Playing With Fire

"I spent three days there a week ago, sir. The classes were gathering then."

"And you liked it, I am sure?"

"I wished to like it for your sake, Father, but I could not. I disliked everything about it."

"I am sorry for that, because you will require to spend a few years there. But, even if you do not like the place, it has many compensations and, among these I count the name that will be yours as soon as you are entered on its list."

"The name, sir?"

"Yes. You will then be A Man of St. Andrews! Other universities have students, scholars, fellows, etc., but St. Andrews breeds Men! In after life you will know each other as 'Men' and call each other 'Man' with the grip of a kindly world-wide brotherhood, for East, West, North, or South St. Andrews' 'Men' soon find each other. Donald, my dear son, be a Man of St. Andrews."

"O Father, I cannot. It is impossible! I would rather die."

"Speak sensibly, Donald, men don't talk of dying because duty demands of them a certain amount of self-denial."

"Duty asks nothing of me, sir, in regard to St. Andrews. I have seen the world has now one test. It asks of every man and of every proposition, Will it work? If it will not, it must go. I could not do any kind of work in a university. Plenty of better men than I am would work splendidly there. I should die of spiritual and mental nausea. I have considered university life, both as regards law and medicine. I thought we might compromise, perhaps, on medicine, but my feeling is the same. I am an open-air man. I want to live with every part of my body at the same time, not with my brain only – to be tethered to a desk with a book, whether ledger or Bible, would be to me a dreadful existence."

"We will put me out of the question. Do I not deserve some honor and obedience? It is my positive will that you should go to St. Andrews."

"In order to give you pleasure, sir, I might be willing to give up, say three of the best years of my life, but you would then want the whole of my life to preach Calvinism."

"I have given my youth and my life to preach Calvinism or the Truth – they are the same thing."

"If Calvinism is true, sir, then I think my opinion ought to have been asked before I was sent into the world on such terms."

"This talk is irrelevant. What I ask of you is, will you go to St. Andrews and study Divinity? Donald, I will make it as pleasant as I can for you – will you go?"

"No, sir. Forgive me. I cannot."

Dr. Macrae looked steadily at his son, and his large, lambent eyes were full of tears.

"It is for your salvation, Donald. My son, think again, your father asks of you this favor – for your own good."

Donald was even more moved than his father and, if he had followed his instincts, he would have fallen at his father's knees and said, "I am your son. I will do all you wish." But his resolve was not a something of yesterday, and his will was the strongest force in his nature. He put all feeling under its majestic orders and, though his heart was aching with sorrow, he answered, "Forgive me, Father. I must take my own way. I must live my own life."

Then Dr. Macrae turned his face toward his desk. It was covered with papers and he lifted a pen and began to write. Donald waited patiently, neither speaking nor moving for about five minutes. Then his father lifted his head and said with cold politeness, "You can go, sir, there is nothing more to say."

"I would like to tell you something about my plans, Father."

Dr. Macrae went on writing and did not answer. In a few moments Donald continued: "I have resolved to go – "

"I have no interest in your plans, sir."

"But Father, listen."

Then Dr. Macrae threw down his pen. It fell upon his sermon and left a large, unsightly blot which irritated him. He did not speak, however, but by an almost imperceptible movement of his eyes and outstretched hand said to Donald more plainly than words could have done, "Leave the room!"

With that relentless figure regarding him, Donald knew that delay or entreaty was vain. He gave his father one long, last look, a look of such love as would master time, and then, with two scarcely audible words, "Farewell, Father," he obeyed the silent order he had received.

That look pierced Dr. Macrae's heart like an arrow, and those two words went pealing through his ears like words of doom. He threw up his hands and rushed to the door. He wanted to cry, "Come back, come back, Donald," but the hall was empty and still. It was but a few steps to the front door, he opened it in frantic haste, but neither up nor down Bath Street could he see the son he loved so dearly and had sent away so cruelly. He called Mrs. Caird and she came from the kitchen, her hands covered with flour.

"What are you wanting, Ian?" she asked. "I am just throng with the pastry."

"Have you seen Donald within the last five minutes?"

"Nor within the last hour. He went to your study after his breakfast. That is the last I have seen of the poor lad. What is the matter?"

"He has gone."

"Gone! Where to?"

"God knows," and, heedless of Mrs. Caird's inquiries and reproaches, he fled to his study and locked the door. He was suffering as he had never before suffered in all his life. He said to himself, "My heart is bleeding," and he felt as if this sensation might be a reality. For a long time he stood by his table quite still, heartless, hopeless, aidless, almost senseless. He had expected a fight, but that his child would be finally disobedient had been an incredulity to smile at. Yet he had bid him farewell and had gone to face the world without either his help or his counsel.

