CHAPTER XIX
Once back in the old environment, Northrup went, daily, through the sensations of his haunting dream, without the relief of awakening. The corridor of closed doors was an actuality to him now. Behind them lay experiences, common enough to most men, undoubtedly, but, as yet, unrevealed to him.
In one he had dwelt for a brief time––good Lord! had it only been for weeks? Well, the memory, thank heaven, was secure; unblemished. He vowed that he would reserve to himself the privilege of returning, in thought, to that memory-haunted sanctuary as long as he might live, for he knew, beyond any doubt, that it could not weaken his resolve to take up every duty that he had for a time abandoned. It should be with him as Manly had predicted.
This line of thought widened Northrup’s vision and developed a new tie between him and other men. He found himself looking at them in the street with awakened interest. He wondered how many of them, stern, often hard-featured men, had realized their souls in private or public life, and how had they dealt with the revelation? He grew sensitive as to expressions; he believed, after a time, that he could estimate, by the look in the eyes of his fellowmen, by the set of their jaws, whether they had faced the ordeal, as he was trying to do, or had denied the soul acceptance. It was like looking at them through a magnifying lens where once he had regarded them through smoked glass.
And the women? Well, Northrup was very humble about women in those days. He grew restive when he contemplated results and pondered upon the daring that had assumed responsibility where complete understanding had never been attempted. It seemed, in his introspective state, that God, 228 even, had been cheated. Women were, he justly concluded, pretty much a response to ideals created for them, not by them.
Mary-Clare was having her way with Northrup!
Something of all this crept into his book for, after a fortnight at home, he set his own jaw and lips rather grimly, went to his small office room in the tower of a high building, and paid the elevator boy a goodly sum for acting as buffer during five holy hours of each day.
It was like being above the world, sitting in that eyrie nook of his. Northrup often recalled a day, years before, when he had stood on a mountain-peak bathed in stillness and sunlight, watching the dramatic play of the elements on the scene below. Off to the right a violent shower spent itself mercilessly; to the left, rolling mists were parting and revealing pleasant meadows and clustering hamlets. And with this recollection, Northrup closed his eyes and, from his silent watch tower, saw, as no earthly thing could make him see, the hideous tragedy across the seas.