The Glory of the Conquered Part 19

Professor Hastings was smiling a little as he walked down the corridor.

He wondered why Dr. Parkman cared anything about slaving for so senseless and unsatisfying a world.

He loved the doctor for his inconsistencies.

CHAPTER XXII

A BLIND MAN'S TWILIGHT

"Ready?"

"All ready."

"Then, one--two--three--we're off!" A laugh and a scamper and one grand rush down to the back fence. "You go too fast," she laughed, gasping for breath.

"And you're not steady. You jerk."

"But this was a fine straight row. I can steer it just right when you don't push too hard. Now--back."

They always had a great deal of fun cutting the gra.s.s. Ernestine used to wish the gra.s.s had to be cut every day.

But Karl did not seem to be enjoying it as much as usual to-day. "I'm going to desert you," he said, after a little while.

"Lazy man!"

"Yes--lazy good for nothing man--leaves all the work for his wife."

She looked at him sharply. His voice sounded very tired. "I'll be in in just a few minutes, dear," she said.

She did not go with him. She knew Karl liked to find his own way just as much as he could. She understood far too well to do any unnecessary "helping."

But she stood there and looked after him--watched him with deep pain in her eyes. He stooped a little, and of course he walked slowly, and uncertainly. All that happy spring and a.s.surance had gone from his walk.

She walked down to the rear of the yard, stood there leaning against the back fence. She had dropped more than one tear over that back fence.

She too had lost something during the summer. Struggle had sapped up some of the wine of youth. Her face was thinner, but that was not the vital difference. The real change lay in the determination with which she had learned to set her jaw, the defiance with which she held her head, and the wistfulness, the pleading, with which her eyes seemed to be looking out into the future. The combination of things about her was a strange one.

She looked to the west; the sun was low, the clouds very beautiful. For the minute she seemed to relax:--beauty always rested her. And then, with a sharp closing of her eyes, a bitter little shake of her head, she turned away. She could not look at beautiful things now without the consciousness that Karl could not see them.

They always sat together in the library that hour before dinner--"our hour" they had come to call it. She wondered, with a hot rush of tears, if they did not care for it because it marked the close of another day.

She turned to the house, kicking the newly cut gra.s.s with her foot, walking slowly. She was waiting for something--fighting for it. Karl needed her to-night, needed courage and cheer.

She came so quietly, or else he was so deep in thought, that he did not hear her. For a minute she stood there in the library door.

He was sitting in his Morris chair, his hands upon the arms of it, his head leaning back. His eyes were closed, one could not tell in that moment that he was blind, but it was more than the dimness, the blankness in his eyes, more than scarred eyeb.a.l.l.s, made for the change in Karl's face. He and life did not dwell together as they had once; a freedom and a gladness and a sureness had gone. The loss of those things meant the loss of something fundamentally Karl. And the sadness--and the longing--and the marks of struggle which the light of courage could not hide!

She choked a little, and he heard her, and held out his hand, with a smile. It was the smile which came closest to bridging the change. He was very close to being Karl when he smiled at her like that.

She sat down on the low seat beside him, as was their fashion. "Lazy man,"--brushing his hand tenderly with her lips--"wouldn't help his wife cut the gra.s.s!"

She wondered, as they sat there in silence, how many lovers had loved that hour. It seemed mellowed with the dreams it had held from the first of time. Ever since the world was very young, children of love had crept into the twilight hour and claimed it as their own. Perhaps the lovers of to-day love it because unto it has been committed the soul of all love's yesterdays.

She and Karl had loved it from the very first: in those days when they were upon the sea, those supreme days of uncomprehended happiness. They sat in the twilight then and watched day withdraw and night spread itself over the waters. They loved the mystery of it, for it was one with the mystery of their love; they loved it for reasons to be told only in great silences, knowing unreasoningly, that they were most close together then.

And after that they came to love the twilight for the things it bequeathed them. "Don't you remember," he would say, "we left it just as the sun was setting. Aren't you glad we can remember it so?" It was as if their love could take unto itself most readily that which came to it in the mystic hour of closing day.

And when they returned, during that first year of joy in their work, they loved the hour of transition as an hour of rest. Their day's work was done; in the evening they would study or read or in some way occupy themselves, but because they had worked all through the day they could rest for a short time in the twilight. And they would tell of what they had done; of what they hoped to do; if there had been discouragements they would tell of them, and with the telling they would draw away. In the light of closing day the future's picture was unblurred. They loved their hour then as true workers love it; it was good to sink with the day to the half lights of rest and peace.

Now it was all different, but they clung to their love for it still.

Through the heart of the day, during those hours which from his early boyhood had been to him working hours, this removal from life brought to the man a poignancy of realisation which beat with undiminishing force against the wall of his endurance. It was when he finished his breakfast and the day's work would naturally begin that it came home to him the hardest. They would go into the library, and Ernestine would read to him--how she delved into the whole storehouse of literature for things to hold him best--and how great her joy when she found something to make the day pa.s.s a little less hard than was the day's wont! He would listen to her, loving her voice, and trying to bring his mind to what she read, but all the while his thoughts reaching out to what he would be doing if his life as worker were not blotted out. The call of his work tormented him all through the day, and the twilight was the time most bearable because it was an hour which had never been filled with the things of his work.

