Home from the Hill by William Humphrey Page B

knew that snobbery for what it was: sour grapes for the lack of gentility and birth. A gentleman was idle, spent his time hunting. Why should he go to school along with every till-keeper’s son and learn arithmetic to count pennies?
    There was just one thing that might have kept her from her present course. Unfortunately, as even she had to admit, the embodiment of her ideal, certainly Theron’s model in it, was his father. But finding him, as he himself had just said, on the opposite side of the matter from what anybody might have expected was suddenly exciting. Hunting was what Theron had shared with his father. Now his father had reneged on him. It was an opportunity to make hunting something Theron owed to her.
    â€œTomorrow,” she said.
    â€œI won’t try to deny my share of responsibility in it up to now, but this is your doing. I’m against it.”
    â€œThat surprises me,” she said, and he took her meaning.
    He said quietly, “I’d like my son to be better than I am.”
    â€œHe is better than you,” she said. “In every way.”
    â€œDo as you please,” he said. “But remember that I was against this.”
    â€œMy doing. Yes,” she said. “Don’t you forget it.”
    It hurt her to think of Theron alone in his room, humbled, ashamed, miserable at the prospect of her finding out, of having to go back to the school he detested. To think that he had suffered in the belief that she would be disappointed in him, that he had suffered still more—as she knew he would—at having to conceal anything from her. Not to be able to come to her with it, when something had hurt him! She would go up at once and set his mind at ease.
    Poor kid, he must be feeling pretty low, thought the Captain. How miserable he had looked, hunched up in that chair! Too miserable to see how unconvincing a job his father was doing with his part in the act. He had not lacked sincerity of conviction; but “do as I say, not as I do,” supported by no matter how much earnestness of belief, is a sermon not to be orated without some feeling of warmth around the collar. He wanted the boy to profit by the mistakes he had made, to unlock and pass through doors that had been closed to him. And he would see to it that he did. This interruption was temporary, and meanwhile it was impossible for him to be quite as unhappy about it as he might have been had Theron’s truancy been from any other cause. Hannah amazed him. Let him live to be a hundred, he would never understand Hannah. But understand her or not, he knew how to appreciate her. You would not find many women who would go so far in understanding what a thing like hunting could mean to a boy his age. It would be a load off Theron’s mind to know she knew, much less to know how she had taken it, and that he need not go back to school but could take a long holiday in the woods. However, it was going to puzzle him, the way his father had reversed himself—or been reversed by his mother. A child liked consistency in his parents, and according to the Captain’s views, liked to see the father the master in the house. He knew how much the boy looked up to him—so much so that sometimes it got to be rather a burden. Perhaps he had better go up there and break it to him himself. That would be better than hearing it from his mother. It would be a pleasure anyway. If he desired to save face, he could in all honesty say that in this case that was no selfish motive. Surely a son did not enjoy seeing his father lose face.
    Hardly had she knocked when the door flew upon, and there, instead of the dejected boy she had imagined, stood one rapturously happy. He flung both arms around her, grabbed her up and swung her feet off the floor and spun around with her into the room, laughing and thanking her in between loud kisses he planted on her cheeks and neck. She had been anticipated. He had taken all the credit.