"The philanthropic hypocrite," mused Grismer, still smarting from a note expressing civil regrets in reply to an invitation to Stephanie and Jim to join them after church for a motor trip to Lakewood.
"Can't they come?" inquired Oswald.
"Previous engagement," snapped Grismer, tearing up the note. His wife, an invalid, with stringy hair and spots on her face, remarked with resignation that the Clelands were too stylish to care about plain, Christian people.
"Stylish," repeated Grismer, "I've got ten dollars to Cleland's one. I can put on style enough to swamp him if I've a mind to! – m-m-m'yes, if I've a mind to."
"Why don't you?" inquired Oswald, with a malicious side glance at his father's frock coat and ready-made cravat. "Chuck the religious game and wear spats and a topper! It's a better graft, governor."
Chiltern Grismer, only partly attentive to his son's impudence, turned a fierce, preoccupied glance upon him. But his mind was still intrigued with that word "stylish." It began to enrage him.
He repeated it aloud once or twice, sneeringly:
"So you think we may not be sufficiently stylish to suit the Clelands – or that brat they picked out of the sewer? M-m-m'yes, out of an east-side sewer!"
Oswald pricked up his intelligent and rather pointed ears.
"What brat?" he inquired.
Chiltern Grismer had never told his son the story of Stephanie Quest. In the beginning, the boy had been too young, and there seemed to be no particular reason for telling him. Later, when Grismer suddenly developed ambitions in behalf of his son for the Quest fortune, he did not say anything about Stephanie's origin, fearing that it might prejudice his son.
Now, he suddenly concluded to tell him, not from spite entirely, nor to satisfy his increasing resentment against Cleland; but because Oswald would, some day, inherit the Grismer money. And it might be just as well to prime him now, in the event that any of the Clelands should ever start to reopen the case which had deprived Jessie Grismer of her own inheritance so many years ago.
The young fellow listened with languid astonishment as the links of the story, very carefully and morally polished, were displayed by his father for his instruction and edification.
"That is the sort of stylish people they are," concluded Grismer, making an abrupt end. "Let it be a warning to you to keep your eye on the Clelands; for a man that calls himself a philanthropist, and is sharp enough to pick out an heiress from the gutter, will bear watching! – m-m-m'yes, indeed, he certainly will bear watching."
Mrs. Grismer, who was knitting with chilly fingers, sighed.
"You always said it was God's judgment on Jessie and her descendants, Chiltern. But I kind of wish you'd been a little mite more forgiving."
"Who am I?" demanded Grismer, sullenly, "to thwart God's wrath … m-m-m'yes, the anger of the Lord Almighty! And I never thought of that imbecile aunt… It was divine will that punished my erring sister and her children, and her children's chil – "
"Rot!" remarked Oswald. "Cleland caught you napping and put one over. That's all that worries you. And now you are properly and piously sore!"
"That is an impious and wickedly outrageous way to talk to your father!" said Grismer, glaring at him. "You have come back from college lacking reverence and respect for everything you have been taught to consider sacred! – m-m-m'yes – everything! You have returned to us utterly demoralized, defiant, rebellious, changed! Every worldly abomination seems to attract you: you smoke openly in your mother's presence; your careless and loose conversation betrays your contempt for the simple, homely, and frugal atmosphere in which you have been reared by Christian parents. Doubtless we are not sufficiently stylish for you any longer!" he added sarcastically.
"I'm sorry I was disrespectful, governor – "
"No! You are not sorry!" retorted Grismer tartly. "You rejoice secretly in your defiance of your parents! You have been demoralized by the license permitted you by absence from home. You live irresponsibly; you fling away your money on theatres! You yourself admit that you have learned to dance. Nothing that your pastor has taught you, nothing that our church holds sacred seems capable of restraining you from wickedness. That is the truth, Oswald. And your mother and I despair of your future, here and – " he lifted his eyes solemnly – "above."
There was an awkward silence. Finally Oswald said with sullen frankness:
"You see I'm a man, now, and I've got to do my own thinking. Things I used to believe seem tommyrot to me now – "
"Oswald!" sighed his mother.
"I'm sorry to pain you, Mother, but they do! And about everything you object to I find agreeable. I'm not very bad, Mother. But this sort of talk inclines me to raise the devil. What's the harm in going to a show? In dancing? In smoking a cigar? For heaven's sake, let a fellow alone. The line of talk the governor hands me makes a cynic of a man who's got any brains."
There was another silence; then Oswald continued:
"And, while we are trying to be frank with each other this pleasant Sunday morning, what about my career? Let's settle it now!"
"I'm opposed to any such frivolous profession!" snapped Grismer angrily. "That's your answer. And that settles it."
"You mean that you still oppose my studying sculpture?"
"Emphatically."
"Why?" demanded the youth, rather white, but smiling.
"Because it is no business career for a Christian!" retorted his father, furious. "It is a loose, irregular, eccentric profession, beset with pitfalls and temptations. It leads to immorality and unbelief – m-m-m'yes, to hell itself! And that is why I oppose it!"
Oswald shrugged:
"I'm sorry you feel that way but I can't help it, of course."
"Do you mean," inquired his mother, "that you intend to disregard our solemn wishes?"
"I don't know," said the young fellow, "I really don't know, Mother. I can't seem to breathe and expand at home. You've never made things very cheerful for me."
"Oswald! You are utterly heartless!"
"I've been fed up on the governor's kind of religion, on narrow views and gloom; and that's no good for a modern boy. It's a wonder I have any heart at all, and sometimes I think it's dried up – "
"That will do!" shouted Grismer, losing all self-control. "If your home, your parents, and your Creator can not make a Christian of you, there is nothing to hope from you! … I'll hear no more from you. Go and get ready for church!"
"I sha'n't go," said the young fellow calmly.
When he went back to Cambridge at the end of the week, it was with the desire never to see his home again, and with a vague and burning intention to get even, somehow, by breaking every law of the imbecile religion on which he had been "fed up."
CHAPTER VIII
When Stephanie was fifteen years old, John Cleland took her to Cambridge.
The girl had been attending a celebrated New York school during the last two years. She had developed the bearing and manners which characterized the carefully trained products of that institution, but the régime seemed to have subdued her, and made her retiring and diffident.
She could have formed friendships there had she desired to do so; she formed none; yet any girl there would have been happy and flattered to call Stephanie Quest her friend. But Stephanie cared little for those confidential and intimate relations so popular among school girls of her age.
She made no enemies, however. An engaging reticence and reserve characterized her – the shy and wistful charm of that indeterminate age when a girl is midway in the delicate process of transformation.
If she cared nothing about girls, she lacked self-confidence with boys, though vastly preferring their society; but she got little of it except when Jim's