One Way of Love (Lee)/Chapter 18
XVIII.
The day had been unusually warm in the office, but otherwise no different from other days.
When Derring came home at night he threw himself on the bed to rest before dressing for dinner. It had become a common thing for him to stop to rest now and then during the day—how common, even he himself did not realize. He was less introspective than formerly. He worked instead of speculating or dreaming. When he found himself too tired to work he rested for a little, as he was doing now.
It had taken him long to learn the art of resting. But he had at last gained the power to turn aside at any moment from the rush of life and yield himself, body and mind, to a quiet restfulness.
As he lay in the half-darkened room, his eyes closed, his breath coming and going lightly between parted lips, it was easy to see that the past ten years had not all been as peaceful as this. The thick hair, pushed carelessly back, was streaked with gray. The exuberant vitality of the face and frame had given place to a worn look of passive strength. Ten years should not so change a face were it not that ten years, as men count time, are sometimes a cycle.
Derring was not thinking of the past, however, nor of himself. He was resting, gaining strength for the next work that lay before him.
At last he rose and began to move about the room, making ready for dinner. Suddenly he stopped, bewildered, putting his hand to his head. What had happened? A change too subtle to be put in words had come over him while he rested. He looked at his face in the mirror, half expecting to see some sign. It was not there. But deep in his heart he felt it throbbing—thrilling. Life was, after all, worth living! Nay, more, it was a wonderful, beautiful thing. The feeling did not take words. It was too pervasive, too complete, for that. No mere thought could have carried such weight of conviction. It was too simple for a chain of reasoning. Yet it carried belief. He had reasoned carefully and logically to the opposite conclusion. How was it?—Life could not be worth living. Since there is no permanent happiness, existence has no reason for being rather than for not being, and no certainty of an outcome that shall justify suffering. He smiled at his careful logic, swept away by the force of pure conviction—Life was worth living!
It lay before him simple as daylight, and as clear. His mind ran ahead. He must find the work he could do well, and do it. Herein lay happiness. Then let him help others to find their place. He would have joy of heart and the purpose that makes life reasonable. It mattered little about the immortality of the soul. Three-score years and ten was immortality. The structure of the universe betrayed a master plan. To live in unison with this plan, to aid in its execution—if only for a few years—was enough.
He turned to the window and, drawing up the shade, looked across the broken lines of chimney-pots and roofs to the western sky. His heart leaped to meet it. Beauty had come back to the earth. He stood drinking it in with the eagerness of a traveller who sees home at last. He had not known how his artist nature had hungered for it through the years. The tears came into his eyes as he looked. A tangle of chimneys and gables against a twilight sky, but full of subtle beauty. Would it stay with him?—Where had it been? There in the outer world—but hidden from him because he was unworthy? Or in his own soul languishing with its sickness? Then in a moment it came to him—it was not in the world, nor in his soul. It was the soul itself coming to consciousness, recognizing itself, beholding its own features, as in a glass—existence reaching its highest form in the consciousness of the soul. He stood awed before it. It seemed to stretch away into space, wonderful, lofty, but close about him.
He went down to dinner with an eager interest. Everything had become transformed. Men and women were no longer machines wound up to run through a definite term of pain, and calling on his sympathy and help. They were divine—capable of the highest happiness. He felt like leaping, exulting, crying aloud in fulness of joy at the beauty of life and human kinship.
“Derring was more like himself to-night than he has been for years,” remarked an elderly man to his companion as Derring passed from the room where they sat smoking after dinner.
The speaker was a quiet, thoughtful man with observant gray eyes. He was the only one left of those who had been in the house ten years before. “He always used to be like that,” he went on, “full of life and a kind of magnetism. He drew you.”
Derring passed out of the house and down the street, walking with swift, eager feet. He felt cords of sympathy drawing him to those he met. He walked until late at night, seeking out the busiest streets and pressing in close among those who thronged them. He was intoxicated with humanity and the joy of life. He must come close to it. He was thrilling with a sense of exultation—all this living, surging crowd, capable of perfect development of the divinest joy!
When he returned to his room, he did not retire immediately. There were letters that must be written before he slept. He had thought, as he walked, of two or three young men whom a word from him might help to better positions. He must not miss his opportunity. Life was short. He longed to bring happiness to the world.
He fell asleep, planning for the coming day. It seemed strange to look forward to the morrow with anything except a sense of dull endurance.
When he wakened he could not, for a moment, account for the feeling that wakened with him. Like a child, half awake, he groped in memory to recall the gift that yesterday made him so happy. Then it came to him. It had not failed him. It was not a passing mood. He was awake, alive, in a world full of beauty and love.