That he had rights as father Collingham was aware, though he was shy of putting them forward. Having left them so much in abeyance, it would have been as ridiculous to emphasize them now as to dispute Bickley as efficiency expert at the bank. Moreover, the uneasiness which seizes on a man when his chickens come home to roost inclined him still further to passivity. If Bob was "knocking about town," as he seemed to be, he might know about his father what Junia did not—or presumably did not—that the woman who received the fifty thousand dollars had had her successors, and that even now the line was not extinct. While he knew of amusing incidents of fathers and sons meeting on this ground, any such contretemps in his own case would have shocked him profoundly. Junia might go beyond her powers in prescribing his course, and yet, for a multitude of reasons too subtle for him to phrase, it seemed wise to follow what Junia prescribed.
So the family dined and spent the evening together as tourists walk across the Solfatara crater. The ground was hot beneath their tread, and here and there a whiff of sulphuric vapor poured through a fissure in the crust; but only Max and Dauphin sensed the volcanic fire.
Later in the evening, Junia knelt at her prie-dieu with the armorial books of devotion.
"And, O heavenly Father," she added, to her usual prayer, "have mercy upon that poor erring girl and help her to repent. Grant that my son may extricate himself from the toils in which he is entangled. Enable my daughter to see that her duty lies in the station of life to which thou hast been pleased to call her. Give my husband the wisdom to seek advice and to follow it. Lead me with thy counsel so that I may do what is best for all my dear ones, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Amen."
Having thus poured out her heart, she rose feeling stronger and more comforted.
[CHAPTER XI]
It should be said for Jennie Follett that, in the matter of her course toward Bob Collingham, she had few of those convictions of sin and righteousness which restrain a proportion of mankind. As with the other members of her family, her conduct followed certain lines "because she couldn't help it." That is as far as her analysis would have carried her, though analysis didn't give her much concern. Having so much to do to get food and clothes, the higher laws were outside her sphere of interest. Her chief law was Necessity, and it covered so much ground that there was little place for any other law.
It may be well to state here that the Folletts belonged to that vast American contingent who have practically no religion. They had had a religion in Canada, where they had attended the church of a local god who seemed to hold no sway over the United States. They never found that church in the suburbs of New York, or, if they found it nominally, it didn't, in their opinion, "seem the same." There were no local suasions and compulsions to bring them to its doors, and so, after a few spasmodic efforts to re-establish the connection, they gave up the attempt.
Perhaps this failure was due to the fact that, in the depths of her strong, proud heart, Lizzie didn't believe in God. Josiah did—or, at least, he had believed in him up to the time of being thrown upon the scrap heap. But Lizzie's faith in God had died with the dying of her faith in man. She had never said so, because she kept her deeper thoughts to herself; but along these lines her influence on her children had been negative.
So Jennie had missed those counsels to do right which sometimes form a part of domestic education. With so little latitude for doing anything, there was not—apart from the grosser vices—much latitude in the Follett family even for doing wrong. They did what they "couldn't help" doing, and there was an end of it. A kind of inborn rectitude kept them from offenses of which the public would have taken note, but behind it there was little in the way of principle.