Part 11 (1/2)
”Don't you think you 'd better go in, so as not to take cold?”
”Oh, I don't care if I do take cold.” The speech sounded rude. Elizabeth looked at him in surprise.
”What 's the matter with you?” she asked.
”I 'm mad; that 's what 's the matter.”
”Oh, Fred, you should n't get mad: you know it 's wrong.”
He put up his hand as if she had struck him. ”Wrong! wrong! It seems I can't hear anything else but that word. Everything is wrong. Don't say any more about it. I don't want to hear the word again.”
Elizabeth did not know what to make of his words, so she said nothing, and for a while they stood in strained silence. After a while he said, ”Aunt Hester wants me to be a preacher.”
”I am so glad to hear that,” she returned. ”I think you 'll make a good one.”
”You too!” he exclaimed, resentfully. ”Why should I make a good one?
Why need I be one at all?”
”Oh, because you 're smart, and then you 've always been good.”
The young man was suddenly filled with disdain. His anger returned. He felt how utterly out of accord he was with every one else. ”Don't you think there is anything else required besides being 'smart' and 'good'?”
He himself would have blushed at the tone in which he said this, could he have recognised it. ”I 'm smart because I happened to pa.s.s all my examinations. I got through the high school at eighteen: nearly everyone does the same. I 'm good because I have never had a chance to be bad: I have never been out of Aunt Hester's sight long enough. Anybody could be good that way.”
”But then older people know what is best for us, Fred.”
”Why should they? They don't know what 's beating inside of us away down here.” The boy struck his breast fiercely. ”I don't believe they do know half the time what is best, and I don't believe that G.o.d intends them to know.”
”I would n't talk about it, if I were you. I must go in. Won't you come in with me?”
”Not to-night,” he replied. ”I must be off.”
”But papa might give you some advice.”
”I 've had too much of it now. What I want is room to breathe in once.”
”I don't understand you.”
”I know you don't; n.o.body does, or tries to. Go in, Lizzie,” he said more calmly. ”I don't want you to catch cold, even if I do. Good-night.”
And he turned away.
The girl stood for a moment looking after him; her eye was moist. Then she pouted, ”Fred 's real cross to-night,” and went in.
It is one of the glaring sarcasms of life to see with what complacency a shallow woman skims the surface of tragedy and thinks that she has sounded the depths.
Fred continued his walk towards home. He was thinking. It ran in him that Elizabeth was a good deal of a fool; and then he felt horrified with himself for thinking it. It did not occur to him that the hard conditions through which he had come had made him mentally and spiritually older than the girl. He was thinking of his position, how perfectly alone he stood. Most of the people whom he knew would see only blind obstinacy in his refusal to be a minister. But were one's inclinations nothing? Was there really nothing in the ”call” to preach?
So he pondered as he walked, and more and more the hopelessness of his predicament became revealed to him. All his life had been moulded by this one woman's hands. Would not revolt now say to the world, ”I am grown now; I do not need this woman who has toiled. I can disobey her with impunity; I will do so.”
He went home, and before going in leaned his head long upon the gate and thought. A listless calm had succeeded his storm of pa.s.sion. He went in and to bed.