Chapter III: Part I: Rulers of Kings (2)

“That is the mere force of personality. You can have the same experience when you are grown, if you make of yourself a strong and isolated spirit, not a mere creditable member of a type. As for your father, his opinions are worth their weight in gold. Obey him without question--therein lies the success of your future. He is not only a man of remarkable brain-power, but he is between three and four times your age. He is helping you now out of his own experience. Be thankful that he takes so great an interest in you, instead of spoiling you in the usual criminal American fashion.”

“His interest appears to be more excessive than his love.”

“Cannot you take love on trust?”

“Does anybody take anything on trust? Can I eat nails and believe them bread? I know what I see, what I feel, what I am permitted to enjoy. I might say to myself twenty times a day, ‘My father loves me,’ and it wouldn’t make one-thousandth the impression that a weekly visit of ten minutes would.”

“A weekly visit from Mr. Abbott--” Morris checked his laugh abruptly. “Your father is not too strong, and hates travelling. But you have brain and imagination; it is odd you should need the regularly administered pap of the ordinary youth.”

“I am human,” responded Fessenden dryly; and as usual he went to _Pocahontas_ for comfort and counsel.

The world was green on this birthday of his, for the spring had come early. The snow had gone from the mountains, the young maple-leaves were fluttering in the forest, the fields were green, the golden sunshine flooded the lake. There was a light breeze, and Fessenden unfurled his sails and thought into the sympathetic soul of his canoe.

“Perhaps, on the whole, I like the idea,” he admitted.

“With one or two exceptions, our great men have risen from the ranks--were hired men, grocery-store clerks, born in log-cabins, and all that sort of thing. To be sure, my favorites happen to be the ones who were not; still it seems to be the proper thing in this country, and as I intend to be a great man, old girl, I am contented to start at the proper place--no log-hut could be uglier than the Nettlebeck farm-house, and I am going to be a hired man, all right. I can’t help being thankful that it isn’t to be a grocery-store clerk. What am I to be? What am I to be? Can’t you give me a hint?” He laid his ear to the spot where he fancied the heart of _Pocahontas_ beat warmly, and for him alone. “When I read the life of a great warrior, I want to be one. Upon some other occasion I want to be a great statesman and orator, and spout the seventh-of-March speech in the woods, as exalted as if the world listened--and feel like a fool afterwards. Write? Morris says there are too many writers now, and that my brain is that of the man of action. He certainly seems to know more about it than I do, and as for you, my beauty, you’re a selfish hussy. When your sails are up you think of nothing but filling your belly with wind.”

IX

Fessenden was so preoccupied that even the voices and laughter of girls did not attract his attention for some moments. He was inserting the little nickel troughs called spiles into the trees of the maple orchard, and hanging the red buckets beneath to catch the sap. Dolf was in the sugar shanty nearby, scouring out the vats, for the boiling would begin to-morrow, and maple-sugar was an industry from which the Nettlebecks derived a yearly income of several hundred dollars. This year Fessenden, who was now seventeen and tired of being a farm-hand, had stipulated that he was to work on shares, arguing that if he did two-thirds of the work he was entitled to at least one-third of the profits. Nettlebeck, after some demur, and a long growl over his pipe one evening, capitulated when young Abbott threatened to stake off a claim on government land and in partnership with Jeff Hunter build his own vats. Fessenden was feeling much elated over his rise in life, and his imagination was running riot in a great future to which sugar should be the stepping-stone--he had recently read several articles on self-made men in magazines sent to Morris--when his house of cards came tumbling down, and the future financier rose from the ruins, a blushing, shivering, gibbering swain.

“This here is Grace Morton, Fess,” remarked the dry young voice of Mamie Hunter. “She’s come to stay with me a spell. Lives down to Malone, and ain’t very well.”

During this elaborate introduction Fessenden was gazing into the soft black eyes of the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her hair was dark, her features fragile and regular; she wore a black frock and a red-peaked cap, red about her throat and tiny waist. Her complexion was sickly, her figure might have been that of the last woman, but Fessenden saw no defects. Neither did he recognize the vacant, the utterly commonplace mind that looked from that sweet unchanging face. She was a little beauty in her way, and wholly unlike the buxom rough-handed girls of his district; there pervaded her that neutral refinement which nature has lavished with such a curious lack of discrimination upon all classes in the United States; and to Fessenden, who had never seen even a village, she seemed city-bred and fashionable. She blushed under his devouring gaze, and then she looked like a wild rose of the woods; one barrier fell. She raised her eyes and glanced vaguely round.

