“I have given you these details that you may thoroughly understand what kind of a man Theodoric’s father was. He was, in fact, a puritan in every fibre of his soul. He looked upon the world as a dark valley, through which we had to pass on our way to a better; and it seemed to him that any hilarity on the part of us poor wayfarers smacked of frivolity, to use the mildest term. Dancing he never allowed under his roof, and secular music he rated as a snare for the feet of the unwary. Therefore he shook his head with unaffected uneasiness when he discovered in Theodoric, at a very early age, a passionate love for this half-wicked form of noise. And so, when, year after year, as Theodoric’s birthday came round, and the boy, when asked what he wanted, always answered, a fiddle, his father put his foot down. At last, on his thirteenth birthday, a compromise was effected. Theodoric got a flute; an instrument which Mr. Poythress allowed to be as nearly harmless as any could be; at least to the performer. I had been piping away on one for a year, but he soon surpassed me. His progress pleased his mother, from whom, in fact, he had inherited his love for music; but his father looked upon the time spent practising as wasted. Conscious, therefore, that his flute annoyed his father, he hit upon a plan to give him as little of it as possible.
“In a little clump of trees, about a quarter of a mile from the house, be constructed a music-desk against an old tree; and thither he repaired, on all fair afternoons, and played to his heart’s content, surrounded by an admiring audience of a dozen or so dusky adherents.
“It was this harmless flute that brought on the catastrophe that I shall presently relate.
“Mr. Poythress’s religion, I need hardly tell you, was of the most sombre character. (I say was; for he is much changed since those days.) It is singular how extremes meet in everything. Puritanism among the Protestants, and asceticism in the Catholic Church, each seek, by making a hell of this world, to win heaven in the next. I have said that Theodoric frequently spent Saturday with me. He was never allowed to be absent from home on Sunday; and month by month, and year by year, as he grew older, those Sundays grew more and more intolerable to him. It was a firm hand that crammed religion down his throat, and, as a child, he was, if wretched, unresisting. But Theodoric was his father’s own son. He too loved personal liberty. To be brief, the time came when he hated the very name of religion; and, when we were about thirteen years old, he often shocked me by his fierce irreverence. And, unfortunately, his parents had no suspicion of what was going on in his mind. His love for his mother, equally with his awe of his father, sealed his lips.
“There are those whose discontent is like damp powder burning. It sputters, flashes, smokes, but does not explode. But with Theodoric, everything was sudden, unexpected, violent. He had immense self-control; but it was that of a boiler, that at one moment is propelling a steamer, an instant later has shattered it. There was an element of the irrevocable and the irreparable in all that he did.
“It was, as I have said, the hard, relentless sabbatarianism of Mr. Poythress that bore hardest upon his son. And, when you think of it, what a curse sabbatarianism has been to the world! How the Protestants of England and America ever managed to ingraft it upon Christianity I could never understand; for not only is it without trace of authority in the New Testament, but the very founder of our religion never lost an opportunity of striking it a blow. And I can’t help thinking, sometimes, that when he said, Suffer little children to come unto me, he said it in pity of their tortures on this one long, dreary day in every week. But I am getting away from my story.
“One Sunday—it was the first after Theodoric’s fourteenth birthday—he complained of headache. He did not ask to be excused from going to church; but the day was warm, and the road long and dusty, and his mother begged him off; and the family coach went off without him. The party had gone but a few miles, when they learned that owing to the illness of the pastor there would be no service that day. So they turned about.
“At last, hoofs and wheels ploughing noiselessly through the heavy sand, they approached the little clump of trees which we have mentioned. Suddenly an anxious, pained look came into Mrs. Poythress’s face. Mr. Poythress put his hand to his ear and listened. An angry flush overspread his countenance.
“‘Stop!’ cried he to the coachman.
“There could be no doubt about it: it was Theodoric’s flute, and—shades of John Knox!—playing a jig.