It was with the determination that Guinevere should occasionally be allowed the privilege of following her own inclinations that Hinton hurled himself into the breach.
“I’ll go, Mother,” said Guinevere; “but it’s so hot. We went to see everybody last Sunday. I thought I’d rather stay home and read, if you didn’t mind.”
Mrs. Gusty tossed her head in disgust, and turned to Hinton.
“Now, ain’t that a Gusty for you! I never saw one that didn’t want to set down to the job of living. Always moping around with their nose in a book. I never was a reader, never remember wasting a’ hour on a book in my life, and yet I never saw the time that I wasn’t able to hold my own with any Gusty living.”
“In short,” said Hinton, sympathetically, “to quote a noted novelist, you [p257] have never considered it necessary to add the incident of learning to the accident of brains.”
Mrs. Gusty tied her bonnet-strings in a firmer knot as she looked at him uncertainly, then, not deigning to cast another glance in the direction of her daughter, who was disappearing up the stairs, swept out of the house.
Hinton looked at his watch; it was not yet two o’clock. The afternoon threatened to be a foretaste of eternity. He went out on the porch and lay in the hammock, with his hands clasped across his eyes. He could no longer see to read or to write. The doctor said the darkness might close in now at any time, after that the experiment of an operation would be made, and there was one chance in a hundred for the partial restoration of the sight.
Having beaten and bruised himself against the bars of Fate, he now lay exhausted and passive in the power of his jailer. He had tried to run his own life in his own way, and the matter had been [p258] taken out of his hands. He must lie still now and wait for orders from headquarters. The words of Mr. Opp, spoken in the low-ceiled, weird old dining-room, came vividly back to him: “What the fight is concerning, or in what manner the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain’t, according to my conclusion, a particle of our business.”
And Hinton, after a year of rebellion and struggle and despair, had at last acknowledged a superior officer and declared himself ready to take whatever orders came.
As he lay in the hammock he turned his head at every noise within the house, and listened. He had become amazingly dependent upon a soft, drawling voice which day after day read to him for hours at a time. At first he had met Guinevere’s offers of help with moody irritability.