CHAPTER VII
A NEW ERA BEGINS
Bertrand Ballard’s studio was at the top of his house, with a high north window and roughly plastered walls of uncolored sand, left as Bertrand himself had put the plaster on, with his trowel marks over the surface as they happened to come, and the angles and projections thereof draped with cobwebs.
When Peter Junior was able to leave his home and get about a little on his crutches, he loved to come there and rest and spend his idle hours, and Bertrand found pleasure in his companionship. They read together, and sang together, and laughed together, and no sound was more pleasant to Mary Ballard’s ears than this same happy laughter. Peter had sorely missed the companionship of his cousin, for, at the close of the war, no longer a boy and unwilling to be dependent and drifting, Richard had sought out a place for himself in the work of the world.
First he had gone to Scotland to visit his mother’s aunts. There he found the two dear old ladies, sweetly observant of him, willing to tell him much of his mother, who had been scarcely younger than the youngest of them, but discreetly reticent about his father. From this he gathered that for some reason his father was under a cloud. Yet he did not shrink from trying to learn from them all they knew about him, and for what reason they spoke as if to even mention his name was an indiscretion. It was really little they knew, only that he had gravely displeased their nephew, Peter Craigmile, who had brought Richard up, and who was his mother’s twin brother.
“But why did Uncle Peter have to bring me up? You say he quarreled with my father?”
“Weel, ye see, ye’r mither was dead.” It was Aunt Ellen, the elder by twenty years, who told him most about it, she who spoke with the broadest Scotch.
“Was my father a bad man, that Uncle ‘Elder’ disliked him so?”
“Weel now, I’d no say that; he was far from that to be right fair to them both–for ye see–ye’r mither would never have loved him if he’d been that–but he–he was an Irishman, and ye’r Uncle Peter could never thole an Irishman, and he–he–fair stole ye’r mither from us a’–an–” she hesitated to continue, then blurted out the real horror. “Your Uncle Peter kenned he had ance been in the theayter, a sort o’ an actor body an’ he couldna thole that.”
But little was to be gained with all his questioning, and what he could learn seemed no more than that his father had done what any man might be expected to do if some one stood between him and the girl he loved; so Richard felt that there must be something unknown to any one but his uncle that had turned them all against his father. Why had his father never appeared to claim his son? Why had he left his boy to be reared by a man who hated the boy’s father? It was a strange thing to do, and it must be that his father was dead.
At this time Richard was filled with ambitions,–fired by his early companionship with Bertrand Ballard,–and thought he would go to France and become an artist;–to France, the Mecca of Bertrand’s dreams–he desired of all things to go there for study. But of all this he said nothing to any one, for where was the money? He would never ask his uncle for it, and now that he had learned that he had been all his young life really a dependent on the bounty of his Uncle Peter, he could no longer accept his help. He would hereafter make his own way, asking no favors.
The old aunts guessed at his predicament, and offered to give him for his mother’s sake enough to carry him through the first year, but he would not allow them to take from their income to pay his bills. No, he would take his way back to America, and find a place for himself in the new world; seek some active, stirring work, and save money, and sometime–sometime he would do the things his heart loved. He often thought of Betty, the little Betty who used to run to meet him and say such quaint things; some day he would go to her and take her with him. He would work first and do something worthy of so choice a little mortal.
Thus dreaming, after the manner of youth, he went to Ireland, to his father’s boyhood home. He found only distant relatives there, and learned that his father had disposed of all he ever owned of Irish soil to an Englishman. A cousin much older than himself owned and still lived on the estate that had been his grandfather Kildene’s, and Richard was welcomed and treated with openhearted hospitality. But there, also, little was known of his father, only that the peasants on the estate remembered him lovingly as a free-hearted gentleman.
Even that little was a relief to Richard’s sore heart. Yes, his father must be dead. He was sorry. He was a lonely man, and to have a relative who was his very own, as near as a father, would be a great deal. His cousin, Peter Junior, was good as a friend, but from now on they must take paths that diverged, and that old intimacy must naturally change. His sweet Aunt Hester he loved, and she would fill the mother’s place if she could, but it was not to be. It would mean help from his Uncle Peter, and that would mean taking a place in his uncle’s bank, which had already been offered him, but which he did not want, which he would not accept if he did want it.
So, after a long and happy visit at his cousin Kildene’s, in Ireland, he at last left for America again, and plunged into a new, interesting, and vigorous life, one that suited well his energetic nature. He found work on the great railway that was being built across the plains to the Pacific Coast. He started as an engineer’s assistant, but soon his talent for managing men caused his employers to put him in charge of gangs of workmen who were often difficult and lawless. He did not object; indeed he liked the new job better than that he began with. He was more interested in men than materials.
