Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/398

 poured out to him in a bitter flood his horrified sense of the closing in on him of bonds which he hated, which were being forged around him by the irresistible forces of social tradition and family affection. Fighting helplessly against overwhelming odds, he was slowly being shoved into becoming a petit fonctionnaire in Bourges for all his life.… "Here, in this hole!" he had cried looking around him with wild young eyes, like a rat in a trap. But there was his dear Maman's certainty that this feeling was mere youth, that he would soon settle down, and be contented in his office, and always, always be quite close to her; there was the relief of the family far and wide, now that he was safe, safe for life in a good little position with a nice little pension at the end! "Safe! How loathe being safe!" he had cried. "Why wasn't I born three hundred years ago, so that I could have gone out with Champlain! Or later with Du Chaillou?"

In spite of all his sympathy for the poor kid, Neale hadn't seen then nor could he see now why anybody need wait for a Champlain or a Du Chaillou to come along. It looked as though the boy's grievance was because what he was meant to do didn't happen to be in fashion when he lived. Neale couldn't see what prevented him from getting right up on his feet from off the bench where he agonized, and marching off to the nearest port to work his way to Senegal, if that was where he thought he'd have the chance to use that latent stifled something in him which could never live in Bourges. Of course, it would give his mother a jolt, but if she was any kind of a mother, she'd want her son to have what was best for him. That was sure, if anything was. And as for the cousins and the aunts and uncles butting in … to hell with them! What business was it of theirs?

Neale had a suspicion that very likely the boy would be horrified by Senegal, not get on a bit better than in Bourges, and be mighty glad to come back to the safeness and comfort that irked him so now. If he had had pep enough to get on in Senegal, or anywhere else on his own, wouldn't he have had pep enough to cut loose from his leading-strings before this? Now was the time to do it, now or never, before he had