A man more strongly conscientious never lived;
and his sudden neglect of me had nothing to do with caprice, but
came--as I am now assured--of some lesion of memory under the shock
of my sister's death. As an unregenerate youngster I thought little
of it at the time, beyond rejoicing to be free of my daily lesson in
Virgil.
I can see my father now, seated within the summer-house by the
filbert-tree at the end of the orchard--his favourite haunt--or
standing in the doorway and drawing himself painfully erect, a giant
of a man, to inhale the scent of his flowers or listen to his bees,
or the voice of the stream which bounded our small domain. I see him
framed there, his head almost touching the lintel, his hands gripping
the posts like a blind Samson's, all too strong for the flimsy
trelliswork. He wore a brown holland suit in summer, in colder
weather a fustian one of like colour, and at first glance you might
mistake him for a Quaker. His snow-white hair was gathered close
beside the temples, back from a face of ineffable simplicity and
goodness--the face of a man at peace with God and all the world, yet
marked with scars--scars of bygone passions, cross-hatched and almost
effaced by deeper scars of calamity.
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