gaiety of children, those absolute little gods of the moment, lifted itself slowly out of their hearts, something like hopefulness returned to her. They were a life unto themselves—how lonely they were they did not know, but they were known to every one and friended by almost no one. Their status was singular—if they could have been distinguished by caste, they would probably have been called middle-class, but the Duncans, the Tarkintons, all their neighbors, and all their acquaintances throughout the town, never drew in to them, never came into the strange rich color of their lives, because they had twisted the design of all orderly life, because there was in them a mad, original, disturbing quality which they did not suspect. And companionship with the elect— those like the Hilliards—was equally impossible, even if they had had the gift or the desire for it. But they hadn’t.
Gant was a great man, and not a singular one, because singularity does not hold life in unyielding devotion to it.
As he stormed through the house, unleashing his gathered bolts, the children followed him joyously, shrieking exultantly as he told Eliza he had first seen her “wriggling around the corner like a snake on her belly,” or, as coming in from freezing weather he had charged her and all the Pentlands with malevolent domination of the elements.
“We will freeze,” he yelled, “we will freeze in this hellish, damnable, cruel and God-forsaken climate. Does Brother Will care? Does Brother Jim care? Did the Old Hog, your miserable old father, care? Merciful God! I have fallen into the hands of fiends incarnate, more savage, more cruel, more abominable than the beasts of the field. Hellhounds that they are, they will sit by and gloat at my agony until I am done to death.”
He paced rapidly about the adjacent wash-room for a moment, muttering to himself, while grinning Luke stood watchfully near.
“But they can eat!” he shouted, plunging suddenly at the kitchen door. “They can eat—when some one else will feed them. I shall never forget the Old Hog as long as I live. Cr-unch, Cr-unch, Cr-unch,”—they were all exploded with laughter as his face assumed an expression of insane gluttony, and
