Elaine, her pale face tense, heard
the steps of Arsdale coming up the stairs to meet
her. Donaldson had telephoned at nine that if
she had not yet retired he was going to bring her
brother home. She dreaded the ordeal for herself
and for him. She dreaded lest the aversion she
felt for him with the horror of that night still upon
her might overcome her sense of duty; she dreaded
the renewed protestations, the self abasement, the
sight of the maudlin shame of the man. She had
gone through the hysterical scenes so many times that
it was growing difficult, especially in her present
condition of weakness, to arouse the necessary spirit
to undergo it. Not only this, but she found
herself inevitably pitting him against the strong self-reliant
character of Donaldson. It had been easier for
her to condone when she had seen Arsdale only as the
loved son of the big-hearted elder, but now that this
other unyielding personality had come into her life
it was difficult to avoid comparison. Arsdale
when standing beside a man was only pitiable.
He faltered at the door and then crossed
the room with a poise that reminded her of the father
who to the end had never shown evidence of any physical
weakness in his bearing. In fact in look and
carriage, even in the spotless freshness of his dress
which was a characteristic of the elder, he appeared
like his father. She could hardly believe.
She sat as silent as though this were some illusion.
There was color in the ordinarily
yellow cheeks, there was life in the usually dull
eyes, though the spasmodic twitching testified to nerves
still unsteady. When he held out his trembling
hand, she took it as though in a trance. She
saw that it was difficult for him to speak. It
was impossible for her. The suggested metamorphosis
was too striking.
He broke the strained, glad silence.
“Elaine, can you forget?”
She uttered his name but could go no further.
“I can’t apologize,”
he stammered, “it’s too ghastly.
But if we could start fresh from to-day, if you could
wait a little before judging, and watch. Perhaps
then ”
She drew him quickly towards her.
“Can I believe what I see?” she asked.
“I I don’t know what you see,”
he answered unsteadily.
“I see your father. I
see the man who was the only father I myself knew.”
He bent over her. He kissed her forehead.
“Dear Elaine,” he said
hoarsely, “you see a man who is going to be a
better man to you.”
“To yourself, Ben, be better to yourself!
Are you going to be that?”
“That is the way, by being a man
to you and to the others.”
“The others?”
“The unseen others. You
must get Donaldson to tell you about the others.”
She grasped his wrist with both her
hands, looking up at him intently. Where was
the change? A photograph would not have shown
all the change. Yet it was there. Nor
was this a temporal reformation based upon cowardly
remorse. It showed too calm, too big an impulse
for that. It was so sincere, so deep, that it
did not need words to express it.
“I believe you, Ben,”
she said, “I believe you with all my heart and
soul.”
In the words he realized the divine
that is in all women, the eagerness that is Christ-like
in its eternal hunger to seize upon the good in man.
He stooped again and with religious reverence kissed
the white space above her eyes.
“We ’ll not talk about
it much, shall we?” he said. “I want
you to believe only as I go on from day to day.
I ’ve some big plans that I thought up
on the way home. Some day we ’ll talk those
over, but not now. Donaldson is downstairs.”
He saw the color sweep her face.
It suggested to him something that he had not yet
suspected. It came to him like a new revelation
of sunlight.
He smiled. It was the smile
of the father which she had so long missed, the smile
that always greeted her when his sad heart was fullest
of hope and gladness. It was so he used to smile
when at twilight he stood at her side, his long thin
arm over her shoulder and talked of Ben with a new
hope born of his own victory.
“I was going to tell you,”
he said tenderly, “I was going to tell you of
what a big fine fellow this Donaldson is. But perhaps
you know.”
She refused not to meet her brother’s eyes.
“Yes, Ben,” she said, “I know that.”
He took her hand, seating himself
on the arm of her chair, the other arm resting affectionately
across her shoulders. So the father had sometimes
sat.
“Is there more?” he asked softly.
“So,” she answered, starting
a little, “not as you mean. But tell me
about him tell me all about him, Ben.”
He felt her hand throb as he held it.
“It’s just this; that
I owe everything in the world to him. I owe my
life to him; I owe,” his voice lowered, “I
owe my soul to him. You ought to have heard
him talk. But it was n’t talking, it wasn’t
preaching. I don’t know what it was, unless unless
it was praying. Yet it was n’t like that
either. He got inside me and made me talk to
myself. It was the first time words ever meant
anything to me that they ever got a hold
on me. You ’ve talked, little sister,
Lord knows how often, and how deep from the heart,
but somehow, dear, nothing of it sank in below the
brain. I understood as in a sort of dream.
Sometimes I even remembered it for a little, but that
was all.
“But he was different, Elaine!
If I forgot every word he spoke, the meaning of it
would still be left. I ’d still feel his
hand upon my shoulder, the hand that sank through
my shoulder and got a grip on something inside me.
I ’d still feel his eyes burning into mine.
I ’d still see that street out the window and
know what it meant. I ’d even see the
little old lady picking her way to the other side, see
the blind beggar on the corner and the Others.
Oh, the Others, Elaine!”
He had risen from beside her and pressed
towards the window as though once again he wished
to taste the air that came down to him from the star-country
to sweeten the decaying soul of him.
“What was it, Elaine?” he demanded.
“You heard,” she answered,
“because every fibre of him is true. Tell
me more.”
“He showed me the sun on the
windows!” he ran on eagerly. “He
showed me the people passing on the streets!
He showed me what I even I had
to do among them. Did you know that we are n’t
just ourselves that we ’re a part
of a thousand other lives? Did you know that?”
