Rulers of kings: A novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

There was nothing for him; and then he realized that, subconsciously, he had expected Grace to defy her mother and write to him—had believed the separation to be a matter of a few weeks; that the time would come when her demand would be as imperative as his own. He leaped up the stairs to his room and rummaged among the papers on his table; there were fragments of exercises in five languages, dead and alive, brief studies of public men, but there was no letter, even from his father. He returned to the forest, his hands and knees trembling, his brain whirling, his panic increasing, muttering vague phrases, filled with terror of the future, confusion, a mad desire for annihilation. Then, as his ego reached its depths and grovelled there, he straightened himself suddenly and, flinging his fist against a tree, exclaimed: “By God, what slavery!” What he had seen of religion as expressed by itinerant and ignorant preachers had left him cold, but he had entire faith in some great force pervading the Universe, although he did not think it worth while to apply a name to it. He bethought himself of this force, and by a violent effort put himself in relation with it, demanding imperiously that some of its strength should pass into him and relieve him from this intolerable state of slavery. His prayer was answered so quickly that for a moment he stood as dazed as if he had been transferred abruptly to another planet. Then he shrugged his shoulders, laughed at his recent self, went down to the lake, and took Pocahontas out for a long, confidential, and somewhat cynical conversation.

He half expected that the obsession would return, but it did not, even when, missing his agonies, he endeavored to evoke their ghosts. Finally he sat down and wrote a long letter to his father.

“It has taught me two things,” he concluded: “the advisability of keeping a tight hold on the bulk of your energies until you are sure of having found the right woman, and the danger of praying for strength to annihilate unless you are quite sure you are not making a mistake. In this case it was all right, but she might have been the one woman; there might have been merely a misunderstanding, and the result would have been the same. I dragged the strength from out there into myself and blasted the thing to the roots. I am convinced that I can evoke that strength whenever I will, but it rather frightens me to think that I might have made this discovery at the wrong time.”

XI

The immediate results of Fessenden’s enslavement and deliverance were a terror of women, which he called contempt, an augmented interest in the great men of history, and a daily mounting ardor for his country. He had the usual school-boy’s idea of the isolated grandeur of the American Republic, and a corresponding resentment against the rest of the world for having annoyed it occasionally. Mr. Abbott, who liked all healthy manifestations in a youth, had asked Morris to let him keep his illusions until he was old enough to accept their loss without bitterness. Fessenden, who had been patriotic enough in all conscience before he met Grace, now burned with a holy fire, built an altar in the depths of the forest, and solemnly devoted his life and energies to the service of the United States—thought of her, dreamed of her, poured upon her all the rejected passion of his nature. But as yet no light had been shed upon the manner in which he should best serve her, and one day he abruptly broached the subject to Morris. The tutor came to attention at once. He had been in correspondence with Mr. Abbott for some time, and was awaiting his opportunity to speak: Fessenden was a delicate subject.

“I have been thinking it over,” he said. “Of course your father’s wish—and mine—has been that you should go to Harvard, but in the few years since I left college things have changed so in America—I am not old as years go, and judging from the occasional newspaper and magazine that comes my way, the world seems to have run by me.” He spoke hesitatingly, as if the subject had been presented to him too abruptly, after all; and Fessenden, who did not count patience among his virtues, beat a roll-call on the window-pane. The woods were green and warm; Pocahontas was making imperious little motions on the lake. A hint, a stimulus, was all he expected from Morris; the final solution would be found in solitude.

“Why not Harvard?” he asked, as Morris continued to look out upon the world in mute reproach. “Of course I expect to go to Harvard. And my father says the world’s all right.”

“Whatever is is right. I am philosopher enough to believe that—but this is the point: the great universities, like Harvard, are for the sons of rich men, or at all events for those of that privileged class who do not have to enter into the great struggle the moment they graduate. If you had even a small income, and purposed to become a man of letters, if you had in you the makings of a professor or a clergyman, I should say Harvard without hesitation, even though you would have to skimp through in a manner that is very humiliating to a gentleman; but I have studied you closely now for seven years, and I cannot associate you with any of the old-fashioned callings. You are peculiarly energetic and practical. You have tremendous ideals, but you would never have the patience to angle for them in an ink-pot, and you have too much common-sense to stump the world as a propagandist. The way for you to achieve great ends is through the medium of money—no one in this country to-day respects anything as much—and through that medium you could make yourself understood at once, and have what following you chose. It seems to me that you could make money in very large amounts—you were born with concentration, obstinacy, and industry; you must excel in all you undertake or burn to ashes in the attempt, and you have an uncommonly good brain. Of course I have only been able to cultivate its intellectual part, and there are a thousand things you must study in the next few years—men, your country, other countries, the great industrial, financial, commercial, and political problems which make up the machinery of the world. Now, if you were merely to be a dilettante in these matters, I should again say Harvard; but as it seems to me that you were born to take an active part in the great world problems, and as you have your living to make, I have thought it expedient to suggest the University of the Northwest—” He paused again and turned away his head; the polite scholar loathed the thought of the Western college. As Fessenden stared at him in earnest attention, he proceeded, in a moment.

“It is quite a remarkable institution in a way, and very cheap. As it is in a small Western town, living costs next to nothing; and as it is not patronized by rich men’s sons, the scale of living is very low—there are no expensive clubs and other constant demands. Of course it is your duty to consider this, as well as the more complete freedom which it would give you. It is my private opinion that the great colleges are no place for a man who cannot spend money like a gentleman. If my father had lost his money earlier I should not have gone to Harvard.”

“Well, what should I get at this Western university that would send me straight from the log-cabin to Aladdin’s cave—it used to be the White House.”