In the evening Virgie refused to accompany her father. He coaxed in mild surprise, but, despite his pleading, she remained obdurate, and he was forced to go alone. Their separation was filled with pathetic dissembling, for each would hold to themselves the sorrows in their keeping, while each strove to shield the other from pain. Brandt bid her guard herself with fine care and unnecessary precaution, and as he lingered fondly, guiltily, she kissed him a second time with strange alacrity. Then closing and bolting the door she threw herself prostrate upon the floor, crying in desolation to feel herself apart from him, without a chance of courting his wisdom or confidence. And this was all before he had turned quite away. He started down the walk, simply unconscious of her outburst, and wondering if he had betrayed aught of his thoughts to her by an unguarded look.
Landy greeted him without a sign or word, and together they went to the parsonage. Brandt grew quickly weaker in anticipating a scene, and he leaned on his companion's arm. As they neared the house, and eventually stopping outside the gate, he stood with one hand upon a post while he overcame his dread.
They proceeded then slowly, Landy uttering constantly rough words of re-assurance, and Brandt seemed to establish a better control over his fears that compassion and intimate familiarity with the patient had inspired. The house was apparently deserted, though in the quietness a lamp burned low, shedding a cheerful light through the study window. Kent and Mrs. George and the babies were all over at the church, and there were none left here now to distract the old man from his sorrow. He followed Landy to a bolted door, and the horror of Snell's having a keeper and being guarded, locked and barred, created at once a new sentiment. Indignation quickened his blood, and with the impetuous resolve to deliver his one-time charge he hastened into the room and stood before the demented man, his mind forming fine reasonings that he tried to voice. He would have talked, argued, consoled, pitied—but no words came. He laid his hand upon Snellins' head with silent gentleness and entreaty, but there was no sign of recognition or even of consciousness of his presence. He paused and looked steadfastly into the man's eyes.
"Ben, don't you know me?" he asked at last, so low that Landy caught only the pathos of his voice. It was a tone that pinched his heart, and he turned his face away to shut out the sight of the utterly hopeless pleading that distorted the features of the kindly old man.
"Ben!" he said again, "Ben—Ben Snellins!" in ineffectual experiment, and then he waited expectantly. After a time he tried again, and flung the poor man's name into his face with all the force of eagerness. Still this was without result. He watched hopefully until the hope could live no longer. Then he turned to Landy, all the pitiful expression of a lifeless grief, stunned with dull helplessness, but as he turned Snellins moved uneasily, and Landy motioned Brandt's attention toward him again with quick expectancy, anticipating the man's only words before they were uttered.
"Poor Snell!" he said, and chuckled. And Brandt's heart beat furiously with deluded hope until the inane tone perforated that hope and entered his reason like a sharp point—and then he buried his face in his hands and wept.
Landy waited inactive, bound by the awful scene, until he felt his own strength yielding, and then he drew the sorrowing man away, leaving him to suffer alone, while he hastened around to the church to remain out the evening with his wife, thus to save the comment sure to follow his non-appearance so soon after their marriage.
Kent saw Landy enter, and derived from his unusual seriousness an instantaneous enlightenment of that which had occurred. He lost then, somehow, the sparkle and happiness that he was appropriately attempting to convey, and his words drifted with his thoughts into gems of pathetic beauty that were spontaneous and noble. His listeners realized slowly the unwonted change, but as surely they came to a respectful following that led them on to deeply-moved sympathy. He talked of sorrows that knew no respite. He told of undeserved pain that came, no one knew why, unless—and here a bright opening from the tunnel of darkness in which they were living seemed to come before his view, growing—growing—growing with nearing perspective. The sunshine of happiness, narrowed by funneling walls standing at the end, ready to burst into a world of light infinitely larger, surpassingly beautiful, dwarfing beyond previous conception the old way—the present way of hardships and darkness, and he said:
"Yes, there is pain and there are pangs that come, no one mortal knows why—unless that out of it all we shall live to know the glorious goodness of being free from these, and also the goodness of living, knowing that we are happy, knowing that we are well off, and knowing what the good things are, because we can hold them against the bad and be joyous in the favorable comparison. If one day's suffering can give us a week of this knowledge, or even if a year of pain can give us the touch to feel an hour of delicious happiness, and feel it deep into our hearts, the pain is worth the bearing. May we all learn to recognize the goodness we may have at hand and enjoy its fullest blessings, as we should learn to bear our reverses, looking forward to the happiness that must come some time."
