The problem of his own life was what this hour held in its shifting hold for Justin, the wavering veiled outlines on which he gazed seemed to prefigure the uncertain boundaries of his own future. To a man who has a family, the leaving of a certain occupation for an uncertain one, even though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into space.
The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely any time for six years back had come at last, but it had brought with it at this moment a strange and unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing calculations of the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with a new undertaking and eager for power had given place to a weight of responsibility and foreboding. How much, and how much, and yet how much, depended on his efforts! He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he had succeeded, what would success bring him individually that he had not now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? The toil of years piled up before him, with the pain of satisfied ambition at the end of it.
In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul stood confessed before him. He yearned at the moment unutterably, and with a mighty longing, for another to be as one with that soul in the comprehension of mood and aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the deepest sympathy. His wife—she was very sweet, she was very beloved, but her utmost understanding of this life of his was the conscious effort of one who lived in an alien sphere. His children—he loved them fondly, but the responsibility of their future years weighed upon him; as long as he could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait upon him in his rôle of provider—neither in body nor in spirit could he ever again have the rest of freedom.
Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and in spite of the inner knowledge of true love for the bonds that held him, a wild desire for the untrammeled liberty of his boyish days. If he could take his fishing-rod and tramp off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank under the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools of the brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to look for him or question why, and have neither yesterday nor to-morrow to hamper him, but only the joy of living! To saunter back to the house late in the warm afternoon with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk tasted after the long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up with a china cup out of the stone crock on the wooden bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, careless day!
The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew uppermost in him to escape from civilization and wander as he would upon the brown earth, without let or hindrance! In those far-off wilds where men tracked beasts to their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands also, and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost all connection now with his environment. The air that blew down from the hills and touched his cheek might have come over the burning desert, or have been freighted with the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed him now. His roaming fancy——
“Are you up still?”
Justin started—it was the voice of his wife. He came back to the familiar region of warm human love with a glad bound of relief so instantaneous that he had not even shame for his abnormal wanderings; they became already as though they had never been as he answered:
“Yes; I couldn’t have slept if I had gone to bed.”
“But you’re all cold sitting by that window, with the night air blowing in on you!”
Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as they closed around his neck.