“I’m going up to tell the Hugheses.”
“Ah! then I won’t offer to go with you,” said Kane. “I approve of your constancy, but I have my own philosophy of such things. I think David would have done much better to stay where he was; I do not wish to punish him for coming to meet the world, and reform it on its own ground; but I could have told him he would get beaten. He is a thinker, or a dreamer, if you please, and in his community he had just the right sort of distance. He could pose the world just as he wished, and turn it in this light and in that. But here he sees the exceptions to his rules, and when I am with him I find myself the prey of a desire to dwell on the exceptions, and I know that I afflict him. I always did, and I feel it the part of humanity to keep away from him. I am glad that I do, for I dislike very much being with sick people. Of course I shall go as often as decency requires. For Decency,” Kane concluded, with the effect of producing a Hard Saying, “transcends Humanity. So many reformers forget that,” he added.
The days were now getting so long that they had just lighted the lamps in Hughes’s room when Ray came in, a little after seven. He had a few words with Peace in the family room first, and she told him that her father had passed a bad day, and she did not know whether he was asleep or not.
“Then I’ll go away again,” said Ray.
“No, no; if he is awake, he will like to see you. He always does. And now he can’t see you much oftener.”
“Oh, Peace! Do you really think so?”
“The doctor says so. There is no hope any more.” There was no faltering in her voice, and its steadiness strengthened Ray, standing so close to one who stood so close to death.
“Does he—your father—know?”
“I can’t tell. He is always so hopeful. And Jenny won’t hear of giving up. She is with him more than I am, and she says he has a great deal of strength yet. He can still work at his book a little. He has every part of it in mind so clearly that he can tell her what to do when he has the strength to speak. The worst is, when his voice fails him—he gets impatient. That was what brought on his hemorrhage to-day.”
“Peace! I am ashamed to think why I came to-night. But I hoped it might interest him.”