The Brentons | Page 4

have all the light I am likely to get, mother," he said steadily.
"But, if the light within thee be--"

He checked her with a sudden petulant lift of his head. And, after all, it
was not quite her fault. Life, for her, had been so hard and so busy that
he ought not to grudge her the consolation she had been able to dig up
out of the accumulated débris of the ancestral trick of sermonizing. In a
more gracious, plastic existence, she would have taken it out in
Browning and the Russians; yet she was not necessarily more narrow
because her literary artists were pre-Messianic. Neither was it the fault
of those same artists that they were quoted in and out of season, and
always for the purpose of clinching an obnoxious point.
"It isn't," he said, as quietly as he was able. Then the boyishness pent
up within him came bursting out once more. "Listen, mother," he said
impetuously. "Really, this thing has got to be talked out between us to
the very dregs. We may as well face it now as ever, and come to the
final conclusion. I know you started out to make me into a minister. I
know you feel that it is the one great profession of them all. But is it?"
For a minute, her hands gripped each other; but they were underneath
the hanging edge of tablecloth, and so invisible to Scott.
"What can be greater than to speak the truth that makes us free?" she
questioned.
"Isn't there more than one kind of truth, mother?" he challenged her.
"How can there be?"
Again he shut his teeth and swallowed down his opposition. He was too
immature to argue that there might be different facets to the selfsame
truth.
"Listen, mother," he began again, when he had proved to himself that
he could rely upon his self-control. "As I say, I started out to be a
minister, to be another Parson Wheeler in fact, if not in name. I know it
has been your dream to hear me preach, some day or other. And I know
how you have pinched and scrimped and worked, to give me the
education that I was bound to need."

"You have worked, too, Scott," she told him, in swift generosity. "You
have tugged along and gone without things and worked hard, in your
books and out of them. You know I have been proud of you; the credit
for it isn't all mine, by any means."
His young face flushed and softened. Unclasping his hands, he leaned
across the table and laid his palm upon her fingers as they rested on the
cloth beside her plate. Both palm and fingers were roughened and
callous with hard work; but mother and son both were of that
fast-vanishing class of folk who spell their Education with the largest
sort of capital letter. Their minds were alike, in that they both believed
the work worth while, for the sake of all that it would be able to
accomplish.
"Thank you, mother," Scott said unsteadily. "I am glad you feel so,
even if I don't deserve it." Then he steadied sharply and became
practical. "So far, we've put it through, one way or the other," he went
on. "Still, if I go in for the ministry," and his mother winced at the bald
worldliness of his phrasing; "I shall have a year and a half more at
college, and then three years of divinity school. We can do it, I suppose.
For a matter of fact, I ought to be able to put it through alone, without a
cent from you; but is it quite worth while? According to Professor
Mansfield, if I keep steady, I can go straight from my degree into the
laboratory as a paid demonstrator. It wouldn't be much pay, of course.
Still, it would help along, and I could go on studying under him, all the
time I was about it. By the time three years were over, the three years I
would have to spend in the divinity school, I should be, ought to be,
well upon my feet and walking towards a future of my own."
His mother drew a long breath, as the swift torrent of words came to an
end. Then,--
"And at the end of twenty years, my son? That is the real question."
Scott's enthusiasm all went out of him. His assent came heavily.
"Yes," he admitted. "Yes. I suppose that is the real question, mother. It
all depends--"

She looked up at him sharply, as if in haste to probe the limits of his
hesitation.
"Depends?" she echoed.
"Upon the way you feel about it, mother."
She shook her head.
"Not that," she offered swift correction; "but upon the