“Oh, Fred,” said the girl, reproachfully, “is it true that you have been playing baseball?”
“Baseball, yes; what of it? What are you looking so horrified about?”
“Did you think it was right for you, in your position, to play?”
“If I had thought it was wrong I assuredly should not have played,” the young man returned.
“Everybody is talking about it, and father says he thinks you have disgraced your calling.”
“Disgraced my calling by playing an innocent game?”
“But father thinks it is a shame for a man who is preparing to do such work as yours to have people talking about him as a mere ballplayer.”
The blood mounted in hot surges to the young man’s face. He felt like saying, “Your father be hanged,” but he controlled his anger, and said, quietly, “Elizabeth, don’t you ever think for yourself?”
“I suppose I do, Fred, but I have been brought up to respect what my elders think and say.”
“Don’t you think that they, as well as we, can be narrow and mistaken?”
“It is not for me to judge them. My part is to obey.”
“You have learned an excellent lesson,” he returned, bitterly. “That is just the thing: ‘obey, obey.’ Well, I will. I will be a stick, a dolt. I will be as unlike what God intended me to be as possible. I will be just what your father and Aunt Hester and you want me to be. I will let them think for me and save my soul. I am too much an imbecile to attempt to work out my own salvation. No, Elizabeth, I will not play ball any more. I can imagine the horrified commotion it caused among the angels when they looked down and saw me pitching. When I get back to school I shall look up the four Gospels’ views on ball-playing.”
“Fred, I don’t like you when you talk that way.”
“I won’t do that any more, either.” He rose abruptly. “Goodbye, Elizabeth. I am off.” He was afraid to stay, lest more bitter words should come to his lips.
“Goodbye, Fred,” she said. “I hope you understand.”
The young man wondered as he walked homeward if the girl he had chosen was not a little bit prim. Then he thought of her father, and said to himself, even as people would have said of himself, “How can she help it, with such a father?”
All his brightness had been dashed. He was irritated because the thing was so small, so utterly absurd. It was like the sting of a miserable little insect—just enough to smart, and not enough to need a strong remedy. The news of the game had also preceded him home, and his guardian’s opinion of the propriety of his action did not tend to soothe his mind. Mrs. Hodges forcibly expressed herself as follows: “I put baseball-playin’ right down with dancin’ and sich like. It ain’t no fittin’ occupation for anyone that’s a-goin’ into the ministry. It’s idleness, to begin with; it’s a-wastin’ the precious time that’s been given us for a better use. A young man that’s goin’ to minister to people’s souls ought to be consecrated to the work before he begins it. Who ever heerd tell of Jesus playin’ baseball?”
Among a certain class of debaters such an argument is always supposed to be clinching, unanswerable, final. But Mr. Hodges raised his voice in protest. “I ain’t a-goin’ to keep still no longer. I don’t believe the boy’s done a bit o’ harm. There’s lots of things the Lord didn’t do that He didn’t forbid human bein’s to do. We ain’t none of us divine, but you mark my words, Freddie, an’ I say it right here so’s yore aunt Hester can hear me too, you mark my words: ef you never do nothin’ worse than what you’ve been a-doin’ today, it’ll be mighty easy for you to read yore title clear to mansions in the skies.”
“Omph huh, ’Liphalet, there ain’t nothin’ so easy as talkin’ when Satin’s a-promptin’ you.”
“There you go, Hester, there you go ag’in, a-pattin’ the devil on the back. I ’low the Old Boy must be tickled to death with all the compliments Christian people give him.”
“A body’d about as well be complimentin’ the devil as to be a-countenancin’ his works, as you air.”
The old man stopped with a piece halfway to his mouth. “Now jest listen at that! Hester Prime, ain’t you ashamed of yoreself? Me a-countenancin’ wrong! Sayin’ that to me, an’ me ol’ enough to be—to be—well, I’m your husband, anyway.”
In times of excitement he was apt to forget this fact for the instant and give his wife her maiden name, as if all that was sharp in her belonged to that prenuptial period. But this storm relieved the atmosphere of its tension. Mrs. Hodges felt better for having spoken her mind, and Mr. Hodges for having answered, while the young man was relieved by the championship of his elder, and so the storm blew over. It was several days before Brent saw Elizabeth again; but, thanks to favouring winds, the sky had also cleared in that direction.
It was through such petty calms and storms that Fred passed the days and weeks of
