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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lifted Bandage, by Mary Raymond Shipman
+Andrews
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lifted Bandage
+
+
+Author: Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2005  [eBook #15894]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED BANDAGE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously made available
+by the Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See
+      http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=
+      kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-165-30098685&view=toc
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFTED BANDAGE
+
+by
+
+MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
+
+Author of "The Perfect Tribute," etc.
+
+New York
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The man let himself into his front door and, staggering lightly, like a
+drunken man, as he closed it, walked to the hall table, and mechanically
+laid down his hat, but still wearing his overcoat turned and went into
+his library, and dropped on the edge of a divan and stared out through
+the leaded panes of glass across the room facing him. The grayish skin
+of his face seemed to fall in diagonal furrows, from the eyes, from the
+nose, from the mouth. He sat, still to his finger-tips, staring.
+
+He was sitting so when a servant slipped in and stood motionless a
+minute, and went to the wide window where the west light glared through
+leafless branches outside, and drew the shades lower, and went to the
+fireplace and touched a match. Wood caught and crackled and a cheerful
+orange flame flew noisily up the chimney, but the man sitting on the
+divan did not notice. The butler waited a moment, watching, hesitating,
+and then:
+
+"Have you had lunch, sir?" he asked in a tentative, gentle voice.
+
+The staring eyes moved with an effort and rested on the servant's face.
+"Lunch?" he repeated, apparently trying to focus on the meaning of the
+word. "Lunch? I don't know, Miller. But don't bring anything."
+
+With a great anxiety in his face Miller regarded his master. "Would you
+let me take your overcoat, Judge?--you'll be too warm," he said.
+
+He spoke in a suppressed tone as if waiting for, fearing something, as
+if longing to show sympathy, and the man stood and let himself be cared
+for, and then sat down again in the same unrestful, fixed attitude,
+gazing out again through the glittering panes into the stormy, tawny
+west sky. Miller came back and stood quiet, patient; in a few minutes
+the man seemed to become aware of him.
+
+"I forgot, Miller. You'll want to know," he said in a tone which went to
+show an old bond between the two. "You'll be sorry to hear, Miller," he
+said--and the dull eyes moved difficultly to the anxious ones, and his
+voice was uninflected--"you'll be sorry to know that the coroner's jury
+decided that Master Jack was a murderer."
+
+The word came more horribly because of an air of detachment from the
+man's mind. It was like a soulless, evil mechanism, running unguided.
+Miller caught at a chair.
+
+"I don't believe it, sir," he gasped. "No lawyer shall make me. I've
+known him since he was ten, Judge, and they're mistaken. It's not any
+mere lawyers can make me believe that awful thing, sir, of our Master
+Jack." The servant was shaking from head to foot with intense rejection,
+and the man put up his hand as if to ward off his emotion.
+
+"I wish I could agree with you," he said quietly, and then added, "Thank
+you, Miller." And the old butler, walking as if struck with a sickness,
+was gone.
+
+The man sat on the edge of the divan staring out of the window, minute
+after minute; the November wind tossed the clean, black lines of the
+branches backward and forward against the copper sky, as if a giant hand
+moved a fan of sea-weed before a fire. The man sat still and stared. The
+sky dulled; the delicate, wild branches melted together; the diamond
+lines in the window blurred; yet, unmoved, unseeing, the eyes stared
+through them.
+
+The burr of an electric bell sounded; some one came in at the front door
+and came to the door of the library, but the fixed figure did not stir.
+The newcomer stood silent a minute, two minutes; a young man in clerical
+dress, boyish, with gray, serious eyes. At length he spoke.
+
+"May I come in? It's Dick."
+
+The man's head turned slowly and his look rested inquiringly on his
+nephew. It was a minute before he said, as if recognizing him, "Dick.
+Yes." And set himself as before to the persistent gazing through the
+window.
+
+"I lost you at the court-house," the younger man said. "I didn't mean to
+let you come home alone."
+
+"Thank you, Dick." It seemed as if neither joy nor sorrow would find a
+way into the quiet voice again.
+
+The wind roared; the boughs rustled against the glass; the fire, soberly
+settled to work, steamed and crackled; the clock ticked indifferently;
+there was no other sound in the room; the two men were silent, the one
+staring always before him, the other sitting with a hand on the older
+man's hand, waiting. Minutes they sat so, and the wintry sky outside
+darkened and lay sullenly in bands of gray and orange against the
+windows; the light of the logs was stronger than the daylight; it
+flickered carelessly across the ashiness of the emotionless face. The
+young man, watching the face, bent forward and gripped his other hand on
+the unresponsive one in his clasp.
+
+"Uncle," he asked, "will it make things worse if I talk to you?"
+
+"No, Dick."
+
+Nothing made a difference, it seemed. Silence or words must simply fall
+without effect on the rock bottom of despair. The young man halted, as
+if dismayed, before this overpowering inertia of hopelessness; he drew a
+quick breath.
+
+"A coroner's jury isn't infallible. I don't believe it of Jack--a lot of
+people don't believe it," he said.
+
+The older man looked at him heavily. "You'd say that. Jack's friends
+will. I've been trained to weigh evidence--I must believe it."
+
+"Listen," the young man urged. "Don't shut down the gates like that. I'm
+not a lawyer, but I've been trained to think, too, and I believe you're
+not thinking squarely. There's other evidence that counts besides this.
+There's Jack--his personality."
+
+"It has been taken into consideration."
+
+"It can't be taken into consideration by strangers--it needs years of
+intimacy to weigh that evidence as I can weigh it--as you--You know best
+of all," he cried out impulsively, "if you'll let yourself know, how
+impossible it was. That Jack should have bought that pistol and taken it
+to Ben Armstrong's rooms to kill him--it was impossible--impossible!"
+The clinched fist came down on the black broadcloth knee with the
+conviction of the man behind it. The words rushed like melted metal,
+hot, stinging, not to be stopped. The judge quivered as if they had
+stung through the callousness, touched a nerve. A faint color crawled
+to his cheeks; for the first time he spoke quickly, as if his thoughts
+connected with something more than gray matter.
+
+"You talk about my not allowing myself to believe in Jack. You seem
+not to realize that such a belief would--might--stand between me and
+madness. I've been trying to adjust myself to a possible scheme of
+living--getting through the years till I go into nothingness. I can't.
+All I can grasp is the feeling that a man might have if dropped from
+a balloon and forced to stay gasping in the air, with no place in it,
+nothing to hold to, no breath to draw, no earth to rest on, no end to
+hope for. There is nothing beyond."
+
+"Everything is beyond," the young man cried triumphantly. "'The end,' as
+you call it, is an end to hope for--it is the beginning. The beginning
+of more than you have ever had--with them, with the people you care
+about."
+
+The judge turned a ghastly look upon the impetuous, bright face. "If
+I believed that, I should be even now perfectly happy. I don't see how
+you Christians can ever be sorry when your friends die--it's childish;
+anybody ought to be able to wait a few years. But I don't believe it,"
+he said heavily, and went on again as if an inertia of speech were
+carrying him as an inertia of silence had held him a few minutes before.
+"When my wife died a year ago it ended my personal life, but I could
+live Jack's life. I was glad in the success and honor of it. Now the
+success--" he made a gesture. "And the honor--if I had that, only the
+honor of Jack's life left, I think I could finish the years with
+dignity. I've not been a bad man--I've done my part and lived as seemed
+right. Before I'm old the joy is wiped out and long years left. Why?
