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 God! 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!