"Well, now," said Dr. Lavendar that Sunday evening when he and David came into the study after tea; "I suppose you'd like me to tell you a story before you go to bed?"
"A Bible story?"
"Why, yes," Dr. Lavendar admitted, a little taken aback.
"No, sir," said David.
"You don't want a Bible story!"
The little boy shook his head.
"David," said Dr. Lavendar chuckling, "I think I like you."
David made no response; his face was as blank as an Indian's. He sat down on a stool by the fire, and once he sighed. Danny had sniffed him, slowly, and turned away with a bored look; it was then that he sighed. After a while he got up and wandered about the room, his hands gripped in front of him, his lips shut tight. Dr. Lavendar watched him out of the tail of his eye, but neither of them spoke. Suddenly David climbed up on a chair and looked fixedly at a picture that hung between the windows.
"That is a Bible picture," Dr. Lavendar observed.
"Who," said David, "is the gentleman in the water?"
Dr. Lavendar blew his nose before answering. Then he said that that was meant to be our Saviour when He was being baptized. "Up in the sky," Dr. Lavendar added, "is His Heavenly Father."
There was silence until David asked gently, "Is it a good photograph ofGod?"
Dr. Lavendar puffed three times at his pipe; then he said, "If you think the picture looks like a kind Father, then it is. And David, I know some stories that are not Bible stories. Shall I tell you one?"
"If you want to, sir," David said. Dr. Lavendar began his tale rather doubtfully; but David fixed such interested eyes upon his face that he was flattered into enlarging upon his theme. The child listened breathlessly, his fascinated eyes travelling once or twice to the clock, then back to the kind old face.
"You were afraid bedtime would interrupt us?" said Dr. Lavendar, when the tale was done. "Well, well; you are a great boy for stories, aren't you?"
"You've talked seven minutes," said David, thoughtfully, "and you've not moved your upper jaw once."
Dr. Lavendar gasped; then he said, meekly, "Did you like the story?"
David made no reply,
"I think," said Dr Lavendar, "I'll have another pipe."
He gave up trying to make conversation; instead, he watched the clock. Mary had said that David must go to bed at eight, and as the clock began to strike, Dr. Lavendar, with some eagerness, opened his lips to say good night—and closed them. "Guess he'd rather run his own rig," he thought. But to his relief, at the last stroke David got up.
"It's my bedtime, sir."
"So it is! Well, it will be mine after a while. Good night, my boy!" Dr. Lavendar blinked nervously. Young persons were generally kissed. "I should not wish to be kissed," he said to himself, and the two shook hands gravely.
Left alone, he felt so fatigued he had to have that other pipe. Before he had finished it his senior warden looked in at the study door.
"Come in, Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar. "Samuel, I feel as if I had driven ten miles on a corduroy road!"
Mr. Wright looked blank; sometimes he found it hard to follow Dr.Lavendar.
"Sam, young persons are very exciting."
"Some of them are, I can vouch for that," his caller assured him grimly.
"Come, come! They are good for us," said Dr. Lavendar. "I wish you'd take a pipe, Sam; it would cheer you up."
"I never smoke, sir," said Samuel reprovingly, "Well, you miss a lot of comfort in life. I've seen a good many troubles go up in smoke."
Mr. Wright sat down heavily and sighed.
"Sam been giving you something to think about?" Dr. Lavendar asked cheerfully.
"He always gives me something to think about. He is beyond my comprehension! I may say candidly, that I cannot understand him. What do you think he has done now?"
"Nothing wicked."
"I don't know how you look at it," Samuel said, "but from my point of view, buying prints with other people's money is dangerously near wickedness. This present matter, however, is just imbecility. I told him one day last week to write to a man in Troy, New York, about a bill of exchange. Well, he wrote. Oh, yes—he wrote. Back comes a letter from the man, enclosing my young gentleman's epistle, with a line added"—Mr. Wright fumbled in his breast pocket to find the document—"here it is:'Above remarks about ships not understood by our House.'Will you look at that, sir, for the 'remarks about ships'?"
Dr. Lavendar took the sheet stamped "Bank of Pennsylvania," and hunted for his spectacles. When he settled them on his nose he turned the letter over and read in young Sam's sprawling hand:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"
"What's this? I don't understand."
"Certainly you do not; no sensible person would. I showed it to my young gentleman, and requested an explanation. 'Oh,' he said, 'when you told me to write to Troy, it made me think of those lines.' He added that not wishing to forget them, he wrote them down on a sheet of paper, and that probably he used the other side of the sheet for the Troy letter—'by mistake.' 'Mistake, sir!' I said, 'a sufficient number ofmistakeswill send me out of business.'"
"Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar thoughtfully, "do you recall whose face it was that 'launched the thousand ships' on Troy?"
Samuel shook his head,
"Helen's" said Dr. Lavendar.
The senior warden frowned, then suddenly understood. "Oh, yes, I know all about that. Another evidence of his folly!"
"I've no doubt you feel like spanking him," Dr. Lavendar said sympathetically, "but—" he stopped short. Sam Wright was crimson.
"I!Spankhim? I?" He got up, opening and shutting his hands, his face very red. The old minister looked at him in consternation.
"Sam! what on earth is the matter with you? Can't a man have his joke?"
Mr. Wright sat down. He put his hand to his mouth as though to hide some trembling betrayal; his very ears were purple.
Dr. Lavendar apologized profusely. "I was only in fun. I'm sure you know that I meant no disrespect to the boy. I only wanted to cheer you up."
"I understand, sir; it is of no consequence. I—I had something else on my mind. It is of no consequence." The color faded, and his face fell into its usual bleak lines, but his mouth twitched. A minute afterwards he began to speak with ponderous dignity. "This love-making business is, of course, most mortifying to me; and also, no doubt, annoying to Mrs. Richie. To begin with, she is eleven years older than he—he told his mother so. He added, if you please! that he hoped to marry her."
"Well! Well!" said Dr. Lavendar.
"I told him," Mr. Wright continued, "that in my very humble opinion it was contemptible for a man to marry and allow another man to support his wife."
Dr. Lavendar sat up in shocked dismay. "Samuel!"
"I, sir," the banker explained, "am his father, and I support him. If he marries, I shall have to support his wife. According to my poor theories of propriety, a man who lets another man support his wife had better not have one."
"But you ought not to have put it that way," Dr. Lavendar protested,
"I merely put the fact," said Samuel Wright "Furthermore, unless he stops dangling at her apron-strings, I shall stop his allowance, I shall so inform him."
"You surely won't do such a foolish thing!"
"Would you have me sit still? Not put up a single barrier to keep him in bounds?"
"Samuel, do you know what barriers mean to a colt?"
Mr. Wright made no response.
"They mean something to jump over."
"Possibly," said Mr. Wright with dignity, "you are, to some extent, correct. But a man cannot permit his only son to run wild and founder."
