Robert Hardy's Seven Days Part 7

She looked grieved, and he said:

"Can't help it; I'm not hungry. Besides, I don't deserve all this attention. Say, Bess, is father still acting under his impression, or dream, or whatever it was?"

"Yes, he is," replied Bessie, with much seriousness; "and he is ever so good now, and kisses mother and all of us good-bye in the morning; and he is kind and ever so good. I don't believe he is in his right mind.

Will said yesterday he thought father was _non campus meant us_; and then he wouldn't tell me what it meant; but I guess he doesn't think father is just right intellectually."

Now and then Bess got hold of a big word and used it for all it would bear. She said "intellectually" over twice, and George laughed a little; but it was a bitter laugh, not such as a boy of his age has any business to possess. He lay down and appeared to be thinking, and, after a while, said aloud:

"I wonder if he wouldn't let me have some money while he's feeling that way?"

"Who?" queried Bess. "Father?"

"What! you here still, Curiosity? Better take these things downstairs!"

George spoke with his "headache tone," as Clara called it, and Bess, without reply, gathered up the tray things and went out, while George continued to figure out in his hardly yet sober brain the possibility of his father letting him have more money with which to gamble.

In the very next room Mrs. Hardy kneeled in an agony of pet.i.tion for that firstborn son, crying out of her heart, "O G.o.d, it is more than I can bear! To see him growing away from me so! Dear Lord, be Thou merciful to me. Bring him back again to the life he used to live! How proud I was of him! What a joy he was to me! And now, and now! O gracious Father, if Thou art truly compa.s.sionate, hear me! Has not this foul demon of drink done harm enough? And yet it still comes, and even into my home! Ah, I have been indifferent to the cries of other women, but now it strikes me! Spare me, great and powerful Almighty!

My boy! my heart's hunger is for him! I would rather see him dead than see him as I saw him last night. Spare me, spare me, O G.o.d!" Thus the mother prayed, dry-eyed and almost despairing, while he for whom she prayed that heart-broken prayer calculated, with growing coldness of mind, the chances of getting more money from his father to use in drink and at the gaming table.

O appet.i.te, and thou spirit of gambling, ye are twin demons with whom many a fair-browed young soul to-day is marching arm in arm down the dread pavement of h.e.l.l's vestibule, lined with grinning skeletons of past victims! Yet men gravely discuss the probability of evil, and think there is no special danger in a little speculation now and then.

Parents say, "Oh, _my_ boy wouldn't do such a thing!" But how many know what their boy is really doing, and how many of the young men would dare reveal to their mothers or fathers the places where they have been, and the amus.e.m.e.nts they have tasted, and the things for which they have spent their money?

Mr. Hardy went at once to his neighbours, the Caxtons, who lived only a block away. He had not been on speaking terms with the family for some time, and he dreaded the interview with the sensitiveness of a very proud and stern-willed man. But two days had made a great change in him. He was a new man in Christ Jesus; and as he rang the bell he prayed for wisdom and humility.

James himself came to the door with his overcoat on and hat in hand, evidently just ready to go down town. He started back at seeing Mr.

Hardy.

"Are you going down town? I will not come in then, but walk along with you," said Mr. Hardy quietly.

So James came out, and the two walked along together. There was an awkward pause for a minute, then Mr. Hardy said:

"James, is it true that you and Clara are engaged?"

"No, sir; that--is--not exactly what you might call engaged. We would like to be." Mr. Hardy smiled in spite of himself; and James added in a quickened tone: "We would like to be, with your consent, sir."

Mr. Hardy walked on thoughtfully, and then glanced at the young man at his side. He was six feet tall, not very handsome, as Bessie had frankly said, but he had a good face, a steady, clear blue eye, and a resolute air, as of one who was willing to work hard to get what he wanted. Mr. Hardy could not help contrasting him with his own prematurely broken down son George, and he groaned inwardly as he thought of the foolish pride that would bar the doors of his family to a young man like James Caxton simply because he was poor and because his father had won in a contested election in which the two older men were candidates for the same office.

It did not take long to think all this. Then he said, looking again at the young man with a businesslike look:

"Supposing you had my permission, what are your prospects for supporting my daughter? She has always had everything she wanted.

What could you give her?"

The question might have seemed cold and businesslike. The tone was thoughtful and serious.

A light flashed into James' eyes, but he said simply: "I am in a position to make a thousand dollars a year next spring. I earn something extra with my pen at home."

Mr. Hardy did not reply to this. He said: "Do you know what a wilful, quick-tempered girl Clara is?"

"I have known her from a little child, Mr. Hardy. I feel as if I know her about as well as you do."

"Perhaps you know her better than I do; I do not know my child as I should."

