VIII
Fessenden, until his Great Love Affair, which occurred when he had rounded his seventeenth year, lived in his books and the future, finding less and less companionship in his now humble and devoted band of followers. This interval of four years was pricked out by two variations only: the gradually discontinuing visits of his father and the slight change incident upon a letter received from Mr. Abbott on his son’s fifteenth birthday:
“My dear Boy”—(this letter began, in the well-bred but curiously unexercised handwriting which sometimes made Fessenden wonder if his father never wrote to any one else)—“It may be some time, perhaps years, before we meet again. I shall give you no reason now for this additional separation, so painful to me. When the time comes I shall explain, and you will find the explanation satisfactory. Meanwhile, I shall write to you twice a year, remind you of all the advice and admonition I have given you, and ask many questions. I am very much gratified with Mr. Morris’s accounts of you. It is in your blood to take naturally to books. I hope and pray that other things may come as readily to you in due course.
“I have now concluded that you are old and strong enough to support yourself—barring your tuition, which I shall manage to meet. I am writing to Nettlebeck to put you to work during the fine weather. As you know, I prefer you should not study during those months, and you will be paid what will more than meet your expenses the year round. You are quite equal to the work of a farm-hand, and it is time you knew how it feels to earn money. It will also be a very considerable relief to me, besides accustoming you to the fit of the harness before it is imperatively necessary to put it on. Your sister is well, and sends you her love. I add mine, and I beg you to believe that in spite of appearances I love you devotedly—more than I have ever loved any one. You ask for my picture. I have never had one taken. I have my reasons. One is that a man always seems to me most of an ass when smirking on cardboard.
“Your very affectionate
“Father.”
“He believes in disciplining,” remarked Fessenden to Morris, with some acerbity. He was not enchanted at the prospect of being a farm-hand. “If I must I must, but somehow I can’t believe my father is as poor as he makes out. If he is poor, it must be because he wants to be, for it always seems to me as if a sort of power came straight out of him, and hit me hard. And up here, where all men are equal—quite unlike what you say it is in cities—the Nettlebecks show him more respect than they ever show any one else.”
“That is the mere force of personality. You can have the same experience when you are grown, if you make of yourself a strong and isolated spirit, not a mere creditable member of a type. As for your father, his opinions are worth their weight in gold. Obey him without question—therein lies the success of your future. He is not only a man of remarkable brain-power, but he is between three and four times your age. He is helping you now out of his own experience. Be thankful that he takes so great an interest in you, instead of spoiling you in the usual criminal American fashion.”
“His interest appears to be more excessive than his love.”
“Cannot you take love on trust?”
“Does anybody take anything on trust? Can I eat nails and believe them bread? I know what I see, what I feel, what I am permitted to enjoy. I might say to myself twenty times a day, ‘My father loves me,’ and it wouldn’t make one-thousandth the impression that a weekly visit of ten minutes would.”