The Sins of the Children Part 34

For three weeks Peter's bedroom was the one room in the house to which the eyes of all the family were wholly turned. There, in the dark, he lay a victim to an attack of brain fever. Never in a condition of great danger, poor old Peter was ill and the Doctor, who, better than the rest, knew that death has many doors through which life goes out, eyed the specialist who had been called in with pathetic eagerness.

The little mother and Belle were joined at once by Betty, and the three women sat very close together, speaking and even thinking in whispers during the first two days. To the one whose first child he was and the one who waited to be his wife, Peter meant everything good that life had for them, and in their terror that he might be taken away their imaginations ran ahead, as they always do in moments of such poignant anxiety, and they were afraid to look out of the window in case they should see Death, the black camel, kneeling at the gate.

While the shadow seemed to rest on his house, Dr. Guthrie did many things. First of all he went over all the terrible words that Peter had said to him that bad and unforgettable night. With great humbleness and deep emotion he accepted them as the truth. He sat for hours at his desk with his hands over his face and tears leaking through his fingers.

Metaphorically he placed his old hard-working, concentrated self in the criminal stand and his new startled, humbled and ashamed self in the Judge's seat and summed up his life as a father. It was very plain that he had failed in his duty to his boys. He had made no great effort to conquer that queer shyness which had affected him from the beginning. He had allowed his children to grow up to regard him as Bluebeard. He had thrown upon his wife's slight shoulders all the onus of the responsibility for the human development of their characters, and because she had succeeded while they were young he had, like a coward, neglected to step in and take upon himself his obvious duty when they had grown old enough to need more--much more--than the soft guiding hand of a mother. He had allowed them to make an early start,--the girls, as well as the boys,--without understanding the vital necessity of duty and discipline which he alone could inspire in them, because no man or woman in all the country, in any school or college, gave a single thought to either. He had hidden behind a hundred weak and foolish excuses in order to avoid the so-called difficulties of speaking manfully to these two embryo men. He had permitted them to grow out of boyhood without giving them the benefit of his own uninitiated struggles, or the simple warnings and facts which take the glamour away from temptation and make straight ways easy. He "took chances," and hoped that some one else might by accident give them the facts of s.e.x or that they would find them out themselves, as other young men were obliged to do,--never mind how.

Remorse and regret made h.e.l.l for this man in those honest hours,--this good, exemplary, distinguished, self-made man whose name would live by his professional efforts and scientific discoveries and who had succeeded in everything except as a father.

And then he called Graham into his room, and sitting knee to knee with his second son, was brave enough to tell him wherein he now knew that he had failed and asked of him, as he had asked of Peter, for another chance. It was a pathetic and emotional talk that these two had, during which both told the truth, hiding nothing, reserving nothing. The outcome of it was good for them both, as well as for Peter. They went together to see Nellie Pope and heard from her lips, to the Doctor's unspeakable thankfulness, that Peter was in no danger from her. From that time onwards that little, kind, wretched girl became one of the Doctor's patients in the proper hospital, eventually to be placed by him at work which rendered the need for her following her chosen profession unnecessary.

And finally the day came when Peter was able to receive visitors, and a very good day it was. The little mother went in first--she had the right. Peter was sitting in his dressing-gown by the window. To his intense relief he had just pa.s.sed through the hands of a barber, whom he had asked to make him look a little less like a poet. He turned his head quickly towards the door as his mother went in. His old high spirits had returned. The sun was s.h.i.+ning and life looked very good. His imagination made him as well aware of the fact that his mother had been through some of the most anxious hours of her life as though he had seen her sitting in her room below with a drawn white face and her hands clasped together. He got up and went to meet her. He took her in his arms and held her very tight. What they said to each other was far too sacred to put into cold print. They spoke in undertone, because the trained nurse kept a jealous eye upon her patient and moved in and out of the dressing-room adjoining. The interview was not allowed to be a long one.

The last thing that Peter said to his mother made her very happy. "I think that the Governor and I are pals," he said. "I think we've found each other at last. Isn't that just about the best thing you ever heard?"

