“Why is it,” he said, “that you have that look in your great soft eyes? I see it always, always in the eyes of you dumb creatures—a look as if you if your hearts were bursting with the thoughts you cannot speak; as if in proud humility you acknowledge that your faculties were maimed—as if you too could render a reason for all that you do, if only you could make it articulate—as if you plead with us to understand you—as if you prayed piteously against the eternal silence which keeps you down. Ah! Do not look at me like that! I know you feel and suffer and think! Look at me as an equal. Surely when you are alone, quite alone, you look at each other with different eyes? Free eyes bright with the unspeakable boon of equality. May I not see you thus? Some night when the moon is high above the tree tops, when the meadow lies like a bright green lake beneath its beams, when the cat-bird calls from the bushes and there is no one here but you, may I not come to you and see you look at each other, and at me, proudly, as brother looks upon brother? For I am your brother! To breathe is to be the brother of all that lives by breath. And see! how ready I am to acknowledge kinship,” and so he babbled on and on, all forgotten but the living creatures before him. At length the glory faded from his face, little by little, as a fabric falls into its old folds, his face resumed its normal expression, he patted the outstretched noses all round.
“What piteous eyes you have, poor fellows!” he said, and left them stretching their glossy necks over the fence to him, and pressing their broad breasts against it, till it creaked and cracked.
Dole maintained its attitude unchanged till Wednesday. Upon that day Sidney, passing from the post office, with some books under his arm, met Mrs. Smilie, who, going over to exchange views with Mrs. Simpson about matters in general, and the preacher and the witch’s ghost in particular, had left home very early, intending to return before dark.
There would be no more lonely twilight walks taken in Dole for some time to come. The ghost had been seen by several individuals, all testified to its height, its black robe, its white face. Truth to tell, Vashti, dreading to be questioned about her husband’s views, had kept herself close within doors all day long, and had taken her constitutionals in the dusk. Did she intentionally play the part of spectre? Perhaps. Nor indeed is it to be wondered at if she grasped at any distraction from her own thoughts, for Vashti Lansing was beset with terrible fears. Working with material she did not understand she had wrought havoc in her husband’s brain. His mind had given evidence during the last day or two, not only that it had partially escaped her control, but his own.