The Breaking Point - Page 104/275

"Well, it's time Jim was fair to Leslie," Nina said, with family

frankness. "I'll tell you something, mother. Jim has a girl somewhere,

in town probably. He takes her driving. I found a glove in the car. And

he must be crazy about her, or he'd never do what he's done."

"Do you know who it is?"

"No. Somebody's he's ashamed of, probably, or he wouldn't be so

clandestine about it."

"Nina!"

"Well, it looks like it. Jim's a man, mother. He's not a little boy.

He'll go through his shady period, like the rest."

That night it was Mrs. Wheeler's turn to lie awake. Again and again she

went over Nina's words, and her troubled mind found a basis in fact

for them. Jim had been getting money from her, to supplement his small

salary; he had been going out a great deal at night, and returning very

late; once or twice, in the morning, he had looked ill and his eyes had

been bloodshot, as though he had been drinking.

Anxiety gripped her. There were so many temptations for young men, so

many who waited to waylay them. A girl. Not a good girl, perhaps.

She raised herself on her elbow and looked at her sleeping husband. Men

were like that; they begot children and then forgot them. They never

looked ahead or worried. They were taken up with business, and always

they forgot that once they too had been young and liable to temptation.

She got up, some time later, and tiptoed to the door of Jim's room.

Inside she could hear his heavy, regular breathing. Her boy. Her only

son.

She went back and crawled carefully into the bed.

There was an acrimonious argument between Jim and his father the next

morning, and Jim slammed out of the house, leaving chaos behind him. It

was then that Elizabeth learned that her father was going away. He said: "Maybe I'm wrong, mother. I don't know. Perhaps, when I come back,

I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand

things."

"Are you going away?" Elizabeth asked, surprised.

It appeared that he was. More than that, that he was going West with

Dick. It was all arranged and nobody had told her anything about it.

She was hurt and a trifle offended, and she cried a little about it.

Yet, as Dick explained to her later that day, it was simple enough. Her

father needed a rest, and besides, it was right that he should know all

about Dick's life before he came to Haverly.