Betrothal -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; Middle West -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
He saw that she was turning now to the great faith that had sustained
her in every trial of a life that had known so many trials; and the
tears came to his own eyes. He would have left her for a moment but she
followed him. He had an impulse he could not resist to torture himself
by going over the house again; he went into the dining-room which in the
darkness wore an air of waiting for the breakfast they would eat when he
was gone; he went to the kitchen and took a drink of water, from the old
habit he was now breaking; then he went up stairs and looked into his
own room, at the neatly made bed where he was to sleep no more; at last
he stood at the door of the study.
He could catch the odor of his father's cigar, just as he had in
standing there so many times before; he pushed the door open and felt
the familiar hot, close, smoke-laden atmosphere which his father seemed
to find so congenial to his studies. Doctor Marley took off his
spectacles and pushed his manuscript aside, and Marley felt that he
never would forget that picture of the gray head bent in its earnest
labors over that worn and littered desk; it was photographed for all
time on his memory. His words with his father had always been few; there
were no more now.
"Well, father," he said, "I've come to say good-by."
His father pushed back his chair and turned about. He half-rose, then
sank back again and took his son's hand.
"Good-by, Glenn," he said. "You'll write?"
"Yes."
"Write often. We'll want to hear."
"Yes, write often," the doctor said. "And take care of yourself."
"I will, father."
"Wait a moment." Doctor Marley was fumbling in his pocket. He drew forth
a few dollars.
"Here, Glenn," he said. "I wish it could be more."
There was nothing more to do, or say. They went down stairs; Marley's
bag was waiting for him in the hall. He kissed his mother again and then
again; he shook his father's hand, and then he went.
"Write often," his father called out to him, as he went down the walk.
It was all the old man could say.
The door closed, as the door of the Blairs' had closed. Inside Doctor
Marley looked at his wife a moment.
"Well," he said, "he's gone."
Mrs. Marley made no answer.
"I suppose," he said, "I ought to have gone to the train with him."
Then he toiled up the stairs to his study and the sermon he was to
preach when Glenn was gone.
Marley walked rapidly down Market Street toward the depot; in the dark
houses that suddenly had taken on a new significance to him, people were
sleeping, people who would awake the next morning in Macochee. He could
not escape the torture of this thought; his mind revolved constantly
about the mystery of his being still in Macochee, still within calling
distance, almost, of Lavinia, of his father and mother, of all he loved
in life, when in reality they had in an instant become as inaccessible
to him as though the long miles of his exile already separated them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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