Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author

by Leslie Burton Blades

Lawrence, through ignorance of their situation and jealousy of Philip, grew daily more dissatisfied. He would hear the intimate ring in their voices and writhe within. The artist felt keenly that he was being set aside, and his eager determination to live and be in the front rank of warring manhood made him determine to win Claire against this man who, it seemed to him, was taking her from him by mere advantage of sight. He felt that they were shelving him as a blind man, a very nice fellow, but quite outside the possibility of any relation with their real lives. He now thought that Claire was kind to him as one is to those whose situation makes them objects of pity.

There were days when he sat alone before the fire in the cabin brooding until he was filled with savage hatred of Philip. He would think of all sorts of impossible means of eliminating this Spaniard from Claire's life; then Philip would come in, talk to him, seem so very normally friendly as man to man, that his reason mastered his fancies and he laughed at himself. He ridiculed his own thoughts with an irony that inwardly grew in bitterness with his growing love for Claire, and he would end by admitting that Philip was only doing what he himself would like to do.

In his fair-minded moments he did not blame his friend. "I should be a fool to expect him to act differently," he told himself. "In this struggle for meat and mate which we all wage, he is doing what any one would do. I who am losing must at least be just to him." He resolved to be just, and in a little while was again ensnaring himself in his own notions. "She is throwing herself away upon this Spaniard," he thought, "while I sit by. If I were not blind, she would see that after all I am the better man. I put all my power into the carving of that little statue, and she knows it is good, better than anything he has done or can do, and yet—she loves him."

He would rise and walk the floor in his tension, knocking into the chairs recklessly. His thoughts would gain speed from his bodily movement, and soon he would rage against the man whose guest he was, against Claire, against life, fate, and blindness. Then suddenly his ever self-questioning mind would demand of him, "Why are you doing nothing, then?" He did nothing because he could do nothing. That was his answer, no sooner made than contradicted, no sooner contradicted than to be restated, "I do nothing because I will do nothing."

Several times he refused to go with them on tramps or skiing trips. When they were gone he would revile himself for his stubbornness and ache because Claire could not see that he had refused with a petulant boy's hope that she would stay with him. "Why should she stay with me?" There was no reason, he told himself, and again he would be off on a mental whirlwind that carried him still farther from reason. He became perpetually sullen, irritable, and discontented. He realized it, thought that Claire would certainly grow to dislike him if he continued so disagreeable, and with the thought became even more disagreeable.

Claire, however, was not growing to dislike him. She avoided him in pursuance of her settled policy, but she thought of him all the more.

One morning when she and Philip were out in the pines together, she observed, casually, "Lawrence doesn't seem to be doing any work these days."

Philip glanced at her carelessly. "Yes. I'm very sorry for the poor fellow."

His pity angered her a little. Lawrence did not need his sympathy. "I think he must be feeling badly," she replied.

"I believe he is moody by nature."