Graham was before his time. He hurried in, as anxious to get Peter out of that apartment as Peter was to go. He found his brother sitting on one side of the kitchen table and Nellie Pope on the other. Both had magazines. The girl tore herself out of the marblehouse of the heroine's father with reluctance. Peter had been holding his magazine upside down for an hour. He had been looking right through it and into his father's laboratory. There was not even the remote suggestion of a smile on his pale face when Graham threw open the door.
"Come on, old man," urged Graham. "The taxi's waiting."
Peter got up. "Well, good-bye, Nellie," he said. "I'll come and see you soon."
The girl darted a quick look at him. She saw that she was mistaken. "Oh, yes, that'll be very kind of you. I 'aven't got any friends."
"Yes you have," said Graham,—"two."
Nellie Pope led the way into the narrow passage, stood on tiptoe, made a long arm and got Peter's hat off the peg. Then she stood in front of him and her lips trembled, although her well-practised smile curled up the corners of her mouth. "Not good-bye, but orevoy, eh? Well, good luck and God bless you. I shall miss you both most awfully. It's been a fair treat to 'ave you 'ere."
Peter waved his hand and went down the bare stairs. His knees felt weak and shaky and his eyes seemed to be at the back of his head. He drew back to let a woman pass. She cocked her golden head at him with an enquiring eye and a flash of teeth and pushed open the half-closed door of an apartment. Her high-pitched metallic voice rang out. "Say, Kid, there goes Nellie Pope's boarder. By Gosh, don't yer think some one oughter stop her?"
The two boys drove home in silence. They had both caught the meaning of those significant words.
Graham, the self-imagined man of the world, who had picked up a large collection of half-facts—as all the precocious do—but who, for all that, or in spite of that, had walked into the trap set by Ita Strabosck without the faintest perception of his danger, threw those words aside. Everything would be right, he told himself, and ifhehad been coming out of Nellie Pope's apartment in the ordinary way and had overheard her rival's loud comment, he would simply have shrugged his shoulders, like the rest of the young men of his type and spirit, and knowing only the tail end of the truth, told himself that all men take "chances" and that the odds were largely in his favor. And what would this attitude of puerile bravado have proved? That he and all the men like him were just as much a menace to society from knowing the half-facts which did nothing more for them than allow them to take "chances," as the men who were wholly ignorant and so blundered blindly into tragedy.
To Peter, the words of the painted woman came as a finishing blow. In his crass and culpable ignorance, into which Kenyon had flung one most terrific fact, he came away from Nellie Pope not knowing whether he was immune—not able to assure himself that he was safe. Think of it! Big and strong as he was, he remained a mere child in the matter of plain, necessary and urgent truths, and if ever a man knew himself for a fool he was Peter Guthrie, as he drove home.
No less grateful to God than ever for having beenassisted to go through Harvard and Oxford clean and straight, he cursed himself for not having sought out the facts of life,—not from grinning and salacious arguments of half-informed young men, but from a proper source,—since his father had not conceived it to be his duty to give them to him early in his life. If Kenyon had not opened out a new and awful vista of thought the night that he talked about Graham and Ita Strabosck, Peter's ignorance, so jealously and mistakenly preserved, would have remained so colossal that he would have gone home humiliated, but unworried. As it was, this one thing at any rate—this one most awful thing—had sunk into his mind, making him dangerously less ignorant but without proper knowledge. He arrived home a prey, therefore, to the most hideous fear.
Luckily there were people dining with his father and mother. Belle had gone out of town for several days, suffering from the shock of finding out the truth about Kenyon, and Ethel had returned to school. Peter was able to go up to his own room unnoticed.
Graham, whose loyalty and concern had been good to see, went up with him and threw the suit-case into a corner.
"Gee!" he said, with a touch of emotion that he made no attempt to hide, "but I'm glad you're home, Petey." It was many years since he had called Peter by the name that he had gone by in the nursery. He seemed to have come so close to his big brother during those recent hours.
Peter did a surprising thing. He turned quickly,strode over to Graham, put his arm round his shoulder and kissed his cheek. For just those few moments both men had gone back through the years and were little boys again.
Two things happened to Graham. He blushed to the roots of his hair, and swallowed something that threatened to choke him.
"You said you had something on, didn't you,—supper, or something?" said Peter.
"Yes; but I'll cut it out if you want me to."
