Two men went up into the sanctum sanctorum of the Quill Drivers' Club
to lunch. The younger was a writer of fiction and the elder a
clergyman, his friend and guest, by chance encountered on a rare visit
to town.
They were evidently absorbed in discussion when they sat down, for the
host hardly interrupted himself long enough to give the briefest of
orders to the attendant waiter before he leaned forward across the
table and resumed eagerly: "Let the critics rage furiously together if
they will"--referring to a controversy excited by one of his late
stories. "The thing is going to stand! I believe, and I'll go bail
there's no reasonable person who doesn't believe, that falsehood is
justifiable, and more than justifiable, on many occasions."
"Only everybody will differ as to the occasions," put in the
clergyman, the humor in the corners of his eyes counterbalanced by the
graveness of the lines about his mouth.
"I'll go further than that," continued the writer, striking his hand
on the table impressively. "In the circumstances as I described them I
won't call it falsehood! I agree with whoever it was who said that one
lied only when one intentionally deceived a person who had a right to
know the truth."
"And suppose," said the clergyman, with sudden earnestness, "the
knowledge of the truth would be cruel, painful, harmful even, to the
person who had the right to it. What then? Would you still owe it to
him, or not?"
"Why, then, of course, I wouldn't tell it," answered the other. "You
might call it what you liked. I suppose it would be a passive lie, if
you're particular about its front name; but there have been lots of
fine ones, actively and passively told, since the world began."
"Fine?" echoed the clergyman thoughtfully. "I wonder!"
"Fitting, proper, expedient," amended the writer impatiently.
"Fitting, proper, expedient," repeated the clergyman--"even when the
result appeared to justify it. I--wonder!"
He sank into a reverie so profound that the younger man had to call
his attention to the fact that food was being offered to him; and then
he helped himself mechanically, as if his mind had drifted too far to
be immediately recalled to material things.
"I wonder!" he said again vaguely, his eyes, sad and thoughtful, fixed
upon distance.
"I was once, you see," he went on, making a sudden effort and looking
his companion in the face with a directness that was almost
disconcerting. "I was once involved in a case where such a lie had
been told, and I--well, I am inclined, if you have no objections, to
tell you the whole story and let you judge.
"Some years ago I broke down from over-work and worry, and was ordered
away for my health. I chose to travel about my own country, and at a
hotel in a certain place where many people go to recover from
imaginary ailments I met a man who was being slowly crippled forever
by a real and incurable one. His place at the table was next to mine,
and every day he was brought in, in his wheeled chair, from the
sunniest corner of the piazza, fed neatly and expeditiously by his
manservant (his own hands were almost useless), and fetched away
again. During the meal when I first sat beside him we entered into
conversation, and I found him so cultivated, charming, and humorous a
companion that for the rest of my stay I neglected no opportunity of
indulging myself in his society."
"Of course it was no indulgence at all to him," said the writer, whose
affectionate regard for his friend was one of long standing.
"I hope so," answered the other, "and, indeed, I had every reason to
suppose that the liking which sprang up between us was no less on his
side than on my own. We were mutually attracted in spite of, or
perhaps _because_ of, our fundamental differences in disposition,
opinions, beliefs; though no Christian could have borne affliction
with a braver patience than he--the braver in that he did not look to
a hereafter for comfort."
"A continuous powder and no jam to come," threw in the writer, with
the glare of battle in his eye, for he also had opinions and beliefs
at variance with those of his companion. "There are a good many of us
who have to face that."
"Not many in worse case than he," returned the clergyman gently,
declining to be drawn into discussion. "But although the use of his
limbs was denied him, he took a keener delight than any man I have
ever known in the compensations that his mind, through books, and his
senses, through contact with the outer world, brought him. Beauty of
color and form, beauty in nature, beauty in people, was an exquisite
pleasure to him, and music an intense--I had almost said a sacred
passion. He drank in lovely sights and sweet sounds with an almost
painful appreciation, and I remember well his telling me in his
whimsical way--it was during one of the last conversations I had with
him before my departure--that, travel about as I would with my mere
automatic arms and legs, I could never overtake such happiness as he
did on the wings of harmony.
"We corresponded, from time to time, for a year or two, I in the usual
manner and he by means of dictation to his servant, who was an earnest
if somewhat poor performer on the type-writer. But gradually the
thread of our intercourse was broken in some way and our letters
ceased."
"I've always said that nothing but community of interests preserved
friendship," declared the writer sententiously, "with the exception,
of course, of our own."
"I was surprised, therefore," went on the clergyman, "to receive about
eighteen months ago a brief note telling me that a great sorrow and a
great joy had come into his life almost simultaneously, and begging me
to go to him, if he might so far trespass upon our acquaintance, as he
had 'matters about which it behooved a man'--I am repeating his
words--'to consult another wiser than himself.' I started at once. It
took me all day to accomplish the journey, and it was early evening
when I arrived at the little station he had mentioned as the place
where he would send somebody to meet me. I found the carriage without
difficulty, and was driven for some five miles through the beautiful
autumn woods.
"It was a low, square, comfortable-looking paper-weight of a house,"
he went on after a moment, "beaming welcome from an open front door,
where my friend's confidential servant stood waiting for me. He
conducted me at once to my room, saying that dinner would be served as
soon as I could make myself ready and join his master in the library.
This I made haste to do. I found my friend in his wheeled chair, near
a cheerfully crackling fire in a delightful room lined with books from
its scarlet-carpeted floor to its oak-beamed ceiling. He welcomed me
warmly and yet with a certain constraint, and I felt--it might have
been some subtle thought-transference--that the thing he had it in his
mind to discuss with me was one which only an extremity of trouble
would have induced him to discuss with any man.
