Young Lives. Richard Le Gallienne
in the home be removed--"
"Oh, James," exclaimed the wife.
"Mary, my dear, you must let me finish. If Henry will go, go he shall; but if he still stays, he must learn that I am master in this house, and that while I remain so, not he, but I shall dictate how it is to be carried on."
It was at this point that Esther ventured to lift the girlish tremor of her voice.
"But, father, if you'll forgive my saying so, I think it would be best for another reason for us to go. There are too many of us. We haven't room to grow. We get in each other's way. And then it would ease you; it would be less expense--"
"When I complain of having to support my children, it will be time to speak of that--"
"But you have complained," hotly interrupted the son; "you have reproached us many a time for what we cost you for clothes and food--"
"Yes, when you have shown yourselves ungrateful for them, as you do to-night--"
"Ungrateful! For what should we be grateful? That you do your bare duty of feeding and clothing us, and even for that, expect, in my case at all events, that I shall prove so much business capital invested for the future. Was it we who asked to come into the world? Did you consult us, or did you beget us for anything but your own selfish pleasure, without a thought--"
Henry got no further. His father had grown white, and, with terrible anger pointed to the door.
"Leave the room, sir," he said, "and to-morrow leave my house for ever."
The son was not cowed. He stood with an unflinching defiance before the father, in whom he forgot the father and saw only the tyrant. For a moment it seemed as if some unnatural blow would be struck; but so much of pain was spared the future memory of the scene, and saying only, "It is true for all that," he turned and left the room. The sister followed him in silence, and the door closed.
Mother and father looked at each other. They had brought up children, they had suffered and toiled for them,--that they should talk to them like this! Mrs. Mesurier came over to her husband, and put her arm tenderly on his shoulder.
"Never mind, dear. I'm sure he didn't mean to talk like that. He is a good boy at heart, but you don't understand each other."
"Mary dear, we will talk no more of it to-night," he replied; "I will try and put it from me. You go to bed. I will finish my diary, and be up in a few minutes."
When he was alone, he sat still a little while, with a great lonely pain on his face, and almost visibly upon it too the smart of the wounded pride of his haughty nature. Never in his life had he been spoken to like that,--and by his own son! The pang of it was almost more than he could bear. But presently he had so far mastered himself as to take up his pen and continue his writing. When that was finished, he opened his Bible and read his wonted chapter. It was just the simple twenty-third psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." It was his favourite psalm, and always had a remarkable tranquillising effect upon him. James Mesurier's faith in God was very great. Then he knelt down and prayed in silence,--prayed with a great love for his disobedient children; and, when he rose from his knees, anger and pain had been washed away from his face, and a serenity that is not of this world was there instead.
CHAPTER II
CONCERNING THOSE "ATLANTIC LINERS" AND AN OLD DESK
Of all battles in this complicated civil warfare of human life, none is more painful than that being constantly waged from generation to generation between young and old, and none, it would appear, more inevitable, or indeed necessary. "The good gods sigh for the cost and pain," and as, growing older ourselves, we become spectators of such a conflict, with eyes able to see the real goodness and truth of both combatants, how often must we exclaim: "Oh, just for a little touch of sympathetic comprehension on either side!"
And yet, after all, it is from the older generation that we have a right to expect that. If that vaunted "experience" with which they are accustomed to extinguish the voice of the young means anything, it should surely include some knowledge of the needs of expanding youth, and be prepared to meet them, not in a spirit of despotic denial, but in that of thoughtful provision. The young cannot afford to be generous, even if they possess the necessary insight. It would mean their losing their battle,--a battle very necessary for them to win.
Sometimes it would seem that a very little kindly explanation on the part of the elder would set the younger at a point of view where greater sympathy would be possible. The great demand of the young is for some form of poetry in their lives and surroundings; and it is largely the fault of the old if the poetry of one generation is almost invariably the prose of the next.
Those "Atlantic liners" are an illustration of my meaning. To the young Mesuriers they were hideous chromo-lithographs in vulgar gilt frames, arbitrary defacements of home; but undoubtedly even they would have found a tolerant tenderness for them, had they realised that they represented the poetry--long since renounced and put behind him--of James Mesurier's life. He had come of a race of sea-captains, two of his brothers had been sailors, and deep down in his heart the spirit of romance answered, with voice fresh and young as ever, to any breath or association of the sea. But he seldom, if ever, spoke of it, and only in an anecdote or two was it occasionally brought to mind. Sometimes his wife would tease him with the vanity which, on holidays by the sea, would send him forth on blustering tempestuous nights clad in a greatcoat of blue pilot-cloth and a sealskin cap, and tell how proud he was on one occasion, as he stood on the wharf, at being addressed as "captain," and asked what ship he had brought into port. Even the hard heart of youth must soften at such a reminiscence.
Then scattered about the house was many a prosaic bit of furniture which was musical with memories for the parents,--memories of their first little homes and their early struggles together. This side-board, now relegated to the children's play-room, had once been their pièce de resistance in such and such a street, twelve years ago, before their children had risen up and--not called them blessed.
A few years, and the light of poetry will be upon these things for their children too; but, meanwhile, can we blame them that they cannot accept the poetry of their elders in exchange for that of their own which they are impatient to make? And when that poetry is made and resident in similar concrete objects of home--how will it seem, one wonders, to their children? This old desk which Esther has been allowed to appropriate, and in a secret drawer of which are already accumulating certain love-letters and lavender, will it ever, one wonders, turn to lumber in younger hands? For a little while she leans her sweet young bosom against it, and writes scented letters in a girlish hand to a little red-headed boy who has these past weeks begun to love her. Can it be possible that the desk on which Esther once wrote to her little Mike will ever hear itself spoken of as "this ugly old thing"? Let us hope not.
CHAPTER III
OF THE LOVE OF HENRY AND ESTHER
Father and son had both meant what they said; and even the mother, for whom it would be the cruellest wrench of all, knew that Henry was going to leave home. Not literally on the morrow, for the following evening he had appeared before his father to apologise for the manner--carefully for the manner, not the matter,--in which he had spoken to him the evening before, and asked for a day