He was uttering the reasonings and dictates of his suffering self quite as though he were not before nearly two-score people, and like as if he might be musing in his study alone. But these thoughts were not inappropriate, for they were words of his inner self, counseling the humanly human in the depths of other sufferers, and it drew them to him with poor resistance on their part, for men suffer much in silence, and reason much in silence, until they are awakened to find themselves but as simply constructed pieces in the machinery of events as are their neighbors, and then they surprisedly give vent to foolish and guilty confessions of private self-study, being aroused to the plan simple in human patterning.
Here again, for the second time in one day, he had bent his classic intellect to the level of their understanding, speaking not in words, but in the deep, sweet language which the heart can understand. The happiness that followed, in having their responsive feeling, moved him beyond the reactive thought of condescension, pointing clearly the way for self-enoblement and giving a taste of the bliss in pure sympathy, and he held to the lesson with a hope of its future inspiration.
When the little household returned they found that Brandt had gone, but they were not surprised, as they had anticipated that he would leave soon after collecting himself. They strove to be merry, or at least light-hearted, but Kent was filled with the glow of his new sensation, seeking seclusion at the first opportunity, while Landy told to his wife the occurrences of the evening visit, throwing her into the depressed state of pitying good-heartedness, magnifying for himself the sadness of it and swaying his wife with constant re-countings, making her suffer and suffering for her.
The weeks slipped away with unaccountable rapidity. Virgie found her time so filled with the multiplied Christmas interests and her correspondence with Harvey that she scarcely noted the change that had come over her father, and the buoyancy of her nature permitted the worry over mysterious things to trouble her but shortly. She met Kent not infrequently, and gradually the doubting of his honesty and sincerity fell away from her, leaving only a dull remembrance. Yet she could not—would not accept him as the others were beginning to do. He was becoming strong in the moving of events. His people, her own people, apprised her constantly of his newer personality—whether wilfully or thoughtlessly she did not know. This as a doubtful penance of a former misconception. Still she held away from the changing tide of opinion, drawing her own line of comparison. Kent's old self, as she had known him, weak, vacillating and obviously insincere, was still Kent's own self. She could not place the mantle of the people's new conception upon his shoulders so as to cover the Kent she had known.
Harvey was writing to her now breezy, clever letters, filled with thoughts rare to her own domain, and his lacking graphicness gave scope to imaginings unreal, but not foundationless. She idealized her surroundings when in the humor of splendid conceptions, and in the midst of wonderful people she held to him as the one claim to make her fancy-pictures genuine. Again, she loved to confuse herself with city noises and distraction, and to find him a master in it all, strong, cool and delightfully polite. That he was so used to all that the world held, and yet so indifferent, handling the things she read ecstatically from his letters in such common-place wording, caused her to become awed with the importance of her correspondence. She gave her whole mind to the betterment of her portion, often taking a day entire to form the correct rounding of a sentence, and, in struggling for the subject-matter, she worked devotedly. The parson had become a bit of unimportant property in the scenery of her home, although they made her think of him—they forced him upon her; but he was little nearer to her than some of the others, and she blotted out all past remembrances, using him only for comparison with Harvey, and this to his detriment.
Kent saw her father often, as Brandt called frequently to see Snellins, and he longed many times to ask about the things that were on his mind. Where once he was confident, under the ban of her unjust anger he had now grown hopeless, as her manner changed to tolerating indifference; and he would have almost dared to talk to her father—seeking light. He grew sorrowful and broken through the desolation of his cares. Her manner was not uninviting nor repellant toward him, yet the barrier of chilling disinterest was ever evident, and he learned to accept her scant courtesies with a resignation that taught him tenderness. He learned the deepest lessons of fortitude in the days he suffered most. He diffused a gentler, more welcoming resignation to his people because of his own sorrow and the steadfast purpose of the ennobling insight into unselfishness which he had given that Thanksgiving night. Virgie did not see, much less did she understand.
It was late in January that she came one day to the parsonage. Little Bennie had been down with fever three weeks, but her calls there had been infrequent during the early part of his illness owing to the unavoidable meeting of Kent, though he quickly understood and found excuses ready at hand to make the home freely at her disposal on her second and subsequent visits. To-day he had drawn away from the sick child's bedside and shut himself in his own sanctum. "Three or four hours at most," "Doc" Murray had told him quietly, and it had tried him sorely to give up a chance of the last word that he had hoped for from the child he loved now most dearly.
