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MAKING GOOD
75
"this is no longer your home until you make good"
want you to brace up, and heed what I say to you."
Tom drank thirstily. The man left the room, and Mr. Rockaway faced his son sternly.
"Each time this thing has happened you have promised me it would be the last. You have no word; you have no will ; you think of nothing but your own pleasures. I have been hoping that you would come to your senses, and realize that you are a good-for-nothing waster. But my patience is exhausted, and I intend to force that realization on you — in a word, I am done with you! This is no longer your home, and I will take no interest in your existence until you make good!"
Tom stared, open-mouthed, at this father who, aside from the occasions when reprimands were necessary, had always shown him leniency and affection. He recoiled from the stern mandate as if from a blow. Then, advancing toward his father, he pleaded for another chance.
"Another chance?" exclaimed Mr. Rockaway. "That is the same old cry ! No ! I have given you too many. My methods have failed; now it is for you to see if you can make a man
of yourself. I'll no longer harbor a loafer and drunkard under my roof. This is final, so pack up and go as soon as possible."
"This is not fair!" exclaimed Tom, passionately. But the door had closed behind his father.
Disowned ! Driven from home ! His face flushed at the shame of it. And his father had taunted him with not being a man ! Well, whose fault was that ? He had simply done as the other rich boys of his set did. His father had often proposed putting him in a bank or in a brokerage house, but the boy had always begged off and temporized. A disgust for himself succeeded the rebellion and indignation at his father's sentence.
"Dad is right," he admitted, ruefully. " I 'm a waster, and he did the only thing to pull me up. I'll go West and rough it, that's what I'll do! If that doesn't make a man of me, I guess I 'm hopeless ! ' '
A freight train rumbled thru a landscape that was monotonous^ devoid of vegetation. On each side of the track the plain stretched away in an arid tract until met by the foothills, which were of the same brownness and aridness. Here and there a determined pine-tree made an incisive note of color, but it introduced no mitigation to the general effect of dryness and unfriendliness.
Perched on a pile of cordwood, loaded on a flatcar, sat Tom Rockaway. He was "beating it" thru Southern California, for the excellent reason that his funds had come to an end in Los Angeles. He had even pawned everything of value, and everything immediately superfluous that he possessed, with the exception of the ring on his little finger. So, when he trudged out of the "City of the Angels," he took with him merely the clothes upon his back and that one gleaming souvenir of better days.
He had walked some hours, when a freight train came grinding and creaking down the line.
"I guess this will take me somewhere quicker than I can hoof it, ' ' he