The Sins of the Children Part 2

From morning until night he kept them on the move, taking them to all his favorite haunts in the town and out in the country, introducing to them whole flocks of his friends, with whom they had tea and lunch; guiding them into the strange quiet chapels that were filled with the aroma of dead years like a bowl of dry rose-leaves; going with them into the sweet, quiet, sacred, stately seclusion of New College Garden and into the echoing cloisters of Magdalen. They were good days, memorable days, giving them all mental pictures that even time would not blur nor age rub out. To Peter the best of all the afternoons was the one when he looked up at the St. John's barge as he paddled out into the river in the College Eight and caught the eager and excited eyes of all the people who meant so much to him, and especially those of Betty. He rowed that afternoon as he had never rowed before, carrying with him all along the stream the raucous shouts of the members of his college who tore along the tow-path almost demented with enthusiasm, firing pistols, turning rattles and screaming "St. John's! St. John's! Give her ten!

Give her ten! Up! Up!" And finally, when he staggered out of the boat almost sick from exertion, his knees shaking under him, the thought that came to him as he heard the incessant cries of "Good old Peter!" was "Thank G.o.d for this! The Governor will get something back for all he has done for me." He just waved his hand to his people, felt his way into the barge, laid himself flat on the floor and underwent the soothing process of being rubbed and sponged down--and all the while he smiled and was very happy.

He didn't catch the look of maternal agony in his mother's eyes nor her remarks--which was perhaps just as well. Seeing her great big boy crumpled up over his oar before he was a.s.sisted out of the boat, seeing him stand rocking like a drunken man with his great chest heaving and his face the color of a green apple, she leaned over the rail and cried out: "Oh, my dear, what _have_ they done to you? Oh, Hunter, you must _not_ let him do these things, he'll kill himself! Oh, Peter, Peter!"

As a matter of fact, no one heard her. There was too much good solid roar going on. Every l.u.s.ty-throated St. John's man was shouting at the full capacity of his lungs. Oh, but it was a good scene! And for the quiet, studious Doctor who had sat day after day for the greater part of his life watching bacteriological experiments, with the most intense interest, it was one that caused his blood to move almost dangerously through his veins and make him shout for the first time in his life.

It had a different effect upon temperamental Belle, who danced with excitement and kept on saying, in a sort of refrain, "Oh, I'm crazy about all this--simply crazy!" As for Graham, even the thrill of Wall Street seemed poor to him in comparison with this stirring scene,--the wild rush of men, the rhythmetic plunge of oars, the glorious muscular effort and the frenzied outburst.

Betty merely smiled, clasped her hands together and held her breath. It seemed to her that in Peter all the heroes of her youth,--Brian de Bois Guilbert, Ivanhoe and the rest,--were epitomized in the form, the splendid young giant form of her fellow-countryman. Above all things in the world she wanted to lean over and put a wreath of laurels on the man who stroked the St. John's boat to victory. As it was, she cried a little, quietly and simply, not caring who saw her tears; and in her heart, for a reason which she herself found unexplainable, she sang "My Country 'tis of Thee." She had never in her life been so deeply stirred, and who can wonder at that? There is indeed something full of inspiration about these undergraduates' struggles on the water and the fervent partisanship of the colleges. It is unique and splendid and sends young men out into the world with good and beautiful memories and with the love and loyalty for their alma mater which makes them better able to serve the women who need them and the country to which they belong.

And when, having changed his shorts and got once more into his flannels, Peter went up to the roof of the barge, stinging with health and glowing with very natural pride and satisfaction, it was the Doctor whose hand he first took, and the Doctor who said: "My son, my dear son!" It was an extraordinary moment for Peter, who had never in his life before felt the indescribable barrier which existed between his father and himself so near to crumbling.

That night, while his father and mother and Graham were taken to the theatre by three of his fellow Rhodes scholars, to see a performance of one of Gilbert and Sullivan's plays, Peter and Nicholas Kenyon took Betty and Belle to the Worcester Ball, the two girls being under the wing of the wife of one of the Dons.

It was one of those warm, clear, silver nights which the fickle climate of England sometimes produces apparently to show what it can do when it likes. The moon was full and the sky was bespattered with stars. The trees on the smooth lawn round the old college flung their shadows as though in sunlight and it was to a seat under one of these that Peter led Betty just before midnight, having very nearly danced her off her feet. They sat down panting a little, and laughing for no reason, and listened for a moment to the strains of the band which drifted through the open windows of the hall.