“I’ve never seen the sap running before,” she remarked. “It looks real nice. Is it sweet like what we eat on cakes?”

“You goose!” exclaimed Miss Hunter. “It’s got to be boiled down first--the water boiled out of it; not that it’s so bad now.”

Fessenden had produced a tin cup and filled it with the running liquid. “Will you taste it?” he asked hoarsely.

She took the cup from him, and their fingers met. He trembled. She did not, and tasted the sap daintily. “Well, I like it,” she announced. “It’s real refreshing, and we had a long walk over here. I never walked so far before, and I’m all tuckered out. I guess I’ll sit down.”

Fessenden hastily cleared off a log, and regretted that he had no coat to fling upon it--for obvious reasons he could not remove his sweater. She seated herself with the fastidious little manner which pervaded her personality, and Miss Hunter, remarking that she guessed she was not wanted, strolled off to call on Christina. Fessenden, humbly craving permission, seated himself beside the beauty from Malone, regardless of the sap that was flowing from the punctured trees which still awaited spile and bucket. They talked disconnectedly of various things, no one of which could Fessenden recall later. Her remarks were pleasant and meaningless and she was utterly unmoved. She thought this young mountaineer very handsome and clever-looking, and she had a faint romantic preference for tall men; but her poor little body was not destined for reproduction, and her brain was too small for imagination and sentiment. She was vain and liked attention, but she was without guile, and as she had no immediate reason for marrying, her mother keeping a small store comfortably, she encouraged no one of her admirers, while accepting the homage of several as a matter of course. The wild tempest in Fessenden she could not have understood with the aid of a miracle.

“Is this your first visit to the woods?” asked Fessenden, who wondered dully why he was so stupid; he could think of nothing to say to this divine creature, and words, as a rule, came to him almost as rapidly as thoughts.

“No, I’ve never been before. I always wanted to.” Her voice was sweet and thin; it was only when she raised it that it escaped through her nose. To the infatuated Fessenden it sounded like the rilling of one of the minor streams in the woods.

“I hope you’ll stay a long while.”

“I guess I will. Most of our folks’ve died of consumption, and I’ve had a hackin’ kind of cough. But I guess I’ll get over it here. I’m better already.”

If there was a mutter of protest from the race in Fessenden’s depths he let it pass unheeded. His suddenly conceived and violent passion needed but the lash of pity to transform him from the individual into the type, tumultuous with sentimental desire; the instinct of the strong to protect the beloved weak, keen and quick; pouring into a flimsy shell such an ideal as man knows only in his dreams--the determination to possess this inestimable treasure though the world stood still and the angels warned through brazen trumpets.

“I hope this log isn’t damp,” he said anxiously. “I’d better fetch you something from the house to sit on.”

“Oh, I’d be afraid to stay here alone, and I can’t walk another step. It’s bad enough to walk home. I guess this log’s all right. Have you ever been to Malone?”

“Never!” Fessenden for the first time realized his rude wild state. “I’ve never been twenty miles from here.”

“My! you are a country bumpkin. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings,” she added contritely as Fessenden’s sunburnt face assumed a purple hue. “I’m always saying silly things. You mustn’t mind me. The boys always say I just rattle out anything that comes into my head, and they don’t mind a bit.”

“I’m sure I don’t either,” said Fessenden quickly; he was determined to equal the Maloner in insensibility. “I should think”--he blundered somehow through his first compliment--“that anything you said would be about right.”

“Well, that’s what they tell me,” she replied complacently. “You can get me another cup of that sap if you like.”

Fessenden held the cup to her mouth, which was thin and curved and scarlet. Then, partly because his emotions were rendering him speechless, partly because he was fired with the primitive desire of the male to show off before the female, he swung his axe to his shoulder and muttered that he guessed he’d better cut down a tree; he was wasting too much time.

His axe he always carried with him. It occupied a place in his affections second to his canoe, and preceding a more lukewarm passion for his gun. In a moment Miss Grace Morton, of Malone, was admiring a lithe strong back, the supple free action of two brawny arms as the axe swung as easily as a switch, cutting straight and deep at every stroke. The old tree was quickly brought to earth, and Fessenden leaned on his axe and dared once more to look into the soft eyes beneath the red cap.

