An unerring knowledge of men in general and of his own son in particular indicated to Hector McKaye, upon the instant that the latter appeared at the family dinner-table, that his son's first day in command had had a sobering effect upon that young man. He had gone forth that morning whistling, his eyes alert with interest and anticipation; and a feeling of profound contentment had come to The Laird as he watched Donald climb into his automobile and go briskly down the cliff highway to Port Agnew. Here was no unwilling exile, shackled by his father's dollars to a backwoods town and condemned to labor for the term of his natural life. Gladly, eagerly, it seemed to Hector McKaye, his son was assuming his heritage, casting aside, without one longing backward glance, a brighter, busier, and more delightful world.
Although his son's new arena of action was beautiful and The Laird loved it with a passionate love, he was sufficiently imaginative to realize that, in Port Agnew, Donald might not be as happy as had been his father. Old Hector was sufficiently unselfish to have harbored no resentment had this been so. It had been his one anxiety that Donald might take his place in the business as a matter of duty to himself rather than as a duty to his father, and because he had found his lifework and was approaching it with joy, for The Laird was philosopher enough to know that labor without joy is as dead-sea fruit. Indeed, before the first day of his retirement had passed, he had begun to suspect that joy without labor was apt to be something less than he had anticipated.
The Laird observed in his son's eyes, as the latter took his place at table, a look that had not been there when Donald left for the mill that morning. His usually pleasant, "Evening, folks!" was perfunctory to-night; he replied briefly to the remarks addressed to him by his mother and sisters; the old man noted not less than thrice a slight pause with the spoon half-way to his mouth, as if his son considered some problem more important than soup. Mrs. McKaye and the girls chattered on, oblivious of these slight evidences of mental perturbation, but as The Laird carved the roast (he delighted in carving and serving his family, and was old-fashioned enough to insist upon his right, to the distress of the girls, who preferred to have the roast carved in the kitchen and served by the Japanese butler), he kept a contemplative eye upon his son, and presently saw Donald heave a slight sigh.
"Here's a titbit you always liked, son!" he cried cheerfully, and deftly skewered from the leg of lamb the crisp and tender tail. "Confound you, Donald; I used to eat these fat, juicy little lamb's tails while you were at college, but I suppose, now, I'll have to surrender that prerogative along with the others." In an effort to be cheerful and distract his son's thoughts, he attempted this homely badinage.
"I'll give you another little tale in return, dad," Donald replied, endeavoring to meet his father's cheerful manner. "While we were away, a colony of riffraff from Darrow jumped old Caleb Brent's Sawdust Pile, and Daney was weak enough to let them get away with it. I'm somewhat surprised. Daney knew your wishes in the matter; if he had forgotten them, he might have remembered mine, and if he had forgotten both, it would have been the decent thing to have thrown them out on his own responsibility."
So that was what lay at the bottom of his son's perturbation! The Laird was relieved.
"Andrew's a good man, but he always needed a leader, Donald," he replied. "If he didn't lack initiative, he would have been his own man long ago. I hope you did not chide him for it, lad."
"No; I did not. He's old enough to be my father, and, besides, he's been in the Tyee Lumber Company longer than I. I did itch to give him a rawhiding, though."
"I saw smoke and excitement down at the Sawdust Pile this morning, Donald. I dare say you rectified Andrew's negligence."
"I did. The Sawdust Pile is as clean as a hound's tooth."
Jane looked up from her plate.
"I hope you sent that shameless Brent girl away, too," she announced, with the calm attitude of one whose own virtue is above reproach.
Donald glared at her.
"Of course I did not!" he retorted. "How thoroughly unkind and uncharitable of you, Jane, to hope I would be guilty of such a cruel and unmanly action!"
The Laird waved his carving-knife.
"Hear, hear!" he chuckled. "Spoken like a man, my son. Jane, my dear, if I were you, I wouldn't press this matter further. It's a delicate subject."
"I'm sure I do not see why Jane should not be free to express her opinion, Hector." Mrs. McKaye felt impelled to fly to the defense of her daughter. "You know as well as we do, Hector, that the Brent girl is quite outside the pale of respectable society."
"We shall never agree on what constitutes 'respectable society,' Nellie," The Laird answered whimsically. "There are a few in that Seattle set of yours I find it hard to include in that category."
"Oh, they're quite respectable, father," Donald protested.
"Indeed they are, Donald! Hector, you amaze me," Mrs. McKaye chided.
"They have too much money to be anything else," Donald added, and winked at his father.
"Tush, tush, lad!" the old man murmured. "We shall get nowhere with such arguments. The world has been at that line of conversation for two thousand years, and the issue's still in doubt. Nellie, will you have a piece of the well-done?"
