“Perhaps not frozen; but sunk down deep. I’m that already. Give me a hand up, do!” He answered my smile.
I was still in the season of cocksureness, and at a distance could no doubt have dealt glibly with the problem. But at such short range, and under those melancholy eyes, I had a chastening sense of inexperience.
“You don’t care to tell me what you think?” He spoke almost reproachfully.
“Oh, it’s not that.... I’m trying to. But it’s so—so awfully evangelical,” I brought out—for some of us were already beginning to read the Russians.
“Is it? Funny, that, too. For I have an idea I got it, with other things, from an old heathen; that chap I told you about, who used to come and talk to me by the hour in Washington.”
My interest revived. “That chap in Washington—was he a heathen?”
“Well, he didn’t go to church.” Delane did, regularly taking the children, while Leila slept off the previous night’s poker, and joining in the hymns in a robust barytone, always half a tone flat.
He seemed to guess that I found his reply inadequate, and added helplessly: “You know I’m no scholar: I don’t know what you’d call him.” He lowered his voice to add: “I don’t think he believed in our Lord. Yet he taught me Christian charity.”
“He must have been an unusual sort of man, to have made such an impression on you. What was his name?”
“There’s the pity! I must have heard it, but I was all foggy with fever most of the time, and can’t remember. Nor what became of him either. One day he didn’t turn up—that’s all I recall. And soon afterward I was off again, and didn’t think of him for years. Then, one day, I had to settle something with myself, and, by George, there he was, telling me the right and wrong of it! Queer—he comes like that, at long intervals; turning-points, I suppose.” He frowned, his heavy head sunk forward, his eyes distant, pursuing the vision.