The Awakening of Helena Richie | Page 9

in such things?"
"Oh no, Samuel; no, indeed," Mrs. Wright protested nervously.
"And to use money not his own! Do you know what that is called, my dear Eliza? It is called--"
"Oh don't, Samuel." whimpered the poor mother.
"And to think how carefully I have trained him! And all I have done for him. I let him buy that skiff he said he wanted. Absolute waste of money! Our old rowboat is good enough for the girls, so why isn't it good enough for him? And I never laid a hand on him in punishment either; not many fathers can say that."
As for the bank supplies young Sam had explained to his mother that they had been ordered and charged, so what was the matter? And Mrs. Wright kneading her tear-soaked handkerchief into a ball, cried some more and said:
"Oh, Sam dear, why do you act so?"
Sam looked at her attentively, wondering why her little nose always reddened when she cried. But he waited patiently, until she finished her rambling reproaches. It occurred to him that he would tell Mrs. Richie all about this matter of the prints. "She will understand," he thought.
Sam's acquaintance with Mrs. Richie had begun when she was getting settled in her new house. Sam senior, having no desire to climb the hill road, sent his various communications to his tenant by his son, and afterwards Sam junior had communications of his own to make. He fell into the habit of stopping there on Sunday afternoons, quite oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Richie did not display any pleasure at seeing him. After one of these calls he was apt to be late in reaching "The Top," as his grandfather's place was called, and old Benjamin Wright, in his brown wig and moth-eaten beaver hat, would glare at him with melancholy dark eyes.
"Gad-a-mercy, what do you mean,--getting here at six-five! I have my tea at six, sir; at six sharp. Either get here on time or stay away. I don't care which. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir," young Sam would murmur.
"Where have you been? Mooning after that female at the Stuffed Animal House?"
"I had to leave a message, sir, about the lease."
"How long does it take to leave a message about a lease?"
"She was not down-stairs and I had to wait--"
"I had to wait! That's more to the point. There, don't talk about it. You drive me crazy with your chatter."
Then they would sit down to supper in a black silence only broken by an occasional twitter from one of the many cages that hung about the room. But afterwards young Sam had his reward; the library, a toby, long before he was old enough to smoke, and his grandfather reading aloud in a wonderful voice, deep, sonorous, flexible--Shakespeare, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, there was nothing personal in such reading--it was not done to give pleasure to young Sam. Every night the old man rumbled out the stately lines, sitting by himself in this gloomy room walled to the ceiling with books, and warmed by a soft-coal fire that snapped and bubbled behind the iron bars of the grate. Sometimes he would burst into angry ecstasy at the beauty of what he read "There! What do you think of that?"
"Oh, it's splendid!"
"Hah! Much you know about it! There is about as much poetry in your family as there is in that coal scuttle."
It was when he was eighteen that once the old man let his grandson read The Tempest with him. It was a tremendous evening to Sam. In the first place, his grandfather swore at him with a fury that really attracted his attention. But that night the joy of the drama suddenly possessed him. The deed was done; the dreaming youth awoke to the passion of art. As Benjamin Wright gradually became aware of it delight struggled with his customary anger at anything unexpected. He longed to share his pleasure with somebody; once he mentioned to Dr. Lavendar that "that cub, Sam, really has something to him!" After that he took the boy's training seriously in hand, and his artless pride concealed itself in a severity that knew no bounds of words. When Sam confessed his wish to write a drama in blank verse, his grandfather swore at him eagerly and demanded every detail of what he called the "fool plot of the thing."
"What does that female at the Stuffed Animal House say to the idea of your writing a drama?" he asked contemptuously.
"She says I may read it to her."
"Knows as much about dramatic poetry as you do I suppose? When you finish the first act bring it to me. I'll tell you how bad it is."
His eager scoffing betrayed him, and every Sunday night, in spite of slaughtering criticism the boy took courage