Part 26 (2/2)
”Thank you, yes. You were saying--”
”Willits, do you think so much coffee is good for you?”
”Land sakes, Doctor, my coffee won't hurt him! It never seems to trouble you any. As I was saying, one would almost have thought that what with picnicking in the bush all day and trapesing around in a canoe half the night and having to stay where she wasn't expected and wouldn't like to ask the loan of the flat-irons--”
”Please, Mrs. Sykes, don't let Ann eat another biscuit. I don't want her to be ill just when I want a day off to take Willits to church. Willits, as your medical adviser, I forbid more coffee. He will really injure himself, Mrs. Sykes, if I do not take him away. He isn't used to breakfasts like this and his const.i.tution won't stand it.”
Mrs. Sykes beamed graciously under this delicate compliment and confiscated Ann's latest biscuit with a ruthless hand. ”If you gentlemen would like to sit in the parlour--” she offered graciously. But Callandar with equal graciousness declined. The office would do quite well enough. Willits might want to smoke. ”And as it-seems that my watch has stopped,” he added, ”perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us when it is time to change for church.”
The professor settled himself primly upon the hardest chair which the office contained and refused a cigar.
”You seem to have acquired a reprehensible habit of fooling, Henry,” he said. ”Your language also is strange. When, for instance, you say 'change for church,' to what sort of transformation do you refer?”
Callandar chuckled.
”Only to your clothes, old chap. Don't worry. You wouldn't expect me to go to church in flannels?”
”I should not expect you to go to church at all.”
”Well, the fact is, old man, you are painfully ignorant. I do go to church, and the proper church costume for a professional man is a frock coat and silk hat. But as you are a traveller, and as you are not exactly a professional man, I shall not lose caste by taking you as you are.”
The imperturbable Willits waived the point. ”I understood you to say, also, that your watch had stopped. Was that a joke?”
”No such luck!” The doctor took out his watch and shook it. ”Mainspring gone, I'm afraid!”
”A month ago,” said the professor, ”if your watch had stopped you would have had a fit.”
”Really! Was I ever such an a.s.s? Well, I'm not the slave of my watch any longer. Time goes softly in Coombe. Aren't you glad I'm not taking a fit?”
”I am glad. But I want to understand.”
”Then let's return to the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Ann and I were talking about it this morning. Do you remember the man with the pack on his back and how when he reached a certain spot the pack, seemingly without effort of his own, fell off and was seen no more?”
Willits reflected. The doctor was thoroughly in earnest now. ”I seem to recollect the incident to which you refer,” he said after a pause. ”If I remember rightly it is an allegory and is used in a definitely religious sense. The man with the pack meets a certain spiritual crisis. Do I understand that you--er--that you have experienced conversion? I am not guilty of speaking lightly of so important a matter, but I hardly know how to frame my question.”
The doctor tilted back his chair and looked dreamily out of the window.
”I did not mean you to take my ill.u.s.tration literally. My religious beliefs are very much the same as they have always been. To a materialist like you they seem, I know, absurdly orthodox; to a church member in good standing they might seem fatally lax; but such as they are I have not changed them. Still, I was, as you know, a man with a burden. You may call the burden consequence or what you will, the name doesn't matter. The weight of that youthful, selfish, unpardonable act which bound a young girl to me without giving her the protection which that bond demanded, was always upon me, crus.h.i.+ng out the joy of life.
The news of her death made no difference, except to render me hopeless of ever making up to her for the wrong I had done. Her death did not set me free, it bound me closer.
”I seemed like one caught in the tow of some swift tide, always fighting to get back, yet eternally being drawn away. The tide still flows out, for the tide of human life is the only tide which never returns, but I have ceased to struggle. I no longer look back. It is not that G.o.d has forgiven me (I have never been able to think of G.o.d as otherwise than forgiving), it is that I have forgiven myself.”
CHAPTER XV
”It amounts to this, then,” said Willits presently. ”You are cured. The balance is swinging true again. It has taken a long time, but the cure is all the more complete for that. Now, when are you coming back to us?”
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