He never sought to explain to himself, and I see no reason why we should explain for him, the subtile meaning which went from the metal to the man.
The key said, “Go!”
And Bayard went. He made such efforts as all cool-headed people make, to buffet the inexplicable, and to resist an unreasonable impression. But, after an hour’s protest with himself, he yielded to the invisible summons.
“It is a long while since I have seen my uncle,” he reasoned. “This may be as good a time as any other to look him up.”
He dressed for the storm, and took the nine o’clock train to Boston.
It was blowing a blizzard when he arrived in town; and eleven o’clock. He took a carriage and drove to his uncle’s house. The lights were out on the front of the house, and the servants asleep. Bayard stood a moment irresolute. The folly of his undertaking presented itself to him with emphasis, now he was there. He could not tell when he had yielded to any of that class of highly wrought emotions which we call presentiments, or “leadings.” Impatient with himself, and suddenly vividly aware that Mr. Hermon Worcester was a man who particularly objected to being disturbed in his sleep, Bayard was about to call the cab back to take him away, when he perceived that the driver had started off, and was laboring heavily up Beacon Street, with the snow to the hubs of the wheels. (Who has ever fathomed the inscrutable mind of the Boston cabman who has to be snowed under, before he will get on runners?) Resisting no longer, Bayard softly put his key in the lock.
It creaked a little, for it had grown rusty in the Windover salts, but the boy’s key turned in the man’s hand, and admitted him loyally into his old home.
The hall was dark, and the house still. He brushed off the snow in silence, and stood wondering what to do next. He felt mortified at his own lack of good sense.
Why was he here? And what reason could he give for this stupendous foolishness? He dripped on the Persian rugs awhile, and, finding neither enlightenment nor consolation in this moist occupation, proceeded to take off his overcoat and hang it on his own nail on the mahogany hat-tree under the stairs. When had such a shabby overcoat put that venerable piece of furniture to the blush? Never, if one excepted the case of the Vermont clergyman who had been known to take a lunch with his benefactor, and who received a barrel of old clothes the following week. Bayard hung up his wet hat, too, in the old place, took off his shoes, and crept upstairs in his stockings, as he had done—how many hundred nights, coming home from Cambridge, late, in college days?
His uncle’s door was closed, but to his surprise, he found the door of his own room open. He crept in. It seemed warm and pleasant—how incredibly pleasant and natural! The register seemed to be open. Oh, the luxury of a furnace! The wet and tired man crawled up, feeling his way in the familiar dark, and got down by the register. He remembered where the safety-matches used to be, that struck, and made no sound. Groping, he found them, in their paper match-box, set within the old bronze one. He struck one, softly, and looked about. In the little flare he saw that the room was just as it had always been. Nothing was changed or disturbed, except that his books had gone to Mrs. Granite’s. His bed lay turned back, open for the night, as it always was; the big, soft pillow, the luxurious mattresses, the light warmth of the snowy blankets, invited him. His mother’s picture hung over the head of his bed. Those old pipes and silk menus and college traps and trifles were crossed on the wall by the bureau; his gun was there, and his fishing-rods.