"Sam won't founder. But he may get a bad strain. You'd better look out.He is his father's son."
"I do not know, sir, to what you refer."
"Oh, yes, you do," Dr. Lavendar assured him easily; "and you know that no man can experience unforgiving anger, and not be crippled. You didn't founder, Sam, but you gave yourself a mighty ugly wrench. Hey? Isn't that so?"
The senior warden looked perfectly deaf; then he took up the tale again.
"If he goes on in his folly he will only be unhappy, and deservedly so. She will have nothing to do with him. In stopping him, I shall only be keeping him from future unhappiness."
"Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar, "I never begrudge unhappiness to the young."
But Mr., Wright was too absorbed in his own troubles to get any comfort out of that.
"By the way," said Dr. Lavendar, "speaking of Mrs. Richie—do you think she'd be a good person to take this little David Allison?"
"I don't know why she shouldn't be, sir," Samuel said. "I have no fault to find withher. She pays her rent and goes to church. Yes; a very good person to take the boy off your hands."
"The rent is important," Dr. Lavendar agreed nodding; "but going to church doesn't prove anything."
"All good people go to church," the senior warden reproved him.
"But all people who go to church are not good," Dr. Lavendar said dryly,
"I am afraid she lets Sam talk poetry to her," Sam's father broke out. "Stuff! absolute stuff! His mother sometimes tells me of it. Why," he ended piteously, "half the time I can't understand what it's about; it's just bosh!"
"What you don't understand generallyisbosh, isn't it, Sam?" saidDr. Lavendar thoughtfully.
"I am a man of plain common sense, sir; I don't pretend to anything but common sense."
"I know you don't, Samuel, I know you don't," Dr. Lavendar said sadly; and the banker, mollified, accepted the apology.
"On top of everything else, he's been writing a drama. He told his mother so. Writing a drama, instead of writing up his ledgers!"
"Of course, he ought not to neglect his work," Dr. Lavendar agreed; "but play-writing isn't one of the seven deadly sins."
"It is distasteful to me!" Sam senior said hotly; "most distasteful. I told his mother to tell him so, but he goes on writing—so she says." He sighed, and got up to put on his coat. "Well; I must go home. I suppose he has been inflicting himself upon Mrs. Richie this evening. If he stays late, I shall feel it my duty to speak plainly to him."
Dr. Lavendar gave him a hand with his coat. "Gently does it, Samuel, gently does it!"
His senior warden shook his head. The sense of paternal helplessness, felt more or less by all fathers of sons, was heavy upon him. He knew in a bewildered way, that he did not speak the boy's language. And yet he could not give up trying to communicate with him,—shouting at him, so to speak, as one shouts at a foreigner when trying to make oneself understood; for surely there must be some one word that would reach Sam's mind, some one touch that would stir his heart! Yet when he brought his perplexity to Dr. Lavendar, he was only told to hold his tongue and keep his hands off. The senior warden said to himself, miserably, that he was afraid Dr. Lavendar was getting old, "Well, I mustn't bother you," he said; "as for Sam, I suppose he will go his own gait! I don't know where he gets his stubbornness from. I myself am the most reasonable man in the world. All I ever ask is to be allowed to follow my own judgment. I asked his mother if obstinacy was a characteristic of her family, and she assured me it was not. Certainly Eliza herself has no will of her own. I don't think a good woman ever has. And, as I say, I never insisted upon my own way in my life—except, of course, in matters where I knew I was right."
"Of course," said Dr. Lavendar.
The parting at the Stuffed Animal House the next morning was dreary enough. The day broke heavy with threatening rain. The man, after that brief flaming up of the embers of burned-out passion, had fallen into a weariness which he did not attempt to conceal. But the woman—being a woman—still tried to warm herself at the poor ashes, wasting her breath in a sobbing endeavor to blow them into some fitful ardor. There was a hurried breakfast, and while waiting for the stage the desultory talk that skims over dangerous topics for fear of getting into discussions for which there is no time. And with it the consciousness of things that burn to be said—at least on one side.
"I'm sorry I was cross last night," she murmured once, under her breath.
And he responded courteously, "Oh, not at all."
But she pressed him. "You know it was only because I—love you so? And to make a joke of—"
"Of course! Helena, when is that stage due? You don't suppose the driver misunderstood, and expects to take me on at the Tavern?"
"No, he was told to call here…. Lloyd, it's just the same? You haven't—changed?"
"Certainly not! I do hope he hasn't forgotten me? It would be extremely inconvenient."
She turned away and stood looking out of the window into the rain-sodden garden. Mr. Pryor lighted a cigar. After a while she spoke again. "You'll come soon? I hope you will come soon! I'll try not to worry you."
"Of course," he assured her; "but I trust your cook will be well next time, my dear."
"Give me a day's notice, and I will have another cook if Maggie should be under the weather," she answered eagerly.
"Oh, that reminds me," he said, and thrusting his hand into his pocket he went out to the kitchen. When he came back he went at once to the window, "I'm afraid that stage-driver has forgotten me," he said, frowning. But she reassured him—it really wasn't time yet; then she leaned her cheek on his shoulder.
"Do you think you can come in a fortnight, Lloyd? Come the first ofMay, and everything shall be perfect. Will you?"
Laughing, he put a careless arm around her, then catching sight of the stage pulling up at the gate, turned away so quickly that she staggered a little.
"Ah!" he said in a relieved voice;—"beg your pardon, Nelly;—There's the stage!"
At the door he kissed her hurriedly; but she followed him, bareheaded, out into the mist, catching his hand as they went down the path.
"Good-by!" he called back from the hinged step of the stage. "Get along, driver, get along! I don't want to miss my train in Mercer. Good-by, my dear. Take care of yourself."
Helena standing at the gate, followed the stage with her eyes until the road turned at the foot of the hill. Then she went back to the bench under the silver poplar and sat down. She said to herself that she was glad he was gone. His easy indifference to the annoyance to her of all these furtive years, seemed just for a moment unbearable. He had not showed a glimmer of sympathy for her position; he had not betrayed the slightest impatience at Frederick's astonishing health, so contrary to every law of probability and justice; he had not even understood how she felt at taking the friendship of the Old Chester people on false pretences—oh, these stupid people! That dull, self-satisfied, commonplace doctor's wife, so secure, so comfortable, in her right to Old Chester friendships! Of course, it was a great thing to be free from the narrowness and prejudice in which Old Chester was absolutely hidebound. But Lloyd might at least have understood that in spite of her freedom the years of delay had sometimes been a little hard for her; that it was cruel that Frederick should live, and live, and live, putting off the moment when she should be like—other people; like that complacent Mrs. King, even; (oh, how she detested the woman!) But Lloyd had shown no spark of sympathy or understanding; instead he had made a horrid joke…. Suddenly her eyes, sweet and kind and shallow as an animal's, clouded with pain, and she burst out crying—but only for one convulsive moment. She could not cry out here in the garden. She wished she could get into the house, but she was sure that her eyes were red, and the servants might notice them. She would have to wait a while. Then she shivered, for a sharp wind blew from across the hills where in the hollows the snow still lingered in grimy drifts, icy on the edges, and crumbling and settling and sinking away with every day of pale sunshine. The faint fragrance of wind-beaten daffodils reached her, and she saw two crocuses, long gold bubbles, over in the grass. She put the back of her hand against her cheek—it was hot still; she must wait a little longer. Her chilly discomfort made her angry at Lloyd, as well as hurt…. It was nearly half an hour before she felt sure that her eyes would not betray her and she could go into the house.