"Dinner was announced almost before our first greetings were over, and
an excellent dinner it was--cooked by an old woman who, he declared,
had virtually ruled him and the house ever since he could remember,
and waited upon by the man, who also attended to his master's peculiar
needs with the utmost swiftness and dexterity. The household, I
subsequently learned, consisted of only these two, an elderly
housemaid, and the white-haired coachman who had driven me from the
station.
"'Why they stay with me in this out-of-the-way place, without a
grumble, all the year round, I can't see,' said my host, after our
meal was over and we were once more alone in the library. 'And, by the
way,' he added, turning his face toward me suddenly,--I don't know
whether I have mentioned that he had a particularly handsome
face,--'apropos of seeing, what I have not seen before I shall have no
further chance of informing myself about now, for I have become, in
these last six months, completely blind.'
"The unexpected horror of the announcement, the shock of it, left me
for the moment speechless. But I looked at him and saw, what I suppose
I might in a more direct light have noticed before, that his eyes had
the dull, dumb stare of blindness. Before the inarticulate sound of
pity I made could have reached him, he continued:
"'I used to tell myself, quite sincerely, I think, that as long as I
had an eye or an ear left I'd not waste my time envying any other man.
Nature seems to have been afraid I'd see too much, so she has cut off
my powers of vision. That is the great sorrow that has come to me. The
great joy, if I may accept it (and it is about that that I have been
driven by my conscience to consult you), is that I have found--or
perhaps, as that suggests a certain amount of activity on my part,
I'd better say _Fate_ has found for me--here, living at my very gates,
a woman who loves me!'
"He appeared to dread interruption, for he went on hurriedly:
'Extraordinary, isn't it? But let me tell you how it happened. I've a
garden out there to the south, and last summer, soon after this thing
first came upon me, I used to have myself wheeled there and left in
the shade for hours to think things out where I could feel light and
color and fresh air about me. On the other side of my wall is her
cottage, and one day she began to play, play like an angel. You know
how that would move me. I sent a note to her telling her that a blind
beggar had been lifted into heaven for a little while by her music,
and would be glad if, of her clemency, he might sometimes be so lifted
again. After that she played to me every day, and so, she being
alone--for her mother, it seems, had died early in the spring, soon
after they came--and I being lonely, we gradually drifted into--Oh, I
know it's monstrous!' he exclaimed, breaking off in his recital, and
evidently afraid of the mental recoil he suspected in me, 'monstrous
to consider that a beautiful young woman should bear the name, even,
of wife to me; but she is very poor, and now entirely desolate. I am,
comparatively speaking, well off, and I cannot live long! I shall at
least leave her better able to fight the world. You'll think I could
do that, I suppose, in any event, for a man such as I am--a sightless
head in command of a body that cannot move hand or foot--might _will_
what he pleased to any woman without exciting adverse comment; but I
ask you, haven't I the right to allow myself the happiness of her near
companionship for whatever time it may be before I die? It seems to me
that I have, since, instead of shrinking from me, she loves me, and is
willing, indeed,--bless her wonderful heart for it,--_wilful_ to marry
me. What time is it?' he cried abruptly, turning his blank eyes toward
the clock on the mantelpiece.
"'Five minutes before nine,' I answered.
"'She will be here directly,' he said. 'I had a piano of my mother's
put in order and moved in here as soon as the garden grew too cold for
me. She comes every evening to play to me. You will see her with me,
and alone if you like, and to-morrow you must tell me, man to man,
what you think I ought or ought not to do. She knows that I was to
write and put the case before you, but she will be surprised to find
you here.'
"'I will do my best,' said I, infinitely moved, 'to make friends with
her.'
"'I wish I could tell what you are thinking now!' he cried out with
sudden passion, and then, before I could reply, he said, 'Hush! I hear
her in the hall.'
"All the excitement died out of his face, leaving it white and drawn,
but peaceful. I had heard nothing.
"'She's coming,' he whispered, 'and she'll be so embarrassed, poor,
pretty soul. She thinks it's of no account, her being pretty, but I
tell her that, blind as I am, I think I _feel_ the atmosphere of her
beauty, and if she were plain she would not please me so.'
"As he spoke the curtains in front of the doorway parted. My eyes,
lifted to the height of fair tallness they expected to encounter,
looked for an instant upon vacancy. Then they dropped to meet those of
a grotesque and piteous little hunchback, whose agonized gaze cried to
me, as did the hitching of her poor shoulders and the sudden trembling
flutter of her hands to her mouth: 'For God's sake, don't betray me!'
"He leaned his head a little on one side, listening to the silence.
Then he said to me, laughing: 'Is she as charming as all that? Or do
you refrain from speech for fear of alarming her?'
"She stood quite still, her sharp-featured, tragic face, with its halo
of reddish hair, raised toward mine, and her expression imploring,
pleading, mutely compelling me.
"I had to answer his question.
"'Both,' I said.
"As I finished he called to her: 'I always knew you were lovely, Rica,
but this is a real tribute--the dumbness of admiration!'
* * * * *
"She told me later that he had fantastically described her to herself
after hearing her play, at the same time dwelling upon the happiness
it was to him to think of her so. She had longed to make her
affliction known to him, but for his own sake had not dared.
"'No one here will undeceive him unless you bid them,' she said, 'and
you will not be so cruel! What has he left in life but this illusion?
What have I but my love for him?'
"And she did love him! I had seen tenderness and pity leap from her
eyes whenever they turned in his direction, and he--What should a man
have done?" ended the clergyman.
The writer shook his head. "What did you do?" he asked rather
hoarsely.
"I married them," answered the other simply.