The Uncalled Part 17

"I thank you for this," he said. "It makes my way easier."

CHAPTER XIV

The story of the altercation between the young minister and a part of his congregation was well bruited about the town, and all united in placing the fault heavily on the young man's shoulders. As for him, he did not care. He was wild with the enjoyment of his new-found freedom.

Only now and again, as he sat at the table the morning after, and looked into the sad faces of Eliphalet and his guardian, did he feel any sorrow at the turn matters had taken.

In regard to Elizabeth, he felt only relief. It was as if a half-defined idea in his mind had been suddenly realised. For some time he had believed her unable either to understand him or to sympathise with his motives. He had begun to doubt the depth of his own feeling for her.

Then had come her treatment of him last Sunday, and somehow, while he knew it was at her father's behest, he could not help despising her weakness.

He had spent much of the night before in packing his few effects, and all was now ready for his departure as they sat at breakfast. Mrs.

Hodges was unusually silent, and her haggard face and swollen eyes told how she had pa.s.sed the night. All in a single hour she had seen the work of the best part of her life made as naught, and she was bowed with grief and defeat. Frederick Brent's career had really been her dream.

She had scarcely admitted, even to herself, how deeply his success affected her own happiness. She cared for him in much the same way that a sculptor loves his statue. Her att.i.tude was that of one who says, "Look upon this work; is it not fair? I made it myself." It was as much her pride as it was her love that was hurt, because her love had been created by her pride. She had been prepared to say, exultingly, "Look where he came from, and look where he is;" and now his defection deprived her for ever of that sweet privilege. People had questioned her ability to train up a boy rightly, and she had wished to refute their imputations, by making that boy the wonder of the community and their spiritual leader; and just as she had deemed her work safely done, lo, it had come toppling about her ears. Even if the fall had come sooner, she would have felt it less. It was the more terrible because so unexpected, for she had laid aside all her fears and misgivings and felt secure in her achievement.

"You ain't a-eatin' nothin', Hester," said her husband, anxiously. "I hope you ain't a-feelin' bad this mornin'." He had heard her sobbing all night long, and the strength and endurance of her grief frightened him and made him uneasy, for she had always been so stoical. "Had n't you better try an' eat one o' them buckwheat cakes? Put lots o' b.u.t.ter an'

mola.s.ses on it; they 're mighty good."

"Ef they 're so good, why don't you eat yoreself? You been foolin' with a half a one for the last ten minutes." Indeed, the old man's food did seem to stick in his throat, and once in a while a mist would come up before his eyes. He too had had his dreams, and one of them was of many a happy evening spent with his beloved boy, who should be near him, a joy and comfort in the evening of his life; and now he was going away.

The old man took a deep gulp at his coffee to hide his emotion. It burned his mouth and gave reason for the moisture in his eye when he looked up at Fred.

"What train air you goin' to take, Fred?" he asked.

"I think I 'll catch that eight-fifty flier. It 's the best I can get, you know, and vestibuled through, too."

"You have jest finally made up yore mind to go, have you?"

"Nothing could turn me from it now, Uncle 'Liph."

"It seems like a shame. You 'ain't got nothin' to do down in Cincinnaty."

"I 'll find something before long. I am going to spend the first few days just in getting used to being free." The next moment he was sorry that he had said it, for he saw his guardian's eyes fill.

"I am sorry, Frederick," she said, with some return to her old asperity, "I am sorry that I 've made your life so hard that you think that you have been a slave. I am sorry that my home has been so onpleasant that you 're so powerful glad to git away from it, even to go into a strange city full of wickedness an' sin."

"I did n't mean it that way, Aunt Hester. You 've been as good as you could be to me. You have done your duty by me, if any one ever could."

"Well, I am mighty glad you realise that, so 's ef you go away an' fall into sinful ways you can't lay none of it to my bringin'-up."

"I feel somehow as if I would like to have a go with sin some time, to see what it is like."

"Well, I lay you 'll be satisfied before you 've been in Cincinnaty long, for ef there ever was livin' h.e.l.ls on airth, it 's them big cities."

"Oh, I have got faith to believe that Fred ain't a-goin' to do nothin'

wrong," said Eliphalet.

"n.o.body don't know what n.o.body 's a-goin' to do under temptation sich as is layin' in wait fur young men in the city, but I 'm sh.o.r.e I 've done my best to train you right, even ef I have made some mistakes in my poor weak way an' manner."

"If I do fall into sinful ways, Aunt Hester, I shall never blame you or your training for it."

"But you ain't a-goin' to do it, Fred; you ain't a-goin' to fall into no evil ways."

"I don't know, Uncle 'Liph. I never felt my weakness more than I do now."

"Then that very feelin' will be yore stren'th, my boy. Keep on feelin'

that way."

"It 'll not be a stren'th in Cincinnaty, not by no means. There is too many snares an' pitfalls there to entrap the weak," Mrs. Hodges insisted.

It is one of the defects of the provincial mind that it can never see any good in a great city. It concludes that, as many people are wicked, where large numbers of human beings are gathered together there must be a much greater amount of evil than in a smaller place. It overlooks the equally obvious reasoning that, as some people are good, in the larger ma.s.s there must be also a larger amount of goodness. It seems a source of complacent satisfaction to many to sit in contemplation of the fact of the extreme wickedness of the world. They are like children who delight in a "bluggy" story,--who gloat over murder and rapine.

Brent, however, was in no wise daunted by the picture of evil which his guardian painted for him, and as soon as breakfast was over he got his things in hand ready to start. Buoyant as he was with his new freedom, this was a hard moment for him. Despite the severity of his youthful treatment in Dexter, the place held all the tender recollections he had, and the room where he stood was the scene of some memories that now flooded his mind and choked his utterance when he strove to say good-bye. He had thought that he should do it with such a fine grace. He would prove such a strong man. But he found his eyes suffused with tears, as he held his old guardian's hand, for, in spite of all, she had done the best for him that she knew, and she had taken a hard, uncompromising pride in him.

