WALTER DOUGLAS was not what would be called ordinarily a religious young
man. That is, he was not pious, in the sense that he was a lover of
prayer meetings and church gatherings. He was a member of the
Congregational church at Milton and had joined it from the Sunday School
when he was twelve years old, growing up in the church like any average
boy whose father and mother were members. He had a tremendous respect
for his father's and mother's religious life and example and would
probably have been willing to die for their faith if not for his own.
For the rest, he had grown up in the home atmosphere, which from his
childhood had been deeply reverent towards the Bible and the superhuman
element.
The effect on his mind, now, of the address he had just heard, was very
much the same as if someone far above him in education and age had
attacked his father and mother, bringing forward a great array of
argument and proof to show that they were unworthy of his love and
confidence. Walter's mind could not have been more disturbed by such an
attempt than it actually was by what had been said that evening,
undermining his lifelong confidence in Christ as a divine being, and the
superhuman and miraculous as part of his own life.
He was stunned by it and at first his only desire was to be alone. As
the night wore on, this desire gave way to a longing for counsel from
someone who could answer his questions and relieve his mind of the
terrible uncertainty which had invaded it. And it was at least a strange
comment on the teaching force in the Burrton school that Walter at this
crisis could not think of anyone to whom he cared to go with a religious
doubt. There were plenty of men at Burrton occupying responsible places
as professors or instructors who knew plenty of mathematics and physics
and electricity and engineering and science. But not one that Walter
could think of who knew or cared about a student's moral or religious
character. The president was a keen, wide-awake, sharp man of affairs,
but as Walter thought of him he shrank from the idea of going to him
with a real heart trouble or with a genuine mental difficulty. He would
as soon have thought of telling his personal griefs or sorrows into a
phonograph. And yet President Davis of Burrton was a church member, a
highly educated gentleman, a great money getter from rich men, and had
the reputation in the educational world of being a success as such
school presidents go. He could extract half a million for Burrton from
some great pirate of industry, but he did not know how to extract a
poisonous doubt from a tortured mind like Walter's, or, better yet,
instill the balm of healing faith into a spirit that had for the time
being lost its God and its heaven. Great thing, our boasted education
is, isn't it! How many of our cultured, highly developed university men
are all head and no heart! And yet in the history of this old world who
would dare say that in the long run it does not need more heart than
head, or at least an equal division of each, for its comfort, its
happiness and its real progress?
Walter, going over the list of possible men who might help him now,
thought of the pastor of the Congregational church in Burrton. This man
was a strong, earnest pastor, a tireless worker and an interesting
preacher. But here again Walter had no one to blame but himself that he
did not feel well enough acquainted with this man to go to him with his
personal religious questions. He had been to the church several times
and he always liked the Rev. James Harris, but like so many students who
are attendants and workers in their own churches, Walter on coming to
Burrton had found it easy to lapse into lazy Sunday morning habits.
After he had a late breakfast and read the Sunday morning _Daily
Megaphone_, it was generally too late to go to the Sunday School and it
was easier on stormy Sundays to curl up on a lounge and read a novel, or
on pleasant Sundays to stroll out to the lake two miles away and get an
appetite for a big dinner. Then an afternoon of sleep or visiting or
walking out used up the rest of the day for him. One of the topics he
had avoided with his mother on his recent visit home had been his Sunday
program, and he recalled even now the earnest wish she had expressed
that he would get to work in the Sunday School when he went back to
Burrton. No, he had been so indifferent to all church matters while a
student that he could not bring himself to go to the minister, he was
too much a stranger to him, and this was a matter that seemed to call
for a friend.
"Oh, I wish mother was here!" he exclaimed out loud.
And then because he felt so hungry for comfort and so eager to relieve
his mind of its burden, he went over to his writing desk, and wrote a
long letter to his mother.
When he finished, it was after one o'clock and he went to bed and slept
as if exhausted, but to his dismay when he awoke, his depression and
fear were there to greet him and he found himself waiting for his
mother's answer almost as if her letter were a reprieve from a sentence
of death.
A part of this letter will reveal Walter's excited and even chaotic
feeling.
"The bottom seems to be dropped right out of everything, mother. Of what
use is it to try to do right when there isn't any likelihood of a future
and no personal God and no Redeemer, and no standard for conduct? The
doctor said we could not depend upon Christ's own statements about his
own resurrection. How then can we trust Him for any statement He made
about Himself? The fellows here in Burrton who have money to spend and
do about as they please, the fast set that drinks and carouses and
gambles and gives the chorus girls wine suppers seems to be pretty
happy. They don't worry over the matter of sin or moral responsibility
or going to church or getting serious over the condition of the heathen
or the wrongs of the world, or the 'high calling' you are so fond of
calling my attention to. And why should I be any different from them?
