The White Dove

by William John Locke

She drew herself up with a flash of family resemblance to her brother, which the physician's quick eye noticed. He replied frankly. The old man was in a natural sleep,—a hopeful sign. His recovery would probably depend upon his power of resistance. Lytton, the great specialist, was coming down to-morrow, and they might expect his verdict to be final.

They talked long together in the cold, dimly lit room. Miss Lanyon repeated her story, with fresh details added here and there, told of the kindness of Simmons, the numberless inquiries from the townspeople, broke off to recall little instances of her brother's goodness. Only to-day, during his short spell of consciousness, he had asked whether Sylvester had made the arrangement for the Jenkins' three children to board with the Jellicoes. At this announcement Sylvester brought his hand down hard upon the table. \

“What a brute I am!” he exclaimed! “I forgot all about it! And he remembered! What did you tell him?”

“I said that you no doubt were seeing to the matter,” replied Miss Lanyon.

Sylvester sat on the corner of the table and stared in front of him, his mind full of the father the latchet of whose shoes he felt himself unworthy to loosen, and tears came into his eyes. The incident touched him deeply. This tender thoughtfulness for little things in the midst of events great enough to absorb the attention of a strong man seemed a keynote of his father's nature.

“He is the one perfect man of his generation,” said Sylvester.

A while later he induced Miss Lanyon to go to bed, and went upstairs to relieve the nurse by his father's side. And for some hours he watched the beloved face, placid and wan in the dim light. Skilled physician though he was, he alternated between hope and fear. A world without his father was unimaginable. His life was barren enough already. His father was the only being left that could satisfy the dumb craving for human sympathy that gnawed continually at his vitals. The prospect of his grim loneliness appalled him. Again he looked intently into the sleeping face. The muscles all relaxed, it appeared unutterably careworn,—the face of a man many years older. To the son seemed as if the last two days had brought the havoc; he cursed Roderick in his heart.

Only once before had he felt the same murderous hatred of a man. Then he was watching, even as he was doing now, by a man's bedside. The memory recurred, intensely vivid. He set his teeth as he lived over again those hours of agony and strife. Unconsciously he drew up his indictment of humanity for the wrongs it had inflicted on him. Friendship was naught. Had not his dearest friend stabbed him in the dark? Woman was inherently false and corrupt. His own wife, who had lain in his arms, had betrayed him, and she had smiled, smiled to the hour of her death. To have children was a curse. How did he know that alien blood did not run in Dorothy's veins? Woman's love, what was it? To-night Ella had confessed her love for him. It had not stopped her from throwing herself into the embraces of a satyr. The brute nature of humanity! He himself had not been safeguarded from spasms of jealousy. Fiercely he attributed them to the lower instincts. He forgot how at times in his sombre house he had let his pen slip from his fingers and had ached for the touch of a woman's hand and the sound of a child's laughter; how a girl's fresh face, perilously like Ella's, had quivered before his vision, and how the grip of cold iron had suddenly fastened round his heart, and he had resumed his work, hard and scornful. These things that had come to him were remote from the flesh; but he forgot them. In his hour of dark misanthropy he ranked her sex and his own temptation at their lowest. For her humiliation he had no pity. Like other women, she had rolled in the mire; smirching was the natural consequence. For Roderick he had hatred, unmitigated by any pleasant memory of old acquaintance. But he remembered his father's many kindnesses to Roderick, and the man's crime was further blackened by ingratitude.

Nor did he pity the father of the son thus disgraced. The ignoble, mean old man who had always been the object of his scorn had brought his punishment upon himself; for had he not neglected the elementary responsibilities of parentage? There could be no pity for a father of whom the son spoke openly with cynical contempt. Sylvester's eyes fell upon his own father's face, and the contrast brought a tumultuous rush of feeling. And from the wall opposite, his mother smiled down upon him through the gloom. She was gone,—the one pure, divine woman the earth had held. The one perfect man lay there, still living. He must not die. Sylvester shook with a great terror. His father was as needful as the sun in a foul and dismal world. These two were remote as stars from the rest of humanity. Through them passed his faith in God.

But his faith in man was gone. On this night of vigil, after his day of self-repression and stern meting out of justice, was the culmination of all the disillusion and the bitterness of his life. Towards the three human beings upon whom he was bringing crushing disgrace his heart was cold granite. And the old man with the kindly, careworn face slept on and on by his side.