"I hope you 'll git along all right, Frederick," she faltered forth tearfully. "Keep out of bad company, an' let us hear from you whenever you can. The Lord knows I 've tried to do my dooty by you."

Poor Eliphalet tried to say something as he shook the young man's hand, but he broke down and wept like a child. The boy could not realise what a deal of sunshine he was taking out of the old man's life.

"I 'll write to you as soon as I am settled," he told them, and with a husky farewell hurried away from the painful scene. At the gate the old couple stood and watched him go swinging down the street towards the station. Then they went into the house, and sat long in silence in the room he had so lately left. The breakfast-table, with all that was on it, was left standing unnoticed and neglected, a thing unprecedented in Mrs. Hodges' orderly household.

Finally her husband broke the silence. "It 'pears as if we had jest buried some one and come home from the funeral."

"An' that 's jest what we have done, ef we only knowed it, 'Liphalet. We 've buried the last of the Fred Brent we knowed an' raised. Even ef we ever see him ag'in, he 'll never be the same to us. He 'll have new friends to think of an' new notions in his head."

"Don't say that, Hester; don't say that. I can't stand it. He is never goin' to furgit you an' me, an' it hurts me to hear you talk like that."

"It don't soun' none too pleasant fur me, 'Liphalet, but I 've learned to face the truth, an' that 's the truth ef it ever was told."

"Well, mebbe it 's fur the best, then. It 'll draw us closer together and make us more to each other as we journey down to the end. It 's our evenin', Hester, an' we must expect some chilly winds 'long towards night, but I guess He knows best." He reached over and took his wife's hand tenderly in his, and so they sat on sadly, but gathering peace in the silence and the sympathy, until far into the morning.

Meanwhile the eight-fifty "flier" was speeding through the beautiful Ohio Valley, bearing the young minister away from the town of his birth.

Out of sight of the grief of his friends, he had regained all his usual stolid self-possession, though his mind often went back to the little cottage at Dexter where the two old people sat, and he may be forgiven if his memory lingered longer over the image of the man than of the woman. He remembered with a thrill at his heart what Eliphalet Hodges had been to him in the dark days of his youth, and he confessed to himself with a half shame that his greatest regret was in leaving him.

The feeling with which he had bidden his guardian good-bye was one not of regret at his own loss, but of pity for her distress. To Elizabeth his mind only turned for a moment to dismiss her with a mild contempt.

Something hard that had always been in his nature seemed to have suddenly manifested itself.

"It is so much better this way," he said, "for if the awakening had come later we should have been miserable together." And then his thoughts went forward to the new scenes towards which he was speeding.

He had never been to Cincinnati. Indeed, except on picnic days, he had scarcely ever been outside of Dexter. But Cincinnati was the great city of his State, the one towards which adventurous youth turned its steps when real life was to be begun. He dreaded and yet longed to be there, and his heart was in a turmoil of conflicting emotion as he watched the landscape flit by.

It was a clear August day. Nature was trembling and fainting in the ecstasies of sensuous heat. Beside the railway the trenches which in spring were gurgling brooks were now dry and brown, and the reeds which had bent forward to kiss the water now leaned over from very weakness, dusty and sickly. The fields were ripening to the harvest. There was in the air the smell of fresh-cut hay. The corn-stalks stood like a host armed with brazen swords to resist the onslaught of that other force whose weapon was the corn-knife. Farther on, between the trees, the much depleted river sparkled in the sun and wound its way, now near, now away from the road, a glittering dragon in an enchanted wood.

Such scenes as these occupied the young man's mind, until, amid the shouts of brake-men, the vociferous solicitations of the baggage-man, and a general air of bustle and preparation, the train thundered into the Grand Central Station. Something seized Brent's heart like a great compressing hand. He was frightened for an instant, and then he was whirled out with the rest of the crowd, up the platform, through the thronged waiting-room, into the street.

Then the cries of the eager men outside of "Cab, sir? cab, sir?" "Let me take your baggage," and "Which way, sir?" bewildered him. He did the thing which every provincial does: he went to a policeman and inquired of him where he might find a respectable boarding-house. The policeman did not know, but informed him that there were plenty of hotels farther up. With something like disgust, Brent wondered if all the hotels were like those he saw at the station, where the guests had to go through the bar-room to reach their chambers. He shuddered at it; so strong is the influence of habit. But he did not wish to go to a hotel: so, carrying his two valises, he trudged on, though the hot sun of the mid-afternoon beat mercilessly down upon him. He kept looking into the faces of people who pa.s.sed him, in the hope that he might see in one encouragement to ask for the information he so much wanted; but one and all they hurried by without even so much as a glance at the dusty traveller. Had one of them looked at him, he would merely have said, mentally, "Some country b.u.mpkin come in to see the sights of town and be buncoed."

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of the unknown man in a crowd. A feeling of desolation took hold upon Brent, so he turned down a side-street in order to be more out of the main line of business. It was a fairly respectable quarter; children were playing about the pavements and in the gutters, while others with pails and pitchers were going to and from the corner saloon, where their vessels were filled with foaming beer. Brent wondered at the cruelty of parents who thus put their children in the way of temptation, and looked to see if the little ones were not bowed with shame; but they all strode stolidly on, with what he deemed an unaccountable indifference to their own degradation. He pa.s.sed one place where the people were drinking in the front yard, and saw a mother holding a gla.s.s of beer to her little one's lips. He could now understand the att.i.tude of the children, but the fact, nevertheless, surprised and sickened him.