第123章

I'm going downstairs.It's no good talking; I'm going."Brother Soulsby offered no further opposition, either by talk or demeanor, but returned contentedly to bed, pulling the comforter over his ears, and falling into the slow, measured respiration of tranquil slumber before his wife was ready to leave the room.

The dim, cold gray of twilight was sifting furtively through the lace curtains of the front windows when Mrs.Soulsby, lamp in hand, entered the parlor.She confronted a figure she would have hardly recognized.The man seemed to have been submerged in a bath of disgrace.From the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, everything about him was altered, distorted, smeared with an intangible effect of shame.In the vague gloom of the middle distance, between lamp and window, she noticed that his shoulders were crouched, like those of some shambling tramp.

The frowsy shadows of a stubble beard lay on his jaw and throat.His clothes were crumpled and hung awry;his boots were stained with mud.The silk hat on the piano told its battered story with dumb eloquence.

Lifting the lamp, she moved forward a step, and threw its light upon his face.A little groan sounded involuntarily upon her lips.Out of a mask of unpleasant features, swollen with drink and weighted by the physical craving for rest and sleep, there stared at her two bloodshot eyes, shining with the wild light of hysteria.The effect of dishevelled hair, relaxed muscles, and rough, half-bearded lower face lent to these eyes, as she caught their first glance, an unnatural glare.The lamp shook in her hand for an instant.Then, ashamed of herself, she held out her other hand fearlessly to him.

"Tell me all about it, Theron," she said calmly, and with a soothing, motherly intonation in her voice.

He did not take the hand she offered, but suddenly, with a wailing moan, cast himself on his knees at her feet.

He was so tall a man that the movement could have no grace.

He abased his head awkwardly, to bury it among the folds of the skirts at her ankles.She stood still for a moment, looking down upon him.Then, blowing out the light, she reached over and set the smoking lamp on the piano near by.The daylight made things distinguishable in a wan, uncertain way, throughout the room.

"I have come out of hell, for the sake of hearing some human being speak to me like that!"The thick utterance proceeded in a muffled fashion from where his face grovelled against her dress.Its despairing accents appealed to her, but even more was she touched by the ungainly figure he made, sprawling on the carpet.

"Well, since you are out, stay out," she answered, as reassuringly as she could."But get up and take a seat here beside me, like a sensible man, and tell me all about it.Come! I insist!"In obedience to her tone, and the sharp tug at his shoulder with which she emphasized it, he got slowly to his feet, and listlessly seated himself on the sofa to which she pointed.He hung his head, and began catching his breath with a periodical gasp, half hiccough, half sob.

"First of all," she said, in her brisk, matter-of-fact manner, "don't you want to lie down there again, and have me tuck you up snug with the buffalo robe, and go to sleep?

That would be the best thing you could do."He shook his head disconsolately, from side to side.

"I can't!" he groaned, with a swifter recurrence of the sob-like convulsions."I'm dying for sleep, but I'm too--too frightened!"

"Come, I'll sit beside you till you drop off," she said, with masterful decision.He suffered himself to be pushed into recumbency on the couch, and put his head with docility on the pillow she brought from the spare room.

When she had spread the fur over him, and pushed her chair close to the sofa, she stood by it for a little, looking down in meditation at his demoralized face.

Under the painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had seen a few months before.Nothing essential had been taken away.

There was only this pestiferous overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed.The face underneath was still all right.

With a soft, maternal touch, she smoothed the hair from his forehead into order.Then she seated herself, and, when he got his hand out from under the robe and thrust it forth timidly, she took it in hers and held it in a warm, sympathetic grasp.He closed his eyes at this, and gradually the paroxysmal catch in his breathing lapsed.

The daylight strengthened, until at last tiny flecks of sunshine twinkled in the meshes of the further curtains at the window.She fancied him asleep, and gently sought to disengage her hand, but his fingers clutched at it with vehemence, and his eyes were wide open.

"I can't sleep at all," he murmured."I want to talk.""There 's nothing in the world to hinder you,"she commented smilingly.

"I tell you the solemn truth," he said, lifting his voice in dogged assertion: "the best sermon I ever preached in my life, I preached only three weeks ago, at the camp-meeting.It was admitted by everybody to be far and away my finest effort! They will tell you the same!""It's quite likely," assented Sister Soulsby."I quite believe it.""Then how can anybody say that I've degenerated, that I've become a fool?" he demanded.

"I haven't heard anybody hint at such a thing,"she answered quietly.

"No, of course, YOU haven't heard them!" he cried.

"I heard them, though!" Then, forcing himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint of her hand, he flung back the covering."I'm burning hot already!

Yes, those were the identical words: I haven't improved;I've degenerated.People hate me; they won't have me in their houses.They say I'm a nuisance and a bore.

I'm like a little nasty boy.That's what they say.

Even a young man who was dying--lying right on the edge of his open grave--told me solemnly that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was only fit for a barkeeper now.