Mother, does it pay to be religious? It seems to me religious people are
always sober, dull people, always talking reform and disagreeable things
and never having much fun. But I want you to help me, mother, no one
else can, if you can't. I don't seem to be able to pray any. Why should
I pray, if there isn't any super-human, nothing but a force somewhere? I
am just groping in the dark and it's awful dark. And I don't know a soul
here to help me any. Bauer--well--I never said a word to him on
religious matters. I don't know whether he is a Catholic or what he is.
And I don't know any minister in Burrton well enough to go to him. And
the teachers here don't care about the students' religious life, or if
they do I never saw any signs of it, at least not enough to show where
to go now.
"Mother, I can't tell you how I feel over all this. But I'm just about
down and out. If what Dr. Powers said is true, it seems to me we are
living in an awful world. It isn't the world you and father believe in
or you taught me to believe in, and I can't understand it. Oh, mother,
help me, won't you, if you can! WALTER."
Now his letter reached Mrs. Douglas on the anniversary of her marriage.
She was planning as she always did to make the day bright for Paul, had
invited her brothers, Walter and Louis, and was going to make it a great
family gathering.
The boy's letter smote her heart as nothing in all his experience had
ever troubled her. She managed to get through the evening without
betraying her feeling, but when her brothers had gone home, and Helen
and Louis had retired, she showed the letter to Paul.
He read it and then looked up at Esther.
"You are the one to help him through this," he said. "You are the only
person who can do it right now. But you are tired with all the events of
the day. Hadn't you better wait until to-morrow?"
"No," Esther said positively. "He is waiting. When a soul is drifting
down like his, it is a case of rescue."
"Dear," said Paul, quietly, "I don't have any fears for him. He has too
good a mother to make a wreck of his religion."
"He is my son," said Esther proudly. "I would not be worthy of the name
mother if I did not have confidence in the eternal things of redemption.
I will write him tonight. But you must add to my letter, Paul. He needs
us both."
"I will," said Paul, gravely. He was more disturbed over the letter from
Walter than he cared to acknowledge to Esther, but he managed to conceal
his feelings for her sake. Esther went up to her little corner room,
where she had a sewing table and a writing desk. When she had shut
herself in there she spread Walter's letter out before the Lord.
That meant that her simple mother faith said to God, "Oh, my Father, I
need wisdom now to write this letter. My boy, my first born son is in
need of Thee. But he has turned to his mother for help. Show me how to
say the right thing. For I can not do it without thy help."
And then without any hesitation or fear of the final result, Esther
wrote to Walter. It was a sacred letter, but a part of it belongs to
this narrative.
"You must not forget, boy," Esther went on after cheerfully reminding
him that he was not the only person in the world to have such an
experience; "you must not forget that religion is a universal thing, and
that it is a cry of the heart for God. It is not a matter to figure out
like mathematics, but it is an answer to the real longing of the soul
for a divine life in the world.
"You must not forget, either, that your faith does not depend on what
someone else says, but upon the actual needs of your own life. You know
that you need God. You know that you are wretched now because you are
afraid God has been taken away. Isn't that a sign to you that your
simple faith as you have been taught it here at home is a real and
necessary thing? What Dr. Powers said (and you must remember you may not
have understood his full meaning), what he said has not changed the
everlasting facts of sin and moral responsibility and the facts of the
plain right and wrong of the world. And when it comes to the
resurrection and a future life--all we can do is to take Christ's word
for it. He knows more about it than Dr. Powers knows. Your mother is no
theologian and no great scholar, but when it comes to taking Dr.
Powers's word as against Jesus's own statements about himself, I don't
hesitate, and you ought not to. Jesus is the way and the truth and the
life. Just trust him. It is what thousands of souls bigger than yours
have done and they have found the light as you will. We are praying for
you, father and I. Father can give you better reasons than I can,
perhaps, because he knows more, but listen to me, boy, to your mother,
whose heart goes out to you at this time. You don't have to answer all
the hard questions of religion all at once. Some of them can bide for an
answer. But, oh, plant your feet down on the rock, Christ Jesus! Abide
with him and your soul will not be lost. He will not let you go wrong.
He came to give you abundant life. The love of God is greater than all
other things. Trust simply and don't be afraid. Get to work in the
Sunday school and church. Doubt can not live in the atmosphere of doing
God's will every moment. Perhaps one reason you have been so overthrown
is because you have neglected your church and religious duties since you
left home. Pray; trust; act; live for others; listen for God's voice; be
true to the high calling. It is the only real and living way for you.
And the prayers of your mother go out to God for you now and always.
Walter, you are God's child before you are mine. Go to him at once and
ask his help as you have asked mine. May He bless you as I can not.
Lovingly and prayerfully,
"MOTHER."
Mrs. Douglas was so eager to get her letter off that she did not wait
for Paul's added word. But two days later Paul wrote quite at length, in
much the same fashion, taking up one or two points Esther had not
touched.
"You say in your letter to your mother that you feel the bottom has
dropped out of everything. Why? Because a stranger to you who has some
reputation as a public speaker has made some statements which destroy
your faith in religion.
