“Great Lord!”
The words came like a thunderclap. Caleb Conover stepped back to the wall, his florid face gray.
“You MARRIED a chorus girl?”
“She—her family before the war——”
Caleb had himself in hand.
“Get up!” he ordered. “You haven’t money enough nor earning power enough to buy those boards you’re sprawling on. Yet you saddle yourself with a wife—a wife you can’t support. A woman who will down all your social hopes. And mine. You let a designing doll with a painted face dupe you into——”
“You shan’t speak that way of Enid!” flared up the boy, tearfully. “She is as good and pure as——”
“As you are. And with a damned sight more sense. For she knows a legal way of grabbing onto a livelihood; and you don’t. Shut up! If you try any novel-hero airs on me, you young skunk, I’ll break you over my knee. Now you’ll stand still and you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
Gerald, cowed, but snarling under his breath, obeyed.
“I won’t waste breath telling you all I’d hoped for you,” began Conover, “or how I tried to give you all I missed in my own boyhood. You haven’t the brains to understand—or care. What I’ve got to say is all about money. And I never found you too stupid to listen to that. You’ve cut your throat. Nothing can mend that. We’ll talk about the future at another time. It’s the present we’ve got to ’tend to now. You’re going to be of some use to me at last. The only use you ever will be to anyone. Your allowance, for a few months, is going on just the same as before. But you’ve got to earn it. And you’re going to earn it by staying right here in Granite, and working like a dog for me in this campaign. If you stir out of this town, or if your—that woman comes here, or if you don’t use your pull in my behalf with the sap-heads you travel with at the Pompton Club—if you don’t do all this, I say, till further orders—then, for now and all time, you’ll earn your own way. For you’ll not get another nickel out of me. I guess you know me well enough to understand I’ll go by what I say. Take your choice. You’ve got an earning ability of about $4 a week. You’ve got an allowance of $48,000 a year. Now, till after election, which’ll it be?”