“Well, my father won’t look after it,” Lester returned. “If you touch me with that whip I’ll take things into my own hands. I’m not committing any punishable offenses, and I’m not going to be knocked around any more.”
Words, unfortunately, did not avail in this case, but a good, vigorous Irish-American wrestle did, in which the whip was broken and the discipline of the school so far impaired that he was compelled to take his clothes and leave. After that he looked his father in the eye and told him that he was not going to school any more.
“I’m perfectly willing to jump in and work,” he explained. “There’s nothing in a classical education for me. Let me go into the office, and I guess I’ll pick up enough to carry me through.”
Old Archibald Kane, keen, single-minded, of unsullied commercial honor, admired his son’s determination, and did not attempt to coerce him.
“Come down to the office,” he said; “perhaps there is something you can do.”
Entering upon a business life at the age of eighteen, Lester had worked faithfully, rising in his father’s estimation, until now he had come to be, in a way, his personal representative. Whenever there was a contract to be entered upon, an important move to be decided, or a representative of the manufactory to be sent anywhere to consummate a deal, Lester was the agent selected. His father trusted him implicitly, and so diplomatic and earnest was he in the fulfilment of his duties that this trust had never been impaired.
“Business is business,” was a favorite axiom with him and the very tone in which he pronounced the words was a reflex of his character and personality.
There were molten forces in him, flames which burst forth now and then in spite of the fact that he was sure that he had them under control. One of these impulses was a taste for liquor, of which he was perfectly sure he had the upper hand. He drank but very little, he thought, and only, in a social way, among friends; never to excess. Another weakness lay in his sensual nature; but here again he believed that he was the master. If he chose to have irregular relations with women, he was capable of deciding where the danger point lay. If men were only guided by a sense of the brevity inherent in all such relationships there would not be so many troublesome consequences growing out of them. Finally, he flattered himself that he had a grasp upon a right method of living, a method which was nothing more than a quiet acceptance of social conditions as they were, tempered by a little personal judgment as to the right and wrong of individual conduct. Not to fuss and fume, not to cry out about anything, not to be mawkishly sentimental; to be vigorous and sustain your personality intact—such was his theory of life, and he was satisfied that it was a good one.
As to Jennie, his original object in approaching her had been purely selfish. But now that he had asserted his masculine prerogatives, and she had yielded, at least in part, he began to realize that she was no common girl, no toy of the passing hour.
There is a time in some men’s lives when they unconsciously begin to view feminine youth and beauty not so much in relation to the ideal of happiness, but rather with regard to the social conventions by which they are environed.