Part 17 (2/2)

Again Hester smiled her slow, wise smile. ”You have always been tender, Peter, but you have always gone right along and done your own way, absolutely. The only reason there has not been more friction between you and your father has been that you have been tactful; also you have never seemed to desire unworthy things. You have been a good son, dear: I am not complaining. And the only reason why I have never--or seldom--felt hurt by your taking your own way has been that my likings have usually responded to yours, and the thing I most desired was that you should be allowed to take your own way. It is good for a man to be decided and to have a way of his own: I have liked it in you. But the matter still stands that it has always been your way and never any one's else that you have taken. I can see you being stern even with a wife you thought you wholly loved if her will once crossed yours.”

Peter Junior was silent and a little hurt. He rose and paced the room.

”I can't think I could ever cross Betty, or be unkind. It seems preposterous,” he said at last.

”Perhaps it might never seem to you necessary. Peter, boy, listen. You say: 'She will be myself--my very own.' Now what does that mean? Does it mean that when you are married, her personality will be merged in yours, and so you two will be one? If so, you will not be completed and rounded out, and she will be lost in you. A man does not reach his full manhood to completion until he has loved greatly and truly, and has found the one who is to complete him. At best, by ourselves, we are never wholly man or wholly woman until this great soul completion has taken place in us. Then children come to us, and our very souls are knit in one, and still the mystery goes on and on; never are we completed by being lost--either one--in the will or nature of the other; but to make the whole and perfect creature, each must retain the individuality belonging to himself or herself, each to each the perfect and equal other half.”

Peter Junior paused in his walk and stood for a moment looking down on his mother, awed by what she revealed to him of her inner nature. ”I believe you have done this, mother. You have kept your own individuality complete, and father doesn't know it.”

”Not yet, but my hand will always be in his, and some day he will know. You are very like him, and yet you understand me as he never has, so you see how our oneness is wrought out in you. That which you have in you of your father is good and strong: never lose it. The day may come when you will be glad to have had such a father. Out in the world men need such traits; but you must not forget that sometimes it takes more strength to yield than to hold your own way. Yes, it takes strength and courage sometimes to give up--and tremendous faith in G.o.d. There! I hear him walking about. Go down and have your talk with him. Remember what I say, dear, and don't get angry with your father.

He loves you, too.”

”Have you said anything to him yet about--me--mother?”

”No. I have decided that it will be better for you to deal with him yourself--courageously. You'll remember?”

Peter Junior took her again in his arms as she rose and stood beside him, and kissed her tenderly. ”Yes, mother. Dear, good, wise mother!

I'll try to remember all. It would have been easier for you, maybe, if ever father's mother had said to him the things you have just said to me.”

”Life teaches us these things. If we keep an open mind, so G.o.d fills it.”

She stood still in the middle of the room, listening to his rapid steps in the direction of the parlor. Then Hester did a thing very unusual for her to do of a Sunday. She put on her shawl and bonnet and walked out to see Mary Ballard.

No one ever knew what pa.s.sed between Peter Junior and his father in that parlor. The Elder did not open his lips about it either at home or at the bank.

That Sunday evening some one saw Peter Junior and his cousin walking together up the bluff where the old camp had stood, toward the sunset.

The path had many windings, and the bluff was dark and brown, and the two figures stood out clear and strong against the sky of gold. That was the last seen of either of the young men in the village. The one who saw them told later that he knew they were ”the twins” because one of them walked with a stick and limped a little, and that the other was talking as if he were very much in earnest about something, for he was moving his arm up and down and gesticulating.

CHAPTER XII

MYSTERIOUS FINDINGS

Monday morning Elder Craigmile walked to the bank with the stubborn straightening of the knees at each step that always betokened irritation with him. Neither of the young men had appeared at breakfast, a matter peculiarly annoying to him. Peter Junior he had not expected to see, as, owing to his long period of recovery, he had naturally been excused from rigorous rules, but his nephew surely might have done that much out of courtesy, where he had always been treated as a son, to promote the orderliness of the household. It was unpardonable in the young man to lie abed in the morning thus when a guest in that home. It was a mistake of his wife to allow Peter Junior a night key. It induced late hours. He would take it from him. And as for Richard--there was no telling what habits he had fallen into during these years of wandering. What if he had come home to them with a clear skin and laughing eye! Was not the ”heart of man deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”? And was not Satan abroad in the world laying snares for the feet of wandering youths?

It was still early enough for many of the workmen to be on their way to their day of labor with their tin dinner pails, and among them Mr.

Walters pa.s.sed him, swinging his pail with the rest, although he was master of his own foundry and employed fifty men. He had always gone early to work, and carried his tin pail when he was one of the workmen, and he still did it from choice. He, too, was a Scotchman of a slightly different cla.s.s from the Elder, it is true, but he was a trustee of the church, and a man well respected in the community.

He touched his hat to the Elder, and the Elder nodded in return, but neither spoke a word. Mr. Walters smiled after he was well past. ”The man has a touch of the indigestion,” he said.

When the Elder entered his front door at noon, his first glance was at the rack in the corner of the hall, where, on the left-hand hook, Peter Junior's coat and hat had hung when he was at home, ever since he was a boy. They were not there. The Elder lifted his bushy brows one higher than the other, then drew them down to their usual straight line, and walked on into the dining room. His wife was not there, but in a moment she entered, looking white and perturbed.

”Peter!” she said, going up to her husband instead of taking her place opposite him, ”Peter!” She laid a trembling hand on his arm. ”I haven't seen the boys this morning. Their beds have not been slept in.”

”Quiet yourself, la.s.s, quiet yourself. Sit and eat in peace. 'Evil communications corrupt good manners,' but when doom strikes him, he'll maybe experience a change of heart.” The Elder spoke in a tone not unkindly. He seated himself heavily.

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