“It was time that old tree came down,” he remarked huskily, yet with a fair assumption of indifference. “It hasn’t given any sap for two years, and has been bothering the other trees.”

“Bothering? You talk as if trees was people.”

“Well, they are in a way--that is, they’ve often seemed alive to me.”

“My! You ain’t crazy, are you?”

Fessenden laughed, and a term of endearment ran close to the tip of his tongue. “People who live much alone have odd fancies. But that doesn’t mean they’re crazy.”

“I guess they’re crazy enough if they’re too different. But you look real sensible. I presume you’re all right.”

She looked adorable in her feminine attempt to console him, and Fessenden wheeled about and swung the axe victoriously into a fruitful maple. This time the young lady was bored. She preferred conversation, and this mountain stripling certainly was handsomer than the Malone small-fry who worshipped at her shrine.

She coughed pleasantly but imperiously, and as Fessenden turned quickly the sun blazed full upon her, covering her bright hair with little golden sparks. Her eyes looked babyish and wistful; she had one of those mouths that quiver when pouting. The poor little creature was the more dangerous for being quite natural and sincere. She had neither the brains nor the energy for coquetry, and even to youths of some slight experience she seemed as perfect as she was pretty.

Fessenden threw aside his axe. “Let’s go down to the lake,” he said, with brutal abruptness. “It’s not far, and I’ll row you and Mamie home--here she comes.”

He strode on ahead, and when the girls reached the shore he had one of the boats drawn up to the landing. He rowed with such swift strong strokes that the light craft fairly flew up the lake.

“My, Fess!” remarked Mamie Hunter. “You appear to be in a hurry--must have wasted time after I left you.”

“Of course the trees have to be spiled, but Miss Morton was too tired to walk home. You shouldn’t have brought her such a distance the first time.”

“She didn’t calculate on finding a nurse ready made; she’s real fortunate. Perhaps you’ll come over and carry her next time.”

“I should like to.” He smiled protectingly into the impassive expectant eyes; even in the throes he was the lordly male. Moreover, pride had shaken him into a temporary possession of his senses. “What do you think of our scenery?” he asked Miss Morton.

“It’s real pretty.”

“Pretty? Beautiful, I should call it.”

“Yes, I guess beautiful suits it better.” If he had applied to it erudite and foreign adjectives she would have assented as amiably.

“Fess is a crank,” advised Mamie. “You mustn’t mind anything he raves over. You’ll be the next thing, I suppose--he’ll find it quite a relief after so much brain work.” Mamie was an admirer and disciple of Christina, besides possessing a quick and observing eye of her own. She had a long, investigating nose, and no beauty whatever; but with the boys, whom she treated villanously, she was the most popular girl in the district.

“Have you read much?” asked Fessenden of his divinity, ignoring Mamie.

“Oh yes.”

“What? Shakespeare? History? Biographies?”

“I guess so. I always forget people’s names that write things.”

And even then the rosy halo swirled unrent. Fessenden returned home and viciously punctured his trees. At supper he was so incoherent that Christina arose and felt his pulse. He passed the greater part of the night wandering in the woods. During the ensuing fortnight he spent every evening at the Hunters’. Several times the girls came to the sugar shanty where he was boiling, and he rowed them home in the dusk. He lived aloft with the gods and the goddesses, one of whom was Grace, who gradually assumed heroic proportions. It mattered not that every interview betrayed her paucity the more pitifully; it mattered not that he never once struck fire in that meagre breast, that never once did her brain respond to the confidences, the ambitions, the aspirations he poured into her puzzled and ofttimes weary ear. He no longer loved Grace, little as he realized that world-old fact; he loved the ideal it was her limited destiny to quicken in his imagination. The great forces rushing through his veins and thumping in his brain had nothing in common with mere facts and girls. They were having their first innings, and not even grateful to the cause. Nothing in the vagaries of nature is more inexplicable than nine-tenths of what, for want of a better name, is called love. It is a wanton waste of good energy and a lamentable waste of spiritual forces; for the passion moves the victim to all sorts of unselfish impulses, exalted emotion, and even religion, all of which, in the reaction when delusion is over, are finely scorned. That love which is composed of an instinct for companionship, and a complete honesty of emotions, and is lacking in sentimentalism and the tragic note, delays its arrival, to people of ardent imagination, until so late that they must have much richness of nature and large recuperative powers to dismiss into the past the memory of all they have spent. The theory that the blind passion of youth springs from the relentless instinct of reproduction is true only in part, for some of the maddest passions are inspired by anæmic and useless women, and the earth has its full measure of sickly children. If Nature has any well-defined plan she has as yet hesitated to reveal it, and it is probable that she is still amusing herself in her laboratory. Most love would appear to be a momentary fever of the imagination to which the body responds, and the soul, always struggling for utterance, tries its wings, flies a little span, and flatters the brain: when a man is in love then is he most pleased with himself; he never imagined that for heights and depths, within an apparently trite exterior, he was so remarkable a being; and until the wave recedes he bestows a like approval on the chance object who, in the prettiness of her hour, or by some trick of manner, bulged his ego into grander proportions.

