“Yes, father,” said Tommy Leigh, wearily, “I'll listen.”
“My son, I loved your mother as I pray you may love your wife. But I loved you also—as she did—even before you came to us, her love compelling mine. And when she went from us, my son, I did not follow her, because my love for her, which had not died, made me live in order that I might do as she had planned for me to do—devote my life to my son, who also was hers. In you she lived and I lived, feeling her near me. You will not understand this, my son; you cannot, having no sons—not having one son who meant so much more to me than merely my son—her son! No, you cannot understand.”
Mr. Leigh looked meditatively at his son and shook his head, slowly. But Tommy said:
“Yes, I can, dad!”
“No, my son, for in you I saw the accomplishment of her desires, the fulfilment of her wishes. It meant life—the opportunity for my love to continue to be what it always was; not a withered flower on her grave, Thomas, but a blossom perennially fresh! Through you I could talk to her in the one language that I knew she would hear and would understand. And so all my thoughts were of her because they were all of you—as hers had been, my son, long before her eyes had seen your baby face; as they doubtless are this minute!” The old man rose abruptly, walked to the window and stared out of it a long time, his arms folded tightly across his breast. And Tommy, feeling within his inmost soul the reverberation of the words he had heard, sat there, his soul awestruck by the intensity of his own feelings; the words that regrouped themselves into phrases that sounded unreal—not stilted, but unreal, as though no living man could utter them with living lips.
And then Tommy realized that the father to whom he had felt it his duty to be loyal was not the man who had spoken in the voice and in the language of a man from another world. Therefore, it was plain to Tommy now that he had not loved his father with a true instinct, but rather from the force of convention and habit. And this growing conviction gave to Tommy an uncomfortable sense of aloofness from real love, not entirely of his own making, but for which he was responsible. Real love would have divined such a love as this.
“Father!” cried Tommy, and approached the old man, who was staring out of the window, unseeingly.
Mr. Leigh turned, and Tommy saw that his face was composed. The pallor was still there, but it did not have quite the same unhealthy aspect. And when Mr. Leigh motioned him to a chair Tommy perceived that he wished to say more and say it calmly. So Tommy sat down and tried to look calm. But the smile on the boy's lips was not so encouraging as he meant it to be by reason of the tremulousness of the lips. The old man sat beside him and spoke gently.
“At the bank my thoughts were only of the close of day when I could talk to your mother—through you, my son. I made mistakes in my work and was reproved—and forgiven by the president, who had known her and knew what she had been to me. And as you grew older and the time drew nearer for carrying out the plans she had formed for your upbringing, I realized suddenly the danger that confronted both you and me, a danger so insidious and withal so great that it unnerved me. And that danger, my son, was my love for you.”
He paused and frowned. He nodded to himself grimly, at the recollection of the danger. But when he looked at his son's face, he ceased to frown and went on, earnestly, as if he would not only explain, but defend himself.