"No, don't. Why should you? I feel pretty rotten and I shall turn in right away. Don't bother about me any more, old man."
"I'd rather stay with you."
"Yes, I know you would, old boy, but you push off and have a good time. As a matter of fact, I rather want to—to be alone for a bit. D'you see?"
"All right, then." And to show that he had become a man again and his own master, Graham went off whistling the latest tango.
And by letting his brother go at that moment, Peter did a very unwise thing. He was still weak and ill. His brain, which had not recovered itself from the effects of Kenyon's poisonous mixture, was in no condition to be tortured by solitary thought. He needed to be kept away from self-analysis—to be set to work on the ordinary commonplaces of everyday life. Most of all, his thoughts required to be put to rest by sleep.
Left to himself, Peter sat down, almost in the dark, with his arms folded, his legs stuck out and his chin buried in his chest, and thrashed the tired machineryof his brain into action. All that had happened in the last forty-eight hours coming on top of the suffering that he had undergone through having been separated from Betty and having failed to bring about the new relationship with his father, upon which he had set his heart, gradually became distorted. He began to look at everything through an enormous magnifying glass and to see himself, not as one whose loyal, simple and unsuspicious nature had been taken advantage of by Kenyon, but as a common drunken creature who had had to be lifted into a cab and who had spent two nights in the apartment of a woman of the street. He began to look at himself with so deep a humiliation and disgust that the mere thought of his ever again holding Betty in his arms seemed outrageous. And having by stages, made conceivable by the condition of his health and the strain that had been put upon him by all the things that had happened since his return from England, come up to this morbid and hyperconscientious point in his self-condemnation, he stood up suddenly, obsessed by a new and appalling thought. He said to himself: "I'm not only unworthy of Betty, I'm unclean, and so unfit to live." And having seized at that with the avidity and even triumph that comes with a sudden disorder of the understanding, he began to dramatize his death—to ask himself how to make it most effective. And then his father entered his thoughts. "Ah!" he cried inwardly. "Father—it'sfatherwho is responsible—it'sfatherwho must be made to pay! I'm his eldest son. He's very proud of me. He shall come into theroom to-night in which he spends all his time for the benefit of other men's sons and find the one he neglected lying dead on the floor. That's it! Now I've got it! There's a hideous irony about this that'll sink even into his curious mind. I'd like to be able to see his face when he finds me. There'd be just a little satisfaction in that."
If only Graham could have come back at that moment, or the little mother to put her arms round that poor, big, over-sensitive, uninitiated lad and bring him out of his mental dejection with her love and warmth!
There was a revolver somewhere among his things. He had bought it when he went camping during one of his vacations from Harvard. He hadn't seen it for several years. With feverish haste he instituted a search, going through one drawer after another, flinging his collars and socks and all his personal things aside, talking in a half-whisper to himself, until, with a little cry of glee, he found it with a box of cartridges. And then, with the most scrupulous care he loaded it, slipped it into his pocket and crept out of the room and downstairs. The door of the drawing-room was ajar. He heard laughter and the intermingling of voices, heard some one say "Good-bye." He dodged quickly past, through the library and into the room in which he had last stood with his hand on the shaking shoulders of his father.Hewould give him something to weep about this time,—yes, by jove, he would!Hewould make him wake up at last to the fact that his sons were human beings and needed to be treated as such!
He welcomed the fact that away in the distance a storm had broken with the deep artillery of thunder, and that already heavy rain was swishing down on the city. It fitted into his half-maddened mood.
He shut the door. He walked quickly about the room, speculating as to the most effective place to be found outstretched. He had a decision and then, so that there might be no loop-hole for his father, sat down to write a final indictment.
Time fled away. He covered page after page of note paper, pouring out all his soul, making a great appeal for the right treatment of Graham and his sisters, and finally signed his name, having scrawled in his large round writing, "This is my protest."
The storm had come nearer. Outbursts of thunder rolled over the house followed by stabs of lightning.
He then deliberately placed himself on the chosen spot, cocked the trigger and put the cold barrel of the revolver to his temple.
There was a sort of scream.
Peter swung round, with his nerves jangling like a wire struck suddenly with a stick.
There stood his father, unable to form a sentence, his face grey, his eyes distended and his arms thrown out in front of him.
Peter was angry, like a child disturbed just at the moment when he was planning a surprise.
"Why couldn't you have come in five minutes later?" he cried out, with queer petulance.
