"Come at once, your father is asking for you." The young man read the telegram with a frown on his face. He wondered why his pleasure was always spoiled. Last week wasn't he going for a day down the river with a lot of friends, when a letter came telling of his father's illness? And when he got home there was no great cause for alarm. Now he was just off to the races, and this had come; it really was a bit too bad! What should he do?
“I suppose I'll have to miss it all again!" he muttered. "If he's worse, why don't they say so? And if he's not worse, what do they want me for?”
He began hunting for a timetable, when two other men burst into the room.
“Hurry up, old man," they said breathlessly, "we haven't too much time." Then as they saw Archie's downcast face, they asked: "What's the matter now?”
For the answer he pushed the telegram to them to read. "Isn't that rotten?" he asked. "Last week's pleasure spoiled, and now today's!”
“But do you need to go today? Wouldn't it do tomorrow?”
“That's what I've been wondering, but I wouldn't like the old man to die. I wonder if it would be too risky to wait till morning?”
A moment's silence; duty and pleasure fought together in his heart, but pleasure won. Presently Archie said with an uneasy laugh: "I'll put it off till tomorrow, and go down by the first train. Come on, we'll have a good time today, at any rate!" And off they all went down the stairs with a rush, only just in time to catch the train.
Everything passed off well at the races; all their friends were there; the horses they backed won, and yet Archie Hendon was not happy, for over and over again a voice kept saying: "You ought to have gone home.”
It was very still in the room where the old man lay dying. The solemn hush, as if an angel paused there, waiting to take the tired spirit home to God, was unbroken.
Presently a feeble voice whispered, "Has Archie come yet?”
“Not yet, but I am sure that he will be here soon." And under her breath, Mrs. Hendon said, "God grant that he comes soon, or it will be TOO LATE!”
There was a silence for a while; only broken by the labored breathing and the short, feeble cough, telling of the struggle between life and death. The moments passed, and feebly once more the old man whispered: "Archie is not coming now; tell him to meet me there; give-him-my-love-and-blessing.”
It was a very tired, cross young man that caught the first train the next morning. The day's pleasure had proved exhausting and he had a headache.
“It's a nuisance having to come down again so soon," he said to himself as he stepped out at his destination.
The station master looked at him very gravely, but he never noticed it, and went whistling along the road. He was thinking so much of himself as he turned in at the gate, that he never noticed the drawn blinds, nor the stillness that hung over the house. The front door open, he bounded in, put his bag down, and running upstairs, opened the door of his father's room. He was just beginning to say cheerfully, "Well, Father, I hope you are better," when, with a sudden exclamation, he stopped, horrified!
There lay his father in the sleep of death! The room reeled around him; and as he stood thus, someone came, and putting her hand on his arm, whispered, "My boy, you have come TOO LATE!”
With a passionate exclamation as if the words stung him, he turned and fled down the stairs, across the garden to a nook well-known since his boyhood days. Throwing himself down in an utter abandonment of grief, Archie Hendon prayed. No one ever knew what passed through his mind during that darkest hour of his life. No one ever knew the depth of the agony of remorse that shook him as he realized that his father —his good, kind father—had asked for him in his dying hour, and he had not come!
A few days later, Archie was listening to his mother's account of his father's death, and the last precious words. When she had finished, she laid her hand on Archie's shoulder, and whispered: "My boy, don't wait until it is too late, before listening to your heavenly Father's call!" With broken words, he whispered; "It shall not be too late; I will come NOW.”