The next day he was led resolutely to the 'bus by Mrs. Pope, where his Uncle Jacob had preceded him, and whither his small trunk had already been conveyed; and as he slowly took his seat beside the lawyer, he glanced from the window and saw across the lawn three small bare-legged figures in the street.
It was Reddy, with Spike, and Benjamin Wade; they had assembled to see him off, and now, as he left the grounds, they cheered him lustily. At least, Ben and Spike did, for Reddy, in the gutter was turning handsprings—his most valued accomplishment—with bewildering rapidity, to hide his emotions; while descending upon the three, Stephen caught sight of Peter armed with a garden rake. This was the last he saw of them; for though he looked again and again, his eyes were blinded with tears.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
IN the silence and solitude of his home, by his winter fireside, Benson diagnosed his own case. His, he knew, was a moral malady. The years had given him everything save happiness; and because he had not happiness he was sick. Life had been worse than wasted.
It was in the final analysis that he reduced his case to this. He was aware that it was not alone in his relation to Virginia that he had changed; he knew that he had grown hard, and none too scrupulous; that while his outward manner remained one of consideration and kindness even, he had developed a secret passion for accumulation. This had been of steady growth. He desired wealth and power, not in any very wide sense perhaps, since he was content to be the great man of his own little community.
He compared himself with what he could recall of his father, and knew that he was reverting to the strongly marked family type. He was becoming more and more the shrewd New Englander. The receding sap of pioneer times was leaving him dry and externally emotionless. Men seemed to understand the change. They came to him less often now than formally with generous projects, more often with money-making schemes. In these he was always interested.
Yet throughout he had preserved a cynical contempt for himself, with a latent feeling of pity, too; for he knew just the sort of man he had been, just the sort of man he had become; and he blamed Virginia. Indeed he had come to blame her for each corrupting influence to which he had yielded, and since he blamed her, he wanted her to feel the force of his resentment. The boy had given him this opportunity in the fullest measure. He had removed him from her home, he had sent him from Benson, and he was determined that she should not see him again until it suited his whim to be generous. This might be a year hence, or it might be ten years hence; he only knew that it would not be until his mood changed, until he was ready to show kindness to her.
Thus it was that Stephen's first summer was passed entirely in the East. Benson told Virginia it was better that he should become thoroughly accustomed to his surroundings; that to bring him home would only be to unsettle him. But he himself went East and Stephen spent two weeks with him.