The light burned dimly, but a dimmer light would have revealed to his seeking eyes that for which they looked. Under a gay pieced afghan lay Ellen, a book in her arms. Beside her her father drew up a chair and there sat down, scrutinizing each childish lineament, each crisp curl. She slept heavily, and it seemed to him that there was a shadow under her eyes and he bent still more closely over her to discover that the shadow was only that cast by her long lashes. He put out his hand and laid it softly on the bright cover.
Sitting thus, he faced at last his extraordinary situation. Ten o'clock struck, eleven, twelve, and still he was there. His mind traveled to Matthew's babyhood, to Matthew's childhood—would things have been different if he had been different? He was still young then, and thinking not so much of his children as of his own miseries of mind and body, he had not realized that he was guilty of neglect. Even yet he did not feel like a middle-aged man, much less like an old man—but he had a son mature enough to defy him and to leave his house! His pride was deep and high, the pride of a man of intellect—he contemplated with horror the strange atavistic trick played upon him.
CHAPTER IX
A GROWING MIND
That Matthew had returned, that he was to live henceforth with Grandfather, that he was not even to come to the house, were facts which Ellen found difficult to comprehend, yet which she accepted with a child's willingness to accept what her father told her. The family separation caused comment, but no great astonishment in a neighborhood where differences of opinion and the separation of dissenters were frequent.
Life went on quietly, yet not without interesting events. Study under the driving spur of her father's encouragement was an absorbing occupation for Ellen. Presently catalogues were sent for and schools considered and compared. When a sample examination paper arrived, it seemed possible that she might enter college, thoroughly prepared, in two years.
Once, before Christmas, her father took her away. When they drove to the station the pale winter sun had not yet dispelled the pearly mist which lay over the landscape, nor thawed the ice on farmhouse windows. The fields were covered with snow and it was difficult to imagine them dressed in summer's richness of corn and wheat and tobacco. The farmhouses with their huge barns looked like rich manorial properties, as well they might in this deep-soiled country. Until they reached the outskirts of the larger towns nothing was to be seen that was not beautiful, the white stretches of snow, the frozen streams which showed here and there dark pools, the fine clumps of forest trees, white trunks of sycamores, dark masses of evergreens, and willows tipped with yellow beside old spring houses. Nor was there anything that was not indicative of prosperity and peace. The houses were built of brick and stone, the fences were straight and in good repair, there were no weeds; ignorance might laugh at Mennonite and Dunker, Amish and Seventh-Day Baptist, who had tilled the fields and built the houses, but their thrift and labor had founded a great commonwealth.
The ride across the country did not compare in Ellen's mind with the ride between the Susquehanna River and the miles of furnaces and mills. The sight of the towering Capitol, viewed at first from the train above a low stretch of sordid buildings, filled her with delight. When they had climbed the steps to the esplanade, her father turned her away from the Capitol so that she might look down the broad street to the river.
"Oh, Father!" said Ellen holding his hand tight.