The Doctor tottered forward and peered into his son's face. "Why were you going to do that? Tell me, tell me!"
"You'd have found it all there," said Peter, pointing to the pages which he had left on the desk. "Not very nice reading, I can assure you. But if you want me to tell you instead, I will. And then you can see how a man dies, instead of finding him dead. Perhaps this is the best way, after all."
He went to the door and locked it, still holding the revolver. The sight of his father did not stir any pity or sympathy in his heart. On the contrary, it added to the fever that had attacked his brain and acted as an irritant. He went back and stood in front of the grey man. There was an expression of contempt on his altered face. The pattering of heavy rain against the windows seemed to please him. Nature, like himself, seemed to have burst into open protest.
"Sit down," he said.
The Doctor obeyed. The blaze in his son's eyes contradicted his unnatural calmness. He had to deal with temporary madness. He could see that, and he was chilled with a sense of impending danger in which the most poignant solicitude was mixed.
"Now," said Peter, weighing his words with odd deliberation, "you're going to hear something that'll shake you out of your smug self-complacency and your pitiful belief that everything is all right in this house—You're a good man, a better man than the averagefather. There's nothing in your life that isn't to your credit. Even since you had children you've worked like a dog to give them a better education than you had, and you've gone without things to provide us with money and make things easy. We all know that and we're grateful. We all know that we ought to be proud of you as a doctor—as a man who has made discoveries and added to the scientific knowledge of your profession. Well, weareproud of you. But in the last words that you'll hear me speak I'm going to tell you what you've failed to do and why, in spite of all your kindness and unselfishness, not one of your children respects you or loves you, and why I, your eldest son, have got to put an end to myself because of your neglect."
Dr. Guthrie sprang to his feet. The calculated cruelty of this indictment was more than he could endure. "What does this mean? If you don't respect and love me, the others do. In what way have I neglected you?" He stood up to Peter like a man, whipped into sudden anger.
Peter liked that. It meant that he could hit out and put facts into naked words without feeling that he was ill-treating a weakling. "That's what I'm going to tell you," he said. "But there's lots of time and I'm not going to leave anything out. What makes you think the others respect and love you? Do they ever tell you so? Do they ever tell you anything? Do they ever go out of their way to come in here for a little talk? And if they did come in would you get out of your shell far enough for them to see that you'rea human being? Would you meet them half-way in their desire to get something besides your money from you? Have you ever once in your life been sufficiently inspired with a sense of your responsibility as to make you get up and leave your work and come among us to play with our toys and get known? Have you ever once in all the years that we've been growing up been courageous or wise enough to take Graham or me for a walk and tell usany onething that we ought to know? In what way have you ever neglected us? In the most vital way of all. We could have done without your money and the education that you've been so delighted to give us. We could have done without comfort and servants and good food and easy times. They mean nothing in the sum total of things that count. Most men never have them at the beginning. They make them. What you've never given us isyourself. And weneededyou. What you've never given us is common sense. You've been a good father in every inessential way, but no father at all in all that goes to make us men. You've lived in a fool's paradise. You've let us find our own way. You've not given us one human talk—one simple fact—one word of warning. You've utterly neglected us because you're a coward and you've hoped and trusted that others might tell us what you've been afraid to say. Afraid,—to your own flesh and blood,—think of it!" The Doctor cried out again. He realized much of the truth of all this. He had confessed himself to be painfully shy to his wife many times and had spent God knew how many anxious hours wondering howhe could get to know his boys. But it was too much to stand and be whipped by his son.
"There are thousands of fathers who hold my views and act as I have acted," he said.
"And there are so many thousands of sons who have to pay for those views that you and men like you spend your lives in trying to save them."
The Doctor drew in his breath. "Wh—what d'you mean?" he stammered.
"Ah! that gets you, doesn't it? Now you're beginning to see what I'm driving at, don't you? Put your mind back to the night you found Graham here with me. You saved him from forging your name, and that was good. But what led him up to that? Did you ask yourself? Did you go to Graham and gain his confidence? Did you wonder whether there was a woman behind it all who would never have come into his life if you had dealt by him like a man and a father,—the sort of woman who has made necessary these things round your laboratory and caused you to bend over your experiments for years and years?"
"Good God! What do you mean?"
