“Poor boy—he’s had such a bad example all his life!” she said. “My dear, we have no right to judge him.”
I knew that she, like him, was throwing up to me my transactions with Judson. And like him, she was taking the petty, narrow view of them. “Madam,” I said, “your son is a liar, forger, and thief.”
Just then there came a knock at the door and James’s voice called: “May I come in, mother?”
“No, go away, Jim. Your father and I are busy,” she called in reply.
I went to the door and opened it, beside myself with fury. “Come in!” I exclaimed. “It’s business that concerns you.”
He entered—tall and strong, his handsome face graver than I had ever seen it before. He closed the door behind him and stood looking from one to the other of us. “Well?” he said, “but—no abuse!”
Whenever James and I have come face to face in a crisis I have always had the, to me, maddening feeling that a will as strong as my own has been lifting its head defiantly against me. My wife and my son Walter deal with me by evasion and slippery trickery. My daughter Aurora wins from me, when I choose to let her, by cajolery or tears. Little Helen has never yet had to do with me in a serious matter, and I cannot remember her ever a me even the trifling favours which most children seek from their parents. But James has always played the high and haughty—and I am ashamed to think how often he has ridden me down and defeated me and gained his object. As I have looked upon him as entitled to peculiar consideration because I had planned for him one day to wear my mantle, he has had me at a disadvantage. But my indulgent conduct toward him only makes the blacker his conduct toward me.
“‘You liar—you forger!’”
As he stood there that day, looking so calm and superior, I can’t describe the conflict of pride in him and hatred of him that surged up in me. I lost control of myself. I clinched my fists and shook them in his face. “You liar! You forger! You conscienceless——”