I did not want to be looked at.
“Sit up!” he commanded.
I sat up in bed.
“Put the blanket down,” says he. “I have come, I say, to look at you.”
I uncovered to my middle.
“And this,” says he, “is the body of you, is it?”
The lamp was moved close to my face. John Cather laughed, and began, in a way I may not set down, to comment upon me. ’Twas not agreeable. I tried to stop him. ’Twas unkind to me and ’twas most injurious to himself. He did us vile injustice. I stopped my ears against his raving, but could not shut it out. “And this is the body of you! This is the body of you!” Here was not the John Cather who had come to us clear-eyed and buoyant and kindly out of the great world; here was an evil John Cather––the John Cather of a new birth at Twist Tickle. ’Twas the man our land and hearts had made him; he had here among us come to his tragedy and was cast away. I knew that the change had been worked by love––and I wondered that love could accomplish the wreck of a soul. I tried to stop his ghastly laughter, to quiet his delirium of brutality; and presently he was still, but of exhaustion, not of shame. Again he brought the lamp close to my face, and read it, line upon line, until it seemed he could bear no longer to peruse it. What he saw there I do not know––what to give him hope or still to increase the depth of his hopelessness. He betrayed no feeling; 303 but the memory of his pale despair continues with me to this day, and will to the end of my years. Love has never appeared to me in perfect beauty and gentleness since that night; it can wear an ugly guise, achieve a sinister purpose, I know.
John Cather set the lamp on the table, moving in a preoccupation from which I had been cast out.
“John Cather!” I called.
My uncle shouted from below.