Dr. Borrow would be here soon. I sat down on a block and waited. Dr. Borrow! I had thought his love for Harry tinctured with worldliness; but how honest and hearty it appeared to me now! I had loved in Harry Dudley what he was to be, what he was to do. Dr. Borrow had loved him for himself only, simply and sincerely. I remembered the Doctor's misgivings, his cautions to me. How negligently heard! Then it was only that he did not yet comprehend the high calling of the boy whom we equally loved. Now I almost felt as if I had a complicity in his fate,--as if the Doctor could demand account of me.
That Harry Dudley would give himself to a great cause had been my hope and faith; that he would spend himself on a chimera had been Doctor Borrow's dread. But which of us had looked forward to this utter waste? How reconcile it with Divine Omnipotence? with Supreme Justice? Was there not here frustration of a master-work? Was there not here a promise unfulfilled?
Careless footsteps and voices gave notice of the approach of men brought by curiosity. Seeing me, and judging me not one of themselves, they stop outside, confer a moment in lower tones, come in singly, look, and go out again.
Then new voices. A tall, stout man stalked heavily in. "And the boy was his own, after all," burst from him as he rejoined the others.
"The boy was not his own. He didn't buy him fairly to keep and work him. It was a sham sale. He meant to free him from the first, and the boy knew it. He was free by intention and in fact. He had all the mischief in him of a free negro."
"The man was a New-Englander, and saw it differently," answered the first voice.
"A man is not a fool because he is a New-Englander," replied the second. "I am from New England myself."
"I don't see much of the same about you. Are there more there like him or like you?"
"I tell you he has died as the fool dieth," the other answered sharply, coming carelessly in as he spoke. He was a mean-looking man, trimly dressed, in whom I could not but recognize the Yankee schoolmaster.
As he stooped down over the man he had contemned, some dormant inheritance of manhood revealed itself in his breast, some lingering trace of richer blood stirred in his dull veins. He turned away, cast towards me a humble, deprecating look, and, still bending forward, went out on tiptoe.