Across Oliver's young joy fell the shadow of fear. If, as his heart
told him, there was nothing to be afraid of, why were his elders thus
cautious and terrified? He felt himself affected by their alarms all
the more potently because his understanding of them was vague. He
groped his way in fog. How much ought he to be influenced by {34} Mrs.
Lannithorne's passionate protests and his father's stern warnings? He
realized all at once that the admonitory attitude of age to youth is
rooted deep in immortal necessity. Like most lads, he had never
thought of it before save as an unpleasant parental habit. But fear
changes the point of view, and Oliver had begun to be afraid.
Then again, before him loomed the prospect of his interview with Peter
Lannithorne. This was a very concrete unpleasantness. Hang it all!
Ruth was worth any amount of trouble, but still it was a tough thing
to have to go down to the state capital and seek one's future
father-in-law in his present boarding-place! One oughtn't to have to
plough through that particular kind of difficulty on such an errand.
Dimly he felt that the path to the Most Beautiful should be rose-lined
and soft to {35} the feet of the approaching bridegroom. But,
apparently, that was n't the way such paths were laid out. He resented
this bitterly, but he set his jaws and proceeded to make his
arrangements.
It was not difficult to compass the necessary interview. He knew a man
who knew the warden intimately. It was quickly arranged that he was to
see Peter Lannithorne in the prison library, quite by himself.
Oliver dragged himself to that conference by the sheer strength of his
developing will. Every fibre of his being seemed to protest and hold
back. Consequently he was not in the happiest imaginable temper for
important conversation.
The prison library was a long, narrow room, with bookcases to the
ceiling on one side and windows to the ceiling on the other. There
were red {36} geraniums on brackets up the sides of the windows, and a
canary's cage on a hook gave the place a false air of domesticity,
contradicted by the barred sash. Beneath, there was a window-seat, and
here Oliver Pickersgill awaited Lannithorne's coming.
Ollie did not know what he expected the man to be like, but his
irritated nerves were prepared to resent and dislike him, whatever he
might prove. He held himself rigidly as he waited, and he could feel
the muscles of his face setting themselves into hard lines.
When the door opened and some one approached him, he rose stiffly and
held out his hand like an automaton.
"How do you do, Mr. Lannithorne? I am Oliver Pickersgill, and I have
come--I have come--"
His voice trailed off into silence, for he had raised his eyes
perfunctorily {37} to Peter Lannithorne's face, and the things printed
there made him forget himself and the speech he had prepared.
He saw a massive head topping an insignificant figure. A fair man was
Peter Lannithorne, with heavy reddish hair, a bulging forehead, and
deep-set gray eyes with a light behind them. His features were
irregular and unnoticeable, but the sum-total of them gave the
impression of force. It was a strong face, yet you could see that it
had once been a weak one. It was a tremendously human face, a face
like a battle ground, scarred and seamed and lined with the stress of
invisible conflicts. There was so much of struggle and thought set
forth in it that one involuntarily averted one's gaze. It did not seem
decent to inspect so much of the soul of a man as was shown in Peter
{38} Lannithorne's countenance. Not a triumphant face at all, and yet
there was peace in it. Somehow, the man had achieved something,
arrived somewhere, and the record of the journey was piteous and
terrible. Yet it drew the eyes in awe as much as in wonder, and in
pity not at all!
These things were startlingly clear to Oliver. He saw them with a
vividness not to be overestimated. This was a prison. This might be a
convict, but he was a man. He was a man who knew things and would
share his knowledge. His wisdom was as patent as his suffering, and
both stirred young Oliver's heart to its depths. His pride, his
irritation, his rigidity vanished in a flash. His fears were in
abeyance. Only his wonder and his will to learn were left.
Lannithorne did not take the offered {39} hand, yet did not seem to
ignore it. He came forward quietly and sat down on the window-seat,
half turning so that he and Oliver faced each other.
"Oliver Pickersgill?" he said. "Then you are Oliver Pickersgill's
son."
"Yes, Mr. Lannithorne. My father sent me here--my father, and Mrs.
Lannithorne, and Ruth."
At his daughter's name a light leaped into Peter Lannithorne's eyes
that made him look even more acutely and painfully alive than before.
"And what have you to do with Ruth, or her mother?" the man asked.
Here it was! The great moment was facing him. Oliver caught his
breath, then went straight to the point.
"I want to marry your daughter, Mr. Lannithorne. We love each other
very {40} much. But--I have n't quite persuaded her, and I have n't
persuaded Mrs. Lannithorne and my father at all. They don't see it.
They say things--all sorts of dreadful things," said the boy. "You
would think they had never been young and--cared for anybody. They
seem to have forgotten what it means. They try to make us afraid--
just plain afraid. How am I to suppose that they know best about Ruth
and me?"
Lannithorne looked across at the young man long and fixedly. Then a
great kindliness came into his beaten face, and a great comprehension.
Oliver, meeting his eyes, had a sudden sense of shelter, and felt his
haunting fears allayed. It was absurd and incredible, but this man
made him feel comfortable, yes, and eager to talk things over.
{41}
"They all said you would know. They sent me to you."
Peter Lannithorne smiled faintly to himself. He had not left his sense
of humor behind him in the outside world.
"They sent you to me, did they, boy? And what did they tell you to ask
me? They had different motives, I take it."
"Rather! Ruth said you were the best man she had ever known, and if
you said it was right for her to marry me, she would. Mrs. Lannithorne
said I should ask you if you thought Ruth had a fighting chance for
happiness with me. She does n't want Ruth to marry anybody, you see.
