A Man's World

That evening set my mind in a whirl. It was an utterly new world I had seen. I had never thought of the slums except as a distressful place to live. Stanton Street was revolting. I did not want to see it again. And yet I could not shake myself free from the thought of it – of it and of the strange group I had met in the Children's House. There seemed to be something fateful about it, something I must look at without flinching and try to understand.

On the other hand some self-defensive instinct made me try to forget it. The distaste for the struggle for life which had come to me from experiencing the petty jealousies of the library was turned into a dumb, vague fear by the sight of the slum. I turned to "Ralph Roister Doister" – on which I had made only listless progress – with a new ardor. The only escape which I could see from perplexing problems of life lay in a career of scholarship.

The Old English which had formerly been an amusement for me, now seemed a means of salvation. When Benson next suggested that I spend the evening with him, I excused myself on the ground of work.

But very often as I sat at my table, burning the midnight oil over that century old farce, the vision of that baby of Stanton Street, sucking the piece of garbage, came between me and my page. And I felt some shame in trying to drive him away. It was as though a challenging gauntlet had been thrown at my feet which I must needs pick up and face out the fight, or commit some gross surrender. I tried to escape the issue, with books.

BOOK III

I

Not long after this visit to the slums, when I had been in the city a little more than a year, I received a new offer of employment, through the kindness of Professor Meer. The work was to catalogue, and edit a descriptive bibliography of a large collection of early English manuscripts and pamphlets. A rich manufacturer of tin cans had bought them and intended to give them to some college library.

It offered just the escape I was looking for. I wrote at once, in high spirits, to accept it. However some cold water was thrown on my glee by Norman Benson. He was my one friend in the library and I hastened to tell him the good news. But when he read the letter he was far from enthusiastic.

"Are you going to accept it?" he asked coldly.

"Of course," I replied, surprised at his tone. "I hardly hoped for such luck, at least not for many years. It's a great chance."

"This really interests me," he said, laying down the books he was carrying and sitting on my desk. "What earthly good," he went on, "do you think it's going to do anyone to have you diddle about with these old parchments?"

"Why. It – " I began glibly enough, but I was not prepared for the question. And, realizing suddenly that I had not considered this aspect of the case, I left my response unfinished.

"I haven't a bit of the scholastic temperament," he said, after having waited long enough to let me try to find an answer. "It's just one of the many things I don't understand. I wouldn't deny that any bit of scholarship, however 'dry-as-dust,' may be of some use. I don't doubt that a good case of this kind could be made for the study of medieval literature. I don't say it's absolutely useless. But relatively it seems – well – uninteresting to me. It's in the same class as astronomy. You could study the stars till you were black in the face and you wouldn't find anything wrong with them, and if you did you couldn't make it right. Astronomy has been of some practical use to us, at least it helps us regulate our watches. But how in the devil do you expect to wring any usefulness out of Anglo-Saxon? Don't you want to be useful?"

His scorn for my specialty ruffled my temper.

"What would you suggest for me to do? Social-Settlement-ology?" I replied with elaborate irony.

But if he caught the note of anger in my retort, he was too busy with his own ideas to pay any attention to it. He got off the table and paced up and down like a caged beast, as he always did when he was wrestling with a problem. In a moment he came back and sat down.

"You don't answer my question," he said sharply. "You can stand on your dignity and say I have no right to ask it. But that's rot! I'm serious and I give you the credit of thinking you are. Now you propose to turn your back on the world and go into a sort of monastery. This job is just a beginning. You're making your choice between men and books, between human thought that is alive and the kind that's been preserved like mummies. Why? I ask. What is there in these old books which can compare in interest to the life about us. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more dramatic, more comic, more tragic, more beautiful. Even Shelley never wrote a lyric like some you can see with your own eyes, perhaps feel. I like to know what makes people do things. I'd like to know what makes you accept this offer. I assume that you want to be useful to your day and generation. What utility do you hope to serve in tabulating these old books, which nobody but a few savants will ever read?"

