The summer was nearly at an enda summer that had brought
rehabilitation to the Typometer Company, yet rehabilitation of a certain
kind, under strict rule, strict economy, endless work. Nominally the
same thing, the typometer was now but one factor of trade among a dozen
other patented inventions under the control of Rondell Brothers.
If there was not quite the same personal flavor as yet in Justins
relation to the business which had seemed so inspiringly his own, there
was a larger relation to greater interests, a wider field, a greater
sense of security, and a sense of justice in the change; he felt that he
had much to learn. There was something in him that could not profit
where other men profitedthat could not take advantage when that
advantage meant loss to another. He was not great enough alone to
reconcile the narrowing factors of trade with that warring law within
him. The stumbling of Cater would have been another stumbling-block if
it had not been that one; that for which Leverich, with Martin always
behind him, had chosen Justin first had been the very thing that had
fought against them.
[Illustration: _He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into
the room_]
The summer was far spent. Justin had been working hard. It was long
after midnight. Lois slept, but Justin could not; he rose and went into
the adjoining room, and sat down by the open window. The night had been
very close, but now a faint breath stirred from somewhere out of the
darkness. It was just before the dawnJustin looked out into a gloom in
which the darkness of trees wavered uncertainly and brought with it a
vague remembrance. He had done all this before. When? Suddenly he
recollected the night he had sat at this same window, at the beginning
of this terrible journey, and his thoughts and feelings then; his deep
loneliness of soul, the prevision of the pain even of fulfillmentan
endless, endless arid waste, with the welling forth of that black spirit
of evil in his own nature as the only vital thing to bear him secret
companya moment that was wolfish to his better nature. Almost with the
remembrance came the same mood, but only as reflected in the surface of
his saner nature, not arising from it.
As he gazed, wrapped in self-communing, on the vague formlessness of the
night, it began gradually to dissolve mysteriously, and the outlines of
the trees and the surrounding objects melted into view; a bird sang from
somewhere near by, a heavenly, clear, full-throated call that brought a
shaft of light from across the world, broadening, as the eye leaped to
it, into a great and spreading glory of flame.
It had rained just before; the drops still hung on bush and tree, and as
the dazzling radiance of the sun touched them every drop also radiated
light, prismatic and scintillatingan almost audibly tinkling joy. So
indescribably wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed this
sceneas of a mighty light informing the least atom of our tearful
human existencethat the profoundest depths of Justins nature opened
to the illumination.
In that moment, with calm eyes, and lips firmly pressed together, his
thoughts reached upward; far, far upward. For the first time, he felt in
accordance with something divine and beyondan accordance that seemed
to solve the meaning of life; what had gone and what was to come. All
the hopes, the planning, the seeking and slaving, whatever they
accomplished or did not accomplish, they fashioned us, ourselves. As it
had been, so it still would be. But for what had gone before, he had not
had this hour.
It was the journey itself that countedthe dear joys by the way, that
come even through suffering and through painthe joy of the red dawn,
of the summer breeze, of the winter sun; the joy of children, the joy of
companionship.
He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the room.