CHAPTER XVII
"Everything is indistinct, just blurred outlines. I can't see colorsonly as light and dark," Doris went on, looking at Hollister with thatstraining effort to see. "I can only see you now as a vague formwithout any detail."
Hollister pulled himself together. After all, it was no catastrophe,no thunderbolt of fate striking him a fatal blow. If, with growingclarity of vision, catastrophe ensued, then was time enough to shrinkand cower. That resiliency which had kept him from going before underterrific stress stood him in good stead now.
"It seems almost too good to be true," he forced himself to say, andthe irony of his words twisted his lips into what with him passed fora smile.
"It's been coming on for weeks," Doris continued. "And I haven't beenable to persuade myself it was real. I have always been able todistinguish dark from daylight. But I never knew whether that was pureinstinct or because some faint bit of sight was left me. I have lookedand looked at things lately, wondering if imagination could play suchtricks. I couldn't believe I was seeing even a little, because I'vealways been able to see things in my mind, sometimes clearly,sometimes in a fog--as I see now--so I couldn't tell whether thethings I have seen lately were realities or mental images. I havewanted so to see, and it didn't seem possible."
Asking about the stump had been a test, she told Hollister. She didnot know till then whether she saw or only thought she saw. And shecontinued to make these tests happily, exulting like a child when itfirst walks alone. She made them leave her and she followed them amonga clump of alders, avoiding the trunks when she came within a fewfeet, instead of by touch. She had Hollister lead her a short distanceaway from Myra and the baby. She groped her way back, peering at theground, until at close range she saw the broad blue and white stripesof Myra's dress.
"I wonder if I shall continue to see more and more?" she sighed atlast, "or if I shall go on peering and groping in this uncertain,fantastic way. I wish I knew."
"I know one thing," Myra put in quickly. "And that is you won't doyour eyes any good by trying so hard to see. You mustn't get excitedabout this and overdo it. If it's a natural recovery, you won't helpit any by trying so hard to see."
"Do I seem excited?" Doris smiled. "Perhaps I am. If you had been shutup for three years in a room without windows, I fancy you'd be excitedat even the barest chance of finding yourself free to walk in the sun.My God, no one with sight knows the despair that the blind sometimesfeel. And the promise of seeing--you can't possibly imagine what aglorious thing it is. Every one has always been good to me. I've beenlucky in so many ways. But there have been times--you know, don't you,Bob?--when it has been simply hell, when I struggled in a black abyss,afraid to die and yet full of bitter protest against the futility ofliving."
The tears stood in her eyes and she reached for Hollister's hand, andsqueezed it tightly between her own.
"What a lot of good times we shall have when I get so that I can seejust a little better," she said affectionately. "Your blind woman maynot prove such a bad bargain, after all, Bob."
"Have I ever thought that?" he demanded.
"Oh, no," she said smiling, "but _I_ know. Give me the baby, Myra."
She cuddled young Robert in her arms.
"Little, fat, soft thing," she murmured. "By and by his mother will beable to see the color of his dear eyes. Bless its little heart--himand his daddy are the bestest things in this old world--this old worldthat was black so long."
Myra turned her back on them, walked away and stood on the river bank.Hollister stared at his wife. He struggled with an old sensation, onethat he had thought long put by,--a sense of the intolerable burden ofexistence in which nothing was sure but sorrow. And he was aware thathe must dissemble all such feelings. He must not let Doris know howhe dreaded that hour in which she should first see clearly hismutilated face.
"You ought to see an oculist," he said at last.
"An oculist? Eye specialists--I saw a dozen of them," she replied."They were never able to do anything--except to tell me I would neversee again. A fig for the doctors. They were wrong when they said mysight was wholly destroyed. They'd probably be wrong again in thediagnosis and treatment. Nature seems to be doing the job. Let herhave her way."
They discussed that after Myra was gone, sitting on a log together inthe warm sun, with the baby kicking his heels on the spread quilt.They continued the discussion after they went back to the house.Hollister dreaded uncertainty. He wanted to know how great a measureof her sight would return, and in what time. He did not belittle theoculists because they had once mistaken. Neither did Doris, when sherecovered from the excitement engendered by the definite assurancethat her eyes were ever so slightly resuming their normal function.She did believe that her sight was being restored naturally, as tornflesh heals or a broken bone knits, and she was doubtful if any eyespecialist could help that process. But she agreed in the end that itwould be as well to know if anything could be done and what would aidinstead of retard her recovery.