Peter raised his voice. "Why should your sons be immune? What haveyouever done to render them so? Why am I now standing here with this revolver in my hand? Look at me! A few hours ago I had health and everything in the world that makes life worth living, except a father. At this moment, because I've never had a father, I'm so terrified that I should be a criminal if I married the girl I love that I'm going to kill myself."
"Why? What have you done?"
"I've been two nights in the bed of the sort of woman whose work you are trying to undo."
The Doctor staggered, and then rose up in his wrath. "Youhave? You,myson,—with such a mother—with such home influence! You mean to tell me that you've descended to such depths of immorality that you've gone back on everything that your education has made of you? It's unthinkable—unbelievable. You must be a mere animal to have done such a thing."
What else he would have said in his emotion and horror no one can say.
A cry of pain and rage rang out. The injustice of his father's narrow, inhuman point of view, his inability to show him, even by his impending death, that he must wake up to his duty and stand by Graham and his sisters, sent the blood into Peter's fevered brain.
"My God!" he cried. "You dare to talk like that to me? You dare to kick me in the face after I've told you that I'm ignorant—without listening to my explanation as to how I got into that woman's apartment. All right, then, I'm not going to be the only one to pay. You shall take your share of it. The sins of the children are brought about by the neglect of the fathers, and we'll go and stand together before the Judge to-night for a verdict on that count."
He raised the revolver, aimed it at his father's head, put his finger on the trigger——
There was a blinding flash of lightning. A yellowquivering flame seemed to cut the room in half between the two angry men——
An instant later the Doctor saw Peter standing with both hands over his face. The unfired revolver lay on the table in all its ugliness. And presently, when he had realized what had happened, he went nearer. "God didn't intend that you should do that," he said. And then his voice broke and he went forward to put his arms round Peter's shoulders. "Give me another chance, my dearest boy!" he cried. "Give me another chance!"
But before he could reach his son the great big hurt boy crumpled and fell in a heap at his feet.
For three weeks Peter's bedroom was the one room in the house to which the eyes of all the family were wholly turned. There, in the dark, he lay a victim to an attack of brain fever. Never in a condition of great danger, poor old Peter was ill and the Doctor, who, better than the rest, knew that death has many doors through which life goes out, eyed the specialist who had been called in with pathetic eagerness.
The little mother and Belle were joined at once by Betty, and the three women sat very close together, speaking and even thinking in whispers during the first two days. To the one whose first child he was and the one who waited to be his wife, Peter meant everything good that life had for them, and in their terrorthat he might be taken away their imaginations ran ahead, as they always do in moments of such poignant anxiety, and they were afraid to look out of the window in case they should see Death, the black camel, kneeling at the gate.
While the shadow seemed to rest on his house, Dr. Guthrie did many things. First of all he went over all the terrible words that Peter had said to him that bad and unforgettable night. With great humbleness and deep emotion he accepted them as the truth. He sat for hours at his desk with his hands over his face and tears leaking through his fingers. Metaphorically he placed his old hard-working, concentrated self in the criminal stand and his new startled, humbled and ashamed self in the Judge's seat and summed up his life as a father. It was very plain that he had failed in his duty to his boys. He had made no great effort to conquer that queer shyness which had affected him from the beginning. He had allowed his children to grow up to regard him as Bluebeard. He had thrown upon his wife's slight shoulders all the onus of the responsibility for the human development of their characters, and because she had succeeded while they were young he had, like a coward, neglected to step in and take upon himself his obvious duty when they had grown old enough to need more—much more—than the soft guiding hand of a mother. He had allowed them to make an early start,—the girls, as well as the boys,—without understanding the vital necessity of duty and discipline which he alone could inspire in them, because no man or woman in all the country,in any school or college, gave a single thought to either. He had hidden behind a hundred weak and foolish excuses in order to avoid the so-called difficulties of speaking manfully to these two embryo men. He had permitted them to grow out of boyhood without giving them the benefit of his own uninitiated struggles, or the simple warnings and facts which take the glamour away from temptation and make straight ways easy. He "took chances," and hoped that some one else might by accident give them the facts of sex or that they would find them out themselves, as other young men were obliged to do,—never mind how.
Remorse and regret made Hell for this man in those honest hours,—this good, exemplary, distinguished, self-made man whose name would live by his professional efforts and scientific discoveries and who had succeeded in everything except as a father.