"Do you think that is a very sensible thing for you to do--to let a man
you have never seen before come along and in one address take from you
the faith of years? Would you let a man you didn't know destroy your
faith in your mother so quickly? Would you simply take his word for it,
because he said so?
"You must remember, Walter, that some of the finest theologians and
scholars in the world believe in and teach the miracles and a personal
God and a personal divine Christ and a personal resurrection. I don't
mean old fashioned scholars, but men who are up to date, who rank with
the best in the thinking world. If Dr. Powers does not believe in the
resurrection there are other men, better scholars than he is, who do.
You have no right to let one man's statements be final for you.
"You say again that you don't see what is the use of being good, and you
ask if it pays to be religious, citing the example of the fast set in
Burrton, who, you say, seem to be pretty happy, and free from anxiety
about others, etc. Walter, do you know that is the most terrible thing
that can be said about a human creature? That he is satisfied like an
animal with an animal's appetite and passions, and careless of any one
else or of the world's moral needs? The flies that buzz over a battle
field have the same indifference for the agony and struggle going on
under them. And would you even now while under the depression you
describe, really care to risk your life by becoming like the men in the
fast set? Don't you know that they are sowing the wind to reap the
whirlwind?
"The main facts of life always remain the same. We may learn more about
the facts, but we can't change the real nature and needs of mankind by
any belief or absence of belief. Even if there were no God and no future
and no miracles and no Jesus of history, sin would be sin and its
harvest the same; goodness and right and virtue would always be the same
and their harvest the same. But men can not live without God without
living in hopeless despair. Walter, what did Christ come into the world
for, if not to do for us the very things we really needed and were dying
to get? He revealed God to us. Made the future plain. Showed man his
duty to his neighbour. Brought light and life and joy into the world.
The Christmas season we have enjoyed together ought to show you (and it
will when this cloud has gone from your heart) that the world owes more
to Jesus Christ than to any other being. The best conditions in the
world are found where Christ has been most honoured and his teachings
best obeyed. The wrongs of the world are being righted in his name. And
the kingdom of God is taking the place of the kingdoms of physical
might.
"All this, your father and mother believe, could not be true if Jesus
were a mere man. It is the presence of the divine and superhuman, not
supernatural, but superhuman, which has made all this redemption of the
world possible.
"Walter, trust in God. Believe in Christ. Pray. Seek the light. Keep
doing right. Get to work for others. All the inventions in creation are
not worth anything if your own soul has no motive power and no track to
run on. Religion is as natural as eating and drinking. Prayer is as
natural as sleep or work. And I believe with all my might that my
feelings are as trustworthy as my reason when both are exercised in a
healthy, happy way.
"I haven't any fear for you. It is too bad you can not get help from
some of the teachers in the school. There must be something wrong with
the management of an educational institution when the teachers know
everything except the moral needs of the students.
"Can't your friend, Bauer, help you? You say you have never talked with
him. Try it. From one or two talks I had with him while he was with us I
gained the impression that he was deeply religious. Affectionately, your
father,
"PAUL DOUGLAS."
Both of these letters reached Walter about the same time and he read and
reread them and received vast help from them, more than he himself knew
at the time. But he could not throw off the feeling of depression and
fear that seemed to haunt his spirit. He longed to talk the thing over
with someone and the day after his father's letter came, he resolved to
take Bauer into his confidence. He had never talked with him on any
serious questions except when Bauer had confided in him about his home
troubles, and the occasions were rare and only occurred at times when
Bauer was so tortured with lonesomeness that he could not endure it any
longer and fled to Walter as he did that night in the shop, when he
first appealed to him for his friendship.
They had gone up to Walter's room together; and had just finished a
discussion over Bauer's incubator and the arrangement for the thermostat
when Walter said suddenly:
"Felix, I can't talk this stuff any longer. I want to take up something
else, if you don't mind. Of course, you've noticed I've not been up to
the mark lately, haven't you?"
"Yes." Bauer blushed as he said it. He had noted Walter's condition, but
if truth be told his own state of hopeless feeling towards Helen had
absorbed him to such an extent that he had not paid the attention to
Walter's feelings that he otherwise might. No one quite so egotistic as
your hopeless lover. The world of Bauer revolved around the star of
Helen, and the rest of the universe, including Walter, was for the time
being not counted as there. With Walter's trouble now made more apparent
to him, Bauer's mind at once waked up and stood ready alert to listen to
him.
"I might as well confess that Dr. Powers's address two weeks ago knocked
the props out from under me. What he said cut under me like a great
engine that destroyed my faith."
"You mean your faith in God?" asked Bauer in a tone almost of horror.
"Well, no, not that exactly. I don't think anyone could reason me out of
a belief in a God. But when Dr. Powers got through I felt as if all the
God he believed in was a kind of electrical force, a little bigger unit
of amperes. A sort of international ampere, so to speak, but not much
more."
"Do you mean that you can't say 'Our Father' any more?"
Walter was silent half a minute. When he looked up at Bauer his face was
haggard.
"I haven't prayed any since that address. What is the use of prayer if
God is a machine?"
