MATTHEW MAKES HIS CHOICE
After stabling his horses Matthew came into the house. One would have
thought that any lad would have found the prospect of Ellen on one side
of Dr. Levis's desk and the doctor on the other more attractive than
the furniture of a bedroom. But Matthew started up the stairs.
"Matthew!" called his father.
Matthew returned obediently to the doorway. He was fast approaching his
father's height and promised to be as tall as Grandfather Milhausen.
"Won't you join us?"
Matthew said he thought not; he believed that he would go to bed.
"I hate going to bed," remarked Ellen. Between her and Matthew matters
were not yet straightened out, but she was hopeful of a gentle answer.
"You hate many things that are good and right."
Ellen's brown eyes filled.
"Now, Matthew, it isn't necessary to be as serious as all that!" said
Levis. "Come and sit down."
"I think I'll go to bed."
Levis half rose, impelled to cross the room and lay an affectionate,
persuasive hand on the boy. But he thought better of it and his face
colored with relief at an escape from a possible rebuff. Alas, he knew
beforehand all that Matthew was likely to do; he remembered another
figure with well-set head and gray eyes that had often regarded him
unyieldingly from the doorway.
"Very well, my son. Good-night."
When he had gone, Ellen looked at her father. Levis was for the moment
off his guard, his past years were moving before him in review.
She said nothing, but she began suddenly to feel a deep and loyal
indignation.
Matthew climbed to his room slowly, the spark of regret in his heart
quenched before he reached the upper step. He sat down at his window
and looked out into the moonlight. He said nothing aloud, but what he
said in his heart was this:
"The Lutheran preacher prided himself on his learning with his careful
pronunciation and his long, long words. The girls stood gayly dressed
in the choir for the young men to look at, and each tried to scream
louder than the others. I would not look at one of them. Everything was
too rich and too comfortable. Ellen's eyes were like bright, shining
cat's eyes. It was immodest to stare the way Ellen did."
His gaze sought the moonlit distance as though he would pierce it
through. As clearly as though they were before him he saw the old
buildings, the low ceiling, the worshipers with downcast eyes. He drew
a deep breath of earth-scented air. The field beside the house had been
ploughed, and in the dewy night it exhaled a heavy odor, full of decay
yet full of promise. He seemed to see the farmer, his hands on the
plough; he saw the forward pull of the shoulders of the heavy bays, the
warm dark earth curving from the ploughshare. It was all part of the
life for which he longed, for which he was made.
Then he looked back into the room. Dimly on his table he saw a pile
of books, his hateful books. He was tempted to destroy them, but even
stubborn Matthew had still a measure of common sense. He would have
to obey his father and go away, but he would come back. He would have
another month at home, then he would have to be at the University
before the opening to take examinations. He had no expectation of
failure and he was above deliberate effort to fail. He was determined
to put himself thoroughly to whatever test the city might offer, a
Daniel descending willingly into the fiery furnace.
From summer day to summer day, Ellen studied. It was with difficulty
that Levis restrained himself from giving her longer lessons. When
the cooler weather came, then she should have full hours. Last year's
studies were reviewed and the equivalent of a half-year under Amos
accomplished before September. Then, when Matthew, sullen-eyed and
silent, had been taken to Philadelphia by his father, Ellen began to
work in earnest.
She had by this time acquired many ideas that were new. The gods of
her little girlhood, Grandfather and Amos, had been entirely displaced
and there was but one creature worthy of worship. It was not Levis's
positive statements, delivered as though there were no disputing them,
which won Ellen; it was his hands on her shoulders and the throb of his
beating heart; it was the way he had looked at Matthew when Matthew had
refused to come and sit with them. Two months ago he had been like most
fathers, a tall, distant, directing human being; now he was a creature
not only to be obeyed, but to be made much of, even to be protected
and defended. He would have been touched and amused to know what Ellen
thought of him.
He left Matthew in a small room at the University and came away, still
believing that he would "come out right," that is, he would see how
foolish he had been. He would make friends, he would learn to be like
other lads, he would forget the bigotry and narrowness to which he had
committed himself. Matthew was his own son, and he, Heaven knows, had
never been bigoted or narrow.
