THE MAIMED
A chilly wind swept across the large veranda. He covered his mouth with his left hand and coughed. It was the kind of cough we are accustomed to hear.
I remarked as he leaned over the blaustrade. "Isn't it pretty chilly here?" He drew back his stooping shoulders and with a laugh said, "Oh, I wouldn't miss this for the world!" and he breathed in greedily; his face was pale, his ears flamed.
He was practically a stranger at the hotel, and still carried that condescending air every newcomer assumed toward the rest of us, who were supposed to be farther gone. This morning he was specially loquacious and I, having had a bad spell of it for some days, was disposed to let him speak without interruption, content to sit there, wrapped in blankets, listening to his voice or dozing or saying a word now and then. He turned to me and, raising his hands, said:
“This is great; this air! I can see from here way down the valley there, far across, beyond, where my people wait for me. It’s comfortable to know that no matter where you are, no matter what happens to you, there is some figure, some loving being, who stands near your home, ever ready to welcome you back. Since I began the round of these hopeless hospitals of hope, I have been bottled up, just jammed with things, and no one to speak them out to, for I dare not write to them. There’s no reason for my telling you this, I know, but I feel the impulse to talk; perhaps it’s because I smell the Spring coming on the breeze; do you?”
I mumbled that I saw nothing in the day to suggest Spring. The Sun was breaking through the clouds, the valley below was gray, and a swaying heaviness moved over the borders of the sky. The breeze chilled me.
"In my country," he continued, "there was nothing like this, the great gray clouds, sentinels before the undreamt of mysteries. There were no mountains flung
out like chains, as you have here. It was just flat country and long stretches of it."
—Abruptly—"Life is a misfit, more often than not, but many of us manage after a while to fit into things. Every thing seems to say, Have patience and wait. My boyhood was outwardly very commonplace. But to me it now seems, when I think of it, and I do often, one of those joyous existences which misled Wordsworth into thinking that our lives are spent in continually blotting out the trailing clouds of the Glory of Childhood. See how much of it is true. From boyhood to manhood, what tragic pain bridges it. After the turbulence of boyhood I never caught a glimpse of those massive clouds that stand by like maternal comforters. Then I saw Life torn with doubts, oppressed with vague, horrible unrest, and I longed and ached for the days to pass. I knew that that could not continue, that Life was not and could not be so terrible forever...."
He was now seated, with his hands pressed to his temples, looking up to me ever and again, as if willing to be persuaded to proceed. The poor boy was so forlorn, with all his enjoyment of the scenery, that I encouraged him as well as I knew how. My friends in the world whence I had been exiled, will remember how well that might have been.
"—Have you ever seen a real Sunrise in the early Spring?"
—Have I, my poor boy? Have I not sung of it and does not the World sing my songs while I, huddled in blankets, listen to your poor, poor story?
"It's still raw here, though I do smell the Spring. I shall not see that sort of Sunrise here, even when Spring does come .... The sky is heavy with grayish clouds and you think the day will be cloudy or it may rain slightly. Then you hear the chattering of sparrows—but it means nothing—a melodious note from the robins and a hum spreading through the air and just like magic you feel things blossoming