a world remote from human error. He opened one window of his heart to Margaret, together they entered the sacred grove of poetry; but all dark desire, the dream of fair forms, and all the misery, drunkenness, and disorder of his life at home he kept fearfully shut. He was afraid they would hear. Desperately he wondered how many of the boys had heard of it. And all the facts that levelled Margaret down to life, that plunged her in the defiling stream of life, were as unreal and horrible as a nightmare.
That she had been near death from tuberculosis, that the violent and garrulous Sheba had married an old man, who had begotten two children and was now about to die, that the whole little family, powerful in cohesive fidelity, were nursing their great sores in privacy, building up before the sharp eyes and rattling tongues of young boys a barrier of flimsy pretense and evasion, numbed him with a sense of unreality.
Eugene believed in the glory and the gold.
He lived more at Dixieland now. He had been more closely bound to Eliza since he began at Leonard’s. Gant, Helen, and Luke were scornful of the private school. The children were resentful of it— a little jealous. And their temper was barbed now with a new sting. They would say:
“You’ve ruined him completely since you sent him to a private school.” Or, “He’s too good to soil his hands now that he’s quit the public school.”
Eliza herself kept him sufficiently reminded of his obligation. She spoke often of the effort she had to make to pay the tuition fee, and of her poverty. She said, he must work hard, and help her all he could in his spare hours. He should also help her through the summer and “drum up trade” among the arriving tourists at the station.
“For God’s sake! What’s the matter with you?” Luke jeered. “You’re not ashamed of a little honest work, are you?”
This way, sir, for Dixieland. Mrs. Eliza E. Gant, proprietor. Just A Whisper Off The Square, Captain. All the comforts of the Modern Jail. Biscuits and home-made pies just like mother should have made but didn’t.
That boy’s a hustler.
