Life at High Tide | Page 5

voices better
than I used to be able to tell faces. You are Jim Graham's wife? Yes;
yes, Lizzie Graham. Have you heard about me, Lizzie? I am not going
to finish my machine. I am to be sent to the Farm."
"Yes, I heard," she said.
They were in the big, bare office of the hotel. The August sunshine lay
dim upon the dingy window-panes; the walls, stained by years of
smoke and grime, were hidden by yellowing advertisements of reapers
and horse liniments; in the centre was a dirty iron stove. A poor, gaunt
room, but a haven to Nathaniel May, awaiting the end of hope.
"I heard," Lizzie Graham said; she leaned forward and stroked his hand.
"But maybe you can finish it at the Farm, Nathaniel?"
"No," he said, sadly; "no; I know what it's like at the Farm. There is no
room there for anything but bodies. No time for anything but Death."
"How long would it take you to put it together?" she asked; and Dyer,
who was lounging across his counter, shook his head at her, warningly.
"There ain't nothin' to it, Mrs. Graham," he said, under his breath;
"he's--" He tapped his forehead significantly.
"Oh, man!" Nathaniel cried out, passionately, "you don't know what
you say! Are the souls of the departed 'nothing'? I have it in my
hand--right here in my hand, Lizzie Graham--to give the world the gift
of sight. And they won't give me a crust of bread and a roof over my
head till I can offer it to them!"
"Couldn't somebody put it together for you?" she asked, the tears in her
eyes. "I would try, Nathaniel;--you could explain it to me; I could come
and see you every day, and you could tell me."
His face brightened into a smile. "No, kind woman. Only I can do it. I
can't see very clearly, but there is a glimmer of light, enough to get it
together. But it would take at least two months; at least two months.
The doctor said the light would last, perhaps, three months. Then I shall
be blind. But if I could give eyes to the blind world before I go into the
dark, what matter? What matter, I say?" he cried, brokenly.
Lizzie was silent. Dyer shook his head, and tapped his forehead again;
then he lounged out from behind his counter, and settled himself in one
of the armchairs outside the office door.
Nathaniel dropped his head upon his breast, and sunk back into his
dreams. The office was very still, except for two bluebottle flies butting

against the ceiling and buzzing up and down the window-panes. A hot
wind wandered in and flapped a mowing-machine poster on the wall;
then dropped, and the room was still again, except that leaf shadows
moved across the square of sunshine on the bare boards by the open
door. When Lizzie got up to go, he did not hear her kind good-by until
she repeated it, touching his shoulder with her friendly hand. Then he
said, hastily, with a faint frown: "Good-by. Good-by." And sank again
into his daze of disappointment.
Lizzie wiped her eyes furtively before she went out upon the hotel
porch; there Dyer, balancing comfortably on two legs of his chair,
detained her with drawling gossip until Hiram Wells came up, and,
lounging against a zinc-sheathed bar between two hitching-posts, added
his opinion upon Nathaniel May's affairs.
"Well, Lizzie, seen any ghosts?" he began.
"I seen somebody that'll be a ghost pretty soon if you send him off to
the Farm," Lizzie said, sharply.
"Well," Hiram said, "I don't see what's to be done--'less some nice,
likely woman comes along and marries him."
Dyer snickered. Lizzie turned very red, and started home down the
elm-shaded street. When she reached her little gray house under its big
tree, she went first into the cow-barn--a crumbling lean-to with a
sagging roof--to see if a sick dog which had found shelter there was
comfortable. It seemed to Lizzie that his bleared eyes should be washed;
and she did this before she went through her kitchen into a shed-room
where she slept. There she sat down in hurried and frowning
preoccupation, resting her elbows on her knees and staring blankly at
the braided mat on the floor. As she sat there her face reddened; and
once she laughed, nervously. "An' me 'most fifty!" she said to herself....
The next morning she went to see Nathaniel again.
He was up-stairs in a little hot room under the sloping eaves. He was
bending over, straining his poor eyes close to some small wheels and
bands and reflectors arranged on a shaky table. He welcomed her
eagerly, and with all the excitement of conviction plunged at once into