"Ah, father! How can I ever tell you!"
"How can you ever tell me?"
The rising anger mingled with distrust and fear in those words! How
many a father knows!
"Oh, what is it!" cried his mother, wringing her hands, and bursting
into tears. She rose and went to her seat under the mantelpiece.
"What have you done?" said his father, also rising and going back to
his seat.
There was a new sternness in his voice; but the look which returned
suddenly to his eyes was the old life-long look.
The lad sat watching his father, dazed by the tragedy he was facing.
"It is my duty to tell you as soon as possible--I suppose I ought to
tell you now."
"Then speak--why do you sit there--"
The words choked him.
"Oh! oh!--"
"Mother, don't!--"
"What is it?"
"Father, I have been put out of college and expelled from the church."
How loud sounded the minute noises of the fire--the clocks--the blows
of an axe at the woodpile--the lowing of a cow at the barn.
"FOR WHAT?"
The question was put at length in a voice flat and dead. It summed up a
lifetime of failure and admitted it. After an interval it was put
again:--
"FOR WHAT?"
"I do not believe the Bible any longer. I do not believe in
Christianity."
"Oh, don't do THAT!"
The cry proceeded from David's mother, who crossed quickly and sat
beside her husband, holding his hand, perhaps not knowing her own
motive.
This, then, was the end of hope and pride, the reward of years of
self-denial, the insult to all this poverty. For the time, even the
awful nature of his avowal made no impression.