Somehow or other the empty day passed; she had Lloyd's novel and the candy. It was cold enough for a fire in the parlor, and she lay on the sofa in front of it, and read and nibbled her candy and drowsed. Once, lazily, she roused herself to throw some grains of incense on the hot coals. Gradually the silence and perfume and warm sloth pushed the pain of the last twenty-four hours into the background of her mind, where it lay a dull ache of discontent. By and by even that ceased in physical well-being. Her body had her in its grip, and her spirit sunk softly into the warm and satisfied flesh. She bade Sarah bring her dinner into the parlor; after she had eaten it she slept. When she awoke in the late afternoon, she wished she could sleep again. All her thoughts ran together in a lazy blur. Somewhere, back of the blur, she knew there was unhappiness, so this was best—to lie warm and quiet by the fire, eating candy and yawning over her book.
The next few days were given up to indolence and apathy. But at the end of the week the soul of her stirred. A letter from Lloyd came saying that he hoped she had the little boy with her, and this reminded her of her forgotten promise to Dr. Lavendar.
But it was not until the next Monday afternoon that she roused herself sufficiently to give much thought to the matter. Then she decided to go down to the Rectory and see the child. It was another dark day of clouds hanging low, bulging big and black with wind and ravelling into rain along the edges. She hesitated at the discomfort of going out, but she said to herself, dully, that she supposed she needed the walk. As she went down the hill her cheeks began to glow with the buffet of the wind, and her leaf-brown eyes shone crystal clear from under her soft hair, crinkling in the mist and blowing all about her smooth forehead. The mist had thickened to rain before she reached the Rectory, and her cloak was soaked, which made Dr. Lavendar reproach her for her imprudence.
"And where are your gums?" he demanded. When she confessed that she had forgotten them, he scolded her roundly.
"I'll see that the little boy wears them when he comes to visit me," she said, a comforted look coming into her face.
"David? David will look after himself like a man, and keep you in order, too. As for visiting you, my dear, you'd better visit him a little first. I tell you—stay and have supper with us to-night?"
But she protested that she had only come for a few minutes to ask aboutDavid. "I must go right home," she said nervously.
"No, no. You can't get away,—oh!" he broke off excitedly—"here he is!" Dr. Lavendar's eagerness at the sight of the little boy who came running up the garden path, his hurry to open the front door and bring him into the study to present him to Mrs. Richie, fussing and proud and a little tremulous, would have touched her, if she had noticed him. But she did not notice him,—the child absorbed her. She could not leave him. Before she knew it she found herself taking off her bonnet and saying she would stay to tea.
"David," said Dr. Lavendar, "I've got a bone in my leg; so you run and get me a clean pocket-handkerchief."
"Can I go up-stairs like a crocodile?" said David.
"Certainly, if it affords you the slightest personal satisfaction," Dr. Lavendar told him; and while the little boy crawled laboriously on his stomach all the way up-stairs, Dr. Lavendar talked about him. He said he thought the child had been homesick just at first; he had missed his sister Janey. "He told me 'Janey' gave him 'forty kisses' every night," said Dr. Lavendar; "I thought that told a story—" At that moment the crocodile, holding a handkerchief between his teeth, came rapidly, head foremost, down-stairs. Dr. Lavendar raised a cautioning hand;—"Mustn't talk about him, now!"
There was a quality in that evening that was new to Helena; it was dull, of course;—how very dull Lloyd would have found it! A childlike old man asking questions with serious simplicity of a little boy who was full of his own important interests and anxieties;—the feeding of Danny, and the regretful wonder that in heaven, the little dog would not be "let in."
"Who said he wouldn't?" Dr. Lavendar demanded, fiercely, while Danny yawned with embarrassment at hearing his own name.
"You read about heaven in the Bible," David said, suddenly shy; "an' it said outside were dogs;—an' some other animals I can't remember the names of."
Dr. Lavendar explained with a twinkle that shared with his visitor the humor of those "other animals" itemized in the Revelations. It was a very mild humor; everything was mild at the Rectory; the very air seemed gentle! There was no apprehension, no excitement, no antagonism; only the placid commonplace of goodness and affection. Helena could not remember such an evening in all her life. And the friendship between youth and age was something she had never dreamed of. She saw David slip from his chair at table, and run around to Dr. Lavendar's side to reach up and whisper in his ear,—oh, if he would but put his cheek against hers, and whisper in her ear!
The result of that secret colloquy was that David knelt down in front of the dining-room fire, and made a slice of smoky toast for Dr. Lavendar.
"After supper you might roast an apple for Mrs. Richie," the old minister suggested. And David's eyes shone with silent joy. With anxious deliberation he picked out an apple from the silver wire basket on the sideboard; and when they went into the study, he presented a thread to Mrs. Richie.
"Tie it to the stem," he commanded. "You're pretty slow," he added gently, and indeed her white fingers blundered with the unaccustomed task. When she had accomplished it, David wound the other end of the thread round a pin stuck in the high black mantel-shelf. The apple dropped slowly into place before the bars of the grate, and began—as everybody who has been a child knows—to spin slowly round, and then, slowly back again. David, squatting on the rug, watched it in silence. But Mrs. Richie would not let him be silent. She leaned forward, eager to touch him—his shoulders, his hair, his cheek, hot with the fire.
"Won't you come and sit in my lap?"
David glanced at Dr. Lavendar as though for advice; then got up and climbed on to Mrs. Richie's knee, keeping an eye on the apple that bobbed against the grate and sizzled.
"Will you make me a little visit, dear?"
David sighed. "I seem to visit a good deal; I'd like to belong somewhere."
"Oh, you will, one of these days," Dr. Lavendar assured him.
"I'd like to belong to you," David said thoughtfully.
Dr. Lavendar beamed, and looked proudly at Mrs. Richie.
"Because," David explained, "I love Goliath."
"Oh," said Dr. Lavendar blankly.
"It's blackening on one side," David announced, and slid down from Mrs.Richie's knee to set the apple spinning again.
"The red cheek is beginning to crack," said Dr. Lavendar, deeply interested; "smells good, doesn't it, Mrs. Richie?"
