She turned away from him, her
arms flung above her head and wispy hair veiling her damp cheek.
"Keep still, can't you?" and he gathered her hair into a clumsy plait.
The darkness about him seeped within, into his hope and courage and
resolution; all that he had determined to do seemed impossibly removed.
The whole world resembled Nantbrook--a place of universal condemnation,
forgiving nothing. He felt a certainty that even the few dollars he had
honestly earned would now be stopped.
The air grew clearer and deeper in color, and stars brightened. Lemuel
Doret wondered about God. There was no doubt of His power and glory or
of the final triumph of heaven established and earth, sin, destroyed.
His mind was secure in these truths; his comprehension of the paths of
wickedness was equally plain; it was the ways of the righteous that
bewildered him--the conduct of the righteous and, in the face of his
supreme recognition, the extreme difficulty of providing life for
Flavilla--and Bella.
He consciously added his wife's name. Somehow his daughter was the sole
objective measure of his determination to build up, however late, a
home here and in eternity.
It was not unreasonable, in view of the past, to suppose that he had no
chance of succeeding. Yet religion was explicit upon that particular;
it was founded on the very hopes of sinners, on redemption. But he
could do nothing without an opportunity to make the small living they
required; if the men of Nantbrook, of the world, wouldn't come to him
to be barbered, and if he had no money to go anywhere else to begin
again, he was helpless.
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