And that was all Dr. Lavendar got out of the father....
This was thirty-two years ago. Sain Wright may have been hungry, but
he never spoke. Instead, he worked. Old Chester seethed with curiosity
for a while--to see Benjamin Wright pass his son with a contemptuous
stare, to see Sam pass his father without a glance was very exciting.
But excitement ebbs in thirty-two years. For one thing, old Mr. Wright
came less often into town--because he could not bear to meet his son,
people said; and Samuel never took the hill road out of Old Chester
for a corresponding reason. Furthermore, it was hard to connect Samuel
with anything so irrational as a quarrel, for every year he grew in
solemn common sense. Benjamin Wright's growth was all in the way of
temper; at least so his boy Simmons, a freckled mulatto of sixty
years, informed Old Chester.
"He 'ain't got no human feelin's, 'cept for them there canaries,"
Simmons used to say in an aggrieved voice; "he'll stand and look at
'em and chirp to 'em by the hour--an' 'en he'll turn round and swear
at you 'nough to take your leg off," Simmons said, bitterly. Simmons
did his best for the canaries which he detested, cleaning out the
cages and scraping the perches and seeing that the seed-trays and
bath-tubs were always full; he did his best conscientiously, and it
was hard to be "swore at when you 'ain't done nothin'." Perhaps
Benjamin Wright had some "human feelings" for his grandson, Sam; but
certainly Simmons's opinion was justified by his treatment of his
granddaughters. When by their father's orders the little girls came up
to the lonely house on the hill, the old man used to pitch small coins
to them and tell them to go and look at the canaries,--"and then clear
out. Simmons, give 'em some cake or something! Good-by. Good-by. Clear
out." Long before he had settled into such dreary living, the son with
whom he had quarrelled had made a life of his own. His slimness and
gayety had disappeared as well as his dreaminess and versifying
instincts. "Poetry?" he had been heard to say, "why, there isn't a
poem that was ever written that I'd take five minutes out of my
business to read!" It seemed as if the quarrel had wrenched him from
the grooves, physical and spiritual, in which Nature had meant him to
run and started him on lines of hard common sense. He was intensely
positive; heavy and pompous and painfully literal; inclined to lay
down the law to everybody; richer than most of us in Old Chester, and
full of solemn responsibilities as burgess and senior warden and
banker. His air of aggressive integrity used to make the honestest of
us feel as if we had been picking pockets! Yes; a good man, as Old
Chester said.