A half sob arrested his speech.
“Good-bye,” he said, “good-bye!”
“Good-bye,” said Sidney, who was much moved. So the two men parted. The one went into the sunshine; the other back into the hot atmosphere, where the deleterious dust was eddied into maelstroms by the whirling wheels.
The one murmured, “Vashti, Vashti”; the other, as he oiled the wheels and bent strenuously over his work, thought long and sorrowfully of many things. It chanced to be the meeting-night of the Free Thinking Vegetarian Club, of which he was president, and in his little speech he said much of a man who bartered his soul for a mess of pottage. But he told the story in such fashion that this man seemed to shine as an unselfish hero before their eyes, instead of as a weakling, spendthrift of a precious heritage of independence.
Thus an author has sometimes such wholesome charity for his villains that we love them more than their betters.
As Sidney was borne towards Dole that day, he relived as in a vision all the events which followed that first haphazard visit of his. And yet, could such a vital event be born of chance?
How well he recalled the peculiar fancy he had had when Dr. Clement, after his visit to the country, gave him old Mr. Lansing’s invitation.
It was as if a little bell set swinging in his father’s boyhood had suddenly tinkled in his ear, bidding him turn in his youth to those scenes where his father had been a boy.
He remembered the day when dear old Temperance first opened the door to him. He knew now the enormity of his going direct to the front door. In Dole only ministers and funerals went there. Sidney never really acquired the etiquette of the Dole doors. One has to be born in a court to properly appreciate its etiquette.
With epicurean delay the gentle stream of his recollections took him down the road, past Mullein meadow (O! place of promise!), to the “unction sale,” at Abiron Ranger’s, and then his memory leaped the bounds, swept aside intervening incidents, and dwelt upon the glorified vision of beautiful Vashti. Ah! “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”