In the darkened room Mrs. Forge’s rocker went over with a bump, she sprang from it so quickly. Johnathan reached out a hand and clutched the banisters.
“You married one at nine o’clock? Who have you married?”
“Mildred Richards. Good night!”
Nathan left his apoplectic parents standing side by side.
“Oh, my God!” groaned Johnathan. He staggered to the stairs and sat down flaccid, his face buried in his hands. He remained that way for half an hour.
Mrs. Forge walked slowly back into the wrecked dining room. She stood looking out one of the windows, with clenched fists pushed against her hips, face twitching, biting one corner of her upper lip so nervously it was difficult to discern which was twitch and which was bite.
After that first tragic half-hour, Mrs. Forge’s thinking amounted to this: Nathan had packed his clothes and gone to a wife and those clothes were not in a very happy state of laundering. She had put off her wash that week until she could get a new wringer. She still did her own washing. Laundries mangled clothes so.
It would be hectic to follow on into the week, the month, the year which followed, in so far as Nat’s marriage affected his father. A competent psychologist might have explained Johnathan, but explaining him would have availed Nathan little nor lightened his load. Johnathan’s ultimate attitude was:
He had preserved stainless the morals and directed successfully, though thanklessly, the spiritual education of his son for twenty-one wasted years. The lad had turned out incorrigible. That did not alter the fact that Johnathan had done his duty. His conscience was now clear. He had discharged his obligations to God and State. He was a free man.
The attainment of his majority and the acquisition of a “helpmeet” left Nathan to be treated as a man. And the chief incident in that treatment was a deliberate campaign soon started for a show-down to determine who was to be manager of that box-shop.