In the afternoon Belle was allowed in. To his great relief she told him in her characteristic, concise way, how she felt about Kenyon. He caught her young, she said--marvellously young, "and if he should ever come back to New York all he'll get from me will be two fingers. I've quite recovered. So you may take that line out of your forehead, old boy. One of these days when you're out and about again we'll walk about four times round the reservoir and I'll tell you something of what's been going through my mind while you've been ill. In fact, we'll have a very substantial pow-wow about Nicholas Kenyon, and I don't think we shall leave him quite as immaculate as he usually is by the time we've finished, do you?"

"No," said Peter, "I don't. All the same, I'm grateful to him for one thing. He has brought father out of his sh.e.l.l,--that's about the best thing he ever did in his life."

There was something amusing as well as touching in the way in which the two brothers met again. It was the next morning early. Peter was still in bed, with his hair all frowzled and the remains of sleep still in the corners of his eyes. Graham had ten minutes before he was obliged to leave the house to go downtown.

"h.e.l.lo, old sport!" said Graham.

"h.e.l.lo, sonnie! Rather a hot thing in ties, that, eh?"

Graham cleared his throat and put his hand rather self-consciously to the black-and-white effect newly designed by his pet firm of haberdashers. "I think it'll make the senior partner blink all right,"

he said. "How d'you feel this morning?"

Peter showed his teeth. "I'm sitting up and taking nourishment. Probably before the end of the week you'll see me in shorts and a zephyr sprinting round the park before breakfast."

"I'd like to," said Graham, and he held out his hand.

Peter took it and gave it a scrunch which had in it nothing of the invalid. "Give my love to the subway," he said, "and my kind regards to Wall Street."

Graham grinned, waved his hand and left the room. He found it necessary to blow his nose rather hard on his way down-stairs. "Oh, Gee!" he said to himself. "Oh, Gee! Only think if Peter had--" He didn't allow himself to finish the thought.

And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came together--the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door, inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time.

"My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're almost strangers."

But Betty shook her head. "No," she said. "No. There hasn't been one moment during all this time that I haven't been with you."

And Peter nodded. "That's dead true," he said.

And then they sat down very close together and the things they said to each other are lost to the world, because we joined the nurse in the next room and shut the door.

XXI

It happened that the anniversary of Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie's wedding day,--they had been married twenty-eight years,--fell on a Sunday that year.

The night before, at dinner, the little mother, thankful and happy at having Peter back again at the table, asked a favour. In having to ask it, instead of simply saying that she desired her children to go with her to church the next morning, she proved her knowledge of the fact that she had joined the ranks of mothers whose children have outgrown them.

Mrs. Guthrie was, however, one of those rather rare women who had grown old gracefully. The hand of time, whose natural treatment she had made no sort of endeavor to combat, had added to her beauty. Optimism, a steady faith in G.o.d and His goodness, and the usual gift of accepting whatever came to her without kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks, had mellowed her. It was without any of the spirit of martyrdom that cakes the nature of those women who have not been able to acquire the best sort of philosophy that she frankly made this very natural and easily fulfilled desire a favour. Peter was well again and she wanted to kneel before the altar of the Great Father and give thanks, surrounded by her children, on the anniversary of the day that made her a wife.

The family had grown out of the habit of going to church,--Belle was tired, as a rule, after a late Sat.u.r.day night, Graham was an inveterate week-ender, Ethel was a modernist, and Peter played golf,--and so, when they all agreed without any argument the little mother was almost as surprised as she was delighted.

The conspiracy of silence which the family had tacitly agreed upon during their recent trouble, in order to spare her from unhappiness, left Mrs. Guthrie wholly without any knowledge of the fact that they were all glad of an excuse to join her in church, because they all felt a curious eagerness to listen to the simple, beautiful service with which they had grown up and to kneel once more--more humbly and sincerely than ever before--in the house of the G.o.d who had been instrumental in their various escapes.

