The Night Horseman | Page 7

emotions in words. He was
only conscious of a sense of awe and the necessity of silence.
A strange feeling for the doctor! He came from the region of the mind
where that which is not spoken does not exist, and now this girl was
carrying him swiftly away from hypotheses, doubts, and polysyllabic
speech into the world--of what? The spirit? The doctor did not know.
He only felt that he was about to step into the unknown, and it held for
him the fascination of the suspended action of a statue. Let it not be
thought that he calmly accepted the sheer necessity for silence. He
fought against it, but no words came.
It was evening: the rolling hills about them were already dark; only the
heads of the mountains took the day; and now they paused at the top of
a rise and the girl pointed across the hollow. "There we are," she said. It
was a tall clump of trees through which broke the outlines of a
two-storied house larger than any the doctor had seen in the
mountain-desert; and outside the trees lay long sheds, a great barn, and
a wide-spread wilderness of corrals. It struck the doctor with its
apparently limitless capacity for housing man and beast. Coming in
contrast with the rock-strewn desolation of the plains, this was a great
establishment; the doctor had ridden out with a waif of the desert and
she had turned into a princess at a stroke. Then, for the first time since
they left Elkhead, he remembered with a start that he was to care for a
sick man in that house.
"You were to tell me," he said, "something about the sickness of your

father--the background behind his condition. But we've both forgotten
about it."
"I have been thinking how I could describe it, every moment of the
ride," she answered. Then, as the gloom fell more thickly around them
every moment, she swerved her horse over to the mare, as if it were
necessary that she read the face of the doctor while she spoke.
"Six months ago," she said, "my father was robust and active in spite of
his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a decline.
It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were that I should
not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every day something
of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour to hour, as
slowly as the hour hand of a clock. You can't notice the change, but
every twelve hours the hand makes a complete revolution. It's as if his
blood were evaporating and nothing we can do will supply him with
fresh strength."
"Is this attended by irritability?"
"He is perfectly calm and seems to have no care for what becomes of
him."
"Has he lost interest in the things which formerly attracted and
occupied him?"
"Yes, he minds nothing now. He has no care for the condition of the
cattle, or for profit or loss in the sales. He has simply stepped out of
every employment."
"Ah, a gradual diminution of the faculties of attention."
"In a way, yes. But also he is more alive than he has ever been. He
seems to hear with uncanny distinctness, for instance."
The doctor frowned.
"I was inclined to attribute his decline to the operation of old age," he

remarked, "but this is unusual. This--er--inner acuteness is
accompanied by no particular interest in any one thing?".
As she did not reply for the moment he was about to accept the silence
for acquiescence, but then through the dimness he was arrested by the
lustre of her eyes, fixed, apparently, far beyond him.
"One thing," she said at length. "Yes, there is one thing in which he
retains an interest."
The doctor nodded brightly.
"Good!" he said. "And that--?"
The silence fell again, but this time he was more roused and he fixed
his eyes keenly upon her through the gloom. She was deeply troubled;
one hand gripped the horn of her saddle strongly; her lips had parted;
she was like one who endures inescapable pain. He could not tell
whether it was the slight breeze which disturbed her blouse or the rapid
panting of her breath.
"Of that," she said, "it is hard to speak--it is useless to speak!"
"Surely not!" protested the doctor. "The cause, my dear madame,
though perhaps apparently remote from the immediate issue, is of the
utmost significance in diagnosis."
She broke in rapidly: "This is all I can tell you: he is waiting for
something which will never come. He has missed something from his
life which will never come back into it. Then why should we discuss
what it is