Professor Mayne teased her and she answered saucily. He deplored his own ill fortune, and still more that of this little creature in whom the taint of insanity was darker than in himself. He believed that his sister, Hilda's mother, would have developed, if she had lived, a serious melancholia ending possibly in suicide for which the family history furnished abundant precedent. He was convinced of the present soundness of Hilda's mind, but with him and Hilda the family must end.
He looked at her and young Lanfair earnestly. Lanfair was ambitious; he would improve and develop, and to him certain matters could be explained. Before they parted he had invited Stephen to his house.
Stephen went from the hotel table to Levis's room. He asked merely to sit there with his book before the fire, which was the only means of heating here where living was cheap. He was like a child who finds assuagement for hurt in the silent company of an older person.
Levis smiled and went on with his work. It was not often that students sought him out merely for the pleasure of his company and he was touched by this youthful devotion.
Nor was it often, at least during his occupancy, that a girl's figure and a pair of dark eyes were visualized against the background of the old mantelpiece. Levis himself did not give one hour's thought in a year to women; he believed that he was growing too old for love-making and that hardship had made him immune to love. Certainly there was no profit in thinking of a state of matrimony into which one was too poor to enter!
Stephen contrasted his fearful anticipations with what had actually occurred. He had expected to be by this time disgraced and despairing. Instead he was at peace. He had been more honored than he had dreamed of being, and now a new and wilder possibility dazzled him.
His thoughts recurred to his father, and he dwelt with gratitude upon the self-sacrificing care which had always been his. If his father had been willing to provide less generously for his education, to stint his pocket-money, or to leave a smaller inheritance, he might have had a larger library with which to make Chestnut Ridge tolerable and an occasional journey for diversion or improvement. He might even—Stephen flushed a little as this notion came into his mind—he might even have contracted a second marriage, his first having ended tragically with Stephen's birth.
Stephen avoided thinking of the piety which was after all his father's distinguishing characteristic, even though he was aware that his father would rather have bequeathed to him faith than money, and that his effort to recite the Creed was not a last reassurance to himself as it had seemed, but a final reminder of the faith without which he believed his son would perish. Stephen saw him clearly as he lay in his bed and heard his voice reciting the treasured verses which he had memorized in dreary journeys over the bleak hills. The lines which he repeated most often acknowledged with what was to his son a ghastly frankness his dire plight:
"In the hour of death, after this life's whim,
When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim,
And pain has exhausted every limb—
The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him."