"Why don't you ask him to come up and see you?"
I did not feel that I knew him well enough to bother him. I had not
seen him nor heard from him for three years.
The first thing in the morning, without letting me know, she telephoned
him of my plight. About eleven o'clock, to my immense surprise, Miss
Wright brought him to my room.
Benson was the busiest man I have ever known. In later years when I
roomed with him and was his most intimate friend, I could never keep
track of half his activities. He was a sort of "consulting engineer" in
advertising. Big concerns all over the country would send for him and
pay well to have him attract the attention of the public to some new
product. He could write the Spotless Town kind of verses while eating
breakfast, and although he did not take art seriously, he drew some of
the most successful advertisements of his time. One year he earned
about thirty thousand dollars, above his inherited income of ten
thousand. He did not spend more than five thousand a year on himself,
but he was always hard up.
He was director of half a hundred philanthropies--settlements,
day-nurseries, immigrant homes, children's societies, and so forth. His
pet hobby was the "Arbeiter Studenten Verein." When he did not entirely
support these enterprises, he paid the yearly deficit. It was such
expenses which pushed him into the advertising work he detested.
It was a wonder to me how, in spite of these manifold activities, he
found time for the thousand and one little kindnesses, the varied
personal relations he maintained with all sorts and conditions of men.
Once a week or so he dined at the University Club, more often at the
settlement, and the other nights he took pot-luck on the top floor of
some tenement with one of his Arbeiter Studenten. In the same way he
found time to remember me and bring cheer into the hospital.
That first morning, in speaking of the newspaper story, I asked him if
he was a socialist.
"Hanged if I know," he said. "I never joined any socialist
organization. I don't care much for these soap-box people. They talk
about reconstructing our industrial institutions, and most of them don't
know how to make change for a dollar. They talk about overthrowing Wall
Street, and they don't know railroad-stock from live-stock. They don't
begin to realize what a big thing it is--nor how unjust and crazy and
top-heavy. But sometimes I think I must be a socialist. I can't open my
mouth and say anything serious without everybody calling me a socialist.
I don't know."
The remaining weeks in the hospital gave me a great fund of things to
ponder over. My mind works retrospectively. I have always sympathized
with the cud-chewing habit of the cow. The impressions of the hour are
never clear-cut with me. For an experience to become real, I must mull
over it a long time; gradually it sinks into my consciousness and
becomes a vital possession.
Benson's sort of kindness was absolutely new to me. No one had ever done
things for me as he did. And as it surprised me to have him take the
trouble to send me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the
intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was a thing undreamed
of. "Come with me, up on to a high mountain, and I will show you all
the wonder of the world"--such was Ann's gift to me. Out of the horror
of darkness, from the very bottom of the slough of despond, she led me
up into the white light of the summit peaks of life.
As I read back over these pages, I find that I have described Ann as a
voice, as a person who thought and talked of serious things, who seemed
principally absorbed in an ambition, which up to that time had borne no
fruit. I would like to picture the woman who came to me in the darkness
with a wealth of cheer and tenderness and love.
Some day I hope our literature and our minds will be purified so that
such things can be dealt with sanely and sweetly. But that time has not
yet come and I must be content with the tools at hand. Ann brought to
me in those desolate days all the wondrous womanly things--the quaint
and gentle jests of love, the senseless sweet words and names which are
caresses, the sudden gusts of self revelation, the strange and
unexpected restraints--of which I may not write.
I was not lonely any more--not even when Miss Wright was on duty--there
was so much to ponder over.
*VI*
At last the bandages were taken off. I recall the sudden painful glare
of the darkened room, the three doctors in hospital costumes, who were
consulting on different forms of torture. Especially I remember the
mole on the forehead of the chief, a gray haired, spectacled man. It
was the first things my eyes, startled out of their long sleep, fixed
upon. The ordeal dragged along tragically. It seemed that they were
intentionally slow. But the verdict when it came was acquittal. I was
lucky. With care I might regain almost normal vision. But for months I
must not try to read. Always, all my life, I must stop at the first
hint of fatigue.
So, having adjusted some smoked glasses, they sent me back to my room,
to pack and go out into a new life. As I entered the corridor, I saw
two nurses at the other end. My heart stopped with a jump and I was
suddenly dizzy. Somehow I had not thought of Ann in terms of sight.
She had come to me out of the darkness, revealed herself as a sound and
a touch. I had no idea how she would look. They both came towards me.
I could see very little through my dark glasses. I could not guess which
was which.
"So. They've taken off the bandages? I'm very glad." It was Miss
Wright's strenuous voice.
"I'm glad, too," Ann said.