THE MAN IN THE DARK.
A man stood at a window, looking out into the night. There was no light
in the room. The stars were hidden behind a thick curtain of sullen
clouds.
The house was a wretchedly constructed, long-neglected building of
a type common to those old river towns that in their many years of
uselessness have lost all civic pride, and in their own resultant
squalor and filth have buried their self-respect. A dingy, scarcely
legible sign over the treacherous board walk, in front, by the sickly
light of a smoke-grimed kerosene lantern, announced that the place was a
hotel.
Dark as it was, the man at the window could see the river. The trees
that lined the bank opposite the town were mere ghostly shadows against
the gloomy masses of the low hills that rose from the water's edge,
indistinct, mysterious, and unreal, into the threatening sky. The higher
mountains that reared their crests beyond the hills were invisible. The
stream itself swept sullenly through the night,--a resistless flood of
dismal power, as if, turbid with wrecked souls, with the lost hopes and
ruined dreams of men, it was fit only to bear vessels freighted with
sorrow, misfortune, and despair.
The manner of the man at the window was as if some woeful spirit of the
melancholy scene were calling him. With head bowed, and face turned a
little to one side, he listened intently as one listens to voices that
are muffled and indistinct. He pressed his face close to the glass, and
with straining eyes tried to see more clearly the ghostly trees, the
sombre hills, and the gloomy river. Three times he turned from the
window to pace to and fro in the darkened room, and every time his steps
brought him again to the casement, as if in obedience to some insistent
voice that summoned him. The fourth time, he turned from the window more
quickly, with a gesture of assenting decision.
The crackling snap of a match broke the dead stillness. The sudden flare
of light stabbed the darkness. As he applied the tiny, wavering flame
to the wick of a lamp that stood on the cheap, old-fashioned bureau, the
man's hand shook until the chimney rattled against the wire standards of
the burner. Turning quickly from the lighted lamp, the man sprang again
to the window to jerk down the tattered, old shade. Facing about, he
stood with his back to the wall, searching the room with wide, fearful
eyes. His fists were clenched. His chest rose and fell heavily with his
labored breathing. His face worked with emotion. With trembling limbs
and twitching muscles, he crouched like some desperate creature at bay.
But, save for the wretched man himself, there was in that shabby,
dingy-papered, dirty-carpeted, poorly furnished apartment no living
thing.
Suddenly, the man laughed;--and it was the reckless, despairing laughter
of a soul that feels itself slipping over the brink of an abyss.
With hurried step and outstretched hands, he crossed the room to snatch
a bottle of whisky from its place beside the lamp on the bureau. With
trembling eagerness, he poured a water tumbler half-full of the red
liquor. As one dying of thirst, he drank. Drawing a deep breath, and
shaking his head with a wry smile, he spoke in hoarse confidence to the
image of himself in the dingy mirror: “They nearly had me, that time.”
Again, he poured, and drank.
The whisky steadied him for the moment, and with bottle and glass still
in hand, he regarded himself in the mirror with critical interest.
Had he stood erect, with the vigor that should have been his by right of
his years, the man would have measured just short of six feet; but his
shoulders--naturally well set--sagged with the weariness of excessive
physical indulgence; while the sunken chest, the emaciated limbs, and
the dejected posture of his misused body made him in appearance, at
least, a wretched weakling. His clothing--of good material and well
tailored--was disgustingly soiled and neglected;--the shoes thickly
coated with dried mud, and the once-white shirt, slovenly unfastened at
the throat, without collar or tie. The face which looked back from the
mirror to the man was, without question, the countenance of a gentleman;
but the broad forehead under the unkempt red-brown hair was furrowed
with anxiety; the unshaven cheeks were lined and sunken; the finely
shaped, sensitive mouth drooped with nervous weakness; and the blue,
well-placed eyes were bloodshot and glittering with the light of
near-insanity.
The poor creature looked at the hideous image of his ruined self as
if fascinated with the horror of that which had been somehow wrought.
Slowly, as one in a trance, he went closer, and, without moving his gaze
from the mirror, placed the bottle and tumbler upon the bureau. As if
compelled by those burning eyes that stared so fixedly at him, he leaned
forward still closer to the glass. Then, as he looked, the distorted
features twitched and worked grotesquely with uncontrollable emotions,
while the quivering lips formed words that were not even whispered. With
trembling fingers he felt the unshaven cheeks and touched the unkempt
hair questioningly. Suddenly, as if to shut out the horror of that which
he saw in the mirror, the man hid his face in his hands, and with a
sobbing, inarticulate cry sank to the floor.
Silently, with pitiless force, the river swept onward through the night,
following its ordained way to the mighty sea.
As if summoned again by some dark spirit that brooded over the sombre,
rushing flood, the man rose heavily to his feet. His face turned once
more toward the window. A moment he stood there, listening, listening;
then wheeling back to the whisky bottle and the glass on the bureau, he
quickly poured, and drank again.
