“Father, father, I mean to do all I can to please you. I’ll be always dutiful––and honorable––but you must leave me my manhood. You must allow me to choose my own path in life.”
The Elder paced the floor a few moments longer, then resumed his chair opposite his son, and, leaning back, looked across the table at his boy, meditatively, with half-closed eyes. At last he said, “We’ll take this matter to the Lord, and leave it in his hands.”
Then Peter Junior cried out upon him: “No, no, father; 83 spare me that. It only means that you’ll state to the Lord what is your own way, and pray to have it, and then be more than ever convinced that it is the Lord’s way.”
“My son, my son!”
“It’s so, father. I’m willing to ask for guidance of the Lord, but I’m not willing to have you dictate to the Lord what––what I must do, and so whip me in line with the scourge of prayer.” Peter Junior paused, as he looked in his father’s face and saw the shocked and sorrowful expression there instead of the passionate retort he expected. “I am wrong to talk so, father; forgive me; but––have patience a little. God gave to man the power of choice, didn’t he?”
“Certainly. Through it all manner of evil came into the world.”
“And all manner of good, too. I––a man ought not to be merely an automaton, letting some one else always exercise that right for him. Surely the right of choice would never have been given us if it were not intended that each man should exercise it for himself. One who does not is good for nothing.”
“There is the command you forget; that of obedience to parents.”
“But how long––how long, father? Am I not man enough to choose for myself? Let me choose.”
Then the Elder leaned forward and faced his son as his son was facing him, both resting their elbows on the table and gazing straight into each other’s eyes; and the old man spoke first.
“My father founded this bank before I was born. He came from Scotland when he was but a lad, with his parents, 84 and went to school and profited by his opportunities. He was of good family, as you know. When he was still a very young man, he entered a bank in the city as clerk, and received only ten dollars a week for his services, but he was a steady, good lad, and ambitious, and soon he moved higher––and higher. His father had taken up farming, and at his death, being an only son, he converted the farm, all but the homestead, which we still own, and which will be yours, into capital, and came to town and started this bank. When I was younger than you, my son, I went into the bank and stood at my father’s right hand, as I wish you––for your own sake––to do by me. We are a set race––a determined race, but we are not an insubordinate race, my son.”
Peter Junior was silent for a while; he felt himself being beaten. Then he made one more plea. “It is not that I am insubordinate father, but, as I see it, into each generation something enters, different from the preceding one. New elements are combined. In me there is that which my mother gave me.”
“Your mother has always been a sweet woman, yielding to the judgment of her husband, as is the duty of a good wife.”
“I know she was brought up and trained to think that her duty, but I doubt if you really know her heart. Did you ever try to know it? I don’t believe you understood what I meant by the scourge of prayer. She would have known. She has lived all these years under that lash, even though it has been wielded by the hand of one she loves––by one who loves her.” He paused a second time, arrested by his father’s expression. At first it was that of one who is 85 stunned, then it slowly changed to one of rage. For once the boy had broken through that wall of self-control in which the Elder encased himself. Slowly the Elder rose and leaned towering over his son across the table.
“I tell you that is a lie!” he shouted. “Your mother has never rebelled. She has been an obedient, docile woman. It is a lie!”
Peter Junior made no reply. He also rose, and taking up his crutch, turned toward the door. There he paused and looked back, with flashing eyes. His lip quivered, but he held himself quiet.
“Come back!” shouted his father.
“I have told you the truth, father.” He still stood with his hand on the door.
“Has––has––your mother ever said anything to you to give you reason to insult me this way?”
“No, never. We can’t talk reasonably now. Let me go, and I’ll try to explain some other time.”
“Explain now. There is no other time.”
“Mother is sacred to me, father. I ought not to have dragged her into this discussion.”
The Elder’s lips trembled. He turned and walked to the window and stood a moment, silently looking out. At last he said in a low voice: “She is sacred to me also, my son.”
Peter Junior went back to his seat, and waited a while, with his head in his hands; then he lifted his eyes to his father’s face. “I can’t help it. Now I’ve begun, I might as well tell the truth. I meant what I said when I spoke of the different element in me, and that it is from my mother. You gave me that mother. I know you love her, and you know that your will is her law, as you feel that it ought to 86 be. But when I am with her, I feel something of a nature in her that is not yours. And why not? Why not, father? There is that of her in me that makes me know this, and that of you in me that makes me understand you. Even now, though you are not willing to give me my own way, it makes me understand that you are insisting on your way because you think it is for my good. But nothing can alter the fact that I have inherited from my mother tastes that are not yours, and that entitle me to my manhood’s right of choice.”
“Well, what is your choice, now that you know my wish?”
“I can’t tell you yet, father. I must have more time. I only know what I think I would like to do.”
“You wish to talk it over with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She will agree with me.”
“Yes, no doubt; but it’s only fair to tell her and ask her advice, especially if I decide to leave home.”
The Elder caught his breath inwardly, but said no more. He recognized in the boy enough of himself to know that he had met in him a power of resistance equal to his own. He also knew what Peter Junior did not know, that his grandfather’s removal to this country was an act of rebellion against the wishes of his father. It was a matter of family history he had thought best not to divulge.
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CHAPTER VIII
MARY BALLARD’S DISCOVERY
Peter Junior’s mind was quite made up to go his own way and leave home to study abroad, but first he would try to convert his father to his way of thinking. Then there was another thing to be done. Not to marry, of course; that, under present conditions, would never do; but to make sure of Betty, lest some one come and steal into her heart before his return.
After his talk with his father in the bank he lay long into the night, gazing at the shadowed tracery on his wall cast