And Martin looked at Carol, at the tears running down his cheeks, at the pain that locked his face into the unknown agonies. He looked at the desk, at the picture of Deane and back again at Carol. And to himself he said repeatedly, “What good is compassion now!—What good is compassion now!”
Strangely, he went to Carol, a dark line between his eyes, although there was no frown except one for himself. For a moment he stood facing the boy so steadily and patiently that Carol wet his lips in nervousness, waiting in a kind of stolid anticipation for whatever was to come. Slowly, but with no hesitation, and still regarding the boy with an indefinable expression, Martin raised his hand and laid it on the other’s with such feeling, yet such weight that Carol stepped away and bent his knee as though he had been struck. Then, unresistant to Martin’s comprehensive look—a look so full of search, and surely pain, and perhaps knowing—and calmed by a hand that had found kindness in its power, Carol stepped forward again and held himself as though he were bemused—for so he was, with all his innocence and limitations conflicting with desire. And all the hopeless libido went out of him before this other one who was so straight and quiet and held him like—Carol thought, and thought again—like—and then quite swiftly it was revealed to him; like one man holds another. This chemical transmutation within him was so rapid that even Martin failed to see it. Just the same, as Carol, firmly gripped by Martin in equality, knew himself another man, he lifted his shoulders, stiffened in his new pride as he beheld new vistas; and in an immediate beauty smiled, unknowing that he had left Martin, who dropped his hand, bewildered.
Martin helped the boy on with his coat.
“Carol,” he said, his arm around him, “I want you to know that I’m your friend.” Impulsively he went to his desk and searched through a drawer. He drew out a snapshot and handed it to Carol. “Here I am,” he said, “climbing a king post at the beginning of a bad day.” It was a plain little picture of a ship at a crazy tilt with the sea, and Martin hanging tightly as he worked with a lashing; but Carol put it carefully in his pocket and smiled happily.
CHAPTER XXI
The days were getting warmer. Rio stopped by Martin’s house in the early afternoon and together they walked to the Battery where they sat down on a bench out of the sun. People were pouring in and out of the Aquarium. Boats leaving for Bedloe’s Island whistled and grunted against the docks. Liberty herself, as statuesque as ever, shone from her spring cleaning and seemed to hold her torch still higher and more independently.
Turning away from the water, Rio glanced at Martin’s hand, his attention called to it, perhaps, by a ray of sunlight which fell slantingly upon a flat block of black onyx with a point of ruby in one corner which Martin wore upon his middle finger.
“I’ve always wanted to ask you about that funny ring you got there,” said Rio, yawning. “Where’d you find it?”