CHAPTER VIITHE RECKONING
Sam awoke to find the sunshine pouring through the window of his room. Overnight there had been a change for the better in the weather, and Sunday had dawned clear and bright.
The boy yawned, stretched himself luxuriously, rubbed the lingering sleepiness out of his eyes. There was a blissful moment, in which he felt himself in harmony with the unclouded morning, refreshed, untroubled. Then, of a sudden, came recollection of the events of the day before, and understanding that there was still a reckoning to be paid. He might have nothing to fear from courts and officers of the law; Major Bates, ordinarily warlike, had been brought to prefer peace to hostilities; but he had yet to reach complete understanding with his father.
Mr. Parker and Sam had exchanged hardly a word while they walked home from theMajor’s house; but at their own door the father had paused briefly.
“You’d better turn in, Sam,” he had said. “We’ll have to go over this matter pretty carefully, but I’m not prepared to do so to-night. And I fancy your own ideas will be none the worse for a little revision, and a clearer head in the morning.”
But Sam, going to his room, had found himself very wakeful. Half an hour later his mother had looked in, and discovered him, fully dressed and huddled in a big chair; and glad, indeed, to see her, as it proved. She had had no reproaches to shower upon him—Sam had wondered if his father’s explanation of his misdeeds had not been extremely merciful; and she had slipped an arm about him, and “mothered” him most comfortingly. And, presently, had appeared her handmaiden and his own loyal ally, Maggie, bearing a tray on which were a bowl of milk and a plate of crackers. Sam, who might have vowed that he wasn’t hungry, in a second had become acutely aware of a lack of something under his belt, and had fallen to with a right good will, his mother watching him approvinglyand Maggie voicing her satisfaction in her own fashion.
“Well, say, ma’am, will you look at that, now? It’s not a morsel of supper the poor boy’ll have been puttin’ tooth to! And him sayin’ nothing about it—no; nor his father, either! They’re like as two peas in some ways, ma’am. Oh, them men, them men!”
These were the brighter spots in Sam’s memories. They were pleasant to dwell upon; but they could not relieve the general gravity of the case. A very sober youth it was who dressed mechanically and in due course appeared at breakfast. A deal to his surprise his father and mother greeted him quite as usual. There was nothing to suggest that they regarded him either as a repentant offender or as a hero. At Sunday-school he had another experience of the same sort; for his friends hailed him with matter-of-fact heartiness. Both Step and Poke appeared to have lived down their domestic unpopularity, resulting from the incident of the hungry hound, and to be disposed to regard the worldcheerfully, with no suspicion that he was not entirely of their way of thinking.
There was interest displayed in the news that Peter Groche, after a night in the lock-up, had been released from custody; but it occurred to none of Sam’s chums to connect the circumstance with his adventures as a deer hunter. Groche, presented with his freedom, had walked off, mumbling and grumbling. The popular theory was that, sooner or later, he would try to “get even” with the Major, his old grudge being heightened by the recent episode.
“Funny how the Major let up on him!” Poke ruminated. “Well, you never can tell what’ll happen. But I guess there must have been some weak spot, after all, in the case. If there wasn’t, the Major would have hung on like a bulldog.”
“Gee, but I wouldn’t have him after me—not for a farm!” quoth Step.
Sam held his peace. He might have shed fresh light upon the peculiarities of the old soldier, but the present time was not opportune. He had little share in the talk as the boys walked home together; and themood of silence held him through dinner. Then his father proposed a stroll, and the boy accepted the invitation.
On the top of a hill overlooking the town—not only a sightly place but also one ensuring freedom from interruption—father and son had their discussion calmly and deliberately.
“Sam,” Mr. Parker began, “I’m not going to preach a sermon, but I’m going to take a text. You supplied it when you told me last night that you didn’t regard lack of direct prohibition as making a very good excuse for what you did. The trouble is, you reached that opinion after the fact. In the beginning, I dare say, it seemed quite reasonable to do the thing which wasn’t forbidden.”
