Читать книгу Life at High Tide - Various - Страница 7

Nathaniel May sat in his darkness, brooding over his machine. Since it had been definitely arranged that he was to go to the Poor Farm, he did not care how soon he went; there was no need, he told Dyer, to keep him for the few days which had been promised.

"I had thought," he said, patiently, "that some one would take me in and help me finish my machine—for the certain profit that I could promise them. But nobody seems to believe in me," he ended.

"Oh, folks believe in you, all right, Mr. May," Dyer told him; "but they don't believe in your machine. See?"

Nathaniel's face darkened. "Blind—blind!" he said.

"How did it come on you?" Dyer asked, sympathetically.

"I was not speaking of myself," Nathaniel told him, hopelessly.

There was really no doubt that the poor, gentle mind had staggered under the weight of hope; but it was hardly more than a deepening of old vagueness, an intensity of absorbed thought upon unpractical things. The line between sanity and insanity is sometimes a very faint one; no one can quite dare to say just when it has been crossed. But this mild creature had crossed it somewhere in the beginning of his certainty that he was going to give the world the means of seeing the unseen. That this great gift should be flung into oblivion, all for the want, as he believed, of a little time, broke his poor heart. When Lizzie Graham came to see him, she found him sitting in his twilight, his elbows on his knees, his head in his long, thin hands. On one hollow cheek there was a glistening wet streak. He put up a forlornly trembling hand and wiped it away when he heard her voice.

"Yes; yes, I do recognize it, ma'am," he said; "I can tell voices better than I used to be able to tell faces. You are Jim Graham's wife? Yes; yes, Lizzie Graham. Have you heard about me, Lizzie? I am not going to finish my machine. I am to be sent to the Farm."

"Yes, I heard," she said.

They were in the big, bare office of the hotel. The August sunshine lay dim upon the dingy window-panes; the walls, stained by years of smoke and grime, were hidden by yellowing advertisements of reapers and horse liniments; in the centre was a dirty iron stove. A poor, gaunt room, but a haven to Nathaniel May, awaiting the end of hope.

"I heard," Lizzie Graham said; she leaned forward and stroked his hand. "But maybe you can finish it at the Farm, Nathaniel?"

"No," he said, sadly; "no; I know what it's like at the Farm. There is no room there for anything but bodies. No time for anything but Death."

"How long would it take you to put it together?" she asked; and Dyer, who was lounging across his counter, shook his head at her, warningly.

"There ain't nothin' to it, Mrs. Graham," he said, under his breath; "he's—" He tapped his forehead significantly.

"Oh, man!" Nathaniel cried out, passionately, "you don't know what you say! Are the souls of the departed 'nothing'? I have it in my hand—right here in my hand, Lizzie Graham—to give the world the gift of sight. And they won't give me a crust of bread and a roof over my head till I can offer it to them!"

"Couldn't somebody put it together for you?" she asked, the tears in her eyes. "I would try, Nathaniel;—you could explain it to me; I could come and see you every day, and you could tell me."

His face brightened into a smile. "No, kind woman. Only I can do it. I can't see very clearly, but there is a glimmer of light, enough to get it together. But it would take at least two months; at least two months. The doctor said the light would last, perhaps, three months. Then I shall be blind. But if I could give eyes to the blind world before I go into the dark, what matter? What matter, I say?" he cried, brokenly.

Lizzie was silent. Dyer shook his head, and tapped his forehead again; then he lounged out from behind his counter, and settled himself in one of the armchairs outside the office door.

Nathaniel dropped his head upon his breast, and sunk back into his dreams. The office was very still, except for two bluebottle flies butting against the ceiling and buzzing up and down the window-panes. A hot wind wandered in and flapped a mowing-machine poster on the wall; then dropped, and the room was still again, except that leaf shadows moved across the square of sunshine on the bare boards by the open door. When Lizzie got up to go, he did not hear her kind good-by until she repeated it, touching his shoulder with her friendly hand. Then he said, hastily, with a faint frown: "Good-by. Good-by." And sank again into his daze of disappointment.

