At other times, except that he was confined to the house or to a small
space of the grounds about it and was kept under constant surveillance,
he was left largely to his own devices; and these at least sufficed to
let him examine morning and night, the vase in which he was to find the
signal that was to be left for him; these permitted examination of
window-locks in other rooms, if not in Santoine's study; these
permitted the examination of many other items also and let him follow
at least the outline of the method of Santoine's work.
There was no longer room for Eaton to doubt that Harriet had the
confidence of her father to almost a complete extent. Now that
Santoine was ill, she worked with him daily for hours; and Eaton
learned that she did the same when he was well. But Avery worked with
the blind man too; he too was certainly in a confidential capacity.
Was it not probable then that Avery, and not Harriet, was entrusted
with the secrets of dangerous and ugly matters; or was it possible that
this girl, worshiping her father as she did, could know and be sure
that, because her father approved these matters, they were right?
A hundred times a day, as Eaton saw or spoke with the girl or thought
of her presence near by, this obsessed him. A score of times during
their casual talk upon meeting at meals or elsewhere, he found himself
turned toward some question which would aid him in determining what
must be the fact; but each time he checked himself, until one
morning--it was the fifth after his arrival at Santoine's
house--Harriet was taking him for his walk in the garden before the
house.
It was a bright, sunshiny morning and warm--a true spring day. As they
paced back and forth in the sunshine--she bare-haired and he holding
his cap in his hand--he looked back at the room in the wing where
Santoine still lay; then Eaton looked to the daughter, clear-eyed,
clear-skinned, smiling and joyous with the day. She had just told him,
at his inquiry, that her father was very much stronger that morning,
and her manner more than ever evidenced her pride in him.
"I have been intending to ask you, Miss Santoine," Eaton said to her
suddenly then, "if your belief in the superiority of business over
war--as we were discussing it ten days ago---hasn't suffered a shock
since then?"
"You mean because of--Father?"
"Yes; you can hardly go back far enough in the history of war to find a
time when the soldier's creed was not against killing--or trying to
kill--a sleeping enemy."
She looked at him quickly and keenly. "I can't think of Father as
being any one's enemy, though I know of course no man can do big things
without making some people hate him. Even if what he does is wholly
good, bad people hate him for it." She was silent for a few steps. "I
like your saying what you did, Mr. Eaton."
"Why?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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