He was back to the hall in an instant.
“He’s on the way,” he said soothingly. “Can’t I lift him up?”
“No, we’ll wait till the doctor comes. Get a glass of water!”
He sprang for the water, noting as he passed the dining room window that it was pushed halfway up from the bottom.
“What was Dad doing down here?” he whispered as he brought the water.
“He heard a noise and came down to investigate,” murmured the mother. “I tried to make him wait and telephone the police but he wouldn’t.”
There was a sound at the door. The doctor had arrived, with a policeman just behind him wanting to know what had happened. The next half hour was a confusion of horror to Chris. Policemen coming and going silently, low murmured directions, fingerprints on the windowsill, footprints outside the window. A quick, low gasp of pain from the stricken man as he came back to consciousness under the doctor’s ministrations. Anxious waiting during the search for the bullet that had entered somewhere around the lungs. Bandages, subtle pungent odors filling the house, the swift arrival of a trained nurse from the hospital, a bed brought downstairs and his father moved to it. It all seemed like one awful nightmare that could not be true. His father! And yesterday everything had been so wonderful, and he had been so thankful that there was nothing dreadful in his life.
Strange that that peculiar, unnatural sermon of Sunday should come back to him now. That one sentence, rather, from the sermon, that he had heard above the joyful reverberation of his thoughts. That suggestion that men ought to be thankful for the hard things that came to them. Bosh! How could they? That was ridiculous! What possible good could come from an experience like this one? How could one believe that terrible experiences were sent in love to anyone?
Things settled down into quiet at last. That fearful probing for the bullet was over. It had been found in a gravely serious spot, close to the lung. His father lay sleeping under opiates, with the white-capped nurse in charge and silence reigning. The mother was going about with white face and bright eyes, getting ready in the kitchen something that the doctor had ordered.
“It’s a very serious situation,” the doctor told Chris plainly, “but if all goes well, he has an even chance of pulling through. You’ll have to be a man and take the burden from your mother, Son.”
Chris, with heavy heart, straightened his strong, young shoulders and bowed gravely. He felt as if the burdens of the universe had suddenly settled down upon him. He felt as if the ground under him was sinking away and everything that he had known and trusted in was swimming, toppling about him. But he bowed the doctor out, took all the directions, went and helped the nurse arrange a curtain to keep the light out from her patient’s eyes, helped his mother in the kitchen, and then persuaded her to lie down and save her strength for later, when she might be needed. And at last he was free to go to his own room and change his bathrobe and slippers for more suitable clothing.
He stood in the middle of the room and looked about him, dazed. Looked at his watch and stared about again. Was it only three short hours since he had heard that shot? Why, ordinarily at this hour, he would still be in his bed, sleeping. It was only six o’clock in the morning, yet that house had seemingly passed through a whole day’s work!
Was it only yesterday morning he had been so happy, getting his things in shape for packing? There on his desk lay a pile of papers he had sorted out to burn. And there were the piles of undergarments his mother had marked yesterday and laid on the window seat for him to put in his trunk. College! He couldn’t go now, of course. And that car? Where was it? He ought to hunt up the police and find out what they did with it. He hadn’t thought of it since.
Softly, he tiptoed to the telephone in the back hall and finally got in touch with the police station. They assured him the car was safe, what was left of it, and his heart sank. His next duty would be to communicate with the owner. Would he be liable for the damage or would the insurance cover it? He knew very little about insurance rules. A five-thousand-dollar car—its beautiful glitter defaced! Another five thousand dollars to add to the hundreds of thousands, perhaps, that his father owed. Well, he would look after that, anyway. Somehow, he must find a job. He must! He must be a man now and take cares upon himself. Maybe his father would never recover. Even if he lived, he might be always an invalid after this. There was that possibility to face.
Yesterday, he was facing another happy year of college life: football, basketball, baseball, fraternities, honors—all that college life meant. Today he might as well be an old man and be done with it. He had debts and a family dependent on him. He dropped his head down wearily on the telephone stand and sighed. If he had not been ashamed he would have cried. He could feel the tears in his eyes and down his throat. He swallowed hard and fought them back. He was a man. He had to be! And Dad, his perfectly wonderful dad, was lying in the living room between life and death. Dad might not get well. What did it matter whether he went to college or not? If Dad ever got well, he wouldn’t care whether he owned a sport car or not.
Presently, he roused himself enough to telephone the agency of the car, ask anxious questions about insurance, and disclose the whereabouts of the car. He was gratefully relieved when they said they would take care if it and let him know later about the insurance. He left the telephone with a sigh, tiptoed to the door of the living room, and looked wistfully in. The nurse came and spoke to him in a noiseless voice, telling him to go to bed and snatch some sleep. Chris dragged himself upstairs and threw himself across his bed. The sun was high and bright, flinging its rays half across the room, but he did not notice it. He was utterly weary in soul and body, and dropped asleep as his head touched the pillow.
