The Choir Invisible [34]
gazing absently into the black east.
Within he faced a yet blacker void--the ruined hopes on which the sun would never rise again.
It was the end of everything between him and Amy: that was his one thought. It did not occur to him even to reflect whether he had been right or wrong, rude or gentle: it was the end: nothing else appeared worth considering.
Life to him meant a simple straightforward game played with a few well-known principles. It must be as open as a chess-board: each player should see every move of the other: and all who chose could look on.
He was still very young.
X THE glimmer of gray dawn at last and he had never moved from his seat. A fine, drizzling rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against the walls of his cabin. In the stillness he could hear the big trees shedding their drops from leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took their last leap into little pools below. With the chilliness which misery brings he got up at last and wrapped his weather-coat about him. If it were only day when he could go to his work and try to forget! Restless, sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, he started out to walk. As he passed his school-house he noticed that the door of it, always fastened by a simple latch, now stood open; and he went over to see if everything inside were in order. All his life, when any trouble had come upon him, he had quickly returned to his nearest post of duty like a soldier; and once in the school-room now, he threw himself down in his chair with the sudden feeling that here in his familiar work he must still find his home--the home of his mind and his affections--as so long in the past. The mere aspect of the poor bare place had never been so kind. The very walls appeared to open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves around him with friendly strength and understanding.
He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing blankly through the doorway at the gray light and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an object came into the field of his vision. At the first glimpse he thought it a dog--long, lean, skulking, prowling, tawny--on the scent of his tracks. Then the mist passed over it. When he beheld it again it had approached nearer and was creeping rapidly toward the door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by its motions--its litheness, suppleness, grace, stealth, exquisite caution. Never before had he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A second time the fog closed over it, and then, advancing right out of the cloud with more swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling as lightly as flakes of snow, the weight of its huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached the hickory block, which formed the doorstep; it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters in the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its long tail waving; and then it stole just over the threshold and crouched, its head pressed down until its long, whitish throat lay on the floor; its short, jagged ears set forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing with steady green fire--as still as death. And then with his blood become as ice in his veins from horror and all the strength gone out of him in a deathlike faintness, the school- master realized that he was face to face unarmed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and come for its kill.
This dreaded animal, the panther or painter of the backwoodsman, which has for its kindred the royal tiger and the fatal leopard of the Old World, the beautiful ocelot and splendid unconquerable jaguar of the New, is now rarely found in the Atlantic States or the fastnesses of the Alleghanies. It too has crossed the Mississippi and is probably now best known as the savage puma of more southern zones. But a hundred years ago it abounded throughout the Western wilderness, making its deeper dens in the caverns of mountain rocks, its lair in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and brakes of cane, or
Within he faced a yet blacker void--the ruined hopes on which the sun would never rise again.
It was the end of everything between him and Amy: that was his one thought. It did not occur to him even to reflect whether he had been right or wrong, rude or gentle: it was the end: nothing else appeared worth considering.
Life to him meant a simple straightforward game played with a few well-known principles. It must be as open as a chess-board: each player should see every move of the other: and all who chose could look on.
He was still very young.
X THE glimmer of gray dawn at last and he had never moved from his seat. A fine, drizzling rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against the walls of his cabin. In the stillness he could hear the big trees shedding their drops from leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took their last leap into little pools below. With the chilliness which misery brings he got up at last and wrapped his weather-coat about him. If it were only day when he could go to his work and try to forget! Restless, sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, he started out to walk. As he passed his school-house he noticed that the door of it, always fastened by a simple latch, now stood open; and he went over to see if everything inside were in order. All his life, when any trouble had come upon him, he had quickly returned to his nearest post of duty like a soldier; and once in the school-room now, he threw himself down in his chair with the sudden feeling that here in his familiar work he must still find his home--the home of his mind and his affections--as so long in the past. The mere aspect of the poor bare place had never been so kind. The very walls appeared to open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves around him with friendly strength and understanding.
He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing blankly through the doorway at the gray light and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an object came into the field of his vision. At the first glimpse he thought it a dog--long, lean, skulking, prowling, tawny--on the scent of his tracks. Then the mist passed over it. When he beheld it again it had approached nearer and was creeping rapidly toward the door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by its motions--its litheness, suppleness, grace, stealth, exquisite caution. Never before had he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A second time the fog closed over it, and then, advancing right out of the cloud with more swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling as lightly as flakes of snow, the weight of its huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached the hickory block, which formed the doorstep; it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters in the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its long tail waving; and then it stole just over the threshold and crouched, its head pressed down until its long, whitish throat lay on the floor; its short, jagged ears set forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing with steady green fire--as still as death. And then with his blood become as ice in his veins from horror and all the strength gone out of him in a deathlike faintness, the school- master realized that he was face to face unarmed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and come for its kill.
This dreaded animal, the panther or painter of the backwoodsman, which has for its kindred the royal tiger and the fatal leopard of the Old World, the beautiful ocelot and splendid unconquerable jaguar of the New, is now rarely found in the Atlantic States or the fastnesses of the Alleghanies. It too has crossed the Mississippi and is probably now best known as the savage puma of more southern zones. But a hundred years ago it abounded throughout the Western wilderness, making its deeper dens in the caverns of mountain rocks, its lair in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and brakes of cane, or