Gabriel Tolliver Part 42

"Well, I must go," said Silas somewhat bluntly. When Beauty has a glib tongue, abler men than Silas find themselves without weapons to cope with it.

"Shall I tell mother that you have given your promise to call soon?"

Eugenia asked.

"Now, I hope you are not making fun of me," cried Silas with some irritation.

"How could that be, sir? Don't you think it would be extremely pert in a young girl to make fun of a gentleman old enough to be her father?"

Silas winced at the comparison. "Well, I have seen some very pert ones,"

he insisted, and with that he bade her good-day with a very ill grace, and went on about his business, of which he had a good deal of one kind and another.

"Mother," said Eugenia, after she had given an account of her encounter with Silas, "I believe the man has a good heart and is ashamed of it."

"Why, I think the same may be said of most of the grand rascals that we read about in history; and the pity of it is that they would have all been good men if they had had the right kind of women to deal with them and direct their careers."

"Do you really think so, mother?" the daughter inquired.

"I'm sure of it," said the lady.

Then after all there might be some hope for old Silas Tomlin. And his instinct may have given him an inkling of the remedy for his particular form of the whimsies, for it was not many days before he came knocking at the lady's door, where he was very graciously received, and most delightfully entertained. Both mother and daughter did their utmost to make the hours pa.s.s pleasantly, and they succeeded to some extent. For awhile Silas was suspicious, then he would resign himself to the temptations of good music and bright conversation. Presently he would remember his suspicions, and straighten himself up in his chair, and a.s.sume an att.i.tude of defiance; and so the first evening pa.s.sed. When Silas found himself in the street on his way home, he stopped still and reflected.

"Now, what in the ding-nation is that woman up to? What is she trying to do, I wonder? Why, she's as different from what she was when I first knew her as a b.u.t.terfly is from a caterpillar. Why, there ain't a pearter woman on the continent. No wonder Paul lost his head in that house! She's up to something, and I'll find out what it is."

Silas was always suspicious, but on this occasion he bethought himself of the fact that he had not been dragged into the house; he had been under no compulsion to knock at the door; indeed, he had taken advantage of the slightest hint on the part of the daughter--a hint that may have been a mere form of politeness. He remembered, too, that he had frequently gone by the house at night, and had heard the piano going, accompanied by the singing of one or the other of the ladies. His reflections would have made him ashamed of himself, but he had never cultivated such feelings. He left that sort of thing to the women and children.

In no long time he repeated his visit, and met with the same pleasurable experience. On this occasion, Eugenia remained in the parlour only a short time. For a diversion, the mother played a few of the old-time tunes on the piano, and sang some of the songs that Silas had loved in his youth. This done, she wheeled around on the stool, and began to talk about Paul.

"If I had a son like that," she said, "I should be immensely proud of him."

"You have a fine daughter," Silas suggested, by way of consolation.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, but you know we always want that which we have not. Yet they say that envy is among the mortal sins."

"Well, a sin's a sin, I reckon," remarked Silas.

"Oh, no! there are degrees in sin. I used to know a preacher who could run the scale of evil-doing and thinking, just as I can trip along the notes on the piano."

"They once tried to make a preacher out of me," remarked Silas, "but when I slipped in the church one day and went up into the pulpit, I found it was a great deal too big for me."

"They make them larger now," said the lady, "so that they will hold the exhorter and the horrible example at the same time."

"Did Paul ever see my picture there?" asked Silas, changing the conversation into a more congenial channel.

"Why, I think so," replied the lady placidly. "I think he asked about it, and I told him that we had known each other long ago, which was not at all the truth."

"What did Paul say to that?" asked Silas eagerly.

"He said that while some people might think you were queer, you had been a good dad to him. I think he said dad, but I'll not be sure."

"Yes, yes, he said it," cried Silas, all in a glow. "That's Paul all over; but what will the poor boy think when he finds out what you know?"

"Why, he'll enjoy the situation," said the lady, laughing. "As you Georgians say, he'll be tickled to death."

Silas regarded her with astonishment, his hands clenched and his thin lips pressed together. "Do you think, Madam, that it is a matter for a joke? You women----"

"Can't I have my own views? You have yours, and I make no objection."

"But think of what a serious matter it is to me. Do you realise that there is nothing but a whim betwixt me and disgrace--betwixt Paul and disgrace?"

"A whim? Why, you are another Daniel O'Connell! Call me a hyperbole, a rectangled triangle, a parenthesis, or a hyphen." She was laughing, and yet it was plain to be seen that she had no relish for the term which Silas had unintentionally applied to her.

"I meant to say that if the notion seized you, you would fetch us down as a hunter bags a brace of doves."

"Doves!" exclaimed Mrs. Claiborne, with a comical lift of the eyebrows.

"Buzzards, then!" said Silas with some heat.

"Oh, you overdo everything," laughed the lady.

"Well, there's n.o.body hurt but me," was Silas's gruff reply.

"And Paul," suggested the lady, with a peculiar smile.

"Well, when I say Paul, I mean myself. I've been called worse names than buzzard by people who were trying to walk off with my money. Oh, they didn't call me that to my face," said Silas, noticing a queer expression in the lady's eyes. "And people who should have known better have hated me because I didn't fling my money away after I had saved it."

"Well, you needn't worry about that," Mrs. Claiborne remarked. "You will have plenty of company in the money-grabbing business before long. I can see signs of it now, and every time I think of it I feel sorry for our young men, yes, and our young women, and the long generations that are to come after them. In the course of a very few years you will find your business to be more respectable than any of the professions. You remember how, before the war, we used to sneer at the Yankees for their money-making proclivities? Well, it won't be very long before we'll beat them at their own game; and then our politicians will thrive, for each and all of them will have their principles dictated by Shylock and his partners."

"Why, you talk as if you were a politician yourself. But why are you sorry for our young women?"

"That was a hasty remark. I am sorry for those who will grow weary and fall by the wayside. The majority of them, and the best of them, will make themselves useful in thousands of ways, and new industries will spring up for their benefit. They will become workers, and, being workers, they will be independent of the men, and finally begin to look down on them as they should."

"Well!" exclaimed Silas, and then he sat and gazed at the lady for the first time with admiration. "Where'd you learn all that?" he asked after awhile.

"Oh, I read the newspapers, and such books as I can lay my hands on, and I remember what I read. Didn't you notice that I recited my piece much as a school-boy would?"

"No, I didn't," replied Silas. "I do a good deal of reading myself, but all those ideas are new to me."

"Well, they'll be familiar to you just as soon as our people can look around and get their bearings. As for me, I propose to become an advanced woman, and go on the stage; there's nothing like being the first in the field. I always told my husband that if he died and left me without money, I proposed to earn my own living."

"You told your husband that? When did you tell him?" inquired Silas with some eagerness.

"Oh, long before he died," replied the lady.

Silas sat like one stunned. "Do you mean to tell me that your husband is dead?"

"Why, certainly," replied Mrs. Claiborne. "What possible reason could I have for denying or concealing the fact?"

Silas straightened himself in his chair, and frowned. "Then why did you come here and pretend--pretend--ain't you Ritta Rozelle, that used to be?"