When I returned to the house to get my clothes and make my preparations for leaving home for good, I had a most painful scene with my mother, and it was the only serious misunderstanding I ever had with her.  She went through, in a rapid resume, the history of my life, from the day when I was given her in consolation for the little brother before me, who died, with a word for each of the crises through which her care had carried me,—­accidents, grave maladies, for I was apparently not a strong child, and at several conjunctures my life had been despaired of; all the story being told as she walked up and down rapidly in the chamber, with the tears running down her cheeks, and with a passionate vehemence I had never suspected her to be capable of, since she had the most complete self-restraint I ever knew in a woman.  But it was an impasse—­I neither could nor would go back from the career decided upon, nor would the family have consented, and to return to the workshop at my father’s insistence was to lose everything.  It seemed brutal to refuse mother’s entreaties to ignore the collision of wills, and to go on as if nothing had happened, but to do this and remain in the house with my father, in the perpetual danger of another conflict, was impossible.  The question had to be settled, and all I could do was to insist on father’s making a distinct disavowal of any right or intention to demand my services in the shop at any future time, and leaving me free to follow the programme agreed on in the family council.  It was in effect a frank apology that I wanted, but I knew him too well to suppose he would ever consent to make an apology in words, or to admit to me that he had made a mistake; and I left the solution in my mother’s hands, with the understanding that the definite promise should be made to her, and I knew too that this would hold him as completely as if made to a public authority.  Nothing could bring her to contradict him openly, and in all my life I never saw her make a sign of disrespect for his mastery in domestic things, but I knew that once this promise was made to her I could count on his being held to it sternly.

That evening the matter was settled, but of what had passed, or what was said, I never knew anything, for my mother never wasted words; and, while no apology was made, or any retraction expressed, neither my father nor myself ever alluded to the subject of my working in the shop again, nor did I ever, as before, go into it during the vacations, or offer to assist when affairs were hurried.  The habit of asserting the paternal authority and the sense of it, in my father, were so strong that I never risked again reviving it.

CHAPTER IV

COLLEGE LIFE