There followed long days and anxious nights, when the affairs of the world were practically forgotten in the more vital question of whether the husband and father was going to live or die, and Chris felt that he was aging a year an hour. College was a thing of the past, and he stuffed away all the pennants and athletic articles in a dark closet and tried to forget there was such a thing as being a boy with a carefree life. Yet there wasn’t much to actually do. Hang around the halls, listen for the slightest sound from the sick room, go on the trivial errands for the nurse or doctor, sometimes in a wild hurry, with the helpless feeling that the beloved father’s life was slipping away no matter what they did. Once, he had to go to the train to meet a famous specialist who was coming in consultation. That was a terrible day that seemed ages ago.
As Chris looked back to the afternoon when he and his father had stepped out of the bank door and stood together before that angry mob, it seemed years past. Yet he was sometimes curious of a thrill of pride in his father. If Dad had to go out of life, he was glad he had this last brave act to remember. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes to try and sleep, he could set the noble, unafraid look on his father’s face as he opened his lips to speak and stood there so controlled and quiet when the mud was thrown in his face. At such times, his blood would boil over the indignity till it seemed he just must get up and out and hunt for the criminal who did it and throttle him. Then he would get up and begin to pace back and forth in his room, like a caged lion, till remembering his father was downstairs, who might hear. He would force himself to lie down again.
Affairs at the bank seemed a distant and vague interest. Every day someone would call up and ask after the president and give some hint of how matters were going. Chris knew that a bulletin had been sent out to depositors giving them hope of an installment in the near future. He knew that his mother had signed over all properties in her name or in a joint account. He knew vaguely that other directors had done the same and that there was hope of putting the bank back someday, on some kind of a working foundation. But he seemed to have drifted so far away from it all that it did not interest him. His heart seemed frozen, deadened. His universe had turned to stone. He wondered, sometimes idly, why God could let a catastrophe like this come to his father and mothe
r, such wonderful Christians. And himself! He had never done anything so very bad that he should have to be treated like this. It almost looked as if his father and mother had put their trust vainly in God.
One day on the street, Chris was hurrying along with medicine for which the nurse had sent him, and a man, passing, looked keenly into his eyes with a pleasant glance. The lean, kindly face was vaguely familiar. Somehow battling in his mind against that kindly glance was a former impression of startled antagonism. He glanced back after the man, and suddenly it came to him that this was the man who had preached that sermon about being thankful for the hard things as well as the pleasant things that came into one’s life. Chris stabbed him in the back with a black scowl and passed on.
Good guy, that is! Knows a lot about it, he does! he meditated. Like ta lose all he’s got, wouldn’t he? Like to have his father dishonored and shot and lying between life and death for weeks. Like ta give up his chance of getting anywhere in the world because he couldn’t finish his college education. You bet he’d be thankful for all that handed out ta him in one day, wouldn’t he?
There remained with him an impression of deeply graven lines of sorrow, though the man did not look old.
Gradually, as the days passed, the tension in the sickroom let up a little. The burden on their hearts was not quite so heavy. The father seemed to be improving just a little, and hope sprang up fearsomely.
Then, one morning, there came a telephone call from Walter Gillespie’s sister. Walter was coming home for a few hours and wanted to see him very much. Could he take lunch with him? He wanted to consult with him about something.
Chris was whistling softly under his breath as he got ready. It was good to have the cloud lifted, even briefly, to feel that things were not quite so hopeless in the sickroom as they had been and that he might go out for a few hours without that dread feeling clutching at his heart that death might have entered during his absence. It was good to see Walt again, even though he had been gone from home but a short time. It gave him a warm, pleasant feeling to know that Walt wanted to see him, a thrill to think of hearing how things were going at college. It was a salve for his hurt pride that even though he was not coming back to college, they valued his opinion enough to consult him about something.
As he walked down the street, he began to wonder what it could be that Walt wanted. Probably to discuss some questionable men who were up for consideration by the fraternity. It might be Dick Bradford. If so, he was absolutely against him. He was yellow. You couldn’t depend on him.
As he approached the Gillespie home, he suddenly realized that he was on foot instead of driving the handsome new car that he had talked with Walt so much about when he was thinking of getting it. It may have been this thought that obsessed him as he went up the steps, or was it possible that Walt, as he came down the stairs and met him in the hall, had just the slightest shade of condescension about him as he greeted him? He must be mistaken, of course. Walt was never that way with him. With anybody. Walt and he had been buddies since they were little kids. No, of course, he was just sensitive.
Yet he felt it again up in Walt’s room, when they were going over the history of the last few weeks in college—Walt telling about the new boys, the prospects of the fraternity, the changes in the faculty. Especially what was being done in the fraternity. Walt had been made president! A sudden pang shot through Chris. There had been strong hints that he himself was to be made president this semester. Then he generously arose to the occasion and put out a cordial hand for the old-time grasp!
“Congratulations, Pard!” he said eagerly, his ready smile beaming out. “That’s great!”
Walt accepted his eagerness a bit languidly, as befitted one in a higher position, and went on to tell of the men that had been pledged.
With studied casualness, Walt announced, “And oh, yes, we’re taking in Dick Bradford. That’ll be a help.”