"Have you any little boys and girls?" David asked, watching the apple.
"Come and climb on my knee and I'll tell you," she bribed him.
He came reluctantly; the apple was spinning briskly now under the impulse of a woolly burst of pulp through the red skin.
"Have you?" he demanded.
"No, David."
Here his interest in Mrs. Richie's affairs flagged, for the apple began to steam deliciously. Dr. Lavendar, watching her with his shrewd old eyes, asked her one or two questions; but, absorbed in the child, she answered quite at random. She put her cheek against his hair, and whispered, softly: "Turn round, and I'll give you forty kisses." Instantly David moved his head away. The snub was so complete that she looked over at Dr. Lavendar, hoping he had not seen it. "I once knew a little baby," she said, trying to hide her embarrassment, "that had curly hair the color of yours."
"It has begun to drip," said David briefly. "Does Alice live at your house?"
"Alice!"
"The gentleman—your brother—said Alice was nineteen. I thought maybe she lived at your house."
"No, dear. Look at the apple!"
David looked. "Why not?"
"Why, she lives at her own house, dear little boy."
"Does she pay you a visit?"
"No. David, I think the apple is done. Why didn't you roast one for Dr.Lavendar?"
"I had to do it for you because you're company. Why doesn't she pay you a visit?"
"Because—oh, for a good many reasons. I'm afraid must go home now."
The child slipped from her knee with unflattering haste. "You've got to eat your apple first," he said, and ran to get a saucer and spoon. With great care the thread was broken and the apple secured. Then David sat calmly down in front of her to watch her eat it; but after the first two or three mouthfuls, Dr. Lavendar had pity on her, and the smoky skin and the hard core were banished to the dining-room. While the little boy was carrying them off, she said eagerly, that she wanted him.
"You'll let me have him?"
"I'm going to keep him for a while."
"Oh, do give him to me!" she urged.
"Not yet. You come here and see him. I won't make ye eat a roast apple every time." He smiled at her as he spoke, for she was clasping her hands, and her eyes were eager and shining.
"I must have him! Imust!"
"No use teasing—here comes Dr. King. He'll tell you I'm an obstinate old man. Hey, Willy, my boy! Ain't I an obstinate old man?"
"You are," said William. He had walked in unannounced, in good OldChester fashion, and stood smiling in the doorway.
"Oh, plead my cause!" she said, turning to him.
"Of course I will. But it isn't much use; we are all under his heel."
They were standing, for Mrs. Richie had said she must go, when Dr. Lavendar had an idea: "Would you mind seeing her home, Willy?" he said, in an aside. "I was going to send Mary, but this is a chance to get better acquainted with her—if you're not too tired."
"Of course I'm not too tired," the doctor said eagerly, and went back to the fireside where Mrs. Richie had dropped on her knees before David. "I'm going to walk home with you," he announced. She looked up with a quick protest, but he only laughed. "If we let you go alone, your brother will think we have no manners in Old Chester. Besides I need the walk." And when she had fastened her cloak, and kissed David good night, and thrown Dr. Lavendar an appealing look, William gave her his hand down the two steps from the front door, and then made her take his arm. Dr. Lavendar had provided a lantern, and as its shifting beam ran back and forth across the path the doctor bade her be careful where she stepped. "These flag-stones are abominably rough," he said; "I never noticed it before. And one can't see in the dark."
But what with the lantern and the stars, there was light enough for William King to see the stray curl that blew across her forehead—brown, was it? And yet, William remembered that in daylight her hair was too bright to be called brown. He was solicitous lest he was making her walk too fast. "I don't want your brother to think we don't take care of you in Old Chester," he said; and in the starlight he could see that her face flushed a little. Then he repeated some Old Chester gossip, which amused her very much—and held his breath to listen to the delicious gayety of her laugh.
"There ought to be a better path for you up the hill," he said; "I must speak to Sam Wright about it." And carefully he flung the noiseless zigzag of light back and forth in front of her, and told some more stories that he might hear that laugh again.
When he left her at her own door she said with a sudden impetuous timidity, "Dr. King,pleasemake Dr. Lavendar give me the little boy!"
"I will!" he said, and laughed at her radiant face.
It seemed to the doctor as he went down the hill, that he had had a most delightful evening. He could not recollect what they had talked about, but he knew that they had agreed on every point. "A very intelligent lady," he said to himself.
"William," said Martha, looking up from her mending as he entered the sitting-room, "did you remember to tell Davis that the kitchen sink leaks?"
"Oh!" said the doctor blankly; "well—I'll tell him in the morning." Then, smiling vaguely, he dropped down into his shabby old easy-chair, and watched Martha's darning-needle plod in and out. "Martha," he said after a while, "what shade would you call your hair if it was—well, kind of brighter?"
"What?" said Martha, looking at him over her spectacles; she put up her hard capable hand and touched her hair softly, as if she had forgotten it. "My hair used to be a real chestnut. Do you mean chestnut?"
"I guess I do. It's a pretty color."
Martha looked at him with a queer shyness in her married eyes, then tossed her head a little and thrust her darning-needle into the gray stocking with a jaunty air. "That's what you used to say," she said. After a while, noticing his tired lounge in the old chair, she said kindly, "Why did you stay so long at Dr. Lavendar's, Willy? You look tired. Do go to bed."
"Oh," William explained, "I didn't stay very long; he asked me to seeMrs. Richie home. She had taken tea with him."
Martha's face suddenly hardened. "Oh," she said coldly. Then, after a short silence: "Mrs. Richie's hair is too untidy for my taste."
When Dr. Lavendar went back into the study he found David curled up in an arm-chair in profound meditation.
"What are you thinking about so hard?" Dr. Lavendar said.
"Yesterday. After church."
"Thinking about yesterday?" Dr. Lavendar repeated puzzled. David offered no explanation, and the old minister searched his memory for any happening of interest after church … but found none. He had come out of the vestry and in the church David had joined him, following him down the aisle to the door and waiting close behind him through the usual Sunday greetings: "Morning, Sam!" "Good morning, Dr. Lavendar." "How are you, Ezra? How many drops of water make the mighty ocean, Ezra?" "The amount of water might be estimated in tons, Dr. Lavendar, but I doubt whether the number of minims could be compu—" "Hullo! there's Horace; how d'ye do, Horace? How's Jim this morning?"—and so on; the old friendly greetings of all the friendly years…. Surely nothing in them to make the child thoughtful?
Suddenly David got up and came and stood beside him.
"What is your name?"
"N. or M.," Dr. Lavendar replied.
"What, sir?" said David, in a troubled voice; and Dr. Lavendar was abashed.
"My name is Edward Lavendar, sir. Why do you want to know?"
"Because, yesterday everybody said 'Dr. Lavendar.' I didn't thinkDoctor could be your front name. All the other people had front names."
