Divorce and scandal! Mr. Carter, thinking hard, could not recall a single case in his own family. Of course Uncle Duff Carter had quarreled with his wife, but it was about a back lot that adjoined their place. He wanted to sow it to oats for his horses, and his wife wanted to keep it for a private burial-ground for the family. There hadn’t been the least bit of scandal about that quarrel, and it was made up before his uncle died. He was buried, by the way, in that same back lot, with a monument of Florentine marble. His widow had her own way!
As for a runaway wife, or any kind of a wife who wasn’t what Mr. Carter called “a lady,” there was no record of it. William, his eldest son and the pride of his heart, seemed about to make the first break in a long line. It must distress William as much as it did his father.
Mr. Carter began to feel the greatest compunction about his son. The boy had behaved like a donkey, but there was no use in crying over spilt milk. The only way was to help him set it right. Of course, if the talk got no farther, and William chose to forgive her and could keep her in hand, there was nothing to be done about it.
As Mr. Carter’s rage against Fanchon began to cool, he saw the advantage of suppressing the scandal and making her behave. He had no very clear idea of how this should be done, except his firm belief that any sensible man could prevent such doings in his own household. He belonged, too, to a type of manhood that has long ago decided on the simplest method to avenge an insult to his family. He couldn’t recall an ancestor who under such provocation would fail to shoot his man. Times had changed now, but Mr. Carter felt an intense desire to annihilate that brute, Corwin.
He had no intention of mentioning this to William. The cooling-off process had reached the stage of common sense; but he felt that he must talk things over with his son. He had experience of life, if he had no experience with a recalcitrant wife, and he wanted to suggest some kind of restraint for his daughter-in-law. It seemed to him a perfectly practical thing—because he had never tried it. A moral strait-jacket for Fanchon appealed to his mind, at the moment, more strongly than any other idea in life.
He got through the morning’s work, lunched alone, and then waited until three o’clock. At that time he could endure it no longer. He had caught his two girl stenographers whispering, and he had seen the office-boy watching the inn opposite, where Corwin had stayed the day before. The office-boy brought Mr. Carter’s resolution to a head. He closed his desk sharply, snatched up his hat, and started for William’s office.
The office was situated on the top floor of the Payson Building. William was the buyer and traveling agent of Mr. Payson’s chain of department-stores. There was only a modest branch store in the home town, but in larger cities there were towering beehives bearing the name of Payson.
William had traveled abroad for these stores, and now, in his private office here, he was still directing the foreign correspondence of the firm. It was a position of great responsibility, and it carried a handsome salary and perquisites. Mr. Carter was proud of his son’s advance and proud of his ability to keep up with it. It was his pride in him that made this unfortunate marriage such a bitter disappointment.
He passed through the crowded shop, glancing at the long aisles of merchandise and noting the rugs—some of them brought from Turkey by William, others imported by his advice to be sent to the larger markets in the North. At the elevator Mr. Carter encountered Mr. Payson—the rich man who had paid for the singers at the concert where Fanchon had made herself notorious.
“I’m going up to see my son a moment,” said Mr. Carter, as they shook hands.