"But if God is a machine, who made the machine?"
Walter stared. Bauer went on.
"And if God is only high power electricity or force, who made the high
power or force? One machine can't make another. And a machine that
really thinks and plans, is not a machine but a Being."
Walter did not answer. He was brooding. Finally he said: "Do you really
believe in miracles and the superhuman and the resurrection and future
and--and a Personal Redeemer and all that?"
"Do I?" Bauer did a thing Walter had never seen him do before. He got up
and began to walk the floor.
"If I didn't believe in a personal God who loves me and in a Personal
Redeemer who saves me and in a future life which is going to develop me,
I might as well be just an animal and be done with it. What advantage
have we over the animals if there is nothing to it but flesh and blood
and eating and drinking and dying?
"But I simply take my stand on what Jesus did and said and was. I don't
go back on that to try to philosophise much, though I can give answers
all day long for my religious faith. I wouldn't give anything for it if
I couldn't reason it out. I've been through all the books--Kant and
Hegle and Straus and Feuerbach and Schopenhauer and Schleiermacher and
no end. My father was steeped in all the old world philosophies. I don't
think they ever helped him any. At least not to make a better man of
him. Why, Walter, do you know your father and mother are the products of
Christian faith, and there isn't anything finer in all the world. Where
would you go to find a human being who was nearer the perfection of all
noble, unselfish, beautiful traits of character than your mother, who is
the product of a simple Christian faith?
"My father and mother have always sneered at simple faith. They are
sceptics. What has their scepticism ever done for them? To-day they are
both------" Bauer choked, and after a long pause, during which Walter
looked at him sympathetically, he said quietly:
"I had to have something different from their Godless scheme of life or
I believe I would have gone mad. And, thank the Father, I found it. If I
hadn't I'd been worse than the fastest of the fast set here. I wouldn't
have stopped short of the vilest. I would have been a crowned head of
beastliness. And nothing saved me from it but Jesus Christ. Could a man
have done that? Could anyone have done it who didn't believe in a future
and a spiritual life?"
Bauer came back to his chair and sat down. Walter seemed much impressed
by what he "said and the way he said it. At last he remarked
thoughtfully:
"You never told me anything of this before. I never understood you felt
so, or had such a faith."
"No, I've kept my light under a bushel. But man's religion is the most
sacred thing about him. Why don't we talk more about it? I don't know
unless with me it's been an excess of sensitiveness."
"I understand and thank you, Felix," said Walter after another long
silence.
During the days that followed he had many more talks with Bauer, all of
which did him vast good. Bauer, once he had opened the door of his soul,
threw away all reserve and invited Walter into the very holy of holies.
They also had plenty of argument. But Walter was no match for the German
student, who in his long hours of solitary existence, had managed to do
an astonishing quantity of reading and posted himself on all sorts of
difficult subjects with the German habit of exactness and thoroughness
in matters of detail, so that he soon had Walter hopelessly beaten when
it came to debate over religion and its office.
Finally Walter began slowly to regain his buoyancy and before the spring
vacation he had found a standing place for his faith and a reason for
his religion, so much so that he said to Bauer one Sunday evening after
they had come up to the room after hearing Mr. Harris at the church:
"Felix, I almost believe I could be a preacher. I believe I almost have
a message."
Bauer was immensely pleased.
"You are going to come out all right. You couldn't help it with such a
mother."
And yet, strange as it may seem, at that very moment Walter's mother was
passing through a crisis that was testing her Christian faith even more
severely than Walter's had been tested. There could be no doubt at all
but that Esther's pure and steadfast soul would win the victory; but oh,
the heartache of sorrowing motherhood! Will it ever cease?
Louis Douglas had been for several months a source of anxiety to both
Paul and Esther. As winter wore on he complained more and more of
school. One evening he broke out in such a torrent of appeal to his
father to let him give up his studies that Paul compelled himself to
think of the boy as his first duty and reproaching himself that he had
paid little heed to him on account of political matters, he listened to
Louis that evening and in a pause of his flood of words asked the boy to
come into the library and have it out seriously.
The legislature was in session and Douglas was overwhelmed with
committee work, with shaping up bills, and winning converts to his ideas
of reform. He had anticipated opposition and difficulties of various
sorts, but the actual thing that confronted him was so much greater than
he had supposed possible that he almost let go at one time, in disgust,
and vowed he would never enter politics again. Next day he was back in
the game to stay. But from the beginning to the end of the legislative
session he was blocked in nearly every effort he made for clean, honest
reform of old, corrupt and selfish party devices. In his soul he knew,
and those who knew him knew, that he was heart and soul for the good of
the people. The measures he wanted put into law had no possible
self-seeking in them. He was clean and upright in every detail of his
private and public life, yet he faced every day facts like these:
The other paper in Milton contained columns of abuse, of
misrepresentation and of downright charges of self-seeking against him.
