"GOOD LUCK, BEASON!"
Minutes passed and nothing happened. There was no sound of splintering
glass. The tube did not fall from his hands. Not so much as gasp or groan
broke the stillness of the laboratory. He did not seem to have moved even
the muscle of a finger.
He faced it. He understood it. He faced it and understood it as he had no
other truth in all his life. No merciful, mitigating force caused his
mind to totter. With fairly cosmic regularity, cosmic inevitability,
comprehension struck blow after blow.
He was going blind. He had spent his life studying the action of such
forces as this. _He knew them!_ A man who knew less would have hoped
more. Some idle dreamer might attempt to push one star closer to another.
An astronomer would not do that.
He was going blind. He could no more do his work without his eyes than
the daylight could come without the sun. Fate jeered at him: "Your eyes
are gone, but your life will remain." It was like saying to the sun: "You
are not to give any more light, but you are to go on shining just the
same."
He was going blind. The world which had just opened to him--the world of
sunsets and forests and mountains and seas gulped to black nothingness!
Blind! Swept under by a trick he would not have believed possible from
his most careless student! Mastered by the things he had believed he
controlled! Meeting his life's destruction from the things which were to
bring his life's triumph! In that moment of understanding's throwing wide
her gates to torture, fate stood out as the master dramatist. Making him
do it himself! Working it out of a mere fool's trick!
Blind?--_Blind?_ But his eyes fitted his brain so perfectly it was
through them all knowledge came to him. They were the world's great
channel to his mind. It was through his eyes he knew his fellow beings.
The lifting of an eyebrow, a queer twist to a smile--those things always
told him more than words. And--but here he staggered. The mind could get
this, as it had all else, but on this the heart broke. _Ernestine!_--that
smile--the love lights in her eyes--the glints of her dear, dear
hair--The tube fell from his hand. His head sank to the table. He was
buried now under an agony beyond all power to lift.
Whether it was minutes or hours which passed then, he never knew in the
days which followed. Time is not measured by common reckoning on the hill
of Calvary.
The thing which brought him from under the blow at last was a blinding
rage. He wanted to take a revolver and blow his brains out, then and
there. He--a man supposed to have a mind! _He_--counted a master of those
very things! And now, what? Manhood, power, _himself_ gone. Stumbling
through his days! Useless!--a curse to himself and everyone else. Groping
about in the dark--a thing to be pitied and treated well for pity's sake!
Cared for--looked after--_helped!_ That beat down the bounds of control.
He did things then which he never remembered and would not have believed.
It all rushed upon him--the birthday night--the crafty, insidious mockery
through every bit of it, until everything to which he had held tottered
about him, and goaded beyond all power to bear there came a slow,
comprehending, soul-deep curse on the world and all that the world had
done. And then, out of the darkness, through the blackened, dizzying,
tottering mass--a voice, a face, a smile, a touch, a kiss, and the curses
gave way to a sob and things steadied a little. No, not the world and
everything it had done, for it was a world which held Ernestine, a world
which had given Ernestine to him for his.
He fought for it then: for his faith in the world, his belief in the
things of love. It was the fight of his life, the fight for his own soul.
Come what might in the future, it was this hour which held the decisive
battle. For if he could not master those things which were surging upon
him, then the things which made him himself were gone for all time. And
when sense of the underlying cunning of the blow brought the surrendering
laugh close to his parched lips it was held back, held under, by that
ever recurring memory of a touch, a voice, a face. It was Ernestine,
their love, fighting against the powers of damnation for the rescue of
his soul.
Even in the battle's heat, he had full grasp of the battle's
significance, knew that all the future hung upon making it right this
hour with his own soul. His face grew grey and old, he concentrated days
of force into minutes, but little by little, through a strength greater
than that strength with which men conquer worlds, a force greater than
the force with which the mind's big battles are won, by a force not given
many since the first of time, he held away, beat back, the black tides
ready to carry him over into that sea of bitterness from which lost souls
send out their curses and their jeers and their unmeetable silences.
He tried to see a way. He tried to reach out to something which should
help him. Standing there amid the wreck of his life, he tried to think,
even while the ruins were still falling about him, of some plan of
reconstruction. It was like rebuilding a great city destroyed by fire;
the brave heart begins before the smoke has cleared away. But that task
is a simple one. The city destroyed by fire may be rebuilded as before.
But with him the master builder was gone. Out of those poor, scarred,
ungeneraled forces which remained, could he hope to bring anything to
which the world would care to give place?
He could see no way yet. All was chaos. And just then there came a knock
at the door.
He paid no heed at first. What right had the world to come knocking at
his door? What could he do for any one now?
The knock was repeated. But he would not go. If it were some student,
what could he do for him? He could only say: "I can do nothing for you.
Go to some one else." And should it be one of his fellow professors, come
to counsel with him, he could only say to him: "I have dropped out. Go on
without me. I wish you good luck."
That message he had thought to give!--and now--
Again the knock, timidly this time, fearing a too great persistency, but
reluctant to go away. He would go in just a minute now. There would not
come another knock. Well, let him go. When all the powers of fate had
gathered round to mock and jeer was it too much to ask that there be no
other spectators? Was not a man entitled to one hour alone among the
ruins of his life?
He who would gain entrance was starting, very slowly, to walk away. He
listened to him take a few steps, and then suddenly rose and hurried to
the door. He was not used to turning away his students unanswered.
It was Beason who turned eagerly around at sound of the opening door.
Beason--of all people--that boy who never in the world would understand!
He was accustomed to reading faces quickly and even through his dark
glasses his worried eyes read that Beason was in trouble, moved by
something from the path in which he was wont to go.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you," stammered the boy, as he motioned him to a
chair.