“It takes a seer really to know
that,” she answered, “but it’s true.”
“That’s it,” he
broke in. “He knows! He doesn’t
guess, he doesn’t reason, he knows!”
She was leaning forward, her head
a little back, her eyes half-closed. He saw the
veins in her neck the light purple penciling
of them as they throbbed. He was
held a moment by the sight. Then he laughed
gently.
“Little sister,” he said,
“you know him even better than I.”
She started back.
He was surprised at the shy beauty
he perceived. She had always seemed to him such
a sober body.
The nurse rapped at the door.
“It is bedtime,” she announced,
“Yes, nurse,” she answered quickly.
“He asked if he might come to
say good night. He ’s going to stay here
with me a day or so. Shall I bring him up?”
She hesitated a moment and then meeting
her brother’s eyes steadily, answered,
“Yes, Ben.”
When Donaldson came into the room
she was shocked at the change in his appearance.
It was almost as though what Arsdale had gained Donaldson
had lost. He was colorless, wan, and haggard.
His eyes seemed more deeply imbedded in the dark
recesses below his brows. Even his hair at the
temples looked grayer. But neither his voice
nor his manner betrayed the change. The grip
of his hand was just as sure; there was the same certainty
in gesture and speech, save perhaps for some abstraction.
“They tell me I may stay but
a minute,” he said, “but it is good to
see you even that long.”
“You brought him back home,”
she cried. “But it has cost you heavy.
You look tired.”
“I am not tired,” he answered
shortly. Then turning the talk away from himself,
as he was ever eager to do, he continued,
“I brought him home, but the burden is still
on you.”
“Not a burden any longer. You have removed
the burden.”
“I ’m afraid not.
There still remains the fight to make him stay.
This is only a beginning.”
His face grew worried.
“He will stay,” she answered
confidently, “he will stay because you reached
the father in him and the father was a fighter.
I saw the father in his eyes I heard his
father’s voice. It is a miracle!”
“No. The miracle is how we men keep blind.”
“I feel blind myself when I think how you see.”
“I am no psychic,” he
exclaimed impatiently. “I see nothing that
is n’t before me. You can’t help
seeing unless you close your eyes. The world
presses in upon you from every side. It is insistent.
Even now the stars outside there are demanding recognition.”
He drew back the crimson curtains
draping the big French windows, which opened upon
a balcony. The silver stiletto rays darted a
greeting to him. He swung open the windows.
“Come out with me and see my friends,”
he said.
She rose instantly and followed him.
He stood there a moment in silence,
his head back as he seemed to lead her into the limitless
fragrant purple above. She caught his profile
and saw him like some prophet. It was as though
a people were at his back and he trying to pierce
the road ahead for them. The thin face and erect
head seemed to dominate the night. He looked
down at her, a sad smile about his mouth.
“Out here,” he said, “out
here with a million miles over our heads we are freer.”
In her eyes he saw now just what he
saw in the stars, the same freedom of unpathed universes.
He saw the same limitlessness. Here there were
no boundaries. A man could go on forever and
forever in those eyes in their marvelous
unfolding. More! More! He would go
beyond the cognate universe, straight into the golden
heart of universes beyond. Eternity was written
there. The beacon of her eyes flamed a path that
reached beyond the stars!
She seemed like nothing but a trusting
child. So, she was one with the great poets.
So, she was a great poem. He listened to the
same music which had moved Isaiah.
“The stars, they seem to be dancing!”
she exclaimed.
It was to the music of the spheres they were dancing.
“You!” he commanded, “you
must get away from this house. You must take
Ben and get away from here. You must go into
a new country. You must begin your life anew
and forget all this, forget everything.”
He paused.
“Everything,” he repeated.
“They tell us that the road is straight and
narrow. It’s narrow, but it is n’t
straight. It’s crooked and it’s
winding and it goes through brake and brush.
It’s a hard road to find and a hard road to
keep, even with the polestar over our heads.
Maybe, if we were a little above earth maybe
for those who are winged the road is straight,
but we are n’t all winged. Some of us have
n’t even sturdy legs and have to creep.
Some of us find our legs only after we are helplessly
lost. For down below there is a terrible tangle
with things to be gone around, with things to beat
down, and always the tangle above our heads.
So what wonder that we get lost? What wonder?”
“But I am not lost you are not lost!”
“I! I do not matter,”
he answered slowly. “You must n’t
let me matter. I come into your life and I go
out of your life and I pray that I have done no harm.”
His words to her were like words caught
in a wind. She heard snatches of them, but she
was unable to piece them together.
“In your new life you must forget
even me. We have met in the brush and gone on
a little way together. We have helped each other
in finding each his true road again. Whether
the paths will meet again whether the paths
will meet again ” he repeated as though
deep in some new and grander reflection, “why,
God knows. If we go on forever, perhaps they
will in an aeon or two.”
He paused to give her an opportunity
to say something which he might use as a subject for
proceeding farther. His thoughts did n’t
go very far along any one line. Always he seemed
checked by a wall of darkness. But she said
nothing. The silence lengthened into a minute.
“Do you understand?” he asked gently.
“No,” she answered frankly.
“Then then perhaps we had better
go in,” he said, fearing for himself.
He led the way through the swinging
windows and closed them behind him. In the light
he saw that she was shivering.
“I ’m afraid I kept you
out there too long,” he said anxiously.
He reached her shawl and placed it about her shoulders.
His throat ached.
“I haven’t hurt you?”
“I think you have hurt yourself, somehow.”
She raised her head a little.
Marie was calling.
“Good night,” he said quickly.
“Good night.”