“Between your father and mother?”
“Oh,” he said carelessly, “he beat her.”
“Aw-w! He hit her with his fist?”
“Oh, no. He generally used a walnut walking-stick. It got too much for her finally. My mother, even then, was not a young woman—she was almost fifty, and she could not stand the gaff so well as she could in her young days. I’ll never forget that last night,” he said, gazing thoughtfully into the coals with a smile. “I was only seven, but I remember it all very well. Papa had been brought home drunk by the mayor.”
“The mayor?”
“Oh, yes,” said Eugene casually. “They were great friends. The mayor often brought him home when he was drunk. But he was very violent that time. After the mayor had gone, he stamped around the house smashing everything he could get his hands on, cursing and blaspheming at the top of his voice. My mother stayed in the kitchen and paid no attention to him when he entered. This, of course, infuriated him. He made for her with the poker. She saw that at last she was up against it; but she had realized that such a moment was inevitable. She was not unprepared. So she reached in the flour bin and got her revolver—”
“Did she have a revolver?”
“Oh, yes,” he said nonchalantly, “my Uncle Will had given it to her as a Christmas present. Knowing my father as he did, he told her it might come in handy sometime. Mama was forced to shoot at him three times before he came to his senses.”
There was a silence.
“Gee!” said the boy, finally. “Did she hit him?”
“Only once,” Eugene replied, tossing his cigarette into the fire. “A flesh wound in the leg. A trifle. He was up and about in less than a week. But, of course, Mama had left him by that time.”
“Well!” said Mrs. Simpson, after a yet longer silence, “I’ve never had to put up with anything like that.”
“No, thank heaven!” said Genevieve fervently. Then, curiously: “Is—is your mother Mr. Pentland’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“And the uncle who gave her the revolver—Mr. Pentland’s brother?”
“Oh, yes,” Eugene answered readily. “It’s all the same family.” He grinned in his entrails, thinking of Uncle Bascom.
