The Sins of the Children Part 33

"Yes; but I'll cut it out if you want me to."

"No, don't. Why should you? I feel pretty rotten and I shall turn in right away. Don't bother about me any more, old man."

"I'd rather stay with you."

"Yes, I know you would, old boy, but you push off and have a good time.

As a matter of fact, I rather want to--to be alone for a bit. D'you see?"

"All right, then." And to show that he had become a man again and his own master, Graham went off whistling the latest tango.

And by letting his brother go at that moment, Peter did a very unwise thing. He was still weak and ill. His brain, which had not recovered itself from the effects of Kenyon's poisonous mixture, was in no condition to be tortured by solitary thought. He needed to be kept away from self-a.n.a.lysis--to be set to work on the ordinary commonplaces of everyday life. Most of all, his thoughts required to be put to rest by sleep.

Left to himself, Peter sat down, almost in the dark, with his arms folded, his legs stuck out and his chin buried in his chest, and thrashed the tired machinery of his brain into action. All that had happened in the last forty-eight hours coming on top of the suffering that he had undergone through having been separated from Betty and having failed to bring about the new relationship with his father, upon which he had set his heart, gradually became distorted. He began to look at everything through an enormous magnifying gla.s.s and to see himself, not as one whose loyal, simple and unsuspicious nature had been taken advantage of by Kenyon, but as a common drunken creature who had had to be lifted into a cab and who had spent two nights in the apartment of a woman of the street. He began to look at himself with so deep a humiliation and disgust that the mere thought of his ever again holding Betty in his arms seemed outrageous. And having by stages, made conceivable by the condition of his health and the strain that had been put upon him by all the things that had happened since his return from England, come up to this morbid and hyperconscientious point in his self-condemnation, he stood up suddenly, obsessed by a new and appalling thought. He said to himself: "I'm not only unworthy of Betty, I'm unclean, and so unfit to live." And having seized at that with the avidity and even triumph that comes with a sudden disorder of the understanding, he began to dramatize his death--to ask himself how to make it most effective. And then his father entered his thoughts. "Ah!"

he cried inwardly. "Father--it's _father_ who is responsible--it's _father_ who must be made to pay! I'm his eldest son. He's very proud of me. He shall come into the room to-night in which he spends all his time for the benefit of other men's sons and find the one he neglected lying dead on the floor. That's it! Now I've got it! There's a hideous irony about this that'll sink even into his curious mind. I'd like to be able to see his face when he finds me. There'd be just a little satisfaction in that."

If only Graham could have come back at that moment, or the little mother to put her arms round that poor, big, over-sensitive, uninitiated lad and bring him out of his mental dejection with her love and warmth!

There was a revolver somewhere among his things. He had bought it when he went camping during one of his vacations from Harvard. He hadn't seen it for several years. With feverish haste he inst.i.tuted a search, going through one drawer after another, flinging his collars and socks and all his personal things aside, talking in a half-whisper to himself, until, with a little cry of glee, he found it with a box of cartridges. And then, with the most scrupulous care he loaded it, slipped it into his pocket and crept out of the room and downstairs. The door of the drawing-room was ajar. He heard laughter and the intermingling of voices, heard some one say "Good-bye." He dodged quickly past, through the library and into the room in which he had last stood with his hand on the shaking shoulders of his father. _He_ would give him something to weep about this time,--yes, by jove, he would! _He_ would make him wake up at last to the fact that his sons were human beings and needed to be treated as such!

He welcomed the fact that away in the distance a storm had broken with the deep artillery of thunder, and that already heavy rain was swishing down on the city. It fitted into his half-maddened mood.

He shut the door. He walked quickly about the room, speculating as to the most effective place to be found outstretched. He had a decision and then, so that there might be no loop-hole for his father, sat down to write a final indictment.

Time fled away. He covered page after page of note paper, pouring out all his soul, making a great appeal for the right treatment of Graham and his sisters, and finally signed his name, having scrawled in his large round writing, "This is my protest."

The storm had come nearer. Outbursts of thunder rolled over the house followed by stabs of lightning.

He then deliberately placed himself on the chosen spot, c.o.c.ked the trigger and put the cold barrel of the revolver to his temple.

There was a sort of scream.

Peter swung round, with his nerves jangling like a wire struck suddenly with a stick.

There stood his father, unable to form a sentence, his face grey, his eyes distended and his arms thrown out in front of him.

XIX

Peter was angry, like a child disturbed just at the moment when he was planning a surprise.

"Why couldn't you have come in five minutes later?" he cried out, with queer petulance.

The Doctor tottered forward and peered into his son's face. "Why were you going to do that? Tell me, tell me!"

"You'd have found it all there," said Peter, pointing to the pages which he had left on the desk. "Not very nice reading, I can a.s.sure you. But if you want me to tell you instead, I will. And then you can see how a man dies, instead of finding him dead. Perhaps this is the best way, after all."

He went to the door and locked it, still holding the revolver. The sight of his father did not stir any pity or sympathy in his heart. On the contrary, it added to the fever that had attacked his brain and acted as an irritant. He went back and stood in front of the grey man. There was an expression of contempt on his altered face. The pattering of heavy rain against the windows seemed to please him. Nature, like himself, seemed to have burst into open protest.

"Sit down," he said.

The Doctor obeyed. The blaze in his son's eyes contradicted his unnatural calmness. He had to deal with temporary madness. He could see that, and he was chilled with a sense of impending danger in which the most poignant solicitude was mixed.