I was entirely unprepared to answer his question. And I felt myself sink in his estimation. Why was I reaching out for the life of a bookworm with such eagerness? I understand now. I was a coward. I was still sore from the wounds of my childish endeavor to comprehend God. I was afraid of life. I was afraid of the little child sucking the apple core on Stanton Street. The life about me, of which Benson spoke so enthusiastically, seemed to me threatening. It evidently laid an obligation of warfare on the people who entered it actively. I wanted peace. Books seemed to me a sort of city of refuge.

My new employer, Mr. Perry, the tin-can man, was a strange type. He had grown up in a fruit preserving industry and at thirty-odd he had invented a method of crimping the tops onto cans, without the use of solder. Good luck had given him an honest business partner and the patent had made a fortune for both of them. When the first instalment of royalties had come in, Perry had stopped stirring the kettle of raspberry preserves and had not done a stroke of work since. At forty he had built a "mansion" in the city and had gone in for politics. He bought his way to a seat in the State Senate, only to find that it bored him to extinction. After several other fads had proved uninteresting, he had set his heart on a LL.D. A friend had advised him to donate a valuable collection of books to some college.

He had sent a large check to a London dealer and this heterogeneous mass had been the result. As his interest in the matter had been only momentary he was decidedly penurious about it after the first outlay. That, I suppose, is why I, instead of a recognized authority, was chosen for the work. He had no idea what the catalogue should be like, and his one instruction to me, was to make it "something scholarly."

There was in his monstrous mansion an apartment originally designed for the children's tutor. But there had never been any children. These quarters were given to me. There was a private entrance, a bedroom, bath and study, where my meals were served, and there was a stairway down to the library.

In the three years I worked for him I did not see him ten times. His wife was dead, he lived away a good deal and, to my great satisfaction, he never invited me to his bachelor parties – the reverberations of which sometimes shook me out of sleep. Once every six months or so he would bring an expert to look over my work. As they found no fault and he could not understand it, he was convinced that it was scholarly.

It was a period of great content for me. The rut into which I fell was deep indeed. I saw no one. Almost my only contact with others was by mail. And my letters all related to my specialty. Eight full hours I worked in the library. The architect had not expected Mr. Perry to do much reading and, the windows being few, the room was gloomy. I had often to use artificial light. At five I went for an hour's walk in the park. At least this was my theory. But the least inclemency was an excuse to take some manuscript up to my room, to my shaded lamp and open fire. The daily eight hours on the catalogue was only a beginning. As soon as I had finished my edition of "Ralph Roister-Doister," I began a monograph on Anglo-Saxon Roots. My ambition was to win a fellowship in an English University. By the time my catalogue was finished, I would have enough money put by for a year or more of study in Oxford. My life was mapped out.

II

The darkness came unexpectedly.

Sometimes my eyes had been tired, but I had not taken it seriously. One afternoon, as I laid out a sheet of paper on the desk, the page was suddenly obscured by a dancing spider-web – a dizzying contortion of black and white – growing denser and denser. I clapped my hands over my eyes and felt so sudden a relief I was afraid to take them away again.

I got up slowly and felt my way with my foot to an easy chair. How long I sat there, my hands pressed hard against my eyes, I do not know. I had read somewhere of a man going blind with just such symptoms. It was fear unspeakable, fear that made me laugh. When one feels that the gods are witty it is a bad sign.

I was suddenly calm. It was accepted. I thought for a few minutes, my eyes still shut, and then felt my way to the telephone.

"Central," I said, and I remember that my voice was calm and commonplace. "Will you give me the Eye and Ear Hospital? I can't look up the number. I'm blind."

"Sure," came back the answer. "It must be hard to be blind."

A clutch came to my throat. It comes to me now as I write about it, comes every time I hear people complaining that modern industry has robbed our life of all humanity, has turned us into mechanisms. Such talk makes me think of the sudden sympathy which came to me out of the machine. Whenever I am utterly blue and discouraged, I go into a telephone booth.

