“The friend of no man.” It was said with grandeur.
Morning waited.
Markheim leaned forward, beaming not unkindly, and whispered:
“The little one at the switch-board outside the door. She said it was ‘lovely.’... Oh, she’s a sharp little spider.”
2
Here is an extra bit of the fabric, that goes along with the garment for mending.... Mid-May, and never a sign of the old wound’s reopening. Something of Morning’s former robustness had spent itself, but he had all the strength a man needs, and that light unconsciousness of the flesh which is delightful to those who produce much from within. The balance of his forces of development had turned from restoring his body to a higher replenishment.
The mystery of work broke upon him more and more, and the thrall of it; its relation to man at his best; the cleansing of a man’s daily life for the improvement of his particular expression in the world’s service; the ordering of his daily life in pure-mindedness, the power of the will habitually turned to the achieving of this pure-mindedness. He saw that man is only true and at peace when played upon from the spiritual source of life; therefore, all that perfects a man’s instrumentation is vital, and all that does not is destructive. Most important of all, he perceived that a real worker has nothing whatever to do beyond the daily need, with the result of his work in a worldly way; that any deep relation to worldly results of a man’s work is contamination.
He lost the habit and inclination to think what he wanted to say. He listened. He became sceptical of all work that came from brain, in the sense of having its origin in something he had actually learned. He remembered how Fallows had spoken of this long ago; (he had not listened truly enough to understand then); how a man’s brain is at his best when used purely to receive—as a little finer instrument than the typewriter.
Except for certain moments on the borderland of sleep, Betty Berry was closest to him during his work. His every page was for her eye—a beloved revelation of his flesh and mind and spirit. And the thing had to be plain, plain, plain. That was the law.
How Fallows had fought for that. “Don’t forget the deepest down man, John!”... Betty Berry and Fallows and Nevin were his angels—his cabin, a place of continual outpouring to them. Few evils were powerful enough to stem such a current, and penetrate the gladness of giving.