He would take no lunch, nor would he see or speak to anyone. His heart and brain seemed stupefied by this irreparable sorrow that had so suddenly ruined all his happiness. He tried to think of it as appointed and inevitable, but his heart would not listen to such a suggestion. It told him plainly that many times all had depended on his own yes or no; that a step forward, a look of kindness, a gesture of entreaty would have prevented it. He understood at that hour that sorrow has only the weapons we ourselves give her.

The call to lunch broke the dumb stupidity which had followed the blow of Donald's farewell. Thoughts of what the Church and friends would say began to pierce through the first black despair of his personal feelings and, as the clock struck two, a great change occurred. In half an hour the postman might bring him a letter from Lady Cramer – must bring him one. He stood up, shook himself, and went into a small adjoining room and washed his face and hands. The knowledge that she loved him went like wine to his heart, and her letter would bring him great consolation; he was sure of that.

No young girl waiting for her first love letter ever watched more feverishly for the tall, uniformed official that was to bring it. He was ten minutes later than usual, ten minutes full of hope and despair, but at length the letter was given to him. It was small and light, and he weighed it in his right hand and was disappointed. He had hoped for a long letter telling him of all his beloved was doing, and perhaps asking him to visit her in London, and he had resolved to accept her invitation as soon as it came.

There was no sign of such favor in the few hastily written lines he held in his hand.

Dear Ian – You know that I love you, and I would like to tell you so one thousand times in this little letter. I am, however, in a tumult of hurry and preparation, for I am going to Paris this afternoon with Lady Landgrave's party. We shall only be a week, so do not get blue and think I have deserted you. I shall write you a long letter from Paris, if I can find one hour by myself. Yours,

He threw the tiny note down on the table. He was in one of those atavistic rages which should have revealed to him the original type of bare-armed thanes from whom he was descended. His grandfather, in the same insurrection of feeling, would have instantly put his hand on his dirk. With a slow passion Dr. Macrae tore the offending letter into minute pieces, and then dropped them on the burning coals, and his face and movements during the act had a black expression of anger and contempt. None the less he suffered, none the less he would have taken the offending woman with unspeakable joy to his heart.

But this tempest of rage calmed him. After it he sat down like a man exhausted, and he wished to weep but would not. "It has been a calamitous morning," he whispered, "but what is ordered must be borne. If the lad would only come back! If he would only come back! But he will not – he will not – he will never come back. I must get myself together – there are other things, yes, there is Ada. As Donald was preparing to leave me, she was coming for my consolation."

Then he remembered that he had a session that night at the Church of the Disciples – a session regarding the expenses of the coming year, and not to be neglected. He dressed leisurely for the meeting, and then was sensibly hungry and wished his dinner was ready. When the little silver bell tinkled he needed no other call and, with a preoccupied air, took his place at the table. He could see that Mrs. Caird had been crying, and Marion was white and silent with a trace of indignation in her manner. But, when her father clasped her hand as he took his seat and smiled faintly, she returned his clasp and smile and looked at her aunt with an expression that seemed to plead for tolerance.

At the beginning of the meal there was little conversation, but when the family were alone, Mrs. Caird said, "I hope you are feeling better, Ian. What at all was the matter with you at the lunch hour?"

"I was not sick. I was very wretched, and could not eat."

"Donald, poor lad! I suppose?"

"Just so. Donald has treated me in a very ungrateful and disobedient manner. I know not how I can bear it."

"Forgive him."

"I have forgiven so often."

"That is the way. The best children are aye doing something wrong, forgive Donald as you go along. It is God's way with yourself, Ian."

"His behavior has destroyed my happiness."

"Perhaps, also, you have destroyed his happiness. Everyone has their own kind of happiness, but you want everyone to be happy in your way or not be happy at all. I call that even down selfishness. Ian, you have made a great blunder. I only hope it will not be followed by a great penalty."

"Blunder! Yes, if it be a blunder to take a man out of temptation and put him under the best of influences."

"You think college life the best of influences?"

"It is better than wandering about the country as a musician, however clever he is, must do."

"But Donald likes wandering. He wants to see the wide world over."

"A roving life, Jessy, leads to wavering principles. How can a man be religious who has no settled church? Already, Donald disbelieves in the creed his father preaches, and a man without a creed is a loose-at-ends Christian. General scepticism will succeed it, and scepticism poisons all the wells of life and undermines the foundations of morality."