Man after man in the party that had asked him to run for Senator came to
him to beg him to desist from his fight on corporations that broke the
laws and charged the people prohibitive prices for the necessities of
life. Party worshippers like the Hon. Mr. Maxwell besieged the committee
room pleading for harmony, meaning by "harmony," a slavish compromise
with the greed and influence of money and power that might help the
party if they were let alone. Letters flooded him from all parts of the
state begging him or threatening him to leave well alone. Some of the
very men who had during the election campaign promised to stay with him
and help push his bills, lied outright, broke their promises and called
him a deserter and a party traitor. Old friends who had stood by him for
years, left him and in some cases became his bitterest enemies. Bill
after bill framed with only one great-hearted purpose to benefit all the
people went through the grinding process of detraction, of
vilification, of amendment and final defeat. A little handful of members
rallied around him. But the greed forces of the entire state were on the
other side. The selfish corporations, the highwaymen of commerce, the
whiskey powers fighting for their lives to maintain the license system
of the state, the gang of thugs that lived on the gambling house and the
barter in human blood in the sale of virtue and the degradation of boys
and girls, all fought him. The newspapers that print liquor and other
questionable advertisements, the microscopic men who made a living by
appointment to little political dirty jobs, the horde of hungry office
seekers who didn't know "America" from the latest vaudeville rag-time,
the plunderers of the treasury who live without any visible means of
support except what they boldly stole from contracts on public works,
the princely robbers who are the crowned heads of special privilege,
whose wives and daughters figure in the society columns as leaders in
those useful callings of bridge whist and select receptions, the great
and ignorant mob of pygmies who never had the capacity for a political
idea bigger than their own diminutive measurement, the newspaper and
magazine hacks who live on abuse of everybody who has a high ideal, all
joined in the whoop and chase after Douglas of the fourth district,
branded him as a fakir, an idiot, a senseless dreamer, an egotist, a
demagogue, a party traitor, a knocker, and every other objectionable
kind of disturber of the peace, meaning by "peace," the peace of those
who are let alone by reformers to rob the state, degrade politics,
enthrone injustice, keep the party in power and reelect themselves.
And this is the kind of thing the preacher urges his high-spirited young
men to confront if they go into public careers. Do you think American
politics could be made more attractive to the strong men of this nation
if some of the abuse and personal sewer methods were eliminated? Do you
think all this gutter spattering is necessary to reach conclusions and
arrive at a final better condition for the nation's life? Do you think
that even if discussion and defence of opinion are necessary in the
settlement of great public affairs, it is also in order to question a
man's purity of purpose, his patriotism and his personal devotion to a
great ideal?
Paul's whole nature was stirred by what he was going through and his
absorption in the matters nearest his heart was so complete that it was
with no ordinary shock he came to realise that his own son was in a
critical condition. As a father he reproached himself for neglecting the
boy under the plea of trying to reform the state. And when he began to
question Louis that night he rapidly noted the lad's physical condition
and took account of his manner which, the more he studied it, was not at
all reassuring.
"Tell me, now, Louis, what you want. Begin at the beginning and hide
nothing."
Louis looked sullenly at his father.
"You haven't time to listen to me. You never have."
"Yes, I have. I'll take it." Paul felt more self-reproach every minute
he eyed Louis. And as he looked at him he could not help thinking of how
much the boy resembled in many ways Esther's brother Louis, who used to
give him such concern.
"Well, father, I want to quit High School. I don't like it. I hate it."
"Why? Tell me honestly now. I can't help you unless you give me the real
facts."
"I don't like the teachers. They nag me. I hate them."
"Hate them? You mean all of your teachers?"
"Well, most of them. They criticise me and make fun of me. Miss Barrows
showed what I wrote about tuberculosis to every other teacher in the
school."
"Go on," said Paul, after a pause.
"I can't get the English. I don't understand the long definitions. I am
not cut out for a scholar."
"Have you tried?"
"Yes, I have. But the harder I try, the worse it is."
"What lessons are you carrying?"
"English, algebra, physics, manual training, German and chemistry."
"Tell me now," said Paul good-naturedly, "which one of all these studies
you hate the least."
Louis laughed. "I don't like any studies."
"But which one would you choose first if you couldn't help yourself?"
"Manual training."
"What do you do in that?"
"Oh, I plane and saw and glue up boards and make things."
"What things?"
Louis hesitated. "You'll laugh."
"No, I won't." Paul felt more like crying than laughing as Louis eyed
him doubtfully.
"Great God!" he felt like saying to himself. "Here I have been so busy
with everybody else's affairs that my own son is afraid of me."
"Well, I finished a writing desk the other day. I was going to give it
to mother for her birthday. I brought it home last night."
"A writing desk! Let me see it."
"It's in my room," Louis said with some hesitation.
"I want to see it," said Paul. He rose to go up stairs and had got as
far as the hall when the telephone rang.
"Go on. I'll come as soon as I answer this," Paul said, and Louis
hurried up stairs as if he wanted to get there some time before his
father.
The man at the other end of the telephone wire was an angry committeeman
at the State House.
