The Iron Rule; Or, Tyranny in the Household

"Set a house on fire!" said Edward, in a half-sneering, half-censorious, tantalizing voice.

"If you say that again, I'll knock you down!" fell sharply from the lips of Andrew, in whom his father's repulsive coldness was beginning to awaken bad feelings.

"Set a house on fire!" repeated Edward, in a tone still more aggravating.

The words had scarcely left his tongue, ere the open hand of his brother came along side of his head, with a force that knocked him across the room. At this instant Mr. Howland entered. He made no inquiry as to the cause of the blow he saw struck, but took it for granted that it was an unprovoked assault of Andrew upon his brother. Yielding to the impulse of the moment, he caught the former by the arm, in a fierce grip, and struck him with his open hand, as he had struck his brother, repeating the blow three or four times.

Andrew neither shrunk from the blows, cried out, nor offered the smallest resistance, but stood firmly, until his incensed father had satisfied his outraged feelings.

"You forgot, I suppose, that I could strike also?" said the latter angrily, when he released his son from the tight grasp, with which he held him.

"No sir," replied Andrew, with a calmness that surprized, yet still more incensed his father; "I thought nothing about it. I punished Edward as he deserved; and if he says to me what he did just now, will repeat the punishment, if it cost me my life."

"Silence!" cried Mr. Howland.

"I said nothing but the truth," spoke up Edward.

"What did you say?" inquired the father.

"I told him that he'd set a house on fire."

"And lied when he said it," calmly and deliberately spoke Andrew.

"Silence! I'll have no such language in my presence!" angrily retorted Mr. Howland.

"It is bad enough to be accused falsely by a lying policeman," said Andrew, "but to have the charge repeated by my own brother is more than I can or will bear. And I warn Edward, in your presence, not to try the experiment again. If he does he will not escape so lightly."

"Silence, I say!"

Andrew remained silent.

"Edward, leave the room," said Mr. Howland. There was little sternness in his voice, as he thus spoke to his favorite boy.

The lad retired. For several minutes Mr. Howland walked the floor, and Andrew who had seated himself, waited in a calm, defiant spirit, for him to renew the interview. It was at length done in these words—

"What do you expect is to become of you, sir?"

Not feeling inclined to answer such an interrogation, Andrew continued silent.

"Say!" repeated the father, "what do you think is to become of you?"

Still the boy answered not a word.

"Under bail to answer for a crime—"

"Which I never committed—nor designed to commit!" spoke up Andrew, quickly interrupting his father, and fixing his eyes upon, him with an unflinching gaze.

"It is easy to make a denial. But the evidence against you is positive."

"The evidence against me is a positive lie!" was Andrew's indignant response.

"I won't be talked to in this way!" said Mr. Howland, in an offended tone. "No son of mine shall insult me!"

"A strange insult to a father, for a son to declare himself innocent of a crime falsely laid to his charge," replied Andrew, with a strong rebuke in his voice. "A true father would be glad—"

"Silence!" again fell harshly from the lips of Mr. Howland. "Silence, I say; I will hear no such language from a son of mine!"

Without a word, Andrew arose, and, retiring from the room, took up his hat and left the house—the relation between him and his father by no means in a better position than it was before. Within a few minutes of ten o'clock the boy returned, and, being admitted, went up to his room without joining the family.

On the next morning, one or two of the daily papers contained an account of Andrew's arrest, with his father's name and all the particulars of the transaction. Any one reading this account, with the reporter's comment, could not help but believe that Andrew was a desperate bad boy, and undoubtedly guilty in design of incendiarism.

"See what a disgrace you have brought upon us!" exclaimed Mr. Howland, flinging a paper, containing this mortifying intelligence in the face of his son.

The boy took up the paper, and read the paragraph referred to with a burning cheek. He made no remark, but sat for some time in a state of profound abstraction. No one guessed the thoughts that were passing through his mind, nor the utter hopelessness that was lying, with a heavy weight, upon his spirit. Before him was the image of Emily. She had seen him with his blood-disfigured face, in the hands of the watchman; and now she would see this slanderous story, and what was worse, believe it!

Some two hours subsequently, while walking along the street, Andrew perceived Emily, within a few paces of him. He looked her steadily in the face, and saw that she saw him; for a quick flush overspread her countenance. But, averting her eyes, she passed him without a further sign of recognition.

At night-fall, the boy did not return to his home.

Anxiously did the time pass with Mrs. Howland until ten o'clock, and yet he was away. Eleven—twelve—one o'clock, pealed on the ear of the watching mother, but he came not. It was all in vain that her husband remonstrated with her. His words passed her unheeded; and she remained waiting and watching, until near the hour of morning, but her waiting and watching were all in vain.

Two days passed—yet there came no tidings of the absent boy. On the third day, Mrs. Howland received the following letter:—

"MY DEAR MOTHER:—I have left my home—forever! What is to become of me, I do not know. But I can remain with you no longer. Father treats me like a dog—or worse than a dog; and he has never treated me much better. I have tried to do right a great many times; but it was of no use. The harder I tried to do right, the more he found fault with me. He was always blaming me for something I didn't do. It is all a lie of the watchman's about my setting the house on fire. Such a thing never entered my mind. Father wouldn't let me in, and I had to sleep somewhere. He wouldn't speak a word for me in the Mayor's office. So it's all his fault that I am to be tried before the Court. But I'm not going to be sent to the Penitentiary. Father is my bail for a thousand dollars. I shall be sorry if he has to pay it; but it will be better for him to do that, than for me to go to the Penitentiary for nothing. So, good-by, mother, I love you! You have always been good to me. If father had been as good, I would have been a better boy. Don't grieve about me. It's better that I should leave home. You'll all be happier. If I ever return to you, I will be different from what I am now. Farewell mother! Don't forget me. I will never forget you. Don't grieve about me. The thought of that troubles me the most. But it is better for me to go away, mother—better for us all. Farewell.

"ANDREW."

CHAPTER X

A YEAR elapsed before any tidings of the wanderer came. Then Mrs. Howland received a few lines from him, dated in a Southern city, where he spoke of having just arrived from South America. He had little to say of himself, beyond that he was well; and did not speak of visiting home.

After reading this letter, Mrs. Howland placed it in the hands of her husband, who read it also, and then gave it back without a remark. He checked an involuntary sigh as he did so. Not the slightest reference was made to him by his son; a fact that he did not overlook, and that he did not observe without a sense of disappointment. The long absence of his wayward boy had softened his feelings toward him; and with pain he remembered many acts of harshness that now seemed to have in them too much of the element of severity. At the term of the Court, which was held soon after Andrew went away, the Grand Jury failed to obtain sufficient evidence to justify the finding of a bill against him, and released the security given for his appearance at Court. This fact, with a previous questioning of the policeman by whom Andrew had been arrested, satisfied Mr. Howland that the boy had been unjustly suspected of an intention to commit a crime. But this conviction had come too late. The effects of that unjust accusation had already fallen in sad consequences upon the head of the poor boy; and the father could not force from his mind the painful conviction that he was, mainly, responsible for these consequences.

Another year went by, but during all the time, no further tidings came of Andrew. To his first letter, Mrs. Howland had immediately replied, urging him, by every tender consideration, to return to his home. But she had no means of knowing whether it had ever been received. Upon her the effect of his absence had been, for a time, of the most serious character. For a few weeks after he went away, both body and mind were prostrated; to this succeeded a state of mental depression, which continued so long that her friends began to fear for her reason. Not until after the lapse of a year, when she received the above-mentioned letter from her son, did her mind attain to anything like its former state. The knowledge that he was yet, alive, that he thought of her, and still cherished her memory, gave a new impulse to her fainting spirit, and a quicker motion to the circle of life. There was yet room to hope for him. But, as time went on, there came not back even a faint echo to the voice she had sent after him, her heart failed her again. Yet time, which imparts strength to all in trouble, had done its work for her also. The care and labor that ever attend the mother's position among her children, had bent her thoughts so much away from Andrew, that, while his absence left a constant weight upon her feelings, it did not crush them down as before, into a waveless depression.

The second year of Andrew's absence came to a close; but nothing further was heard from him. And it was the same with the third, fourth, and fifth years. In the meantime, there had been many changes in Mr. Howland's family. Mary had married against her father's wishes, and both herself and husband had been so unkindly treated by him on the occasion and afterward, that neither of them visited at his house.

Henry Markland, the husband of Mary, had been rather a gay young man, and this, with some other things which had come to his ears, created a prejudice in the mind of Mr. Howland against him. As to what was good in Markland, and likely to overbalance defects, he did not inquire. The hue of his prejudice colored everything. Men like Mr. Howland, who seek to bend everything into forms suited to their own narrow range of ideas, are rarely successful in attaining their ends. The principle of freedom is too deeply interwoven with all the tissues of the human mind to admit of this. From earliest infancy there is a reaction against arbitrary power; and, those who are wise, have long since discovered that it is a much easier task to lead than force the young into right ways. Those who would truly govern children, must first learn to govern themselves. Let a parent break his own imperious will before he tries to break the will of his child; and he will be far more successful in the work he essays. to perform. But not so had Mr. Howland learned his duty in life. Without being, aware of the fact, he was a domestic tyrant, and sought to establish a family despotism. And the worst of the whole was, he did nearly all this work in the name of religion! Not that he was a hypocrite. No; Mr. Howland was sincere in his professions of piety. But he was a narrow-minded man, and did much in the name of religion, that in no way harmonized with its true character. His faith was a blind faith, and he sacrificed to the god of his imagination in the unyielding spirit of a dehumanizing superstition. Of necessity, he marred everything upon which he sought to impress the form of his own mind.

Erroneous judgment of others is almost certain to mark the conclusions of such a man's mind; and it is no wonder that Mr. Howland erred in his conclusions respecting the true character of his daughter's husband, who had in him many good qualities, and was sincerely attached to Mary. The great defect appertaining to him, was the fact that he was not a church member. Mr. Howland did not look past the veil of a profession, to see if there was in the ground work of the young man's character a basis of right principles—the only true foundation upon which a religious structure can be built. Because he did not belong to the church, and make an open profession, he classed him with the irreligious, and considered him as one whose feet were moving swiftly along the road to destruction.

And so, instead of wisely seeking to win the confidence of the young man, that he might gain an influence over him for good, Mr. Howland, offended because his daughter could not obey him in a matter so vital to her happiness, angrily repulsed and insulted both of them, even after he saw that a marriage was inevitable. The consequence was, as has been mentioned, that Markland, who possessed an independent spirit, would not go to the house of his father-in-law; and Mary, resenting the wanton attacks that had been made upon her husband's feelings in more than one or two instances, absented herself also. Mr. Howland, however much he might regret the hardness of his unavailing opposition, was not the man to yield anything; and so the breach remained open, in spite of all the grieving mother's efforts to heal it.

Of all his children, Mr. Howland saw most to hope for in Edward, who early perceived it to be his best policy to humor his father, and, by that means, gain the ends he had in view. Cold in his temperament, he was generally able to control himself in a way to deceive his father as to the real motives that were in his heart. Thus, while Mr. Howland, by his peculiar treatment of his children, drove some of them off, he made this one a hypocrite.

Not the smallest affection existed between Edward and the other children, who knew too well the selfish and evil qualities that lay concealed beneath an external of propriety, put on especially for his father's eyes. The mother, too, saw beneath the false exterior assumed by her son, who treated her, except when his father was present, with little respect or affection.

Martha, the youngest, was a sweet tempered girl, who had managed to keep, as a general thing, beyond the sphere of antagonism that marked the intercourse of the other children. To her mother, as she grew up, she proved a source of comfort; and she could, at almost any time, dispel by her smiles the cloud that too often rested on the brow of her morose father.