"Well, I have a front name, David, but you see, there's nobody in Old Chester to call me by it." He sighed slightly, and then he smiled. "The last one who called me by my front name is dead, David. John was his name. I called him Johnny."
David looked at him with wide eyes, silent. Dr. Lavendar took his pipe out of his mouth, and stared for a minute at the fire.
"I should think," David said sadly, "God would be discouraged to haveeverybodyHe makes, die."
At that Dr. Lavendar came quickly out of his reverie. "Oh, it's better that way," he said, cheerfully. "One of these days I'll tell you why. What do you say to a game of dominoes?"
David squeaked with pleasure. Then he paused to say: "Is that lady, Alice's aunt?" and Dr. Lavendar had to recall who "Alice" was before he could say "yes." Then a little table was pulled up, and the dominoes were poured out upon it, with a joyful clatter. For the next half hour they were both very happy. In the midst of it David remarked, thoughtfully: "There are two kinds of aunts. One is bugs. She is the other kind." And after Dr. Lavendar had stopped chuckling they discussed the relative merits of standing the dominoes upright, or putting them on their sides, and Dr. Lavendar built his fence in alternate positions, which was very effective. It was so exciting that bedtime was a real trial to them both. At the last stroke of eight David clenched both hands.
"Perhaps the clock is fast?"
Dr. Lavendar compared it with his watch, and shook his head sympathetically. "No; just right. Tumble 'em back into the box. Good night."
"Good night, sir," David said, and stood hesitating. The color came and went in his face, and he twisted the top button of his jacket with little nervous fingers.
"Good night," Dr. Lavendar repeated, significantly.
But still David hesitated. Then he came and stood close beside Dr.Lavendar. "Lookee here," he said tremulously, "I'llcall you Edward.I'd just as lieves as not."
There was a full minute's silence. Then Dr. Lavendar said, "I thank you, David. That is a kind thought. But no; I like Dr. Lavendar as a name. So many boys and girls have called me that, that I'm fond of it. And I like to have you use it. But I'm much obliged to you, David. Now I guess we'll say good night. Hey?"
The child's face cleared; he drew a deep breath as if he had accomplished something. Then he said good night, and trudged off to bed. Dr. Lavendar looked after him tenderly.
April brightened into May before David came to live at the Stuffed Animal House. Dr. Lavendar had his own reasons for the delay, which he did not share with anybody, but they resulted in a sort of intimacy, which Helena, eager for the child, could not refuse.
"He needs clothes," Dr. Lavendar put her off; "I can't let him visit you till Mary gets his wardrobe to rights."
"Oh, let me get his little things."
—Now, who would have supposed that Dr. Lavendar was so deep! To begin with, he was a man, and an old man, at that; and with never a chick or a child of his own. How did he know what a child's little clothes are to a woman?—"Well," he said, "suppose you make him a set of night-drawers."
Helena's face fell. "I don't know how to sew. I thought I could buy what he needed."
"No; he has enough bought things, but if you will be so kind, my dear, as to make—"
"I will!" she promised, eagerly, and Dr. Lavendar said he would bringDavid up to be measured.
Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and happiness; it brought Dr. Lavendar and David up to the Stuffed Animal House very often, "to try on." David's coming was always a delight, but the old man fretted her, somehow;—he was so good. She said so to William King, who laughed at the humor of a good woman's objection to goodness. The incongruity of such a remark from her lips was as amusing as a child's innocently base comment.
[Illustration: Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and happiness.Awakening of Helena Richie]
William had fallen into the habit of drawing up and calling out "good morning" whenever he and his mare passed her gate. Mrs. Richie's lack of common sense seemed to delight the sensible William. When he was with her, he was in the frame of mind that finds everything a joke. It was a demand for the eternal child in her, to which, involuntarily, she responded. She laughed at him, and even teased him about his shabby buggy with a gayety that made him tingle with pleasure. She used to wonder at herself as she did it—conscious and uneasy, and resolving every time that she would not do it again. She had none of this lightness with any one else. With Dr. Lavendar she was reserved to the point of coldness, and with young Sam Wright, matter-of-fact to a discouraging degree.
But she did not see Sam often in the next month. It had occurred to Sam senior that Adam Smith might cure the boy's taste for 'bosh'; so, by his father's orders, his Sunday afternoons were devoted toThe Wealth of Nations. As for his evenings, his grandfather took possession of them. Benjamin Wright's proposal that the young man should go away for a while, had fallen flat; Sam replying, frankly, that he did not care to leave Old Chester. As Mr. Wright was not prepared to give any reasons for urging his plan, he dropped it; and instead on Sunday nights detained his grandson to listen to this or that drama or poem until the boy could hardly hide his impatience. When he was free and could hurry down the hill road, as often as not the lights were out in the Stuffed Animal House, and he could only linger at the gate and wonder which was her window. But when he did find her, he had an evening of passionate delight, even though occasionally she snubbed him, lazily.
"Do you go out in your skiff much?" she asked once; and when he answered, "No; I filled it with stones and sunk it, because you didn't like rowing," she spoke to him with a sharpness that surprised herself, though it produced no effect whatever on Sam.
"You are a very foolish boy! What difference does it make whether I like rowing or not?"
Sam smiled placidly, and said he had had hard work to get stones enough to fill the skiff. "I put them in," he explained, "and then I sculled out in mid-stream, and scuttled her. I had to swim ashore. It was night, and the water was like flowing ink, and there was a star in every ripple," he ended dreamily.
"Sam," she said, "if you don't stop being so foolish, I won't let you come and see me."
"Am I a nuisance about my drama?" he asked with alarm.
"Not about your drama," she said significantly; but Sam was too happy to draw any unflattering deductions.
When old Mr. Wright discovered that his stratagem of keeping his grandson late Sunday evenings had not checked the boy's acquaintance with Mrs. Richie, he tried a more direct method. "You young ass! Can't you keep away from that house? She thinks you are a nuisance!"
"No, grandfather," Sam assured him earnestly, "she doesn't. I asked her, and she said—"
"Asked her?" roared the old man, "Do you expect a female to tell the truth?" And then he swore steadily for a minute. "I'll have to see Lavendar," he said despairingly.
But Mr. Wright's cause was aided by some one stronger than Dr. Lavendar. Helena's attention was so fixed on the visitor who was coming to the Stuffed Animal House that Sam's conversation ceased to amuse her. Those little night-drawers on which she pricked her fingers interested her a thousand times more than did his dramatic visions. They interested her so much that sometimes she could almost forget that Lloyd Pryor's visit was delayed. For though it was the first of May, he had not come again. "I am so busy," he wrote; "it is impossible for me to get away. I suppose David will have his sling all ready for me when I do arrive?"