The life was hard and rough, but he came to love it. He loved the wide, sweeping prairies, and, later on, the desert. He liked to lie out under the stars,–often when the men slept under tents,–his gun at his side and his thoughts back on the river bluffs at Leauvite. He did a lot of dreaming and thinking, and he never forgot Betty. He thought of her as still a child, although he was expecting her to grow up and be ready for him when he should return to her. He had a vague sort of feeling that all was understood between them, and that she was quietly becoming womanly, and waiting for him.
Peter Junior might have found other friends in Leauvite had he sought them out, but he did not care for them. His nature called for what he found in Bertrand’s studio, and he followed the desire of his heart regardless of anything else, spending all the time he could reasonably filch from his home. And what wonder! Richard would have done the same and was even then envying Peter the opportunity, as Peter well knew from his cousin’s letters. There was no place in the village so fascinating and delightful as this little country home on its outskirts, no conversation more hopeful and helpful than Bertrand’s, and no welcome sweeter or kinder than Mary Ballard’s.
One day, after Richard had gone out on the plains with the engineers of the projected road, Peter lay stretched on a long divan in the studio, his head supported by his hand as he half reclined on his elbow, and his one crutch–he had long since discarded the other–within reach of his arm. His violin also lay within reach, for he had been playing there by himself, as Bertrand had gone on one of his rare visits to the city a hundred miles away.
Betty Ballard had heard the wail of his violin from the garden, where she had been gathering pears. That was how she knew where to find him when she quickly appeared before him, rosy and flushed from her run to the house and up the long flight of stairs.
As Peter lay there, he was gazing at the half-finished copy he had been making of the head of an old man, for Peter had decided, since in all probability he would be good for no active work such as Richard had taken up, that he too would become an artist, like Bertrand Ballard. To have followed his cousin would have delighted his heart, for he had all the Scotchman’s love of adventure, but, since that was impossible, nothing was more alluring than the thought of fame and success as an artist. He would not tie himself to Leauvite to get it. He would go to Paris, and there he would do the things Bertrand had been prevented from doing. Poor Bertrand! How he would have loved the chance Peter Junior was planning for himself as he lay there dreaming and studying the half-finished copy.
Suddenly he beheld Betty, standing directly in front of the work, extending to him a folded bit of paper. “Here’s a note from your father,” she cried.
Looking upon her thus, with eyes that had been filled with the aged, rugged face on the canvas, Betty appealed to Peter as a lovely vision. He had never noticed before, in just this way, her curious charm, but these months of companionship and study with Bertrand had taught him to see beauty understandingly, and now, as she stood panting a little, with breath coming through parted lips and hair flying almost in the wild way of her childhood, Peter saw, as if it were a revelation, that she was lovely. He raised himself slowly and reached for the note without taking his eyes from her face.
He did not open the letter, but continued to look in her eyes, at which she turned about half shyly. “I heard your violin; that’s how I knew you were up here. Oh! Have you been painting on it again?”
“On my violin? No, I’ve been playing on it.”
“No! Painting on the picture of your old man. I think you have it too drawn out and thin. He’s too hollow there under the cheek bone.”
“Is he, Miss Critic? Well, thank your stars you’re not.”
“I know. I’m too fat.” She rubbed her cheek until it was redder than ever.
“What are you painting your cheeks for? There’s color enough on them as they are.”
She made a little mouth at him. “I could paint your old man as well as that, I know.”
“I know you could. You could paint him far better than that.”
She laughed, quickly repentant. “I didn’t say that to be horrid. I only said it for fun. I couldn’t.”
“And I know you could.” He rose and stood without his crutch, looking down on her. “And you’re not ‘too long drawn out,’ are you? See? You only come up to–about–here on me.” He measured with his hand a little below his chin.
“I don’t care. You’re not so awfully tall.”
“Very well, have it so. That only makes you the shorter.”
“I tell you I don’t care. You’d better stop staring at me, if I’m so little, and read your letter. The man’s waiting for it. That’s why I ran all the way up here.” By this it may be seen that Betty had lost all her awe of the young soldier. Maybe it left her when he doffed his uniform. “Here’s your crutch. Doesn’t it hurt you to stand alone?” She reached him the despised prop.
“Hurt me to stand alone? No! I’m not a baby. Do you think I’m likely to grow up bow-legged?” he thundered, taking it from her hand without a thank you, and glaring down on her humorously. “You’re a bit cruel to remind me of it. I’m going to walk with a cane hereafter, and next thing you know you’ll see me stalking around without either.”
