Martin Moreland leaned back in his chair. With each word he uttered he brought the point of a pencil he was holding, down on the sheet of paper before him with a deliberate little tap that accented and clipped off each word with a finality and a certainty that were most reassuring.
“I don’t know,” said the elder Moreland deliberately, “that I’ve made such a very good job of being your father. Your mother thinks not; but I have tried, Junior, with all my might. You should give me credit for that. Ten years ago I began to figure that to-day would come. At the same time, I began to plan how to get the whip hand. Let me tell you without any frills that I’ve got it. You can stake your sweet life that I’ve got it!”
Junior crossed the room and sat down upon the arm of his father’s chair. He ran his hands through his hair, and bending over, kissed him.
“I haven’t a notion what you mean, Dad,” he said, “but you’re the greatest man in all the world. You’ve always been away too good to me, but some of these days I’m going to show you that it hasn’t been wasted. You may go and travel clear around the world, if you want to, and I’ll run this business, and you’ll find when you get back that you haven’t lost a dollar and you’ve made a good many. I’ve been watching the way you play the game all my life. You bet I can play up to you! But this girl matter is another question. I don’t see how you’re going to make Mahala change her mind if she doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me.”
“You poor ninny!” said Martin Moreland scornfully. “Can you look in your glass and tell yourself truthfully that there is such a thing as a girl that doesn’t want as handsome a young fellow as you are? Of course she wants you. But you’ve heard of chariot wheels, haven’t you? They’re an obsession that all women get in the backs of their heads. About Mahala’s period in their career every one of them wants to think of herself as riding in a chariot at the wheels of which she is dragging—the more supine lovers the better. There’s no such thing as getting the number too large. At the present minute, according to Miss Mahala, she has got you under her chariot wheels; she wants you to kneel and to cringe and to beg and to let her feel her power.”
“I wonder now,” said Junior. “Of course, if that is what she wants——”
“Well, you needn’t wonder,” said Moreland Senior. “Your Dad’s had some experience with women, let me tell you. He knows. And whenever a real he-man meets a woman who’s stressing this chariot idea to an uncomfortable degree, it’s time for him to take the reins and do the driving for a while himself.”
“But I don’t fancy driving Mahala would be such an easy job, even for a strong man,” said Junior, once more on his feet and pacing back and forth across the room. “I’ve spent the greater part of the day, ever since we were six years old, nine months out of the year, in the company of that young lady, and you don’t know her very well, Father, or you wouldn’t use the term ‘drive’ in connection with her.”
“Don’t I?” sneered Martin Moreland. “Don’t I, Son? Well, let me tell you something. For the past ten years I’ve been loaning Mahlon Spellman every dollar I could get him to take, at the highest rate of interest the law would allow me to extract. I’ve got him tied up financially until he can’t move hand or foot. I’ve got notes with his signature that will cover every dollar he’s worth in the world, store and house, and furnishings as well. I’m not right sure but that if I made a clean sweep, I’d stand to lose, I’ve gone so damn far getting the finnicky little pickaninny exactly where I want him. All you’ve got to do is to say the word and Miss Mahala will get down on her knees to you and ask you very humbly to please lift her up and keep her in the position she has always been accustomed to occupying.”
During the first part of this speech, Junior stood still in open-mouthed wonder. As his father progressed, he began to pace the floor again. As he finished, he was laughing and rubbing his hands.