And then he called Graham into his room, and sitting knee to knee with his second son, was brave enough to tell him wherein he now knew that he had failed and asked of him, as he had asked of Peter, for another chance. It was a pathetic and emotional talk that these two had, during which both told the truth, hiding nothing, reserving nothing. The outcome of it was good for them both, as well as for Peter. They went together to see Nellie Pope and heard from her lips, to the Doctor's unspeakable thankfulness, that Peter was in no danger from her. From that time onwards that little, kind, wretched girl became one of the Doctor's patients in the proper hospital, eventually to beplaced by him at work which rendered the need for her following her chosen profession unnecessary.
And finally the day came when Peter was able to receive visitors, and a very good day it was. The little mother went in first—she had the right. Peter was sitting in his dressing-gown by the window. To his intense relief he had just passed through the hands of a barber, whom he had asked to make him look a little less like a poet. He turned his head quickly towards the door as his mother went in. His old high spirits had returned. The sun was shining and life looked very good. His imagination made him as well aware of the fact that his mother had been through some of the most anxious hours of her life as though he had seen her sitting in her room below with a drawn white face and her hands clasped together. He got up and went to meet her. He took her in his arms and held her very tight. What they said to each other was far too sacred to put into cold print. They spoke in undertone, because the trained nurse kept a jealous eye upon her patient and moved in and out of the dressing-room adjoining. The interview was not allowed to be a long one. The last thing that Peter said to his mother made her very happy. "I think that the Governor and I are pals," he said. "I think we've found each other at last. Isn't that just about the best thing you ever heard?"
In the afternoon Belle was allowed in. To his great relief she told him in her characteristic, concise way, how she felt about Kenyon. He caught her young, she said—marvellously young, "and if he should evercome back to New York all he'll get from me will be two fingers. I've quite recovered. So you may take that line out of your forehead, old boy. One of these days when you're out and about again we'll walk about four times round the reservoir and I'll tell you something of what's been going through my mind while you've been ill. In fact, we'll have a very substantial pow-wow about Nicholas Kenyon, and I don't think we shall leave him quite as immaculate as he usually is by the time we've finished, do you?"
"No," said Peter, "I don't. All the same, I'm grateful to him for one thing. He has brought father out of his shell,—that's about the best thing he ever did in his life."
There was something amusing as well as touching in the way in which the two brothers met again. It was the next morning early. Peter was still in bed, with his hair all frowzled and the remains of sleep still in the corners of his eyes. Graham had ten minutes before he was obliged to leave the house to go downtown.
"Hello, old sport!" said Graham.
"Hello, sonnie! Rather a hot thing in ties, that, eh?"
Graham cleared his throat and put his hand rather self-consciously to the black-and-white effect newly designed by his pet firm of haberdashers. "I think it'll make the senior partner blink all right," he said. "How d'you feel this morning?"
Peter showed his teeth. "I'm sitting up and taking nourishment. Probably before the end of theweek you'll see me in shorts and a zephyr sprinting round the park before breakfast."
"I'd like to," said Graham, and he held out his hand.
Peter took it and gave it a scrunch which had in it nothing of the invalid. "Give my love to the subway," he said, "and my kind regards to Wall Street."
Graham grinned, waved his hand and left the room. He found it necessary to blow his nose rather hard on his way down-stairs. "Oh, Gee!" he said to himself. "Oh, Gee! Only think if Peter had—" He didn't allow himself to finish the thought.
And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came together—the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door, inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time.
"My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're almost strangers."
But Betty shook her head. "No," she said. "No. There hasn't been one moment during all this time that I haven't been with you."
And Peter nodded. "That's dead true," he said.
And then they sat down very close together and the things they said to each other are lost to the world,because we joined the nurse in the next room and shut the door.
It happened that the anniversary of Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie's wedding day,—they had been married twenty-eight years,—fell on a Sunday that year.
The night before, at dinner, the little mother, thankful and happy at having Peter back again at the table, asked a favour. In having to ask it, instead of simply saying that she desired her children to go with her to church the next morning, she proved her knowledge of the fact that she had joined the ranks of mothers whose children have outgrown them.
Mrs. Guthrie was, however, one of those rather rare women who had grown old gracefully. The hand of time, whose natural treatment she had made no sort of endeavor to combat, had added to her beauty. Optimism, a steady faith in God and His goodness, and the usual gift of accepting whatever came to her without kicking against the pricks, had mellowed her. It was without any of the spirit of martyrdom that cakes the nature of those women who have not been able to acquire the best sort of philosophy that she frankly made this very natural and easily fulfilled desire a favour. Peter was well again and she wanted to kneel before the altar of the Great Father and give thanks, surrounded by her children, on the anniversary of the day that made her a wife.
