Often Grant walked home from these discussions with his heart hot and
rebellious. He saw life only in its spiritual aspect and the logic of
Nathan Perry angered him with its conclusiveness.
Often as he walked Kenyon was upon his heart and he wondered if Margaret
missed the boy; or if the small fame that the boy was making with his
music had touched her vanity with a sense of loss. He wondered if she
ever wished to help the child. The whole town knew that the Nesbits were
sending Kenyon to Boston to study music, and that Amos Adams and Grant
could contribute little to the child's support. Grant wondered,
considering the relations between the Van Dorns and Nesbits, whether
sometimes Margaret did not feel a twinge of irritation or regret at the
course of things.
He could not know that even as he walked through the November night,
Margaret Van Dorn, was sitting in her room holding in her hand a tiny
watch, a watch to delight a little girl's heart. On the inside of the
back of the watch was engraved:
"To Lila
from her
Father, for
Her 10th birthday."
And opposite the inscription in the watch was pasted the photograph of
the unhappy face of the donor. Margaret sat gazing at the trinket and
wondering vaguely what would delight a little boy's heart as a watch
would warm the heart of a little girl. It was not a sense of loss, not
regret, certainly not remorse that moved her heart as she sat alone
holding the trinket--discovered on her husband's dresser; it was a weak
and footless longing, and a sense of personal wrong that rose against
her husband. He had something which she had not. He could give jeweled
watches, and she--
But if she only could have read life aright she would have pitied him
that he could give only jeweled watches, only paper images of a
dissatisfied face, only material things, the token of a material
philosophy--all that he knew and all that he had, to the one thing in
the world that he really could love. And as for Margaret, his wife, who
lived his life and his philosophy, she, too, had nothing with which to
satisfy the dull, empty feeling in her heart when she thought of Kenyon,
save to make peace with it in hard metal and stupid stones. Thus does
what we think crust over our souls and make us what we are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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