Then she heard a feeble rap on her door. At the threshold stood the wheelchair to which her father was confined like a slave chained to his seat in the galley. She caught a brief impression of a pair of eyes beyond him: the eyes of Eleanor Kent, full of the message of strength; eyes that seemed to be saying, "Stand firm. Be sure!" But nearer at hand was the face with skin drawn like parchment over its bony angles, deeply lined with suffering, and crowned with a great shock of snowy hair.
The features, though, were only details of setting for the spirit of the keen eyes that had always burned with an eagle fierceness and an unyielding aggressiveness. Now they were different, and as the guests who had brought the chair and its occupant up the stairs and into the room withdrew in silent respect, the daughter's gaze was held by them with a mesmeric force.
It was a face transfigured; a face in which the hardness of fight had died into the serenity of peace.
Angles and wrinkles had become only lines of emphasis for this new tranquillity of the eyes; eyes that might have seen a vision of divine accolade and were at peace.
"My daughter," he said, as soon as they were alone together, and his voice held the music of a benediction, "you are standing at the threshold of your life—and I am near the end of mine, but for the first time in many years, I am content and all my sorrows are paid for."
"Father!" she exclaimed brokenly, but he went on.
"I can now go, knowing that your life is secure on the rock of a stable marriage: all your dangers over. You are making of my poor life a success after all—and its end is a thing of peace. Eben is not as young as you, but his heart is great and his character sincere. In the shadow of his strength you will 'be secure and at peace beside still waters' and I can leave you without fear. In his blood is the steadfastness of Plymouth Rock—ay, and the Rock of Ages and the honor of our forefathers."
The old man broke off, and raised his thin hand to his lean face with a gesture of appealing physical weakness. His enthusiasm had tired him and now a smile came to his lips of unaccustomed sweetness and tenderness. When he spoke again it was in a different tone.
"But you know all that. My life has been one of stress, and you've not known a mother. What I came to tell you, my dear, is that I realize you may have missed that tenderness, and that whatever I may have seemed, I have always felt it."
She was kneeling by his chair now with her hands gently stroking his white mane.