slanted to the kitchen porch, with the odor of old stacked books in packing-cases, with the sweet orchard scents. There were two beds; he exulted in his unaccustomed occupancy of an entire mattress, dreaming of the day of manlike privacy. But Eliza did not allow this often: he was riven into her flesh.
Forgetful of him during the day’s press, she summoned him at night over the telephone, demanding his return, and upbraiding Helen for keeping him. There was a bitter submerged struggle over him between Eliza and her daughter: absorbed in the management of Dixieland for days, she would suddenly remember his absence from meals, and call for him angrily across the phone.
“Good heavens, mama,” Helen would answer irritably. “He’s your child, not mine. I’m not going to see him starve.”
“What do you mean? What do you mean? He ran off while dinner was on the table. I’ve got a good meal fixed for him here. H-m! A GOOD meal.”
Helen put her hand over the mouthpiece, making a face at him as he stood catlike and sniggering by, burlesquing the Pentland manner, tone, mouthing.
“H-m! Why, law me, child, yes—it’s GOOD soup.”
He was convulsed silently.
And then aloud: “Well, it’s your own lookout, not mine. If he doesn’t want to stay up there, I can’t help it.”
When he returned to Dixieland, Eliza would question him with bitter working lips; she would prick at his hot pride in an effort to keep him by her.
“What do you mean by running off to your papa’s like that? If I were you, I’d have too much pride for that. I’d be a-sha-a-med!” Her face worked with a bitter hurt smile. “Helen can’t be bothered with you. She doesn’t want you around.”
But the powerful charm of Gant’s house, of its tacked and added whimsy, its male smell, its girdling rich vines, its great gummed trees, its roaring internal seclusiveness, the blistered varnish, the hot calfskin, the comfort and abundance, seduced him easily away from the great chill tomb of Dixieland, particularly in winter, since Eliza was most sparing of coal.
Gant had already named it “The Barn”; in the morning now, after his heavy breakfast at home, he would swing gauntly toward
