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Page 16
The light of renunciation, the exhaustion of wrenching effort, the
trembling triumph of hard-won victory, were in the boy's face, and the
thought, as he looked at it, dear and familiar in every shadow, that he
had never seen spirit shine through clay more transparently. Never in
their lives had the two been as close, never had the son so unveiled his
soul before. And, as he had said, in all probability never would it be
again. To the depth where they stood words could not reach, and again
for minutes, only the friendly undertone of the crackling fire stirred
the silence of the great room. The sound brought steadiness to the two
who sat there, the old hand on the young shoulder yet. After a time, the
older man's low and strong tones, a little uneven, a little hard with
the effort to be commonplace, which is the first readjustment from deep
feeling, seemed to catch the music of the homely accompaniment of the
fire.
"It is a queer thing, Ted," he said, "but once, when I was not much
older than you, just such an unexpected chance influence made a crisis
in my life. I was crossing to England with the deliberate intention of
doing something which I knew was wrong. I thought it meant happiness,
but I know now it would have meant misery. On the boat was a young
clergyman of about my own age making his first, very likely his only,
trip abroad. I was thrown with him--we sat next each other at table, and
our cabins faced--and something in the man attracted me, a quality such
as you speak of in this other, of pure and uncommon goodness. He was
much the same sort as your old man, I fancy, not particularly winning,
rather narrow, rather limited in brains and in advantages, with a
natural distrust of progress and breadth. We talked together often, and
one day, I saw, by accident, into the depths of his soul, and knew what
he had sacrificed to become a clergyman--it was what meant to him
happiness and advancement in life. It had been a desperate effort, that
was plain, but it was plain, too, that from the moment he saw what he
thought was the right, there had been no hesitation in his mind. And I,
with all my wider mental training, my greater breadth--as I looked at
it--was going, with my eyes open, to do a wrong because I wished to do
it. You and I must be built something alike, Ted, for a touch in the
right spot seems to penetrate to the core of us--the one and the other.
This man's simple and intense flame of right living, right doing, all
unconsciously to himself, burned into me, and all that I had planned to
do seemed scorched in that fire--turned to ashes and bitterness. Of
course it was not so simple as it sounds. I went through a great deal.
But the steady influence for good was beside me through that long
passage--we were two weeks--the stronger because it was unconscious, the
stronger, I think, too, that it rested on no intellectual basis, but was
wholly and purely spiritual--as the confidence of a child might hold a
man to his duty where the arguments of a sophist would have no effect.
As I say, I went through a great deal. My mind was a battle-field for
the powers of good and evil during those two weeks, but the man who was
leading the forces of the right never knew it. The outcome was that as
soon as I landed I took my passage back on the next boat, which sailed
at once. Within a year, within a month almost, I knew that the decision
I made then was a turning-point, that to have done otherwise would have
meant ruin in more than one way. I tremble now to think how close I was
to shipwreck. All that I am, all that I have, I owe more or less
directly to that man's unknown influence. The measure of a life is its
service. Much opportunity for that, much power has been in my hands, and
I have tried to hold it humbly and reverently, remembering that time. I
have thought of myself many times us merely the instrument, fitted to
its special use, of that consecrated soul."
The voice stopped, and the boy, his wide, shining eyes fixed on his
father's face, drew a long breath. In a moment he spoke, and the father
knew, as well as if he had said it, how little of his feeling he could
put into words.
"It makes you shiver, doesn't it," he said, "to think what effect you
may be having on people, and never know it? Both you and I, father--our
lives changed, saved--by the influence of two strangers, who hadn't
the least idea what they were doing. It frightens you."
"I think it makes you know," said the older man, slowly, "that not your
least thought is unimportant; that the radiance of your character shines
for good or evil where you go. Our thoughts, our influences, are like
birds that fly from us as we walk along the road; one by one, we open
our hands and loose them, and they are gone and forgotten, but surely
there will be a day when they will come back on white wings or dark like
a cloud of witnesses--"
The man stopped, his voice died away softly, and he stared into the
blaze with solemn eyes, as if he saw a vision. The boy, suddenly aware
again of the strong hand on his shoulder, leaned against it lovingly,
and the fire, talking unconcernedly on, was for a long time the only
sound in the warmth and stillness and luxury of the great room which
held two souls at peace.
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