"Plank, I"ll go anywhere except there with you. I"d rather be with you than with anybody. Can I say more than that?"
"I think you ought to, Siward. A--a fellow feels the refusal of his offered roof-tree."
"Man! man! it isn"t your roof I am refusing. I want to go; I"d give anything to go. If it were anywhere except where it is, I"d go fast enough. Now do you understand? If--if Shotover House and Shotover people were not next door to the Fells, I"d go. Now do you understand?"
Plank said: "I don"t know whether I understand. If you mean Quarrier, he"s on his way here, and he"ll have business to keep him here for the next few months, I a.s.sure you. But"--he looked very gravely across at Siward--"if you don"t mean Quarrier--" He hesitated, ill at ease under the expressionless scrutiny of the other.
"Do you know what"s the matter with me, Plank?" he asked at length.
"I think so."
"I have wondered. I wonder now how much you know."
"Very little, Siward."
"How much?"
Plank looked up, hesitated, and shook his head: "One infers from what one hears."
"Infers what?"
"The truth, I suppose," replied Plank simply.
"And what," insisted Siward, "have you inferred that you believe to be the truth? Don"t parry, Plank; it isn"t easy for me, and I--I never before spoke this way to any man.
It is likely I should have spoken to my mother about it.
I had expected to. It may be weakness--I don"t know; but I"d like to talk a little about it to somebody. And there"s n.o.body fit to listen, except you."
"If you feel that way," said Plank slowly, "I will be very glad to listen."
"I feel that way. I"ve been through--some things; I"ve been pretty sick, Plank. It tires a man out; a man"s head and shoulders get tired. Oh, I don"t mean the usual reaction from self-contempt, disgust--the dreadful, aching sadness of it all which lasts even while desire, stunned for the moment, wakens into craving. I don"t mean that. It is something else--a deathly, mental solitude that terrifies. I tell you, no man except a man smitten by my malady knows what solitude can be!
There! I didn"t mean to be theatrical; I had no intention of--"
"Go on," cut in Plank heavily.
"Go on!
Yes, I want to. You know what a pillow is to a tired man"s shoulders. I want to use your sane intelligence to rest on a moment.
It"s my brain that"s tired, Plank."
Although everybody had cynically used Plank, n.o.body had ever before found him a necessity.
"Go on," he said unsteadily. "If I can be of use to you, Siward, in G.o.d"s name let me be, for I have never been necessary to anybody in all my life."
Siward rested his head on one clinched hand: "How much chance do you think I have?" he asked wearily.
"Chance to get well?"
"Yes."
Plank considered for a moment, then: "You are not trying, Siward."
"I have been trying since--since March."
"Since March?"
"Yes."
Plank looked at him curiously: "What happened in March?"
"Had I better tell you?"
"You know better than I."
Siward, cheek crushed against his fist, his elbow on the desk, gazed at him steadily:
"In March," he said, "Miss Landis spoke to me. I"ve made a better fight since."
Plank"s serious face darkened. "Is she the only anchor you have?"
"Plank, I am not even sure of her. I have made a better fight since then; that is all I dare say. I know what men think about a man like me; I knew they demand character, pride, self-denial. But, Plank, I am driving faster and faster toward the breakers, and these anchors are dragging. For it is not, in my case, the physical failure to obey the will; it is the will itself that has been attacked from the first.
That is the horror of it. And what is there behind the will-power to strengthen it? Only the source of will-power--the mind. It is the mind that cannot help me. What am I to do?"
"There is a spiritual strength," said Plank timidly.
"I have never dreamed of denying it," said Siward. "I have tried to find it through the accepted sources--accepted by me, too. G.o.d has not helped me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort," he added hastily. "I don"t for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant of the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one have failed to hold me."
"You mean--Miss Landis?"
"Yes. It may be weakness; it may be to my shame that the cables of pride and self-respect, even the spiritual respect for the Highest, cannot hold me when this one anchor holds. All I know is that it holds--so far.
It held me at Shotover; it holds me again, now. And the rocks were close abeam, Plank--very close--when she spoke to me over the wires, through the rain, that dark day in March."
He moistened his lips feverishly.
"She said that I might see her. I have waited a long time. I have taken my fighting chance again and I"ve won out, so far."
He looked up at Plank, curiously embarra.s.sed:
"Your body is normal; your intelligence wholesome, balanced, sane; and I want to ask you if you think that perhaps, without understanding how, I have found in her, or through her, in some way, the spiritual source that I think might help me to help myself?"
And, as Plank made no reply:
"Or am I talking sentimental cant? Don"t answer, if you think that.
I can"t trust my own mind any more, anyway; and," with an ugly laugh, "I"ll know it all some day--the sooner the better!"
"Don"t say that!" growled Plank. "You were sane a moment ago."
Siward looked up sharply, but the other silenced him with a gesture.
"Wait! You asked me a perfectly sane question--so wholesome, so normal, that I"m trying to frame an answer worthy of it! I intimated that after the physical, the mental, the ethical phenomena, there remained always the spiritual instinct. Like a wireless current, if a man can establish communication it is well for him, whatever the method. You a.s.sented, I think."