“And what else happened?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“After you come home you don’t usually
change your clothes merely for the pleasure of sitting
with me here.”
“Nothing escapes you, does it?” muttered
Anthony.
“In your set, Anthony, that’s what they’d
call an improper question.”
“I could ask you any number of questions, sir,
for that matter.”
“Well?”
“That room over there, for instance, which you
always keep locked. Am I never to have a look
at it?”
He indicated a door which opened from the library.
“I hope not.”
“You say that with a good deal of feeling.
But there’s one thing more that I have a right
to hear about. My mother! Why do you never
tell me of her?”
The big man stirred and the chair groaned beneath
him.
“Because it tortures me to speak of her, Anthony,”
said the husky voice. “Tortures me, lad!”
“I let the locked room go,” said Anthony
firmly, “but my mother—she is different.
Why, sir, I don’t even know how she looked!
Dad, it’s my right!”
“Is it? By God, you have a right to know
exactly what I choose to tell you—no more!”
He rose, strode across the room with ponderous steps,
drew aside the curtains which covered the view of
the garden below, and stared for a time into the night.
When he turned he found that Anthony had risen—a
slender, erect figure. His voice was as quiet
as his anger, but an inward quality made it as thrilling
as the hoarse boom of his father.
“On that point I stick. I must know something
about her.”
“Must?”
“In spite of your anger. That locked room
is yours; this house and everything in it is yours;
but my mother—she was as much mine as yours,
and I’ll hear more about her—who she
was, what she looked like, where she lived—”
The sharply indrawn breath of John Woodbury cut him
short.
“She died in giving birth to you, Anthony.”
“Dear God! She died for me?”
And in the silence which came over the two men it
seemed as if another presence were in the room.
John Woodbury stood at the fire-place with bowed head,
and Anthony shaded his eyes and stared at the floor
until he caught a glimpse of the other and went gently
to him.
He said: “I’m sorrier than a lot
of words could tell you. Will you sit down, sir,
and let me tell you how I came to press home the question?”
“If you want to have it that way.”
They resumed their chairs.
ANTHONY IS LEFT IN THE DARK
“It will explain why I changed my clothes after
I came home. You see, toward the end of the show
a lot of the cowboys rode in. The ringmaster
was announcing that they could ride anything that walked
on four feet and wore a skin, when up jumped an oldish
fellow in a box opposite mine and shouted that he
had a horse which none of them could mount. He
offered five hundred dollars to the man who could back
him; and made it good by going out of the building
and coming back inside of five minutes with two men
leading a great stallion, the ugliest piece of horseflesh
I’ve ever seen.