Lizzie wiped her eyes furtively before she went out upon the hotel porch; there Dyer, balancing comfortably on two legs of his chair, detained her with drawling gossip until Hiram Wells came up, and, lounging against a zinc-sheathed bar between two hitching-posts, added his opinion upon Nathaniel May's affairs.

"Well, Lizzie, seen any ghosts?" he began.

"I seen somebody that'll be a ghost pretty soon if you send him off to the Farm," Lizzie said, sharply.

"Well," Hiram said, "I don't see what's to be done—'less some nice, likely woman comes along and marries him."

Dyer snickered. Lizzie turned very red, and started home down the elm-shaded street. When she reached her little gray house under its big tree, she went first into the cow-barn—a crumbling lean-to with a sagging roof—to see if a sick dog which had found shelter there was comfortable. It seemed to Lizzie that his bleared eyes should be washed; and she did this before she went through her kitchen into a shed-room where she slept. There she sat down in hurried and frowning preoccupation, resting her elbows on her knees and staring blankly at the braided mat on the floor. As she sat there her face reddened; and once she laughed, nervously. "An' me 'most fifty!" she said to herself....

The next morning she went to see Nathaniel again.

He was up-stairs in a little hot room under the sloping eaves. He was bending over, straining his poor eyes close to some small wheels and bands and reflectors arranged on a shaky table. He welcomed her eagerly, and with all the excitement of conviction plunged at once into an explanation of his principle. Then suddenly conviction broke into despair: "I am not to be allowed to finish it!" He gave a quick sob, like a child. He had forgotten Lizzie's presence.

"Nathaniel," she said, and paused; then began again: "Nathaniel—"

"Who is here? Oh yes: Lizzie Graham. Kind woman; kind woman."

"Nathaniel, you know I ain't got means; I'm real poor,—"

"Are you?" he said, with instant concern. "I am sorry. If I could help you—if I had anything of my own—or if they will let me finish my machine; then I shall have all the money I want, and I will help you; I will give you all you need. I will give to all who ask!" he said, joyfully; then again, abruptly: "But no; but no; I am not allowed to finish it."

"Nathaniel, what I was going to say was—I am real poor. I got James's pension, and our house out on the upper road;—do you mind it—a mite of a house, with a big elm right by the gate? And woods on the other side of the road? Real shady and pleasant. And I got eight hens and a cow;—well, she'll come in in September, and I'll have real good milk all winter. Maybe this time I could raise the calf, if it's a heifer. Generally I sell it; but if you—well, it might pay to raise it, if—we—" Lizzie stammered with embarrassment.

Nathaniel had forgotten her again; his head had fallen forward on his breast, and he sighed heavily.

"You see, I am poor," Lizzie said; "you wouldn't have comforts."

Nathaniel was silent.

Lizzie laughed, nervously. "Well? Seems queer; but—will you?"

Nathaniel, waking from his troubled dream, said, patiently: "What did you say? I ask your pardon; I was not listening."

"Why," Lizzie said, her face very red, "I was just saying—if—if you didn't mind getting married, Nathaniel, you could come and live with me?"

"Married?" he said, vacantly. "To whom?"

"Me," she said.

Nathaniel turned toward her in astonishment. "Married!" he repeated.

"If you lived with me, you could finish the machine; there's an attic over my house; I guess it's big enough. Only, we'd have to be married, I'm afraid. Jonesville is a mean place, Nathaniel. We'd have to be married. But you could finish the machine."

He stood up, trembling, the tears suddenly running down his face. "Finish it?" he said, in a whisper. "Oh, you are not deceiving me? You would not deceive me?"

"I don't see why you couldn't finish it," she told him, kindly. "But, Nathaniel, mind, I am poor. You wouldn't get as good victuals even as you would at the Farm. And you'd have to marry me, or folks would talk about me. But you could finish your machine."

Nathaniel lifted his dim eyes to heaven.