After visiting the theater and watching a few skillful operations, he
went home. He might have seen, had he chosen to cross the street to
the Ophthalmic Hospital, Stephen Lanfair, who was there one day in the
week, but he did not choose. He still loved him, but he did not care
to search him out. He was astonished to find that the confusion of the
city wearied and, still worse, worried him.
He found Ellen waiting for him in the doorway and decided as he crossed
the porch that she was going to be a pretty girl. Still there was no
trace of her mother about her, and little of him--perhaps from his own
unknown mother she had inherited her thick curls and her black eyes.
"I have learned what you gave me to learn," she boasted. "Does Matthew
like Philadelphia?"
"I think he will."
"You are to go to Umbesheidens' and to Heilmans' right away."
"Has anything important happened?"
"Nothing at all."
Then Ellen felt a little uncomfortable. Something had happened, but
it was too small a thing to tell. She had met Amos one afternoon in
the woodland. He had been required by a new school law to give a small
amount of instruction in botany and had come to find oak leaves. He
was sitting on the stump which was her special seat and, glad to see
him and ready to talk, she sat down at once on the fallen tree near by.
"How is school?"
Amos did not answer. His curious passion seemed suddenly entirely
reasonable. Ellen's hair had gone up, her dresses down.
"It's pretty much like always," said he at last. "But you're not
there." Then he added hastily, "And Matthew is not there."
"Are the boys still so dumb?"
Amos hesitated. The boys were very stupid, but it was against his code
to speak in such fashion of any one.
"They do their best."
"And Millie? How does she get her lessons?"
"She is no longer there. Oh, Ellen, I wish you would come back!"
"But I'm almost through what you teach," said Ellen. "I couldn't stay
long if I did come. And I couldn't come, anyway. Two years from now I'm
going to college."
"Oh, Ellen, I hope you'll be a good girl!"
Ellen stirred uncomfortably at the solemnity in Amos's expression.
"I mean to!"
"Don't forget what you have learned!"
"I won't. Father says you taught me very well."
"I mean you're not to forget other things--the true Gospel and the
health of your soul."
"I will remember all that," said Ellen quickly, frightened by this
sudden allusion to her soul.
"And don't forget me, and that I'm praying for you!"
"I won't," promised Ellen. "Indeed, I won't." Nervously she rose
from her place on the old log. It was late afternoon and the shadows
suddenly deepened. She held out her hand. The heart which stirred
quickly at another's need felt vaguely Amos's misery. "I must go
back. I--" she was still a child until she had uttered her childish
sentence--"I'll kiss you if you wish, Amos!"
Then Amos knew that the devil was after him indeed. But he bent and
laid his bearded lips to the smooth cheek. He said nothing, and in a
moment she was gone, flushed and frightened.
"Oh, how silly!" said she to herself. She felt again the light warm
touch upon her cheek. "How dreadful to have said such a thing!"
It was of course impossible to describe this foolishness to her father.
Grandfather thought hourly of Matthew. Each day he became more
painfully aware that Matthew was young and that temptations were many.
He saw him at the end of the week surrounded by all the enticements
of a lurid Babylon. Members of the church, astonished at the course
pursued by Dr. Levis and permitted--at least they thought it was
permitted--by Grandfather, poured into his ears descriptions of
orgies indulged in by college students in which wine, women, and
song furnished a gay entertainment. Indeed, according to the stories
heard by Brother König, wine, women, and song were as necessary to
college students as food and sleep. Church-going was unknown without
compulsion, and then all were required to attend a single irreligious,
inconsistent service where one Sunday Jews preached to Gentiles and the
next Gentiles to Jews. Brother König, so keen when the trade of a horse
was in question, had heard that on certain Sundays even Catholics set
up their altars and tried to proselyte. Matthew, every one believed,
had spiritual strength unusual in a young man, but he was, in the local
idiom, not _that_ strong.
It was reported also that all evil practices reached their height
in the Medical School where Matthew, after an incredibly long stay
elsewhere, would eventually spend four years. Brother König could
invent little beyond that which he had already imparted, but he stated
plainly that there were other things, _of which he would not tell_.