Helena was sitting on the porch with her clumsy needlework when Sarah brought her the letter, and after she had read it, she tore it up angrily. "He was in Mercer a week ago; I know he was, because there is always that directors' meeting on the last Thursday in April, so he must have been there. And he wouldn't come!" Down in the orchard the apple-trees were in blossom, and when the wind stirred, the petals fell in sudden warm white showers; across the sky, from west to east, was a path of mackerel clouds. It was a pastel of spring—a dappled sky, apple blossoms, clover, and the river's sheen of gray-blue. All about her were the beginnings of summer—the first exquisite green of young leaves; oaks, still white and crumpled from their furry sheaths; horse-chestnuts, each leaf drooping from its stem like a hand bending at the wrist; a thin flicker of elm buds, still distrustful of the sun. Later, this delicate dance of foliage would thicken so that the house would be in shadow, and the grass under the locusts on either side of the front door fade into thin, mossy growth. But just now it was overflowing with May sunshine. "Oh, hewouldenjoy it if he would only come," she thought. Well, anyhow, David would like it; and she began to fell her seam with painstaking unaccustomed fingers.
The child was to come that day. Half a dozen times she dropped her work to run to the gate, and shielding her eyes with her hand looked down the road to Old Chester, but there was no sign of the jogging hood of the buggy. Had anything happened? Was he sick?Had Dr. Lavendar changed his mind?Her heart stood still at that. She debated whether or not she should go down to the Rectory and find out what the delay meant? Then she called to one of the servants who was crossing the hall, that she wondered why the little boy who was to visit her, did not come. Her face cleared at the reminder that the child went to school in the morning.
"Why, of course! I suppose he will have to go every morning?" she added ruefully.
"My," Maggie said smiling, "you're wan that ought to have six!"
Mrs. Richie smiled, too. Then she said to herself that she wouldn't let him go to school every day; she was sure he was not strong enough. She ventured something like this to Dr. Lavendar when, about four o'clock, Goliath and the buggy finally appeared.
"Strong enough?" said Dr. Lavendar. "He's strong enough to study a great deal harder than he does, the little rascal! I'm afraid Rose Knight will spoil him; she's almost as bad as Ellen Bailey. You didn't know our Ellen, did ye? No; she'd married Spangler and gone out West before you came to us. Ah, a dear woman, but wickedly unselfish. Rose Knight took the school when Spangler took Ellen." Then he added one or two straight directions: Every school-day David was to come to the Rectory for his dinner, and to Collect Class on Saturdays. "You will have to keep him at his catechism," said Dr. Lavendar; "he is weak on the long answers."
"Oh!" Helena said, rather startled; "you don't want me to teach him—things like that, do you?"
"Things like what?"
"The catechism, and—to pray, and—"
Dr. Lavendar smiled. "You can teach folks to say their prayers, my dear, but nobody can teach them to pray. Only life does that. But David's been taught his prayers; you just let him say 'em at your knee, that's all."
David, dismissed to the garden while his elders talked, had discovered the rabbit-hutch, and could hardly tear himself away from it to say good-by. But when Dr. Lavendar called out that he was going, the little boy's heart misgave him. He came and stood by the step of the buggy, and picked with nervous fingers at the dry mud on the wheel—for Dr. Lavendar's buggy was not as clean as it should have been.
"Well, David?" Dr. Lavendar said cheerfully. The child with his chin sunk on his breast said something. "What?" said Dr. Lavendar.
David mumbled a word or two in a voice that seemed to come from his stomach; it sounded like, "Like you best." But Dr. Lavendar did not hear it, and David ran swiftly back to the rabbits. There Helena found him, gazing through two large tears at the opal-eyed pair behind the wooden bars. Their white shell-like ears wavered at her step, and they paused in their nibbling; then went on again with timid, jewel-like glances in her direction.
Helena, at the sight of those two tears, knelt down beside the little boy, eager to be sympathetic. But he did not notice her, and by and by the tears dried up. After she had tried to make him talk;—of Dr. Lavendar, of school, of his old home;—without drawing anything more from him than "yes ma'am," or "no ma'am," she gave it up and waited until he should be tired of the rabbits. The sun was warm, the smell of the crushed dock leaves heavy in the sheltered corner behind the barn; it was so silent that they could hear the nibbling of the two prisoners, who kept glancing at them with apprehensive eyes that gleamed with pale red fires. David sighed with joy.
"What are their names?" he said at last in a low voice.
"They haven't any names; you can name them if you like."
"I shall call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith," he said with decision. And then fell silent again.
"You came to Old Chester in the stage with Mr. Pryor," she said after a while; "he told me you were a very nice little boy."
"How did he know?" demanded David.
"He is very nice himself," Helena said smiling.
David meditated. "Is that gentleman my enemy?"
"Of course not! he isn't anybody's enemy," she told him reprovingly.
David turned silently to his rabbits.
"Why did you think he was your enemy?" she persisted.
"I only just hoped he wasn't; I don't want to love him."
"What!"
"If he was my enemy, I'd have to love him, you know," David explained patiently.
Helena in her confused astonishment knew not what to reply. She stammered something about that being wrong; of course David must love Mr. Pryor!
"They ought to have fresh water," David interrupted thoughtfully; andHelena had to reach into the hutch for a battered tin pan.
She watched him run to the stable and come back, holding the pan in both hands and walking very slowly under the mottled branches of the button-woods; at every step the water splashed over the rusty brim, and the sunshine, catching and flickering in it, was reflected in a rippling gleam across his serious face.
All that afternoon he permitted her to follow him about. He was gently polite when she spoke to him but he hardly noticed her until, as they went down through the orchard, his little hand tightened suddenly on hers, and he pressed against her skirts.
"Are there snakes in this grass?" he asked timorously. "A snake," he added, looking up at her confidingly, "is the only insect I am afraid of."
She stooped down and cuddled him reassuringly, and he rewarded her by snuggling up against her like a friendly puppy. She was very happy. As it grew dusk and cool, and all the sky was yellow behind the black line of the hills, she lured him into the house and watched him eat his supper, forgetting to eat her own.
When she took him up-stairs to bed, Dr. Lavendar's directions came back to her with a slight shock—she must hear him say his prayers. How was she to introduce the subject? The embarrassed color burned in her cheeks as she helped him undress and tried to decide on the proper moment to speak of—prayers. But David took the matter into his own hands. As he stepped into his little night-clothes, buttoning them around his waist with slow precision, he said:
"Now I'll say my prayers. Sit by the window; then I can see that star when I open my eyes. It's hard to keep your eyes shut so long, ain't it?" he added confidentially.
Helena sat down, her heart fluttering in her throat. David knelt beside her, shutting first one eye and then the other. "'Now I lay me—"' he began in a businesslike voice. At the Amen he opened his eyes and drew a long breath. Helena moved slightly and he shut his eyes again; "I've not done yet.
"'Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, Bless Thy little lamb to-night—'"
He paused and looked up at Mrs. Richie. "Can I say colt?" Before she could reply he decided for himself. "No; colts don't have shepherds; it has to be lamb."
