“That’s good,” says he. “Ye’re a wonderful shot, Dannie. I heared un go t’ smash. That’s good; that’s very good!”
We sat, my uncle and I, for an hour after that, I fancy, without managing an exchange: I would address him, but he would not hear, being sunk most despondently in his great chair by the empty, black grate, with his eyes fixed in woe-begone musing upon the toes of his ailing timber; and he would from time to time 297 insinuate an irrelevant word concerning the fishing, and, with complaint, the bewildering rise and fall of the price of fish, but the venture upon conversation was too far removed from the feeling of the moment to engage a reply. Presently, however, I commanded myself sufficiently to observe him with an understanding detached from my own bitterness; and I perceived that he sat hopeless and in fear, as in the days when I was seven, with his head fallen upon his breast and his eyes grown tragical, afraid, but now in raw kind and infinite measure, of the coming of night upon the world he sailed by day. I heard nothing from my tutor––no creak of the floor, no step, no periodical creaking of his rocking-chair. He had not, then, thinks I, cast off his clothes; he had not gone to reading for holy orders, as was, at intervals, his custom––he had thrown himself on his bed. But I neither cared nor wondered: I caught sight of my uncle’s face again––half amazed, wholly despondent, but yet with a little glint of incredulous delight playing, in brief flashes, upon it––and I could think of nothing else, not even of Judith, in her agony of mysterious shame upon the Whisper Cove road, nor of her disquieting absence from the house, nor of the rising wind, nor of the drear world I must courageously face when I should awake from that night’s sleep.
I considered my uncle.
“Do ye go t’ bed, Dannie,” says he, looking up at last. “Ye’ve trouble enough.”
I rose, but did not wish to leave him comfortless in 298 the rising wind. I had rather sit with him, since he needed me now, it seemed, more than ever before.
“Ye’ll not trouble about me, lad?”
I would not be troubled.
“That’s good,” says he. “No need o’ your troublin’ about me. Ol’ Nick Top’s able t’ take care o’ hisself! That’s very good.”
I started away for bed, but turned at the door, as was my custom, to wish my uncle good-night. I said nothing, for he was in an indubitable way not to be disturbed––having forgotten me and the affection I sought at all times to give him. He was fallen dejectedly in his chair, repeating, “For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” I paused at the door to watch him, and I saw that his maimed hand wandered over the table until it found his glass, and that he caught and raised the glass, and that he set it down again, and that he pushed the empty thing away.