Benjamin Wright lay in his great bed, that had four mahogany posts like
four dark obelisks. ... He had not spoken distinctly since the night of
his seizure, though in about a fortnight he began to babble something
which nobody could understand. Simmons said he wanted his birds, and
brought two cages and hung them in the window, where the roving,
unhappy eyes could rest upon them. He mumbled fiercely when he saw
them, and Simmons cried out delightedly: "There now, he's better--he's
swearin' at me!" The first intelligible words he spoke were those that
had last passed his lips: "M-m-my f-f--," and from his melancholy eyes
a meagre tear slid into a wrinkle and was lost.
Dr. Lavendar, sitting beside him, put his old hand over the other old
hand, that lay with puffed fingers motionless on the coverlet. "Yes,
Benjamin, it was your fault, and mine, and Samuel's. We were all
responsible because we did not do our best for the boy. But remember,
his Heavenly Father will do His best."
"M-m-my f--" the stammering tongue began again, but the misery lessened
in the drawn face. Any denial of the fact he tried to state would have
maddened him. But Dr. Lavendar never denied facts; apart from the
question of right and wrong, he used to say it was not worth while. He
accepted old Mr. Wright's responsibility as, meekly, he had accepted
his own, but he saw in it an open door.
And that was why he went that evening to the Wright house. It was a
melancholy house. When their father was at home, the little girls
whispered to each other and slipped away to their rooms, and when they
were alone with their mother, they quivered at the sight of her tears
that seemed to flow and flow and flow. Her talk was all of Sam's
goodness and affection and cleverness. "He read such learned books!
Why, that very last afternoon, when we were all taking naps, he was
reading a big leather-covered book from your father's library, all
about the Nations. And he could make beautiful poetry," she would tell
them, reading over and over with tear-blinded eyes some scraps of verse
she had found among the boy's possessions. But most of all she talked
of Sam's gladness in getting home, and how strange it was he had taken
that notion to clean that dreadful pistol. No wonder Lydia and her
sisters kept to themselves, and wandered, little scared, flitting
creatures, through the silent house, or out into the garden, yellowing
now and gorgeous in the September heats and chills.
Dr. Lavendar came in at tea-time, as he had lately made a point of
doing, and sat down beside Mrs. Wright in Sam's chair.
"Samuel," said he, when supper was over and the little girls had
slipped away; "you must comfort your father. Nobody else can."
The senior warden drew in his breath with a start.
"He blames himself, Samuel."
"Blames himself! What reason has _he_ got to blame himself? It was my
fault."
"Oh, my dear," said the poor mother, "you couldn't tell that he was
going to clean your pistol."
Samuel Wright looked heavily over at Dr. Lavendar.
"Well," said the old minister, "he gave Sam the money to go away. I
suppose that's on his mind, for one thing. He may think something went
wrong, you know."
"Oh," broke in the mother, beginning to cry, "he Was so glad to get
home; he said to me the night he got back, 'Mother, I just had to come
home to you and father; I couldn't stay away any longer.' I'm sure he
couldn't have said anything more loving, could he? And he kissed me.
You know he wasn't one to kiss much. Yes; he couldn't bear to be away
from us. He said so."
"Go and see him, Samuel," urged Dr. Lavendar. "You, too, have lost a
son, so you know now how he has felt for thirty-two years. His was a
loss for which he knows he was to blame. It is a cruel knowledge, Sam?"
"It is," said the senior warden. "It is."
"Then go and comfort him."
Samuel went. A great experience had wiped the slate so clean of all the
years of multiplications and additions of resentment and mortification,
that the thought of facing his father did not stir his dull
indifference to the whole dreary matter. When Simmons saw him coming up
the garden path, he said under his breath, "Bless the Lawd!" Then,
mindful of hospitality, offered whiskey.
"Certainly not," said Samuel Wright; and the old habit of being
displeased made his voice as pompous as if he cared--one way or the
other. "Can you make him understand that I'm here, Simmons? Of course,
I won't go up-stairs unless he wants to see me."
"He'll want to see you, suh, he'll want to see you," said Simmons. "He's
right smart to-day. He kin use his left hand. He dun shuck that fist at
me this mawnin'. Oh, laws, yes, he'll want to see you."
"Go and ask him."
Simmons went, and came back triumphantly. "I tole him. He didn't say
nothin'. So it's all right."
The visitor went ponderously up-stairs. On the first landing he caught
his breath, and stood still.
Directly opposite him, across the window of the upper hall was a
horsehair-covered sofa, with great, shiny, slippery mahogany ends.
Samuel Wright put his hand up to his throat as if he were
smothering.... He used to lie on that sofa on hot afternoons and study
his declensions. It had no springs; he felt the hardness of it in his
bones, now, and the scratch of the horsehair on his cheek. Instantly
words, forgotten for a generation, leaped up:
Stella Stellae Stellae Stellam--
Mechanically his eyes turned to the side wall; an old secretary stood
there, its glass doors curtained within by faded red rep. He had kept
his fishing-tackle in its old cupboard; the book of flies was in a
green box on the second shelf, at the left. Samuel looked at those
curtained doors, and at the shabby case of drawers below them where the
veneer had peeled and blistered under the hot sun of long afternoons,
and the sudden surge of youth into his dry, middle-aged mind, was
suffocating. Something not himself impelled him on up the half-flight
from the landing, each step creaking under his heavy tread; drew him
across the hall, laid his hand on the door of the secretary.... Yes;
there they were: the green pasteboard box, the flannel book to hold the
flies. He put out his hand stealthily and lifted the book;--rust and
moth-eaten rags.
The shock of that crumbling touch and the smell of dust made him
gasp--and instantly he was back again in middle age. He shut the
secretary quietly, and looked around him. On the right side of the hall
was a closed door. _His_ door. The door out of which he had rushed that
windy March night thirty-two years ago. How hot with passion he had
been then! How cold he was now. On the other side of the hall a door
was ajar; behind it was his father. He looked at it with sombre
indifferent eyes; then pushed it open and entered. He saw a little
figure, sunk in the heap of pillows on the big bed; a little shrunken
figure, without a wig, frightened-eyed, and mumbling. Samuel Wright
came forward with the confidence of apathy. As he stood at the foot of
the bed, dully looking down, the thick tongue broke into a whimpering
stammer:
"M-m-my f--"
And at that, something seemed to melt in the poor locked heart of the
son.
_"Father!"_ said Samuel Wright passionately. He stooped and took the
helpless fingers, and held them hard in his own trembling hand. For a
moment he could not speak. Then he said some vague thing about getting
stronger. He did not know what he said; he was sorry, as one is sorry
for a suffering child. The figure in the bed looked at him with scared
eyes. One of the pillows slipped a little, and Samuel pulled it up,
clumsily to be sure, but with the decided touch of pity and purpose,
the touch of the superior. That fixing the pillow behind the shaking
helpless head, swept away the last traces of the quarrel. He sat down
by the gloomy catafalque of a bed, and when Benjamin Wright began to
say again, "M-m-my f--" he stopped him with a gesture.
"No, father; not at all. He would have gone away anyhow, whether you
had given him the money or not. No; it was my fault," the poor man
said, dropping back into his own misery. "I was hard on him. Even that
last night, I spoke harshly to him. Sometimes I think that possibly I
didn't entirely understand him."
He dropped his head in his hand, and stared blankly at the floor. He
did not see the dim flash of humor in the old eyes.