A light flashed across her face, but she said simply, "John knows," and her uncle had to be content with that.
Dr. Howe grew more intolerant with each mile of his journey. Every incident touched him with a personal annoyance at the man he was going to see. The rattling, dingy cars on the branch railroad afflicted him with an irritated sense of being modern; the activity about the shabby station jarred upon his remembrance of Ashurst's mellow quiet; the faces of the men in the lumber-yards, full of aggressive good-nature, offended his ideas of dignity and reserve. A year ago, Dr. Howe would have thought all this very entertaining, and simple, and natural. Now, that a man who lived in such a place, among such people, should have it in his power to place the Howes in a conspicuous and painful position was unbearable!
By the time he reached the parsonage, to which an officious young person of whom he had inquired his way conducted him, he had attained a pitch of angry excitement which drove all theological arguments out of his mind. Alfaretta greeted him with a blank stare, and then a sudden brightening of her face as he gave his name.
"You're her uncle!" she cried. "How is she? and when is she comin' back? She ain't sick?"—this with quick alarm, for Dr. Howe had not answered her questions.
"No, no, my good woman," he said impatiently, "certainly not. Where is your master?"
"The preacher's not home," the girl answered coldly. She was not used to being called "my good woman," if she did live out. "You can wait, if you want to;" but there, her anxiety getting the better of her resentment, she added, "Is she comin' back soon?"
"I'll wait," said Dr. Howe briefly, walking past her into John Ward's study.
"Insufferable people!" he muttered. He looked about him as he entered the room, and the poverty of the bookshelves did not escape his keen eyes, nor the open volume of Jonathan Edwards on the writing-table. There was a vase beside it, which held one dried and withered rose; but it is doubtful if the pathos of the flower which was to await Helen's return would have softened him, even if he could have known it. He stopped and glanced at the book, and then began to read it, holding it close to his eyes, while, with his other hand behind him, he grasped his hat and stick.
He read the frequently quoted passages from Edwards, that God holds man over hell as a man might hold a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, with the satisfaction one feels in detecting a proof of the vicious nature of an enemy. "Ward is naturally cruel," he said to himself. "I've always thought so. That speech of his about slavery showed it."
He put down the book with an emphasis which argued ill for his opinion of a man who could study such words, and began to pace up and down the room like some caged animal, glancing once with a smothered exclamation at the old leather-covered volume, which had fallen upon the floor; he even gave it a furtive kick, as he passed.