From Matthew directly Grandfather heard nothing. He wrote to him, but
his vaguely addressed envelope did not reach its destination. Meanwhile
he came to his assistance in another way. The evenings had grown cool
and he and Amos sat within doors, Grandfather in meditation, Amos
studying a Latin manuscript which he had found in a room high under the
eaves of Saron. It was a discourse on "The Mystic Dove," and was one of
the few documents which had escaped prying antiquarians. The quality
of the Latin was poor, but Amos was puzzling it out, believing that
it had been written by Brother Jabez, one of the most interesting and
certainly the most learned of the sect, and that it contained valuable
devotional material. Sometimes he read a line to Grandfather, and they
discussed it wisely. Alien and worldly historians had described the
Kloster, but none had written with understanding and sympathy, and
sometimes Amos dreamed of undertaking the task.
Grandfather's plan for the sustaining of Matthew consisted in the
offering of prayers each evening at the hour of nine, when, for some
reason, he fancied temptations to be at their height. During October
the two petitioners made their candle-lit way into the dim and musty
Saal and there knelt down before the old benches, and when the Saal
grew tomblike in the cold November evenings, they offered their
oblations both for Matthew and Ellen in the kitchen, which was filled
with the sound of Grandfather's sonorous voice.
Amos also, fresh from the work of the devout and mystic Brother
Jabez, prayed for Matthew's well-being, reproaching himself with the
neophyte's humility for the pleasure which he took in a neatly rounded
petition. He tried to pray for Ellen, but when he did so he seemed to
feel her kiss.
November waned, and still each evening the two men besought the
Creator of the world to watch over their lamb. Grandfather prayed more
fervently and eloquently, with the desperate earnestness of a Jacob who
feels the angel slipping from him.
"I have had no sign of an answer," said he despairingly. "We must pray
more."
The next evening they prayed for an hour. Grandfather's heavy heart
found relief, and Amos on his knees with eyes uplifted expected some
visible pillar of fire or of cloud.
"We shall hear from him," said Grandfather with assurance.
The last evening of November was stormy. A late and lovely autumn had
ended yesterday with a fiery sunset and a roaring wind, and to-day
wind and rain and sleet made the outer world almost intolerable. The
blast penetrating between the cracks of the cottage blew the fire to
a furious blaze which, roaring up the chimney, gave little heat. The
gale stirred the end of Grandfather's beard as he knelt by his chair,
and fanned Amos's cheek. There were the dark shadows, the silvery white
of Grandfather's beard, the golden light on the brass bowl of the old
lamp, and all about the sound and fury of the storm, which seemed to
threaten the destruction of the cottage.
Grandfather had worked himself into an ecstasy of expectation and it
seemed to him certain that a divine communication was imminent. Amos
opened his eyes to look at him and did not close them, so wonderful did
he seem. The wind distressed him but the sight of the old man at prayer
calmed him.
"O Lord, we pray Thee for some sign that we are heard. We ask Thee for
Thy blessing upon one whom we love. Thou knowest the cruel snares set
for the feet of the young; keep his feet from going in those paths.
Forgive those who have tried to set his way therein. Bring him safely
home. We wait, O Lord!"
The voice grew shrill; the key upon which it ended was high, as though
the petitioner did indeed wait. There was suddenly a sound outside
that was different from the wind, a sharp closing of the gate behind
a visitor in haste. Before Grandfather and Amos could rise from their
knees, the door opened, and, looking up, they saw not a mysterious
visitor, still less Matthew, whom his grandfather thought of first of
all, but Levis, pale and drenched with rain.
Levis looked away; he did not like to see men in the act of baring
their souls any more than he liked to bare his own.
"I don't wish to interrupt."
"There is no interruption. Sit down, Edward."
Levis did not respond to the invitation.
"Do you know anything of Matthew?"
Amazement answered him.
"Nothing," said Grandfather at last. "I haven't seen him since long
before he was sent away. What is the matter with Matthew?"
"He has left school."
Grandfather waited for further information. In his heart he said,
"Thank God!"
"He hasn't simply disappeared; he has deliberately run away, after
notifying the registrar that he was going. He was forbidden to go, but
he went nevertheless."
"I know nothing whatever about him."
"Nor I," said Amos.
