“Probably Hodges,” said Alfred, after a moment. “Shall I go, dad?”
“See who it is,” said Carstairs.
“Wrong number, more than likely,” said his wife, wearily. “Central has been unusually annoying of late. It happens several times every day. The service is atrocious.”
Young Carstairs went into the study and snatched up the receiver. Moved by a common impulse, the others followed him into the room, the face of each expressing not only curiosity hut a certain alarm.
“Yes, this is Mr. Carstairs' residence.... What?... All right.” He sat down on the edge of the library table and turned to the others. “Must be long distance. They're getting somebody.”
Alfred Carstairs was a tall, well-built young fellow of twenty. He bore a most remarkable, though perhaps not singular, resemblance to his mother. His eyes were dark, his thick hair a dead black, growing low on his forehead. The lips were full and red, with a whimsical curve at the corners denoting not merely good humour but a certain contempt for seriousness in others. He was handsome in a strong, hold way despite a strangely colourless complexion,—a complexion that may be described as pasty, for want of a nobler word. His voice was deep, with the guttural harshness of youth; loud, unmusical, not yet fixed by the processes of maturity. A big, dominant, vital boy making the last turn before stepping into full manhood. He was his mother's son,—his mother's boy.
His father, a Harvard man, had been thwarted in his desire to have his son follow him through the historic halls at Cambridge,—as he had followed his own father and his grandfather.
Sentiment was not a part of Alfred's makeup. He supported his mother when it came to the college selection. Together they agreed upon Columbia. She frankly admitted her selfishness in wanting to keep her boy at home, but found other and less sincere arguments in the protracted discussions that took place with her husband. She fought Harvard because it was not democratic, because it bred snobbishness and contempt, because it deprived the youth of this practical age of the breadth of vision necessary to success among men who put ability before sentiment and a superficial distinction. She urged Columbia because it was democratic, pulsating, practical.
In the end, Carstairs gave in. He wanted to be fair to both of them. But he was not deceived. He knew that her chief reason, though spoken softly and with almost pathetic simpleness, was that she could not bear the separation from the boy she loved so fiercely, so devotedly. He was not so sure that filial love entered into Alfred's calculations. If the situation had been reversed, he was confident,—or reasonably so,—that Alfred would have chosen Harvard.
He had the strange, unhappy conviction that his son opposed him in this, as in countless other instances, through sheer perversity. His mother's authority always had been supreme. She had exercised it with an iron-handed firmness that not only surprised but gratified the father, who knew so well the tender affection she had for her child. Her word was law. Alfred seldom if ever questioned it, even as a small and decidedly self-willed lad. Paradoxically, she both indulged and disciplined him by means of the same consuming force: her mother-love.