The suggestion was inevitable that it would be interesting to go over and talk to him. Indeed a start was made, but again came that impulse of hesitation, stronger this time and not to be gainsaid. Was Patrick well--was he happy? On the whole the answer was in the affirmative. He had, it appeared, touches of rheumatism, but he could still do light work, and he liked to putter about the lawns and the flower beds. At home he was comfortable. Generally speaking, it seemed that life had treated him not too harshly. It was clear that he was with kindly people--and there one left him.
After all, it is comforting to realize that the picture of Patrick that is best remembered is not of a bent old man, leaning somewhat heavily upon his rake, but of the figure that takes shape out of the mists of childhood--a figure that somehow always personifies the attributes of kindliness and sympathy--standing in a long vanished garden, beneath an apple tree in bloom.
WE always stood rather in awe of Raymond's Uncle Horace because it was said he had once taught Latin in a boys' school. Any one who had ever wielded the power of a teacher was a person with a background of authority and importance whom one could not approach too familiarly. Indeed, it would have been difficult to be familiar with Raymond's Uncle Horace under any conceivable circumstances, for he was essentially a dignified and aloof person.
It was understood that the abandonment of teaching had been caused by failing health and to the same origin was perhaps due the reserve and apparent preoccupation that militated against any real intimacy with his nephew's young friends. There was some vague story of a young wife who had died years before, but an experience of that sort was so far beyond our comprehension that the rumor added but little to the isolation in which Raymond's uncle seemed to dwell. He was never really an actor in the drama of our young lives. Sometimes appearing in the wings, more often in the critic's seat, he was an onlooker rather than a participant.
One remembers him chiefly as walking back and forth on the old street between Raymond's grandfather's house and certain indefinite rooms he dwelt in which were probably in the edifice then known as the Charter Oak building.