Benjamin Wright lay in his great bed, that had four mahogany posts
like four dark obelisks. ... He had not spoken distinctly since the
night of his seizure, though in about a fortnight he began to babble
something which nobody could understand. Simmons said he wanted his
birds, and brought two cages and hung them in the window, where the
roving, unhappy eyes could rest upon them. He mumbled fiercely when he
saw them, and Simmons cried out delightedly: "There now, he's better--
he's swearin' at me!" The first intelligible words he spoke were those
that had last passed his lips: "M-m-my f-f--," and from his melancholy
eyes a meagre tear slid into a wrinkle and was lost.
Dr. Lavendar, sitting beside him, put his old hand over the other old
hand, that lay with puffed fingers motionless on the coverlet. "Yes,
Benjamin, it was your fault, and mine, and Samuel's. We were all
responsible because we did not do our best for the boy. But remember,
his Heavenly Father will do His best."
"M-m-my f--" the stammering tongue began again, but the misery
lessened in the drawn face. Any denial of the fact he tried to state
would have maddened him. But Dr. Lavendar never denied facts; apart
from the question of right and wrong, he used to say it was not worth
while. He accepted old Mr. Wright's responsibility as, meekly, he had
accepted his own, but he saw in it an open door.
And that was why he went that evening to the Wright house. It was a
melancholy house. When their father was at home, the little girls
whispered to each other and slipped away to their rooms, and when they
were alone with their mother, they quivered at the sight of her tears
that seemed to flow and flow and flow. Her talk was all of Sam's
goodness and affection and cleverness. "He read such learned books!
Why, that very last afternoon, when we were all taking naps, he was
reading a big leather-covered book from your father's library, all
about the Nations. And he could make beautiful poetry," she would tell
them, reading over and over with tear-blinded eyes some scraps of
verse she had found among the boy's possessions. But most of all she
talked of Sam's gladness in getting home, and how strange it was he
had taken that notion to clean that dreadful pistol. No wonder Lydia
and her sisters kept to themselves, and wandered, little scared,
flitting creatures, through the silent house, or out into the garden,
yellowing now and gorgeous in the September heats and chills.