Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

“I’m the doctor,” Morning said. The three had left him.

It was now after midnight. She had not aroused. Old scenes quivered across the surface of her consciousness, starting a faintly mumbled sentence now and then: The Armory, the first kiss, the road to Baltimore, letters, hurried journeys, the Guardian; and much about the latest journey—from cab to station, from porter to Pullman, from car to clerk to carrier. He saw how the night and the day had used her final strength. Always the Guardian intervened to break her will, and Morning did not understand. There were other enemies; the studio, the nurse, the padlock, and the rain. After brief hushes, she would speak of his coming, or answer his calling.

It was the one theme of his life even now—the great thing Betty Berry had done. It awed and chilled him to realize how coarse-fibered he had been, so utterly impervious, not to sense the nature of the force that had upheld him, nor the quality of the bestowals.... There was a rending about it, and yet it was all so quiet now. It seemed to him that a man’s life is husk after husk of illusion, that the illusions are endless. He had torn them away, one after another, thinking each time that he had come to the grain.... And what was the sum of his finding so far? That good is eternal; that man loves God best by serving men; that greatness is in the working, not in the result; that a man who has found his work has found the soul’s sunlight, and that service for men is its rain. Surely, these are not husks.... It had been a hard, weary way. He was like a tired child now, and here was the little mother—wearied with him unto death.... He had been so perverse and headstrong. She had given him her love and guidance until her last strength was spent. He must be the man now.... He wondered if his heart would break, when he realized fully his own evil and her unfathomable sweetness?... Must a woman always fall spent and near to death—before a man can be finished? Or is it because her work is done that she falls?

He knelt beside her. Sometimes, in the lamplight, she looked as he had seen her at the Armory; again, as if she were playing; now, it was as she had been to him in the dark of the Pullman seat.... Who was the Guardian?

... And this was what had come to her from teaching him the miracle of listening alone.... It was true. He belonged to that life, as Duke Fallows had always said. She had made him see it by going from him. He would never be the same, after having tasted the greater love, in which man and woman are one in the spirit of service, having renounced the emblem of it. And with all her vision and leading—the glory of it had not come to her as to him. It had all but killed her. She had come to him—a forgotten purpose, a broken vessel.

He would love her back to life. That was his work now. Everything must stop for that—even truth.... He halted. If he loved her back to full and perfect health again, would she not be the same as she had been? Would she not take up her Cross again?... No, he would not let her. He would destroy the results of his work if necessary. He would force himself to forget, even in the spirit—this taste of the mystic oneness that had come to him. He would show his need for her every hour. That would make her happy—his leaning upon her word and thought and action. He would show her his need of her presence in the long, excellent forenoons, in the very processes of his task—and in the evenings, her hands, her kisses, her step, her voice; he would make her see that these were his perfect essentials.

“I’ve talked and written a lot about how a man should live—in the past six months,” he said grimly. “I’ve got to do a bit of real living in the world now. God knows I love her—as I used to. That seemed enough then!”

He looked up from her face. The ghost of day had come softly to the South. He arose, took the lamp across the room and blew it out. Then he opened the door. The mingled night and dawn came in, a cool dimness, but the rain had ceased. He replenished the fire, left the door open, and returned to her. She had become quiet since the lamp had been taken away.... A sense of the man and woman together, and of her strength returning crept upon him. He welcomed it, though the deeps cried out.

“When you are yourself, you will want to go away again—the long, blinding ways of the sun,” he whispered. “But I will say, ‘I cannot spare you, Betty Berry. This is the place for two to be. We will begin again——’”

His thought of what she would answer brought back to mind the play, Compassion, and the Book of John Morning.... He smiled. He had almost forgotten. Night before last, at the beginning of the third act, he had left the Markheim. He had given way suddenly to the thought that had pulled at him all day—to take the train to Betty Berry that night.... The play had seemed good. Even to him there had been moments of thrilling joy. It had been surprisingly different, sitting in front with the audience, from the rehearsals. Of yesterday’s notices he had not seen a single one. It was a far thought to him even now of the play’s failure, but if it did fail, how easy to say to Betty Berry, “You see, how mad I was alone—how mad in my exaltation—how terribly out of tune? I needed you here. I need you now——”