"It was three days ago."
"I've been praying that he would resist temptation," said Grandfather
boldly. "Perhaps this is the answer."
"I'm not concerned about temptations," answered Levis impatiently.
"Matthew is no fool. I'm concerned for his health. Where is he?"
Then Levis felt the door against which he stood move slightly and
turned with tigerish swiftness and threw it open. In came the wind and
sleet, and in came also Matthew, rain-soaked, bedraggled, with bent
head. He pressed hard against the door until it was closed and then
stood panting with bright, sullen eyes.
Levis spoke first.
"How long have you been out in this storm?"
"Only a little while. I walked yesterday and the day before, but to-day
I got a long ride in a market wagon."
"Have you any clothes here that he can put on?" This in a physician's
sharp tone to Amos.
Amos beckoned Matthew to the other room.
"When did you eat?" asked Levis.
"At supper time," said Matthew and shut the door.
Levis sat down by the table. "Have you any stimulant in the house?"
"God in Heaven, Edward, now that he is here and safe, would you ruin
him deliberately? Aren't you satisfied?"
"Have you anything that he can take hot?"
Grandfather rose and opened a cupboard door, his hands trembling.
"I will make _durch-wax_ tea."
"Make it then, or let your acolyte make it." In the midst of his rage
Levis was pleased with having found exactly the right word.
"It's very bitter tea," said the old man as he poured hot water upon
the dried leaves.
"The bitterer the better," said Levis grimly.
When Matthew appeared from the inner room, there came into his father's
white face the expression of amazed and intolerable pain which Ellen
had once seen. Matthew was unshaven; the dark shade on his cheek was
not put there by the soil of travel, it was a curling beard, which,
above Amos's black suit, had a significance not to be ignored. For a
single second his father thought that this could not be Matthew, it
was Amos. He laid his hand against his side as though his heart ached
sensibly.
"Are you tired?" he asked.
"Not very."
"Then I think we'd better settle this matter at once. Since you've
chosen to come here and to pass your father's gate, we'll discuss it
here and for the last time. Why did you leave school?"
"I couldn't see any use in it."
"Do you expect to be a physician without going to school?"
"I don't want to be a physician. I have no interest in it. I want to
farm." Matthew burst into tears.
Levis met tears without a change of expression.
"Suppose you do want to farm, there's no reason why you shouldn't go
to school. There are new methods of farming which you could learn. You
could at least learn how to live. Do you want to remain an ignoramus?"
"I'm not an ignoramus. And I don't want to take your money."
Levis made no answer.
"Because I'm going to be a Seventh-Day Baptist. I'm under conviction.
It wouldn't make any difference how long I went to school, the result
would be the same. I can't have peace unless I come out openly."
Now it was the heart of Grandfather which threatened to stop beating.
Did God hear the prayers of the faithful, or did He not? He poured into
a cup some of the steaming brew.
Levis folded his arms and settled himself more closely against the back
of the straight pine chair.
"Drink your tea," he commanded. "Then I have something to say to you."
Matthew swallowed the scalding fluid. It warmed him, put heart in him,
like a sacramental wine. The storm was almost over; the roar in the
chimney had ceased, the roar outside had almost died down; it seemed as
though the stage were set for Levis.
"I don't wish to be interrupted," said he. "I'm speaking to my son and
you are perfectly welcome to listen. Afterwards you shall have your
chance if he wishes to hear you."
Levis began in the fifteenth century.
"The Reformation was a protest against superstition, but only against
the more gross superstitions, and the Protestant Church retains to-day
the essential superstitions of the Roman Church. The idea of the Son
of the Creator of the universe in human form is a fantastic one,
now fading from the minds of the more intelligent. Matthew, are you
listening to me?"
"Yes," said Matthew in a whisper.
"The idea of a blood atonement, of the sacrifice of a single innocent
being for the sins of all the world, is monstrous, a development of the
idea that the crimes of men could be laid upon the back of an animal,
which, driven away, took them with him. To these ideas the Seventh-Day
Baptists have added others as fantastic as any invented in the history
of the queer mind of man. I could just as easily worship the bones of
a human being as I could believe it essential to have my feet bathed
at a church service. Your denial of opportunities is as ridiculous as
that of the hermit who prefers to live in bodily uncleanness. You live
in mental sloth and blindness! Your founder was a charlatan of the
worst sort who beguiled women away from their husbands and mothers away
from their children, to live in fancied holiness in this grim place.
