"You are out of your senses!" his father said; "I forbid it, sir. Do
you hear me?"
Sam looked out of the window. "I shall go, I think, to-morrow," he
said thoughtfully.
Samuel Wright stared at his wife in dumfounded silence. When he got
his breath, he said in awful tones, "Eliza, he defies me! A child of
mine, and lost to all sense of duty! I cannot understand it;--unless
such things have happened in your family?" he ended with sudden
suspicion, "Never!" protested the poor mother; "but Samuel, my dear--Sammy, my
darling--"
The senior warden raised a majestic hand. "Silence, if you please,
Eliza." Then he thrust his right hand into his bosom, rested his left
fist on the marble-topped centre-table, and advanced one foot.
Standing thus, he began to tell his son what he thought of him, and as
he proceeded his anger mounted, he forgot his periods and his
attitudes, and his voice grew shrill and mean. But, alas, he could not
tell the boy all that he thought; he could not tell him of his high
ambitions for him, of his pitiful desire for his love, of his
anguished fear lest he might be unhappy, or foolish, or bad. These
thoughts the senior warden had never known how to speak. Instead, he
detailed his grievances and his disappointments; he told Sam with
ruthless candor what the world called his conduct: dishonest, idiotic,
ungrateful. He had a terrifying string of adjectives, and through them
all the boy looked out of the window. Once, at a particularly
impassioned period, he glanced at his father with interest; that
phrase would be fine in a play, he reflected. Then he looked out of
the window again.
"And now," Mr. Wright ended sonorously, "what reply have you to make,
sir?"
Sam looked confused. "I beg your pardon, father? I did not hear what
you were saying."
Samuel Wright stared at him, speechless.
As for the boy, he said calmly, "Good night, father," and went up-
stairs to his own room where he began his packing. The next morning he
had gone.
"Where?" asked Dr. Lavendar, when the angry father brought him the
news. "I do not know," said the senior warden, "and I do not--"
"Yes, you do," said Dr. Lavendar; "but that's not the point. The point
is that it doesn't really matter, except for our comfort, whether we
know or not. Sam is a man, and our protection is an impertinence. He's
taking a dive on his own account. And as I look at it, he has a right
to. But he'll come up for breath, and then we'll get some information.
And he'll get some sense."