“Good God, man,” Kite snapped, “can’t you handle your own son?”
Chase got up and walked to the window, his back to Kite. His lips set firmly. Kite was right; he ought to be able to handle his own son, unless the world were all awry. After all, the dry question was only a pretext. Wint ought to train with him rather than with Amos. He would tell the boy so.
When at last he turned toward Kite again, the other man saw that he had won. “I’ll see,” said Chase. “I’ll talk to Wint and see.”
CHAPTER IV
CHASE CHANGES SIDES
WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR, was thoughtful all that day; he went home in the evening still undecided as to what he should do. He was unhappy, hurt at Wint’s reticence, disturbed as to his own course of action, and fiercely resentful of Amos’s influence over his son.
His conscience was troubling him; and he was trying to quiet it with Kite’s more or less specious argument that this was politics, not morality. If Chase had been asked to come out, point-blank, and champion the nonenforcement of the liquor law, he would have refused; and he would have refused with indignation at the suggestion. But the issue was not so clear as that. It was clouded by his dislike for Amos. It was not merely a question of enforcing the law; it was a question of balking Amos Caretall. And Chase was prepared to go a long way to put a spoke in Amos’s wheel.
Wint had not yet come, when he reached his home; and he was glad of that. It gave him some leeway, gave him some further time to think. But his thoughts ran in an endless circle; his convictions countered his enmity toward Amos. It was only by small degrees that his attitude toward Amos crowded other considerations out of his mind. He was gradually coming to the point of decision when he heard Wint at the door. Mrs. Chase met Wint in the front hall, and told him hurriedly:
“Now, Wint, you’re late again. You run right upstairs and wash your face and hands. Supper’s all ready, and Hetty wants to go out, and I don’t want to keep her waiting any—”
Wint laughed, and kissed her, and told her he would hurry, and he was gone up the stairs, two steps at a time, while his mother still talked to him. When he came down, his father and mother had already gone into the dining room. He followed them, answered his father’s “Good evening, Wint,” in an abstracted way, and sat down hurriedly. He did not look toward his father; he was conscious he had not done the fair thing in failing to tell the older man of his orders to Radabaugh. He felt guilty.
Mrs. Chase never allowed any gaps in the conversation to go unplugged; and since Wint and his father were both normal men, with normal appetites, she did most of the talking during the early part of the meal, while they ate. It was only when Hetty brought on a thick rhubarb pie and Mrs. Chase began to cut it that Chase said casually to his son: