September Song by William Humphrey Page B

garden. Pete Jeffers had lived under the same roof with her for nine months and never gotten to first base; this Rodney Evans had begun his successful suit on their initial walk together over the property.
    â€œIt was love at first sight,” she said.
    â€œShame on you, Father! Trying to make your daughter marry a man she does not love.”
    â€œBut you will love him. You will. In time. Pete will make you the best of husbands. You’ve seen him up close. You know how he lives. Hard-working. Easygoing. Good-natured. Home-loving. Thrifty. Dependable. Has no bad habits. Doesn’t drink—or only a drop now and then. Doesn’t go out to bars. Doesn’t go out anywhere . Doesn’t gamble. Doesn’t chase after women. Why, I’ve never even heard him curse! And there’s another thing. (This is just between you and me.) There’s a lot to be said for being brighter than your husband. You’re not just better educated but a lot brighter than Pete, and he knows it. He would look up to you. You can twist him around your little finger. And I know you. You’re like me. You like having your own way in everything. Eh? And why not! Well, with him you would.”
    â€œFather, you are becoming more shameful by the moment. You’re proposing a husband for your daughter on the grounds that he’s not too bright. And he’s supposed to be a friend of yours!”
    â€œListen. Marry Pete and I’ll leave everything to you. Everything. Your sisters don’t need it. Their husbands have got the most secure jobs in the world. People are going to go on dying and trying to get to heaven for the foreseeable future.”
    â€œFather! I will not be a party to robbing my sisters of their inheritance.”
    â€œYou always were my favorite. You know that.”
    A silence fell. Between father and daughter passed a perception. It was as though he were wooing her for himself.
    â€œI know nothing of the sort. And I don’t want to hear it. How can I face my sisters? If I’m your favorite now it’s because I’m the one still unmarried. Do you realize what you are doing and what it makes you? You are tempting me with the apple.”
    â€œMillions of them! Millions! Tell me, what have you got against Pete?”
    â€œNothing. I’ve got nothing against Pete. I like him. But I don’t love him. He’s supposed to be a friend of yours. Would you want your friend to marry a woman who didn’t love him? I like Pete too much to wish that on him. What is more, I have no reason to think he loves me. Or anybody else, for that matter. Pete doesn’t know what love is.”
    â€œHe respects you.”
    â€œOnce and for all, Father, I will never marry a man I do not love. Did you have me only so I could carry on this farm?”
    â€œIt’s been in our family, yours and mine, for four generations.”
    â€œThat’s long enough. Time for a change.”
    â€œThat does it! Now you listen to your father, young lady.”
    â€œListen to your daughter, old man. You are forgetting that you are my father.”
    â€œMarry Pete, and everything will be yours. Marry this what’s-his-name—”
    â€œRodney. Rodney Evans. And I will soon be Mrs. Rodney Evans.”
    â€œâ€”and I will leave everything to be divided between your sisters.”
    â€œYou’re no father, you’re … you’re a breeder. A stockbreeder.”
    He fell silent, struck by a truth in what she had said. A twist to it of which she herself was unaware, and the difference in their outlooks made him feel the difference in their ages, the gap between the generations, made him feel that indeed he was not the father of his children—or rather, that they were not the children of their father. Yes, he had “bred” them with a career for them in mind, as he had been bred. He had given them life, that was to say, he had passed on to them the life