"Oh--that's all right; I wasn't doing anything, very important.
Just--finishing up something," he added, glad, when he heard his own
voice, that it was only Beason.
"I'm in trouble," blurted out Beason, "and I--I wanted to see you."
The man was sitting close to a table, and he rested his elbow upon it,
and shaded his eyes with his hand.
"Trouble?" his voice was kind, though a little unsteady. "Why, what's the
trouble?"
"I've got to stop school! I've got to give up my work for a whole year!"
The hand still shaded his darkened eyes. His mouth was twitching a
little.
"A year, Beason?" he said--any one else would have been struck with the
note in it--"You say--a year?"
"Yes," said Beason, "a whole year. My father has had some hard luck and
can't keep me here. I'd try to get work in Chicago, and stay on, but I
not only have to make my own way, but I must help my mother and sister.
Next year another deal my father's in will probably straighten things
out, and then I suppose I can come back."
The man very slowly nodded his head. "I see," he said, his voice coming
from 'way off somewhere, "I see."
"It's tough!" exclaimed Beason bitterly--"pretty tough!"
Dr. Hubers had turned his chair away from Beason, and with closed eyes
was facing the light from without. There was a long pause. Beason waited
patiently, supposing the man to be thinking what to say about so great a
difficulty.
"As I understand it," he said, turning around at last, "it's like this.
You are to give up your work at the university for a year--just one short
little year--and do something else; something not so much in your line,
perhaps, but something which will be helping those you care for--making
it easier for some one else. It's to be your privilege, as I understand
it, to fill a man's place. That's about it, isn't it?"
"But that's not the point! I thought,"--in an injured, almost tearful
voice--"that you would understand."
"Oh, I do. I see the other point. You hate to stop work for,"--he cleared
his throat--"for a year."
"A year," said Beason dismally, "is such a long time to lose."
The man had nothing to say to that. His head sank a little. He seemed to
be thinking.
Finally he came out of his reverie; seemed to come from a long way off.
"And where are you going, my boy?" he asked kindly. "What are you going
to do?"
"I'm going clear out West," said Beason gloomily. "Father has something
for me with a company in the Northwest."
"Out there!"--an eager voice rang out, a voice which rested on a
smothered sob. "Great heavens, man, you're going out there? Out there to
the mountains and the forests? Out there where you can see the sun come
up and go down, can see--can see--" but his voice trailed off to a
strange silence.
"I never cared much for scenery," said Beason bluntly, "and I care a lot
for--all this I'm leaving."
"We don't really leave a thing," said the man--his voice was low and
tired--"when we're coming back to it. The only real leave-takings are the
final ones."
Beason shifted in his chair. Some of these things were not just what he
had expected.
"Beason,"--something in his voice now made the boy move a little
nearer--"I'm sorry for your disappointment, but I wish I could make you
see how much you have to live for. Get in the habit of looking at the
sunsets, Beason. Take a good many long looks at the mountains and the
rivers. It's not unscientific. You know,"--with a little whimsical toss
of his head--"we only have so many looks to take in this world, and when
we're about through we'd hate to think they'd all been into microscopes
and culture ovens. And don't worry too much, Beason, about things running
into your plans and knocking them over. You know what that wise old Omar
had to say about it all." He paused, and then quoted, very slowly, each
word seeming to stand for many things:
And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, shall know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
"And--will--pour,"--he repeated the three words. And then his head
drooped, his hands fell laxly at his sides. It seemed it was not of
Beason he had been thinking as he looked Fate in the face with that taunt
of the old Persian poet.
But he looked at him after a moment, came back to him. He saw that the
boy was disappointed. The gloom with which he had come had not lifted
from his face. That would not do. He was not going to fail his student
like that.
"Why, look here, Beason," he said in a new tone, all enthusiasm now,
"maybe you'll shoot a bear. I have a presentiment, Beason, that you will,
and when you're eighty-five and have your great grandchild on your knee,
you'll think a great deal more about that bear than you will about the
year you missed here at school. Now brace up! Hard knocks wake a fellow
up. You'll come back here and do better work for your year of roughing
it--take my word for it, you will."
Beason had brightened. "And you think,"--he grew a little red--"that when
I come back I can have my old place here with you?"
The man drew in his breath, drew it in rather hard; something had taken
the enthusiasm away.
"I'll do my little part, Beason," he said, exceedingly quietly, "to see
that you are not overlooked when you come back."
The boy rose to go. "I do feel better," he said clumsily, but with
heartiness.
He looked around the room. "I hate to leave it. I've had some good times
here, and I'm--fond of it." The man was leaning against the wall. He did
not say anything at all.
Then Beason held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, "and--thank you."
For a minute there was no reply, nothing save the very cold hand given in
response to Beason's. But that was only for the instant. And then the man
in him, those things which made him more than a great scientist, things
more than mind, not even to be comprehended under soul, those fundamental
things which made him a man, rose up and conquered. He straightened up,
smiled a little, and then heartily, quite sunnily, came the words: "Take
a brace, Beason--take a good brace. And good luck to you, boy--good
luck."
The door had closed. At last he was alone again. Dizzy with the strain he
staggered to a chair. For a long time he sat there, many emotions
struggling in his face. He could not see it yet--not quite. It was all
very new, and uncertain. But 'way out there in the darkness it seemed
there was perhaps something waiting for him to grasp. He would never give
that other message, but it might be, if he worked hard enough, and never
faltered, he could learn to say to the world which had given him this,
say heartily, quite sunnily: "Good luck to you. Good luck."