The Indifference of Juliet Part 28

"Are they going to do it?"

"I didn't tell vem to."

"Why not?"

"Didn't want to."

"Listen, son," said Anthony. "I could make the fire chief put away the cart. I'm stronger than he is, you know. I could make him walk out to where it lies in the garden, and I could make his hands pick it up and carry it into the house, and then it would be done.--Don't you think I could?"

Tony considered. "Es, I fink 'ou could," he admitted. Evidently the question was one he could reflect upon from the standpoint of the outsider.

"But I don't want to do that. I want Tony Robeson to put the cart away because his father asks him to do it. Don't you think he ought to do that?"

"I isn't Tony Robeson, I'se ve fire chief."

"Were you the fire chief when you woke up, and mother washed you and dressed you and gave you your lunch? I don't think she thought you were.

If you had been the fire chief she would have left you to take care of yourself."

Tony thought about it. "I dess I'se Tony wiv muvver," he said.

"Then you aren't Tony with me?"

The thick locks shook vehemently in the sir with the negative response. "I said I was ve fire chief, and I'se got to _be_ ve fire chief," he reiterated.

Without question it was a battle of wills. But Anthony's mind was made up.

For lack of time to deal with them previous similar issues had been dodged in various ways, compromises had been effected. It was plain that argument and reasoning, the wiles of the affectionately wise adversary who does not want to bring the matter to a direct conflict, had been tried. Anthony could see no way out except to dominate the child by the force of his own resolute character. It was not the way by which he wanted to obtain the mastery, but it was becoming plain to him that, in this case, at least, it was the only way left.

His face grew stern all at once, his eyes, though still kind, met his son's with determination. "Tony," he said very gravely--and there was a new quality in his tone to which the child was not accustomed--"You are not the fire chief now. You are Tony Robeson. _I shall not let you be the fire chief any longer._ Do you understand?"

There was no threat in the words, only a decisiveness of the sort before which men give way, because they see that there is no alternative. Tony stared into his father's eyes curiously. His own grew big with wonder, with something which was not alarm, but akin to it. He gazed and gazed, as if fascinated. Anthony's look held his; the man's powerful eyes did not flinch--neither did the boy's. It is possible that both pulses quickened a beat.

Little Tony drew his eyes away at last, turned and started for the door.

Silently Anthony watched him as he reached for the k.n.o.b, turned again, and looked back at his father. On the very threshold the child stood still and stared back. His brown eyes filled, his red lips quivered. The stern face which watched his melted into a winning smile, and Anthony held out his arms. An instant longer, and his son had run across the floor and flung himself into them.

When the childish storm of tears had quieted, and several big hugs had been exchanged, Anthony set the boy down upon the floor and took his hand.

Silently the two walked out of the house and down the garden. The hook-and-ladder cart stood patiently waiting, just where it had waited all day. Little Tony ran to it and picked it up. Over his exquisite face broke the first smile that had been seen there since the earliest disregarded command of the morning.

"Ve fire chief's gone," he said. "He was a bad fire chief."

So together the man and the boy escorted the hook-and-ladder cart to the nursery, and backed it carefully into its stall, between the milk wagon and the automobile. Then the child went to his play. But the man drew a long breath.

"I would rather manage a hundred striking workmen," he said to himself with emphasis.

XXVI.--ON GUARD

While little Tony had been growing, waxing strong and st.u.r.dy: while Juliet had been tending and training him, learning, as every mother does, more than she could impart: Anthony, in his place, had not stood still. The strength and determination he had from the first hour put into his daily work had begun to tell. His position in a great mercantile establishment had steadily advanced as he had made himself more and more indispensable to its heads.

Cathcart, the successful architect, began to talk about a new home for the man into whose hands Henderson and Henderson were putting large interests to manage for them, and whose salary, he a.s.serted, must now justify, indeed call for, life under more ideal surroundings than the little home in the unfas.h.i.+onable suburb which poverty had at first made necessary.

"Let me draw some plans for you," urged Cathcart, one evening in June, when he had run out to see his friend. Juliet was by chance away, and Cathcart took advantage of this to call Anthony's attention, in a politely frank fas.h.i.+on, to the shortcomings of his present residence. "It's all right in its way," he said, standing upon a corner of the lawn with Anthony, and surveying the house critically. "Mrs. Robeson certainly deserves full credit for the admirable way in which she restored the old house and added just the changes in keeping with its possibilities. I've always said it couldn't have been better done, with the means you've told me you were able to put at her disposal. But the place is too small for you now."

