The House of Pride | Page 4

an idler--"
"With reason," was the interruption, "considering the jobs out of which
you have knocked him."
"He is immoral--"
"Oh, hold on now, Ford. Don't go harping on that. You are pure New
England stock. Joe Garland is half Kanaka. Your blood is thin. His is
warm. Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He laughs and
sings and dances through life, genial, unselfish, childlike, everybody's
friend. You go through life like a perambulating prayer-wheel, a friend
of nobody but the righteous, and the righteous are those who agree with
you as to what is right. And after all, who shall say? You live like an
anchorite. Joe Garland lives like a good fellow. Who has extracted the
most from life? We are paid to live, you know. When the wages are too
meagre we throw up the job, which is the cause, believe me, of all
rational suicide. Joe Garland would starve to death on the wages you
get from life. You see, he is made differently. So would you starve on
his wages, which are singing, and love--"
"Lust, if you will pardon me," was the interruption.
Dr. Kennedy smiled.
"Love, to you, is a word of four letters and a definition which you have

extracted from the dictionary. But love, real love, dewy and palpitant
and tender, you do not know. If God made you and me, and men and
women, believe me He made love, too. But to come back. It's about
time you quit hounding Joe Garland. It is not worthy of you, and it is
cowardly. The thing for you to do is to reach out and lend him a hand."
"Why I, any more than you?" the other demanded. "Why don't you
reach him a hand?"
"I have. I'm reaching him a hand now. I'm trying to get you not to down
the Promotion Committee's proposition of sending him away. I got him
the job at Hilo with Mason and Fitch. I've got him half a dozen jobs,
out of every one of which you drove him. But never mind that. Don't
forget one thing--and a little frankness won't hurt you--it is not fair play
to saddle another fault on Joe Garland; and you know that you, least of
all, are the man to do it. Why, man, it's not good taste. It's positively
indecent."
"Now I don't follow you," Percival Ford answered. "You're up in the air
with some obscure scientific theory of heredity and personal
irresponsibility. But how any theory can hold Joe Garland irresponsible
for his wrongdoings and at the same time hold me personally
responsible for them--more responsible than any one else, including Joe
Garland--is beyond me."
"It's a matter of delicacy, I suppose, or of taste, that prevents you from
following me," Dr. Kennedy snapped out. "It's all very well, for the
sake of society, tacitly to ignore some things, but you do more than
tacitly ignore."
"What is it, pray, that I tacitly ignore!"
Dr. Kennedy was angry. A deeper red than that of constitutional Scotch
and soda suffused his face, as he answered:
"Your father's son."
"Now just what do you mean?"

"Damn it, man, you can't ask me to be plainer spoken than that. But if
you will, all right--Isaac Ford's son--Joe Garland--your brother."
Percival Ford sat quietly, an annoyed and shocked expression on his
face. Kennedy looked at him curiously, then, as the slow minutes
dragged by, became embarrassed and frightened.
"My God!" he cried finally, "you don't mean to tell me that you didn't
know!"
As in answer, Percival Ford's cheeks turned slowly grey.
"It's a ghastly joke," he said; "a ghastly joke."
The doctor had got himself in hand.
"Everybody knows it," he said. "I thought you knew it. And since you
don't know it, it's time you did, and I'm glad of the chance of setting
you straight. Joe Garland and you are brothers--half-brothers."
"It's a lie," Ford cried. "You don't mean it. Joe Garland's mother was
Eliza Kunilio." (Dr. Kennedy nodded.) "I remember her well, with her
duck pond and taro patch. His father was Joseph Garland, the beach-
comber." (Dr. Kennedy shook his head.) "He died only two or three
years ago. He used to get drunk. There's where Joe got his dissoluteness.
There's the heredity for you."
"And nobody told you," Kennedy said wonderingly, after a pause.
"Dr. Kennedy, you have said something terrible, which I cannot allow
to pass. You must either prove or, or . . . "
"Prove it yourself. Turn around and look at him. You've got him in
profile. Look at his nose. That's Isaac Ford's. Yours is a thin edition of
it. That's right. Look. The lines are fuller, but they are all there."
Percival Ford looked at the Kanaka