"Hello, Central," I say, "tell me something cheerful. I'm down on my luck."

It has never failed. Always some joking sympathy has come out of the machine and helped me to get right again.

When the doctor came, he looked a minute at my desk, at the whole eye-straining mass of faded print and notes. He snapped on the electric light.

"I suppose you work a lot in this fiendish glare?"

"I need a strong light," I said.

He grunted in disgust.

"This will hurt," he said, as he made me sit down near the electric light, "but you've got to bear it."

He fixed a little mirror on his forehead and flashed the cruel ray into my eye. Back somewhere in the brain it focussed and burned. The sweat broke out all over me.

"Now the other eye."

I flinched for a moment, holding my hand before it.

"Come, come," he said gruffly, and I took my hand away.

When the ordeal was over, he tied a black bandage over my eyes, laid me down on the lounge and lectured me. When he stopped for breath, I interrupted.

"What hope is there?"

He hesitated.

"Oh! Tell me the truth."

"Well – I guess the chances are even – of your seeing enough for ordinary work. But they will never be strong. You'll have to give up books. You must keep your eyes bandaged – complete rest – six weeks – then we can tell how much damage you've done. It is only a guess now."

We talked business. I had enough money saved for a private room and good treatment, so he put me into a cab and told the driver to deliver me at the hospital.

It was an appalling experience, that ride. Try it yourself. Ride through the streets with your eyes darkened: you will hear a thousand sounds you never heard before, even familiar sounds will be fearsome. Every jolt, every stoppage will seem momentous. I was glad the doctor did not come with me, glad that no one saw me so afraid.

At last we stopped and I heard the cabby call.

"Hey! there. Come out and take this man."

I revolted at my helplessness, pushed the door open and stumbled as I stepped out. I would have fallen heavily, if an orderly had not been there to catch me.

"You must be careful at first, Mister," he said. "You'll get used to it in time."

That was just what I was afraid of – getting used to the darkness!

However, his words jogged my pride. The ways of the gods seemed funny to me again, and I joked with him as he led me up some stairs and into a receiving room. The house surgeon, to me only a voice, was nervously cheerful. He kept saying, "It'll be all right." "It'll be all right." He seemed to be dancing about in all directions. My ears had not become accustomed to locating sounds. I suppose he moved about normally, but he seemed to talk from a different angle every time.

"This is Miss Barton," he said at last. "She is day nurse in your ward. She'll make you comfortable."

Mechanically I thrust my hand out into the darkness. It was met and grasped by something I knew to be a hand, but it did not feel like any hand I had ever seen.

"I'm glad to meet you," I said.

With some jest about people not usually being glad to meet nurses, she led me off to the elevator and my room.

"You've quite a job before you – exploring this place," she said with real cheer in her voice. "There are all sorts of adventures in this terra incognita. Everything is cushioned so you can't bang your shins, but watch out for your toes. At first you'd better stay in bed for a few days and rest. Have you all you need in your valise?"

"I don't know. A servant packed it."

"Well then. That's the first bit of exploring to do. I'll help you."

Her voice also jumped about surprisingly. There was something weird in being in a room with an utter stranger whose existence was only manifested by this apparently erratic voice and by hands which unsnarled my shoe laces, handed me my pajamas, and put me to bed.

"I must run off now and attend to Mrs. Stickney, next door – she is very fussy. The night nurse, Miss Wright, comes on pretty soon, at six. She'll bring you your supper. When you wake up in the morning, ring the bell, here over your head, and I'll bring you breakfast. Good night."

It was when she had gone and I alone there in the strange bed, that I first felt the awful void of the darkness. I do not like to think of it now.