“Why, Peter Junior! I’d be so proud of that crutch I wouldn’t leave it off for anything! I’d always limp a little, even if I didn’t use it. Cruel? I was complimenting you.”
“Complimenting me? How?”
“By reminding you that you had been brave–and had been a soldier–and had been wounded for your country–and had been promoted–and–”
But Peter drowned her voice with uproarious laughter, and suddenly surprised himself as well as her by slipping his arm around her waist and stopping her lips with a kiss.
Betty was surprised but not shocked. She knew of no reason why Peter should not kiss her even though it was not his custom to treat her thus. In Betty’s home, demonstrative expressions of affection were as natural as sunlight, and why should not Peter like her? Therefore it was Peter who was shocked, and embarrassed her with his sudden apology.
“I don’t care if you did kiss me. You’re just like my big brother–the same as Richard is–and he often used to kiss me.” She was trying to set Peter at his ease. “And, anyway, I like you. Why, I supposed of course you liked me–only naturally not as much as I liked you.”
“Oh, more! Much more!” he stammered tremblingly. He knew in his heart that there was a subtle difference, and that what he felt was not what she meant when she said, “I like you.” “I’m sure it is I who like you the most.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t! Why, you never even used to see me. And I–I used to gaze on you–and be so romantic! It was Richard who always saw me and played with me. He used to toss me up, and I would run away down the road to meet him. I wonder when he’s coming back! I wish he’d come. Why don’t you read your father’s letter? The man’s waiting, you know.”
“Ah, yes. And I suppose Dad’s waiting, too. I wonder why he wrote me when he can see me every day!”
“Well, read it. Don’t stand there looking at it and staring at me. Do you know how you look? You look as if it were a message from the king, saying: ‘You are remanded to the tower, and are to have your head struck off at sundown.’ That’s the way they did things in the olden days.” She turned to go.
“Stay here until I see if you are right.” He dropped on the divan and made room for her at his side.
“All right! That’s what I wanted to do, but I thought it wouldn’t be polite to be curious.”
“But you wouldn’t be polite anyway, you know, so you might as well stay. M-m-m. I’m remanded to the tower, sure enough. Father wants me to meet him in the director’s room as soon as banking hours are over. Fine old Dad! He wouldn’t think of infringing on banking hours for any private reasons unless the sky were falling, and even then he would save the bank papers first. See here–Betty–er–never mind. I’ll tell you another time.”
“Please tell me now! What is it? Something dreadful, Peter Junior?”
“I wasn’t thinking about this; it–it’s something else–”
“About what?”
“About you.”
“Oh, then it is no consequence. I want to hear what’s in the letter. Why did you tell me to stay if you weren’t going to tell me what’s in it?”
“Nothing. We have had a little difference of opinion, my father and I, and he evidently wants to settle it out of hand his way, by summoning me in this official manner to appear before him at the bank.”
“I know. He thinks you are idling away your time here trying to paint pictures, and he wishes to make a respectable banker of you.” She reached over and began picking the strings of his violin.
“You musn’t finger the strings of a violin that way.”
“Why not? I want to see if I can pick out ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ on it. I can on the flute, father’s old one; he lets me.”
“Because you’ll get them oily.”
She spread out her two firm little hands. “My fingers aren’t greasy!” she cried indignantly; “that’s pear juice on them.”
Peter Junior’s gravity turned to laughter. “Well, I don’t want pear juice on my strings. Wait, you rogue, I’m going to kiss you again.”
“No, you’re not, you old hobble-de-hoy. You can’t catch me.” When she was halfway down the stairs, she called back, “The man’s waiting.”
“Coward! Coward!” he called after her, “to run away from a poor old cripple and then call him names.” He thrust the letter into his pocket, and seizing his crutch began deliberately and carefully to descend the stairs, with grave, set face, not unlike his father’s.
“Catch, Peter Junior,” called Betty from the top of the pear tree as he passed down the garden path, and tossed him a pear which he caught, then another and another. “There! No, don’t eat them now. Put them in your desk, and next month they’ll be just as sweet!”
“Will they? Just like you? I’ll be even with you yet–when I catch you.”
“You’ll get pear juice on your strings. There are lots of nice girls in the village for you to kiss. They’ll do just as well as me.”
“Good girl. Good grammar. Good-by.” He waved his hand toward Betty, and turned to the waiting servant. “You go on and tell the Elder I’m coming right along,” he said, and hopped off down the road. It was only lately he had begun to take long walks or hops like this, with but one crutch, but he was growing frantic to be fairly on his two feet again. The doctor had told him he never would be, but he set his square chin, and decided that the doctor was wrong. More than ever to-day, with the new touch of little pear-stained fingers on his heart, he wanted to walk off like other men.