All through the fever he had watched alternately with the mother, almost arising to the mother's anxious care and dread. The world came back to Bennie finally. In it were the old funny-faced clock and frosted windows—and Kent, and he grew to be ill-content if the world—his world—was without these. The parson always listened to the child-life wonders with eagerness in their unfolding revelations, and, catching the key of Goblin Land, he went within, drawing forth an array of strange old things that were new even to him, and paraded them in different garbs, as fairies and beggars, princes and pages, and awful giant men, for the child. This was friendship at first, then love all in one day; and when the relapse came, "Doc" Murray must tell someone that which his practiced eye caught at a glance, Kent seemed the one. He felt bitterness toward the physician at first; then an eager yearning, as if he hoped to say good-bye to the baby-boy's conscious mind before he was gone, took hold upon him, and he watched oh! so eagerly for the returning spark that would be the last.
An hour slipped by and the relentless clock in ungrateful return of Bennie's friendship gonged off the short respite. Martin had divined from the two men's anxiety the approaching end, and she sat apart from them rocking in grief-stricken tenseness. A half hour, then an hour struck, and Kent moved uneasily. He was leaning toward the bed, watching intensely the peaked, fever-worn little face, with all the will he controlled centered upon drawing a sign of recognition when the fleeting instant should come. He was becoming momentarily more expectant when "Doc" led Virgie into the room. He turned reluctantly and, in the first glance, she seemed only the friend she once was, and he raised his hand warningly. She stopped short at the gesture and moved as if to withdraw. It was then that Kent came back from the past into the unhappy present with an agonizing sense of indecision. Slowly he gave his place to her and withdrew from the room. Once in the hall he was overwhelmed by the loss of his place at the bedside, and though he fought the deception as best he could he was drawn back to the doorway with irresistible force. He was just going away again when Bennie stirred, and his own self-control was spent.
Slowly the child opened his eyes. They were too weak at first to express the wonderment his brain felt, but he soon smiled wanly, and, as his last spark of strength revived, his lips moved until he had formed a word.
Virgie laid her hand gently on the coverlet. Kent leaned forward eagerly in the doorway, and Mrs. George stopped rocking, though she did not rise.
"Auntie Virgie,' he said, scarcely audible. Then louder, as his strength grew: "Auntie Virgie—man—did—bring Gyp's pin—man did." And he looked at her wistfully.
"Yes, dear, yes," she replied, quickly attempting to re-assure his doubts of her belief, and smiling tearfully.
"He did," he began again. "He's in the house too!"
Kent moved uneasily, but Virgie did not hear, and the mother came quickly to hush his innocent confession.
"Mommer, darling mommer—and Royal!" he said, on beholding her, moving only his eyes in an effort to find Kent. It took all the parson's strength to overcome his inclination to respond, for his first name, as he had taught Bennie to say it, sounded ineffably sweet. Virgie remained rigidly expectant.
"Darling Royal," he said softly, closing his eyes as if the image in his heart were too dear to let escape, and then they watched his breathing sink, growing almost breathless themselves as they followed the respirations. Finally "Doc" stepped forward and took up the limp hand tenderly, when Virgie arose and drew the mother away. She passed Kent with a surprised stare—first to find him so close, and second, in the quick knowledge that he had foreborne to intrude himself upon her, while his rapt expression conveyed more of the depth of feeling he contained than she had ever credited him with.
When she was gone he came and stood over the still form of his little friend—thinking, thinking, thinking—the bitterness in his heart at the lost opportunity near crowding out the sorrow over the baby's death. Standing in an attitude of resignation as he did "Doc" Murray derived only the idea that Kent was contemplating the change, as men had often done before in his presence, but the good man missed entirely the trend of Kent's thought as he stood repeating to himself despondently the words, "Too late," following them into the pathetic hopelessness they conveyed with all the abandonment of self-censure.
Virgie was haunted even into the soothing of Mrs. George by the look of self-restraining that had hallowed the parson's face when she discovered him standing by the door, and though engaged with actions and words foreign to the thought it remained, an accompaniment at once unfathomable and persistent. She alternated between applying her affectionate pity and condolences and the desire to be alone. Landy had remained in the kitchen during the crisis dreading, then hopeful, then fearful, but in the knowledge of his own roughness not daring to come to the succor of his wife, and when the end had come he struggled long with his instinctive awkwardness before mastering it. When he did appear Virgie readily yielded her place to his comforting, withdrawing at once.