Shot With Crimson. George Barr McCutcheon

reasonably so,—that Alfred would have chosen Harvard.

      He had the strange, unhappy conviction that his son opposed him in this, as in countless other instances, through sheer perversity. His mother's authority always had been supreme. She had exercised it with an iron-handed firmness that not only surprised but gratified the father, who knew so well the tender affection she had for her child. Her word was law. Alfred seldom if ever questioned it, even as a small and decidedly self-willed lad. Paradoxically, she both indulged and disciplined him by means of the same consuming force: her mother-love.

      On the other hand, Carstairs,—a firm and positive character,—received the scantiest consideration from the boy on the rare occasions when he felt it necessary to employ paternal measures. Alfred either sulked or openly defied him. Always the mother stepped into the breach. She never temporized. She either promptly supported the father's demand or opposed it. No matter which point of view she took, the youngster invariably succumbed. In plain words, it was her command that he obeyed and not his father's.

      As time went on, Carstairs came to recognize the resistless combination that opposed him, and, while the realization was far from comforting, his common-sense ordered him to accept the situation, especially as nothing could be clearer than the fact that she was bringing her son up with the most rigid regard for his future. She had her eyes set far ahead; she was seeing him always as a man and not as a boy. That much, at least, Carstairs conceded, and was more proud of her than he cared to admit, even to himself. He watched the sturdy, splendid, earnest development of his boy under the influence of a force stronger than any he could have exercised.

      Sometimes he wondered if it was the German in her that made for the rather unusual strength which so rarely rises above the weakness of a mother's pity. Once he laughingly had inquired what she would have done had their child been born a girl.

      “I should have been content to let you bring her up,” said she, with a twinkle in her eye.

      While she was resolute, almost unyielding in regard to her growing son, her attitude toward her husband was in all other respects amazingly free from assertiveness or arrogance. On the contrary, she was submissive almost to the point of humility. He was her man. He was her law. A simple, unwavering respect for his strength, his position, his authority in the home of which he was the head, rendered her incapable of opposing his slightest wish. An odd timidity, singularly out of keeping with her physical as well as her mental endowments, surrounded her with that pleasing and,—to all men,—gratifying atmosphere of femininity so dear to the heart of every lord and master. She made him comfortable.

      And she was, despite her social activities, a good and capable house-wife,—one of the old-fashioned kind who thinks first of her man's comfort and, although in this instance it was not demanded, of his purse. He was her man; it was her duty to serve him.

      As her boy merged swiftly,—almost abruptly into manhood,—her long-maintained grip of iron relaxed. Carstairs, noting the change, was puzzled. He was a long time in arriving at the solution. It was very simple after all: she merely had admitted another man into her calculations. Her boy had become a man,—a strong, dominant man,—and she was ready, even willing, to relinquish the temporary power she had exerted over him.

      She was no longer free to command. Alfred had come into his own. He was a man. She was proud of him. The time had come for her to be humble in the light of his glory, and she was content to lay aside the authority with which she had cloaked her love and ambition for so long. His word had become her law. She had two men in her family now. Slowly but surely she was giving them to understand that she was their woman, and that she knew her place. She had been for twenty-two years the wife of one of them, and for twenty years the mother of the other.

      Carstairs was rich. He was a man of affairs, a man of power and distinction in the councils of that exalted class known as the leaders of finance. He represented one of the soundest vertebrae in the back-bone of the nation in these times of war. With a loyalty that incurred a tremendous amount of self-sacrifice, he had offered all of his vital energy, all of his heart, to the cause of the people. He was on many boards, he was in touch with all the great enterprises that worked for the comfort, the support and the encouragement of those who went forth to give their lives if need be in the turmoil' of war. Davenport Carstairs stood for all that was fine and strong in practical idealism, which, after all, is the basis of all things truly American.

      As he stood inside the study door, watching with some intensity the face of his son, he was suddenly conscious of a feeling of dread, not associated with the recent grave event, but something new that was creeping, as it were, along the wire that reached its end in the receiver glued to Alfred's ear. He glanced at his wife. She suddenly exhaled the breath she was holding and smiled faintly into his concerned eyes.

      “Yes,—” said Alfred, impatiently, after a long pause,—“Yes, this is Mr. Carstairs' home.... I am his son.... What?... Yes, he's here, but can't you give me the message?... Who are you?... What?... Certainly I'll call him, but... Here, father; it's some one who insists on speaking to you personally.”

      He set the receiver down on the table with a sharp bang, and straightened up to his full height as if resenting an indignity.