Her silent laughter did not disturb him. He finished with another satisfied Amen. Helena put her arms about him to raise him from the floor, but he looked up, aggrieved.
"Why, I've not done yet," he reproached her "You've forgot the blessings."
"The blessings?" she asked timidly.
"Why, of course," said David, trying to be patient; "but I'm most done," he encouraged her. "God bless everybody—Dr. Lavendar taught me the new blessings," he interrupted himself, his eyes snapping open, "because my old blessings were all gone to heaven. God bless everybody; Dr. Lavendar, an' Mary, an' Goliath—" Helena laughed. "He said I could," David defended himself doggedly—"an' Danny, an' Dr. King, an' Mrs. Richie. And make me a good boy. For Jesus' sake Amen. Now I'm done!" cried David, scrambling happily to his feet.
"And—Mr. Pryor, too? Won't you ask God to bless Mr. Pryor?"
"But," said David, frowning, "I'm done."
"After this, though, it would be nice—"
"Well," David answered coldly, "God can bless him if He wants to. ButHe needn't do it just to please me."
When Dr. Lavendar left David at the Stuffed Animal House, he didn't feel, somehow, like going home; the Rectory would be so quiet. It occurred to him that, as he was on the hill, he might as well look in on Benjamin Wright.
He found the old gentleman in his beaver hat and green serge dressing-gown, tottering up and down the weedy driveway in front of his veranda, and repeating poetry.
"O great corrector of enormous times, Shaker of o'er rank states, thou grand decider Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood—Hello! 'Bout time you came to see me. I suppose you want to get some money out of me for something?"
"Of course; I always want money out of somebody for something. There's a leak in the vestry roof. How are you?"
"How do you suppose I am? At eighty-one, with one foot in the grave!Ready to jump over a five-barred gate?"
"I'm seventy-two," said Dr. Lavendar, "and I played marbles yesterday."
"Come in and have a smoke," the older man said, hobbling on to the veranda, where four great white columns, blistered and flaked by time, supported a roof that darkened the shuttered windows of the second story.
He led the way indoors to the dining-room, growling that his nigger, Simmons, was a fool. "Hesayshe closes the shutters to keep the flies out; makes the room as dark as a pocket, and there ain't any flies this time of year, anyhow. He does it to stop my birds from singing; he can't fool me! To stop my birds!" He went over to one of the windows and pushed the shutters open with a clatter; instantly a twitter ran from cage to cage, and the fierce melancholy of his old face softened. "Hear that?" he said proudly.
"I ought to come oftener," Dr. Lavendar reproached himself; "he's lonely."
And, indeed, the room with its mammoth sideboard black with age and its solitary chair at one end of the long table, was lonely enough. On the walls, papered a generation ago with a drab paper sprinkled over with occasional pale gilt medallions, were some time-stained engravings: "The Destruction of Nineveh"; "The Trial of Effie Deans"; "The Death-bed of Washington." A gloomy room at best; now, with the shutters of one window still bowed, and the faint twitter of the canaries, and that one chair at the head of the table, it was very melancholy.
"Sit down!" said Benjamin Wright. Still in his moth-eaten high hat, he shuffled about to fetch from the sideboard a fat decanter with a silver chain and label around its neck, and two tumblers.
"No," said Dr. Lavendar; "I'm obliged to you."
"What, temperance?" snarled the other.
"Well, I hope so," Dr. Lavendar said, "but not a teetotaler, if that's what you mean. Only I don't happen to want any whiskey at five o'clock in the afternoon."
At which his host swore softly, and lifting the decanter poured out two good fingers.
"Mr. Wright," said Dr. Lavendar, "I will be obliged if you will not swear in my presence."
"You needn't talk to me," cried Benjamin Wright, "I despise this damned profanity there is about; besides, I am always scrupulously particular in my language before females and parsons. Well;—I wanted to see you, because that jack-donkey, Sam, my grandson, is causing me some anxiety."
"Why, Sam is a good boy," Dr. Lavendar protested.
"Too good. I like a boy to be human at twenty-three. He doesn't know the wickedness of the world."
"Thank God," said Dr. Lavendar.
"Dominie, ignorance ain't virtue."
"No; but it's a fair substitute. I wouldn't want one of my boys to be able to pass an examination on wrong-doing."
"But you want him to recognize it when he sees it, don't you?"
"If he knows goodness, you can trust him to recognize the other thing.Teach 'em goodness. Badness will label itself."
"Doesn't follow," Benjamin Wright said. "But you're a parson; parsons know about as much as females—good females. Look here! I have reasons for saying that the boy ought to get out of Old Chester. I want your assistance."
"Get out of Old Chester!—to see how wicked the world is?"
Mr. Wright shook his head. "No; he could see that here—only the puppy hasn't got his eyes open yet. A little knocking about the world, such as any boy ought to have, will open 'em. Living in Old Chester is narrowing; very narrowing. Besides, he's got—well, he's got some truck he's written. It isn't entirely bad, Lavendar, and he might as well try to get it published, or, maybe, produced in some theatre. So let him go and hunt up a publisher or a manager. Now, very likely, his—hismotherwon't approve. I want you to urge—her, to let him go."
"Travelling might be good for Sam," said Dr. Lavendar; "I admit that—though not to learn the wickedness of the world. But I don't know that it would be worth while to take a journey just on account of his writing. He could put it in an envelope and mail it to a publisher; he'd get it back just as soon," Dr. Lavendar said chuckling. "Look here, what's the matter? I can see you're concerned about the boy."
"Concerned?" cried Benjamin Wright, pounding the table with his tumbler and chewing orange-skin rapidly. "I'm damned concerned."
"I will ask, sir, that you will not swear in my presence."
Mr. Wright coughed. "I will endeavor to respect the cloth," he said stiffly.
"If you will respect yourself, it will be sufficient. As for Sam, if there's anything wrong, his father ought to know it."
"Well then, tell his—mother, that there is something wrong."
"What?"
Mr. Wright got up, and clasping his hands behind him, shuffled about the room. Instantly one of the canaries began to sing. "Stop that!" he said. The bird quivered with shrill music. "Stop! You! … There's no such thing as conversation, with these creatures about," he added in a proud aside. "Did you ever hear such singing?"
Dr. Lavendar, unable to make himself heard, shook his head.
"If you don't stop," said Mr. Wright, "I'll wring your neck!" and as the bird continued, he opened the door. "Simmons! You freckled nigger! Bring me the apron." Then he stamped, and cursed the slowness of niggers. Simmons, however, came as fast as his old legs could carry him, bearing a blue gingham apron. This, thrown over the cage, produced silence.
"There! Now, perhaps, you'll hold your tongue? … Lavendar, I prefer not to say what is wrong. Merely tell Sam's—mother, that he had better go. If she is too mean to provide the money, I will."