It was probably not many minutes, but it seemed hours on end, before Miss Wright brought me my supper. She sat on the edge of my bed and helped me find the way to my mouth. She was considerate, and tried to be cheering. But I did not like her. Always her very efficiency reminded me of my helplessness. And her voice seemed too large for a woman. It gave me the impression that she was talking to someone several feet behind me.

They had, I think, mercifully drugged my food, for I fell asleep at once. When I woke I had no idea of the hour. For some time I lay there in the darkness wondering about it. I did not want to wake anybody up. But at last I decided that I would not be so hungry before breakfast time. After much futile fumbling I found the bell above my bed. In a few minutes Miss Barton's voice – even after all these years, I think of it as the type of sunny cheerfulness – announced that it was near eleven. When the breakfast was finished, with joking cautions against setting the bed on fire, she filled my pipe and taught my hands the way to the matchbox.

In the weeks which followed, I lost all track of the sun's time. I came to figure my days in relation to her. During the "nights," when she was off duty, the darkness was very black.

It would be impossible for me to give in detail the evolution by which Miss Barton, my nurse, changed into my friend, Ann. It began I think when she discovered how utterly alone I was. The second day in the hospital I was given permission to have visitors, and I sent for my employer's man of law.

"Whom do you want to have come to see you to-morrow?" Miss Barton asked when he had gone.

I could think of no one.

"Do you want me to write some letters to your relatives?"

"No. I haven't any near kin."

"Well. Haven't you some friends to write to?"

In the three years I had lived at Mr. Perry's I had severed all social connections. I had not kept up my college friendships. Benson had been so opposed to my leaving what he called active life that I had lost all touch with him. My only relations with people had been technical, by correspondence. I did not want to trouble even Prof. Meer with my purely personal misfortunes. This seemed utterly impious to Miss Barton. What? I had lived several years in the city and had no friends? It was unbelievable! Unfortunately it was true. I could think of no one to ask in to relieve my loneliness. And there is no loneliness like the darkness.

The next week was the worst, for the nurses changed and Miss Wright, who was on day duty, was not companionable. However, Miss Barton, taking compassion on me, used often to sit with me by the hour at night. How fragmentary was my contact with her! No one who has not been deprived of sight can realize how large a part it plays in the relationships of life. I could only hear. There was always the creak of the rocking chair beside my bed and her voice, sometimes placid, sometimes tense, swinging back and forth in the darkness. It did not seem to have any body to it. Whenever her hands touched me, it startled me.

But from her talk I learned something of the person who owned the voice. She had been born in a Vermont village, where no one had ever heard of a professional woman, but as far back as she could remember, she had set her heart on medicine. Her father she had never known. Her mother, a fine needlewoman and embroidery designer had brought up the children. A brother was an engineer and the older sister a school teacher. But there had not been enough money to send Ann to medical college. Nursing was as near as she had been able to get towards her ambition. But what could not be given her she intended to win for herself. She had taken this position because the night duty was very light and every other week she could give almost the entire day to study. Her interest had turned to the new science of bacteriology. Her vague ambition to be a doctor had changed to the definite ideal of research work.

Somehow the voice, so calmly certain when it dealt of this, gave me an impression of integrity of purpose, of invincible determination, such as sight has never given me of anyone. I did not, any more than she, know how she was to get her research laboratory. But I could not doubt that she would. She had unquestioning faith in her destiny. I find myself emphasizing this phase of her. It impressed me most at the time.

But her conversation was by no means limited to her ambition. She had read a thousand things besides her medicine, and spoke of them more frequently. She was constantly referring to books, to facts of history and science, of which I was ignorant. She talked seriously of ethics and the deeper things of life. It woke again in me all the old questionings and aspirations of prep. school days – the things I had hidden away from in my book-filled library. She was the first person I had met since the doctor at school who showed me what she thought of these things. Benson had talked copiously about the objective side of life, but he had never referred to his inner life. The people I had known wanted to make this world a prayer meeting, a counting house or a playground. Ann was no more interested in such ideals than I was.