+It's not reasonable--not logical. With one thing to hold to, with Jack's
+good name, I might live. How can I, now? What can I do? A life must have
+a _raison d'être._"
+
+"Listen," the clergyman cried again. "You are not judging Jack as fairly
+as you would judge a common criminal. You know better than I how often
+juries make mistakes--why should you trust this jury to have made none?"
+
+"I didn't trust the jury. I watched as I have never before known how to
+watch a case. I felt my mind more clear and alert than common."
+
+"Alert!" he caught at the word. "But alert on the side of
+terror--abnormally clear to see what you dreaded. Because you are
+fair-minded, because it has been the habit of your life to correct at
+once any conscious prejudice in your judgment, you have swayed to the
+side of unfairness to yourself, to Jack. Uncle," he flashed out, "would
+it tear your soul to have me state the case as I see it? I might, you
+know--I might bring out something that would make it look different."
+
+Almost a smile touched the gray lines of his face. "If you wish."
+
+The young man drew himself into his chair and clasped his hands around
+his knee. "Here it is. Mr. Newbold, on the seventh floor of the Bruzon
+bachelor apartments, heard a shot at one in the morning, next his
+bedroom, in Ben Armstrong's room. He hurried into the public hall, saw
+the door wide open into Ben's apartment, went in and found Ben shot
+dead. Trying to use the telephone to call help, he found it was out of
+order. So he rushed again into the hall toward the elevator with the
+idea of getting Dr. Avery, who lived below on the second floor. The
+elevator door was open also, and a man's opera-hat lay near it on the
+floor; he saw, just in time, that the car was at the bottom of the
+shaft, almost stepping inside, in his excitement, before he noticed
+this. Then he ran down the stairs with Jack's hat in his hand, and got
+Dr. Avery, and they found Jack at the foot of the elevator shaft. It was
+known that Ben Armstrong and Jack had quarrelled the day before; it was
+known that Jack was quick-tempered; it is known that he bought that
+evening the pistol which was found on the floor by Ben, loaded, with one
+empty shell. That's the story."
+
+The steady voice stopped a moment and the young man shivered slightly;
+his look was strained. Steadily he went on.
+
+"That's the story. From that the coroner's jury have found that Jack
+killed Ben Armstrong--that he bought the pistol to kill him, and went
+to his rooms with that purpose; that in his haste to escape, he missed
+seeing that the elevator was down, as Mr. Newbold all but missed seeing
+it later, and jumped into the shaft and was killed instantly himself.
+That's what the jury get from the facts, but it seems to me they're
+begging the question. There are a hundred hypotheses that would fit
+the case of Jack's innocence--why is it reasonable to settle on the
+one that means his guilt? This is my idea. Jack and Ben Armstrong had
+been friends since boyhood and Jack, quick-tempered as he was, was
+warm-hearted and loyal. It was like him to decide suddenly to go to Ben
+and make friends. He had been to a play in the evening which had more
+or less that _motif_; he was open to such influences. It was like
+the pair of them, after the reconciliation, to set to work looking at
+Jack's new toy, the pistol. It was a brand-new sort, and the two have
+been interested always in guns--I remember how I, as a youngster, was
+impressed when Ben and Jack bought their first shot-guns together. Jack
+had got the pistol at Mellingham's that evening, you know--he was likely
+to be keen about it still, and then--it went off. There are plenty of
+other cases where a man has shot his friend by accident--why shouldn't
+poor Jack be given the benefit of the doubt? The telephone wouldn't
+work; Jack rushed out with the same idea which struck Mr. Newbold later,
+of getting Dr. Avery--and fell down the shaft.
+
+"For me there is no doubt. I never knew him to hold malice. He was
+violent sometimes, but that he could have gone about for hours with
+a pistol in his pocket and murder in his heart; that he could have
+planned Ben Armstrong's death and carried it out deliberately--it's
+a contradiction in terms. It's impossible, being Jack. You must know
+this--you know your son--you know human nature."
+
+The rapid _résumé_ was but an impassioned appeal. Its answer came
+after a minute; to the torrent of eager words, three words:
+
+"Thank you, Dick."
+
+The absolute lack of impression on the man's judgment was plain.
+
+"Ah!" The clergyman sprang to his feet and stood, his eyes blazing,
+despairing, looking down at the bent, listless figure. How could he let
+a human being suffer as this one was suffering? Quickly his thoughts
+shifted their basis. He could not affect the mind of the lawyer; might
+he reach now, perhaps, the soul of the man? He knew the difficulty,
+for before this his belief had crossed swords with the agnosticism of
+his uncle, an agnosticism shared by his father, in which he had been
+trained, from which he had broken free only five years before. He had
+faced the batteries of the two older brains at that time, and come out
+with the brightness of his new-found faith untarnished, but without, he
+remembered, scratching the armor of their profound doubt in everything.
+One could see, looking at the slender black figure, at the visionary
+gaze of the gray wide eyes, at the shape of the face, broad-browed,
+ovalled, that this man's psychic make-up must lift him like wings into
+an atmosphere outside a material, outside even an intellectual world.
+He could breathe freely only in a spiritual air, and things hard to
+believe to most human beings were, perhaps, his every-day thoughts. He
+caught a quick breath of excitement as it flashed to his brain that now,
+possibly, was coming the moment when he might justify his life, might
+help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a
+prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose
+concentration lifted the eyes below him, that brooded, stared.
+
+"I can't bear it to stand by and see you go under, when there's help
+close. You said that if you could believe that they were living, that
+you would have them again, you would be perfectly happy no matter how
+many years you must wait. They are living as sure as I am here, and as
+sure as Jack was here, and Jack's mother. They are living still. Perhaps
+they're close to you now. You've bound a bandage over your eyes, you've
+covered the vision of your spirit, so that you can't see; but that
+doesn't make nothingness of God's world. It's there--here--close,
+maybe. A more real world than this--this little thing." With a boyish
+gesture he thrust behind him the universe. "What do we know about the
+earth, except effects upon our consciousness? It's all a matter of
+inference--you know that better than I. The thing we do know beyond
+doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy.
+How is that something the same as the body--the body that gets old
+and dies--how can it be? You can't change thought into matter--not
+conceivably--everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part
+die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is
+the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has
+grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in it will stand free
+to sunlight and air--just at the beginning of life, as a plant is when
+it breaks through earth in the spring. It's the seed in the ground,
+and it's the flower in the sunlight, but it's the same thing--the same
+life--it is--it _is_." The boy's intensity of conviction shot like
+a flame across the quiet room.
+
+"It is the same thing with us too. The same spirit-substance underlies
+both worlds and there is no separation in space, only in view-point.
+Life goes on--it's just transfigured. It's as if a bandage should be
+lifted from our eyes and we should suddenly see things in whose presence
+we had been always."
+
+The rushing, eager voice stopped. He bent and laid his hand on the older
+man's and stared at his face, half hidden now in the shadows of the
+lowering fire. There was no response. The heavy head did not lift and
+the attitude was unstirred, hopeless. As if struck by a blow he sprang
+erect and his fingers shut hard. He spoke as if to himself, brokenly.
+
+"He does not believe--a single word--I say. I can't help him--I
+_can't_ help him."
+
+Suddenly the clinched fists flung out as if of a power not their own,
+and his voice rang across the room.
+
+"God!" The word shot from him as if a thunderbolt fell with it. "God!
+Lift the bandage!"
+
+A log fell with a crash into the fire; great battling shadows blurred
+all the air; he was gone.
