Junia would understand these things. As he sat
at his breakfast, with the newspaper spread against the teapot and the
milk-pitcher, he felt satisfied he had done the bold and right, if
incomprehensible, thing.
But in another hotel, at another breakfast, another man read of Carnac's
candidature with sickening surprise. It was Barode Barouche.
So, after twenty-seven long years, this was to be the issue! His own son,
whom he had never known, was to fight him at the polls! Somehow, the day
when he had seen Carnac and his mother at the political meeting had given
him new emotions. His wife, to whom he had been so faithful in one sense
since she had passed into the asylum, had died, and with her going, a new
field of life seemed to open up to him. She had died almost on the same
day as John Grier. She had been buried secludedly, piteously, and he had
gone back to his office with the thought that life had become a
preposterous freedom.
So it was that, on the day when he spoke at the political meeting, his
life's tragedy became a hammer beating every nerve into emotion. He was
like one shipwrecked who strikes out with a swimmer's will to reach his
goal. All at once, on the platform, as he spoke, when his eyes saw the
faces of Carnac and his mother the catastrophe stunned him like a huge
engine of war.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181