She used a phraseology which was new to me: "Individualism," "self-expression," "expansion of personality." She spoke of life as a crusade against the tyrannies of prejudice and conventions. Her viewpoint was biologic. All evolutionary progress was based on variations from the type. Efforts to sustain or conserve the type she called "reactionary" and "invasive." She insisted on the desirability of "absolute freedom to vary from the norm." The authority she quoted with greatest reverence was Spencer. This conversation, much of which I did not understand, showed me clearly one thing – a soul seeking passionately for truth. That she told me was her ideal as it had been the war-cry of Bakounine. "Je suis un chercheur passionné de la Vérité."

When any reference was made to my manner of life, she flared up. It was – and this was her worst denunciation – unnatural.

"I believe in individualism, egoism," she said. "But not in isolation. Man is naturally as gregarious as the ant. An ant that lived alone would be a non-ant. You've been a non-man. It's good your eyes went back on you – if it teaches you sense. Intercourse with one's kind is a necessary food of human life."

And while it was a God-send for me to find someone to talk to, it must have been also a pleasure for her. The stories she told me about the other patients showed that their relations to nurses were barren enough – when not actually insulting. After listening by the hour to Mrs. Stickney's endless little troubles, it was a relief for her, I think, to come to my room and talk of the things which interested her violently. She gave more and more time to me. During the third week, when she was again on day duty, she read me Lecky's "History of European Morals."

III

It is hard to write about the next week. I can no longer see it as it must have looked in those days. I cannot tell the "why" of it. It was.

There was immense loneliness – and fear. The few hundred dollars I had saved for studying in Oxford would pay the doctor's bill and keep me for some months. But what was there beyond, if my eyes did not come back? At best the chances were only even. In any case the one trade I knew was gone. A bookworm with weak eyes is a sorry thing. Of course I might have gone home. But I have never had much respect for the Prodigal Son. He must have been a poor spirited chap.

Well, in my utmost misery, Ann comforted me – as women have comforted men since the world began. In some inexplicable way, for some inexplicable causes, she loved me.

I try to arrange my memories of those days in orderly sequence. But it is all a blur. Day by day my need grew and day by day she met the need. The patients in that hospital did not require much attention, except in the day. Most of them slept well. They rarely rang for her after midnight. She gave me more and more of her time.

The stress between us grew rapidly, but by gradual steps, almost imperceptibly. Her hand rested in mine a trifle longer. The hand clasp became a caress – then a kiss. The kiss lingered…

So the voice took on a body. Touch came to the aid of hearing as a means of contact with this dear person of the darkness. It is strange in what a fragmentary way she took shape in my consciousness as something more than a paid nurse, more close and intimate than any friend I had known in the light.

In the darkness every other thing seemed strange. What I discovered by touch to be a table, did not fit into the old category of "tables." Even the pipe which I had smoked since college seemed to have undergone some fundamental change in its nature. Ann was the only thing which seemed natural. I had had no intimacy with woman of the light by which I could judge this experience. Coming to me as it did, it did not seem strange – it made subsequent things seem strange. When at last my eyes were opened, I blushed before Ann as before a stranger.

It all seemed so inevitable.

"It's late," she said one night, "I must go. If you want me, ring."

"Of course I want you."

"But you ought to sleep. I mean, ring if anything happens."

"It don't matter whether anything happens or not. I – "

"Don't ring unless you need me."

The door closed behind her. I lay there debating with myself whether or not I needed her. The bell was in reach of my hand. I got out of bed to be further from temptation. With awkward trembling hands, I filled and lit my pipe and sat down by the open window. My head ached with loneliness and desolation. Off somewhere in the night a church bell struck two, some belated footsteps rang sharp and clear on the sidewalk below me. I tried to interest myself in speculating whither or to whom the person was hurrying. But my thoughts swung back to my own loneliness. In all the world there was no one who knew of my blindness and cared except the tin-can merchant who was cursing that he must have the trouble to find someone to finish my work. No. There was Ann.