+
+The man, startled, drew up his bent shoulders, and pushed back a lock of
+gray hair and stared about, shaking, bewildered. The ringing voice, the
+word that had flashed as if out of a larger atmosphere--the place was
+yet full of these, and the shock of it added a keenness to his misery.
+His figure swung sideways; he fell on the cushions of the sofa and his
+arms stretched across them, his gray head lying heedless; sobs that tore
+roots came painfully; it was the last depth. Out of it, without his
+volition, he spoke aloud.
+
+"God, God, God!" his voice said, not prayerfully, but repeating the
+sound that had shocked his torture. The word wailed, mocked, reproached,
+defied--and yet it was a prayer. Out of a soul in mortal stress that
+word comes sometimes driven by a 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 trial?"
+
+"No." A slight spasm twisted the smiling lines of the man's mouth, but
+it was gone and the mouth smiled still.
+
+A horror-struck expression gleamed for a second from the anxious eyes of
+the brother-in-law, but he controlled it quickly. He spoke gently. "Tell
+me about it--it will do you good to talk."
+
+The judge turned from the fire, and at sight of his flushed cheeks and
+lighted eyes the other shrank back, and the judge saw it. "You needn't
+be alarmed," he said quietly. "Nothing is wrong with me. But something
+has happened, as I told you, and everything--is changed." His eyes
+lifted as he spoke and strayed about the room as if considering a change
+which had come also to the accustomed setting.
+
+A shock of pity flashed from the other, and was mastered at once. "Can
+you tell me what has happened?" he urged. The judge, his face bright
+with a brightness that was dreadful to the man who watched him, held his
+hand to the fire, turning it about as if enjoying the warmth. The other
+shivered. There was silence for a minute. The judge broke it, speaking
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Suppose you had been born blind, Ned," he began, "and no one had ever
+given you a hint of the sense of vision, and your imagination had never
+presented such a power to your mind. Can you suppose that?"
+
+"I think so--yes," the brother-in-law answered, with careful gentleness,
+watching always the illumined countenance. "Yes, I can suppose it."
+
+"Then fancy if you will that all at once sight came, and the world
+flashed before you. Do you think you'd be able to describe such an
+experience?"
+
+The voice was normal, reflective. Many a time the two had talked
+together of such things in this very room, and the naturalness of the
+scene, and of the judge's manner, made the brother-in-law for a second
+forget the tragedy in which they were living.
+
+"Why, of course," he answered. "If one had never heard of such a power
+one's vocabulary wouldn't take in the words to describe it."
+
+"Exactly," the judge agreed. "That's the point I'm making. Perhaps now I
+may tell you what it is that has happened. Or rather, I may make you
+understand how a definite and concrete event has come to pass, which I
+can't tell you."
+
+Alarm suddenly expressed itself beyond control in the brother-in-law's
+face. "John, what do you mean? Do you see that you distress me? Can't
+you tell clearly if some one has been here--what it is, in plain
+English, that has happened?"
+
+The judge turned his dreamy, bright look toward the frightened man. "I
+do see--I do see," he brought out affectionately. "I'll try to tell, as
+you say, in plain English. But it is like the case I put--it is a
+question of lack of vocabulary. A remarkable experience has occurred in
+this room within an hour. I can no more describe it than the man born
+blind could describe sight. I can only call it by one name, which may
+startle you. A revelation."
+
+"A revelation!" the tone expressed incredulity, scarcely veiled scorn.
+
+The judge's brilliant gaze rested undisturbed on the speaker. "I
+understand--none better. A day ago, two hours ago, I should have
+answered in that tone. We have been trained in the same school, and have
+thought alike. Dick was here a while ago and said things--you know what
+Dick would say. You know how you and I have been sorry for the lad--been
+indulgent to him--with his keen, broad mind and that inspired
+self-forgetfulness of his--how we've been sorry to have such qualities
+wasted on a parson, a religion machine. We've thought he'd come around
+in time, that he was too large a personality to be tied to a treadmill.
+We've thought that all along, haven't we? Well, Dick was here, and out
+of the hell where I was I thought that again. When he talked I thought
+in a way--for I couldn't think much--that after a consistent voyage of
+agnosticism, I wouldn't be whipped into snivelling belief at the end, by
+shipwreck. I would at least go down without surrendering. In a dim way I
+thought that. And all that I thought then, and have thought through my
+life, is nothing. Reasoning doesn't weigh against experience. Dick is
+right."
+
+The other man sat before him, bent forward, his hands on his knees,
+listening, dazed. There was a quality in the speaker's tone which made
+it necessary to take his words seriously. Yet--the other sighed and
+relaxed a bit as he waited, watched. The calm voice went on.
+
+"The largest event of my life has happened in the last hour, in this
+room. It was this way. When Dick went out I--went utterly to pieces.
+It was the farthest depth. Out of it I called on God, not knowing what
+I did. And he answered. That's what happened. As if--as if a bandage
+had been lifted from my eyes, I was--I was in the presence of
+things--indescribable. There was no change, only that where I was blind
+before I now saw. I don't mean vision. I haven't words to explain what
+I mean. But a world was about me as real as this; it had perhaps always
+been there; in that moment I was first aware of it. I knew, as if a door
+had been opened, what heaven means--a condition of being. And I knew
+another thing more personal--that, without question, it was right with
+those I thought I had lost and that the horror which seemed blackest
+I have no need to dread. I cannot say that I saw them or heard or
+touched them, but I was with them. I understand, but I can't make you
+understand. I told Dick an hour ago that if I could believe they were
+living, that I should ever have them again, I should be perfectly happy.
+That's true now. I believe it, and I am--perfectly happy."
+
+The listener groaned uncontrollably.
+
+"I know your thought," the judge answered the sound, and his eyes were
+like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong--my mind
+is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing
+eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I know. I
+am--perfectly happy."
+
+Then the man who listened rose from his chair and came and put a hand
+gently on the shoulder of the judge, looking down at him gravely. "I
+don't understand you very well, John," he said, "but I'm glad of
+anything--of anything"--his voice went suddenly. "Will you wait for me
+here a few minutes? I'm going home and I'll be back. I think I'll spend
+the night with you if you don't object."
+
+"Object! Wait!" The judge looked up in surprise, and with that he
+smiled. "I see. Surely. I'd like to have you here. Yes, I'll certainly
+wait."
+
+Outside in the hall one might have heard the brother-in-law say a low
+word or two to Miller as the man helped him on with his coat; then the
+front door shut softly, and he was gone, and the judge sat alone, his
+head thrown back against his chair, his face luminous.
+
+The other man swung down the dark street, rushing, agitated. As he came
+to the corner an electric light shone full on him and a figure crossing
+down toward him halted.
+
+"Father! I was coming to find you. Something extraordinary has happened.
+I was coming to find you."
+
+"Yes, Dick." The older man waited.
+
+"I've just left Charley Owen at the house--you remember Charley Owen?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, yes, you do--he's been here with--Jack. He was in Jack's class in
+college--in Jack's and Ben Armstrong's. He used to go on shooting trips
+with them both--often."
+
+"I remember now."
+
+"Yes, I knew you would." The young voice rushed on. "He has been away
+just now--down in Florida shooting--away from civilization. He got all
+his mail for a month in one lump--just now--two days ago. In it was a
+letter from Jack and Ben Armstrong, written that night, written
+together. Do you see what that means?"
+
+"What!" The word was not
+a question, but an exclamation.
+"What--Dick!"
