I was so overwhelmed that I fairly staggered into a chair. Helen darted to me and knelt beside me. “And I won’t go there again! I didn’t show her that I was cut. I didn’t feel cut. I only felt what a great, noble father I have, and how low and contemptible all those girls and boys and their parents are. I stayed until nearly the last. But I’ll never go again. You won’t ask me to, will you, father?”
I patted her on the shoulder. It was impossible for me to answer her. Whether through fear of me or to gain her point with her child, my wife concealed the triumph she must have felt, and said: “The more reason for going, Helen. Where is your pride? If you should stay away, they would say it was because you were ashamed——”
“But that isn’t the reason,” interrupted Helen. “And I don’t care what they think!” she added, scornfully.
I have never been in such a rage as possessed me at that moment. I felt an insane impulse to rush out and strangle and torture those envious wretches who were seeking to revenge themselves for having been worsted in the encounter with me down-town by humiliating my children. But the matter of Helen’s holding the social advantage we had gained when we got the Merivales to put her in that class was too important to be neglected for a burst of impotent fury. I joined with her mother, and finally we brought her round to see that she must keep on at the class and must make a fight to overthrow the clique of traducers of her father. When she saw it her enthusiasm was roused, and—well, she can’t fail to win with her cleverness and good looks, and with me to back her up.
What that miserable girl said in her hearing, and her expression as she repeated it, comes back to me again and again, and, somehow, I feel as if old Judson were getting revenge upon me. First James—and now Helen! But James believed it, while Helen, splendid girl that she is, knew at once that it was untrue. At least, I think so.
What an ugly word “thief” is! And how ugly it sounds from the lips of my child—even when there is no real justification for it! I know that all who come in contact with me, whether socially or in business, envy and hate me. It seems to me now that I know the thought in their spiteful brains—know the word that trembles on their lips but dares not come out.
Yesterday I turned upon my wife when we were alone for a moment. I have felt that she has been gloating over me ever since that afternoon.
“Well,” I said, angrily—for I have been extremely irritable through sleeplessness of late, “why don’t you say it, instead of keeping this cowardly silence? Why don’t you taunt me?”
She showed what she’d been thinking by understanding me instantly. “Taunt you!” she said; “I’m trying to forget it—I’ve been trying to forget it all these years. That’s why I’m an old woman long before my time.”
Her look was a very good imitation of tragedy. I felt unable to answer her and so begin a quarrel that might have relieved my mind. The best I was able to do was to say, sarcastically: “So that’s the reason, is it? I had noted the fact, but was attributing it to your anxiety about falsifying your accounts.”