Shafts of pale sunlight darted into the room and rested on Mr. Levice's hair, covering it with a silver glory, --they trailed along the silken coverlet, but stopped there; one little beam strayed slowly, and almost as if with intention, toward Arnold, seated near the foot of the bed. Ruth, lovely in her pallor, sat near him; Mrs. Levice, on the other side of the bed, leaned back in her chair placed close to her husband's pillow; more remote, though inadvertently so, sat Dr. Kemp. It was by Mr. Levice's desire that these four had assembled here.
He was sitting up, supported by many pillows; his face was hollow and colorless; his hands lay listlessly upon the counterpane. No one touches him; bathed in sunlight, as he was, the others seemed in shadow. When he spoke, his voice was almost a whisper, but it was distinctly audible to the four intent listeners; only the clock seemed to accompany his staccato speech, running a race, as it were, with his failing strength.
"It is a beautiful world," he said dreamily, "a very beautiful world;" the sunbeams kissed his pale hands as if thanking him; no one stirred, letting the old man take his time. Finally he realized that all were waiting for him, and thought sprang, strong and powerful, to his face.
"Dr. Kemp," he began, "I have something to say to you, --to you in particular, and to my daughter Ruth. My wife and nephew know in brief what I have to say; therefore I need not dwell on the painful event that happened here last September; you will pardon me, when you see the necessity, for my reverting to it at all."
Every one's eyes rested upon him, --that is, all but Arnold's, which seemed holding some secret communion with the cupids on the ceiling, --and the look of convulsive agony that swept across Ruth's face was unnoticed.
"In all my long, diversified life," he went on, "I had never suffered as I did after she told me her decision, --for in all those years no one had ever been made to suffer through me; that is, so far as I knew.
Unconsciously, or in anger, I may have hurt many, but never, as in this case, with knowledge aforethought, --when the blow fell upon my own child.
You will understand, and perhaps forgive, when I say I gave no thought to you. She came to me with her sweet, renunciating hands held out, and with a smile of self-forgetfulness, said, 'Father, you are right; I could not be happy with this man.' At the moment I believed her, thinking she had adopted my views; but with all her bravery, her real feelings conquered her, and I saw. Not that she had spoken untruly, but she had implied the truth only in part, I knew my child loved me, and she meant honestly that my pain would rob her of perfect happiness with you, --my pain would form an eclipse strong enough to darken everything. Do you think this knowledge made me glad or proud? Do you know how love, that in the withholding justifies itself, suffers from the pain inflicted? But I said, 'After all, it is as I think; she will thank me for it some day.' I was not altogether selfish, please remember. Then, as I saw her silent wrestling, came distrust of myself; I remembered I was pitted against two, younger and no more fallible than myself. As soon as doubt of myself attacked me, I strove to look on the other side; I strove to rid myself of the old prejudices, the old superstitions, the old narrowness of faith; it was useless, --I was too old, and my prejudices had become part of me. It was in this state of perturbation that I had gone one day up to the top floor of the Palace Hotel. Thank you, Doctor."
The latter had quietly risen and administered a stimulant. As he resumed his seat, Levice continued:
"I was seated at a window overlooking Market Street. Below me surged a black mass of crowding, jostling, hurrying beings, so far removed they seemed like little dots, each as large and no larger than his fellows.
Above them stretched the same blue arch of heaven, they breathed the same air, trod in each other's footsteps; and yet I knew they were all so different, --ignorance walked with enlightenment, vice with virtue, rich with poor, low with high, --but I felt, poised thus above them, that they were creatures of the same God. Go once thus, and you will understand the feeling. And so I judged these aliens. Which was greater; which was less?
