“Good-night, dad!” said Angus at last, turning himself to see his father’s face.
Thomas Warden rose hastily; he laid the boy in his little white bed, kissed him, and blessed him, and went down and sat in the study again. But a man cannot dine in his fishing boots; so he went upstairs, had a bath, and while he dressed, Angus discoursed cheerfully to him through the half-open door.
The silence was unbearable; it was so lonely. Thomas Warden could not sleep. He got up and walked about his room. Only one o’clock! The night had hardly begun.
The moon shone brilliantly, but the wind blew shrewdly through the open casement. May nights are cold in the North country.
He went into the dressing-room and looked at Angus. “If she had only loved the boy—if she had only loved the boy.” He could have forgiven her all the rest. A just and tolerant man, he knew his own limitations. He granted to the full his wife’s intellectual superiority; but she might have loved the boy.
“Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me.” Why did those lines ring in his head? and then, there always followed the sentence in his wife’s letter: “I cannot live your life, and you can live no other.”
It was true: he could live no other. But the boy—why did she not love the boy?
He drew up the blind, and the mellow moonlight fell on the sleeping child. Surely he was a goodly child, so comely, and kindly, and honest. As he looked at the boy his heart went out to him. He did not stoop and kiss him as a woman would have done; he reverenced too much this fair sleep which wrapped him round. He went back to his own room and got a pillow. Then, laying his long length on the floor beside the little bed, and with the child’s psalm still sounding in his ears, he too slept.
The room was flooded with moonlight when Angus awoke. There was a sound of regular and heavy breathing. Angus felt puzzled; puzzled, but not in the least afraid. Such breathing must come from a man, or a dog; from men and dogs the child had experienced nothing but kindness.