CHAPTER V

THE WILL

When Hiram had so far improved that his period of isolation was obviously within a few days of its end, Adelaide suggested to Arthur, somewhat timidly, “Don’t you think you ought to go to work at the mills?”

He frowned.  It was bad enough to have the inward instinct to this, and to fight it down anew each day as a temptation to weakness and cowardice.  That the traitor should get an ally in his sister—­it was intolerable.  The frown deepened into a scowl.

But Del had been doing real thinking since she saw her father stricken down, and she was beginning clearly to see his point of view as to Arthur.  That angry frown was discouraging, but she felt too strongly to be quite daunted.  “It might help father toward getting well,” she urged, “and make such a difference—­in every way.”

“No more hypocrisy.  I was right; he was wrong,” replied her brother.  He had questioned Dr. Schulze anxiously about his father’s seizure; and Schulze, who had taken a strong fancy to him and had wished to put him at ease, declared that the attack must have begun at the mills, and would probably have brought Hiram down before he could have reached home, had he not been so powerful of body and of will.  And Arthur, easily reassured where he must be assured if he was to have peace of mind, now believed that his outburst had had no part whatever in causing his father’s stroke.  So he was all for firm stand against slavery.  “If I yield an inch now,” he went on to Adelaide, “he’ll never stop until he has made me his slave.  He has lorded it over those workingmen so long that the least opposition puts him in a frenzy.”

Adelaide gave over, for the time, the combat against a stubbornness which was an inheritance from his father.  “I’ve only made him more set by what I’ve said,” thought she.  “Now, he has committed himself.  I ought not to have been so tactless.”

Long after Hiram got back in part the power of speech, he spoke only when directly addressed, and then after a wait in which he seemed to have cast about for the fewest possible words.  After a full week of this emphasized reticence, he said, “Where is Arthur?”

Arthur had kept away because—­so he told himself and believed—­while he was not in the least responsible for his father’s illness, still seeing him and being thus reminded of their difference could not but have a bad effect.  That particular day, as luck would have it, he for the first time since his father was stricken had left the grounds.  “He’s out driving,” said his mother.

“In the tandem?” asked Hiram.

“Yes,” replied Ellen, knowing nothing of the last development of the strained relations between her husband and her “boy.”

“Then he hasn’t gone to work?”

“He’s stayed close to the house ever since you were taken sick, Hiram,” said she, with gentle reproach.  “He’s been helping me nurse you.”