Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 227, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1916 — The Blind Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Blind Man

BY H. M. EGBERT

(Copyright, 1916. by W. G. Chapman.)

The lonely blind man came slowly along the passage of his big house, thumping his cane. At the door of the parlor he stopped, hearing voices. The voices ceased. A charming woman came forward and gave the blind man her arm. “Are you coming in to tea, dear?” she asked. Charles Hawley, the blind man, gripped her arm tightly. “Who is 'with you?” he asked. “Only Lionel,” answered his wife. “I don’t think —yes. I’ll come in and Bee Lionel,”, said the blind man. Lionel Graves had been Hawley’s best man at his wedding el gift years before. Both were prosperous architects, members of the same firm. Then Hawley had suddenly gone blind. The attack came on him without any warning as he sat as his desk one day. By the time he reached home he lived in a world of darkness. There was no organic trouble that the specialists could discover. His light had simply gone out. They pronounced it to be atrophy of the optic nerves,zand incurable. Charles Hawley gave up his work and withdrew into the seclusion of his home. He had plenty of money, he had a charming wife, but the light was gone out of his life as well as out of his eyes. His little daughter, their only child* had died the year before. Life now seemed utterly purposeless. At first he thought that he would break down under the strain. He grew nervous nad despondent. He

hired a man to read to him and accompany him abroad, and then he blamed Letty for allowing the care of him to fall into the hands of the attendant. In his increasing suspicion believed that his wife found him a Inuisance. He suspected her of caring (for Lionel, his best friend. As the blind man’s eyes closed, his ears opened. He heard every sound in th£ house, conversations on other Hights; he fancied that Lionel was (constantly there unknown to him. Gradually his wife and he became estranged. Letty was too proud to question him and withdrew into herself also. So matters went on for several years. They hardly met now, and Letty’s rare approaches were received by Charles with coldness. n. “I believe you can be cured.” Doctor Abergavenny, the specialist, put down the flash mirror and spoke. Hawley looked at him with his blind eyes. “The, trouble is,” said Abergavenny, “the optic nerve has ceased to function. But it is intact. There is no atrophy. I thinrf the whole question resolves itself into a case of stimulating it. A few electrical treatments should restore the tone. Then, if your sight returns, it will return completely. I had such a case last month and the treatment proved a success.” “When shall I come to you for treatment?” inquired Hawley. • “I can come to your house.” “No, I prefer to come to you,” said Hawley. “Then let us begin right away,” the doctor answered. After an hour’s treatment the blind man was as hopelessly blind as before. He returned daily and the treatments had no result whatever. He grew discouraged. “When the sight returns it will come like a flash,” said the specialist. “I can see an improvement. You .may suddenly see —” “Or I may never see?” The oculist admitted that. “There Is no use continuing the applications,” he said. “If the sight does not come hack you might try another course in six months’ time. But, frankly, I don’t understand why your sight has not come batk of its own accord.” Hawley knew that the specialist

tacitly admitted failure. He paid him five hundred dollars and went home. And now he began to pray for the gift of sight. He wanted to look for one moment upon his wife’s face when she was with Lionel Graves. For that privilege he felt that he would give ten years of his life. Either he and bitterly wronged her or he was deeply wronged. Lionel continued to be their visitor. He and Letty were alone a good deal. Hawley did not know how much. Sometimes he fancied that he passed a waiting figure in the hall, or on the stairs. He read guilt into his wife’s voice, he wondered where she went when she was out of the house. He grew more and more Irritable, and at last dismissed his attendant, declining his wife’s offers of assistance. He was completely cut off from the world. He read nothing. He lived like a hermit in an upper room of his big house. ’ in. Charles Hawley saw! He awoke one morning to discover that vision had come back to him completely. He sprang out of bed and ran to the mirror. He looked with amazement upon the gaunt, haggard man, with lined face and graying hairs who stared at him out of the mirror. His first impulse of joy was to tell his wife. His second was to restrain that motive. He felt that at last his chance had come. He made his way downstairs, tapping with his cane as usual. He saw his wife for the first time in years. He noticed that she, too, seemed to have aged. “Dear, 1 1 am thinking of going out for the afternoon,” she said to him. He nodded as if he did not see her, though his eyes scanned her face. “I have some shopping that must be done,” she continued. “Is there anything I can do for you?” “Nothing,” he answered. From his window upstairs he watched her leave the house after luncheon. As soon as she was in the street he slipped on his overcoat and put on his hat. He followed her. Ashamed and yet determined to probe her acts, he dogged her footsteps on the opposite side of the street. She hired a taxicab and he took another, ordering it to drive in pursuit. As he had suspected, it stopped at Graves’ house. Letty went in. Charles Hawley waited in the door of a big apartment house opposite. He never took his eyes from the door till Letty and Graves came out. They walked for blocks, and always the man who had been blind followed them. They were approaching a suburban district and it was beginning to grow cloudy. Hawley wondered why they still walked on together. They turned into a little yard that led toward a church. On one side was the building, on the other the graveyard, It was an old parish church which had stood there for nearly a hundred years—since the days when the metropolis was only a distant blur on the skyline, and this an independent village. Hawley remembered what was familiar about this church. He had been married here. And —their child had been buried here. It was only a few years before, but the time that had passed since then seemed infinite. They were approaching the grave of the child. Hawley clenched his fists. Anywhere but there, he thought. If they had gone anywhere but there. They were so absorbed in their conversation that they did not hear him approaching; nor might they have recognized him in the shabby, muffled man who gilded into the doorwSy behind them. Hawley’s sharp ears could now hear their conversation. “She was all that united us,” Letty was saying. “It was good of you to bring me here. I appreciate your confidence and understand how much it means to you,” said Lionel. “If only Charles could understand what he means to me. I have tried so hard to regain his love, and it means nothing at all to him. While our little girl lived he cared for me; but since she died and he has become blind he cares for no one. And I would give my whole heart to comfort him.” / “Yes,” said Lionel. “I don’t know what can be done—“except to wait and hope.” “I ought not to have told you this,” went on Letty. “I should never have told anyone but you, and that only because you are his only friend.” “Was,” said the other. “I have felt that I hold that friendship no longer.” Letty turned her eyes on him; and suddenly Hawley, with bursting heart, realized that neither, of them understood the suspfclons that had been in his heart. He had been blind —blind, not only with his physical but with his moral faculties. He stepped out from the porch. They turned and stood amazed at his appearance.' Charles drew his wife to his heart.

Looked With Amazement Upon the Gaunt, Haggard Man.