CHAPTER IX
THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUTH
"Father, I want to marry John Henry," said Susan, just as she had said almost ten years ago, "Father, I want to go to college."
It was a March afternoon, ashen and windy, with flocks of small fleecy clouds hurrying across a changeable blue sky, and the vague, roving scents of early spring in the air. After his dinner, which he had taken for more than fifty years precisely at two o'clock, Cyrus had sat down for a peaceful pipe on the back porch before returning to the office. Between the sunken bricks in the little walled-in yard, blades of vivid green grass had shot up, seeking light out of darkness, and along the grey wooden ledge of the area the dauntless sunflowers were unfolding their small stunted leaves. On the railing of the porch a moth-eaten cat—the only animal for whom Cyrus entertained the remotest respect—was contentedly licking the shabby fur on her side.
"Father, I want to marry John Henry," repeated Susan, raising her voice to a higher key and towering like a flesh and blood image of Victory over the sagging cane chair in which he sat.
Taking his pipe from his mouth, he looked up at her; and so little had he altered in ten years, that the thought flashed through her mind that he had actually suffered no change of expression since the afternoon on which she had asked him to send her to college. As a man he may not have been impressive, but as a defeating force who could say that he had not attained his fulfilment? It was as if the instinct of patriarchal tyranny had entrenched itself in his person as in a last stronghold of the disappearing order. When he died many things would pass away out of Dinwiddie—not only the soul and body of Cyrus Treadwell, but the vanishing myth of the "strong man," the rule of the individual despot, the belief in the inalienable right of the father to demand blood sacrifices. For in common with other men of his type, he stood equally for industrial advancement and for domestic immobility. The body social might move, but the units that formed the body social must remain stationary.
"Well, I don't think I'd worry about marrying, if I were you," he replied, not unkindly, for Susan inspired him with a respect against which he had struggled in vain. "You are very comfortable now, ain't you? And I'll see that you are well provided for after my death. John Henry hasn't anything except his salary, I reckon."
Marriage as an economic necessity was perfectly comprehensible to him, but it was difficult for him to conceive of anybody indulging in it simply as a matter of sentiment. That April afternoon was so far away now that it had ceased to exist even as an historical precedent.
"Yes, but I want to marry him, and I am going to," replied Susan decisively.