It was not in Peter to do anything by halves. He worked and played like a Trojan and put his back into everything that he took up. He knew by this time, short as it was, that he was wholly and completely in love with the little girl, the first sight of whom had made him catch his breath. With a peculiar kind of grimness he had made up his mind that she was for him if he could win her, and all the previous night he had dreamed of her as his future wife, as the girl who would stand by his side, helpmate and everlasting lover, and for whom he would work well and live well and carry her with him rung by rung to the top of the ladder. He told himself when he awoke that he was a presumptuous a.s.s even to dream that she would care for him. What was there in him for such a girl to care about? All the same, he set his teeth and from that moment laid all his future plans and his hopes and ambitions and all the best of his nature, at her little feet--and knew perfectly well that if Betty could not love him eventually he would walk alone through life.

Odd, romantic or foolish as it may seem, when youth falls in and out of love so easily, this was true. Peter had, with a sort of unrealized solemnity, kept his heart free and pure. He was no trifler--he had never philandered. Like the boy who, perhaps unduly imaginative, believes that he will find the place where the rainbow ends, Peter said to himself: "One day I shall find my girl. I want to go to her heart-whole and complete."

There was nothing of sentimentality about this. It was simply the outcome of the effect of the mother-influence upon the boy which had become a very concrete thing. Somehow, ever since he was old enough to remember and to think, he had looked upon his mother as his sweetheart, and when she bent over his cot at night and asked G.o.d to bless him and left the touch of her soft lips upon his forehead she had impressed upon him the unconscious ambition to make another such woman the centre of his own home. The numerous tender services, the exquisite maternal thoughtfulness of this little mother-woman, had been built up by him into a protection and a lode-star. Betty came--a girl in whom he recognized at once another mother--and she just touched his heart with her finger and walked straight in, fitting into the place which had been kept for her like a diamond into its setting.

Poor dear old Peter! No one would have thought, who looked at him sitting there in his big awkwardness and incoherence, that he was a man in love, although a psychologist or even an ordinarily observant girl could very easily have told how Betty felt.

"Topping, isn't it?" he said.

"Simply wonderful," she replied.

"Tired?"

"Not a bit."

"Pretty good floor, eh?"

"Perfectly splendid."

"Gee! I shall miss this place."

"Why, of course you will."

"All the same, I shall be mighty keen to get at things,--and begin."

"Yes, of course you will."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, that's easy."

"Is it? How?"

"Well, don't I know you?"

"Do you? I wish you did."

Up in the branches something stirred. It may have been Cupid--probably it was.

But silence followed this conversational effort--a silence broken by a great heaving sigh, mostly of excitement, and the strains of the band which drifted out of the windows of the College Hall.

And over them both, as over all other men and women, young and old, at the beginning and at the end, hung the moon and the stars.

How good it is to be young and in love!

VI

Unnoticed by Mrs. Guthrie and her two boys, there was something more than a little pathetic in the Doctor's eager, wistful att.i.tude toward the rather thoughtless, high-spirited, seething youth in the middle of which he found himself for the first time.

This man had never been young. The atmosphere of the farm on which he had been born killed youth as foul air kills a caged bird. Poverty, sordidness and the grim, constant struggle to live made his childhood and early days utterly devoid of the good sweet things. His mother, worn out and dispirited, died in giving him birth, and his father, bitter, lonely and filled with the irony that comes from a long and unprofitable hand-to-hand fight with mother-earth, let him bring himself up. He was turned out to work at a time when most lads are sent to school. He had to trudge daily into the straggling, one-eyed town, at an early hour, to report at the chemist's store where he obtained employment as an errand boy. Most of the small wages he earned were required by his father. From almost the very beginning life was to him a sort of whirling stream into which he had been flung before having been taught to swim. Mere self-preservation demanded that he should keep himself afloat. He picked up education as a stray dog picks up an occasional bone. There was, however, great grit in this boy and deep down in his soul an ambition to become something better than his father, whose daily wrestle with nature--the most relentless of task-mistresses--had warped his character and stultified his soul. Young Hunter shuddered at the thought of living always on the farm, of grubbing in the earth, of planting and hoeing and reaping, of facing the almost inevitable tragedy of spoiled crops and ruined hopes, and the yearly set-backs of advancing freights and higher wages. He looked with growing horror and detestation at the farm implements among which his father spent his life; and while he ran his errands, carrying medicines and soda syphons, he nursed a dream in his little cold heart, which grew out of the smell of medicines and the talk of illness that was all about him in the chemist store. It was to become a doctor and tend the needs of humanity and, if it was in his power, to save to other children the mothers who brought them into being.