Now he tried to use his lame leg as much as possible. If only he might throw away the crutch and walk with a cane, it would be something gained. With one hand in his pocket he crushed his father’s letter into a small wad, then tossed it in the air and caught it awhile, then put it back in his pocket and hobbled on.
The atmosphere had the smoky appearance of the fall, and the sweet haze of Indian summer lay over the landscape, the horizon only faintly outlined through it. Peter Junior sniffed the air. He wondered if the forests in the north were afire. Golden maple leaves danced along on the path before him, whirled hither and thither by the light breeze, and the wild asters and goldenrod powdered his dark trousers with pollen as he brushed them in passing. All the world was lovely, and he appreciated it as he had never been able to do before. Bertrand’s influence had permeated his thoughts and widened thus his reach of happiness.
He entered the bank just at the closing hour, and the staid, faithful old clerks nodded to him as he passed through to the inner room, where he found his father awaiting him. He dropped wearily into a swivel chair before the great table and placed his crutch at his feet; wiping the perspiration from his forehead, he leaned forward, and rested his elbows on the table.
The young man’s wan look, for the walk had taxed his strength, reminded his father of the day he had brought the boy home wounded, and his face relaxed.
“You are tired, my son.”
“Oh, no. Not very. I have been more so.” Peter Junior smiled a disarming smile as he looked in his father’s face. “I’ve tramped many a mile on two sound feet when they were so numb from sheer weariness that I could not feel them or know what they were doing. What did you want to say to me, father?”
“Well, my son, we have different opinions, as you know, regarding your future.”
“I know, indeed.”
“And a father’s counsel is not to be lightly disposed of.”
“I have no intention of doing so, father.”
“No, no. But wait. You have been loitering the day at Mr. Ballard’s? Yes.”
“I have nothing else to do, father,–and–” Peter Junior’s smile again came to the rescue. “It isn’t as though I were in doubtful company–I–there are worse places here in the village where I might–where idle men waste their time.”
“Ah, yes. But they are not for you–not for you, my son.” The Elder smiled in his turn, and lifted his brows, then drew them down and looked keenly at his son. The afternoon sunlight streamed through the high western window and fell on the older man’s face, bringing it into strong relief against the dark oak paneling behind him, and as Peter Junior looked on his father he received his second revelation that day. He had not known before what a strong, fine old face his father’s was, and for the second time he surprised himself, when he cried out:–
“I tell you, father, you have a magnificent head! I’m going to make a portrait of you just as you are–some day.”
The Elder rose with an indignant, despairing downward motion of the hands and began pacing the floor, while Peter Junior threw off restraint and laughed aloud. The laughter freed his soul, but it sadly irritated the Elder. He did not like unusual or unprecedented things, and Peter Junior was certainly not like himself, and was acting in an unprecedented manner.
“You have now regained a fair amount of strength and have reached an age when you should think seriously of what you are to do in life. As you know, it has always been my intention that you should take a place here and fit yourself for the responsibilities that are now mine, but which will some day devolve on you.”
Peter Junior raised his hand in protest, then dropped it. “I mean to be an artist, father.”
“Faugh! An artist? Look at your friend, Bertrand Ballard. What has he to live on? What will he have laid by for his old age? How has he managed to live all these years–he and his wife? Miserable hand-to-mouth existence! I’ll see my son trying to emulate him! You’ll be an artist? And how will you support a wife if you ever have one? You mean to marry some day?”
“I mean to marry Betty Ballard,” said Peter Junior, with a rugged set of his jaw.
Again the Elder made that despairing downward thrust with his open hands. “Take a wife who has nothing, and a career which brings in nothing, and live on what your father has amassed for you, and leave your sons nothing–a pretty way for you to carry on the work I have begun for you–to–establish an honorable family–”
“Father, father, I mean to do all I can to please you. I’ll be always dutiful–and honorable–but you must leave me my manhood. You must allow me to choose my own path in life.”
The Elder paced the floor a few moments longer, then resumed his chair opposite his son, and, leaning back, looked across the table at his boy, meditatively, with half-closed eyes. At last he said, “We’ll take this matter to the Lord, and leave it in his hands.”
Then Peter Junior cried out upon him: “No, no, father; spare me that. It only means that you’ll state to the Lord what is your own way, and pray to have it, and then be more than ever convinced that it is the Lord’s way.”
