“No, indeed!
He got the best of the bargain. Margaret’s a decent girl.”
“Well,” said Eliza hopefully, “maybe he’s going to brace up now and make a new start.
He’s promised that he’d try.”
“Well, I should hope so,” said Helen scathingly.
“I should hope so.
It’s about time.”
Her dislike for him was innate.
She had placed him among the tribe of the Pentlands.
But he was really more like Gant than any one else.
He was like Gant in all his weakness, with none of his cleanliness, his lean fibre, his remorse.
In her heart she knew this and it increased her dislike for him.
She shared in the fierce antagonism Gant felt toward his son.
But her feeling was broken, as was all her feeling, by moments of friendliness, charity, tolerance.
“What are you going to do, Steve?” she asked.
“You’ve got a family now, you know.”
“Little Stevie doesn’t have to worry any longer,” he said, smiling easily.
“He lets the others do the worrying.”
He lifted his yellow fingers to his mouth, drawing deeply at a cigarette.
“Good heavens, Steve,” she burst out angrily.
“Pull yourself together and try to be a man for once.
Margaret’s a woman.
You surely don’t expect her to keep you up, do you?”
“What business is that of yours, for Christ’s sake?” he said in a high ugly voice.
“Nobody’s asked your advice, have they?
All of you are against me.
None of you had a good word for me when I was down and out, and now it gets your goat to see me make good.”
He had believed for years that he was persecuted — his failure at home he attributed to the malice, envy, and disloyalty of his family, his failure abroad to the malice and envy of an opposing force that he called “the world.”
“No,” he said, taking another long puff at the moist cigarette, “don’t worry about Stevie.
He doesn’t need anything from any of you, and you don’t hear him asking for anything.
You see that, don’t you?” he said, pulling a roll of banknotes from his pocket and peeling off a few twenties.
“Well, there’s lots more where that came from.
And I’ll tell you something else: Little Stevie will be right up there among the Big Boys soon.
He’s got a couple of deals coming off that’ll show the pikers in this town where to get off.
You get that, don’t you?” he said.
Ben, who had been sitting on the piano stool all this time, scowling savagely at the keys, and humming a little recurrent tune to himself while he picked it out with one finger, turned now to Helen, with a sharp flicker of his mouth, and jerked his head sideways.
“I hear Mr. Vanderbilt’s getting jealous,” he said.
Helen laughed ironically, huskily.
“You think you’re a pretty wise guy, don’t you?” said Steve heavily.
“But I don’t notice it’s getting you anywhere.”
Ben turned his scowling eyes upon him, and sniffed sharply, unconsciously.
“Now, I hope you’re not going to forget your old friends, Mr. Rockefeller,” he said in his subdued, caressing ominous voice.
“I’d like to be vice-president if the job’s still open.”
He turned back to the keyboard — and searched with a hooked finger.
“All right, all right,” said Steve.
“Go ahead and laugh, both of you, if you think it’s funny.
But you notice that Little Stevie isn’t a fifteen-dollar clerk in a newspaper office, don’t you?
And he doesn’t have to sing in moving-picture shows, either,” he added.
Helen’s big-boned face reddened angrily.
She had begun to sing in public with the saddlemaker’s daughter.