LITMIR.BIZ

      10

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      But this freedom, this isolation in print, this dreaming and unlimited time of fantasy, was not to last unbroken. Both Gant and Eliza were fluent apologists for economic independence: all the boys had been sent out to earn money at a very early age.

      “It teaches a boy to be independent and self-reliant,” said Gant, feeling he had heard this somewhere before.

      “Pshaw!” said Eliza. “It won’t do them a bit of harm. If they don’t learn now, they won’t do a stroke of work later on. Besides, they can earn their own pocket money.” This, undoubtedly, was a consideration of the greatest importance.

      Thus, the boys had gone out to work, after school hours, and in the vacations, since they were very young. Unhappily, neither Eliza nor Gant were at any pains to examine the kind of work their children did, contenting themselves vaguely with the comfortable assurance that all work which earned money was honest, commendable, and formative of character.

      By this time Ben, sullen, silent, alone, had withdrawn more closely than ever into his heart: in the brawling house he came and went, and was remembered, like a phantom. Each morning at three o’clock, when his fragile unfurnished body should have been soaked in sleep, he got up under the morning stars, departed silently from the sleeping house, and went down to the roaring morning presses and the inksmell that he loved, to begin the delivery of his route. Almost without consideration by Gant and Eliza he slipped quietly away from school after the eighth grade, took on extra duties at the paper’s office and lived, in sufficient bitter pride, upon his earnings. He slept at home, ate perhaps one meal a day there, loping home gauntly at night, with his father’s stride, thin long shoulders, bent prematurely by the weight of the heavy paper bag, pathetically, hungrily Gantian.

      He bore encysted in him the evidence of their tragic fault: he walked alone in the darkness, death and the dark angels hovered, and no one saw him. At three-thirty in the morning, with his loaded bag beside him, he sat with other route boys in a lunch room, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, laughing softly, almost noiselessly, with his flickering exquisitely sensitive mouth, his scowling gray eyes.

      At home he spent hours quietly absorbed in his life with Eugene, playing with him, cuffing him with his white hard hands from time to time, establishing with him a secret communication to which the life of the family had neither access nor understanding. From his small wages he gave the boy sums of spending-money, bought him expensive presents on his birthdays, at Christmas, or some special occasion, inwardly moved and pleased when he saw how like Mæcenas he seemed to Eugene, how deep and inexhaustible to the younger boy were his meagre resources. What he earned, all the history of his life away from home, he kept in jealous secrecy.

      “It’s nobody’s business but my own. By God, I’m not asking any of you for anything,” he said, sullenly and irritably, when Eliza pressed him curiously. He had a deep scowling affection for them all: he never forgot their birthdays, he always placed where they might find it, some gift, small, inexpensive, selected with the most discriminating taste. When, with their fervent over-emphasis, they went through long ecstasies of admiration, embroidering their thanks with florid decorations, he would jerk his head sideways to some imaginary listener, laughing softly and irritably, as he said:

      “Oh for God’s sake! Listen to this, won’t you!”

      Perhaps, as pigeon-toed, well creased, brushed, white-collared, Ben loped through the streets, or prowled softly and restlessly about the house, his dark angel wept, but no one else saw, and no one knew. He was a stranger, and as he sought through the house, he was always aprowl to find some entrance into life, some secret undiscovered door — a stone, a leaf — that might admit him into light and fellowship. His passion for home was fundamental, in that jangled and clamorous household his sullen and contained quiet was like some soothing opiate on their nerves: with quiet authority, white-handed skill, he sought about repairing old scars, joining with delicate carpentry old broken things, prying quietly about a short-circuited wire, a defective socket.

      “That boy’s a born electrical engineer,” said Gant. “I’ve a good notion to send him off to school.” And he would paint a romantic picture of the prosperity of Mr. Charles Liddell, the Major’s worthy son, who earned thousands by his electrical wizardry, and supported his father. And he would reproach them bitterly, as he dwelt on his own merit and the worthlessness of his sons:

      “Other men’s sons support their fathers in their old age — not mine! Not mine! Ah Lord — it will be a bitter day for me when I have to depend on one of mine. Tarkinton told me the other day that Rafe has given him five dollars a week for his food ever since he was sixteen. Do you think I could look for such treatment from one of mine? Do you? Not until Hell freezes over — and not then!” And he would refer to the hardships of his own youth, cast out, so he said, to earn his living, at an age which varied, according to his temper, at from six to eleven years, contrasting his poverty to the luxury in which his own children wallowed.

      “No one ever did anything for me,” he howled. “But everything’s been done for you. And what gratitude do I get from you? Do you ever think of the old man who slaves up there in his cold shop in order to give you food and shelter? Do you? Ingratitude, more fierce than brutish beasts!” Remorseful food stuck vengefully in Eugene’s throat.

      Eugene was initiated to the ethics of success. It was not enough that a man work, though work was fundamental; it was even more important that he make money — a great deal

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