I could feel an invidious comparison between Tom and Wallace, of whom he spoke with such laudatory emphasis, and some one else whom I suspected to be the Jack who had come back from the Philippines; and his next utterance proved this instinctive estimate of the situation to be correct. He went on, slower than before, with long pauses in which he seemed lost in thought, and in some of which I gave up, without much regret, I confess, the idea of ever hearing more of Jack or his brothers.
"Jack was always mother's boy," said he. "Mother's boy ... you know how it is.... Make beds, an' dust, an' play the pianah, an' look after the flowers!... Wasn't bigger'n nothin', either.... Girl, I always thought, by good rights. I remember ... mother wanted him to be a girl.... She was on the square with the children ... but if any boy got a shade the best of it anywhere along the line, it was Jack.... I don't guess Tom an' Wallace ever noticed; but maybe Jack got a leetle the soft side o' things from mother.... Still, she's al'ays been dumbed square....
"I seen as soon as he got old enough to take holt, an' didn't, that he wasn't wuth a cuss.... Never told mother, an' never let on to the boys; but I could see he was no good, Jack wasn't.... Some never owns up when it's their own folks ... but what's the use lyin'?... Hed to hev a swaller-tail coat, an' joined a 'country club' down to town—an' him a-livin' in the middle of a strip o' country a mile wide an' four long, wuth a hundred dollars an acre ... all ourn ... goin' out in short pants to knock them little balls around that cost six bits apiece. I didn't let myself care much about it; but 'country club!'—Hell!"
He had visualized for me the young fellow unfitted to his surroundings, designed on a scale smaller than the sons of Anak about him, deft in little things, finical in dress, fond of the leisure and culture of the club, oppressed with the roughnesses and vastnesses about his father's farms, too tender for the wild winds and burning suns, with nerves attuned to music and art rather than to the crushing of obstacles and the defeat of tasks: and all the while the image of "mother" brooded over him. All this was vividly in the picture—very vividly, considering the unskilful brush with which it had been limned—but just as it began to appeal to me, Anak fell quiescent.
"I never thought he was anything wuss than wuthless," he went on, at last, "till he come to me to git some money he'd lost at this here club.... Thirty-seven dollars an' fifty cents.... Gamblin'.... I told him not by a damned sight; an' he cried—cried like a baby.... I'd 'a' seen him jugged 'fore I'd 'a' give him thirty-seven fifty of my good money lost that way.... Not me.
"... Wallace give him the money f'r his shotgun.... An' mother—she al'ays knowed when Jack had one o' his girl-cryin' fits—she used to go up after Jack come in them nights, an' when he got asleep so he wouldn't know it she'd go in and kiss him.... Watched and ketched her at it, but never let on.... She run down bad—gittin' up before daylight an' broke of her rest like that.... I started in oncet to tell her he was no good, but I jest couldn't.... Turned it off on a hoss by the name o' Jack we had, an' sold him to make good f'r twenty-five dollars less'n he was wuth, ruther'n tell her what I started to.... She loved that wuthless boy, neighbor—there ain't no use denyin' it, she did love him."
He paused a long while, either to ponder on the strange infatuation of "mother" for "Jack" or to allow me to digest his statement. A dog—one of the shaggy brown enthusiasts that chase trains—ran along by the cars until distanced, and then went back wagging his tail as if he had expelled from the neighborhood some noxious trespasser—as he may have conceived himself to have done. Goliath watched him with great apparent interest.
"Collie," said he, at last. "Know anything about collies? Funny dogs! Lick one of 'em oncet an' he's never no good any more.... All kind o' shruvle up by lickin', they're that tender-hearted.... Five year ago this fall Tom spiled a fifty-dollar pedigreed collie by jest slappin' his ears an' jawin' him.... Some critters is like that ... Jack ... was!"
He faltered here, and then flamed out into pugnacity, squaring his huge jaw as if I had accused him—as I did in my heart, I suspect.
"But the dog," he rumbled, "was wuth somethin'—Jack never was.... Cryin' around f'r thirty-seven fifty!... Talkin' o' debts o' honor!... That showed me plain enough he wasn't wuth botherin' with.... Got his mother to come an' ask f'r an allowance o' money—so much a month.... Ever hear of such a thing? An' him not turnin' his hand to a lick of work except around the house helpin' mother.... Tom an' Wallace bed quite a little start in live stock by this time, an' money in bank.... Jack hed the same lay, but he fooled his away—fooled it away.... Broke flat all the time, an' wantin' an allowance.... Mother said the young sprouts at the club had allowances ... an' he read in books that laid around the house about fellers in England an' them places havin' allowances an' debts of honor.... Mother seemed to think one while that we was well enough off so we could let Jack live like the fellers in the books.... He lived more in them books than he did in South Dakoty, an' talked book lingo all the time.... Mother soon seen she was wrong.