No wonder Dr. Hunter Guthrie wore strong gla.s.ses over his short-sighted eyes. At all times, with a sort of greed and an almost terrible eagerness, he read every medical book on which he could lay his hands,--in bed by the light of one candle, in the cubby-hole at the back of the store under the glare of the unshaded electric bulb, in trolley-cars and trains, and on the stoop of the shabby farmhouse so long as the light lasted. Later, after his day's work, he attended night cla.s.ses, and even as he walked from the farm to the town he read.

Spending sleepless nights and living laborious days he followed the example of many other brave and determined boys whose names gleam like beacons in the history of their country. He worked his way through the necessary stages until finally, after a struggle so relentless that it nearly broke his health, he became a qualified doctor. In order to earn the money for his courses he was at different times bell-boy in a country hotel, an advertis.e.m.e.nt writer in a manufacturer's office, a clerk for a real-estate man and a traveling salesman for safety razors.

His vacations were more arduous than his terms, and during these he earned the money with which to pay his college expenses. Every step up the ladder of innumerable rungs--which sometimes seemed to him impossible to climb--was painful and difficult. So much concentration was needed from the very beginning--so much condensed determination and energy required--that at the age of twenty-five he seemed to have lived twice that number of years. No wonder then that the all-conquering youthfulness of all the undergraduates amongst whom he found himself at Oxford awoke a sort of envy in his heart and startled him who had never been young. There was no meanness, jealousy or sense of martyrism in his feelings as he watched the kaleidoscopic picture of university life--only a sort of wonder and amazement that there were men in the world so lucky--so indescribably fortunate as to be able to carry boyhood and all its joys forward to an age when he had forgotten that such a period existed. Many times during those interesting and stirring days he stopped suddenly and thanked his G.o.d that he had been able to do for his own boys those things which no one had ever done for him, and give them such a chance in life as he had never had. Actually to see Peter, his eldest boy, proving his muscular strength and his mental ability and moving among his fellows with such splendid popularity, filled him with pride and gladness. Here indeed was a very concrete evidence of his reward for that long, arduous struggle.

Like most men who have concentrated upon one thing, Dr. Guthrie was a child when it came to others. Athleticism, of which he knew nothing, filled him with admiration. The knack of conversation amazed him. Even to his wife he found it difficult to talk. To force himself to confide was almost impossible--it was like blasting a rock. One afternoon however he got nearer to an intimate expression of his feelings than ever before--perhaps because he was still under the influence of the intoxication of the youthfulness all about him.

Kenyon had driven them out after tea to Shotover Hill. All the young people had gone on to Cuddesden, leaving the doctor and his wife to sit and look down into the valley far below in which nestled the town and all its colleges and spires. It had been a golden day and the sun was setting with all the dignity and pomp of early summer, making the thin line of the Thames shine like a winding silver ribbon. There was something of exultation over the earth that evening and of untranslatable beauty, and the evening song of the birds was like that of choristers in a great cathedral.

Unusual words seethed in the doctor's head. He was moved and thrilled.

The rest and the relief of leaving his work, all the bustle and stir of the new life in which he was a temporary figure, seemed to take him back to his own early days when, with the little woman who sat by his side, he had stood with her in their first house, newly married.

He took his hat off, put his arm round the shoulders of that faithful woman and kissed her cheek with a touch of pa.s.sion and grat.i.tude. "My darling," he said, "I wish I could say properly some of the things that I feel about you and my children and the goodness of G.o.d. There are tears in my heart, and strange feelings. I feel oddly young and strong.

I want to laugh and cry. I'd like to pick wild flowers and make a little crown for your head. Don't laugh at me--please don't laugh."

The little woman took his thin hand and pressed it to her cheek. "I laugh because that is how I feel, too," she said,--"young and glad and very happy to see my big Peter doing such wonderful things, and still a boy. Dear old man, we have much to be thankful for! I know how you've worked and striven,--and how fine it is to see some of the results of it. I was a little afraid before we came here that we might find Peter different--altered--perhaps older--but he's just the same. He's exactly like you."