Considering the issues, it was fortunate in many respects that Fessenden had the inevitable attack so early in life.

He was subjected to an unmerciful chaffing, to the most sarcastic achievements of Christina’s tongue, and to more than one crude remark by Mr. Nettlebeck; in subject the eternal damnation tendency of young fools to fall in love with a bigger fool than themselves--in this case as useless a bit of furniture as ever littered the earth. Morris for a time ignored the episode, but after Fessenden, who scorned his tormentors, overflowed one day in the presence of the polite philosopher, and announced that he intended to marry as soon as he had a maple-grove of his own--college had no further charms for him--the tutor and Nettlebeck had a long and meaning conference. At its conclusion Morris spent an hour in composition, the farmer hitched up his buckboard and, in spite of the pressing duties of the season, drove thirty miles to the station and gave the letter to an obliging conductor to post in New York. Nettlebeck, not many days later, took a trip which lasted nearly a week.

X

Fessenden, who had long since proposed to Grace and been listlessly accepted, started as usual for the Hunters’ one evening, striking through the woods. The moon illuminated the recesses, in which the snow still lingered, and Fessenden strode along, idealizing even that beautiful forest; for would it not, in another hour, shelter two divinely selected beings? He still trod the upper ether, but even in that rarefied atmosphere he experienced a slight chill as he saw Jeff Hunter hastening towards him through the romantic reaches.

Jeff, who under Fessenden’s training had acquired a direct and uncompromising method of speech, wasted no time in coming to the point.

“I’ve got bad news for you,” he announced. “Grace’s gone, and she won’t come back, neither.”

Fessenden, who had a confused sense that he was tumbling through space, merely stared at Jeff, who continued:

“Her ma came this morning and yanked her off--said she’d have no such nonsense with a girl who was not strong enough to darn her own stockings, let alone getten’ married. Grace cried, of course--all girls do whenever they get an excuse--but soon dried up when her ma said she’d take her out West and show her something of the world. Grace told me to tell you she guessed it was all right, she hadn’t felt much like getten’ married, anyway; she’d only said yes because it wouldn’t have been any use to say no; and the old lady told me to tell you that it was no sort of use to follow her, for she was coverin’ up her tracks--she’s a tartar, that one, and I guess you needn’t cry that you ain’t goin’ to have her for a mother-in-law; and I guess she’s got enough money to go ’s fur ’s she likes--she told me she’d be five hundred miles away before night. As for Grace, Fess, she ain’t worth one of the ribs in _Pocahontas_--that’s the reason I didn’t warn you this morning.”

“Good-night,” said Fessenden.

The blood had rushed to his head. It remained there and confused him, until, after a brief sleep, he awoke next morning; then he burst in upon the astonished Morris and raged like a madman. He smashed a window and two chairs, vowed that he would walk to the West, that he knew Grace loved him, and that if she did not he had no use for life anyway.

Morris brought him partly to his senses by the ironic method, to which Fessenden was peculiarly susceptible, and then suggested that he put a sandwich in his pocket and spend the day in the woods.

“When you are a rational being once more I shall be glad to see you again and talk it over. I sincerely hope I may be able to help you in some way. But we all have to go through this, my boy. It is as inevitable as the phenomenon of man and woman itself, and must be taken as philosophically as the ills of the flesh, which under the proper diffusion of scientific knowledge will be obviated in time. It is to be hoped that puppy-love will prove an equally amenable microbe. Now take to the woods and think like a man.”