"Sam's father is not too mean to do anything for Sam's welfare; but of course, a general accusation is not convincing; should not be convincing—Why!" said Dr. Lavendar, interrupting himself, "bless my heart! I believe you mean that the boy is making sheep's-eyes at your neighbor here on the hill? Is that it? Why, Benjamin, the best way to cure that is to pay no attention to it."
"Sir," said Mr. Wright, sinking into his chair breathlessly, and tapping the table with one veined old finger; "when I was a young man, it was not thought proper to introduce the name of a female into a discussion between gentlemen."
"Well," Dr. Lavendar admitted, "maybe not—when you were young. But all of us young folks in Old Chester know perfectly well that Sam is smitten, and we are ignoring it."
"What! His—motherknows it?"
"His father knows it perfectly well," said Dr. Lavendar smiling.
Mr. Wright got up again, his fingers twitching with impatience. "Lavendar," he began—another bird trilled, and snarling with annoyance, he pulled the blue apron from the first cage and threw it over the second. "These creatures drive me distracted! … Lavendar, to get Sam out of Old Chester, I might almost consent to see his—mother, if there was no other way to accomplish it."
At that Dr. Lavendar stopped smiling. "Benjamin," he said solemnly, "if any foolishness on the part of the boy brings you to such wisdom, the hand of the Lord will be in it!"
"I don't want to see—his relations!" cried Benjamin Wright; "but Sam's got to get away from this place for a while, and if you won't persuade his—motherto allow it, why I might be driven to seeing—her. But why shouldn't he try to get his truck published?"
Dr. Lavendar was very much moved. "If you'll only see your son," he said, "this other business will straighten itself out somehow. But—" he paused; "getting Sam's play published isn't a very good excuse for seeing him. I'd rather have him think you were worried because the boy had an attack of calf-love. No; I wouldn't want you to talk about theatrical things," Dr. Lavendar ended thoughtfully.
"Why not?"
"Well, the fact is, Samuel has no sympathy with dramas or playhouses. I do not myself approve of the theatre, but I am told respectable persons have adopted the profession. Samuel, however, can't find any good in it."
"He can't, can't he? Well, well; it was efficacious—it was efficacious!"
"What was efficacious?"
Benjamin Wright laughed loudly. "You—don't know? He never told you?"
"You mean what you and he quarrelled about? No; he never told me."
"He was a fool."
"Benjamin, if you were not a fool at twenty-four; you missed a good deal."
"And now he objects to theatrical things?"
"He objects so intensely," said Dr. Lavendar, "that, anxious as I am to have you meet and bring this foolish and wicked quarrel to an end, I should really hesitate to have you do so, if you insisted on discussing that subject."
Benjamin Wright lifted one trembling fist. "It was efficacious!"
"And you would give your right hand to undo it," said Dr. Lavendar.
The very old man lowered his shaking right hand and looked at it; then he said sullenly, "I only wanted his own good. You ought to see that—a parson!"
"But you forget; I don't know what it was about."
Mr. Wright's face twitched. "Well," he said spasmodically, "I'll-tell you. I—"
"Yes?"
"I—" his voice broke, then he coughed, then he tried to laugh. "Simple enough; simple enough. I had occasion to send him to Mercer. He was to come back that night." Mr. Wright stopped; poured some whiskey into his glass, and forgetting to add any water, drank it at a gulp, "He didn't come back until the next afternoon."
"Yes. Well?"
"In those days I was of—of somewhat hasty temper."
"So I have heard," said Dr. Lavendar,
Benjamin Wright glared. "When I was young, listening to gossip was not thought becoming in the cloth. When he came, I learned that he had stayed over in Mercer—without my consent, mark you—to go to the theatre!"
"Well?" said Dr. Lavendar. "He was twenty-four. Why should he have your consent?"
Mr. Wright waved this question aside. "When he came home, I spoke with some severity."
"This quarrel," said Dr. Lavendar, "is not built on such folly as that."
Benjamin Wright shook his head, and made a careless gesture with his trembling hand. "Not—entirely. I reproved him, as I say. And he was impertinent. Impertinent, mind you, to his father! And I—in those days my temper was somewhat quick—I—"
"Yes?"
But Mr. Wright seemed unable to proceed, except to say again,"I—reproved him."
"But," Dr. Lavendar protested, "you don't mean to tell me that Samuel, just for a reproof, an unkind and unjust reproof, would—why, I cannot believe it!"
"It was not unjust!" Benjamin Wright's melancholy eyes flamed angrily.
"I know, Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar. "He is obstinate; I've told him so a hundred times. And he's conceited—so's everybody, more or less; if in nothing else, we're conceited because we're not conceited. But he's not a fool. So, whether he is right or not, I am sure he thinks he had something more to complain of than a good blowing-up?"
"In a way," said the old man, examining his ridgy finger-nails and speaking with a gasp, "he had. Slightly."
Dr. Lavendar's stern lip trembled with anxiety. "What?"
"I—chastised him; a little."
"You—what?"
Benjamin Wright nodded; the wrinkled pouches under his eyes grew dully red. "My God!" he said plaintively; "think of that—a hasty moment! Thirty-two years; my God! I—spanked him."
Dr. Lavendar opened his lips to speak, but found no words.
"And he was offended! Offended? What right had he to be offended?Iwas the offended party. He went to a low theatre. Apparently you see nothing wrong in that? Well, I've always said that every parson had the making of an actor in him. It's a toss-up—the stage or the pulpit. Same thing at bottom. But perhaps even you won't approve of his staying away all night? Smoking! Drinking! He'd been drunk. He confessed it. And there was a woman in it. He confessed that. Said they'd all 'gone to supper together.' Said that he was 'seeing the world'—which a man ('man,' if you please!) of his years had a right to do. Well; I suppose you'd have had me smile at him, and tuck him up in bed to sleep off his headache, and give him a stick of candy? That wasn't my way. I reproved him. I—chastised him. Perfectly proper. Perhaps—unusual. He was twenty-four, and I laid him across my knee, and—well; I got over it in fifteen minutes. I was, perhaps, hasty My temper in those days was not what it is now. But I forgave him in fifteen minutes; and he had gone! He's been gone—for thirty-two years. My God!"
He poured out another finger of whiskey, but forgot to drink it. A canary-bird chirped loudly, then lapsed into a sleepy twitter.
"I was well rid of him! To make a quarrel out of a thing like that—a joke, as you might say. I laughed, myself, afterwards, at the thought of it. A fellow of twenty-four—spanked! Why didn't he swear and be done with it? I would have reproved him for his profanity, of course. Profanity in young persons is a thing I will not tolerate; Simmons will tell you so. But it would have cleared the air. If he had done that, we'd have been laughing about it, now;—he and I, together." The old man suddenly put both hands over his face, and a broken sound came from behind them.