The Doctor shook his head and a sudden pain twisted his thin, studious face. "Oh no, no," he said, "I was never like that. I wish to G.o.d I had been. But it was to make Peter what he is that I've worked night and day. He's my idea of a man. He's doing all the things that I'd like to have done. He's me as I might have been if I'd had any luck--any sort of a chance. Do I regret it? Am I jealous? No; because if I hadn't lived such an opposite life I mightn't have desired to give my boy all this." He waved his hand towards the spires that rose in all their significance out of the town away below. And then, with intense eagerness and a ring of wistfulness in his voice that brought tears to his wife's eyes, he bent towards her. "Do you think he realizes this, Mary? Does Graham ever stop to think how hard I've worked to put him in Wall Street? Does Belle ever wonder what it's cost me in youth and health to give her so much more than she needs? I'm--I'm a queer, wordless, foolishly shy man. Old since the time they all three began to think and use their eyes,--necessarily concentrated and aloof away in that laboratory of mine, and--and sometimes I wonder whether my children know me and understand and make allowances. Do they, Mary, my dear one?

Do they?"

"Yes, my man, my brave and splendid man," she replied, "they do, they do!" And in saying this she deliberately lied,--out of her great and steadfast love for this man of hers she lied.

No one knew so well as she did that the father of her children might almost as well be a mere distant relation who lived in their home for reasons of convenience and allotted money to their requirements at the proper time. No one knew so well as she did that Hunter Guthrie's tragic lack of childhood had dried out of his nature the power of understanding children. Never having been a child in any sense of the word--never having known the inexpressible joy of a mother's love--remembering nothing but a father who was either working hard or tired out--he was unable to conceive what his own children needed in addition to all that they got hourly from his wife and from his own work. It had always seemed to him that in the possession of a mother they had everything good that G.o.d could give them. It seemed to him that his own part was performed by providing for their needs. No man desired to be the father of sons and daughters more than he did. No man was prouder in the possession of them than he was and had always been. To hear the patter of their little feet about his house sent him to his work with that sense of religion of which Carlyle wrote. To watch them shaping from childhood into youth was the most satisfactory and beautiful thing in his life. To be able, year after year, to do better and still better for them was his best and biggest reward--far greater and more glorious than the distinction he earned for himself and the international reputation that increased with each of his discoveries. And when, six months after Peter had left home to go to Oxford with a Rhodes scholarship, he found himself unexpectedly endowed to the extent of over three million dollars under the will of a late wealthy patient, so that he might, in the old man's own words, "devote himself, without the fret and fever of earning a livelihood as a pract.i.tioner, to the n.o.ble and limitless work of a bacteriologist for the benefit of suffering humanity all over the world," it was for the sake of his children that he offered up thanks.

With what immense pride he notified the authorities at Harvard that his son was independent of the scholarship, which was free to send another man to Oxford. With what keen pleasure he was able to buy Graham a seat on the Stock Exchange, bring Belle out as a debutante and send his little Ethel to the best possible school. These things he could do, and did, but he could not and had never been able to do for them a better thing than all these,--win their confidence, their deep affection and their friendship. That gift had been killed in him. It could not be acquired, taught or purchased, and he had always been as much out of touch with his boys and girls as though he were divided from them by a great stone wall. It had always been with them, "Look out! Here's father!" instead of "h.e.l.lo! Here's Dad!" His entrance into their playroom was the signal for silence. The sight of his studious face and short-sighted eyes and distrait, shy manner chilled them and reduced them to quietude and self-consciousness and suspicion. If he had treated them always as human beings, played with them, sat on the floor and built houses with their bricks, thrown open the door of his study to them, if only for half an hour every day, so that there might be no possibility of its becoming a Blue Room; if he had, as they grew into the habit of thinking and observing and remembering, told them about himself and his own boyhood and in this way inculcated a mutual interest, a desire to respond and open out; if, before the two boys had gone to college he had had the courage to act on the earnest advice of a friend and speak to them on the vital question of s.e.x, give them the truth as he so well knew it and warn them bravely and rightly of the inevitable pitfalls that lined their youthful path, no brick wall would have existed and he would have been their pal as well as their father,--a combination altogether irresistible.

As it was Hunter Guthrie's wife, who loved him deeply and devotedly and recognized in him a great man as well as a most unselfish father, was obliged to lie in reply to his questions. She would rather have died, then and there, than hurt him and bring down his house about his ears.

The sad and tragic part of it all was that she knew utterly that no good, no change could be brought about by telling the truth. It was too late.

VII