The family had grown out of the habit of going tochurch,—Belle was tired, as a rule, after a late Saturday night, Graham was an inveterate week-ender, Ethel was a modernist, and Peter played golf,—and so, when they all agreed without any argument the little mother was almost as surprised as she was delighted.
The conspiracy of silence which the family had tacitly agreed upon during their recent trouble, in order to spare her from unhappiness, left Mrs. Guthrie wholly without any knowledge of the fact that they were all glad of an excuse to join her in church, because they all felt a curious eagerness to listen to the simple, beautiful service with which they had grown up and to kneel once more—more humbly and sincerely than ever before—in the house of the God who had been instrumental in their various escapes.
It would have been better if Mrs. Guthrie had not been so carefully shielded—if she had been made to share with the Doctor the blame,—at any rate for the mistakes which the two girls had made,—from the fact that she had let go the reins of duty and discipline with which she had held them in their early years and given them their heads—if she had been strong enough and wise enough to maintain over Belle and Ethel, without autocratically putting a stop to their having "a good time," the authority of respect, won by love and the exercise of sympathy and common sense—if, in short, she had not been content to slip into a position that allowed these high-spirited girls to say to themselves quite so early in their lives, "Oh, poor, dear little mother doesn't understand. Shedoesn't know anything that modern girls have to go through." She was shielded because it was understood that she was a sort of sleeping partner—not an active member of the firm. She was regarded as being so sweet and soft and old-fashioned that she couldn't possibly appreciate the conditions of the times in which the girls lived. Their early positions had become reversed. It was the girls who mothered their mother.
It was a strangely silent party that returned home that Sunday morning, headed by the Doctor and the little mother. Betty had been invited by Mrs. Guthrie to join them and was to stay to lunch. It was while they were in the hall, and just as Betty had gone upstairs with Mrs. Guthrie, that the Doctor turned quickly. "I want you all to come to my room," he said. "I won't keep you more than a few moments," and led the way.
Wondering what was going to happen, but taking trouble to avoid catching each other's eyes, Peter, Graham, Belle and Ethel followed their father across the library into the room which, for the two boys, had associations that they were never likely to forget, and for the two girls had hitherto been a place to avoid.
As soon as they were in the room the Doctor shut the door and, from force of habit, went over to his desk. With one thin hand on it, and with a shaft of winter sun on a face that was very lined and pale he stood there for a moment in silence. His lips trembled a little, but there was a look in his eyes behindthose strong glasses that his children had never seen before.
"Peter, Graham, Belle and my little Ethel," he said brokenly, "I'm going to ask you all, on a day that means a great deal to your mother and to me, and so to you, to forgive me for not having been all that I ought to have been to you I know that I've failed in my duty as a father. You have always been my most precious possessions and it is for you that I've worked so hard and so closely, but because of all that I went through as a child and because I never struggled as I ought to have done to overcome a foolish shyness that has made me self-conscious, you and I have never been friends—have never understood each other. I take all the blame for whatever you have done that has made you suffer and of which you are ashamed. Very humbly, I stand before you now and ask you, as I asked Peter, here, in this room, to give me another chance. Let's make a new beginning from to-day, with the knowledge that I love you better than anything in the world. I want you all to meet me half-way in future, to look upon me no longer as the shy, unsympathetic, unapproachable man who, by accident, is your father, but as your closest and most intimate friend whose best and dearest wish is to help you and listen to your worries and give you all the advice in his power. I want this room to be the place to which you'll always come with the certain knowledge that you'll be welcomed by me with the greatest eagerness and delight. Don't let there be anything from to-day onwards that you can't tell me. Promise me that. I—I've told myself two or three times that it's too late for me to be of any use to you—that having failed I could never repair my mistake or ever hope to win your confidence and friendship."
His voice broke so badly that he was unable to speak, and the painfulness of this strange little scene was almost more than those young people could bear. It hurt them enough to stand facing a man who opened his soul for them to gaze into, especially when that man was their father. It was dreadful to see him blinded by tears in the middle of an appeal which they all realized called for such extreme courage and strength of character to make.
