January 20. Hannah came up for me this evening while I was reading to Mother.
"Deacon Webbe's down in the parlor," she announced. "Says he wants to see you if you're not busy. 'Ll come again if you ain't able to see him."
"Go down, Ruth dear," Mother said at once. "It may be another church quarrel, and I wouldn't hinder you from settling it for worlds."
"But don't you want me to finish the chapter?" I asked. "Church quarrels will generally keep."
"No, dear. I'm tired, and we'll stop where we are. I'll try to go to sleep, if you'll turn the light down."
As I bent over to kiss her, she put up her feeble thin fingers, and touched my cheek lovingly.
"You're a dear girl," she said. "Be gentle with the deacon."
There was a twinkle in her eye, for the idea of anybody's being anything but gentle with Deacon Daniel Webbe is certainly droll enough. Miss Charlotte said the other night that a baby could twist him round its finger and never even know there was anything there; and certainly he must call out the gentle feelings of anybody. Only Tom seemed always somehow to get exasperated with his father's meekness. Poor Tom, I do wonder why he went away!
The deacon dries up by way of growing old. I have not seen him this winter except the other day at church, and then I did not look at him. To-night he seemed worn and sad, and somehow his face was like ashes, it was so lifeless. The flesh has dried to the bones of his face till he looks like a pathetic skull. His voice is not changed, though. It has the same strange note in it that used to affect me as a child; a weird, reedy quality which suggests some vague melancholy flavor not in the least fretful or whining,—a quality that I have never been able to define. I never hear him speak without a sense of mysterious suggestiveness; and I remember confiding to Father once, when I was about a dozen years old, that Deacon Webbe had the right voice to read fairy stories with. Father, I remember, laughed, and said he doubted much if Deacon Daniel knew what a fairy story was, unless he thought it was something wickedly false. Tom's voice has something of the same quality, but only enough to give a little thrill to his tone when he is really in earnest. There is an amusing incongruity between that odd wind-harp strain in Deacon Webbe's voice and his gaunt New England figure.