Generation by generation his followers have grown fewer in number. In
Matthew's generation there will not be half a dozen.
"Now, Matthew, this is my last word. You may return to school for the
year--that is one alternative. Or you may come home and live like a
normal human being and farm if you wish and without further education
if you insist, under the condition that you don't join the Seventh-Day
Baptists or attend their meetings until you are twenty-one years old.
Or, you may stay here, allied with the past, letting the world go by,
alienated from your father and little sister who have a right to your
society and your love.
"You must choose now, Matthew. I can't continue to hope for years to
come that you'll be an honor to me and then have you fail me. You'll
have to make up your mind."
It seemed to Levis that he had been talking a long time. He changed his
position, driving his hands deep into his pockets and crossing one knee
over the other. Seated easily, his clenched fists invisible, he had the
appearance of a man too firmly grounded in his philosophy of life to be
seriously affected by any chance which might befall. Matthew sat with
bent head; Amos in the shadow held his hand across his lips. Once he
remembered a cool, soft cheek. Grandfather seemed to have shrunk within
himself; his eyes were half closed, his lips moved. It was evident that
against the influence of Levis's eloquence he was opposing all his
supplicatory powers. He looked at no one; he seemed to be in a trance.
The wind began to blow louder, whistling round the corners. The silence
within became nerve-racking.
"Well, Matthew?" said Levis, sitting suddenly upright.
Matthew answered without raising his head.
"I'm under conviction. It would be wrong for me to waste my time
studying when nothing was to come of it."
Levis got to his feet quickly.
"You mean you're going to stay here?"
"Yes."
Now Grandfather folded his arms across his breast and bent his head
almost upon them. Did God hear His children, or did He not?
Levis lifted his hat from the pine table.
"Matthew, look at me!"
Matthew lifted his eyes. For an instant, with torn heart, he longed to
throw himself on his father's breast. But his Heavenly Father was more
dear. He dropped his eyes once more.
"You've entirely made up your mind?"
"Yes," he whispered.
Levis lingered another instant, his back against the door.
"Listen to me. I have my creed. I believe that no man can behave
foolishly or wrongly without having it somehow returned to him. I hope
that this hour will never be visited upon you."
Then Levis went out to return no more. He stumbled as he crossed the
step and then straightened up in the face of the wind which blew
clear and strong from the north. He went through the gate into the
graveyard, and saw the full moon, unveiled with mysterious suddenness,
illuminating the white stones. The experience through which he had
passed, the stormy and magnificent night, the moonlight making so
purely white the tallest stone in the little graveyard--all would have
moved and racked another man. But he had the power, cultivated through
long years in uncongenial surroundings, of detaching himself from the
present. He began to repeat a passage of description of which he was
fond and which brought before his eyes a foreign landscape which he
had never seen, but of which he often dreamed. When it was finished he
repeated another passage and yet another, and so came at last to his
own door.
The light burned dimly, but a dimmer light would have revealed to his
seeking eyes that for which they looked. Under a gay pieced afghan lay
Ellen, a book in her arms. Beside her her father drew up a chair and
there sat down, scrutinizing each childish lineament, each crisp curl.
She slept heavily, and it seemed to him that there was a shadow under
her eyes and he bent still more closely over her to discover that the
shadow was only that cast by her long lashes. He put out his hand and
laid it softly on the bright cover.
Sitting thus, he faced at last his extraordinary situation. Ten o'clock
struck, eleven, twelve, and still he was there. His mind traveled to
Matthew's babyhood, to Matthew's childhood--would things have been
different if he had been different? He was still young then, and
thinking not so much of his children as of his own miseries of mind and
body, he had not realized that he was guilty of neglect. Even yet he
did not feel like a middle-aged man, much less like an old man--but he
had a son mature enough to defy him and to leave his house! His pride
was deep and high, the pride of a man of intellect--he contemplated
with horror the strange atavistic trick played upon him.