Hanging’s Too Good for Him
THE PATHETIC STORY OF TOMMY ELLINGER, OF NEW YORK, AND AN INNOCENT YOUNG GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
HE first emerged from obscurity at his father’s funeral. He was the only son and the heir to everything, and therefore, of course, the center of interest; but immediately and forever he destroyed all the tepid sympathy and good will of the assembled relatives by his curious air of immense carelessness, his foppish nonchalance.
He hadn’t even the decency to wear a dark suit, they observed. He was dressed in light gray, evidently quite new, and he kept his hands in his pockets. It never occurred to any of them that his indifference might be a clumsy effort to conceal an immeasurable embarrassment. Neither did any one else remember what he remembered—that his father had detested any sort of formal mourning. And it was Tommy’s destiny always to do a thing in the wrong way, always to antagonize, invariably to blunder.
It was not regret for the loss of his father, or any great regard for his opinions, that caused Tommy to remember and to respect his wishes. It was nothing more than a naïve and kindly sentimentality. His father had been a horrible bully to him, the great bogey of his childhood. His mother had died when he was very little, and he had been sent off to boarding school at once.
It seemed to the family that Tommy had always been at school, winter and summer. Once in a great while he had emerged at some cousin’s Christmas party, a rather silly blond boy in military uniform, always spoken of as “poor little Tommy Ellinger.” There were no family rumors or traditions about him, no reports of his behavior at school.
Now, however, that he had definitely come to life, it was necessary for the family to decide upon him, and they decided unfavorably. He got, then and there, the name of being “defiant” and “conceited.”
His father’s elder brother was to be his guardian until he was twenty-one—a task which disgusted and appalled Uncle James. He was an old bachelor lawyer, living in a hotel. Naturally his first thought for Tommy was college, which would remove the boy for all his minority, and even longer; but Tommy fought desperately against that. His hatred for books, for herding with other young males, for all the bullying and chaffing which terrified his awkward innocence, for the competition which dazed his lumbering mind, made him unusually resolute. Business, too, he summarily repudiated.
“Then what do you intend to do?” his uncle demanded, with false patience.
“Well,” said Tommy desperately, “why couldn’t I be a lawyer, like you?”