DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH
On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that not a shadow was
cast by tree or house or man, there was no graver place than the room of
old Joe Cumberland; even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for
it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity, but this meagre
daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly.
Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now
as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when
the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and
when their fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground by every
faint wind, with a sound like breathing in the forest. And like autumn,
too, was the face of Joe Cumberland, with a colour neither flushed nor
pale, but a dull sallow which foretells death. Beside his bed sat Doctor
Randall Byrne and kept the pressure of two fingers upon the wrist of the
rancher.
When he removed the thermometer from between the lips of Cumberland the
old man spoke, but without lifting his closed eyelids, as if even this
were an effort which he could only accomplish by a great concentration
of the will.
"No fever to-day, doc?"
"You feel a little better?" asked Byrne.
"They ain't no feelin'. But I ain't hot; jest sort of middlin' cold."
Doctor Byrne glanced down at the thermometer with a frown, and then
shook down the mercury.
"No," he admitted, "there is no fever."
Joe Cumberland opened his eyes a trifle and peered up at Byrne.
"You ain't satisfied, doc?"
Doctor Randall Byrne was of that merciless modern school which believes
in acquainting the patient with the truth.
"I am not," he said.
"H-m-m!" murmured the sick man. "And what might be wrong?"
"Your pulse is uneven and weak," said the doctor.
"I been feelin' sort of weak since I seen Dan last night," admitted the
other. "But that news Kate brought me will bring me up! She's kept him
here, lad, think of that!"
"I am thinking of it," answered the doctor coldly. "Your last interview
with him nearly--killed you. If you see him again I shall wash my hands
of the case. When he first came you felt better at once--in fact, I
admit that you _seemed_ to do better both in body and mind. But the
thing could not last. It was a false stimulus, and when the first
effects had passed away, it left you in this condition. Mr. Cumberland,
you must see him no more!"
But Joe Cumberland laughed long and softly.
"Life," he murmured, "ain't worth that much! Not half!"
"I can do no more than advise," said the doctor, as reserved as before.
"I cannot command."
"A bit peeved, doc?" queried the old man. "Well, sir, I know they ain't
much longer for me. Lord, man, I can feel myself going out like a flame
in a lamp when the oil runs up. I can feel life jest makin' its last few
jumps in me like the flame up the chimney. But listen to me----" he
reached out a long, large knuckled, claw-like hand and drew the doctor
down over him, and his eyes were earnest--"I got to live till I see 'em
standin' here beside me, hand in hand, doc!"
The doctor, even by that dim light, had changed colour. He passed his
hand slowly across his forehead.
"You expect to see that?"
"I expect nothin'. I only hope!"
The bitterness of Byrne's heart came up in his throat.
"It will be an oddly suited match," he said, "if they marry. But they
will not marry."
"Ha!" cried Cumberland, and starting up in bed he braced himself on a
quaking elbow. "What's that?"
"Lie down!" ordered the doctor, and pressed the ranchman back against
the pillows.
"But what d'you mean?"
"It would be a long story--the scientific explanation."
"Doc, where Dan is concerned I got more patience than Job."
"In brief, then, I will prove to you that there is no mystery in this
Daniel Barry."
"If you can do that, doc, you're more of a man than I been guessing you
for. Start now!"
"In primitive times," said Doctor Randall Byrne, "man was nearly related
to what we now call the lower animals. In those days he could not
surround himself with an artificial protective environment. He depended
on the unassisted strength of his body. His muscular and sensuous
development, therefore, was far in advance of that of the modern man.
For modern man has used his mind at the expense of his body. The very
_quality_ of his muscles is altered; and the senses of sight and
hearing, for instance, are much blunted. For in the primitive days the
ear kept guard over man even when he slept in terror of a thousand
deadly enemies, each stronger than he; and the eye had to be keenly
attuned to probe the shadows of the forest for lurking foes.
"Now, sir, there is in biology the thing known, as the sport. You will
have heard that all living organisms undergo gradual processes of
change. Season by season and year by year, environment affects the
individual; yet these gradual changes are extremely slow. Between steps
of noticeable change there elapse periods many times longer than the
life of historic man. All speed in changes such as these comes in what
we call 'sports'. That is, a particular plant, for instance, gradually
tends to have fewer leaves and a thicker bark, but the change is slight
from age to age until suddenly a single instance occurs of plant which
realises suddenly in a single step the 'ideal' towards which the species
has been striving. In a word, it has very, very few leaves, and an
extraordinarily thick bark.
"For a particular instance, one species of orange tended to have few and
fewer seeds. But finally came an orange tree whose fruit had no seeds at
all. That was the origin of the navel orange. And that was a typical
'sport'.
"Now, there is the reverse of the sport. Instead of jumping long
distance ahead, an individual may lapse back towards the primitive. That
individual is called an atavism. For instance, in this mountain-desert
there has, for several generations, been a pressure of environment
calling for a species of man which will be able to live with comparative
comfort in a waste region--a man, in a word, equipped with such powerful
organisms that he will be as much at home in the heart of the desert as
an ordinary man would be in a drawing-room. You gather the drift of my
argument.
"I have observed this man Barry carefully. I am thoroughly convinced
that he is such an atavism.
"Among other men he seems strange. He is different and therefore he
seems mysterious. As a matter of fact, he is quite a common freak. I
could name you others like him in differing from common men, though not
differing from them in exactly the same manner.
"You see the result of this? Daniel Barry is a man to whom the desert is
necessary, because he was made for the desert. He is lonely among
crowds--you have said it yourself--but he is at home in a mountain
wilderness with a horse and a dog."
"Doc, you talk well," broke in Joe Cumberland, "but if he ain't human,
why do humans like him so much? Why does he mean so much to me--to
Kate?"
"Simply because he is different. You get from him what you could get
from no other man in the world, perhaps, and you fail to see that the
fellow is really more akin to his wolf-dog than he is to a man."
"Supposin' I said you was right," murmured the old man, frowning, "how
d'you explain why he likes other folks. According to you, the desert and
the mountains and animals is what he wants. Then how is it that he took
so much care of me when he come back this time? How is it that he likes
Kate, enough to give up a trail of blood to stay here with her?"
"It is easy to explain the girl's attraction," said the doctor. "All
animals wish to mate, Mr. Cumberland, and an age old instinct is now
working out in Dan Barry. But while you and Kate may please him, you are
not necessary to him. He left you once before and he was quite happy in
his desert. And I tell you, Mr. Cumberland, that he will leave you
again. You cannot tame the untameable. It is not habit that rules this
man. It is instinct a million years old. The call which he will hear is
the call of the wilderness, and to answer it he will leave father and
wife and children and ride out with his horse and his dog!"
The old man lay quite motionless, staring at the ceiling.
"I don't want to believe you," he said slowly, "but before God I think
you're right. Oh, lad, why was I bound up in a tangle like this one? And
Kate--what will she do?"
The doctor was quivering with excitement.
"Let the man stay with her. In time she will come to see the brute
nature of Daniel Barry. That will be the end of him with her."
"Brute. Doc. They ain't nobody as gentle as Dan!"
"Till he tastes blood, a lion can be raised like a house-dog," answered
the doctor.
"Then she mustn't marry him? Ay, I've felt it--jest what you've put in
words. It's livin' death for Kate if she marries him! She's kept him
here to-day. To-morrow something may cross him, and the minute he feels
the pull of it, he'll be off on the trail--the blow of a man, the
hollering out of the wild geese--God knows what it'll take to start him
wild again and forget us all--jest the way a child forgets its parents!"
A voice broke in upon them, calling far away: "Dan! Dan Barry!"