+
+"Yes--yes. There were newspapers, too, which gave an account of the
+trial--the first he'd heard of it--he was away in the Everglades. He
+started instantly, and came on here when he had read the papers, and
+realized the bearing his letter would have on the trial. He has
+travelled day and night. He hoped to get here in time. Jack and Ben
+thought he was in New York. They wrote to ask him to go
+duck-shooting--with them. And, father--here's the most startling point
+of it all." As the man waited, watching his son's face, he groaned
+suddenly and made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Don't, father--don't take it that way. It's good--it's glorious--it
+clears Jack. My uncle will be almost happy. But I wouldn't tell him at
+once--I'd be careful," he warned the other.
+
+"What was it--the startling point you spoke of?"
+
+"Oh--surely--this. The letter to Charley Owen spoke of Jack's new
+pistol--that pistol. Jack said they would have target-shooting with it
+in camp. They were all crack shots, you know. He said he had bought it
+that evening, and that Ben thought well of it. Ben signed the letter
+after Jack, and then added a postscript. It clears Jack--it clears him.
+Doesn't it, father? But I wouldn't tell my uncle just yet. He's not fit
+to take it in for a few hours--don't you think so?"
+
+"No, I won't tell him--just yet."
+
+The young man's wide glance concentrated with a flash on his father's
+face. "What is it? You speak queerly. You've just come from there.
+How is he--how is my uncle?"
+
+There was a letterbox at the corner, a foot from the older man's
+shoulder. He put out his hand and held to the lid a moment before he
+answered. His voice was harsh.
+
+"Your uncle is--perfectly happy," he said. "He's gone mad."
+
+
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lifted Bandage, by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[*/
+    <!--
+ body { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; }
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lifted Bandage, by Mary Raymond Shipman
+Andrews</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Lifted Bandage</p>
+<p>Author: Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 24, 2005  [eBook #15894]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED BANDAGE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by David Garcia<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    from page images generously made available by the<br />
+    Kentuckiana Digital Library <a href="http://kdl.kyvl.org/">http://kdl.kyvl.org/</a></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" bgcolor="ccccff" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+         Images of the original pages are available through
+		 the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See
+         <a href="http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&amp;idno=B92-165-30098685&amp;view=toc">
+         http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&amp;idno=B92-165-30098685&amp;view=toc</a>
+   </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    THE LIFTED BANDAGE
+</h1>
+<h3>
+By
+</h3>
+<h2>
+Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
+</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0;">
+Author of "The Perfect Tribute," etc.
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0;">
+  NEW YORK<br />
+  Charles Scribner's Sons<br />
+  <br />
+  1910
+</p>
+<hr />
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    THE LIFTED BANDAGE
+</h2>
+<p>
+The man let himself into his front door and, staggering lightly, like a
+drunken man, as he closed it, walked to the hall table, and mechanically
+laid down his hat, but still wearing his overcoat turned and went into
+his library, and dropped on the edge of a divan and stared out through
+the leaded panes of glass across the room facing him. The grayish skin
+of his face seemed to fall in diagonal furrows, from the eyes, from the
+nose, from the mouth. He sat, still to his finger-tips, staring.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was sitting so when a servant slipped in and stood motionless a
+minute, and went to the wide window where the west light glared through
+leafless branches outside, and drew the shades lower, and went to the
+fireplace and touched a match. Wood caught and crackled and a cheerful
+orange flame flew noisily up the chimney, but the man sitting on the
+divan did not notice. The butler waited a moment, watching, hesitating,
+and then:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Have you had lunch, sir?" he asked in a tentative, gentle voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+The staring eyes moved with an effort and rested on the servant's face.
+"Lunch?" he repeated, apparently trying to focus on the meaning of the
+word. "Lunch? I don't know, Miller. But don't bring anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+With a great anxiety in his face Miller regarded his master. "Would you
+let me take your overcoat, Judge?&mdash;you'll be too warm," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+He spoke in a suppressed tone as if waiting for, fearing something, as
+if longing to show sympathy, and the man stood and let himself be cared
+for, and then sat down again in the same unrestful, fixed attitude,
+gazing out again through the glittering panes into the stormy, tawny
+west sky. Miller came back and stood quiet, patient; in a few minutes
+the man seemed to become aware of him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I forgot, Miller. You'll want to know," he said in a tone which went to
+show an old bond between the two. "You'll be sorry to hear, Miller," he
+said&mdash;and the dull eyes moved difficultly to the anxious ones, and his
+voice was uninflected&mdash;"you'll be sorry to know that the coroner's jury
+decided that Master Jack was a murderer."
+</p>
+<p>
+The word came more horribly because of an air of detachment from the
+man's mind. It was like a soulless, evil mechanism, running unguided.
+Miller caught at a chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't believe it, sir," he gasped. "No lawyer shall make me. I've
+known him since he was ten, Judge, and they're mistaken. It's not any
+mere lawyers can make me believe that awful thing, sir, of our Master
+Jack." The servant was shaking from head to foot with intense rejection,
+and the man put up his hand as if to ward off his emotion.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I wish I could agree with you," he said quietly, and then added, "Thank
+you, Miller." And the old butler, walking as if struck with a sickness,
+was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+The man sat on the edge of the divan staring out of the window, minute
+after minute; the November wind tossed the clean, black lines of the
+branches backward and forward against the copper sky, as if a giant hand
+moved a fan of sea-weed before a fire. The man sat still and stared. The
+sky dulled; the delicate, wild branches melted together; the diamond
+lines in the window blurred; yet, unmoved, unseeing, the eyes stared
+through them.
+</p>
+<p>
+The burr of an electric bell sounded; some one came in at the front door
+and came to the door of the library, but the fixed figure did not stir.
+The newcomer stood silent a minute, two minutes; a young man in clerical
+dress, boyish, with gray, serious eyes. At length he spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+"May I come in? It's Dick."
+</p>
+<p>
+The man's head turned slowly and his look rested inquiringly on his
+nephew. It was a minute before he said, as if recognizing him, "Dick.
+Yes." And set himself as before to the persistent gazing through the
+window.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I lost you at the court-house," the younger man said. "I didn't mean to
+let you come home alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thank you, Dick." It seemed as if neither joy nor sorrow would find a
+way into the quiet voice again.
+</p>
+<p>
+The wind roared; the boughs rustled against the glass; the fire, soberly
+settled to work, steamed and crackled; the clock ticked indifferently;
+there was no other sound in the room; the two men were silent, the one
+staring always before him, the other sitting with a hand on the older
+man's hand, waiting. Minutes they sat so, and the wintry sky outside
+darkened and lay sullenly in bands of gray and orange against the
+windows; the light of the logs was stronger than the daylight; it
+flickered carelessly across the ashiness of the emotionless face. The
+young man, watching the face, bent forward and gripped his other hand on
+the unresponsive one in his clasp.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Uncle," he asked, "will it make things worse if I talk to you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, Dick."
+</p>
+<p>
+Nothing made a difference, it seemed. Silence or words must simply fall
+without effect on the rock bottom of despair. The young man halted, as
+if dismayed, before this overpowering inertia of hopelessness; he drew a
+quick breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+"A coroner's jury isn't infallible. I don't believe it of Jack&mdash;a lot of
+people don't believe it," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+The older man looked at him heavily. "You'd say that. Jack's friends
+will. I've been trained to weigh evidence&mdash;I must believe it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Listen," the young man urged. "Don't shut down the gates like that. I'm
+not a lawyer, but I've been trained to think, too, and I believe you're
+not thinking squarely. There's other evidence that counts besides this.
+There's Jack&mdash;his personality."
+</p>
+<p>
+"It has been taken into consideration."
