The betrayal hurt Jacob more keenly than
the ridicule. It left a wound that never ceased to rankle; yet,
with the inconceivable perversity of unthinking natures, precisely
this joke (as the people supposed it to be) had been perpetuated,
until "Jake Flint's Journey" was a synonyme for any absurd or
extravagant expectation. Perhaps no one imagined how much pain he
was keeping alive; for almost any other man than Jacob would have
joined in the laugh against himself and thus good-naturedly buried
the joke in time. "He's used to that," the people said, like Becky
Morton, and they really supposed there was nothing unkind in the
remark!
After Jacob had passed the thickets and entered the lonely hollow
in which his father's house lay, his pace became slower and slower.
He looked at the shabby old building, just touched by the moonlight
behind the swaying shadows of the weeping-willow, stopped, looked
again, and finally seated himself on a stump beside the path.
"If I knew what to do!" he said to himself, rocking backwards
and forwards, with his hands clasped over his knees,--"if I knew
what to do!"
The spiritual tension of the evening reached its climax: he could
bear no more.
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