"You and your father are never done joining forces against me," Mrs. McKaye protested, and in her voice was the well-known note that presaged tears should she be opposed further. The Laird, all too familiar with this truly feminine type of tyranny, indicated to his son, by a lightning wink, that he desired the conversation diverted into other channels, whereupon Donald favored his mother with a disarming smile.
"I'm going to make a real start to-morrow morning, mother," he announced brightly. "I'm going up in the woods and be a lumberjack for a month. Going to grow warts on my hands and chew tobacco and develop into a brawny roughneck."
"Is that quite necessary?" Elizabeth queried, with a slight elevation of her eyebrows. "I understood you were going to manage the business."
"I am--after I've learned it thoroughly, Lizzie."
"Don't call me 'Lizzie,'" she warned him irritably.
"Very well, Elizabeth."
"In simple justice to those people from Darrow that you evicted from the Sawdust Pile, Don, you should finish your work before you go. If they were not fit to inhabit the Sawdust Pile, then neither is Nan Brent. You've got to play fair." Jane had returned to the attack.
"Look here, Jane," her brother answered seriously: "I wish you'd forget Nan Brent. She's an old and very dear friend of mine, and I do not like to hear my friends slandered."
"Oh, indeed!" Jane considered this humorous, and indulged herself in a cynical laugh.
"Friend of his?" Elizabeth, who was regarded in her set as a wit, a reputation acquired by reason of the fact that she possessed a certain knack for adapting slang humorously (for there was no originality to her alleged wit), now bent her head and looked at her brother incredulously. "My word! That's a rich dish."
"Why, Donald dear," his mother cried reproachfully, "surely you are jesting!"
"Not at all. Nan Brent isn't a bad girl, even if she is the mother of a child born out of wedlock. She stays at home and minds her own business, and lets others mind theirs."
"Donald's going to be tragic. See if he isn't," Elizabeth declared. "Come now, old dear; if Nan Brent isn't a bad woman, just what is your idea of what constitutes badness in a woman? It would be interesting to know your point of view."
"Nan Brent was young, unsophisticated, poor, and trusting when she met this fellow, whoever he may be. He wooed her, and she loved him--or thought she did, which amounts to the same thing until one discovers the difference between thinking and feeling. At first, she thought she was married to him. Later, she discovered she was not--and then it was too late."
"It wouldn't have been too late with some--er--good people," The Laird remarked meaningly.
"In other words," Donald went on, "Nan Brent found herself out on the end of a limb, and then the world proceeded to saw off the limb. It is true that she is the mother of an illegitimate child, but if that child was not--at least in so far as its mother
is concerned--conceived in sin, I say it isn't illegitimate, and that its mother is not a bad woman."
"Granted--if it's true; but how do you know it to be true?" Jane demanded. She had a feeling that she was about to get the better of her brother in this argument.
"I do not
know it to be true, Jane."
"
Voila!" "But--I believe it to be true, Jane."
"Why?"
"Because Nan told her father it was true, and old Caleb told me when I was at his house this morning. So I believe it. And I knew Nan Brent when she was a young girl, and she was sweet and lovely and virtuous. I talked with her this morning, and found no reason to change my previous estimate of her. I could only feel for her a profound pity."
"'Pity is akin to love,'" Elizabeth quoted gaily. "Mother, keep an eye on your little son. He'll be going in for settlement-work in Port Agnew first thing we know."
"Hush, Elizabeth!" her mother cried sharply. She was highly scandalized at such levity. The Laird salted and peppered his food and said nothing. "Your attitude is very manly and sweet, dear," Mrs. McKaye continued, turning to her son, for her woman's intuition warned her that, if the discussion waxed warmer, The Laird would take a hand in it, and her side would go down to inglorious defeat, their arguments flattened by the weight of Scriptural quotations. She had a feeling that old Hector was preparing to remind them of Mary Magdalen and the scene in the temple. "I would much rather hear you speak a good word for that unfortunate girl than have you condemn her."
"A moment ago," her son reminded her, with some asperity, for he was sorely provoked, "you were demanding the right of free speech for Jane, in order that she might condemn her. Mother, I fear me you're not quite consistent."
"We will not discuss it further, dearie. It is not a matter of such importance that we should differ to the point of becoming acrimonious. Besides, it's a queer topic for dinner-table conversation."
"So say we all of us," Elizabeth struck in laconically. "Dad, will you please help me to some of the well-done?"
"Subjects," old Hector struck in, "which, twenty years ago, only the family doctor was supposed to be familiar with or permitted to discuss are now being agitated in women's clubs, books, newspapers, and the public schools. You can't smother sin or the facts of life unless they occur separately. In the case of Nan Brent they have developed coincidently; so we find it hard to regard her as normal and human."
