Church—said she grew up with your mother and has known her all her life—well, she’s praying for you!” said Robert solemnly. “I’ll swear she is!”
“Praying for me!” the boy cried in an exasperated tone, but at the same time, feeling the numb white nauseous sickness of the heart which the intolerable thought that people are talking in a disparaging manner about him, his talents, or the success or failure of his life, can always bring to a young man. “Praying for me!” he fiercely shouted. “Why the hell should any one pray for me?”
“I know! I know!” said Robert, nodding his head vigorously, and speaking with grave agreement. “That’s what I told them. That’s just the way I felt about it!… But some of those people down there think you’ve gone to hell for good…. Do you know what I heard a woman say the other day? She said that Eugene Gant had gone straight to the devil since he went away to the State University—”
“Robert, I don’t believe you!” the boy shouted. “You’re making all this up!”
“Why, she did! So help me, God! I heard her say it, as sure as I’m standing here,” swore Robert solemnly. “She said you’d gone down there and taken Vergil Weldon’s courses in philosophy and that you were ruined for life! She said you had turned into a regular infidel—didn’t believe in God or anything any more…. Said she certainly did feel sorry for your mother,” said Robert maliciously.
“Feel sorry for my mother!” the boy fairly howled, dancing around now like a maniac. “Why the hell should the old bitch feel sorry for my mother! My mother can take care of herself; she doesn’t need any one to feel sorry for her!… All right, then!” he cried bitterly, with sudden acceptation of the other’s story. “Let’em pray! If that’s the way they feel, let’em pray till they wear corns on their God-damned knees! The dirty hypocrites!” he cried bitterly. “I’ll show them! Sneaking around behind your back to tell their rotten lies about you—and their talk of praying for your soul! I’m glad I’m out of that damned town! The two-faced bastards! I wouldn’t trust any of them as far as I could throw an elephant by his tail!”
“I know! I know!” said Robert, wagging his head in solemn agreement. “I agree with you absolutely. It’s awful—that’s what it is.”
It was extraordinary that this absurd story, whether true or not, should have had such a violent effect on the emotions of the boy. Yet now that he had been told of some unknown woman’s concern for the salvation of his
