It was the boy alone that grew; the mother, having become perfect, remained stationary in charm like the blessed Greeks in the asphodel-fields of Hades.
About the time Eric Rudd outgrew the public schools of Hillsdale and graduated from the high school with a wonderful oration of his own writing called "Night Brings Out the Stars," Kittredge announced that his eldest son would go to Harvard in the fall. Rudd determined that Eric should go to Yale. He even sent for catalogues. Rudd was appalled to see how much a person had to know before he could even get into college. And then, this nearly omniscient intellect was called a Freshman!
The prices of rooms, of meals, of books, of extra fees, the estimated allowances for clothing and spending-money dazed the poor shoe clerk and nearly sent Eric into business. But, fortunately, the brier pipe came to the rescue with an unexpected legacy from an unsuspected uncle.
The four years of college life were imagined with a good deal of elision and an amount of guesswork that would have amused a janitor. But Rudd and Martha were chiefly interested in the boy's vacations at home, and their own trips to New Haven, and the letters of approval from the professors.
Eric had an athletic career seldom equaled since the days of Hercules. For Eric was a champion tennis-player, hockey-player, baseballist, boxer, swimmer, runner, jumper, shot-putter. And he was the best quoit-thrower in the New Haven town square. Rudd had rather dim notions of some of the games, so that Eric was established both as center rush of the football team and the cockswain in the crew.
He was also a member of all the best fraternities. He was a "Bones" man in his Freshman year, and in his Sophomore year added the other Senior societies. And, of course, he stood at the head of all his classes—though he never condescended to take a single red apple to a professor.
The boy's college life lasted Rudd a thousand and one evenings. It was in beautiful contrast with the career of Kittredge's children, some of whom were forever flunking their examinations, slipping back a year, requiring expensive tutors, acquiring bad habits, and getting into debt. Almost the only joy Kittredge had of them was in telegraphing them money in response to their telegrams for money—they never wrote. Their vacations either sent them scurrying on house parties or other excursions. Or if they came home they were discontented with house and parents. They corrected Kittredge's grammar, though his State accounted him an orator. They corrected Mrs. Kittredge's etiquette, though Hillsdale looked up to her as a social arbitrix.
Kittredge poured a deal of his disappointment into Rudd's ear, because his hard heart was broken and breaking anew every day, and he had to tell somebody. He knew that his old clerk would keep it where he kept all the secrets of his business, but he never knew that Rudd still had a child of his own, forging ahead without failure. Rudd could give comfort, for he had it to spare, and he was empty of envy.
It was a ghastly morning when Kittredge showed Rudd a telegram saying that his eldest son, Thomas, had thrown himself in front of a train because of the discovery that his accounts were wrong. Kittredge had found him a place in a New York bank, but the gambling fever had seized the young fellow. And now he was dead, in his sins, in his shame. Dives cried out to Lazarus:
"It's hell to be a father, Will. It's an awful thing to bring children into the world and try to carry 'em through it. It's not a man's job. It's God's."