Benjamin Wright glared. "When I was young, listening to gossip was not thought becoming in the cloth. When he came, I learned that he had stayed over in Mercer--without my consent, mark you--_to go to the theatre!_"

"Well?" said Dr, Lavendar. "He was twenty-four. Why should he have your consent?"

Mr., Wright waved this question aside. "When he came home, I spoke with some severity,"

"This quarrel," said Dr. Lavendar, "is not built on such folly as that."

Benjamin Wright shook his head, and made a careless gesture with his trembling hand. "Not--entirely. I reproved him, as I say. And he was impertinent. Impertinent, mind you, to his father! And I--in those days my temper was somewhat quick--I--"

"Yes?"

But Mr. Wright seemed unable to proceed, except to say again, "I-- reproved him,"

"But," Dr. Lavendar protested, "you don't mean to tell me that Samuel, just for a reproof, an unkind and unjust reproof, would--why, I cannot believe it!"

"It was not unjust!" Benjamin Wright's melancholy eyes flamed angrily.

"I know, Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar. "He is obstinate; I've told him so a hundred times. And he's conceited--so's everybody, more or less; if in nothing else, we're conceited because we're not conceited. But he's not a fool. So, whether he is right or not, I am sure he thinks he had something more to complain of than a good blowing-up?"

"In a way," said the old man, examining his ridgy finger-nails and speaking with a gasp, "he had. Slightly."

Dr. Lavendar's stern lip trembled with anxiety. "What?"

"I--chastised him; a little."

"You--_what_?"

Benjamin Wright nodded; the wrinkled pouches under his eyes grew dully red. "My G.o.d!" he said plaintively; "think of that--a hasty moment!

Thirty-two years; my G.o.d! I--spanked him."

Dr. Lavendar opened his lips to speak, but found no words.

"And he was offended! Offended? What right had he to be offended?

_I_ was the offended party. He went to a low theatre. Apparently you see nothing wrong in that? Well, I've always said that every parson had the making of an actor in him. It's a toss-up--the stage or the pulpit. Same thing at bottom. But perhaps even you won't approve of his staying away all night? Smoking! Drinking! He'd been drunk. He confessed it. And there was a woman in it. He confessed that. Said they'd all 'gone to supper together.' Said that he was 'seeing the world'--which a man ('_man_,' if you please!) of his years had a right to do. Well; I suppose you'd have had me smile at him, and tuck him up in bed to sleep off his headache, and give him a stick of candy? That wasn't my way. I reproved him. I--chastised him. Perfectly proper. Perhaps--unusual. He was twenty-four, and I laid him across my knee, and--well; I got over it in fifteen minutes. I was, perhaps, hasty My temper in those days was not what it is now. But I forgave him in fifteen minutes; and he had gone! He's been gone--for thirty- two years. My G.o.d!"

He poured out another finger of whiskey, but forgot to drink it. A canary-bird chirped loudly, then lapsed into a sleepy twitter.

"I was well rid of him! To make a quarrel out of a thing like that--a joke, as you might say. I laughed, myself, afterwards, at the thought of it. A fellow of twenty-four--spanked! Why didn't he swear and be done with it? I would have reproved him for his profanity, of course.

Profanity in young persons is a thing I will not tolerate; Simmons will tell you so. But it would have cleared the air. If he had done that, we'd have been laughing about it, now;--he and I, together." The old man suddenly put both hands over his face, and a broken sound came from behind them.

Dr. Lavendar shook his head, speechlessly.

"What's the matter with you?" cried Benjamin Wright, pulling off his hat and banging it down on the table so fiercely that the crown collapsed on one side like an accordion. "Good G.o.d! Can't you see the tomfoolery of this business of thirty-two years of hurt feelings?"

Dr. Lavendar was silent.

"What! You excuse him? When I was young, parsons believed in the Ten Commandments; 'Honor thy father and thy mother--'"

"There is another scripture which saith, 'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.' And when it comes to the Commandments, I would commend the third to your attention. As for Samuel, you robbed him."

"Robbed him?"

"You took his self-respect. A young man's dignity, at twenty-four, is as precious to him as a woman's modesty. You stole it. Yes; you robbed him. Our Heavenly Father doesn't do that, when He punishes us. We lose our dignity ourselves; but He never robs us of it. Did ye ever notice that? Well; you robbed Samuel. My--my--_my!_" Dr. Lavendar sighed wearily. For, indeed, the matter looked very dark. Here was the moment he had prayed for--the readiness of one or the other of the two men to take the first step towards reconciliation. Such readiness, he had thought, would mean the healing of the dreadful wound, whatever it was; forgiveness on the father's part of some terrible wrong-doing, forgiveness on the son's part of equally terrible hardness of heart.

