Chapter XV
Brent found himself in a most peculiar situation. He had hated the severe discipline of his youth, and had finally rebelled against it and renounced its results as far as they went materially. This he had thought to mean his emancipation. But when the hour to assert his freedom had come, he found that the long years of rigid training had bound his volition with iron bands. He was wrapped in a mantle of habit which he was ashamed to display and yet could not shake off. The pendulum never stops its swing in the middle of the arc. So he would have gone to the other extreme and revelled in the pleasures whose very breath had been forbidden to his youth; but he found his sensibilities revolting from everything that did not accord with the old Puritan code by which they had been trained. He knew himself to be full of capabilities for evil, but it seemed as if some power greater than his held him back. It was Frederick Brent who looked on sin abstractly, but its presence in the concrete was seen through the eyes of Mrs. Hester Hodges. It could hardly be called the decree of conscience, because so instantaneous was the rejection of evil that there was really no time for reference to the internal monitor. The very restriction which he had complained of he was now putting upon himself. The very yoke whose burden he hated he was placing about his own neck. He had run away from the sound of “right” and “duty,” but had not escaped their power. He felt galled, humiliated, and angry with himself, because he had long seen the futility of blind indignation against the unseen force which impelled him forward in a hated path.
One thing that distressed him was a haunting fear of the sights which Perkins would show him on the morrow’s night. He had seen enough for himself to conjecture of what nature they would be. He did not want to see more, and yet how could he avoid it? He might plead illness, but that would be a lie; and then there would be other nights to follow, so it would only be a postponement of what must ultimately take place or be boldly rejected. Once he decided to explain his feelings on the subject, but in his mind’s eye he saw the half-pitying sneer on the face of the worldly young cityite, and he quailed before it.
Why not go? Could what he saw hurt him? Was he so great a coward that he dared not come into the way of temptation? We do not know the strength of a shield until it has been tried in battle. Metal does not ring true or false until it is struck. He would go. He would see with his own eyes for the purpose of information. He would have his boasted bout with sin. After this highly valorous conclusion he fell asleep.
The next morning found him wavering again, but he put all his troubled thoughts away and spent the day in sightseeing. He came in at night tired and feeling strange and lonesome. “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,” we used to say; but all that is changed now, and whom the devil wishes to get, he first makes lonesome. Then the victim is up to anything.
Brent had finished his supper when Perkins came in, but he brightened at the young clerk’s cheery salute, “Hello, there! ready to go, are you?”
“Been ready all day,” he replied, with a laugh. “It’s been pretty slow.”
“ ’Ain’t made much out, then, seeing the sights of this little village of ours? Well, we’ll do better tonight, if the people don’t see that black tie of yours and take you for a preacher getting facts for a crusade.”
Brent blushed and bit his lip, but he only said, “I’ll go up and change it while you’re finishing your supper.”
“Guess you’d better, or someone will be asking you for a sermon.” Perkins laughed good-naturedly, but he did not know how his words went home to his companion’s sensitive feelings. He thought that his haste in leaving the room and his evident confusion were only the evidence of a greenhorn’s embarrassment under raillery. He really had no idea that his comrade’s tie was the badge of his despised calling.
Brent was down again in a few minutes, a grey cravat having superseded the offending black. But even now, as he compared himself with his guide, he appeared sombre and ascetic. His black Prince Albert coat showed up gloomy and oppressive against young Perkins’s natty drab cutaway relieved by a dashing red tie. From head to foot the little clerk was light and dapper; and as they moved along the crowded streets the preacher felt much as a conscious omnibus would feel beside a pneumatic-tired sulky.
“You can talk all you want to about your Chicago,” Perkins was rattling on, “but you can bet your life Cincinnati’s the greatest town in the West. Chicago’s nothing but a big overgrown country town. Everything looks new and flimsy there to a fellow, but here you get something that’s solid. Chicago’s pretty swift, too, but there ain’t no flies on us, either, when it comes to the go.”
Brent thought with dismay how much his companion knew, and felt a passing bitterness that he, though older, had seen none of these things.
“Ever been in Chicago?” asked Perkins; “but of course you haven’t.” This was uttered in such a tone of conviction that the minister thought his greenness must be very apparent.
“I’ve never been around much of anywhere,” he said. “I’ve been hard at work all my life.”
“Eh, that
