第23章

I had never seen him in a more relaxing mood,a more approving one.My mother sat down beside me....Words seem useless to express the complicated nature of my suffering at that moment,--my remorse,my sense of deception,of hypocrisy,--yes,and my terror.I tried to talk naturally,to answer my father's questions about affairs at the store,while all the time my eyes rested upon the objects of the room,familiar since childhood.Here were warmth,love,and safety.Why could I not be content with them,thankful for them?What was it in me that drove me from these sheltering walls out into the dark places?I glanced at my father.Had he ever known these wild,destroying desires?Oh,if I only could have confided in him!The very idea of it was preposterous.Such placidity as theirs would never understand the nature of my temptations,and I pictured to myself their horror and despair at my revelation.In imagination I beheld their figures receding while I drifted out to sea,alone.Would the tide--which was somehow within me--carry me out and out,in spite of all I could do?

"Give me that man That is not passion's slave,and I will wear him In my heart's core...."I did not shirk my tasks at the store,although I never got over the feeling that a fine instrument was being employed where a coarser one would have done equally well.There were moments when I was almost overcome by surges of self-commiseration and of impotent anger:for instance,I was once driven out of a shop by an incensed German grocer whom I had asked to settle a long-standing account.Yet the days passed,the daily grind absorbed my energies,and when I was not collecting,or tediously going over the stock in the dim recesses of the store,I was running errands in the wholesale district,treading the burning brick of the pavements,dodging heavy trucks and drays and perspiring clerks who flew about with memorandum pads in their hands,or awaiting the pleasure of bank tellers.Save Harvey,the venerable porter,I was the last to leave the store in the evening,and I always came away with the taste on my palate of Breck and Company's mail,it being my final duty to "lick"the whole of it and deposit it in the box at the corner.The gum on the envelopes tasted of winter-green.

My Cousin Robert was somewhat astonished at my application.

"We'll make a man of you yet,Hugh,"he said to me once,when I had performed a commission with unexpected despatch....

Business was his all-in-all,and he had an undisguised contempt for higher education.To send a boy to college was,in his opinion,to run no inconsiderable risk of ruining him.What did they amount to when they came home,strutting like peacocks,full of fads and fancies,and much too good to associate with decent,hard-working citizens?Nevertheless when autumn came and my friends departed with eclat for the East,I was desperate indeed!Even the contemplation of Robert Breck did not console me,and yet here,in truth,was a life which might have served me as a model.His store was his castle;and his reputation for integrity and square dealing as wide as the city.Often I used to watch him with a certain envy as he stood in the doorway,his hands in his pockets,and greeted fellow-merchant and banker with his genuine and dignified directness.This man was his own master.They all called him "Robert,"and they made it clear by their manner that they knew they were addressing one who fulfilled his obligations and asked no favours.

Crusty old Nathaniel Durrett once declared that when you bought a bill of goods from Robert Breck you did not have to check up the invoice or employ a chemist.Here was a character to mould upon.If my ambition could but have been bounded by Breck and Company,I,too,might have come to stand in that doorway content with a tribute that was greater than Caesar's.

I had been dreading the Christmas holidays,which were indeed to be no holidays for me.And when at length they arrived they brought with them from the East certain heroes fashionably clad,citizens now of a larger world than mine.These former companions had become superior beings,they could not help showing it,and their presence destroyed the Balance of Things.For alas,I had not wholly abjured the feminine sex after all!And from being a somewhat important factor in the lives of Ruth Hollister and other young women I suddenly became of no account.New interests,new rivalries and loyalties had arisen in which I had no share;I must perforce busy myself with invoices of flour and coffee and canned fruits while sleigh rides and coasting and skating expeditions to Blackstone Lake followed one another day after day,--for the irony of circumstances had decreed a winter uncommonly cold.There were evening parties,too,where I felt like an alien,though my friends were guilty of no conscious neglect;and had I been able to accept the situation simply,I should not have suffered.

The principal event of those holidays was a play given in the old Hambleton house (which later became the Boyne Club),under the direction of the lively and talented Mrs.Watling.I was invited,indeed,to participate;but even if I had had the desire I could not have done so,since the rehearsals were carried on in the daytime.Nancy was the leading lady.I have neglected to mention that she too had been away almost continuously since our misunderstanding,for the summer in the mountains,--a sojourn recommended for her mother's health;and in the autumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school at Farmington.During the brief months of her absence she had marvellously acquired maturity and aplomb,a worldliness of manner and a certain frivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane.