Be free as you must be free,
as you should be free--but stay with me--remain with me. I am an old
man; I have longed for you as I think no other father can ever have
longed for his son. They tell me that I cannot live many more years.
God chooses His time. Be with me, Martin, for a little while even
though I may seem old to you and foolish. Perhaps things will come
back to you that you have long forgotten. You were once pledged and
it was a vow that is not easily removed--but it is enough for the
present if you will be with me a little, give me some of your time--
give the old days a chance to come back." He laid his hand upon his
son's.
The sudden touch of the dry, hot, trembling skin filled Martin's
heart with the strangest confusion of affection, embarrassment and
some familiar pathos. In just that way ten years before he had felt
his father's hand and had thought: "How old he's getting! . . . How
I shall miss him! . . . I hope nothing happens to him!" In the very
balance of his father's sentences and the deliberate choice of words
there had been something old-fashioned and remote from all the life
and scramble of Martin's recent years.
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