XXVIII
He found Henry, but the search took two hours, and his clothes were sodden with the rain that drenched them as he got in and out of his car to make inquiries, or to investigate restaurants of lively all-night reputations. The red speedster he had bought for his son stood hub-deep in the running gutter before the last of these to be reached; and when the father brought his boy out of the place, and helped him into the Morgan limousine, Henry protested in a whimper somewhat incoherent that he wanted to drive his own car home;—he didn’t like to leave it out all night in the rain he said.
“I guess it has stood where it is about long enough!” Dan told him grimly. “But we’ll leave it there till I send a man for it in the morning—to sell it, Henry.”
Henry whimpered again; then recovered enough presence of mind to say no more. When they reached home, he went upstairs as quickly as he could, although once he had to employ the assistance of the banister railing; and his father followed him.
A light still shone into the hall from the library door, and Dan, whose face was pallid and startled, made his voice cheerful as he called from the stairway: “It’s all right, mother. The boy’s home and everything’s all right. Just a little foolishness with his car; and I’ve decided it’ll be offered for sale tomorrow. You go to bed now.”
Henry went to his room and Dan was following him, when Lena, wearing a bright kimono over her nightdress, made her appearance in the open doorway of her bedroom. “What is all this?” she asked petulantly.
“Never mind!”
“But I do mind! What are you saying about selling Henry’s car? Didn’t I hear you say—”
“Yes, you did.” Dan closed the door of Henry’s room and came to her. “I made a terrible mistake to give it to him. We’ve both made a mistake the way we’ve raised him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a fine nature and a noble soul. But he’s got with bad companions. He’s been—” He paused, and went on slowly, with difficulty: “He’s been—he’s been drinkin’, Lena.”
She said nothing, but stared at him blankly for a moment—then the stare became an angry one.
“We’ve got to change our whole way of treatin’ Henry,” her unhappy husband told her. “We’ve been all wrong. He—he got with bad companions—”
“Yes,” she interrupted angrily. “I should think he might, in a town like this!”
“My Lord! It ain’t the town’s fault. For heaven’s sake, don’t go back to that old story at a time like this!”
“Yes, I will,” she said. “The time’s come when you’ve got to let me take Henry and go where I want to.”
Dan looked dazed. “Go where you want to? Why, where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere I please!”
“But, my Lord! You were away seven months out of last year. You only got back from Europe last October! What do you—”
“I want to go and I want to take Henry with me! What’s just happened proves that I’m right. This is the wrong place for him.”
“But I tell you the place hasn’t got anything on earth to do with it.”
“Hasn’t it?” she cried. “I tell you it has all to do with it, just as it’s had all to do with me ever since I came here! I’ve hated it every instant of all these silly, wasted years I’ve been pent up here. And now it’s ruining my child—yes, ruining him—and you want me still to stay here and let him stay here! You want me to waste the rest of my life, and ruin my child’s life, but I tell you, Dan Oliphant, you can’t make us do it—not either of us! Not either of us, do you hear?” She had become hysterical, and her voice was so wild and loud that Mrs. Oliphant had come into the hall, downstairs, and was calling up piteously to know what was the matter.
“What is the matter, Dan, dear?” she called. “What is the matter with Lena?”
But Lena, shrieking, “You can’t make us—you can’t make us!” ran into her room and locked the door. It was a thick old door, but she could still be heard, and it was not difficult to understand that she had thrown herself upon her bed, and was there convulsive, still shrieking: “You can’t make us! You can’t make us! You can’t, you can’t, you can’t—”