Then came the change which brought Clara home from college--home,
first to companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly years, to
slave for this disintegrating remnant of humanity. Slowly,
reluctantly, this genial, old soul descended the scale of human life.
He was dear and pathetic in the early, unaccustomed awkwardness of his
painless weakness. "Only a few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin in
the car and your father'll show thim upstarts how to rustle up the
business." The rustling days did not come, but short periods of
irritability did. He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became impatient
in her absence. He objected to her mother's nursing, and later became
suspicious that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, and often
greeted both mother and daughter with unreasonable words. His
interests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the
range of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did his
feelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and required
increasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness first
peeped in, then became a permanent guest--a coarseness which the
wife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finally
only by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slow
melting of brain-tissue went every vestige of decency; vile thoughts
which had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's normal mind
seemed bred without restraint in the caldron of his diseased brain.
His was a vital sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, but
during the last of these he was physically and morally repellent.
Sentiment, that too-often fear of unkind gossip, or ignorant
falsifying of consequences, stood between this family and the proper
institutional and professional care, which could have given him more
than any family's love, and protected those who had their lives to
live from memories which are mercilessly cruel.