My father--my father"--Oliver's voice shook with his consciousness
of the cruelty of what was to follow, but he forced himself to
steadiness and got the words out "said I was to ask you what a man
wants in the family of the woman {42} he marries. He said you knew
what was what, and I should ask you what to do."
Lannithorne's face was very grave, and his troubled gaze sought the
floor. Oliver, convicted of brutality and conscience-smitten, hurried
on, "And now that I've seen you, I want to ask you a few things for
myself, Mr. Lannithorne. I--I believe you know."
The man looked up and held up an arresting hand. "Let me clear the way
for you a little," he said. "It was a hard thing for you to come and
seek me out in this place. I like your coming. Most young men would
have refused, or came in a different spirit. I want you to understand
that if in Ruth's eyes, and my wife's, and your father's, my counsel
has value, it is because they think I see things as they are. And that
means, first of all, that I know {43} myself for a man who committed a
crime, and is paying the penalty. I am satisfied to be paying it. As I
see justice, it is just. So, if I seem to wince at your necessary
allusions to it, that is part of the price. I don't want you to feel
that you are blundering or hurting me more than is necessary. You have
got to lay the thing before me as it is."
Something in the words, in the dry, patient manner, in the endurance
of the man's face, touched Oliver to the quick and made him feel all
manner of new things: such as a sense of the moral poise of the
universe, acquiescence in its retributions, and a curious pride, akin
to Ruth's own, in a man who could meet him after this fashion, in this
place.
"Thank you, Mr. Lannithorne," he said. "You see, it's this way, sir.
Mrs. Lannithorne says--"
{44}
And he went on eagerly to set forth his new problems as they had been
stated to him.
"Well, there you have it," he concluded at last. "For myself, the
things they said opened chasms and abysses. Mrs. Lannithorne seemed to
think I would hurt Ruth. My father seemed to think Ruth would hurt me.
Is married life something to be afraid of? When I look at Ruth, I am
sure everything is all right. It may be miserable for other people,
but how could it be miserable for Ruth and me?"
Peter Lannithorne looked at the young man long and thoughtfully again
before he answered. Oliver felt himself measured and estimated, but
not found wanting. When the man spoke, it was slowly and with
difficulty, as if the habit of intimate, convincing speech had been so
long disused that {45} the effort was painful. The sentences seemed
wrung out of him, one by one.
"They have n't the point of view," he said. "It is life that is the
great adventure. Not love, not marriage, not business. They are just
chapters in the book. The main thing is to take the road fearlessly,
to have courage to live one's life."
"Courage?"
Lannithorne nodded.
"That is the great word. Don't you see what ails your father's point
of view, and my wife's? One wants absolute security in one way for
Ruth; the other wants absolute security in another way for you. And
security--why, it's just the one thing a human being can't have, the
thing that's the damnation of him if he gets it! The reason it is so
hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven is that {46} he has
that false sense of security. To demand it just disintegrates a man. I
don't know why. It does."
Oliver shook his head uncertainly.
"I don't quite follow, sir. Ought n't one to try to be safe?"
"One ought to try, yes. That is common prudence. But the point is
that, whatever you do or get, you are n't after all secure. There is
no such condition, and the harder you demand it, the more risk you
run. So it is up to a man to take all reasonable precautions about his
money, or his happiness, or his life, and trust the rest. What every
man in the world is looking for is the sense of having the mastery
over life. But I tell you, boy, there is only one thing that really
gives it!"
"And that is--?"
Lannithorne hesitated perceptibly. For the thing he was about to tell
this {47} undisciplined lad was his most precious possession; it was
the piece of wisdom for which he had paid with the years of his life.
No man parts lightly with such knowledge.
"It comes," he said, with an effort, "with the knowledge of our power
to endure. That's it. _You are safe only when you can stand everything
that can happen to you._ Then and then only! Endurance is the measure
of a man."
Oliver's heart swelled within him as he listened, and his face shone,
for these words found his young soul where it lived. The chasms and
abysses in his path suddenly vanished, and the road lay clear again,
winding uphill, winding down, but always lit for Ruth and him by the
light in each other's eyes. For surely neither Ruth nor he could ever
fail in courage!
"Sometimes I think it is harder to {48} endure what we deserve, like
me," said Lannithorne, "than what we don't. I was afraid, you see,
afraid for my wife and all of them. Anyhow, take my word for it.
Courage is security. There is no other kind."
"Then--Ruth and I--"
"Ruth is the core of my heart!" said Lannithorne thickly. "I would
rather die than have her suffer more than she must. But she must take
her chances like the rest. It is the law of things. If you know
yourself fit for her, and feel reasonably sure you can take care of
her, you have a right to trust the future. Myself, I believe there is
Some One to trust it to. As for the next generation, God and the
mothers look after that! You may tell your father so from me. And you
may tell my wife I think there is the stuff of a man in you. And
Ruth--tell Ruth--"
{49}
He could not finish. Oliver reached out and found his hand and wrung
it hard.
"I'll tell her, sir, that I feel about her father as she does! And
that he approves of our venture. And I'll tell myself, always, what
you've just told me. Why, it _must_ be true! You need n't be afraid
I'll forget--when the time comes for remembering."
Finding his way out of the prison yard a few minutes later, Oliver
looked, unseeing, at the high walls that soared against the blue
spring sky. He could not realize them, there was such a sense of
light, air, space, in his spirit.
Apparently, he was just where he had been an hour before, with all his
battles still to fight, but really he knew they were already won, for
his weapon had been forged and put in his hand. He left his boyhood
behind him as he {50} passed that stern threshold, for the last hour
had made a man of him, and a prisoner had given him the master-key
that opens every door.
{51}