“What those tests are, I do not know. Personally I lean toward an older theology, one mostly outworn now, one cast away by weak men because they are afraid to believe in it. It is not for me to say that Dante foresaw falsely. The only thing I can not believe is the legend over the door—‘Abandon Hope, ye who enter here.’ There is no gateway here or hereafter that can shut out Hope. I believe that no matter how terrible the punishment that lies within those gates, however hard the school, there is a way through and out at last.
“Hell is not the dream of a religious fanatic, Ned. I believe in it just as surely as I believe in a heaven. There must be some school, some bitter, dreadful training camp for those who leave this world unfitted to go on to a higher, better world. Lately souls have been going there in ever-increasing numbers. Let softness and self-indulgence and luxury continue to degenerate this nation, and all travel will be in that direction. My hope is yet, the urge behind all that I’m saying to you to-night, is that you may take some other way.”
His black eyes gleamed over the board. For the moment, he might have been some prophet of old, preaching the Word to the hosts of Israel. The long dining room was deathly still as he paused. Realizing that the intensity of his feeling was wakening the somber poetry within him, revealing his inmost, secret nature, he steadied himself, watching the upcurling smoke of his cigar. When he spoke again his voice and words were wholly commonplace.
“There is no force in heaven or earth so strong as moral force,” he said. “In the end, nothing can stand against it. If it dies in this land, Lord help us—because we will be unable to help ourselves. We can then no longer drive the heathen from our walls. With it, we are great—without it we are a race of weaklings. And with luxury and ease upon us, it seems to me I see it manifested ever less and less.
“Ned, there’s one thing to bring it back—and that is hardship. I mean by hardship all that is opposite to ease: self-restraint instead of license; service instead of self-love; devotion to a cause of right rather than to pleasure; most of all, hard work instead of ease. I’ve heard it said, as a thing to be deplored, that shirt sleeves go to shirt sleeves every three generations. Thank God it is so. There is nothing like shirt sleeves, Ned, to make a man—and hard-working, bunching muscles under them. And through my own weakness I’ve let those fine muscles of yours grow flabby and soft.
“Your mother and I have a lot to answer for. Both of us were busy, I with my business, she with her household cares and social duties, and it was easier to give you what you wanted than to refuse you things for your own good. It was easier to let you go soft than to provide hardship for you. It was pleasanter to give in than to hold out—and we loved you too much to put you through what we should have put you through. We excused you your early excesses. All young men did it, we told each other—you were merely sowing your wild oats. Then I found, too late, that I could not interest you in work—in business. You had always played, and you didn’t want to stop playing. And your games weren’t entirely harmless.
“This thing we’ve talked over before. I’ve never been firm. I’ve let you grow to man’s years—twenty-nine, I believe—and still be a child in experience. The work you do around my business could be done by a seventeen-year-old boy. You don’t know what it means to keep a business day. You come when you like and go when you like. In your folly you are no longer careful of the rights of other, better people—or you wouldn’t have driven as you did to-day. You can no longer be bright and attractive at dinner except under the stimulation of cocktails—nothing really vicious yet, but pointing to the way things are going. Ned, I want to make a man of you.”
He paused again, and their eyes met over the table. All too plainly the elder Cornet saw that his appeal had failed to go home. His son was smiling grimly, his eyes sardonic, unmistakable contempt in the curl of his lips. Whether he was angry or not the gray man opposite could not tell. He hoped so in his heart—that Ned had not sunk so low that he could no longer know the stirring urge of manly anger. A great depression drew nigh and enfolded him.
“This isn’t a theater,” was the calloused reply at last. “You are not delivering a lecture to America’s school children! Strangely, I feel quite able to take care of myself.”
“I only wish that I could feel so too.”