Then they were gone.
Moonson got up as they disappeared, left the tavern.
It was dark when he reached the cabin. He was dog-tired, and when he saw the seated man through the lighted window a great longing for companionship came upon him.
He forgot that he couldn’t talk to the man, forgot the language difficulty completely. But before this insurmountable element occurred to him he was inside the cabin.
Once there he saw that the problem solved itself—the man was a writer and he had been drinking steadily for hours. So the man did all of the talking, not wanting or waiting for an answer.
A youngish, handsome man he was, with graying temples and keenly observant eyes. The instant he saw Moonson he started to talk.
“Welcome, stranger,” he said. “Been taking a dip in the ocean, eh? Can’t say I’d enjoy it, this late in the season!”
Moonson was afraid at first that his silence might discourage the writer, but he did not know writers …
“It’s good to have someone to talk to,” the writer went on. “I’ve been sitting here all day trying to write. I’ll tell you something you may not know—you can go to the finest hotels, and you can open case after case of the finest wine, and you still can’t get started sometimes.”
The writer’s face seemed suddenly to age. Fear came into his eyes and he raised the bottle to his lips, faced away from his guest as he drank as if ashamed of what he must do to escape despair every time he faced his fear.
He was trying to write himself back into fame. His greatest moment had come years before when his golden pen had glorified a generation of madcaps.
For one deathless moment his genius had carried him to the heights, and a white blaze of publicity had given him a halo of glory. Later had come lean and bitter years until finally his reputation dwindled like a gutted candle in a wintry room at midnight.
He could still write but now fear and remorse walked with him and would give him no peace. He was cruelly afraid most of the time.
Moonson listened to the writer’s thoughts in heart-stricken silence—thoughts so tragic they seemed out of keeping with the natural and beautiful rhythms of his speech. He had never imagined that a sensitive and imaginative man—an artist—could be so completely abandoned by the society his genius had helped to enrich.
Back and forth the writer paced, baring his inmost thoughts … His wife was desperately ill and the future looked completely black. How could he summon the strength of will to go on, let alone to write?
He said fiercely, “It’s all right for you to talk—”
He stopped, seeming to realize for the first time that the big man sitting in an easy chair by the window had made no attempt to speak.
It seemed incredible, but the big man had listened in complete silence, and with such quiet assurance that his silence had taken on an eloquence that inspired absolute trust.
He had always known there were a few people like that in the world, people whose sympathy and understanding you could take for granted. There was a fearlessness in such people which made them stand out from the crowd, stone-markers in a desert waste to lend assurance to a tired wayfarer by its sturdy permanence, its sun-mirroring strength.
There were a few people like that in the world but you sometimes went a lifetime without meeting one. The big man sat there smiling at him, calmly exuding the serenity of one who has seen life from its tangled, inaccessible roots outward and testifies from experience that the entire growth is sound.
The writer stopped pacing suddenly and drew himself erect. As he stared into the big man’s eyes his fears seemed to fade away. Confidence returned to him like the surge of the sea in great shining waves of creativeness.
He knew suddenly that he could lose himself in his work again, could tap the bright resonant bell of his genius until its golden voice rang out through eternity. He had another great book in him and it would get written now. It would get written …
“You’ve helped me!” he almost shouted. “You’ve helped me more than you know. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you. You don’t know what it means to be so paralyzed with fright that you can’t write at all!”
The Man from Time was silent but his eyes shone curiously.
The writer turned to a bookcase and removed a volume in a faded cover that had once been bright with rainbow colors. He sat down and wrote an inscription on the flyleaf.
Then he rose and handed the book to his visitor with a slight bow. He was smiling now.
“This was my firstborn!” he said.
The Man from Time looked at the title first … This Side of Paradise.
Then he opened the book and read what the author had written on the flyleaf:
With warm gratefulness for a courage which brought back the sun.
Moonson bowed his thanks, turned and left the cabin.
Morning found him walking across fresh meadowlands with the dew glistening on his bare head and broad, straight shoulders.
They’d never find him, he told himself hopelessly. They’d never find him because Time was too vast to pinpoint one man in such a vast waste of years. The towering crests of each age might be visible but there could be no returning to one tiny insignificant spot in the mighty ocean of Time.
As he walked his eyes searched for the field and the winding road he’d followed into town. Only yesterday this road had seemed to beckon and he had followed, eager to explore an age so primitive that mental communication from mind to mind had not yet replaced human speech.
Now he knew that the speech faculty which mankind had long outgrown would never cease to act as a barrier between himself