Nodding his head in the manner of one reaching a conclusion, he looked
slowly about the room, while a frightful grin of hopeless, despairing
triumph twisted his features, and his lips moved as if he breathed
reckless defiance to an invisible ghostly company.
Moving, now, with a decision and purpose that suggested a native
strength of character, the man quickly packed a suit-case with various
articles of clothing from the bureau drawers and the closet. He was in
the act of closing the suit-case when he stopped suddenly, and, with
a shrug of his shoulders, turned away. Then, as if struck by another
thought, he stooped again over his baggage, and drew forth a fresh,
untouched bottle of whisky.
“I guess you are the only baggage I'll need where I am going,” he said,
whimsically; and, leaving the open suit-case where it lay, he crossed
the room, and extinguished the light. Cautiously, he unlocked and opened
the door. For a moment, he stood listening. Then, with the bottle hidden
under his coat, he stole softly from the room.
A few minutes later, the man stood out there in the night, on the bank
of the river. Behind him the outlines of the scattered houses that made
the little town were lost against the dusk of the hillside. From the
ghostly tree-shadows that marked the opposite bank, the solemn hills
rose out of the deeper darkness of the lowlands that edged the stream
in sombre mystery. There was no break in the heavy clouds to permit the
gleam of a friendly star. There was no sound save the soft swish of the
water against the bank where he stood, the chirping of a bird in the
near-by willows, and the occasional splash of a leaping fish or water
animal. But to the man there was a feeling of sound. To the lonely human
wreck standing there in the darkness, the river called--called with
fearful, insistent power.
From under the black wall of the night the dreadful flood swept out of
the Somewhere of its beginning. Past the man the river poured its mighty
strength with resistless, smoothly flowing, terrible force. Into the
darkness it swept on its awful way to the Nowhere of its ending. For
uncounted ages, the river had poured itself thus between those walls of
hills. For untold ages to come, until the end of time itself, the stream
would continue to pour its strength past that spot where the man stood.
Out of the night, the voice of the river had called to the man, as he
stood at the window of his darkened room. And the man had come, now, to
answer the call. Cautiously, he went down the bank toward the edge of
the dark, swirling water. His purpose was unmistakable. Nor was there
any hint of faltering, now, in his manner. He had reached his decision.
He knew what he had come to do.
The man's feet were feeling the mud at the margin of the stream when his
legs touched something, and a low, rattling sound startled him. Then
he remembered. A skiff was moored there, and he had brushed against the
chain that led from the bow of the boat to the stump of a willow higher
up on the bank. The man had seen the skiff,--a rude, flat-bottomed
little craft, known to the Ozark natives as a John-boat,--just before
sunset that evening. But there had been no boat in his thoughts when he
had come to answer the call of the river, and in the preoccupation of
his mind, as he stood there in the night beside the stream, he had not
noticed it, as it lay so nearly invisible in the darkness. Mechanically,
he stooped to feel the chain with his free hand. A moment later, he had
placed his bottle of whisky carefully in the boat, and was loosing the
chain painter from the willow stump.
“Why not?” he said to himself. “It will be easier in midstream,--and
more certain.”
Carefully, so that no sound should break the stillness, he stowed the
chain in the bow, and then worked the skiff around until it pointed out
into the stream. Then, with his hands grasping the sides of the little
craft, and the weight of his body on one knee in the stern, he pushed
vigorously with his free foot against the bank and so was carried well
out from the shore. As the boat lost its momentum, the strong current
caught it and whirled it away down the river.
Groping in the darkness, the man found his bottle of whisky, and working
the cork out with his pocketknife, drank long and deep.
Already, save for a single light, the town was lost in the night. As
the man watched that red spot on the black wall, the stream swung
his drifting boat around a bend, and the light vanished. The dreadful
mystery of the river drew close. The world of men was far, very far
away. Centuries ago, the man had faced himself in the mirror, and had
obeyed the voice that summoned him into the darkness. In fancy, now, he
saw his empty boat swept on and on. Through what varied scenes would it
drift? To what port would the mysterious will of the river carry it? To
what end would it at last come in its helplessness?
And the man himself,--the human soul-craft,--what of him? As he had
pushed his material boat out into the stream to drift, unguided and
helpless, so, presently, he would push himself out from the shore of
all that men call life. Through what scenes would he drift? To what port
would the will of an awful invisible stream carry him? To what end would
he finally come, in his helplessness?
Again the man drank--and again.
And then, with face upturned to the leaden clouds, he laughed
aloud--laughed until the ghostly shores gave back his laughter, and the
voices of the night were hushed and still.
The laughter ended with a wild, reckless, defiant yell.
Springing to his feet in the drifting boat, the man shook his clenched
fist at the darkness, and with insane fury cursed the life he had left
behind.
The current whirled the boat around, and the man faced down the stream.
He laughed again; and, lifting his bottle high, uttered a reckless,
profane toast to the unknown toward which he was being carried by the
river in the night.