“A supper!” Mark Constantine demanded crisply that same evening, merely groaning when his sister told him that Gaylord had undertaken all the errands and was such a dear boy. “And send it up to my room––ham, biscuits, pie, and iced coffee, and I’m not at home if the lord mayor calls.”
He departed to the plainest room in the mansion and turned on an electric fan to keep him company. He sat watching the lawn men at their work, wondering what he was to do with this barn of a place. Beatrice had told him forcibly that she was not going to live in it. Wherein was the object of keeping it open for Belle Todd and himself when more and more he wished for semi-solitude? Noise and crowds and luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered, the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor moral. He liked to relive in dream fashion the years of early endeavour––of his married life with Hannah. After he finished the reverie he would tell himself with a flash of honesty, “Gad, it might as well have happened to some other fellow––for all the good it does you.” Nothing seemed real to Constantine except his check book and his wife’s monument.
It was still to dawn upon him that his daughter partly despised him. He had always said that no one loved him but his child, and that no one but his child mattered so far as he was concerned. Since 69 Beatrice’s marriage he had become restless, wretched, desperately lonesome; he found himself missing Steve quite as much as he missed Beatrice. Their letters were unsatisfactory since they were chiefly concerned with things––endless things that they coveted or had bought or wanted in readiness for their return. As he sat watching the lawn men gossip he knitted his black brows and wondered if he ought to sell the mansion and be done with it. Then it occurred to him that grandchildren playing on the velvety lawn would make it quite worth while. With a thrill of anticipation he began to plan for his grandchildren and to wonder if they, too, would be eternally concerned with things.
As he recalled Mary’s defiance he chuckled. “A ten-dollar-a-week raise was cheap for such a woman,” he thought.
Meantime, Trudy informed the Faithful family at supper: “Gay has telephoned that he is coming to-night. Were you going to use the parlour, Mary?” A mere formality always observed for no reason at all.
“No, I’m going to water the garden. It’s as dry as Sahara.”
Luke groaned.
“Don’t make Luke help you. He’s stoop-shouldered enough from study without making him carry sprinkling cans,” Mrs. Faithful objected.
“Nonsense! It’s good for him, and he will be through in an hour.”
“Too late for the first movie show,” expostulated Luke.