+</p>
+<p>
+"It can't be taken into consideration by strangers&mdash;it needs years of
+intimacy to weigh that evidence as I can weigh it&mdash;as you&mdash;You know best
+of all," he cried out impulsively, "if you'll let yourself know, how
+impossible it was. That Jack should have bought that pistol and taken it
+to Ben Armstrong's rooms to kill him&mdash;it was impossible&mdash;impossible!"
+The clinched fist came down on the black broadcloth knee with the
+conviction of the man behind it. The words rushed like melted metal,
+hot, stinging, not to be stopped. The judge quivered as if they had
+stung through the callousness, touched a nerve. A faint color crawled
+to his cheeks; for the first time he spoke quickly, as if his thoughts
+connected with something more than gray matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You talk about my not allowing myself to believe in Jack. You seem
+not to realize that such a belief would&mdash;might&mdash;stand between me and
+madness. I've been trying to adjust myself to a possible scheme of
+living&mdash;getting through the years till I go into nothingness. I can't.
+All I can grasp is the feeling that a man might have if dropped from
+a balloon and forced to stay gasping in the air, with no place in it,
+nothing to hold to, no breath to draw, no earth to rest on, no end to
+hope for. There is nothing beyond."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Everything is beyond," the young man cried triumphantly. "'The end,' as
+you call it, is an end to hope for&mdash;it is the beginning. The beginning
+of more than you have ever had&mdash;with them, with the people you care
+about."
+</p>
+<p>
+The judge turned a ghastly look upon the impetuous, bright face. "If
+I believed that, I should be even now perfectly happy. I don't see how
+you Christians can ever be sorry when your friends die&mdash;it's childish;
+anybody ought to be able to wait a few years. But I don't believe it,"
+he said heavily, and went on again as if an inertia of speech were
+carrying him as an inertia of silence had held him a few minutes before.
+"When my wife died a year ago it ended my personal life, but I could
+live Jack's life. I was glad in the success and honor of it. Now the
+success&mdash;" he made a gesture. "And the honor&mdash;if I had that, only the
+honor of Jack's life left, I think I could finish the years with
+dignity. I've not been a bad man&mdash;I've done my part and lived as seemed
+right. Before I'm old the joy is wiped out and long years left. Why?
+It's not reasonable&mdash;not logical. With one thing to hold to, with Jack's
+good name, I might live. How can I, now? What can I do? A life must have
+a <i>raison d'être.</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Listen," the clergyman cried again. "You are not judging Jack as fairly
+as you would judge a common criminal. You know better than I how often
+juries make mistakes&mdash;why should you trust this jury to have made none?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I didn't trust the jury. I watched as I have never before known how to
+watch a case. I felt my mind more clear and alert than common."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Alert!" he caught at the word. "But alert on the side of
+terror&mdash;abnormally clear to see what you dreaded. Because you are
+fair-minded, because it has been the habit of your life to correct at
+once any conscious prejudice in your judgment, you have swayed to the
+side of unfairness to yourself, to Jack. Uncle," he flashed out, "would
+it tear your soul to have me state the case as I see it? I might, you
+know&mdash;I might bring out something that would make it look different."
+</p>
+<p>
+Almost a smile touched the gray lines of his face. "If you wish."
+</p>
+<p>
+The young man drew himself into his chair and clasped his hands around
+his knee. "Here it is. Mr. Newbold, on the seventh floor of the Bruzon
+bachelor apartments, heard a shot at one in the morning, next his
+bedroom, in Ben Armstrong's room. He hurried into the public hall, saw
+the door wide open into Ben's apartment, went in and found Ben shot
+dead. Trying to use the telephone to call help, he found it was out of
+order. So he rushed again into the hall toward the elevator with the
+idea of getting Dr. Avery, who lived below on the second floor. The
+elevator door was open also, and a man's opera-hat lay near it on the
+floor; he saw, just in time, that the car was at the bottom of the
+shaft, almost stepping inside, in his excitement, before he noticed
+this. Then he ran down the stairs with Jack's hat in his hand, and got
+Dr. Avery, and they found Jack at the foot of the elevator shaft. It was
+known that Ben Armstrong and Jack had quarrelled the day before; it was
+known that Jack was quick-tempered; it is known that he bought that
+evening the pistol which was found on the floor by Ben, loaded, with one
+empty shell. That's the story."
+</p>
+<p>
+The steady voice stopped a moment and the young man shivered slightly;
+his look was strained. Steadily he went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That's the story. From that the coroner's jury have found that Jack
+killed Ben Armstrong&mdash;that he bought the pistol to kill him, and went
+to his rooms with that purpose; that in his haste to escape, he missed
+seeing that the elevator was down, as Mr. Newbold all but missed seeing
+it later, and jumped into the shaft and was killed instantly himself.
+That's what the jury get from the facts, but it seems to me they're
+begging the question. There are a hundred hypotheses that would fit
+the case of Jack's innocence&mdash;why is it reasonable to settle on the
+one that means his guilt? This is my idea. Jack and Ben Armstrong had
+been friends since boyhood and Jack, quick-tempered as he was, was
+warm-hearted and loyal. It was like him to decide suddenly to go to Ben
+and make friends. He had been to a play in the evening which had more
+or less that <i>motif</i>; he was open to such influences. It was like
+the pair of them, after the reconciliation, to set to work looking at
+Jack's new toy, the pistol. It was a brand-new sort, and the two have
+been interested always in guns&mdash;I remember how I, as a youngster, was
+impressed when Ben and Jack bought their first shot-guns together. Jack
+had got the pistol at Mellingham's that evening, you know&mdash;he was likely
+to be keen about it still, and then&mdash;it went off. There are plenty of
+other cases where a man has shot his friend by accident&mdash;why shouldn't
+poor Jack be given the benefit of the doubt? The telephone wouldn't
+work; Jack rushed out with the same idea which struck Mr. Newbold later,
+of getting Dr. Avery&mdash;and fell down the shaft.
+</p>
+<p>
+"For me there is no doubt. I never knew him to hold malice. He was
+violent sometimes, but that he could have gone about for hours with
+a pistol in his pocket and murder in his heart; that he could have
+planned Ben Armstrong's death and carried it out deliberately&mdash;it's
+a contradiction in terms. It's impossible, being Jack. You must know
+this&mdash;you know your son&mdash;you know human nature."
+</p>
+<p>
+The rapid <i>résumé</i> was but an impassioned appeal. Its answer came
+after a minute; to the torrent of eager words, three words:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thank you, Dick."
+</p>
+<p>
+The absolute lack of impression on the man's judgment was plain.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah!" The clergyman sprang to his feet and stood, his eyes blazing,
+despairing, looking down at the bent, listless figure. How could he let
+a human being suffer as this one was suffering? Quickly his thoughts
+shifted their basis. He could not affect the mind of the lawyer; might
+he reach now, perhaps, the soul of the man? He knew the difficulty,
+for before this his belief had crossed swords with the agnosticism of
+his uncle, an agnosticism shared by his father, in which he had been
+trained, from which he had broken free only five years before. He had
+faced the batteries of the two older brains at that time, and come out
+with the brightness of his new-found faith untarnished, but without, he
+remembered, scratching the armor of their profound doubt in everything.
+One could see, looking at the slender black figure, at the visionary
+gaze of the gray wide eyes, at the shape of the face, broad-browed,
+ovalled, that this man's psychic make-up must lift him like wings into
+an atmosphere outside a material, outside even an intellectual world.