In that short hour he sometimes, in slight measure found, if not peace, cessation from struggle. "This is what I would be doing now," he told himself, and with that, when the day had not drawn too heavily upon him, he could rest a little, perhaps, in some rare moments, almost forget.

But to-night the spell of the hour was pa.s.sing him by. Ernestine saw that in the restless way his hand moved away from hers, the nervous little cough, the fretted shaking of the head. She understood why it was; the fall quarter at the university opened that day. It would have marked the beginning of his new year's work. Very quietly she wiped the tears from her cheek. She tried never to let Karl know that they were there.

His head had fallen to his hand, and she moved closer to him and laid her face against the sleeve of his coat. She did not say anything, she did not touch him, or wind her arm, as she loved to do, about his neck. She had come to understand so well, and perhaps the greatest triumph of her love was in knowing when to say nothing at all.

At last he raised his head. His voice, like his face, was tensely drawn.

"Ernestine, don't bother to stay. Probably you want to be seeing about dinner, and I--I don't feel like talking."

That too she understood. She only laid her hand for the moment upon his hair. Then: "Call me, dear, if you want me," and she slipped away, and in a little nook under the stairs sat looking out into their strange future with wondering, beseeching eyes--seeking pa.s.sionately better resources, a more sustaining strength.

Left alone the man sat very still, his hands holding tight the arm of the chair. The tide of despair was coming in, was washing over the sands of resignation, beating against the rocks of courage. Many times before it had come in, but there was something overwhelming in its volume to-night.

It beat hard against the rocks. Was it within its power to loosen and carry them away? Carry them out with itself to be gone for all time?

He rose and felt his way to the window. He pressed his hot forehead against the pane. Outside was the dying light of day, but the glare of noonday, the quiet light of evening, the black of the night, were all one to him now. Was it going to be so with his mind, his spirit? Would all that other light, light of the mind and soul, be gulped into this black monotone, this nothingness?

He had heard of the beautiful spirit of the blind, of the mastery of fate achieved, the things they were able, in spite of it all, to gain from life. Ernestine had read him some of that; he had been glad to hear it, but it had not moved him much. Most of those people had been blind for a long time. He too, in the course of ten or twenty years, when the best of his life was gone, would become accustomed to groping his way about, reading from those books, and having other people tell him how things looked. But so long as he remained himself at all how accustom himself to doing without his work? In the records and stories of the blind, it seemed if they had a work it was something which they could continue. But with him, the work which made his life was gone.

Over there was the university. It had been a busy day at the university--old faces and new faces, all the exuberance of a new start, the enthusiasm for a clean slate--students anxious to make some particular cla.s.s--how well he knew it all! Who was in his laboratory? Who working with his old things? To whom was coming the joy he had thought would be his? What man of all the world's men would achieve the things he had believed would crown his own life?

Some day Ernestine would read it to him. He had made her promise to do that, if it came. He would see it all--just how it had been worked out, and the momentary joy of the revelation would sweep him back into it and he would forget how completely it was a thing apart from him. And then Ernestine would ask him if he wanted his chair a little higher or lower, or whether she should shut the window; and he would pick up one of his embossed books and try to read something, and he would know, as he had never known before, how the great world which did things was going right on without him.

There were a few little pet.i.tions he sent out every once in a while. "I want to remain a man! I want to keep my nerve. I don't want to whine. I don't want to get sorry for myself. For G.o.d's sake help me to be a good fellow--a half way decent sort of chap!"

And he had not tried in vain. His success, as to exteriors, had been good. Mrs. McCormick said it was indeed surprising how well one could get along without one's sight.

But within himself he had not gone far. Ernestine knew something of that--though he had tried his best with Ernestine, and Parkman knew, for Parkman had a way of knowing everything.

And yet they did not know it all. The waking up in the night and knowing it would not be any more light in the morning! Hearing the clock strike four or five, and thinking that in a little while he would be getting up and going to work, only to remember he would never be going to work in that old way again! The waking in the morning feeling like his old self, strength within him, his mind beseeching him to start in! No man had ever suffered with the craving for strong drink as he suffered for the work taken from him.

He had, by what grit he could summon, gone along for five months. But ahead were five years, ten years, thirty years, perhaps, and what of them? Each day was a struggle; the living of each day a triumph. Through thousands of days should it be the same?

It was the future which took hold of him then--smothered him. He went down before the vision of those unlived days, the grim vision of those relentless, inevitable days, standing there waiting to be lived. It was desolation. The surrender of a strong man who had tried to the uttermost.

Whether it was because he upset a chair, whether she heard him groan, or whether she just knew in that way of hers that it was time for her to be there, he did not know. But he felt her at the door, and held out beseeching arms.