It is safe to say that Mr. Worthington understood.
CHAPTER XVI
There are certain instruments used by scientists so delicate that they have to be wrapped in cotton wool and kept in ductless places, and so sensitive that the slightest shock will derange them. And there are certain souls which cannot stand the jars of life—souls created to register thoughts and sentiments too fine for those of coarser construction. Such was the soul of the storekeeper of Coniston. Whether or not he was one of those immortalized in the famous Elegy, it is not for us to say. A celebrated poet who read the letters to the Guardian—at Miss Lucretia Penniman's request—has declared Mr. Wetherell to have been a genius. He wrote those letters, as we know, after he had piled his boxes and rolled his barrels into place; after he had added up the columns in his ledger and recorded, each week, the small but ever increasing deficit which he owed to Jethro Bass. Could he have been removed from the barrels and the ledgers, and the debts and the cares and the implications, what might we have had from his pen? That will never be known.
We left him in the lobby of the Opera House, but he did not go in to see the final act of “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” He made his way, alone, back to the hotel, slipped in by a side entrance, and went directly to his room, where Cynthia found him, half an hour later, seated by the open window in the dark.
“Aren't you well, Dad?” she asked anxiously. “Why didn't you come to see the play?”
“I—I was detained Cynthia,” he said. “Yes—I am well.”
She sat down beside him and felt his forehead and his hands, and the events of the evening which were on her lips to tell him remained unspoken.
“You ought not to have left Coniston,” she said; “the excitement is too much for you. We will go back tomorrow.”
“Yes, Cynthia, we will go back to-morrow.”