"I say," he exclaimed in a strident voice that clanged into the receiver
like a personal insult. "When are you coming down? We've been waiting
here over an hour."
Paul made a lightning decision and answered. "I can't come down
to-night. I have a very important engagement elsewhere."
"Elsewhere!" snorted the irate committeeman. "Why, you made this a
personal meeting. You've got to come down. I can't hold Rogers to our
plan if you don't come. And Alvard is on the fence. We lack just enough
to make a majority. This is your pet measure. Are you going back on it?"
"I can't come down to-night. Put it through among you. If you really
mean business you don't need me. Stand by the bill at all costs."
The committeeman broke in with an oath: "All costs! It's your bill. If
you desert it now at this pinch, it is down and out. I can't look after
your fences."
The receiver at the other end went up with a bang and Paul realised that
another one of his cherished measures had received its _coup de grace_.
Partly, he said to himself as he started up to Louis's room, on account
of the half hearted action of those who called themselves friends. What
friends! Rabbits! Cowards! Self seekers! Real friends could have managed
that bill without his presence and there was a show for it owing to its
popular character, if anyone would push matters with energy and
intelligent enthusiasm. "But was it his duty always to neglect his own
children even for service to the state?" He said "No" as he went along
up and into Louis's room.
He had seldom been into the boy's sanctum, and as he came in now he was
curious, and interested in what he saw. Louis had employed the interval
of his father's presence to pick a number of things up off the floor and
what he did not have time to throw on top of the bed he had kicked under
it, so the room presented a fairly respectable outward appearance.
He had pulled the writing desk out into the middle of the room and as
his father stopped in front of it he said suddenly: "There it is, now
laugh."
Paul was simply astonished when he examined the article. To be sure, all
the joints on it were not perfect by any means and one of the legs
looked a little out of plumb. But as a whole the writing desk was so
creditable a piece of work that he could not help saying, "I call that
pretty fine. Mother will be tremendously pleased. You made it all
yourself?"
"Yes, all but this little bit of carving. That Johnson started me on.
The rest of it is mine."
"It's mighty good," said Paul, walking around it. "Straighten that leg
out by amputating it just below the knee and it will------"
"Yes, I knew you would laugh at me. All the teachers do," wailed Louis.
"No, I'm not laughing at you, Louis. You have done splendid work. But
you mustn't feel badly to have your faults pointed out. That is the way
to learn. If you hadn't been in quite such a hurry you would have made a
better job, wouldn't you? Your fault, one of your faults, is lack of
patience and thorough painstaking over details. Isn't that so?"
"It must be. All my teachers say so all the time."
"Well, if they say so all the time there must be some reason for it. But
honest, now, the writing desk is not a bad piece of work viewed as a
whole."
Louis felt somewhat mollified and after his father had made one or two
more comments they started down stairs. When they reached the hall, the
telephone rang again.
"Go into the library and wait for me," Paul said as he went to the
instrument.
This time it was Rogers, the doubtful member of the committee. He wanted
to ask one or two questions about the bill and Paul quickly and eagerly
answered him.
"But we need you right here now. We can't do anything without you. Burke
is mad and we can't depend on him. You've just got to come if you want
to see the thing through."
"I can't come, Rogers. You can whip them into line." Paul rapidly shot
directions at him. "Stand by the thing for my sake if not for the sake
of the bill. Don't go back on your promise."
"Promise! What's become of yours? The thing is impossible without you. I
can't do anything with Burke and the rest of the committee are hot over
your absence. Don't blame anyone but yourself when you read the morning
paper."
Paul started to answer, but the committeeman had finished, and after
hesitating over the matter he went into the library and resumed his
questions with Louis.
"After the manual training, which one of your studies do you take to
most?"
"Oh, I don't like any of them. Chemistry, I guess."
"Do you like mathematics?"
"I don't mind, but I want to go into business, father. I want to quit
school altogether and go into business."
"What business?"
"Any kind. I want to make money."
"What do you want to make money for?"
"What does any one want money for? I want to buy----"
"Go on. Tell me exactly."
"Well, clothes and--and--I want things, so I can go out and be with
other fellows, and have something to spend--and------"
In his burst of unconcealed eagerness to get out of school Louis was
really revealing to his father some of the actual reasons for wanting to
give up his studies, and as Paul listened to him he felt that the boy's
eagerness went even farther. He determined to be very frank with him and
get at the bottom of the thing if possible.
"Do you want to make money so as to go with the girls and get popular
with them and spend money on them?"
The question was almost brutal in its directness, and one that his
father had never before suggested. Louis reddened with an angry but
self-conscious manner that told Paul he had not guessed very wide of the
real motive that was urging the boy.
He did not answer the question but sat sullenly tearing bits of paper
from the leaves of a magazine on the table. And his father sat silently
staring at him, wondering how he was going to manage Louis and help him
to make a possible manhood for himself. The problem across the library
table in this boy of his was even a greater problem than the one down at
the State House. He could afford politically to lose the bill. But could
he afford parentally to lose the boy?
