IV
“You dared,” he cried hoarsely, “to bring her right here into this house! You dared!”
“Well,” demanded the son desperately, “what do you want me to do? Sneak up some back alley with her?”
The apparent impudence of the question was so flagrant that Johnathan’s temper exploded with a bang. Like lightning he ripped a hand from his pocket and struck Nathan in the head, an unexpected blow so fierce and hard it knocked the boy sprawling over a clothes basket.
“Pa!—I——”
“Shut up! Not a word out of you! There may be murder done in this house to-night! You’re not too big yet for me to thrash, even if you can line the help up against me in my own factory.”
Despite his white-hot rebellion Nathan saw a facial expression that made him fear his father. It cowed him. Beside, at heart he was still much of a boy and the habit of obedience was strong in him.
“Now,” declared Johnathan, “you’re going to listen to me. Edith! Anna! Go out! This is my affair and Nathan’s—alone!”
The terrified women withdrew. Father and son faced one another beneath that ghastly white light from the burner sticking out from the wall.
“You’ve been going with that girl—unbeknown to me—you’ve been seen with her!”
Johnathan began moving back the chairs dramatically.
“All right! Suppose I have! What of it?”
“Then you—you—admit it!”
“Yes. I admit it!”
“Unbeknown to me—against all I’ve told you—you’ve gone with her and now you admit it!”
“Do you want me to say I haven’t? Do you want me to lie to you?”
“I want you to keep your mouth shut! Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!”
“But you did speak to me, didn’t you?”
Johnathan walked over deadly close.
“Nathan,” he said gutturally, “you’re my son—and murder is punishable by hanging. But I swear if you give me any more of your lip, I’m going to send you to the undertaker and I’m going to do it to-night!”
The boy backed away from his father against the wall, as far as he could retreat. He did not answer. He waited.
“Six or eight years ago,” went on Johnathan, when he saw he had browbeaten his boy into silence, “six or eight years ago I told you you were to have nothing to do with girls! Not until you were old enough to know your own mind, became of age and reached years of discretion. You understood me plainly enough then, didn’t you? What? You may answer! What?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And all down the years you’ve understood I insisted on obedience, didn’t you—right down until to-night?”
“Yes, sir!”
“But regardless of the fact that you knew my wishes and preferences in the matter perfectly, regardless of my warnings, my whippings, my admonitions—just like you did that picnic day with the Gridley girl—you’ve deliberately disobeyed me, haven’t you? You may answer me that too! What?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then what’s the answer? What is it you deserve—deserve terribly?”
“Nothing, sir!”
“What?”
“I said ‘Nothing’!”
“Nothing!”
“Precisely! Nothing! You can’t lay down a law that runs contrary to human nature and expect obedience.”
“Nathan—I’m—going—to—kill you!”
The boy never batted an eyelid.
“No, father, you’re not going to kill me. And when you go talking so, I’ve cause to believe you’re not quite sane.”
It was the boy’s utter calm and perfect poise in a crucial situation, more than the girl question now, which was making Johnathan a man obsessed. He wanted Nathan to cringe and be afraid. Nathan was driven back against the wall but he did not cringe. Neither was he afraid. For the son had at last looked into his father’s weak, inflamed eyes and realized that he—the son—was the better man.
Johnathan’s lips moved ghastly before his voice would come.
“So I’m crazy, am I? And if I choose to murder you, what would you do?”
“I won’t hit you, father. But no one could criticize me for defending myself when any one, even my own father, announces he’s going to murder me.”
“You’ll defend yourself? How?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“God Almighty——”
“It strikes me, father—and this is as good a time to say it as any—it strikes me that there’s altogether too much dragging of God into our family affairs, and mouthing His name over and over is little short of blasphemy. Let’s leave God out of this and settle it between ourselves.”
On the son’s face was slight contempt. Johnathan moved deadly close. Forked lights were dancing in his eyes.
“I demand respect and obedience,” began Johnathan in a cracked, unnatural voice.
“Respect isn’t something that one person can demand of another, father. It’s something we earn by the way we conduct ourselves, day by day——”
Nathan never finished his sentence. Johnathan aimed a blow for his son’s jaw which, landed, would have split open the lad’s face. But this time Nathan saw the blow coming. And——
The step from terrible tragedy to divine comedy is oft but the space of a hair. Johnathan struck for his son’s jaw. But when his fist reached his son’s jaw, his son’s jaw wasn’t there. It had moved. With a boxer’s nicety of perception for distance, Nathan had whipped his head to the left.
The father’s fist went through plaster and lath halfway in to the elbow.
Anna Forge heard the dull smash and Johnathan’s bellow of agony. She burst into the kitchen. She beheld her husband for an instant with his hand and arm caught in a ragged aperture in the plaster. Off to one side Nathan stood with a tired, amused smile around his mouth.
But there was no amusement in the incident for Johnathan. He had broken two small bones in his right hand. And all further attempts at parental chastisement were adjourned for that night in the greater calamity of broken bones.
“You go to bed!” he ordered his son hoarsely. “We’ll finish this in the morning.” The father’s face had been ashen with anger. Now it was white with agony, and his eyes were streaming tears.
Nathan pitied his father. But he shrugged his shoulders and went from the room. The pain from the broken knuckles was so great that Johnathan soon sobbed openly. Still, one could hardly expect the boy to leave his face around to intercept any such blow as Johnathan had purposed.