It was several days before Fessenden realized that he felt something
more than natural grief at the death of Mrs. Nettlebeck. He knew
that his father loved him, but Mr. Abbott’s visits were brief and
far between, and his infrequent letters rarely covered a sheet of
notepaper. Fessenden now had his ardent following among the boys of his
region, but boys manifest their liking by loyalty, not by sentiment.
Fritz and Dolf treated him with good-natured indifference; he would
as soon have thought of kissing one of the scraggy winter maples as
Christina, in spite of her cross indulgence, and Morris might have
been a disembodied spirit. Mrs. Nettlebeck had been his one steady well
of affection. She had petted and crooned over him since he had come to
her, a baby in a chronic state of disapproval with his nurse; and the
large measure of rejected love that was still in her she had lavished
upon him daily. He had taken it as a matter of course, for he was
lordly and masculine, and there was no sharp contrast of neglect and
ill-treatment to fuse it into light. But now that the magic had gone
abruptly from him, and there was nothing to take its place, he felt
himself up against the barren rocks of life; for the first time the
future seemed to hold vague and unknown terrors, the present to be less
than the supremely satisfactory thing he had esteemed it. He went first
for consolation to his canoe, whom perhaps he loved the more ardently
as her responses held an exciting element of doubt. But _Pocahontas_,
like the bears, seemed to “deaden” in winter, at all events to be
coldly impersonal until she was skimming above the sunken ice before
the first breeze of spring. So he left her to the chill repose of
the boat-house, and poured out his lonely and frightened soul to his
father. Mr. Abbott answered that he would go up to see him at once,
and did manage to pay his son a flying visit in the course of a month.
But by this time Fessenden was ashamed of his reckless exhibition of
sentiment, and, like a true American, had jealously concealed his
gushing fountains under a cool, alert, and practical exterior. When his
father arrived his head was high, and his blue eyes keen and bright,
his very muscles expressive of masculine impatience with the soft side
of life. Mr. Abbott had brought him a fishing-rod, which appeared
to afford immediate consolement; and then, somewhat to his father’s
relief, he began to talk about American history.
“Mr. Morris wanted me to wait until I had read more of English and
foreign history,” he said. “But I couldn’t, and I’ve been reading out
of hours. We’ve a great country, haven’t we?”
“Great.”
“Up here they all think it’s the greatest in the world. Is it?”
“That is largely a matter of experience. Personally, I see more in the
future than in the present. We have never been whipped. That is fatal
to steady and rounded development. A nation, like man, is full of
vanity until life has trounced him more than once.”
“I should hate it if we had ever been licked. And we have had such
grand men to guide us--I have read the lives of Washington and
Hamilton and Franklin; and we have such grand ideals--after I read the
Declaration of Independence I went out into the woods and whooped and
whooped. With that to live by we can’t be in need of a trouncing; and
of course all other men try to follow in the footsteps of our great
ones--there are a lot of others whose lives I haven’t had time to read
yet.”
Mr. Abbott turned his eyes to his son’s flushed face, and opened his
straight lips as if about to smile and speak. But he closed them
quickly, and brought down his lids over his cold dreaming eyes.
He answered in a moment: “Our ideals, like our theories, are the best
in the world. When you are launched out into the hustle, it will be
time enough to know how they work. Meanwhile, don’t worry about your
country--it has an amazing power of taking care of itself; but develop
your intellect and your strength of character. Do you repeat that
lesson of mine once a week?”
Mr. Abbott invariably asked this question, and Fessenden was usually
able to nod satisfactorily. He continued: “A man who came up here once
said that this was the rich man’s country, that the poor man was
getting less and less of a show, and often couldn’t get justice. They
all argued after that--it was down at the store; but it didn’t seem to
lead anywhere, and I’d like to know what he meant. Was he only talking?
Is that the reason you are poor? You seem to me the cleverest man in
the world--and even Mr. Morris thinks an awful lot of you--he’s not
much on admiring. Are you ground down by the rich? I should think you
could sail into ’em, and send ’em all higher’n a kite.”
Mr. Abbott opened the door of the stove and poked the fire. Its red
glow was reflected in his face, usually the hue of leather.
“I cannot say that the rich have interfered with me,” he replied,
after a considerable pause. “I have chosen my own course, and have
felt justified in pursuing it. Don’t believe all this twaddle about
the rich, my son. It is their enterprise that has made this country
great, not the growling of the failures. It is they who encourage
and promote industries, whether their employees like their manner
of doing it or not. It is they who make the money circulate, find
employment for millions, keep the fires crackling under the great
boiling caldron. Moreover, most of them have risen from the ranks of
these grumblers--who, one and all, dream of reaching their altitude and
having their chance to dictate to those still below. Never forget that
point. Every working-man on strike is a potential millionaire--in fact
as well as in fancy--for this country offers equal chances to all. It
is the brains of the men that are not equal; and every millionaire has
only himself--in rare instances his immediate forebears--to thank that
he is not still grovelling with the herd, close to the wall.”
“Then of course the millionaires have the really great minds nowadays.
Having done such wonderful things, I should think they would feel as
if all the rest of the world were their children.”
“H’m! My son, I think it is time for you to go to bed.”