+He could breathe freely only in a spiritual air, and things hard to
+believe to most human beings were, perhaps, his every-day thoughts. He
+caught a quick breath of excitement as it flashed to his brain that now,
+possibly, was coming the moment when he might justify his life, might
+help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a
+prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose
+concentration lifted the eyes below him, that brooded, stared.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I can't bear it to stand by and see you go under, when there's help
+close. You said that if you could believe that they were living, that
+you would have them again, you would be perfectly happy no matter how
+many years you must wait. They are living as sure as I am here, and as
+sure as Jack was here, and Jack's mother. They are living still. Perhaps
+they're close to you now. You've bound a bandage over your eyes, you've
+covered the vision of your spirit, so that you can't see; but that
+doesn't make nothingness of God's world. It's there&mdash;here&mdash;close,
+maybe. A more real world than this&mdash;this little thing." With a boyish
+gesture he thrust behind him the universe. "What do we know about the
+earth, except effects upon our consciousness? It's all a matter of
+inference&mdash;you know that better than I. The thing we do know beyond
+doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy.
+How is that something the same as the body&mdash;the body that gets old
+and dies&mdash;how can it be? You can't change thought into matter&mdash;not
+conceivably&mdash;everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part
+die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is
+the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has
+grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in it will stand free
+to sunlight and air&mdash;just at the beginning of life, as a plant is when
+it breaks through earth in the spring. It's the seed in the ground,
+and it's the flower in the sunlight, but it's the same thing&mdash;the same
+life&mdash;it is&mdash;it <i>is</i>." The boy's intensity of conviction shot like
+a flame across the quiet room.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It is the same thing with us too. The same spirit-substance underlies
+both worlds and there is no separation in space, only in view-point.
+Life goes on&mdash;it's just transfigured. It's as if a bandage should be
+lifted from our eyes and we should suddenly see things in whose presence
+we had been always."
+</p>
+<p>
+The rushing, eager voice stopped. He bent and laid his hand on the older
+man's and stared at his face, half hidden now in the shadows of the
+lowering fire. There was no response. The heavy head did not lift and
+the attitude was unstirred, hopeless. As if struck by a blow he sprang
+erect and his fingers shut hard. He spoke as if to himself, brokenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He does not believe&mdash;a single word&mdash;I say. I can't help him&mdash;I
+<i>can't</i> help him."
+</p>
+<p>
+Suddenly the clinched fists flung out as if of a power not their own,
+and his voice rang across the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+"God!" The word shot from him as if a thunderbolt fell with it. "God!
+Lift the bandage!"
+</p>
+<p>
+A log fell with a crash into the fire; great battling shadows blurred
+all the air; he was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+The man, startled, drew up his bent shoulders, and pushed back a lock of
+gray hair and stared about, shaking, bewildered. The ringing voice, the
+word that had flashed as if out of a larger atmosphere&mdash;the place was
+yet full of these, and the shock of it added a keenness to his misery.
+His figure swung sideways; he fell on the cushions of the sofa and his
+arms stretched across them, his gray head lying heedless; sobs that tore
+roots came painfully; it was the last depth. Out of it, without his
+volition, he spoke aloud.
+</p>
+<p>
+"God, God, God!" his voice said, not prayerfully, but repeating the
+sound that had shocked his torture. The word wailed, mocked, reproached,
+defied&mdash;and yet it was a prayer. Out of a soul in mortal stress that
+word comes sometimes driven by a force of the spirit like the force of
+the lungs fighting for breath&mdash;and it is a prayer.
+</p>
+<p>
+"God, God, God!" the broken voice repeated, and sobs cut the words. And
+again. Over and over, and again the sobbing broke it.
+</p>
+<p>
+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&mdash;a dream&mdash;a
+presence&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;to something&mdash;and
+his face now was the face of a starved man, of a man dying from thirst,
+who sees food, water, salvation.
+</p>
+<p>
+And his face changed; a quality incredible was coming into it&mdash;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.
+</p>
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;he was yet dazed with the
+newness of a marvel&mdash;but he turned his head and saw the fire and at that
+put out his hand to it as if to a friend.
+</p>
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Dick told me I might come," he said. "Shall I trouble you? May I stay
+with you awhile?"
+</p>
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You're not well," he said. "You must take something&mdash;whiskey&mdash;Miller&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+The butler moved in the room making lights here and there, and he came
+quickly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No," the judge said. "I don't want anything&mdash;I don't need anything.
+It's not as you think. I'll tell you about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't know how to tell you," he said. "There seem no words. Something
+has happened, yet it's difficult to explain."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Something happened?" the other repeated, bewildered but guarded. "I
+don't understand. Has some one been here? Is it about&mdash;the trial?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No." A slight spasm twisted the smiling lines of the man's mouth, but
+it was gone and the mouth smiled still.
+</p>
+<p>
+A horror-struck expression gleamed for a second from the anxious eyes of
+the brother-in-law, but he controlled it quickly. He spoke gently. "Tell
+me about it&mdash;it will do you good to talk."
+</p>
+<p>
+The judge turned from the fire, and at sight of his flushed cheeks and
+lighted eyes the other shrank back, and the judge saw it. "You needn't
+be alarmed," he said quietly. "Nothing is wrong with me. But something
+has happened, as I told you, and everything&mdash;is changed." His eyes
+lifted as he spoke and strayed about the room as if considering a change
+which had come also to the accustomed setting.
+</p>
+<p>
+A shock of pity flashed from the other, and was mastered at once. "Can
+you tell me what has happened?" he urged. The judge, his face bright
+with a brightness that was dreadful to the man who watched him, held his
+hand to the fire, turning it about as if enjoying the warmth. The other
+shivered. There was silence for a minute. The judge broke it, speaking
+thoughtfully:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Suppose you had been born blind, Ned," he began, "and no one had ever
+given you a hint of the sense of vision, and your imagination had never
+presented such a power to your mind. Can you suppose that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think so&mdash;yes," the brother-in-law answered, with careful gentleness,
+watching always the illumined countenance. "Yes, I can suppose it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Then fancy if you will that all at once sight came, and the world
+flashed before you. Do you think you'd be able to describe such an
+experience?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The voice was normal, reflective. Many a time the two had talked
+together of such things in this very room, and the naturalness of the
+scene, and of the judge's manner, made the brother-in-law for a second
+forget the tragedy in which they were living.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, of course," he answered. "If one had never heard of such a power
+one's vocabulary wouldn't take in the words to describe it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Exactly," the judge agreed. "That's the point I'm making. Perhaps now I
+may tell you what it is that has happened. Or rather, I may make you
+understand how a definite and concrete event has come to pass, which I
+can't tell you."
+</p>
+<p>
+Alarm suddenly expressed itself beyond control in the brother-in-law's
+face. "John, what do you mean? Do you see that you distress me? Can't
+you tell clearly if some one has been here&mdash;what it is, in plain
+English, that has happened?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The judge turned his dreamy, bright look toward the frightened man. "I
+do see&mdash;I do see," he brought out affectionately. "I'll try to tell, as
+you say, in plain English. But it is like the case I put&mdash;it is a
+question of lack of vocabulary. A remarkable experience has occurred in
+this room within an hour. I can no more describe it than the man born
+blind could describe sight. I can only call it by one name, which may
+startle you. A revelation."
+</p>
+<p>
+"A revelation!" the tone expressed incredulity, scarcely veiled scorn.