Instead he found a cruel and ridiculous mortification, made permanent by thirty-two unpardoning years. Here was no sin to command the dreadful dignity of repentance, with its divine response of forgiveness. The very lack of seriousness in the cause made the effect more serious. He looked over at the older man, and shook his head....

How could they pay their debts to each other, this father and son?

Could Benjamin Wright return the self-respect he had stolen away?

Could Samuel offer that filial affection which should have blessed all these empty years? A wickedly ludicrous memory forbade the solemnity of a reconciliation: below any attempt the father might make, there would be a grin, somewhere; below any attempt the son might make, there would be a cringe, somewhere. The only possible hope was in absolute, flat commonplace. Play-writing, as a subject of conversation, was out of the question!

"Benjamin," he said with agitation, "I thank G.o.d that you are willing to see Samuel; but you must promise me not to refer to Sam's play. You must promise me this, or the last end of the quarrel will be worse than the first."

"I haven't said I was willing to see him," Mr. Wright broke out; "I'm _not_ willing! Is it likely that I would hanker after an interview?

All I want is to get the boy away from Old Chester; to 'see the world.' His--father ought to sympathize with that! Yes; to get him away, I would even--But if you will tell his--relatives, that in my judgment, he ought to go away, that is all that is necessary."

"No! You must urge it yourself," Dr. Lavendar said eagerly. "Put it on the ground of calf-love, if you want to. I'll tell Samuel you want to get Sam out of town because you're afraid he's falling in love with Mrs. Richie; and you'd like to consult him about it."

But the old man began a scrabbling retreat. "No! No!" he said, putting on his hat with shaking hands. "No, don't tell anybody anything. I'll find some other way out of it. Let it go. Seeing his--relatives is a last resource. If they are so virtuous as to object to plays, I'll try something else. Object?" he repeated, "Gad-a-mercy! My discipline was successful!" He grinned wickedly.

Dr. Lavendar made no reply. The interview had been a strain, and he got up a little feebly. Benjamin Wright, as he saw him to the door, swore again at some misdemeanor on the part of Simmons, but was not rebuked.

The old minister climbed into his buggy, and told Goliath to "g'long."

As he pa.s.sed the Stuffed Animal House, he peered through the little dusty window of the hood; but David was not in sight.

CHAPTER XII

"I think," said Dr. Lavendar, as he and Goliath came plodding into Old Chester in the May dusk, "I think I'll go and see w.i.l.l.y. He'll tell me how much Sam's love-making amounts to."

His mind was on the matter to such an extent that he hardly heard Mary's anxious scolding because he looked tired, but his preoccupation lifted at supper, in the consciousness of how lonely he was without David. He really wanted to get out of the house and leave the loneliness behind him. So after tea he put on his broad-brimmed felt hat and tied a blue m.u.f.fler around his throat--Dr. Lavendar felt the cold a good deal; he said it was because the seasons were changing-- and walked wearily over to Dr. King's house. That talk with Benjamin Wright had told on him.

"Well," he said, as the doctor's wife opened the door, "how are you, Martha?"

"Very tired," said Mrs. King. "And dear me, Dr. Lavendar, you look tired yourself. You're too old to do so much, sir. Come in and sit down."

"I'll sit down," said Dr. Lavendar, dropping into a chair in the parlor; "but don't flatter yourself, Martha, that you'll ever be as young as I am!" ("He _is_ failing," Mrs. King told her husband afterwards. "He gets his words all mixed up. He says 'young' when he means 'old.' Isn't that a sign of something, William?" "It's a sign of grace," said the doctor shortly.)

"I want w.i.l.l.y to come over and give my Mary a pill," Dr. Lavendar explained. "She is as cross as a bear, and cross people are generally sick people--although I suppose that's Mary's temperament," he added sighing.

Martha shook her head. "In my judgment _temperament_ is just another word for temper: I don't believe in making excuses for it. That's a great trick of William's, I'm sorry to say."

"I should have thought you'd have cured him of it by this time?" Dr.

Lavendar murmured; and then he asked if the doctor was out.

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. King, dryly; "w.i.l.l.y always manages to get out in the evening on one excuse or another. You'd think he'd be glad of a restful evening at home with me, sometimes. But no. William's patients need a surprising amount of attention, though his bills don't show it When Mrs. Richie's cook was sick--just as an instance--he went six times to see her. I counted."

"Well; she got well?"' said Dr. Lavendar.