“My son, my son!”
“It’s so, father. I’m willing to ask for guidance of the Lord, but I’m not willing to have you dictate to the Lord what–what I must do, and so whip me in line with the scourge of prayer.” Peter Junior paused, as he looked in his father’s face and saw the shocked and sorrowful expression there instead of the passionate retort he expected. “I am wrong to talk so, father; forgive me; but–have patience a little. God gave to man the power of choice, didn’t he?”
“Certainly. Through it all manner of evil came into the world.”
“And all manner of good, too. I–a man ought not to be merely an automaton, letting some one else always exercise that right for him. Surely the right of choice would never have been given us if it were not intended that each man should exercise it for himself. One who does not is good for nothing.”
“There is the command you forget; that of obedience to parents.”
“But how long–how long, father? Am I not man enough to choose for myself? Let me choose.”
Then the Elder leaned forward and faced his son as his son was facing him, both resting their elbows on the table and gazing straight into each other’s eyes; and the old man spoke first.
“My father founded this bank before I was born. He came from Scotland when he was but a lad, with his parents, and went to school and profited by his opportunities. He was of good family, as you know. When he was still a very young man, he entered a bank in the city as clerk, and received only ten dollars a week for his services, but he was a steady, good lad, and ambitious, and soon he moved higher–and higher. His father had taken up farming, and at his death, being an only son, he converted the farm, all but the homestead, which we still own, and which will be yours, into capital, and came to town and started this bank. When I was younger than you, my son, I went into the bank and stood at my father’s right hand, as I wish you–for your own sake–to do by me. We are a set race–a determined race, but we are not an insubordinate race, my son.”
Peter Junior was silent for a while; he felt himself being beaten. Then he made one more plea. “It is not that I am insubordinate father, but, as I see it, into each generation something enters, different from the preceding one. New elements are combined. In me there is that which my mother gave me.”
“Your mother has always been a sweet woman, yielding to the judgment of her husband, as is the duty of a good wife.”
“I know she was brought up and trained to think that her duty, but I doubt if you really know her heart. Did you ever try to know it? I don’t believe you understood what I meant by the scourge of prayer. She would have known. She has lived all these years under that lash, even though it has been wielded by the hand of one she loves–by one who loves her.” He paused a second time, arrested by his father’s expression. At first it was that of one who is stunned, then it slowly changed to one of rage. For once the boy had broken through that wall of self-control in which the Elder encased himself. Slowly the Elder rose and leaned towering over his son across the table.
“I tell you that is a lie!” he shouted. “Your mother has never rebelled. She has been an obedient, docile woman. It is a lie!”
Peter Junior made no reply. He also rose, and taking up his crutch, turned toward the door. There he paused and looked back, with flashing eyes. His lip quivered, but he held himself quiet.
“Come back!” shouted his father.
“I have told you the truth, father.” He still stood with his hand on the door.
“Has–has–your mother ever said anything to you to give you reason to insult me this way?”
“No, never. We can’t talk reasonably now. Let me go, and I’ll try to explain some other time.”
“Explain now. There is no other time.”
“Mother is sacred to me, father. I ought not to have dragged her into this discussion.”
The Elder’s lips trembled. He turned and walked to the window and stood a moment, silently looking out. At last he said in a low voice: “She is sacred to me also, my son.”
Peter Junior went back to his seat, and waited a while, with his head in his hands; then he lifted his eyes to his father’s face. “I can’t help it. Now I’ve begun, I might as well tell the truth. I meant what I said when I spoke of the different element in me, and that it is from my mother. You gave me that mother. I know you love her, and you know that your will is her law, as you feel that it ought to be. But when I am with her, I feel something of a nature in her that is not yours. And why not? Why not, father? There is that of her in me that makes me know this, and that of you in me that makes me understand you. Even now, though you are not willing to give me my own way, it makes me understand that you are insisting on your way because you think it is for my good. But nothing can alter the fact that I have inherited from my mother tastes that are not yours, and that entitle me to my manhood’s right of choice.”
“Well, what is your choice, now that you know my wish?”
“I can’t tell you yet, father. I must have more time. I only know what I think I would like to do.”
“You wish to talk it over with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She will agree with me.”
“Yes, no doubt; but it’s only fair to tell her and ask her advice, especially if I decide to leave home.”
The Elder caught his breath inwardly, but said no more. He recognized in the boy enough of himself to know that he had met in him a power of resistance equal to his own. He also knew what Peter Junior did not know, that his grandfather’s removal to this country was an act of rebellion against the wishes of his father. It was a matter of family history he had thought best not to divulge.