The gray shadow over Hiram"s face grew grayer. "But you ought to rest,"
Mrs. Whitney went on. "You and Charles both ought to rest. It"s ridiculous, the way American men act. Now, Charles has never taken a real vacation. When he does go away he has a secretary with him and works all day. But at least he gets change of scene, while you--you rarely miss a day at the mills."
"I haven"t missed a whole day in forty-three years," replied Hiram, "except the day I got married, and I never expect to. I"ll drop in the harness. I"d be lost without it."
"Don"t you think that"s a narrow view of life?" asked Mrs. Whitney.
"Don"t you think we ought all to take time to cultivate our higher natures?"
"What do you mean by higher natures?"
Mrs. Whitney scented sarcasm and insult. To interrogate a glittering generality is to slur its projector; she wished her hearers to be dazzled, not moved to the impertinence of cross-examination. "I think you understand me," she said loftily.
"I don"t," replied Hiram. "I"m only a cooper and miller. I haven"t had the advantages of a higher education"--this last with a steady look toward his son, approaching from the direction of the stables. The young man was in a riding suit that was too correct at every point for good taste, except in a college youth, and would have made upon anyone who had been born, or initiated into, the real mysteries of "good form" an impression similar to that of Mrs. Whitney"s costume and accent and manner. There was the note of the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied--the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all. It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of bra.s.ses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong. The falseness, the absence of the quality called "the real thing," made him bitter and sad. And, when his son joined them and walked up and down with them, he listened with heavier droop of face and form to the affected chatter of the young "man of the world" and the old "_grande dame_" of Chicago society. They talked the language and the affairs of a world he had never explored and had no wish to explore; its code and conduct, his training, his reason and his instinct all joined in condemning as dishonorable shirking of a man"s and woman"s part in a universe so ordered that, to keep alive in it, everyone must either work or steal.
But his boy was delighted with the conversation, with Mrs. Whitney, and, finally, with himself. A long, hard ride had scattered his depression of many weeks into a mere haze over the natural sunshine of youth and health; this haze now vanished. When Mrs. Whitney referred to Harvard, he said lightly, "You know I was plucked."
"Ross told me," said she, in an amused tone; "but you"ll get back all right next fall."
"I don"t know that I care to go," said Arthur. "I"ve been thinking it over. I believe I"ve got about all the good a university can do a man. It seems to me a year or so abroad--traveling about, seeing the world--would be the best thing for me. I"m going to talk it over with father--as soon as he gets through being out of humor with me."
Hiram did not look at his son, who glanced a little uneasily at him as he unfolded this new scheme for perfecting his education as "man of the world."
"Surely your father"s not _angry_" cried Mrs. Whitney, in a tone intended to make Hiram ashamed of taking so narrow, so rural, a view of his son"s fashionable mischance.
"No," replied Hiram, and his voice sounded curt. He added, in an undertone: "I wish I were."
"You"re wrong there, Hiram," said Mrs. Whitney, catching the words not intended for her, and misunderstanding them. "It"s not a case for severity."
Arthur smiled, and the look he gave his father was a bright indication of the soundness of his heart. Severity! The idea was absurd in connection with the most generous and indulgent of fathers. "You don"t get his meaning, Mrs. Whitney," said he. "I, too, wish he were angry. I"m afraid I"ve made him sad. You know he"s got old-fashioned views of many things, and he can"t believe I"ve not really disgraced him and myself."
"Do _you_ believe it?" inquired Hiram, with a look at him as sudden and sharp as the ray of a search light.
"I _know_ it, father," replied Arthur earnestly. "Am I not right, Mrs. Whitney?"
"Don"t be such an old fogy, Hiram," said Mrs. Whitney. "You ought to be thankful you"ve got a son like Arthur, who makes a splendid impression everywhere. He"s the only western man that"s got into exclusive societies at Harvard in years simply on his own merits, and he"s a great favorite in Boston and in New York."
"My children need no one to defend them to me," said Hiram, in what might be called his quiet tone--the tone he had never in his life used without drying up utterly the discussion that had provoked it. Many people had noted the curious effect of that tone and had resolved to defy it at the next opportunity, "just to see what the consequences would be." But when the opportunity had come, their courage had always withered.
"You can"t expect me to be like you, father. You wouldn"t, want it," said Arthur, after the pause. "I must be myself, must develop my own individuality."
Ranger stopped and that stopped the others. Without looking at his son, he said slowly: "I ain"t disputing that, boy. It ain"t the question."
There was tremendousness in his restrained energy and intensity as he went on: "What I"m thinking about is whether I ought to keep on _helping_ you to "develop" yourself, as you call it. That"s what won"t let me rest." And he abruptly walked away.
Mrs. Whitney and Arthur stared after him. "I don"t think he"s quite well, Artie," she said rea.s.suringly. "Don"t worry. He"ll come round all right.
But you ought to be a little more diplomatic."
Arthur was silent. Diplomacy meant deceit, and he hadn"t yet reached the stage of polite and comfortable compromise where deceit figures merely as an amiable convenience for promoting smoothness in human intercourse. But he believed that his father would "come round all right," as Mrs. Whitney had so comfortingly said. How could it be otherwise when he had done nothing discreditable, but, on the contrary, had been developing himself in a way that reflected the highest credit upon his family, as it marched up toward the lofty goal of "cultured" ambition, toward high and secure social station.
