It became evident that Stephen Gore’s manhood and his self-respect were returning to him slowly as he lay in the kitchen of Thorn. What his thoughts were John Gore could only guess, though he was struck by the change in his father, the indefinable refining and strengthening of the outer and inner man, as though my lord had ceased to be the animal, and had come again to the cognizance of higher things. They seldom spoke to each other, these two, nor did they venture beyond the trivial needs or happenings of the day. Both were conscious of the imminent and dark shadow, and faltered before it, sheltering behind reticence and procrastination. Yet John Gore would see a certain look come into his father’s eyes, as though the man were dumb and were striving to speak.
And the first breaking of the superficial surface of reserve was caused by nothing more dramatic than a beard. My lord’s self-respect seemed intimately married to bodily cleanliness and perfection in dress. Silks and brocades and perfumes were beyond him; perhaps he would not have asked for them even if they had been at hand. But it was with a gleam of his old wit that he desired most humbly to be barbered, and to be deprived of the hair that had grown at Thorn.
John Gore accepted the incident without a smile, brought a razor with him next day, and dutifully shaved my lord’s upper lip and chin. He had done his barbering in silence, with the air of a man who had no care beyond the dexterity of his fingers, when my lord laid a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“You would like to cut my throat, John. Cut it.”
They looked at each other squarely in the eyes. Stephen Gore was the first to glance away.
“Nor should I blame you, my son.”
And that was all that passed between them over the shaving of my lord’s chin.
John Gore told Barbara of the change in Stephen Gore, and she listened with a faint smile hovering about her mouth, as though her intuition gave her some vision of the future.
“Be gentle with him, John,” she said. “I have heard it said that pottery is brittle when it first comes from the furnace.”
“Then you think the clay has been recast, child?”