The tone was not bitter but intensely sad. The young man had, of course, been greatly wondering at this talk from Mr. Hardy, and had observed the change in his manner and his speech. He looked at him now and noted his pale, almost haggard face and his extremely thoughtful appearance.

"Mr. Hardy," said James frankly, "you are in trouble. I wish I could"--

"Thank you; no, you can't help me in this--except," continued Mr. Hardy with a faint smile, "except you solve this trouble between you and my daughter."

"There is no trouble between us, sir," replied James simply. "You know I love her and have loved her for a long time, and I believe I am able to support her and make her happy. Won't you give your consent, sir?

We are not children. We know our minds."

James spoke very earnestly. He was beginning to hope that the stern, proud man who had so curtly dismissed him a little while before would in some unaccountable manner relent and give him his heart's desire.

Mr. Hardy walked along in silence a little way. Then he said almost abruptly:

"James, do you drink?"

"No, sir!"

"Or gamble?"

"You forget my mother, Mr. Hardy." The reply was almost stern.

Mrs. Caxton's younger brother had been ruined by gambling. He had come to the house one night, and in a fit of anger because his sister would not give him money to carry on his speculations, he had threatened her life. James had interposed, and at the risk of his own life had probably saved his mother's. Mrs. Caxton had been so unnerved by the scene that her health had suffered from it seriously. All this had happened when James was growing out of boyhood. But not a day had pa.s.sed that the young man did not see a sad result of that great gambling pa.s.sion in his own mother's face and bearing. He loathed the thought of a vice so debasing that it ignored all the tender ties of kindred and was ready to stop at nothing in order to get means for its exercise.

Mr. Hardy knew the story, and he exclaimed: "Forgive me, James, I did not think!" Then, after a pause, "Are you a Christian? I mean, do you have a faith in the revelation of G.o.d to men through Jesus Christ, and do you try to live according to His teachings, with a supreme love for G.o.d controlling your life? Do you live every day as if it might be the last you would have to live?"

James started. Was Mr. Hardy out of his mind? He had never heard him talk like this before. The idea of Mr. Hardy caring about his religious character in the event of his becoming a son-in-law was an idea too remote for occurrence. He could see, however, that some very powerful change had taken place in Mr. Hardy's usual demeanour. His words also produced a strong effect upon the young man. He was like thousands of young men--temperate, honest, industrious, free from vices, strictly moral, but without any decided religious faith. "Am I a Christian?" he asked himself, echoing Mr. Hardy's question. No; he could not say that he was. He had, in fact, never been confronted with the question before. So he replied to Mr. Hardy:

"No, sir; I don't think I am what would be called a Christian. As for living as if every day were to be my last--do you think that is possible, sir?"

Mr. Hardy did not answer. He walked along thoughtfully. In the course of the conversation they had reached the corner where the young man turned down to his office, and the two paused.

"I want to have another talk with you," Mr. Hardy said. "To-day is Tuesday; say to-morrow evening. I want to see your father also, and"--Mr. Hardy was on the point of saying that he wanted to ask the elder Caxton's forgiveness, but for some reason he stopped without doing so.

James exclaimed eagerly as Mr. Hardy turned to go:

"Then you don't forbid my entertaining some hope of your good will in the matter of my love for Clara?" He lowered his voice and spoke very strongly. "You don't forget your own youth, and the way in which you yourself began your home?"

Mr. Hardy answered never a word to this appeal, but looked into the young man's face with a gaze he did not forget all day, then wrung his hand and turned on his heel abruptly and walked rapidly down the street.

James looked after him as he disappeared among the crowds of people going to their business, and then turned to his own tasks. But something in him gave him hope. Another something appealed all day to his inner nature, and he could not shake off the impression of Mr.

Hardy's question--"Are you a Christian?" Even when he went home at night that question pursued him more strenuously than any other, and would not give him peace.

Robert Hardy reached his office just in time to see Burns, the foreman, go out of a side door and cross the yard. The manager followed him and entered the machine shop in time to see him stop at a machine at the farthest end of the shop and speak to the man at work there. The man was a Norwegian, Herman by name. He was running what is called a planer, a machine for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g pieces of cold metal just from the foundry or the casting room. He was at work this morning on one of the eccentric bars of a locomotive, and it was of such a character that he could leave the machine for several minutes to do the planing. Burns talked with this man for a while, and then moved across the floor to another workman, a small-boned, nervous little fellow, who was in charge of a boring machine which drove a steel drill through heavy plates of iron fastened into the frame.

Mr. Hardy came up just as Burns turned away from this man, and touched him on the shoulder. The foreman started and turned about, surprised to see the manager.

"Well, Burns, how goes everything this morning?" asked Robert.