+</p>
+<p>
+The judge's brilliant gaze rested undisturbed on the speaker. "I
+understand&mdash;none better. A day ago, two hours ago, I should have
+answered in that tone. We have been trained in the same school, and have
+thought alike. Dick was here a while ago and said things&mdash;you know what
+Dick would say. You know how you and I have been sorry for the lad&mdash;been
+indulgent to him&mdash;with his keen, broad mind and that inspired
+self-forgetfulness of his&mdash;how we've been sorry to have such qualities
+wasted on a parson, a religion machine. We've thought he'd come around
+in time, that he was too large a personality to be tied to a treadmill.
+We've thought that all along, haven't we? Well, Dick was here, and out
+of the hell where I was I thought that again. When he talked I thought
+in a way&mdash;for I couldn't think much&mdash;that after a consistent voyage of
+agnosticism, I wouldn't be whipped into snivelling belief at the end, by
+shipwreck. I would at least go down without surrendering. In a dim way I
+thought that. And all that I thought then, and have thought through my
+life, is nothing. Reasoning doesn't weigh against experience. Dick is
+right."
+</p>
+<p>
+The other man sat before him, bent forward, his hands on his knees,
+listening, dazed. There was a quality in the speaker's tone which made
+it necessary to take his words seriously. Yet&mdash;the other sighed and
+relaxed a bit as he waited, watched. The calm voice went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The largest event of my life has happened in the last hour, in this
+room. It was this way. When Dick went out I&mdash;went utterly to pieces.
+It was the farthest depth. Out of it I called on God, not knowing what
+I did. And he answered. That's what happened. As if&mdash;as if a bandage
+had been lifted from my eyes, I was&mdash;I was in the presence of
+things&mdash;indescribable. There was no change, only that where I was blind
+before I now saw. I don't mean vision. I haven't words to explain what
+I mean. But a world was about me as real as this; it had perhaps always
+been there; in that moment I was first aware of it. I knew, as if a door
+had been opened, what heaven means&mdash;a condition of being. And I knew
+another thing more personal&mdash;that, without question, it was right with
+those I thought I had lost and that the horror which seemed blackest
+I have no need to dread. I cannot say that I saw them or heard or
+touched them, but I was with them. I understand, but I can't make you
+understand. I told Dick an hour ago that if I could believe they were
+living, that I should ever have them again, I should be perfectly happy.
+That's true now. I believe it, and I am&mdash;perfectly happy."
+</p>
+<p>
+The listener groaned uncontrollably.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I know your thought," the judge answered the sound, and his eyes were
+like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong&mdash;my mind
+is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing
+eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I know. I
+am&mdash;perfectly happy."
+</p>
+<p>
+Then the man who listened rose from his chair and came and put a hand
+gently on the shoulder of the judge, looking down at him gravely. "I
+don't understand you very well, John," he said, "but I'm glad of
+anything&mdash;of anything"&mdash;his voice went suddenly. "Will you wait for me
+here a few minutes? I'm going home and I'll be back. I think I'll spend
+the night with you if you don't object."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Object! Wait!" The judge looked up in surprise, and with that he
+smiled. "I see. Surely. I'd like to have you here. Yes, I'll certainly
+wait."
+</p>
+<p>
+Outside in the hall one might have heard the brother-in-law say a low
+word or two to Miller as the man helped him on with his coat; then the
+front door shut softly, and he was gone, and the judge sat alone, his
+head thrown back against his chair, his face luminous.
+</p>
+<p>
+The other man swung down the dark street, rushing, agitated. As he came
+to the corner an electric light shone full on him and a figure crossing
+down toward him halted.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Father! I was coming to find you. Something extraordinary has happened.
+I was coming to find you."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, Dick." The older man waited.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I've just left Charley Owen at the house&mdash;you remember Charley Owen?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, you do&mdash;he's been here with&mdash;Jack. He was in Jack's class in
+college&mdash;in Jack's and Ben Armstrong's. He used to go on shooting trips
+with them both&mdash;often."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I remember now."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, I knew you would." The young voice rushed on. "He has been away
+just now&mdash;down in Florida shooting&mdash;away from civilization. He got all
+his mail for a month in one lump&mdash;just now&mdash;two days ago. In it was a
+letter from Jack and Ben Armstrong, written that night, written
+together. Do you see what that means?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What!" The word was not
+a question, but an exclamation.
+"What&mdash;Dick!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;yes. There were newspapers, too, which gave an account of the
+trial&mdash;the first he'd heard of it&mdash;he was away in the Everglades. He
+started instantly, and came on here when he had read the papers, and
+realized the bearing his letter would have on the trial. He has
+travelled day and night. He hoped to get here in time. Jack and Ben
+thought he was in New York. They wrote to ask him to go
+duck-shooting&mdash;with them. And, father&mdash;here's the most startling point
+of it all." As the man waited, watching his son's face, he groaned
+suddenly and made a gesture of despair.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't, father&mdash;don't take it that way. It's good&mdash;it's glorious&mdash;it
+clears Jack. My uncle will be almost happy. But I wouldn't tell him at
+once&mdash;I'd be careful," he warned the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What was it&mdash;the startling point you spoke of?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;surely&mdash;this. The letter to Charley Owen spoke of Jack's new
+pistol&mdash;that pistol. Jack said they would have target-shooting with it
+in camp. They were all crack shots, you know. He said he had bought it
+that evening, and that Ben thought well of it. Ben signed the letter
+after Jack, and then added a postscript. It clears Jack&mdash;it clears him.
+Doesn't it, father? But I wouldn't tell my uncle just yet. He's not fit
+to take it in for a few hours&mdash;don't you think so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, I won't tell him&mdash;just yet."
+</p>
+<p>
+The young man's wide glance concentrated with a flash on his father's
+face. "What is it? You speak queerly. You've just come from there.
+How is he&mdash;how is my uncle?"
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a letterbox at the corner, a foot from the older man's
+shoulder. He put out his hand and held to the lid a moment before he
+answered. His voice was harsh.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Your uncle is&mdash;perfectly happy," he said. "He's gone mad."
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED BANDAGE***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lifted Bandage, by Mary Raymond Shipman
+Andrews
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lifted Bandage
+
+
+Author: Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2005  [eBook #15894]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED BANDAGE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously made available
+by the Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See
+      http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=
+      kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-165-30098685&view=toc
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFTED BANDAGE
+
+by
+
+MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
+
+Author of "The Perfect Tribute," etc.
+
+New York
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The man let himself into his front door and, staggering lightly, like a
+drunken man, as he closed it, walked to the hall table, and mechanically
+laid down his hat, but still wearing his overcoat turned and went into
+his library, and dropped on the edge of a divan and stared out through
+the leaded panes of glass across the room facing him. The grayish skin
+of his face seemed to fall in diagonal furrows, from the eyes, from the
+nose, from the mouth. He sat, still to his finger-tips, staring.
+
+He was sitting so when a servant slipped in and stood motionless a
+minute, and went to the wide window where the west light glared through
+leafless branches outside, and drew the shades lower, and went to the
+fireplace and touched a match. Wood caught and crackled and a cheerful
+orange flame flew noisily up the chimney, but the man sitting on the
+divan did not notice. The butler waited a moment, watching, hesitating,
+and then:
+
+"Have you had lunch, sir?" he asked in a tentative, gentle voice.
+
+The staring eyes moved with an effort and rested on the servant's face.
+"Lunch?" he repeated, apparently trying to focus on the meaning of the
+word. "Lunch? I don't know, Miller. But don't bring anything."
+
+With a great anxiety in his face Miller regarded his master. "Would you
+let me take your overcoat, Judge?--you'll be too warm," he said.
