The Choir Invisible [43]
Club of Philadelphia. In truth it seemed to him that everyone in the town came sooner or later, to take a turn at his bedside or wish him well.
Except four persons: Amy did not come; nor Joseph, with whom he had quarrelled and with whom he meant to settle his difference as soon as he could get about; nor O'Bannon, whose practical joke had indirectly led to the whole trouble; nor Peter, who toiled on at his forge with his wounded vanity.
Betrothals were not kept secret in those days and engagements were short. But as he was sick and suffering, some of those who visited him forbore to mention her name, much less to speak of the preparations now going forward for her marriage with Joseph. Others, indeed, did begin to talk of her and to pry; but he changed the subject quickly.
And so he lay there with the old battle going on in his thoughts, never knowing that she had promised to become the wife of another: fighting it all over in his foolish, iron-minded way: some days hardening and saying he would never look her in the face again; other days softening and resolving to seek her out as soon as he grew well enough and learn whether the fault of all this quarrel lay with him or wherein lay the truth: yet in all his moods sore beset with doubts of her sincerity and at all times passing sore over his defeat--defeat that always went so hard with him.
Meantime one person was pondering his case with a solicitude that he wist not of: the Reverend James Moore, the flute-playing Episcopal parson of the town, within whose flock this marriage was to take place and who may have regarded Amy as one of his most frisky wayward fleeces. Perhaps indeed as not wearing a white spiritual fleece at all but as dyed a sort of merino-brown in the matter of righteousness.
He had long been fond of John--they both being pure-minded men, religious, bookish, and bachelors; but their friendship caused one to think of the pine and the palm: for the parson, with his cold bleak face, palish straight hair put back behind white ears, and frozen smile, appeared always to be inhabiting the arctic regions of life while John, though rooted in a tropical soil of many passions, strove always to bear himself in character like a palm, up-right, clean-cut; having no low or drooping branches; and putting forth all the foliage and blossoms of the mind at the very summit of his powers. The parson and the school-master had often walked out to the Falconers' together in the days when John imagined his suit to be faring prosperously; and from Amy's conduct, and his too slight knowledge of the sex, this arctic explorer had long since adjusted his frosted faculties to the notion that she expected to become John's wife. He was sorry; it sent an extra chill through the icebergs of his imagination; but perhaps he gathered comforting warmth from the hope that some of John's whiteness would fall upon her and that thus from being a blackish lambkin she would at least eventually turn into a light-gray ewe.
When the tidings reached his far-inward ear that she was to marry Joseph instead of his friend, a general thaw set in over the entire landscape of his nature: it was like spring along the southern fringes of Greenland.
The error must not be inculcated here that the parson had no passions: he had three-ruling ones: a passion for music, a passion for metaphysics, and a passion for satirizing the other sex.
Dropping in one afternoon and glancing with delicate indirection at John's short shelf of books, he inquired whether he had finished with his Paley. John said he had and the parson took it down to bear away with him. Laying it across his stony knees as he sat down and piling his white hands on it,
"Do you believe Paley?" he asked, turning upon John a pair of the most beautiful eyes, which looked a little like moss agates.
"I believe St. Paul," replied John, turning his own eyes fondly on his open Testament.
"Do you believe Paley?" insisted the parson, who would always have his questions answered directly.
"There's a good deal of Paley: what do you
Except four persons: Amy did not come; nor Joseph, with whom he had quarrelled and with whom he meant to settle his difference as soon as he could get about; nor O'Bannon, whose practical joke had indirectly led to the whole trouble; nor Peter, who toiled on at his forge with his wounded vanity.
Betrothals were not kept secret in those days and engagements were short. But as he was sick and suffering, some of those who visited him forbore to mention her name, much less to speak of the preparations now going forward for her marriage with Joseph. Others, indeed, did begin to talk of her and to pry; but he changed the subject quickly.
And so he lay there with the old battle going on in his thoughts, never knowing that she had promised to become the wife of another: fighting it all over in his foolish, iron-minded way: some days hardening and saying he would never look her in the face again; other days softening and resolving to seek her out as soon as he grew well enough and learn whether the fault of all this quarrel lay with him or wherein lay the truth: yet in all his moods sore beset with doubts of her sincerity and at all times passing sore over his defeat--defeat that always went so hard with him.
Meantime one person was pondering his case with a solicitude that he wist not of: the Reverend James Moore, the flute-playing Episcopal parson of the town, within whose flock this marriage was to take place and who may have regarded Amy as one of his most frisky wayward fleeces. Perhaps indeed as not wearing a white spiritual fleece at all but as dyed a sort of merino-brown in the matter of righteousness.
He had long been fond of John--they both being pure-minded men, religious, bookish, and bachelors; but their friendship caused one to think of the pine and the palm: for the parson, with his cold bleak face, palish straight hair put back behind white ears, and frozen smile, appeared always to be inhabiting the arctic regions of life while John, though rooted in a tropical soil of many passions, strove always to bear himself in character like a palm, up-right, clean-cut; having no low or drooping branches; and putting forth all the foliage and blossoms of the mind at the very summit of his powers. The parson and the school-master had often walked out to the Falconers' together in the days when John imagined his suit to be faring prosperously; and from Amy's conduct, and his too slight knowledge of the sex, this arctic explorer had long since adjusted his frosted faculties to the notion that she expected to become John's wife. He was sorry; it sent an extra chill through the icebergs of his imagination; but perhaps he gathered comforting warmth from the hope that some of John's whiteness would fall upon her and that thus from being a blackish lambkin she would at least eventually turn into a light-gray ewe.
When the tidings reached his far-inward ear that she was to marry Joseph instead of his friend, a general thaw set in over the entire landscape of his nature: it was like spring along the southern fringes of Greenland.
The error must not be inculcated here that the parson had no passions: he had three-ruling ones: a passion for music, a passion for metaphysics, and a passion for satirizing the other sex.
Dropping in one afternoon and glancing with delicate indirection at John's short shelf of books, he inquired whether he had finished with his Paley. John said he had and the parson took it down to bear away with him. Laying it across his stony knees as he sat down and piling his white hands on it,
"Do you believe Paley?" he asked, turning upon John a pair of the most beautiful eyes, which looked a little like moss agates.
"I believe St. Paul," replied John, turning his own eyes fondly on his open Testament.
"Do you believe Paley?" insisted the parson, who would always have his questions answered directly.
"There's a good deal of Paley: what do you