Fessenden took to the woods, but the time was not yet come when he could think like a man. Calf-love has furnished the mills of the wits since the first pen impaled the emotions; but it may be a hideous experience to youths in whom are the makings of strong and passionate men. The academic standard arbitrarily established by our literary powers has given the world an entirely false idea of the American temperament, which, in its masculine half, at least, is excitable and sentimental. It is their capacity for intense and powerful emotion, making them in mob capable of the maddest excesses of enthusiasm, which is the deep indestructible bond of unity in the American race; that has saved it from passing off long since in fireworks; that, when it has found the courage and acquired the brain-power to struggle through its artificial envelope, will permit it to become as great as it now thinks it is.

Poor Fessenden had not yet reached the analytical stage. He went out into the forest and suffered horribly. He wept and raved, and believed that so far as he was concerned the world had reached its finish. For the time he was primeval man balked of the first woman; later, when the acute stage had passed, and imagination had returned, every fine impulse and need of his nature which had leaped to assertion under the quickening process of idealized woman seemed to have withered out of him under the sudden blight. He felt shorn, impoverished, hopeless; worse than all, helpless. To pursue would be less than folly. Only a fortune and a detective could have found the indifferent girl, hidden in the skirts of a determined mother; and he had not a penny. The little he made beyond what Nettlebeck charged him for his board went, after the replenishment of his rough wardrobe, to New York for books. His helplessness degraded his manhood, added to the sum of his miseries. He stood two days of this mental hell, during which he ate little and slept less, and then he shouldered his axe and put a sandwich in his pocket.

“I’m going over to the river to get a job driving logs,” he said to Nettlebeck. “I’ve had fourteen years of this, and I’d like a change for a week or two. When the logging is over I’ll come home.”

The river was twelve miles distant. Ten minutes after he had started on his tramp through the forest he heard a shout behind him. He answered mechanically, and a moment later was joined by Dolf.

“I thought I’d come along,” panted the younger Nettlebeck. “I ain’t seen drivin’ for six years or so, and it’s good exercise; you have to jump so lively.”

Fessenden shrugged his shoulders ungraciously, and declined conversation, but even here he did not recognize the ever-watchful spirit of his father. Nevertheless the thought of that sympathetic parent spontaneously occurred to him. He was the one person to whom he could have spoken, but he remembered his fiercely reacting pride at the age of thirteen; moreover, he was bound to respect his father’s mandate of complete separation. He had puzzled deeply over the motive which had prompted this decision in a proud and affectionate parent, but had finally put the question aside, as so far beyond his limited experience that he had better apply his inquiring mind elsewhere. He had perfect faith in both the wisdom and the love of his father, in spite of occasional outbursts of disappointment, and although the kind firm hand that guided his destinies and smoothed his path without weakening his spirit was too well covered to attract his attention, some spiritual emanation from it kept his heart from closing and the bitterness of neglect from entering his soul.

They reached the river in three hours, hearing from the forest the roar of the dam, the loud shouts of the men. On their side the woods grew down to the stream, but on the heights opposite and far beyond hundreds of virgin trees had been sacrificed that the people of New York might have their daily news. The gates had just been opened, the river was foaming and racing over the rocks, its surface already crowded with long sections of tree-trunks, while others were rolling down the hill. The boss was short of men, and Fessenden and Dolf were employed at once, for the logs were already becoming jammed. Fessenden had watched “driving” many times, and, jumping from log to log to avoid crushing his feet, while at the same time he pried refractory logs into position and relieved jams, he was soon so deeply occupied learning his new trade, to say nothing of preserving his bones, that Grace lay down among the memories. His passion for proving himself the best man replaced the other, and applying all his intelligence to the task, he was very soon the most expert driver on the river. This elated him and sent consoling rays through the dark recesses of his soul. At night he was so tired that, after the evening meal--a repetition of the two preceding ones of pork, beans, bread, and coffee--he was asleep before he had settled himself in his bunk; and although his spirit may have wept over the hearse in the back alleys of his memory, for he awoke depressed and rebellious, he sprang out of bed at once, ate his beans with a relish, and went to work.

