"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 of
God?"
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
of _mistakes_ will 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! _Spank_ him? 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 with _her_. 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 generally _is_ bosh, isn't it, Sam?" said
Dr. 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.