At that Dr. Lavendar stopped smiling. "Benjamin," he said solemnly,
"if any foolishness on the part of the boy brings you to such wisdom,
the hand of the Lord will be in it!"
"I don't want to see--his relations!" cried Benjamin Wright; "but
Sam's got to get away from this place for a while, and if you won't
persuade his--mother to allow it, why I might be driven to
seeing--her. But why shouldn't he try to get his truck published?"
Dr. Lavendar was very much moved. "If you'll only see your son," he
said, "this other business will straighten itself out somehow. But--"
he paused; "getting Sam's play published isn't a very good excuse for
seeing him. I'd rather have him think you were worried because the boy
had an attack of calf-love. No; I wouldn't want you to talk about
theatrical things," Dr. Lavendar ended thoughtfully.
"Why not?"
"Well, the fact is, Samuel has no sympathy with dramas or playhouses.
I do not myself approve of the theatre, but I am told respectable
persons have adopted the profession. Samuel, however, can't find any
good in it."
"He can't, can't he? Well, well; it was efficacious--it was
efficacious!"
"What was efficacious?"
Benjamin Wright laughed loudly. "You--don't know? He never told you?"
"You mean what you and he quarrelled about? No; he never told me."
"He was a fool."
"Benjamin, if you were not a fool at twenty-four; you missed a good
deal."
"And now he objects to theatrical things?"
"He objects so intensely," said Dr. Lavendar, "that, anxious as I am
to have you meet and bring this foolish and wicked quarrel to an end,
I should really hesitate to have you do so, if you insisted on
discussing that subject."
Benjamin Wright lifted one trembling fist. "It was efficacious!"
"And you would give your right hand to undo it," said Dr. Lavendar.
The very old man lowered his shaking right hand and looked at it; then
he said sullenly, "I only wanted his own good. You ought to see that--
a parson!"
"But you forget; I don't know what it was about."
Mr. Wright's face twitched. "Well," he said spasmodically, "I'll-tell
you. I--"
"Yes?"
"I--" his voice broke, then he coughed, then he tried to laugh.
"Simple enough; simple enough. I had occasion to send him to Mercer.
He was to come back that night." Mr. Wright stopped; poured some
whiskey into his glass, and forgetting to add any water, drank it at a
gulp, "He didn't come back until the next afternoon."