"Now," said Peter, weighing his words with odd deliberation, "you're going to hear something that'll shake you out of your smug self-complacency and your pitiful belief that everything is all right in this house--You're a good man, a better man than the average father.

There's nothing in your life that isn't to your credit. Even since you had children you've worked like a dog to give them a better education than you had, and you've gone without things to provide us with money and make things easy. We all know that and we're grateful. We all know that we ought to be proud of you as a doctor--as a man who has made discoveries and added to the scientific knowledge of your profession.

Well, we _are_ proud of you. But in the last words that you'll hear me speak I'm going to tell you what you've failed to do and why, in spite of all your kindness and unselfishness, not one of your children respects you or loves you, and why I, your eldest son, have got to put an end to myself because of your neglect."

Dr. Guthrie sprang to his feet. The calculated cruelty of this indictment was more than he could endure. "What does this mean? If you don't respect and love me, the others do. In what way have I neglected you?" He stood up to Peter like a man, whipped into sudden anger.

Peter liked that. It meant that he could hit out and put facts into naked words without feeling that he was ill-treating a weakling. "That's what I'm going to tell you," he said. "But there's lots of time and I'm not going to leave anything out. What makes you think the others respect and love you? Do they ever tell you so? Do they ever tell you anything?

Do they ever go out of their way to come in here for a little talk? And if they did come in would you get out of your sh.e.l.l far enough for them to see that you're a human being? Would you meet them half-way in their desire to get something besides your money from you? Have you ever once in your life been sufficiently inspired with a sense of your responsibility as to make you get up and leave your work and come among us to play with our toys and get known? Have you ever once in all the years that we've been growing up been courageous or wise enough to take Graham or me for a walk and tell us _any one_ thing that we ought to know? In what way have you ever neglected us? In the most vital way of all. We could have done without your money and the education that you've been so delighted to give us. We could have done without comfort and servants and good food and easy times. They mean nothing in the sum total of things that count. Most men never have them at the beginning.

They make them. What you've never given us is _yourself_. And we _needed_ you. What you've never given us is common sense. You've been a good father in every inessential way, but no father at all in all that goes to make us men. You've lived in a fool's paradise. You've let us find our own way. You've not given us one human talk--one simple fact--one word of warning. You've utterly neglected us because you're a coward and you've hoped and trusted that others might tell us what you've been afraid to say. Afraid,--to your own flesh and blood,--think of it!" The Doctor cried out again. He realized much of the truth of all this. He had confessed himself to be painfully shy to his wife many times and had spent G.o.d knew how many anxious hours wondering how he could get to know his boys. But it was too much to stand and be whipped by his son.

"There are thousands of fathers who hold my views and act as I have acted," he said.

"And there are so many thousands of sons who have to pay for those views that you and men like you spend your lives in trying to save them."

The Doctor drew in his breath. "Wh--what d'you mean?" he stammered.

"Ah! that gets you, doesn't it? Now you're beginning to see what I'm driving at, don't you? Put your mind back to the night you found Graham here with me. You saved him from forging your name, and that was good.

But what led him up to that? Did you ask yourself? Did you go to Graham and gain his confidence? Did you wonder whether there was a woman behind it all who would never have come into his life if you had dealt by him like a man and a father,--the sort of woman who has made necessary these things round your laboratory and caused you to bend over your experiments for years and years?"

"Good G.o.d! What do you mean?"

Peter raised his voice. "Why should your sons be immune? What have _you_ ever done to render them so? Why am I now standing here with this revolver in my hand? Look at me! A few hours ago I had health and everything in the world that makes life worth living, except a father.

At this moment, because I've never had a father, I'm so terrified that I should be a criminal if I married the girl I love that I'm going to kill myself."

"Why? What have you done?"

"I've been two nights in the bed of the sort of woman whose work you are trying to undo."

The Doctor staggered, and then rose up in his wrath. "_You_ have? You, _my_ son,--with such a mother--with such home influence! You mean to tell me that you've descended to such depths of immorality that you've gone back on everything that your education has made of you? It's unthinkable--unbelievable. You must be a mere animal to have done such a thing."

What else he would have said in his emotion and horror no one can say.

A cry of pain and rage rang out. The injustice of his father's narrow, inhuman point of view, his inability to show him, even by his impending death, that he must wake up to his duty and stand by Graham and his sisters, sent the blood into Peter's fevered brain.

"My G.o.d!" he cried. "You dare to talk like that to me? You dare to kick me in the face after I've told you that I'm ignorant--without listening to my explanation as to how I got into that woman's apartment. All right, then, I'm not going to be the only one to pay. You shall take your share of it. The sins of the children are brought about by the neglect of the fathers, and we'll go and stand together before the Judge to-night for a verdict on that count."

He raised the revolver, aimed it at his father's head, put his finger on the trigger----

There was a blinding flash of lightning. A yellow quivering flame seemed to cut the room in half between the two angry men----

An instant later the Doctor saw Peter standing with both hands over his face. The unfired revolver lay on the table in all its ugliness. And presently, when he had realized what had happened, he went nearer. "G.o.d didn't intend that you should do that," he said. And then his voice broke and he went forward to put his arms round Peter's shoulders. "Give me another chance, my dearest boy!" he cried. "Give me another chance!"

But before he could reach his son the great big hurt boy crumpled and fell in a heap at his feet.

XX