“What is the use of it all,” he asked himself, “my struggle, involuntary though it was, my self-abnegation, my rigidity, when what little character I have built up is overshadowed by my father’s past? Why should I have worked so hard and long for those rewards, real or fancied, the favour of God and the respect of men, when he, after a career of outrageous dissipation, by a simple act or claim of repentance wins the Deity’s smile and is received into the arms of people with gushing favour, while I am looked upon as the natural recipient of all his evil? Of course they tell us that there is more joy over the one lamb that is found than over the ninety and nine that went not astray; it puts rather a high premium on straying.” He laughed bitterly. “With what I have behind me, is it worth being decent for the sake of decency? After all, is the game worth the candle?”
He took up a little book which many times that morning he had been attempting to read. It was an edition of Matthew Arnold’s poems, and one of the stanzas was marked. It was in “Mycerinus.”
Oh, wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be,
Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream,
Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see,
Blind divinations of a will supreme?
Lost labour! when the circumambient gloom
But holds, if gods, gods careless of our doom!
He laid the book down with a sigh. It seemed to fit his case.
It was not until the next morning, however, that his anticipations were realised, and the telegraph messenger stopped at his door. The telegram was signed Eliphalet Hodges, and merely said, “Come at once. You are needed.”
“Needed”! What could they “need” of him? “Wanted” would have been a better word—“wanted” by the man who for sixteen years had forgotten that he had a son. He had already decided that he would not go, and was for the moment sorry that he had stayed where the telegram could reach him and stir his mind again into turmoil; but the struggle had already recommenced. Maybe his father was burdening his good old friends, and it was they who “needed” him. Then it was his duty to go, but not for his father’s sake. He would not even see his father. No, not that! He could not see him.
It ended by his getting his things together and taking the next train. He was going, he told himself, to the relief of his guardian and his friend, and not because his father—his father!—wanted him. Did he deceive himself? Were there not, at the bottom of it all, the natural promptings of so close a relationship which not even cruelty, neglect, and degradation could wholly stifle?
He saw none of the scenes that had charmed his heart on the outward journey a few days before; for now his sight was either far ahead or entirely inward. When he reached Dexter, it was as if years had passed since he left its smoky little station. Things did not look familiar to him as he went up the old street, because he saw them with new eyes.
Mr. Hodges must have been watching for him, for he opened the door before he reached it.
“Come in, Freddie,” he said in a low voice, tiptoeing back to his chair. “I’ve got great news fur you.”
“You needn’t tell me what it is,” said Brent. “I know that my father is here.”
Eliphalet started up. “Who told you?” he said; “some blockhead, I’ll be bound, who didn’t break it to you gently as I would ’a’ done. Actu’lly the people in this here town—”
“Don’t blame the people, Uncle ’Liph,” said the young man, smiling in spite of himself. “I found it out for myself before I arrived; and, I assure you, it wasn’t gently broken to me either.” To the old man’s look of bewildered amazement, Brent replied with the story of his meeting with his father.
“It’s the good Lord’s doin’s,” said Eliphalet, reverently.
“I don’t know just whose doing it is, but it is an awful accusation to put on the Lord. I’ve still got enough respect for Him not to believe that.”
“Freddie,” exclaimed the old man, horror-stricken, “you ain’t a-gettin’ irreverent, you ain’t a-beginnin’ to doubt, air you? Don’t do it. I know jest what you’ve had to bear all along, an’ I know what you’re a-bearin’ now, but you ain’t the only one that has their crosses. I’m a-bearin’ my own, an’ it ain’t light neither. You don’t know what it is, my boy, when you feel that somethin’ precious is all your own, to have a real owner come in an’ snatch it away from you. While I thought yore father was dead, you seemed like my own son; but now it ’pears like I ain’t got no kind o’ right to you an’ it’s kind o’ hard, Freddie, it’s kind o’ hard, after all these years. I know how a mother feels when she loses her baby, but when it’s a grown son that’s lost, one that she’s jest been pilin’ up love fur, it’s—it’s—” The old man paused, overcome by his emotions.
“I am as much—no, more than ever your son, Uncle ’Liph. No one shall ever come between us; no, not even the man I should call father.”
“He is yore father, Freddie. It’s jest like I told Hester. She was fur sendin’ him along.” In spite of himself, a pang shot through Brent’s heart at this. “But I said, ‘No, no, Hester, he’s Fred’s father an’ we must take him in, fur our boy’s sake.’ ”
“Not for my sake, not for my sake!” broke out the young man.
“Well, then, fur