They all wanted to do something to help him and force him out of a humbleness that made them horribly self-conscious. It was Peter who did it. With two strides he stood at the Doctor's side and put his arms round his shoulder.
The Doctor looked up into the face of the great big, tender fellow, whose eyes were eloquent, and smiled. Then he found his voice again and forced himself to the bitter end of what he had determined to say. "Something in the way you've all treated me since Peter has been ill," he said, "has given me hope. That's why I put myself in your hands, my dears. Shall we make a new beginning? Will you take me into your friendship? Will you all give me another chance?"
With a little cry from her heart Belle went forward and put her arms round her father's neck, and Ethel, with hot tears running down her face, crept up tohim and put one of his hands to her lips. Graham bent over the other, which he held tight, and Peter, who had longed for this moment through all his illness, didn't give a curse who heard his voice break, patted the Doctor on the back, and said: "Dear old man, my dear old father!" over and over again.
THE END
Books byCosmo Hamilton
The Blindness of Virtue
"A plea to mothers to tell their daughters frankly all the laws of nature before they arrive at years of possible indiscretion through innocence. Its characters are uncommonly well drawn and might have stepped out of life."—New York Evening Sun."A beautiful piece of work dealing with a stupendously difficult subject with the most dexterous blending of delicacy, dramatic strength and wholesome candor."—London Daily Chronicle.
"A plea to mothers to tell their daughters frankly all the laws of nature before they arrive at years of possible indiscretion through innocence. Its characters are uncommonly well drawn and might have stepped out of life."—New York Evening Sun.
"A beautiful piece of work dealing with a stupendously difficult subject with the most dexterous blending of delicacy, dramatic strength and wholesome candor."—London Daily Chronicle.
307 Pages.$1.35 net.
The Miracle of Love
"One of the most notable novels of the year, well worth reading by those who are seeking more than a pleasant hour, but wholly delightful merely as a story."—New Haven Register."It is a fine, well told and purposeful tale, with brilliant and quotable passages."—Detroit Free Press.
"One of the most notable novels of the year, well worth reading by those who are seeking more than a pleasant hour, but wholly delightful merely as a story."—New Haven Register.
"It is a fine, well told and purposeful tale, with brilliant and quotable passages."—Detroit Free Press.
325 Pages.$1.35 net.
The Door That Has No Key
"A work of genuine power; it is impossible to read it unmoved."—Providence Journal."A novel to re-read and preserve. A wonderful piece of work, alive with emotion."—London World."Discusses marriage and divorce. With its brilliant characteristics it is a notable novel."—New York Evening Sun.
"A work of genuine power; it is impossible to read it unmoved."—Providence Journal.
"A novel to re-read and preserve. A wonderful piece of work, alive with emotion."—London World.
"Discusses marriage and divorce. With its brilliant characteristics it is a notable novel."—New York Evening Sun.
324 Pages. $1.35 net.
The Blindness of Virtue
A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS
In this drama of two girls' careers Mr. Hamilton shows powerfully just how far innocence, that is only ignorance, is a protection. He levels the finger of accusation against parents whose cowardice of silence, masquerading as refinement, threatens ruin in their children's lives."It is the biggest sermon on the subject that has ever been preached."—Dorothy Dix.
In this drama of two girls' careers Mr. Hamilton shows powerfully just how far innocence, that is only ignorance, is a protection. He levels the finger of accusation against parents whose cowardice of silence, masquerading as refinement, threatens ruin in their children's lives.
"It is the biggest sermon on the subject that has ever been preached."—Dorothy Dix.
126 Pages. $1.00net.
A Plea for the Younger Generation
"It is a little bomb which any one at all interested in children—parent, teacher, eugenist—would do well to read and consider. It is written with the glow of conviction and there is merit in it from cover to cover."—Chicago Tribune."It is a very small book, but into its compass the author contrives to say nearly all that is worth while on 'the tragedy of half truths' on sex matters when they are told to children."—San Francisco Chronicle.
"It is a little bomb which any one at all interested in children—parent, teacher, eugenist—would do well to read and consider. It is written with the glow of conviction and there is merit in it from cover to cover."—Chicago Tribune.
"It is a very small book, but into its compass the author contrives to say nearly all that is worth while on 'the tragedy of half truths' on sex matters when they are told to children."—San Francisco Chronicle.
16mo. 75 centsnet.
LITTLE, BROWN & CO.,Publishers, BOSTON