The Lifted Bandage | Page 5

force of the spirit like the force of the lungs fighting for breath--and it is a prayer.
"God, God, God!" the broken voice repeated, and sobs cut the words. And again. Over and over, and again the sobbing broke it.
As suddenly as if a knife had stopped the life inside the body, all sound stopped. A movement shook the man as he lay face down, arms stretched. Then for a minute, two minutes, he was quiet, with a quiet that meant muscles stretched, nerves alert. Slowly, slowly the tightened muscles of the arms pushed the shoulders backward and upward; the head lifted; the face turned outward, and if an observer had been there he might have seen by the glow of the firelight that the features wet, distorted, wore, more than all at this moment, a look of amazement. Slowly, slowly, moving as if afraid to disturb something--a dream--a presence--the man sat erect as he had been sitting before, only that the rigidity was in some way gone. He sat alert, his eyes wide, filled with astonishment, gazing before him eagerly--a look different from the dull stare of an hour ago by the difference between hope and despair. His hands caught at the stuff of the divan on either side and clutched it.
All the time the look of his face changed; all the time, not at once, but by fast, startling degrees, the gray misery which had bound eyes and mouth and brow in iron dropped as if a cover were being torn off and a light set free. Amazement, doubting, incredulous came first, and with that eagerness, trembling and afraid. And then hope--and then the fear to hope. And hunger. He bent forward, his eyes peered into the quiet emptiness, his fingers gripped the cloth as if to anchor him to a wonder, to an unbelievable something; his body leaned--to something--and his face now was the face of a starved man, of a man dying from thirst, who sees food, water, salvation.
And his face changed; a quality incredible was coming into it--joy. He was transformed. Lines softened by magic; color came, and light in the eyes; the first unbelief, the amazement, shifted surely, swiftly, and in a flash the whole man shone, shook with rapture. He threw out before him his arms, reaching, clasping, and from his radiant look the arms might have held all happiness.
A minute he stayed so with his hands stretched out, with face glowing, then slowly, his eyes straining as if perhaps they followed a vision which faded from them--slowly his arms fell and the expectancy went from his look. Yet not the light, not the joy. His body quivered; his breath came unevenly, as of one just gone through a crisis; every sense seemed still alive to catch a faintest note of something exquisite which vanished; and with that the spell, rapidly as it had come, was gone. And the man sat there quiet, as he had sat an hour before, and the face which had been leaden was brilliant. He stirred and glanced about the room as if trying to adjust himself, and his eyes smiled as they rested on the familiar objects, as if for love of them, for pleasure in them. One might have said that this man had been given back at a blow youth and happiness. Movement seemed beyond him yet--he was yet dazed with the newness of a marvel--but he turned his head and saw the fire and at that put out his hand to it as if to a friend.
The electric bell burred softly again through the house, and the man heard it, and his eyes rested inquiringly on the door of the library. In a moment another man stood there, of his own age, iron-gray, strong-featured.
"Dick told me I might come," he said. "Shall I trouble you? May I stay with you awhile?"
The judge put out his hand friendlily, a little vaguely, much as he had put it out to the fire. "Surely," he said, and the newcomer was all at once aware of his look. He started.
"You're not well," he said. "You must take something--whiskey--Miller----"
The butler moved in the room making lights here and there, and he came quickly.
"No," the judge said. "I don't want anything--I don't need anything. It's not as you think. I'll tell you about it."
Miller was gone; Dick's father waited, his gaze fixed on the judge's face anxiously, and for moments no word was spoken. The judge gazed into the fire with the rapt, smiling look which had so startled his brother-in-law. At length:
"I don't know how to tell you," he said. "There seem no words. Something has happened, yet it's difficult to explain."
"Something happened?" the other repeated, bewildered but guarded. "I don't understand. Has some one been here? Is it about--the