"You needn't answer my question, Louis, you have answered it. Now listen
to me. I am your father and next to your mother I love you more than
anyone else in all the world. Do you believe that?"
"I suppose so," Louis managed to say.
"You know it, Louis. There is no guess work. You are sixteen. You have
fairly good health and more than average brains. The main business in
your life for the next ten years ought to be study and education. The
girls--society--all that--do you want to make a fool of yourself and
miss the one thing of manhood that's worth getting? If you do, I don't
for you. I am several years older than you are, Louis. And I am your
father for the purpose, as I believe, of really being worth something to
you in the matter of counsel and direction for your voyage over life's
great ocean. If you are planning to start out without a compass or the
right kind of equipment I would be worse than a fool if I didn't prevent
such a voyage, wouldn't I? Well, I don't intend to let you do just as
you please just because for the time being you choose to go your own
gait. Mind, Louis, I am not going to ask you to do impossible things or
be tyrannical with you. But neither do I intend that you should throw
away a splendid chance for education just to gratify a present longing
to make money for the purpose you want it for."
The telephone rang again at this point and Paul went over to it.
Burke had come to the instrument again.
"We can't agree on the bill in its present shape and it's simply
impossible to put it through in your absence. You are being judged by
all the committees and some of them don't hesitate to say you are being
bought out. If you come down now you may be able to save it. But we are
on the point of kicking the bill out or reporting adversely. Can't you
come down within an hour?"
"I can't promise. I have a very important engagement here. I might be
able to get down by midnight, but wouldn't promise."
"Midnight! The members are dead tired now. Rogers is asleep in his chair
and Colfax is dozing on the lounge. If you don't come within an hour you
needn't come at all."
"I can't come within an hour."
"What is it? A matter of life and death?"
"Yes, a matter of life and death," Paul answered slowly.
"Oh, very well. Then the old bill is dead, that's all. It's not a matter
of question."
And Paul could picture Burke as with an incredulous sneer he hung up,
and told the committee to clear out and go to bed.
He went back into the library and sat down by Louis and put his arm
around his shoulder and reasoned with him as he had never in all the
campaign reasoned with a political acquaintance for the purpose of
winning his friendship. He showed the boy clearly what it meant to lose
an education, what a handicap it would be to him all his life if he did
not have the schooling and culture that history and language and science
stood ready to give. He pictured to Louis the tremendous advantages that
go with education in the social life of the world and cited numerous
instances in the range of his own experience to show Louis what a prize
he was throwing away at the age of sixteen if he deliberately threw away
the riches of mental power for the dirt of lust and mammon. He got hold
of Louis as he never had before, because he divined the really impure
and foolish motive the boy had for going into business, and as the
minutes ticked into hours Louis gradually became convinced of certain
things which he had only vaguely entertained so far.
In the first place he began to have a feeling that his father did care
for him tremendously after all. Paul's absorption in politics for the
last year had been so deep that, as has been said, he had neglected the
boy's interests and had not paid attention to his frequent complaints
and appeals. But now that the matter was squarely met, Louis knew from
what he caught of the telephone dialogue that his father was neglecting
a very important political affair to spend the entire evening with him.
The thought added to the feeling he began to have of his father's real
character. Then Louis had all his life had the greatest respect for his
father's intellectual life and regarded it with admiration. He was fond
of quoting him and there was no one in Milton who read Douglas's
editorials more regularly and carefully than Louis.
And added to all the rest that influenced him that night was the shame
he began to feel that his father knew his real motive for wanting to
leave the school and make money. He had become fascinated and led away
by a certain set in the High School and he wanted to go with them, wear
expensive clothes, frequent society functions and spend freely and get
the reputation of a generous and even lavish giver. This he could not do
with the allowance his father gave him, and he chafed under it
foolishly. He had not supposed his father would detect his underlying
motive in his longing to quit school and go into business. Now that he
realised his father did understand he felt ashamed to continue his plea
as he had first made it. At the end of the evening together, a certain
definite agreement was reached between father and son.
Louis agreed to continue his studies for another year and do his best
with those branches he found most difficult where he was not allowed to
choose electives. His father agreed to study with him in a regular
course, helping him through hard places, practically being his tutor and
agreeing to give him all the time he needed in the evening. "And why
not?" Paul kept asking almost with a sob as he noted the glow that was
creeping back into Louis's eye, the glow of a new interest in study.
"Why not? What shall it profit the reformer if he reforms the whole
state and loses his own children? I don't believe that even high-flown
Patriotism requires such a sacrifice as that."
When Louis went up to bed tears were on his cheeks and a choking in his
breast. His father had simply said, "My boy, I want you to be a man.
Your mother and I have prayed for you all these years. We believe you
will not disappoint us. Don't forget God, Louis. You need to pray to
overcome this great temptation of impure thinking. The gates of Hell are
close by that sort of life. Not even your father and mother can spare
you from ruin that way. You have got to fight it out yourself. God
helping you."
