"And _this_," says he, "is the body of you, is it?"
The lamp was moved close to my face. John Cather laughed, and began,
in a way I may not set down, to comment upon me. 'Twas not agreeable.
I tried to stop him. 'Twas unkind to me and 'twas most injurious to
himself. He did us vile injustice. I stopped my ears against his
raving, but could not shut it out. "And this is the body of you! This
is the body of you!" Here was not the John Cather who had come to us
clear-eyed and buoyant and kindly out of the great world; here was an
evil John Cather--the John Cather of a new birth at Twist Tickle.
'Twas the man our land and hearts had made him; he had here among us
come to his tragedy and was cast away. I knew that the change had been
worked by love--and I wondered that love could accomplish the wreck of
a soul. I tried to stop his ghastly laughter, to quiet his delirium of
brutality; and presently he was still, but of exhaustion, not of
shame. Again he brought the lamp close to my face, and read it, line
upon line, until it seemed he could bear no longer to peruse it. What
he saw there I do not know--what to give him hope or still to increase
the depth of his hopelessness. He betrayed no feeling; but the memory
of his pale despair continues with me to this day, and will to the end
of my years. Love has never appeared to me in perfect beauty and
gentleness since that night; it can wear an ugly guise, achieve a
sinister purpose, I know.
John Cather set the lamp on the table, moving in a preoccupation from
which I had been cast out.
"John Cather!" I called.
My uncle shouted from below.
"John!" I urged.
"Parson," my uncle roared, "ye'll lose your passage!"
Cather blew out the light.
"John," I pleaded, "you'll not go without saying good-bye?"
He stopped on the threshold; but I did not hear him turn. I called him
again; he wheeled, came stumbling quickly to my bed, caught my hand.
"Forgive me, Dannie!" he groaned. "My heart is broken!"
He ran away: I never saw him again....
* * * * *
And now, indeed, was the world gone all awry! What had in the morning
of that day been a prospect of joy was vanished in a drear mist of
broken hopes. Here was John Cather departed in sore agony, for which
was no cure that ever I heard of or could conceive. Here was John
Cather gone with the wreck of a soul. A cynical, purposeless, brooding
life he must live to his last day: there was no healing in all the
world for his despair. Here with us--to whom, in the years of our
intercourse, he gave nothing but gladness--his ruin had been wrought.
'Twas not by wish of us; but there was small comfort in the
reflection, since John Cather must suffer the same. Here was John
Cather gone; and here, presently, was my uncle, pacing the floor
below. Up and down, up and down: I thought the pat of his wooden leg
would go on forever--would forever, by night and day, express the
restlessness of thirst. And here was Judy, abroad, in trouble I could
not now divine--'twas a thing most strange and disturbing that she
should stand in distress before me. I had accounted for it, but could
not now explain--not with John Cather gone. I was mystified, not
agitated by alarms. I would meet the maid on the Whisper Cove road in
the morning, thinks I, and resolve the puzzle. I would discover more
than that. I would discover whether or not I had blundered. But this
new hope, springing confidently though it did, could not thrive in the
wretchedness of John Cather's departure. I was not happy.
My uncle roughly awoke me at dawn.
"Sir?" I asked.
"Judy," says he, "haves disappeared."
He held me until he perceived that I had commanded myself....