Free The Savage Gentleman by Philip Wylie Page A

development.

    He educated his son to be a public speaker, and with Jack and McCobb for his audience, Henry frequently stood on the front porch, vines, trees and gaudy birds behind him, the sea before, and waxed eloquent on the administration of a proper government, or the fallacies of the Populists, or the trend of policies in the State Department. Sometimes, for variety, he and his father had a debate. McCobb, who rarely joined in these intellectual and social pastimes, was instructed to act as chairman or referee in such cases.

    Henry addressed an imaginary Senate Committee on the freedom of the press. He ranted endlessly about Bryan. He raked over the ancient scandals of the Tweed Ring.

    He also talked with dowagers in imaginary carriages. Dowagers--and they were always stuffy and frigid--were the only women who invaded this educational polic, and their invasion was rare. He rode in street cars under his father's tutelage. He walked on Fifth Avenue on Easter Day. He listened to sermons and sang hymns--although Stone was himself an agnostic.

    A great, vicarious world expanded before him, amplified by poor drawings in books and by his father's excellent descriptions. In that world one thing was paramount: Ideals.

    Stephen Stone made them the foundation of all else:

    Never lie.

    Never cheat.

    Be honest.

    Be forthright (but tactful).

    Stick to your party but hold your country above it.

    Be a gentleman (a thousand times that!)

    Be a good sport.

    Be tolerant (except of certain evils).

    Be moderate. Drink moderately. Smoke moderately.

    Keep informed.

    Sleep eight hours a day and work twelve.

    Never, never, never, never believe a woman.

    Women are ruin. Love is a myth. Marry when you are over forty-five and marry someone you do not love.

    Love is ruin.

    Be, above all, fearless.

    The precepts were banged out on the table with a fist. They were infiltrated through all their discussions. Henry was shown up flagrantly for the slightest lapse from them.

    This was Stephen Stone's reaction to the numb days that had followed the sinking of the ship off the, headlands. He had stayed away from the house all night--with Jack in the bush nearby--and he had come back changed. The gaiety which had grown in him vanished. He applied all his energy now to the training of his son.

    And Henry slowly lost human contact with his father. He obeyed. He even respected. He worked like a slave. But a rift grew between them. McCobb thought that it was an unconscious breach caused by Henry's unspoken resentment of the fact that his father had stranded him--probably for life--on the island.

    It was not.

    It grew because the two men were fundamentally different. There was something fanatical, puritanic, masochistic and sadistic in Stephen Stone. Henry was broad-minded by nature, and generous.

    If Henry had been the man whose wife had run away--he might have forgiven her.
    If Stephen Stone had been the individual whose father deliberately stranded him on an island, he would have eaten out his heart with secret malice and thwarted ambition.

    The strength of the two men lay in different sinews of the soul.

    It was May and 1921.

    Stone sat bitterly in the house. Henry had been gone for three days in the sailboat.
    Stone was bitter because he himself had planned that his-son should be independent and go where he pleased when he pleased--and because he found that such journeys occasioned him only worry and lonliness.

    He stamped ion the floor with a cane which hung on the arm of a chair. Jack looked from the kitchen.

    "Yes, boss?"

    "Bring me a glass of that port,"

    "Yest boss."

    When. Jack came with the glass on the tray, Stone said: "How much have we left?"

    "Of this port?"

    "Of this port."

    "About a barrel."

    "Well--next time I ask for port, bring me some of that stuff we made ourselves.
    It's not bad."

    "No, boss."

    "And you get back to your cooking."

    McCobb entered from the compound, He was carrying a brace of