“Well, sir, I—I did it,” said Sam sheepishly.
“Exactly! And, in doing it, you yielded to impulse.”
“I sup-suppose so.”
“You had no wish, no intention, to harm anybody,” Mr. Parker went on. “You desired to go hunting—I’ve felt the desire; I know what it is. Then there was my gun, fairly thrusting itself upon you—seemed that way, didn’t it?”
“You’re telling it, sir, as if you’d stood in my shoes.”
“Many a time! I’ve been a boy myself. Also I haven’t forgotten, Sam, the scrapes into which I fell. Some of them taught me a lesson—a lesson you’ll have to learn some day. But to get back to the gun. There it was, ready to your hand. You took it. You put a supply of cartridges in your pocket. Your mother was not at home. You were too impatient to await her return. So off you hurried, taking chances, but meaning no harm. You were very sure of yourself; you knew something about firearms; you were confident that you wouldn’t hurt yourself or anybody else. You thought you were extremely careful in the woods. Yet there you took another chance, still meaning no harm, but barely escaping homicide.”
“I know that, sir.”
“You can count yourself most fortunate that the results were not more serious. But I won’t dwell upon what might have happened. What did happen was quite enough to give you food for thought, and to point the moral of your experience. And that is that before yougo ahead you should do your best to be sure you’re right.”
“After this I’ll be sure!”
Mr. Parker smiled a little oddly. “I ask only, Sam, that you do your best to be sure. Often you have to take risks—the practical point is to avoid the unnecessary risks. Hear me through! At sixteen you’re not going to develop the wisdom and foresight of a grown man. I’m not going to demand the impossible. I am going, though, to urge you to profit by the mistakes you’ve made—and that, Sam, is the one best use to make of mistakes.”
“You mean, not to repeat ’em?”
“That is precisely my meaning.”
“Trust me!” cried Sam, with conviction.
“I am going to trust you,” said his father. “In the first place, I am going to assume that we have no need to talk about punishment; perhaps you’ve had a reasonable amount of it as it is, for I suspect you have passed some very trying hours. At the same time, though, I’m not prepared to treat this affair as a wholly closed chapter. I think it will be better for all concerned if you regard yourself, for the next few months, as on probation.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, in other words, you may consider yourself as under test. And the test will be the extent to which you have profited by what has taken place.”
“Oh!” said Sam. “Then you’re waiting to see if I’ve really learned the lesson?”
“You have the idea.”
Sam knit his brows. “It’s awfully kind of you, Father—it’s greater mercy than I’d hoped for. I—I’ll try my prettiest to deserve it. And—and will everything go on just as—just as before?”
“As nearly as may be. Only that brings me to my second point. It has to do with St. Mark’s.”
“Oh!” said Sam again, a bit apprehensively, it must be admitted.
“I think,” said his father slowly, “that for the present we’ll hold in abeyance any plans for sending you away to school. Don’t regard this as a punishment; it is merely part of the probation. St. Mark’s, as you know, allows its students much liberty. It treats them almost as if they were men. And, frankly, Sam, it remains for you to prove thatyou deserve such confidence. As the boys say, it’s up to you.”
The blow to the boy’s hopes was harder than his father realized. For months Sam had been counting upon an early transfer to the famous preparatory school. At his books, and in sports, he had striven with an eye to the St. Mark’s standards; he had read everything concerning the academy upon which he could lay hands; he had thought of St. Mark’s by day and dreamed of it at night. And now, of a sudden, he learned that his goal was not near, but at a distance which seemed to be all the more unhappy because of its vagueness. Yet, very pluckily, he rallied from the shock.
“Yes, sir; it’s up to me—I understand,” said he. “I’ve got to show that I’m not an utter idiot, that I have some common sense. And I will show it, I will! If I don’t, I won’t be worth sending to St. Mark’s or—or anywhere else!”