The Second Generation | Page 6

of the lawns.
Hiram's glance shifted to the direction of the sound. Arthur was
perched high in a dogcart to which were attached two horses, one
before the other. Adelaide did not like to leave her father with that

expression on his face, but after a brief hesitation she went into the
house. Hiram advanced slowly across the lawn toward the tandem.
When he had inspected it in detail, at close range, he said: "Where'd
you get it, young gentleman?" Again there was stress on the
"gentleman."
"Oh, I've had it at Harvard several months," he replied carelessly. "I
shipped it on. I sold the horses--got a smashing good price for 'em.
Yours ain't used to tandem, but I guess I can manage 'em."
"That style of hitching's new to these parts," continued Hiram.
Arthur felt the queerness of his father's tone. "Two, side by side, or two,
one in front of the other--where's the difference?"
True, reflected Hiram. He was wrong again--yet again unconvinced.
Certainly the handsome son, so smartly gotten up, seated in this smart
trap, did look attractive--but somehow not as he would have had his
son look. Adelaide came; he helped her to the lower seat. As he
watched them dash away, as fine-looking a pair of young people as
ever gladdened a father's eye, this father's heart lifted with pride--but
sank again. Everything seemed all right; why, then, did everything feel
all wrong?
"I'm not well to-day," he muttered. He returned to the porch, walking
heavily. In body and in mind he felt listless. There seemed to be
something or some one inside him--a newcomer--aloof from all that he
had regarded as himself--aloof from his family, from his work, from his
own personality--an outsider, studying the whole perplexedly and
gloomily.
As he was leaving the gate a truck entered the drive. It was loaded with
trunks--his son's and his daughter's baggage on the way from the station.
Hiram paused and counted the boxes--five huge trunks--Adelaide's
beyond doubt; four smaller ones, six of steamer size and
thereabouts--profuse and elegant Arthur's profuse and elegant array of
canvas and leather. This mass of superfluity seemed to add itself to his
burden. He recalled what his wife had once said when he hesitated over

some new extravagance of the children's: "What'd we toil and save for,
unless to give them a better time than we had? What's the use of our
having money if they can't enjoy it?" A "better time," "enjoy"--they
sounded all right, but were they really all right? Was this really a
"better time"?--really enjoyment? Were his and his wife's life all wrong,
except as they had contributed to this new life of thoughtless spending
and useless activity and vanity and splurge?
Instead of going toward the factories, he turned east and presently out
of Jefferson Street into Elm. He paused at a two-story brick house
painted brown, with a small but brilliant and tasteful garden in front
and down either side. To the right of the door was an unobtrusive
black-and-gold sign bearing the words "Ferdinand Schulze, M.D." He
rang, was admitted by a pretty, plump, Saxon-blond young woman--the
doctor's younger daughter and housekeeper. She looked freshly clean
and wholesome--and so useful! Hiram's eyes rested upon her
approvingly; and often afterwards his thoughts returned to her,
lingering upon her and his own daughter in that sort of vague
comparisons which we would not entertain were we aware of them.
Dr. Schulze was the most distinguished--indeed, the only
distinguished--physician in Saint X. He was a short, stout, grizzled,
spectacled man, with a nose like a scarlet button and a mouth like a
buttonhole; in speech he was abrupt, and, on the slightest pretext or no
pretext at all, sharp; he hid a warm sympathy for human nature,
especially for its weaknesses, behind an uncompromising candor which
he regarded as the duty of the man of science toward a vain and
deluded race that knew little and learned reluctantly. A man is either
better or worse than the manner he chooses for purposes of conciliating
or defying the world. Dr. Schulze was better, as much better as his
mind was superior to his body. He and his motherless daughters were
"not in it" socially. Saint X was not quite certain whether it shunned
them or they it. His services were sought only in extremities, partly
because he would lie to his patients neither when he knew what ailed
them nor when he did not, and partly because he was a militant infidel.
He lost no opportunity to attack religion in all its forms; and his two
daughters let no opportunity escape to show that they stood with their

father, whom they adored, and who had brought them up with his heart.
It was Dr. Schulze's furious unbelief, investing him with