Poor Man's Rock Part 25

The place was only three blocks from Abbott's. The house itself was not unlike Abbott's, built substantially of gray stone and set in ample grounds. But it was a good deal larger, and both within and without it was much more elaborate, as befitted the dwelling of a successful man whose wife was socially a leader instead of a climber,--like so many of Vancouver's newly rich. There was order and system and a smooth, un.o.btrusive service in that home. Mrs. Horace A. Gower rather prided herself on the noiseless, super-efficient operation of her domestic machinery. Any little affair was sure to go off without a hitch, to be quite charming, you know. Mrs. Gower had a firmly established prestige along certain lines. Her business in life was living up to that prestige, not only that it might be retained but judiciously expanded.

Upon a certain March morning, however, Mrs. Gower seemed to be a trifle shaken out of her usual complacency. She sat at a rather late breakfast, facing her husband, flanked on either hand by her son and daughter.

There was an injured droop to Mrs. Gower's mouth, a slightly indignant air about her. The conversation had reached a point where Mrs. Gower felt impelled to remove her pince-nez and polish them carefully with a bit of cloth. This was an infallible sign of distress.

"I cannot see the least necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such terribly common people. It's degrading."

Norman was employing himself upon a strip of bacon.

"That's a mere matter of opinion," he replied at length. "Somebody has to work. I have to do something for myself sometime, and it suits me to begin now, in this particular manner which annoys you so much. I don't mind work. And those copper claims are a rattling good prospect.

Everybody says so. We'll make a barrel of money out of them yet. Why shouldn't I peel off my coat and go at it?"

"By the way," Gower asked bluntly, "what occasioned this flying trip to England?"

Norman pushed back his chair a trifle, thrust his hands in his trousers pockets and looked straight at his father.

"My own private business," he answered as bluntly.

"You people," he continued after a brief interval, "seem to think I'm still in knee breeches."

But this did not serve to turn his mother from her theme.

"It is quite unnecessary for you to attempt making money in such a primitive manner," she observed. "We have plenty of money. There is plenty of opportunity for you in your father's business, if you must be in business."

"Huh!" Norman grunted. "I'm no good in my father's business, nor anywhere else, in his private opinion. It's no good, mamma. I'm on my own for keeps. I'm going through with it. I've been a jolly fizzle so far. I'm not even a blooming war hero. You just stop bothering about me."

"I really can't think what's got into you," Mrs. Gower complained in a tone which implied volumes of reproach. "It's bad enough for your father and Betty to be running off and spending so much time at that miserable cottage when so much is going on here. I'm simply exhausted keeping things up without any help from them. But this vagary of yours--I really can't consider it anything else--is most distressing. To live in a dirty little cabin and cook your own food, to a.s.sociate with such men--it's simply dreadful! Haven't you any regard for our position?"

"I'm fed up with our position," Norman retorted. A sullen look was gathering about his mouth. "What does it amount to? A lot of people running around in circles, making a splash with their money. You, and the sort of thing you call our position, made a sissy of me right up till the war came along. There was nothing I was good for but parlor tricks. And you and everybody else expected me to react from that and set things afire overseas. I didn't. I didn't begin to come up to your expectations at all. But if I didn't split Germans with a sword or do any heroics I did get some horse sense knocked into me--unbelievable as that may appear to you. I learned that there was a sort of satisfaction in doing things. I'm having a try at that now. And you needn't imagine I'm going to be wet-nursed along by your money.

"As for my a.s.sociates, and the degrading influences that fill you with such dismay," Norman's voice flared into real anger, "they may not have much polish--but they're human. I like them, so far as they go. I've been frostbitten enough by the crowd I grew up with, since I came home, to appreciate being taken for what I am, not what I may or may not have done. Since I have discovered myself to have a funny sort of feeling about living on your money, it behooves me to get out and make what money I need for myself--in view of the fact that I'm going to be married quite soon. I am going to marry"--Norman rose and looked down at his mother with something like a flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes as he exploded his final bombsh.e.l.l--"a fisherman's daughter. A poor but worthy maiden," he finished with unexpected irony.

"Norman!" His mother's voice was a wail. "A common fisherman's daughter? Oh, my son, my son."

She shed a few beautifully restrained tears.

"A common fisherman's daughter. Exactly," Norman drawled. "Terrible thing, of course. Funny the fish scales on the family income never trouble you."

Mrs. Gower glared at him through her gla.s.ses.

"Who is this--this woman?" she demanded.

"Dolly," Betty whispered under her breath.

"Miss Dolores Ferrara of Squitty Cove," Norman answered imperturbably.

"A foreigner besides. Great Heavens! Horace," Mrs. Gower appealed to her husband, "have you no influence whatever with your son?"

"Mamma," Betty put in, "I a.s.sure you you are making a tremendous fuss about nothing. I can tell you that Dolly Ferrara is really quite a nice girl. _I_ think Norman is rather lucky."

"Thanks, Bet," Norman said promptly. "That's the first decent thing I've heard in this discussion."

Mrs. Gower turned the battery of her indignant eyes on her daughter.

"You, I presume," she said spitefully, "will be thinking of marrying some fisherman next?"

"If she did, Bessie," Gower observed harshly, "it would only be history repeating itself."

Mrs. Gower flushed, paled a little, and reddened again. She glared--no other word describes her expression--at her husband for an instant. Then she took refuge behind her dignity.

"There is a downright streak of vulgarity in you, Horace," she said, "which I am sorry to see crop out in my children."

"Thank you, mamma," Betty remarked evenly.

Mrs. Gower whirled on Norman.

"I wash my hands of you completely," she said imperiously. "I am ashamed of you."

"I'd rather you'd be ashamed of me," Norman retorted, "than that I should be ashamed of myself."

"And you, sir,"--he faced his father, speaking in a tone of formal respect which did not conceal a palpable undercurrent of defiance--"you also, I suppose, wash your hands of me?"

Gower looked at him for a second. His face was a mask, devoid of expression.

"You're a man grown," he said. "Your mother has expressed herself as she might be expected to. I say nothing."

Norman walked to the door.

"I don't care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don't say, nor even what you think," he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the k.n.o.b. "I have my own row to hoe. I'm going to hoe it my own style. And that's all there is to it. If you can't even wish me luck, why, you can go to the devil!"

"Norman!" His mother lifted her voice in protesting horror. Gower himself only smiled, a bit cynically. And Betty looked at the door which closed upon her brother with a wistful sort of astonishment.

Gower first found occasion for speech.

"While we are on the subject of intimate family affairs, Bessie," he addressed his wife casually, "I may as well say that I shall have to call on you for some funds--about thirty thousand dollars. Forty thousand would be better."

Mrs. Gower stiffened to attention. She regarded her husband with an air of complete disapproval, slightly tinctured with surprise.

"Oh," she said, "really?"

"I shall need that much properly to undertake this season's operations,"

he stated calmly, almost indifferently.

"Really?" she repeated. "Are you in difficulties again?"

"Again?" he echoed. "It is fifteen years since I was in a corner where I needed any of your money."

"It seems quite recent to me," Mrs. Gower observed stiffly.