Chris froze at once. Dick Bradford! Walt knew what he thought of Dick Bradford. Then Walt hadn’t come to consult him about that. It was all settled. Chris felt strongly the condescension in his former comrade’s manner, and he closed his lips quickly in a firm line and then opened them to say with decision, “You’ll be making a great mistake, Walt. He’s yellow. I thought I told you what happened last spring—”
But Walt waved him aside.
“He’s got personality, Chris. There isn’t a man in the new bunch that can match him for that. And we need men with personality, outstanding men, that can represent us anywhere and make a good impression. We feel that we have done a good thing in securing him. In fact we lost him to the Deltas. They had him all but pledged.”
“He’s a typical Delta,” said Chris, with his old haughty manner that used to bring Walt to terms in the old days. But Walt simply lifted his chin a shade higher and smiled superciliously.
“You always did have it in for Dick,” he said condescendingly, “but your advice is a bit late. Dick was pledged last night, and we feel that he’s the right man. He has charm, you know. And now, kid—”
Chris frowned with a sudden chill at his heart. This wasn’t the old kindly “kid” of his childhood; it was a condescending tone, a term of diminution. It was as if they had suddenly changed places, and the admiring deference that Walt had always paid him had suddenly been demanded of him. Did it do this to Walt to become president of the fraternity for a semester?
Would it have done that to him?
But Walt was talking fluently now.
“We had a get-together last night, some of us who are in the heart of things, and decided it wasn’t fair to your college to have a man like you drop out just at the end this way.”
He spoke as if Chris had dropped out through sheer wantonness. Chris looked up at him in astonishment.
“We feel that it’s due the college and our class that you should finish. You had a fine record all the way through, both athletics and studies, and neither the class nor the teams can afford to lose you at this stage of things. We feel you should come back and finish.”
Chris lifted his chin and looked at his old comrade coldly. This was not even the old tone of sympathy and love that he felt he had a right to expect from Walt. He was talking as if he were an officer who had a right to rebuke him.
“In short,” went on Walt, putting on a grown-up official manner, “we felt that something should be done for you. So we have looked around and found several ways of helping out. With an athletic scholarship, we can fix things so that you will have practically nothing to pay. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to occupy the suite that we had expected to take together.” Walt’s eyes were on the floor now, fitting the toe of his well-polished shoe into the oriental rug. “You wouldn’t expect that. And anyway, Dick has taken over your share in the apartment, so that would be impossible even if you could afford it. But there is a room vacant on the fourth floor, and I think you could be fairly comfortable there. Of course, it’s among the freshies, but that would be a part of the concession I believe from the college. Some duties up there—”
He paused suddenly and looked up, worried by the stony silence with which Chris was receiving his offer.
Chris was sitting there with his haughtiest manner, his head thrown up, his eyes angry, looking at his friend as if he had suddenly become an alien enemy.
Walt began to fidget around uneasily. He knew that look on Chris’s face but had never happened to have it turned on him before. He hastened to speak in quite a different tone.
“Why, what’s the matter, old man? You don’t understand. I’m offering you a chance to finish your college course. I’ve come down on purpose. The frat sent me. They’re back of me, and they’ll be back of you. And the college wants you.”
“Sorry!” said Chris stiffly. “It’s quite impossible.”
“But look here, Chris,” said Walt, getting nervous. He had thought this thing was going to be put through so easily. “You don’t understand. It won’t cost you a cent. It’s a free gif
t. The college feels you’re worth it to them! They haven’t a man who can come up to you in athletics, and they really need you.”
“That’s gratifying, I’m sure,” said Chris, assuming his most grown-up manner and shutting his lips with that kind of finality that made his former playmate remember other occasions and understand that this was going to be a real hand-to-hand battle.
He settled down to argue. He still had several good reasons why Chris should come back with him today to college.
“Why, I’ve had this ready to propose for a week, but I wouldn’t do it until your father was out of danger,” he said, in a conciliatory tone that helped a lot toward soothing Chris’s wounded pride.
“My father isn’t entirely out of danger yet,” said Chris, in a serious tone. “He’s better, but we have to take very great care of him.”
“Oh, certainly! Of course!” said the other young man, a trifle impatiently. “But a nurse can do that! He would get well twice as quick if he knew you were back in college getting all that’s coming to you. Why, I’ve had my sister on the quiet watching the bulletins from the doctor, and she wired me the minute he said your father was better.”
“That wouldn’t make any difference,” said Chris, and suddenly knew he was right. “It will be a long time before my father is well, and I’m needed right here. I have responsibilities. And you’re mistaken about Dad. I’m just sure now, under the existing circumstances, that Dad would expect me to stand by.”
But Walter Gillespie did not give up. He argued it this way and that. It presently appeared that another member of the fraternity had come down with him. An alumnus was to be there to lunch, and Chris had it all to go over again.
But Chris did not weaken. As the argument went on, he only grew stronger in the knowledge of what he had to do. A vision of that angry mob in front of the bank the day he stood by his father and promised to see that his covenant with the people was made good came vividly to his mind, and convinced him that unquestionably his place was here at home, helping his father to make good, cheering and helping his mother.