As he tramped home at night two weeks later, he informed himself that he was cured, and when he reached his own comfortable bed he slept until late on the following day; moreover, he enjoyed Christina’s savory dinner with a relish which, as a rule, associates only with an untroubled mind. Then he went for a stroll through his favorite haunts of the forest--a guilty sense of disloyalty had led him to avoid _Pocahontas_ since the day he met Grace--and it all came back. As it rushed upon him, as he realized that he was still in bondage, he trembled in panic. The horror of returning into the torments of a fortnight since was as strong as the overwhelming passion itself. He ran back to the house, the blood pounding in his head, and searched the shelf over Fritz Nettlebeck’s desk, where letters for the household and neighbors awaited the leisurely claimant.

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.”

“That is what you would decide after you had been there a year or two. The point is that you would find there special courses on electricity, mechanics, banking, transportation, agriculture, international relations, politics, all the industrial problems. Through some one of these great modern avenues you will make your way to wealth, and you will have the inestimable advantage of starting from the ground up--of mastering, for instance, all the details of a machine-shop, of an engine, of railway tracks, of the progressive development of that most mysterious of all forces, electricity, while your mind is still plastic. There is still another reason for making yourself familiar with all these things while you are young and enthusiastic--even if you happened to make your money in some field outside them all.” He hesitated again, but proceeded almost immediately, and in the tone of a man resolute to pursue any subject as far as analysis would take him. “Suppose, for instance, you should make a very great fortune, modern conditions would place you in the most complex relations with all the subjects which this university specializes. You would be elected upon the boards of companies without end, perhaps become president, vice-president, of others; and, as a rule, directors know next to nothing of the industries over which they preside; employers know too little of what is _a b c_ to the men under them. Railroad presidents cannot know too much about mechanics and electricity if they want to pay heavier dividends than their rivals--in a word, it is the millionaire who knows most of those subjects of which most millionaires know nothing who rules all the other millionaires. You see, I have let my imagination run away with me--I already saw you aloft on a gold pedestal. Perhaps I am too sanguine for you--one dreams much when one lives the solitary life--”

“The millionaire proposition seems to me a good deal of a come-down after all my fine dreams and ambitions, but if it’s the short cut-- I haven’t much patience-- Is money really so easy to make?”

“There is nothing less easy to make. My argument is that you are one of the few who could make it if you would.”

“Well, the harder the better. I wouldn’t give a red cent for anything that could be had for the asking.”

Again Morris turned his head and stared into the fire. He heartily wished that Mr. Abbott had come up and done his own talking.

“Your life is likely to be strenuous enough,” he said, after a pause. “When you are rich--if you ever are--you will work as hard, if not harder, than before. Will you think over what I have said about this university, and write to your father? He told me once that he should leave the matter to you; but, of course, he must know soon, as you could enter any college this autumn.”

“I do not need to think it over. How long do you suppose it takes me to make up my mind? I shall go to the Western University.”

XII

He started early in September, accompanied by Morris, who now confessed that he had long pined for the orange groves, the perpetual sunshine of southern California; and as far as the station by the stoical but cheerless Jeff. Christina embarrassed him by a farewell embrace and a tear, while promising him a monthly box of good things. Morris requested him to take no clothes but those he was obliged to wear, but he stuffed his sweaters among his books; he could imagine himself permanently in no less elastic envelope. In spite of remonstrance he also packed his axe. He was quick and eager for the change, and, with the ingratitude of man, left even _Pocahontas_ with little reluctance; his imagination pictured the great gates of the world at the foot of the Adirondacks; and at last he was to pass through them and into that infinite beyond where all dreams were realities.

Morris had chosen the night train for obvious reasons; and when they reached the station in New York he hurried his young mountaineer into a cab and drove to the best of the tailors, who met the immediate demand. The necessary autumn and winter wardrobe he bought for his charge called forth a vigorous remonstrance; Fessenden had never imagined such reckless extravagance; but when his mentor had reassured him, he further indulged himself in several sweaters. He was the proud possessor of a hundred dollars, made in sugar, and his fingers tingled with the new pleasure of spending.

From the shop they drove directly back to the station to catch the morning train for the West. Fessenden grumbled, for he wanted to see New York; every nerve had sprung to greet the great city, and he hung out of the cab in spite of remonstrances and to the amusement of passers-by.

“I know how you feel,” said Morris. “I should like it myself, but I dare not linger in New York an hour--its air is fatal to me--so near the Atlantic--you will see enough of New York in the future--I am sure you will not mind.” And Fessenden submitted with what grace he could muster. As they were standing in the station awaiting the announcement of their train, Fessenden, to the alarm of Morris, suddenly darted from his side and disappeared in the crowd. Morris suspected the cause and turned pale with anxiety. The color the mountains had given him came back as he saw his charge returning alone. Fessenden’s face, however, was flushed, his eyes were as bright as tears.

