"I—chastised him; a little."
"You—what?"
Benjamin Wright nodded; the wrinkled pouches under his eyes grew dully red. "My God!" he said plaintively; "think of that—a hasty moment! Thirty-two years; my God! I—spanked him."
Dr. Lavendar opened his lips to speak, but found no words.
"And he was offended! Offended? What right had he to be offended? I was the offended party. He went to a low theatre. Apparently you see nothing wrong in that? Well, I've always said that every parson had the making of an actor in him. It's a toss-up—the stage or the pulpit. Same thing at bottom. But perhaps even you won't approve of his staying away all night? Smoking! Drinking! He'd been drunk. He confessed it. And there was a woman in it. He confessed that. Said they'd all 'gone to supper together.' Said that he was 'seeing the world'—which a man ('man,' if you please!) of his years had a right to do. Well; I suppose you'd have had me smile at him, and tuck him up in bed to sleep off his headache, and give him a stick of candy? That wasn't my way. I reproved him. I—chastised him. Perfectly proper. Perhaps—unusual. He was twenty-four, and I laid him across my knee, and—well; I got over it in fifteen minutes. I was, perhaps, hasty My temper in those days was not what it is now. But I forgave him in fifteen minutes; and he had gone! He's been gone—for thirty-two years. My God!"
He poured out another finger of whiskey, but forgot to drink it. A canary-bird chirped loudly, then lapsed into a sleepy twitter.
"I was well rid of him! To make a quarrel out of a thing like that—a joke, as you might say. I laughed, myself, afterwards, at the thought of it. A fellow of twenty-four—spanked! Why didn't he swear and be done with it? I would have reproved him for his profanity, of course. Profanity in young persons is a thing I will not tolerate; Simmons will tell you so. But it would have cleared the air. If he had done that, we'd have been laughing about it, now;—he and I, together." The old man suddenly put both hands over his face, and a broken sound came from behind them.
Dr. Lavendar shook his head, speechlessly.
"What's the matter with you?" cried Benjamin Wright, pulling off his hat and banging it down on the table so fiercely that the crown collapsed on one side like an accordion. "Good God! Can't you see the tomfoolery of this business of thirty-two years of hurt feelings?"
Dr. Lavendar was silent.