The Courage of the Commonplace | Page 6

I could wish. I see now that you needed a blow in the face to wake you up--and you got it. And you waked." The great engineer smiled with clean pleasure. "I have had"--he hesitated--"I have had always a feeling of responsibility to your mother for you--more than for the others. You were so young when she died that you seem more her child. I was afraid I had not treated you well--that it was my fault if you failed." The boy made a gesture--he could not very well speak. His father went on: "So when you refused the motor, when you went into engineer's camp that first summer instead of going abroad, I was pleased. Your course here has been a satisfaction, without a drawback--keener, certainly, because I am an engineer, and could appreciate, step by step, how well you were doing, how much you were giving up to do it, how much power you were gaining by that long sacrifice. I've respected you through these years of commonplace, and I've known how much more courage it meant in a pleasure-loving lad such as you than it would have meant in a serious person such as I am--such as Ted and Harry are, to an extent, also." The older man, proud and strong and reserved, turned on his son such a shining face as the boy had never seen. "That boyish failure isn't wiped out, Johnny, for I shall remember it as the corner-stone of your career, already built over with an honorable record. You've made good. I congratulate you and I honor you."
The boy never knew how he got home. He knocked his shins badly on a quite visible railing and it was out of the question to say a single word. But if he staggered it was with an overload of happiness, and if he was speechless and blind the stricken faculties were paralyzed with joy. His father walked beside him and they understood each other. He reeled up the streets contented.
That night there was a family dinner, and with the coffee his father turned and ordered fresh champagne opened.
"We must have a new explosion to drink to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine," he said. Johnny looked at him surprised, and then at the others, and the faces were bright with the same look of something which they knew and he did not.
"What's up?" asked Johnny. "Who's the superintendent of the Oriel mine? Why do we drink to him? What are you all grinning about, anyway?" The cork flew up to the ceiling, and the butler poured gold bubbles into the glasses, all but his own.
"Can't I drink to the beggar, too, whoever he is?" asked Johnny, and moved his glass and glanced up at Mullins. But his father was beaming at Mullins in a most unusual way and Johnny got no wine. With that Ted, the oldest brother, pushed back his chair and stood and lifted his glass.
"We'll drink," he said, and bowed formally to Johnny, "to the gentleman who is covering us all with glory, to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine, Mr. John Archer McLean," and they stood and drank the toast. Johnny, more or less dizzy, more or less scarlet, crammed his hands in his pockets and started and turned redder, and brought out interrogations in the nervous English which is acquired at our great institutions of learning.
"Gosh! are you all gone dotty?" he asked. And "Is this a merry jape?" And "Why, for cat's sake, can't you tell a fellow what's up your sleeve?" While the family sipped champagne and regarded him.
"Now, if I've squirmed for you enough, I wish you'd explain-- father, tell me!" the boy begged.
And the tale was told by the family, in chorus, without politeness, interrupting freely. It seemed that the president of the big mine needed a superintendent, and wishing young blood and the latest ideas had written to the head of the Mining Department in the School of Technology to ask if he would give him the name of the ablest man in the graduating class--a man to be relied on for character as much as brains, he specified, for the rough army of miners needed a general at their head almost more than a scientist. Was there such a combination to be found, he asked, in a youngster of twenty-three or twenty-four, such as would be graduating from the "Tech"? If possible, he wanted a very young man--he wanted the enthusiasm, he wanted the athletic tendency, he wanted the plus-strength, he wanted the unmade reputation which would look for its making to hard work in the mine. The letter was produced and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!" he remarked at intervals and remarked practically nothing else. There was no need. They