“I saw my father!” he exclaimed, with a complete disregard of the bystanders that was quite superb. “I know I saw him! Why does he act like this? I was sure he would come to meet me. Why should he look at me and go away?”

“It could not have been Mr. Abbott,” said Morris soothingly, and taking his arm he hurried him through open gates. “It is doubtful if he is in New York, and he is not the man to do anything so silly and sentimental. He is very busy working out some idea which requires all his energies--he dares venture upon no distraction--there, I have told you that much--your unerring instinct has kept you from doubting that he loves you.”

“Is he an inventor?” asked Fessenden eagerly. “Is that the mystery? Is that the reason he wants me to study all these new things--that I may be of use to him?”

“Well, he is something of an inventor, and you certainly can be of great use to him--more than anybody on earth can be.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before? Now I have a double object. I’ll work like a logger. What’s his line?”

Morris groaned; but as he disposed his hand-baggage neatly about him he had another inspiration. “All!” he announced. “That is to say, a combination of all this very modern university can teach you. The result may be extraordinary.”

Fessenden fell back on his seat and stared out of the window, seeing nothing. His imagination was fired with the vision of his lonely potential devoted father experimenting in obscurity with a revolutionizing idea, whose bare elementary threads--awaiting himself in the Northwest--filled him with such excitement and exhilaration that he wanted to get out and race the train. Fortunately his deep emotions always rendered him speechless, and Morris was permitted to sleep peacefully during the greater part of the journey.

XIII

Although Morris had never reached the heart-strings of his pupil, the youth was his one human interest--his father was dead long since; and as Fessenden fully realized his debt of gratitude to the capable and conscientious tutor, as well as being a person in whom habit struck long roots, the parting was unexpectedly affecting. As Fessenden returned from the station of the little town of Turbine, where he was to spend the greater part of the next four years, he suddenly conceived a violent antipathy for his new surroundings, and a desire to flee back to his mountains. This flat interminable prairie, this cheap town, not an elevation in sight, much less the mountains which had gone far into the modelling of his nature--there was nothing here resembling the great world of which he had dreamed. He longed for real solitude, feeling for the first time the miserable substitute the crowd offers; and suddenly understood how much closer to the great realities of life it brings a man than any actual juxtaposition.

But in a few days he was too busy and interested for either homesickness or dreams. Morris had drilled him so thoroughly in English, the dead languages, German, French, in history and mathematics, that he could have entered Yale or Harvard with sails spread, and in the younger university he took a rank at once which gave him the more time for the course known as “Training for Business.” Almost immediately it seemed to him that sleeping things rose in his brain, things whose existence he had never suspected, and strove to put themselves in touch with inspiring forces without. Fessenden, who had made up his mind to place himself in a neutral receptive state, to give no more thought to the future and to ambition until he had learned all that the university could teach him, was some time recognizing that these new-comers were talents, and that they responded to all that was inventive and practical in his initial course.

He recognized them in time, however, as day by day he grew more absorbed in the mysteries of the engine and electricity; and the glimpses he had, in his first year, of finance and political economy stirred him like old love-letters. His imagination idealized and personified the engine he worked upon as it had his canoe; and on the day when he finally mastered the difficult art of taking it to pieces and putting it together again without help or hitch, he challenged the strong man of the college to combat, and polished him off with such enthusiasm that once more he occupied the proud position of champion. This satisfied his masculine vanity, besides delivering him from the chaffing and petty persecutions provoked by his mountain hues; he was henceforth permitted to indulge his passion for sweaters and old hats, even on Sundays, unchallenged, while his remarkable abilities were as frankly acknowledged.

The military drill did not give him enough exercise, and he had promised his father he would waste no time on sport. “Your passion to excel,” Mr. Abbott had written, “would make you neglect your studies; so be wise and get your exercise some other way.” Fessenden was feeling nervous and somewhat confused one Friday afternoon when he suddenly bethought himself of his axe. He brought it forth, fingered it lovingly in a rush of memories, then shouldered it and started for the open country. He was not long finding a farmer who was willing to have his wood cut for nothing, and thereafter Fessenden spent an hour every evening and half of Saturday, either felling Mr. Lunt’s trees or sawing his logs; and the exercise relieved his brain and kept his muscles hard.

