“I have come out of hell, for the sake of hearing some human being speak to me like that!”
The thick utterance proceeded in a muffled fashion from where his face grovelled against her dress. Its despairing accents appealed to her, but even more was she touched by the ungainly figure he made, sprawling on the carpet.
“Well, since you are out, stay out,” she answered, as reassuringly as she could. “But get up and take a seat here beside me, like a sensible man, and tell me all about it. Come! I insist!”
In obedience to her tone, and the sharp tug at his shoulder with which she emphasized it, he got slowly to his feet, and listlessly seated himself on the sofa to which she pointed. He hung his head, and began catching his breath with a periodical gasp, half hiccup, half sob.
“First of all,” she said, in her brisk, matter-of-fact manner, “don’t you want to lie down there again, and have me tuck you up snug with the buffalo robe, and go to sleep? That would be the best thing you could do.”
He shook his head disconsolately, from side to side. “I can’t!” he groaned, with a swifter recurrence of the sob-like convulsions. “I’m dying for sleep, but I’m too—too frightened!”
“Come, I’ll sit beside you till you drop off,” she said, with masterful decision. He suffered himself to be pushed into recumbency on the couch, and put his head with docility on the pillow she brought from the spare room. When she had spread the fur over him, and pushed her chair close to the sofa, she stood by it for a little, looking down in meditation at his demoralized face. Under the painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had seen a few months before. Nothing essential had been taken away. There was only this pestiferous overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed. The face underneath was still all right.
With a soft, maternal touch, she smoothed the hair from his forehead into order. Then she seated herself, and, when he got his hand out from under the robe and thrust it forth timidly, she took it in hers and held it in a warm, sympathetic grasp. He closed his eyes at this, and gradually the paroxysmal catch in his breathing lapsed. The daylight strengthened, until at last tiny flecks of sunshine twinkled in the meshes of the further curtains at the window. She fancied him asleep, and gently sought to disengage her hand, but his fingers clutched at it with vehemence, and his eyes were wide open.
“I can’t sleep at all,” he murmured. “I want to talk.”
“There’s nothing in the world to hinder you,” she commented smilingly.
“I tell you the solemn truth,” he said, lifting his voice in dogged assertion: “the best sermon I ever preached in my life, I preached only three weeks ago, at the camp-meeting. It was admitted by everybody to be far and away my finest effort! They will tell you the same!”
“It’s quite likely,” assented Sister Soulsby. “I quite believe it.”
“Then how can anybody say that I’ve degenerated, that I’ve become a fool?” he demanded.
“I haven’t heard anybody hint at such a thing,” she answered quietly.
“No, of course, you haven’t heard them!” he cried. “I heard them, though!” Then, forcing himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint of her hand, he flung back the covering. “I’m burning hot already! Yes, those were the identical words: I haven’t improved; I’ve degenerated. People hate me; they won’t have me in their houses. They say I’m a nuisance and a bore. I’m like a little nasty boy. That’s what they say. Even a young man who was dying—lying right on the edge of his open grave—told me solemnly that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was only fit for a barkeeper now. They say I really don’t know anything at all. And I’m not only a fool, they say, I’m a dishonest fool into the bargain!”
“But who says such twaddle as that?” she returned consolingly. The violence of his emotion disturbed her. “You mustn’t imagine such things. You are among friends here. Other people are your friends, too. They have the very highest opinion of you.”
“I haven’t a friend on earth but you!” he declared solemnly. His eyes glowed fiercely, and his voice sank into a grave intensity of tone. “I was going to kill myself. I went on to the big bridge to throw myself off, and a policeman saw me trying to climb over the railing, and he grabbed me and marched me away. Then he threw me out at the entrance, and said he would club my head off if I came there again. And then I went and stood and let the cable-cars pass close by me, and twenty times I thought I had the nerve to throw myself under the next one, and then I waited for the next—and I was afraid! And then I was in a crowd somewhere, and the warning came to me that I was going to die. The fool needn’t go kill himself: God would take care of that. It was my heart, you know. I’ve had that terrible fluttering once before. It seized me this time, and I fell down in the crowd, and some people walked over me, but someone else helped me up, and let me sit down in a big lighted hallway, the entrance to some theatre, and someone brought me some brandy, but somebody else said I was drunk, and they took it away again, and put me out. They could see I was a fool, that I hadn’t a friend on earth. And when I went out, there was a big picture of a woman in tights, and the word ‘Amazons’ overhead—and then I remembered you. I knew you were my