"But not for awhile," she said. "It's just a glimmer. Wait a fewdays. If this fog keeps clearing away, then we'll go."
They were sitting on their porch steps. Doris put her arms around him.
"When I can see, I'll be a real partner," she said happily. "There areso many things I can do that can't be done without eyes. And half thefun of living is in sharing the discoveries one makes about thingswith some one else. Sight will give me back all the books I want toread, all the beautiful things I want to see. I'll be able to climbhills and paddle a canoe, to go with you wherever you want to take me.Won't it be splendid? I've only been half a woman. I have wonderedsometimes how long it would be before you grew weary of my moods andmy helplessness."
And Hollister could only pat her cheek and tell her that he loved her,that her eyes made no difference. He could not voice the fear he hadthat her recovered sight would make the greatest difference, that thereality of him, the distorted visage which peered at him from a mirrorwould make her loathe him. He was not a fool. He knew that people, thewomen especially, shrank from the crippled, the disfigured, themalformed, the horrible. That had been his experience. It had verynearly driven him mad. He had no illusions about the men who workedfor him, about his neighbors. They found him endurable, and that wasabout all. If Doris Cleveland had seen him clearly that day on thesteamer, if she had been able to critically survey the unlovely thingthat war had made of him, she might have pitied him. But would shehave found pleasure in the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand?Hollister's intelligence answered "No." For externally his appearancewould have been a shock, would have inhibited the pleasant intimacy atwhich they so soon arrived.
Doris made light of his disfigurement. She could comprehend clearlymany things unseen--but not that. Hollister knew she must have createdsome definite image of him in her mind; something, he suspected, whichmust correspond closely to her ideal of a man, something that was dearto her. If that ideal did not--and his intelligence insisted that hecould not--survive the reality, then his house was built on sand andmust topple.
And he must dig and pry at the foundations. He must do all that couldbe done for her eyes. That was her right,--to see, to be free of herprison of darkness, to be restored to the sight of beauty, tounclouded vision of the world and all it contained, no matter what theconsequence to him. He would play the game, although he felt that hewould lose.
A cloud seemed to settle on him when he considered that he might loseeverything that made life worth while. And it would be an irrevocableloss. He would never again have courage to weave the threads of hisexistence into another such goodly pattern. Even if he had thecourage, he would never have the chance. No such fortuitouscircumstances would ever again throw him into the arms of awoman,--not such a woman as Doris Cleveland.
Hollister looked at her beside him, and his heart ached to think thatpresently she might not sit so with her hand on his knee, looking upat him with lips parted in a happy smile, gray eyes eager withanticipation under th
e long, curving, brown lashes. She was so verydear to him. Not alone because of the instinctive yearning of flesh toflesh, not altogether because of the grace of her vigorous young body,the comeliness of her face, the shining coils of brown hair that gavehim a strange pleasure just to stroke. Not alone because of the quick,keen mind that so often surprised him by its sureness. There was somecharm more subtle than these, something to which he responded withoutknowing clearly what it was, something that made the mere knowledge ofher presence in his house a comfort, no matter whether he was besideher or miles away.
Lawanne once said to him that a man must worship a God, love a woman,or find a real friendship, to make life endurable. God was too dim,too nebulous, for Hollister's need. Friendship was almostunattainable. How could a man with a face so mutilated that it wasgrotesque, repellent, cultivate the delicate flower of friendship?Doris loved him because she could not see him. When she could see, shewould cease to love. And there would be nothing left forhim--nothing. He would live on, obedient to the law of his being, asentient organism, eating and sleeping, thinking starkly, without joyin the reluctant company of his fellows, his footsteps echoinghollowly down the long corridor of the years, emptied of hope and allthose pleasant illusions by which man's spirit is sustained. But wouldhe? Would it be worth while?
"I must go back to work," he said at last.
Doris rose with him, holding him a moment.
"Presently I shall be able to come and _watch_ you work! I might help.I know how to walk boom-sticks, to handle timber with a pike pole. I'mas strong as an ox. See!"
She put her arms around him and heaved, lifting the hundred and eightypounds of his weight clear of the ground. Then she laughed, a low,pleased chuckle, her face flushed with the effort, and turned into thehouse.
Hollister heard her at the piano as he walked away, thundering out therollicking air of the "Soldier's Chorus", its naive exultance ofvictory, it seemed to Hollister, expressing well her mood,--a victorythat might mean for him an abyss of sorrow and loneliness out of whichhe might never lift himself.