But Dirk pulled at his pipe moodily; shook his head. “Oh, you don’t know, Mother. It’s so damned slow. First thing you know I’ll be thirty. And what am I! An office boy—or little more than that—at Hollis’s.”
During his university years Dirk had seen much of the Arnolds, Eugene and Paula, but it sometimes seemed to Selina that he avoided these meetings—these parties and week-ends. She was content that this should be so, for she guessed that the matter of money held him back. She thought it was well that he should realize the difference now. Eugene had his own car—one of five in the Arnold garage. Paula, too, had hers. She had been one of the first Chicago girls to drive a gas car; had breezed about Chicago’s boulevards in one when she had been little more than a child in short skirts. At the wheel she was dexterous, dare-devil, incredibly relaxed. Her fascination for Dirk was strong. Selina knew that, too. In the last year or two he had talked very little of Paula and that, Selina knew, meant that he was hard hit.
Sometimes Paula and Eugene drove out to the farm, making the distance from their new north-shore house to the DeJong place far south in some breath-taking number of minutes. Eugene would appear in rakish cap, loose London coat, knickers, queer brogans with an English look about them, a carefully careless looseness about the hang and fit of his jacket. Paula did not affect sports clothes for herself. She was not the type, she said. Slim, dark, vivacious, she wore slinky clothes—crêpes, chiffons. Her feet were slim in sheer silk stockings and slippers with buckles. Her eyes were languorous, lovely. She worshipped luxury and said so.
“I’ll have to marry money,” she declared. “Now that they’ve finished calling poor Grandpa a beef-baron and taken I don’t know how many millions away from him, we’re practically on the streets.”
“You look it!” from Dirk; and there was bitterness beneath his light tone.
“Well, it’s true. All this silly muckraking in the past ten years or more. Poor Father! Of course Grand-dad was pur-ty rough, let me tell you. I read some of the accounts of that last indictment—the 1910 one—and I must say I gathered that dear old Aug made Jesse James look like a philanthropist. I should think, at his age, he’d be a little scared. After all, when you’re over seventy you’re likely to have some doubts and fears about punishment in the next world. But not a grand old pirate like Grandfather. He’ll sack and burn and plunder until he goes down with the ship. And it looks to me as if the old boat had a pretty strong list to starboard right now. Father says himself that unless a war breaks, or something, which isn’t at all likely, the packing industry is going to spring a leak.”
“Elaborate figure of speech,” murmured Eugene. The four of them—Paula, Dirk, Eugene, and Selina—, were sitting on the wide screened porch that Selina had had built at the southwest corner of the house. Paula was, of course, in the couch-swing. Occasionally she touched one slim languid foot to the floor and gave indolent impetus to the couch.
“It is, rather, isn’t it? Might as well finish it, then. Darling Aug’s been the grand old captain right through the vi’age. Dad’s never been more than a pretty bum second mate. And as for you, Gene my love, cabin boy would be, y’understand me, big.” Eugene had gone into the business a year before.
“What can you expect,” retorted Eugene, “of a lad that hates salt pork? And every other kind of pig meat?” He despised the yards and all that went with it.
Selina now got up and walked to the end of the porch. She looked out across the fields, shading her eyes with her hand. “There’s Adam coming in with the last load for the day. He’ll be driving into town now. Cornelius started an hour ago.” The DeJong farm sent two great loads to the city now. Selina was contemplating the purchase of one of the large automobile trucks that would do away with the plodding horses and save hours of time on the trip. She went down the steps now on her way to oversee the loading of Adam Bras’s wagon. At the bottom of the steps she turned. “Why can’t you two stay to supper? You can quarrel comfortably right through the meal and drive home in the cool of the evening.”