Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories Part 31

"Poor girl!" said Austin, faintly. "If I'd known more about horses I might have saved her."

"If you'd known more about horses you'd have let Pointer run,"

declared his friend. "n.o.body but an idiot or a Bob Austin would have taken the chance you did. How is your head?"

The sick man closed his eyes wearily. "It hurts all the time. What's the matter with it?"

"We've none of us been able to discover what isn't the matter with it!

Why in thunder did you hold on so long?"

"Because I--I love her, I suppose."

"Did you ask her to marry you?" Suydam had been itching to ask the question for days.

"No, I was just getting to it when Pointer bolted. I--I'm slow at such things." There was a moment's pause. "Doc, what's the matter with my eyes? I can't see very well."

"Don't talk so much," ordered the physician. "You're lucky to be here at all. Thanks to that copper-riveted const.i.tution of yours, you'll get well."

But it seemed that the patient was fated to disappoint the predictions of his friend as well as those of the surgeons at Mercy Hospital. He did not recover in a manner satisfactory to his medical adviser, and although he regained the most of his bodily vigor, the injury to his eyes baffled even the most skilled specialists.

He was very brave about it, however, and wrung the heart of Doctor Suydam by the uncomplaining fort.i.tude with which he bore examination after examination. Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an unschooled farm-boy to a position of eminence in the business world, went slowly blind. The shadows crept in upon him with a deadly, merciless certainty that would have filled the stoutest heart with gloom, and yet he maintained a smiling stoicism that deceived all but his closest a.s.sociates. To Doctor Suydam, however, the incontestable progress of the malady was frightfully tragic. He alone knew the man's abundant spirits, his lofty ambitions, and his active habits. He alone knew of the overmastering love that had come so late and was destined to go unvoiced, and he raved at the maddening limits of his profession. In Austin's presence he strove to be cheerful and to lighten the burden he knew was crus.h.i.+ng the sick man; but at other times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of. In time, however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned himself to the worst. He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness he could muster, of her part in this calamity. But Austin would not hear of it.

"She doesn't dream of the truth," the invalid told him. "And I don't want her to learn. She thinks I'm merely weak, and it grieves her terribly to know that I haven't recovered. If she really knew--it might ruin her life, for she is a girl who feels deeply. I want to spare her that; it's the least I can do."

"But she'll find it out some time."

"I think not. She comes to see me every day--"

"Every day?"

"Yes. I'm expecting her soon."

"And she doesn't know?"

Austin shook his head. "I never let her see there's anything the matter with my sight. She drives up with her mother, and I wait for her there in the bay-window. It's getting hard for me to distinguish her now, but I recognize the hoofbeats--I can tell them every time."

"But--I don't understand."

"I pretend to be very weak," explained the elder man, with a guilty flush. "I sit in the big chair yonder and my j.a.p boy waits on her. She is very kind." Austin's voice grew husky. "I'm sorry to lose sight of the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children--they're growing indistinct. I--I like children. I've always wanted some for myself.

I've dreamed about--that." His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful smile. "I guess that is all over with now."

"Why?" questioned Suydam, savagely. "Why don't you ask her to marry you, Bob? She couldn't refuse--and G.o.d knows you need her."

"That's just it; she couldn't refuse. This is the sort of thing a fellow must bear alone. She's too young, and beautiful, and fine to be harnessed up to a worn-out old--cripple."

"Cripple!" The other choked. "Don't talk like that. Don't be so blamed resigned. It tears my heart out. I--I--why, I believe I feel this more than you do."

Austin turned his face to the speaker with a look of such tragic suffering that the younger man fell silent.

"I'm glad I can hide my feelings," Austin told him, slowly, "for that is what I have to do every instant she is with me. I don't wish to inflict unnecessary pain upon my friends, but don't you suppose I know what this means? It means the destruction of all my fine hopes, the death of all I hold dear in the world. I love my work, for I am--or I was--a success; this means I must give it up. I'm strong in body and brain; this robs me of my usefulness. All my life I have prayed that I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means I must give her up and be lonely all my days. I must grope my way through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me. Do you know how awful the darkness is?" He clasped his hands tightly. "I must go hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me. Just at the crowning point of my life I've been snuffed out. I must fall behind and see my friends desert me."

"Bob!" cried the other, in shocked denial.

"Oh, you know it will come to that. People don't like to feel pity forever tugging at them. I've been a lonely fellow and my friends are numbered. For a time they will come to see me, and try to cheer me up; they will even try to include me in their pleasures; then when it is no longer a new story and their commiseration has worn itself out they will gradually fall away. It always happens so. I'll be 'poor Bob Austin,' and I'll go feeling my way through life an object of pity, a stumbling, incomplete thing that has no place to fill, no object to work for, no one to care. G.o.d! I'm not the sort to go blind! Where's the justice of it? I've lived clean. Why did this happen to me? Why?

Why? I know what the world is; I've been a part of it. I've seen the spring and the autumn colors and I've watched the sunsets. I've looked into men's faces and read their souls, and when you've done that you can't live in darkness. I can't and--I won't!"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going away."

"When? Where?"

"When I can no longer see Marmion Moore and before my affliction becomes known to her. Where--you can guess."

"Oh, that's cowardly, Bob! You're not that sort. You mustn't! It's unbelievable," his friend cried, in a panic.

Austin smiled bitterly. "We have discussed that too often, and--I'm not sure that what I intend doing is cowardly. I can't go now, for the thing is too fresh in her memory, she might learn the truth and hold herself to blame; but when she has lost the first shock of it I shall walk out quietly and she won't even suspect. Other interests will come into her life; I'll be only a memory. Then--" After a pause he went on, "I couldn't bear to see her drop away with the rest."

"Don't give up yet," urged the physician. "She is leaving for the summer, and while she is gone we'll try that Berlin chap. He'll be here in August."

"And he will fail, as the others did. He will lecture some clinic about me, that's all. Marmion will hear that my eyes have given out from overwork, or something like that. Then I'll go abroad, and--I won't come back." Austin, divining the rebellion in his friend's heart, said, quickly: "You're the only one who could enlighten her, Doc, but you won't do it. You owe me too much."

"I--I suppose I do," acknowledged Suydam, slowly. "I owe you more than I can ever repay--"

"Wait--" The sick man raised his hand, while a sudden light blazed up in his face. "She's coming!"

To the doctor's trained ear the noises of the street rose in a confused murmur, but Austin spoke in an awed, breathless tone, almost as if he were clairvoyant.

"I can hear the horses. She's coming to--see me."

"I'll go," exclaimed the visitor, quickly, but the other shook his head.

"I'd rather have you stay."

Austin was poised in an att.i.tude of the intensest alertness, his angular, awkward body was drawn to its full height, his lean face was lighted by some hidden fire that lent it almost beauty.

"She's getting out of the carriage," he cried, in a nervous voice; then he felt his way to his accustomed arm-chair. Suydam was about to go to the bay-window when he paused, regarding his friend curiously.

"What are you doing?"

The blind man had begun to beat time with his hand, counting under his breath: "One! Two! Three!--"

"She'll knock when I reach twenty-five. 's.h.!.+ 's.h.!.+" He continued his pantomime, and Suydam realized that from repeated practice Austin had gauged to a nicety the seconds Marmion Moore required to mount the stairs. This was his means of holding himself in check. True to prediction, at "Twenty-five" a gentle knock sounded, and Suydam opened the door.

"Come in, Marmion."

The girl paused for the briefest instant on the threshold, and the doctor noted her fleeting disappointment at seeing him; then she took his hand.

"This _is_ a surprise," she exclaimed. "I haven't seen you for ever so long."