His father's letters in return did not lessen his gloom. "These agitators will destroy the country, my son, if they keep on," Richard had written in his last letter. "It is a sin against civilization to hold your fellow-men in bondage, and that is why years ago I gave Malachi and Hannah and the others their freedom, but Virginia has unquestionably the right to govern her internal affairs without consulting Massachusetts, and that is what many of these Northern leaders do not or will not understand. I am greatly disturbed over the situation, and I sincerely hope your own career will not be affected by these troubles. As to my own affairs, all I can say is that I work early and late, and am out of debt." Poor fellow! He thought he was.
Oliver was sitting thus one night, his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, gazing into the smouldering coals of his grate, his favorite attitude when his mind was troubled, when Fred, his face aglow, his big blue eyes dancing, threw wide the door and bounded in, bringing in his clothes the fresh, cool air of the night. He had been at work in the School of the Academy of Design, and had a drawing in chalk under his arm--a head of the young Augustus.
"What's the matter, Ollie, got the blues?"
"No, Freddie, only thinking."
"What's her name? I'll go and see her and make it up. Out with it--do I know her?"
Oliver smiled faintly, examined the drawing for a moment, and handing it back to Fred, said, sadly, "It's not a girl, Freddie, but I don't seem to get anywhere."
Fred threw the drawing on the bed and squeezed himself into the chair beside his chum, his arm around his neck.
"Where do you want to get, old man? What's the matter--any trouble at the store?"
"No--none that I know of. But the life is so monotonous, Fred. You do what you love to do. I mark boxes all day till lunch-time, then I roll them out on the sidewalk and make out dray tickets till I come home. I've been doing that all winter; I expect to be doing it for years. That don't get me anywhere, does it? I hate the life more and more every day."
(Was our hero's old love of change again asserting itself, or was it only the pinching of that Chinese shoe which his mother in her anxiety had slipped on his unresisting foot, and which he was still wearing to please her? Or was it the upper pressure of some inherent talent--some gift of his ancestors that would not down at his own bidding or that of his mother or anybody else's?)
"Somebody's got to do it, Ollie, and you are the last man hired," remarked Fred, quietly. "What would you like to do?"
Oliver shifted himself in the crowded chair until he could look into his room-mate's eyes.
"Fred, old man," he answered, his voice choking, "I haven't said a word to you about it all the time I've been here, for I don't like to talk about a thing that hurts me, and so I've kept it to myself. Now I'll tell you the truth just as it is. I don't want Mr. Slade's work nor anybody else's work. I don't like business and never will. I want to paint, and I'll never be happy until I do. That's it, fair and square."
"Well, quit Slade, then, and come with me."
"I would if it wasn't for mother. I promised her I would see this through, and I will." As he spoke the overdue mortgage and his mother's efforts to keep the interest paid passed in review before him.
Fred caught his breath. It astonished him, independent young Northerner as he was, to hear a full-grown man confess that his mother's' apron-strings still held him up, but he made no comment.
"Why not try both?" he cried. "There's a place in the school alongside of me--we'll work together nights. It won't interfere with what you do downtown.
You'll get a good start, and when you have a day off in the summer you can do some out-door work. Waller has told me a dozen times that you draw better than he did when he commenced. Come along with me."
This conversation, with the other incidents of the day, or rather that part of it which had reference to the Academy, was duly set forth in his next letter to his mother--not as an argument to gain her consent to his studying with Fred, for he knew it was the last thing she would agree to--but because it was his habit to tell her everything. It would show her, too, how good a fellow Fred was and what an interest he took in his welfare. Her answer, three days later, sent him bounding upstairs and into their room like a whirlwind.
"Read, Fred, read!" he cried. "I can go.
Mother says she thinks it would be the best thing in the world for me. Here, clap your eyes on that--" and Oliver held the letter out to Fred, his finger pointing to this passage: "I wish you would join Fred at the Academy. Now that you have a regular business that occupies your mind, and are earning your living, I have no objection to your studying drawing or learning any other accomplishment. You work hard all day, and this will rest you."
The cramped foot was beginning to spread! The Chinese shoe had lost its top button.