"Donald is no sceptic. He is a God-loving, God-fearing lad. You'll be to excuse me now. I have a sore headache and I want to be alone."

So she went to her room and Dr. Macrae was much annoyed at her air of injury and sorrow.

"Your aunt is fretting about Donald," he said. "Donald has behaved very cruelly to me, Marion. I suppose you know how."

"About college, Father?"

"Yes. I begged him, for his own good, to go to St. Andrews, and he flatly refused, bid me farewell, and left his home."

"Did you not ask him where he was going?"

"No."

"I am so sorry."

"I knew you would be sorry for me. Never would Marion treat her father in a way so disrespectful and disobedient, eh, dear?"

"While I live I never will say farewell to you, my dear Father."

"You will always obey my wishes, I know."

"When I can, yes, when I can I will always gladly obey them."

"Do I not know what is best for you?"

"Not always, you might be wrong sometimes, Father – everybody is wrong sometimes – but, even so, I would obey you if I could."

"You mean that if you could not you would take your own way?"

"Not exactly."

"And say farewell to me and leave your home?"

"I would never say farewell to you. I do not think I would leave my home in any such way."

"What would you do?"

"Love you and die daily at your side. When you saw me suffering you would give me my desire, because it would be my life."

"I would not. If confident I was right I would not do wrong to please you. And it would be far better for you to die than to make yourself a wanderer in improper company and a prodigal daughter."

"Father, fear to say such words. I am God's daughter. I am your daughter and I do not forget I am a daughter of the honorable clan of Macrae. Such words are an insult to me, to yourself, and to every Macrae, living or dead." She rose as she spoke and with a white, angry look was leaving the room when her father laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder and said:

"Promise me you will not marry anyone without my consent."

"For nearly two years, Father, I could only make a runaway marriage, liable to be temporarily broken at your will."

"Why do you say temporarily?"

"Because, if I loved any man well enough to run away with him I should stay with him forever. You might sever us 'temporarily,' but I should go back to him as soon as I went twenty-one and marry him over again," and her face flushed crimson, and she lifted her brimming eyes to her father and added:

"But all the time I should love you. I should never say farewell to you. To the end of my life, throughout all eternity, I should be your daughter, and you would be my dear, dear Father. Is not that so? Yes, it is! It is!"

He looked at her with a swelling heart full of intense admiration and unbounded love. He could have struck and kissed her at the same moment, but he could find no words to answer her loving question. So he lifted his hand from her proud, indignant form and, with such a sob as may come from a breaking heart, he turned from her to go to his study. She could not bear it. When the parlor door shut, that piteous cry was still in her ears, and she hastened to the study after him. But just as she reached the door she heard the key turn in its lock.

Then she fled upstairs and found her aunt lying still in the semidarkness of her room. "Aunt! Aunt!" she cried in a passion of tears, "I cannot bear it! No, I cannot bear it! My poor Father! Someone ought to think of his feelings. Yes, indeed they ought."

"It seems to me, Marion, that you are busy enough in that way. What is the matter with the Minister now?"

Then Marion, with many tears and protestations, related her conversation with her father, and Mrs. Caird listened as one destitute of much sympathy, and, when she spoke, her words were not more comforting.

"You are a half-and-half creature, Marion; neither here nor there, neither this, that, nor what not. Why didn't you speak plainly to him as your brother did? Mind this! You can't move the Minister with tears and a mouthful of good words. Not you! He will keep up his threep like a gamecock till he dies with it in his last crow. I'm telling you – heed me or not – I am telling you the truth."

"No, he will not, Aunt."

"Such to-and-fro words as you gave him! He'll build his own way strong as Gibraltar upon them. See if he doesn't. Your fight is all to do over, but, as you have taken the matter in your own hands, you and him for it."

"O Aunt! I am so miserable."

"Well, then, I have seen lately that you are never happy unless you are miserable."

"I have not heard from Richard, either yesterday or to-day."

"What is that! At your age I was very proud and satisfied with a love letter once in a fortnight. That's enough in all conscience."

"Two weeks! If Richard was so long silent it would kill me."

"Have you any more nonsense to talk?"

"Aunt, do not be cross with me. I thought you were as full of trouble as I am. Why else did you come here?"

"Partly to keep the doors of my lips shut, and partly to think. I am not full of trouble. I cannot do as I wish to do, but I have a Friend who does all things well. And, when it is my time to act, I shall be ready to act. Now go to your sleeping place and dream without care sitting on your heart; then in the morning you can rise with a clear, trusting soul, such as God loves."