Why, the fanatic feminists were right, after all. Under its greasy camouflage of chivalry, society is really based on a contempt for women’s work in the home. The only women who were paid, either in human respect or in money, were women who gave up their traditional job of creating harmony out of human relationships and did something really useful, bought or sold or created material objects. As for any man’s giving his personality to the woman’s work of trying to draw out of children the best there might be in them … fiddling foolishness! Leave it to the squaws! He was sure that he was the only man who had ever conceived even the possibility of such a lapse from virile self-respect as to do what all women are supposed to do. He knew well enough that other men would feel for such a conception on his part a stupefaction only equaled by their red-blooded scorn.
At this he caught a passing glimpse far below the surface. He knew that it was not only scorn he would arouse, but suspicion and alarm. For an instant he understood why Tradition was so intolerant of the slightest infraction of the respect due to it, why it was ready to tear him and all his into a thousand pieces rather than permit even one variation from its standard. It was because the variation he had conceived ran counter to the prestige of sacred possessions. Not only was it beneath the dignity of any able-bodied brave to try to show young human beings how to create rich, deep, happy lives without great material possessions, but it was subversive of the wholehearted worship due to possessions. It was heresy. It must be stopped at all costs. Lester heard the threatening snarl of that unsuspected, unquestioned Tradition, amazed that anyone dared so much as to conceive of an attack on it. And he knew that he was not man enough to stand up and resist the bludgeon and the snarl.
He had thought he had experienced all the possible ways in which a man can feel contempt for himself. But there was another depth before him. For—he might as well have the poor merit of being honest about it, and not hide behind Eva and the children—he knew that he could stand that “oh …” as little as they, that he would turn feebly sour and bitter under it, as he had before, and blame other people for what was his own lack of endurance.
Let him try to imagine it for an instant—a definite instance. If he were once more an able-bodied man what would he feel to have Harvey Bronson drop in and find him making a bed while Eva sold goods?
Good God! Was he such a miserable cur as to let the thought of Harvey Bronson’s sneer stand between him and doing what he knew was best for the children? There they stood, infinitely precious, hungering and thirsting for what he had to give them … defenseless but for him. Would he stand back and let the opinion of the Ladies’ Guild. …
Yes, he would.
That was the kind of miserable cur he was. And now he knew it. He wiped the sweat from his face and ground his teeth together to keep them from chattering.
They were chattering like those of a man cast adrift in a boat with only a broken paddle between him and the roaring leap of a cataract. The roaring was louder and louder in his ears as he felt himself helplessly drifting towards the drop. He had not been willing to look at it, had kept his eyes on the shores which he had tried so vainly to reach, struggling pitifully with his poor broken tool.
Now he gave up and, cowering in a heap, waited dumbly for the crashing downfall—he who had fallen so low, was he to fall again, lower still? He who had thought he had kept nothing at all for himself in life, must he give up now his one living treasure, his self-respect? Could it be that he was thinking—he, Lester Knapp!—of shamming a sickness he did not have, of trampling his honor deep into the filth of small, daily lies?
The thought carried him with a rush over the wicked gleaming curve at the edge of the abyss … he was falling … falling. …
There was nothing but a formless horror of yelling whirlpools, which sucked him down. …
Presently it was dawn. A faint gray showed at the windows. The blemishes on the ceiling came into view and stalked grimly to their accustomed stand in his brain. The night was over. Stephen lay sleeping peacefully, the harmless, blackened bits of the burned curtain scattered about his bed.
“Father, father, where are you going?
Oh,