It would have been better if Mrs. Guthrie had not been so carefully s.h.i.+elded--if she had been made to share with the Doctor the blame,--at any rate for the mistakes which the two girls had made,--from the fact that she had let go the reins of duty and discipline with which she had held them in their early years and given them their heads--if she had been strong enough and wise enough to maintain over Belle and Ethel, without autocratically putting a stop to their having "a good time," the authority of respect, won by love and the exercise of sympathy and common sense--if, in short, she had not been content to slip into a position that allowed these high-spirited girls to say to themselves quite so early in their lives, "Oh, poor, dear little mother doesn't understand. She doesn't know anything that modern girls have to go through." She was s.h.i.+elded because it was understood that she was a sort of sleeping partner--not an active member of the firm. She was regarded as being so sweet and soft and old-fas.h.i.+oned that she couldn't possibly appreciate the conditions of the times in which the girls lived. Their early positions had become reversed. It was the girls who mothered their mother.

It was a strangely silent party that returned home that Sunday morning, headed by the Doctor and the little mother. Betty had been invited by Mrs. Guthrie to join them and was to stay to lunch. It was while they were in the hall, and just as Betty had gone upstairs with Mrs. Guthrie, that the Doctor turned quickly. "I want you all to come to my room," he said. "I won't keep you more than a few moments," and led the way.

Wondering what was going to happen, but taking trouble to avoid catching each other's eyes, Peter, Graham, Belle and Ethel followed their father across the library into the room which, for the two boys, had a.s.sociations that they were never likely to forget, and for the two girls had hitherto been a place to avoid.

As soon as they were in the room the Doctor shut the door and, from force of habit, went over to his desk. With one thin hand on it, and with a shaft of winter sun on a face that was very lined and pale he stood there for a moment in silence. His lips trembled a little, but there was a look in his eyes behind those strong gla.s.ses that his children had never seen before.

"Peter, Graham, Belle and my little Ethel," he said brokenly, "I'm going to ask you all, on a day that means a great deal to your mother and to me, and so to you, to forgive me for not having been all that I ought to have been to you I know that I've failed in my duty as a father. You have always been my most precious possessions and it is for you that I've worked so hard and so closely, but because of all that I went through as a child and because I never struggled as I ought to have done to overcome a foolish shyness that has made me self-conscious, you and I have never been friends--have never understood each other. I take all the blame for whatever you have done that has made you suffer and of which you are ashamed. Very humbly, I stand before you now and ask you, as I asked Peter, here, in this room, to give me another chance. Let's make a new beginning from to-day, with the knowledge that I love you better than anything in the world. I want you all to meet me half-way in future, to look upon me no longer as the shy, unsympathetic, unapproachable man who, by accident, is your father, but as your closest and most intimate friend whose best and dearest wish is to help you and listen to your worries and give you all the advice in his power. I want this room to be the place to which you'll always come with the certain knowledge that you'll be welcomed by me with the greatest eagerness and delight. Don't let there be anything from to-day onwards that you can't tell me. Promise me that. I--I've told myself two or three times that it's too late for me to be of any use to you--that having failed I could never repair my mistake or ever hope to win your confidence and friends.h.i.+p."

His voice broke so badly that he was unable to speak, and the painfulness of this strange little scene was almost more than those young people could bear. It hurt them enough to stand facing a man who opened his soul for them to gaze into, especially when that man was their father. It was dreadful to see him blinded by tears in the middle of an appeal which they all realized called for such extreme courage and strength of character to make.

They all wanted to do something to help him and force him out of a humbleness that made them horribly self-conscious. It was Peter who did it. With two strides he stood at the Doctor's side and put his arms round his shoulder.

The Doctor looked up into the face of the great big, tender fellow, whose eyes were eloquent, and smiled. Then he found his voice again and forced himself to the bitter end of what he had determined to say.

"Something in the way you've all treated me since Peter has been ill,"

he said, "has given me hope. That's why I put myself in your hands, my dears. Shall we make a new beginning? Will you take me into your friends.h.i.+p? Will you all give me another chance?"

With a little cry from her heart Belle went forward and put her arms round her father's neck, and Ethel, with hot tears running down her face, crept up to him and put one of his hands to her lips. Graham bent over the other, which he held tight, and Peter, who had longed for this moment through all his illness, didn't give a curse who heard his voice break, patted the Doctor on the back, and said: "Dear old man, my dear old father!" over and over again.

THE END