"Do you condone her offense, Hector?" Mrs. McKaye demanded incredulously.
"I am a firm believer in the sacredness of marriage, I cannot conceive of a civilization worth while without it," The Laird declared earnestly. "Nevertheless, while I know naught of Nan Brent's case, except that which is founded on hearsay evidence, I can condone her offense because I can understand it. She might have developed into a far worse girl than it appears from Donald's account she is. At least, Nellie, she bore her child and cherishes it, and, under the rules of society as we play it, that required a kind of courage in which a great many girls are deficient. Give her credit for that."
"Apparently she has been frank," Elizabeth answered him coolly. "On the other hand, father McKaye, her so-called courage may have been ignorance or apathy or cowardice or indifference. It all depends on her point of view."
"I disagree with mother that it is not a matter of importance," Donald persisted. "It is a matter of supreme importance to me that my mother and sisters should not feel more charity toward an unfortunate member of their sex; and I happen to know that it is a matter of terrible importance to Nan Brent that in Port Agnew people regard her as unclean and look at her askance. And because that vacillating old Daney didn't have the courage to fly in the face of Port Agnew's rotten public opinion, he subjected Nan Brent and her helpless old father to the daily and nightly association of depraved people. If
he should dare to say one word against"
"Oh, it wasn't because Andrew was afraid of public opinion, lad," Hector McKaye interrupted him dryly. "Have you no power o'deduction? Twas his guid wife that stayed his hand, and well I know it."
"I dare say, dad," Donald laughed. "Yes; I suppose I'll have to forgive him."
"She'll be up to-morrow, my dear, to discuss the matter with you," The Laird continued, turning to his wife. "I know her well. Beware of expressing an opinion to her." And he bent upon all the women of his household a smoldering glance.
Apparently, by mutual consent, the subject was dropped forthwith. Donald's silence throughout the remainder of the meal was portentous, however, and Mrs. McKaye and her daughters were relieved when, the meal finished at last, they could retire with good grace and leave father and son to their cigars.
"Doesn't it beat hell?" Donald burst forth suddenly, apropos of nothing.
"It does, laddie."
"I wonder why?"
The Laird was in a philosophical mood. He weighed his answer carefully.
"Because people prefer to have their thoughts manufactured for them; because fanatics and hypocrites have twisted the heart out of the Christian religion in the grand scramble for priority in the 'Who's Holier than Who' handicap; because people who earnestly believe that God knows their inmost thoughts cannot refrain from being human and trying to put one over on Him." He smoked in silence for a minute, his calm glance on the ceiling. "Now that you are what you are, my son," he resumed reflectively, "you'll begin to know men and women. They who never bothered to seek your favor before will fight for it now--they do the same thing with God Almighty, seeking to win his favor by outdoing him in the condemnation of sin. A woman's virtue, lad, is her main barricade against the world; in the matter of that, women are a close corporation. Man, how they do stand together! Their virtue's the shell that protects them, and when one of them leaves her shell or loses it, the others assess her out of the close corporation, for she's a minority stockholder."
"Mother and the girls are up to their eyebrows in the work of an organization in Seattle designed to salvage female delinquents," Donald complained. "I can't understand their attitude."
Old Hector hooted.
"They don't do the salvaging. Not a bit of it! That unpleasant work is left to others, and the virtuous and respectable merely pay for it. Ken ye not, boy, 'twas ever the habit of people of means to patronize and coddle the lowly. If they couldn't do that, where would be the fun of being rich? Look in the Seattle papers. Who gets the advertising out of a charity ball if it isn't the rich? They organize it and they put it over, with the public paying for a look at them, and they attending the ball on complimentary tickets, although I will admit that when the bills are paid and the last shred of social triumph has been torn from the affair, the Bide-a-Wee Home for Unmarried Mothers can have what's left--and be damned to them."
Donald laughed quietly.
"Scotty, you're developing into an iconoclast. If your fellow plutocrats should hear you ranting in that vein, they'd call you a socialist."
"Oh, I'm not saying there aren't a heap of exceptions. Many's the woman with a heart big enough to mother the world, although, when all's said and done; 'tis the poor that are kind to the poor, the unfortunate that can appreciate and forgive misfortune. I'm glad you stood by old Brent and his girl," he added approvingly.
"I intend to accord her the treatment which a gentleman always accords the finest lady in the land, dad."
"Or the lowest, my son. I've noticed that kind are not altogether unpopular with our finest gentlemen. Donald, I used to pray to God that I wouldn't raise a fool. I feel that he's answered my prayers, but if you should ever turn hypocrite, I'll start praying again."