The little light showed the open desk, its half-filled and neatly-labelled pigeon-holes, its inkstand, blotter and loose papers. Left and right of the centre, the big drawers were all shut, save one, that gaped half-open. The heavy piece seemed almost as it were to brood over that drawer. It was seldom open. It held Paul's old school reports and essays and some ancient sermon notes, chiefly things he did not guess were still in existence. A few of them, disordered, lay half in, half out, tossed down there by a quick movement. One lay on the floor, white in the gloom, as it had fallen from the reader's hand.
The reader himself had slipped from his seat. The revolving chair in which he had been sitting, was pushed slightly back, and he himself was kneeling, head forward, face hid in his hands. Mr. Kestern often prayed there thus, busy at his sermons, and there was a footstool below the desk for him to kneel upon. But he was not kneeling on it now. His was no premeditated praying. He had dropped the manuscript, turned the gas hastily out, and fallen forward there, in one swift motion, some half-hour or more ago. The fire had thus begun to die, but he paid no heed. His head, with its hair already more nearly white than grey, had scarcely moved in his hands for all that time.
Yet if the man's bowed shoulders were all but motionless, the rapid agonised thoughts lanced this way and that without ceasing through his tortured soul. Now they were flying back down the years, revealing, like lightning flashes, other great moments in the drama of his son: the moment he had knelt praying—good God, how he had prayed!—and waiting for the news of the birth in the room above; the moment when he, and his wife with him this time, had knelt and wrestled with God in an agony for the life of the lad upon whom the consulting doctors were even then pronouncing a final decision. In each case, there had been steps at last outside announcing what had seemed and what he had acclaimed to be a veritable miracle. But now—ah! now....
"'Father, if it be possible...' 'The Lord, Who hath redeemed us from all evil, bless the lad...' 'Lord of All power and might...' 'Master...'"—it was in broken phrases that he prayed. It was, indeed, a prayer not truly of words at all. Mr. Kestern, stricken as he had never dreamed he could be stricken, flung his racked and aching soul at the feet of his God.
And it was all so still: the silent dance of the shadows, the silent existing of the heavy curtains and old-fashioned furniture, the silent, broken man. It was still outside in the suburban street, dank and unlovely in the dull December evening. It was still high up where the lowering clouds, heavy with snow that year, hid the moon. And God on His throne sat still.
"Oh, my God, spare me this thing.... Thou knowest.... Let not Satan triumph over me.... The boy is Thine—given, dedicated, bought;—save Thou my son, my only son. Yet not my will, but Thine be done.... Ah, but it cannot be Thy will—this deceit, this lie! O God of Truth, open his eyes that he may see wondrous things out of Thy Word...."
Knives, lances—each broken sentence was one such. And truly Mr. Kestern would have counted his heart's blood a light offering if thereby he might have saved his son. His heart's blood! He was offering even more as he knelt there now. His faith and love were breaking his soul upon the wheel, and not one blow would he spare himself.
And within, without, above, silences, interwoven silences, a veil—inscrutable.
But God must be made to hear... "'Father, if it be possible....'"
The handle of the door turned, futilely since the door was locked. Mr. Kestern rose slowly, and opened it. Mrs. Kestern came in. "Father!" she exclaimed. "Your fire's nearly out! And no gas? Whatever— Oh, father dear, what is it? How long have you been here alone? Why didn't you call me in? Let me light the gas for you."