AN EVENING WITH CAPTAIN BULSTED

A dream that my father lay like a wax figure in a bed gave me thoughts of
dying. I was ill and did not know it, and imagined that my despair at
the foot of the stairs of ever reaching my room to lie down peacefully
was the sign of death. My aunt Dorothy nursed me for a week: none but
she and my dogs entered the room. I had only two faint wishes left in
me: one that the squire should be kept out of my sight, the other that
she would speak to me of my mother's love for my father. She happened to
say, musing, 'Harry, you have your mother's heart.'

I said, 'No, my father's.'

From that we opened a conversation, the sweetest I had ever had away from
him, though she spoke shyly and told me very little. It was enough for
me in the narrow world of my dogs' faces, and the red-leaved creeper at
the window, the fir-trees on the distant heath, and her hand clasping
mine. My father had many faults, she said, but he had been cruelly used,
or deceived, and he bore a grievous burden; and then she said, 'Yes,' and
'Yes,' and 'Yes,' in the voice one supposes of a ghost retiring, to my
questions of his merits. I was refreshed and satisfied, like the parched
earth with dews when it gets no rain, and I was soon well.

When I walked among the household again, I found that my week of
seclusion had endowed me with a singular gift; I found that I could see
through everybody. Looking at the squire, I thought to myself, 'My
father has faults, but he has been cruelly used,' and immediately I
forgave the old man; his antipathy to my father seemed a craze, and to
account for it I lay in wait for his numerous illogical acts and words,