Jethro nodded toward the table.
“Er—pen and paper there,” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” demanded Mr. Worthington.
“W-write to Bob—write to Cynthy. Nice letters.”
“This is carrying matters with too high a hand, Mr. Bass. I will write the letters to-morrow morning.” It was intolerable that he, the first citizen of Brampton, should have to submit to such humiliation.
“Write 'em now. W-want to see 'em.”
“But if I give you my word they will be written and sent to you to-morrow afternoon?”
“T-too late,” said Jethro; “sit down and write 'em now.”
Mr. Worthington went irresolutely to the table, stood for a minute, and dropped suddenly into the chair there. He would have given anything (except the realization of his ambitions) to have marched out of the room and to have slammed the door behind him. The letter paper and envelopes which Jethro had bought stood in a little pile, and Mr. Worthington picked up the pen. The clock struck two as he wrote the date, as though to remind him that he had written it wrong. If Flint could see him now! Would Flint guess? Would anybody guess? He stared at the white paper, and his rage came on again like a gust of wind, and he felt that he would rather beg in the streets than write such a thing. And yet—and yet he sat there. Surely Jethro Bass must have known that he could have taken no more exquisite vengeance than this, to compel a man—and such a man—to sit down in the white heat of passion—and write two letters of forgiveness! Jethro sat by the window, to all appearances oblivious to the tortures of his victim.
He who has tried to write a note—the simplest note when his mind was harassed, will understand something of Isaac Worthington's sensations. He would no sooner get an inkling of what his opening sentence was to be than the flames of his anger would rise and sweep it away. He could not even decide which letter he was to write first: to his son, who had defied him and who (the father knew in his heart) condemned him? or to the schoolteacher, who was responsible for all his misery; who—Mr. Worthington believed—had taken advantage of his son's youth by feminine wiles of no mean order so as to gain possession of him. I can almost bring myself to pity the first citizen of Brampton as he sits there with his pen poised over the paper, and his enemy waiting to read those tender epistles of forgiveness which he has yet to write. The clock has almost got round to the half-hour again, and there is only the date—and a wrong one at that.