"I don't think we feel it so," said Anthony tentatively, strolling beside Cathcart along the edge of the lawn, his hands in his pockets, lifting friendly eyes at the little house. "Since we put in the bathroom--that small room off the upper hall, you know--and added the nursery and den, we're very comfortable. The furnace keeps us warm as toast, and we're soon to have the water system out here, so we won't have to depend upon our present expedients. I'm fond of the place, and I'm confident Mrs. Robeson is devoted to it."

"I can understand that," agreed Cathcart. "Of course, the spot where you began life together will always have its charm for you both--in fact the sentiment of the matter may blind you to the real inadequacies of the place for a man in your position."

"My position isn't so stable that I want to build a marble palace on it yet," said Anthony, a humorous twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed watching another man manoeuvre for his favourable hearing of a scheme. It was an art in which he was himself accomplished; it was one of the points of his value to Henderson and Henderson.

"Everybody knows that you're in a fair way to become head man with the Hendersons," said Cathcart, "and everybody also knows that you might as well have struck a gold-mine. It's superb, the way you have come into the confidence of those old conservatives."

"That's all well enough; but I don't see that it entails upon me the duty of laying out all I've saved on a new house. I know what you fellows are--when you begin to draw plans your love of the ideal runs away with the other man's pocketbook."

"Not at all," declared Cathcart. "Particularly when he's a friend and you understand just what he can afford to do."

"Why don't you talk about enlarging the old house? That's much more likely to appeal to my desires."

The two had reached the back of the house and were close by the kitchen windows. Cathcart reached up and took hold of a sill. With a strong hand he wrenched and pounded about the window, until he succeeded in showing that it was old and uncertain.

"That's why," he said, dusting his hand with his handkerchief. "The house is old--fairly rotten in places. The minute you began to enlarge it in any ambitious way you'd find it would be cheaper to tear it down and begin again. But the site, Robeson--the site isn't desirable. The place is respectable enough, but it has no future. The good building is all going south, not north, of the city. You don't want to spend a lot of money here--you couldn't sell out except at a loss."

"Your arguments are good, very good," admitted Anthony; "so good that I'd like to put you on your mettle to draw me a set of plans for just the sort of thing you think I ought to have--or Mrs. Robeson ought to have, for she's the one to be considered. Anything will do for me. I'll let you do this--on one condition."

"Name it."

"That you also do your level best to demonstrate to me what a clever man and an artist of your proportions could make out of this house, provided he really wanted to show the extent of his ability. Now, that's fair. If you really care to convince me you won't fool with this proposition, you'll make a study of the one problem as thoroughly as you do of the other, and let me decide the case on its merits. If I thought you weren't giving the old house a fair chance I should take up its cause out of pure affection."

He smiled at Cathcart's discontented face with so brilliant a good humour that the architect cleared up.

"By Jove, Robeson," he said, "I think I see what endears you to the Hendersons. I wouldn't have said you could have induced me to try my hand at the old house, but I'll be hanged if I don't follow your instructions to the letter--and win out, too."

"Good," said Anthony. "And don't mention it to my wife. We'll keep it for a surprise; and I promise you when the time comes I won't prejudice her in any way."

Cathcart drew out a notebook and pencil and entered some memoranda on the spot, while Anthony, coming up on the piazza of the dining-room, laid upon the old Dutch house-door a hand which seemed to caress it. He was wondering if by any possible magic Cathcart could create, in the rarest abode in the world, a new door which he should ever care to enter as he now cared to enter this.

"I think," said Juliet decidedly, "you're wrong about it."

"And I know," returned Anthony with emphasis, "that you are."

The two faced each other. They were walking through a short stretch of woodland, which lay as yet untouched by the hand of suburban property owners. It was a favourite ground for the diversions of the Robesons, when they had not time to spend in getting farther away. They had been strolling through it now, in the early June evening, discussing a matter relative to the investment of a certain moderate sum of money which had come into Anthony's hands. It developed that their ideas about it differed radically.

"It's not safe to do as you propose," said Juliet.

"To do what you propose would be only one better than tying it up in an old stocking--or putting it away in the coffee pot. It's essentially a woman's plan--no man would do it the honour of considering it a moment."