Mrs. Whitney, however, did not believe her own statement. In large part her reputation of being a "good, kind sort," like many such reputations, rested on her habit of cheering on those who were going the wrong way and were disturbed by some suspicion of the truth. She had known Hiram Ranger long, had had many a trying experience of his character, gentle as a trade wind--and as steady and unchangeable. Also, beneath her surface of desperate striving after the things which common sense denounces, or affects to denounce, as foolishness, there was a shrewd, practical person. "He means some kind of mischief," she thought--an unreasoned, instinctive conclusion, and, therefore, all-powerful with a woman.
That evening she wrote her daughter not to cut short her visit to get to Saint X. "Wait until Ross is ready. Then you can join him at Chicago and let him bring you."
Just about the hour she was setting down this first result of her instinct"s warning against the danger signal she had seen in Hiram Ranger"s manner, he was delivering a bombsh.e.l.l. He had led in the family prayers as usual and had just laid the Bible on the center-table in the back parlor after they rose from their knees. With his hands resting on the cover of the huge volume he looked at his son. There was a sacrificial expression in his eyes. "I have decided to withdraw Arthur"s allowance," he said, and his voice sounded hollow and distant, as unfamiliar to his own ears as to theirs. "He must earn his own living. If he wants a place at the mills, there"s one waiting for him. If he"d rather work at something else, I"ll do what I can to get him a job."
Silence; and Hiram left the room.
Adelaide was first to recover sufficiently to speak. "O mother," cried she, "you"re not going to allow this!"
To Adelaide"s and Arthur"s consternation, Ellen replied quietly: "It ain"t no use to talk to him. I ain"t lived all these years with your father without finding out when he means what he says."
"It"s so unjust!" exclaimed Adelaide.
There came into Ellen"s face a look she had never seen there before. It made her say: "O mother, I didn"t mean that; only, it does seem hard."
Mrs. Ranger thought so, too; but she would have died rather than have made the thought treason by uttering it. She followed her husband upstairs, saying: "You and Arthur can close up, and put out the lights."
Adelaide, almost in tears over her brother"s catastrophe, was thrilled with admiration of his silent, courageous bearing. "What are you going to do, Artie?"
This incautious question drew his inward ferment boiling to the surface.
"He has me down and I"ve got to take his medicine," said the young man, teeth together and eyes dark with fury.
This she did not admire. Her first indignation abated, as she sat on there thinking it out. "Maybe father is nearer right than we know," she said to herself finally. "After all, Arthur will merely be doing as father does. There"s _something_ wrong with him, and with me, too, or we shouldn"t think that so terrible." But to Arthur she said nothing.
Encourage him in his present mood she must not; and to try to dissuade him would simply goad him on.
CHAPTER IV
THE SHATTERED COLOSSUS
That night there was sleep under Hiram Ranger"s roof for Mary the cook only. Of the four wakeful ones the most unhappy was Hiram himself, the precipitator of it all. Arthur had the consolation of his conviction that his calamity was unjust; Adelaide and her mother, of their conviction that in the end it could not but be well with Arthur. For Hiram there was no consolation. He reviewed and re-reviewed the facts, and each time he reached again his original conclusion; the one course in repairing the mistakes of the boy"s bringing up was a sharp rightabout. "Don"t waste no time gettin" off the wrong road, once you"re sure it"s wrong," had been a maxim of his father, and he had found it a rule with no exceptions. He appreciated that there is a better way from the wrong road into the right than a mad dash straight across the stumpy fields and rocky gullies between. That rough, rude way, however, was the single way open to him here. Whenever it had become necessary for him to be firm with those he loved, it had rarely been possible for him to do right in the right way; he had usually been forced to do right in the wrong way--to hide himself from them behind a manner of cold and silent finality, and, so, to prevent them from forming an alliance and a junction of forces with the traitor softness within him. Besides, gentle, roundabout, gradual measures would require time--delay; and he must "put his house in order"
forthwith.
Thus, even the consolation that he was at least doing right was denied him. As he lay there he could see himself harshly forcing the bitter medicine upon his son, the cure for a disease for which he was himself responsible; he could see his son"s look and could not deny its justice.
"I reckon he hates me," thought Hiram, pouring vitriol into his own wounds, "and I reckon he"s got good cause to."
But there was in the old miller a Covenanter fiber tough as ironwood.
The idea of yielding did not enter his head. He accepted his sufferings as part of his punishment for past indulgence and weakness; he would endure, and go forward. His wife understood him by a kind of intuition which, like most of our insight into the true natures of those close about us, was a gradual permeation from the one to the other rather than clear, deliberate reasoning. But the next morning her sore and anxious mother"s heart misread the gloom of his strong face into sternness toward her only son.
"When did you allow to put the boy to work, father?" she finally said, and her tone unintentionally made Hiram feel more than ever as if he had sentenced "the boy" to hard labor in the degradation and disgrace of a chain gang.
As he waited some time for self-control before answering, she thought her inquiry had deepened his resentment. "Not that I don"t think you"re right, maybe," she hastened to add, "though"--this wistfully, in a feminine and maternal subtlety of laying the first lines for sapping and mining his position--"I often think about our life, all work and no play, and wonder if we oughtn"t to give the children the chance we never had."
"No good never came of idleness," said Hiram, uncompromisingly, "and to be busy about foolishness is still worse. Work or rot--that"s life."
"That"s so; that"s so," she conceded. And she was sincere; for that was her real belief, and what she had hinted was a mere unthinking repet.i.tion of the shallow, comfortable philosophy of most people--those "go easys"
and "do nothings" and "get nowheres" wherewith Saint X and the surrounding country were burdened. "Still," she went on, aloud, "Arthur hasn"t got any bad habits, like most of the young men round here with more money than"s good for them."