Paul looked up at the clock and saw it was after midnight, but on a
venture he called up the committee room at the State House. A night
janitor answered and informed him that the committee had been gone for
over an hour.
He went upstairs and found Esther in her sewing room, her face pale and
troubled, traces of tears on her cheeks and such a look of real fear on
her face that Paul exclaimed, "Esther! What is it?"
She turned to her table and picked up a package of postcards and with a
shudder of loathing held them out to Paul.
He took them and saw at a second's glance that they were the vulgar,
coarse, suggestive and even indecent photographic postcards which this
great civilised, supposedly Christian, government even yet allows to
pass through the post office and be displayed and sold at every news
stand and book store in the country.
"They dropped out of Louis's coat when I began to mend it this evening.
And there was worse. He or some other boy had written this vile thing."
Esther handed it to Paul what she had found. Paul read it and his face
grew white and stern. Esther sat down and put her head on her arms and
almost shrieked.
"Oh, I can't bear it! Louis! Louis! How could you! Oh, how can his soul
ever be clean again! Oh, boy, your mother's heart is broken! After all
my prayers for you! After all the days and nights of consecration! Oh,
my son, my son! Would God I had died before I knew or saw this! Oh, my
Master, the cup is too bitter! I can't drink it!"
Never in all his knowledge of Esther had Paul ever seen her like this.
His own heart almost stopped at the sight. For years she had been so
uniformly calm and strong even when her children had disappointed her.
She had with high-spirited motherhood faced their sins and wrong-doing
with a peaceful faith that they would do right in the end. But this
discovery seemed to smite her soul down into a hopeless darkness, where
there was no redemption. And as Paul looked at her there was in his soul
more anguish for her than fear for Louis over what she had discovered.
In a sense he was prepared for this, somewhat, because of the glimpses
he had been getting that very evening of Louis's nature and its
temptations.
He kneeled by his wife and put his arm about her.
"This is too great for you to bear alone. Besides, it may not be as
hopeless or as terrible as you think. Let me see Louis. I have just been
having an evening with him. If he hasn't gone to bed I believe now is
the time for me to see him."
Esther had grown quiet. She seemed to be praying. Paul got up and went
out of the room along the hallway to Louis's room and knocked. At
Louis's answer he went in and found him at work on the writing desk.
Without any preliminary Paul held out the cards to Louis and said,
"Louis, are these yours?"
Louis' face blanched on the instant. His hand trembled so he could not
hold the cards still. He tried to answer but his tongue seemed
paralysed. His father repeated the question more sternly. Louis broke
down completely, flung himself on the bed in a spasm of fear and shame.
His father eyed him with conflicting feelings. Again he was strongly
reminded of Louis Darcy and his many experiences with him. Louis still
refused to answer, and Paul said:
"Look up here, Louis. Look up and answer me. Did you write that?"
His father thrust the paper his mother had found close up to the boy.
Louis cried out. "No, no, father. That is not mine. One of the
boys------"
Paul felt relieved as far as that went, for Louis had never lied to him.
"But these cards. Are these yours?"
"Yes."
"How long have you had them?"
"I got them yesterday."
"Give them to me." Louis handed them over and Paul tore them across
again and again and flung the pieces into the waste paper basket. Louis
had never seen his father angry like that before. He shrank and cowered
back while his father said:
"Louis, I would almost rather see you in your coffin than with those
vile things in your hands and their foul imaginings in your heart. Do
you realise what this will lead to? Your manhood will be blasted! your
soul blackened! your body tortured! all the angel in you turned into
animal------"
Paul nearly broke down himself. He shuddered and for one instant Louis
really caught a glimpse into the horror that sin causes.
But Paul Douglas was not a cowardly father nor one who is content to
leave it to boys to learn unaided bitter lessons from evil. He sat down
by Louis and gave him the plainest talk on the subject of personal
purity the boy had ever had. And the effect on him in all his after life
was even more than either Paul or Esther had dared to hope. Paul never
did a better hour's work. When he was through, Louis was completely
broken. In the moment of his cry to his father for help, Paul kneeled by
him, put his arm around him and prayed for him such a prayer of appeal
and hope and good cheer that Louis Douglas will never forget. The whole
thing was the beginning of a new manhood for the boy. And when the next
day he plucked up courage to confess to his mother, one of the hardest
things he ever did in all his life, the entire unfolding of his mother's
love, her passionate appeal to his better nature, her cry to him to seek
God's help in overcoming all, overwhelmed him. Again the boy caught a
glimpse of the mightiness of father and mother affection and young as he
was he came from that soul yearning of Esther with a manly determination
in his boyish heart not to disappoint either father or mother in the
struggle he would make to be true to the high calling. For as the time
slipped away many and many a time he was reminded of the black pit on
the edge of which he had almost slipped, to fall into its slimy and
murky abyss, and perhaps never again come up into the pure sweet air of
God under his blue sky and its silver stars. O Louis, you will never be
able to measure the rescue your father and mother made for you at that
crisis when your soul was wandering over the treeless moor of passion.