Belief and doubt -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Methodists -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
Theron's thoughts were upon the puzzling shadowed lineaments on the
stained glass. He saw now in a flash the resemblance which had baffled
him. “It IS like her, of course,” he said.
“Yes, unfortunately, it IS just like her,” replied the doctor, with a
hostile note in his voice. “Whenever I am dining here, she always goes
in and kicks up that racket. She knows I hate it.”
“Oh, you mean that it is she who is playing,” remarked Theron. “I
thought you referred to--at least--I was thinking of--”
His sentence died off in inconsequence. He had a feeling that he did not
want to talk with the doctor about the stained-glass likeness. The music
had sunk away now into fragmentary and unconnected passages, broken here
and there by abrupt stops. Dr. Ledsmar stretched an arm out past him and
shut the window. “Let's hear as little of the row as we can,” he said,
and the two went back to their chairs.
“Pardon me for the question,” the Rev. Mr. Ware said, after a pause
which began to affect him as constrained, “but something you said about
dining--you don't live here, then? In the house, I mean?”
The doctor laughed--a characteristically abrupt, dry little laugh, which
struck Theron at once as bearing a sort of black-sheep relationship
to the priest's habitual chuckle. “That must have been puzzling you no
end,” he said--“that notion that the pastorate kept a devil's advocate
on the premises. No, Mr. Ware, I don't live here. I inhabit a house
of my own--you may have seen it--an old-fashioned place up beyond the
race-course, with a sort of tower at the back, and a big garden. But I
dine here three or four times a week. It is an old arrangement of ours.
Vincent and I have been friends for many years now. We are quite alone
in the world, we two--much to our mutual satisfaction. You must come
up and see me some time; come up and have a look over the books we were
speaking of.”
“I am much obliged,” said Theron, without enthusiasm. The thought of the
doctor by himself did not attract him greatly.
The reservation in his tone seemed to interest the doctor. “I suppose
you are the first man I have asked in a dozen years,” he remarked,
frankly willing that the young minister should appreciate the favor
extended him. “It must be fully that since anybody but Vincent Forbes
has been under my roof; that is, of my own species, I mean.”
“You live there quite alone,” commented Theron.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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