The military drill not only dismissed his mountain slouch and gave him a free and upright carriage, but inspired him with dreams of war and glory. The martial music quickened his blood, and secretly he fancied himself very much in his uniform. It was not long before he became restless in the ranks and announced to the West Point officer in charge his desire to become captain. The officer stared, laughed, then reminded him that military rank was--as a rule--or should be (he was a victim of politics himself), the result of superior accomplishments and talents, to say naught of hard work. Thereafter, three times a week during two of the afternoon hours, Fessenden dismissed books and machinery from his brain and concentrated that energetic instrument upon military drill alone.

But he spent the greater part of his time and thought in the shops and yards. Aside from the ambition and the superabundant energy which prompted him to excel in all he undertook, his imagination was absorbed in the rapture of unravelling certain mysteries of science--was at work on far-distant but great and picturesque results. He was in no hurry to invent, but even while signalling and switching at night he saw trains of unimaginable beauty and grace and lightness skim by in the dark, and great fleets of ships, invincible and terrible in war, forcing the Monroe Doctrine down the throat of Europe, perhaps annexing the rotten old monarchies altogether. That the red hair of a daughter of the Cæsars would one day entangle itself in his wondrous electrical stores, and jerk them far afield, he did not forebode then, poor Fessenden; he was happy in his dreams and ideals.

XIV

As the college year was drawing to its close he received the following letter from his father:

“MY DEAR BOY,--I am sorry to be obliged to inform you that you must
manage somehow to pay your own expenses during the remaining three
years at the university. Five hundred dollars a year are a good
deal, and you are younger than I am, remember. I can let you have a
hundred, but that is all, and I have every confidence that you will
be able to make the rest for yourself. Perhaps you may imagine what
it means to me to reflect that I have such a son to lean on in my
old age! I know of no man living that I envy. I am informed of your
progress, and I am proud of you beyond the power of any poor words of
mine to express.
Your affectionate FATHER.”

For the moment Fessenden was shocked and bewildered; but not only did the subtlety of Mr. Abbott’s letter begin its work at once, but his mettle flew to its opportunity. He promptly turned to with that absolute lack of doubt which, in a man well equipped, compels success. There were a number of relatively wealthy men in the university whose patriotism for the West and contempt for the effete East had led them, or their fathers, to patronize the home institution. Fessenden imperiously persuaded these men that they needed a course of practical lessons in forestry and longed for a summer in camp in the Adirondacks not far from the cooking of Christina. The summer was pleasant and profitable for all, but particularly for Fessenden, who found many hours to dream alone among his mountains and into the sympathetic ear of _Pocahontas_. She was haughty and evasive for several days after his enthusiastic arrival, turned him over twice, and took advantage of every abstraction to make for submerged stumps and shore. But having made him sufficiently miserable, she gradually restored him to favor, and the old happy bond was re-established. But although he was glad of the long hours of rest and of pondering over the world of science into which he had been precipitated by the intuition and foresight of his father, he was soon eager to get back to the practical application. He returned to the university with half the money he needed, and he could easily make up the remainder by coaching. The day after his return he walked out to Mr. Lunt’s and announced his intention of living with him and paying for his board with his axe, or in any other reasonable manner. The farmer was taken aback, and somewhat displeased at the idea of paying for what he had grown accustomed to accept as his right; but finally admitted the justice of Fessenden’s argument, especially as he had no such enthusiast for hard labor on his farm. Shortly after, Fessenden, in a burst of adolescent pride, returned his father’s contribution, having persuaded his forestry class that they needed private lessons in German, which in truth they did, although they enjoyed the study of Fessenden more. They never connected him with the author of his being, but they thought him unique and perennially interesting. Occasionally they marvelled at his sublime audacity, a quality as a rule born of the easy assurance of wealth and social position, particularly when well-bred and unconscious; but they never got beyond the conclusion that it was the result of an unusual brain and a gift for leadership. That he should become the captain of his company before the end of his first year, and prove an ardent disciplinarian, did not so much surprise them; but his talents were less easy to account for, and those interested in heredity approached him on the subject. Fessenden was determined to keep his father’s secret, whatever it might be; and as he could be diplomatic when diplomacy seemed more advisable than throwing an impertinent man out of the window, he sent the curious away with the impression that he came of plain mountain people.

XV