+
+He spoke in a suppressed tone as if waiting for, fearing something, as
+if longing to show sympathy, and the man stood and let himself be cared
+for, and then sat down again in the same unrestful, fixed attitude,
+gazing out again through the glittering panes into the stormy, tawny
+west sky. Miller came back and stood quiet, patient; in a few minutes
+the man seemed to become aware of him.
+
+"I forgot, Miller. You'll want to know," he said in a tone which went to
+show an old bond between the two. "You'll be sorry to hear, Miller," he
+said--and the dull eyes moved difficultly to the anxious ones, and his
+voice was uninflected--"you'll be sorry to know that the coroner's jury
+decided that Master Jack was a murderer."
+
+The word came more horribly because of an air of detachment from the
+man's mind. It was like a soulless, evil mechanism, running unguided.
+Miller caught at a chair.
+
+"I don't believe it, sir," he gasped. "No lawyer shall make me. I've
+known him since he was ten, Judge, and they're mistaken. It's not any
+mere lawyers can make me believe that awful thing, sir, of our Master
+Jack." The servant was shaking from head to foot with intense rejection,
+and the man put up his hand as if to ward off his emotion.
+
+"I wish I could agree with you," he said quietly, and then added, "Thank
+you, Miller." And the old butler, walking as if struck with a sickness,
+was gone.
+
+The man sat on the edge of the divan staring out of the window, minute
+after minute; the November wind tossed the clean, black lines of the
+branches backward and forward against the copper sky, as if a giant hand
+moved a fan of sea-weed before a fire. The man sat still and stared. The
+sky dulled; the delicate, wild branches melted together; the diamond
+lines in the window blurred; yet, unmoved, unseeing, the eyes stared
+through them.
+
+The burr of an electric bell sounded; some one came in at the front door
+and came to the door of the library, but the fixed figure did not stir.
+The newcomer stood silent a minute, two minutes; a young man in clerical
+dress, boyish, with gray, serious eyes. At length he spoke.
+
+"May I come in? It's Dick."
+
+The man's head turned slowly and his look rested inquiringly on his
+nephew. It was a minute before he said, as if recognizing him, "Dick.
+Yes." And set himself as before to the persistent gazing through the
+window.
+
+"I lost you at the court-house," the younger man said. "I didn't mean to
+let you come home alone."
+
+"Thank you, Dick." It seemed as if neither joy nor sorrow would find a
+way into the quiet voice again.
+
+The wind roared; the boughs rustled against the glass; the fire, soberly
+settled to work, steamed and crackled; the clock ticked indifferently;
+there was no other sound in the room; the two men were silent, the one
+staring always before him, the other sitting with a hand on the older
+man's hand, waiting. Minutes they sat so, and the wintry sky outside
+darkened and lay sullenly in bands of gray and orange against the
+windows; the light of the logs was stronger than the daylight; it
+flickered carelessly across the ashiness of the emotionless face. The
+young man, watching the face, bent forward and gripped his other hand on
+the unresponsive one in his clasp.
+
+"Uncle," he asked, "will it make things worse if I talk to you?"
+
+"No, Dick."
+
+Nothing made a difference, it seemed. Silence or words must simply fall
+without effect on the rock bottom of despair. The young man halted, as
+if dismayed, before this overpowering inertia of hopelessness; he drew a
+quick breath.
+
+"A coroner's jury isn't infallible. I don't believe it of Jack--a lot of
+people don't believe it," he said.
+
+The older man looked at him heavily. "You'd say that. Jack's friends
+will. I've been trained to weigh evidence--I must believe it."
+
+"Listen," the young man urged. "Don't shut down the gates like that. I'm
+not a lawyer, but I've been trained to think, too, and I believe you're
+not thinking squarely. There's other evidence that counts besides this.
+There's Jack--his personality."
+
+"It has been taken into consideration."
+
+"It can't be taken into consideration by strangers--it needs years of
+intimacy to weigh that evidence as I can weigh it--as you--You know best
+of all," he cried out impulsively, "if you'll let yourself know, how
+impossible it was. That Jack should have bought that pistol and taken it
+to Ben Armstrong's rooms to kill him--it was impossible--impossible!"
+The clinched fist came down on the black broadcloth knee with the
+conviction of the man behind it. The words rushed like melted metal,
+hot, stinging, not to be stopped. The judge quivered as if they had
+stung through the callousness, touched a nerve. A faint color crawled
+to his cheeks; for the first time he spoke quickly, as if his thoughts
+connected with something more than gray matter.
+
+"You talk about my not allowing myself to believe in Jack. You seem
+not to realize that such a belief would--might--stand between me and
+madness. I've been trying to adjust myself to a possible scheme of
+living--getting through the years till I go into nothingness. I can't.
+All I can grasp is the feeling that a man might have if dropped from
+a balloon and forced to stay gasping in the air, with no place in it,
+nothing to hold to, no breath to draw, no earth to rest on, no end to
+hope for. There is nothing beyond."
+
+"Everything is beyond," the young man cried triumphantly. "'The end,' as
+you call it, is an end to hope for--it is the beginning. The beginning
+of more than you have ever had--with them, with the people you care
+about."
+
+The judge turned a ghastly look upon the impetuous, bright face. "If
+I believed that, I should be even now perfectly happy. I don't see how
+you Christians can ever be sorry when your friends die--it's childish;
+anybody ought to be able to wait a few years. But I don't believe it,"
+he said heavily, and went on again as if an inertia of speech were
+carrying him as an inertia of silence had held him a few minutes before.
+"When my wife died a year ago it ended my personal life, but I could
+live Jack's life. I was glad in the success and honor of it. Now the
+success--" he made a gesture. "And the honor--if I had that, only the
+honor of Jack's life left, I think I could finish the years with
+dignity. I've not been a bad man--I've done my part and lived as seemed
+right. Before I'm old the joy is wiped out and long years left. Why?
+It's not reasonable--not logical. With one thing to hold to, with Jack's
+good name, I might live. How can I, now? What can I do? A life must have
+a _raison d'etre._"
+
+"Listen," the clergyman cried again. "You are not judging Jack as fairly
+as you would judge a common criminal. You know better than I how often
+juries make mistakes--why should you trust this jury to have made none?"
+
+"I didn't trust the jury. I watched as I have never before known how to
+watch a case. I felt my mind more clear and alert than common."
+
+"Alert!" he caught at the word. "But alert on the side of
+terror--abnormally clear to see what you dreaded. Because you are
+fair-minded, because it has been the habit of your life to correct at
+once any conscious prejudice in your judgment, you have swayed to the
+side of unfairness to yourself, to Jack. Uncle," he flashed out, "would
+it tear your soul to have me state the case as I see it? I might, you
+know--I might bring out something that would make it look different."
+
+Almost a smile touched the gray lines of his face. "If you wish."
+
+The young man drew himself into his chair and clasped his hands around
+his knee. "Here it is. Mr. Newbold, on the seventh floor of the Bruzon
+bachelor apartments, heard a shot at one in the morning, next his
+bedroom, in Ben Armstrong's room. He hurried into the public hall, saw
+the door wide open into Ben's apartment, went in and found Ben shot
+dead. Trying to use the telephone to call help, he found it was out of
+order. So he rushed again into the hall toward the elevator with the
+idea of getting Dr. Avery, who lived below on the second floor. The
+elevator door was open also, and a man's opera-hat lay near it on the
+floor; he saw, just in time, that the car was at the bottom of the
+shaft, almost stepping inside, in his excitement, before he noticed
+this. Then he ran down the stairs with Jack's hat in his hand, and got
+Dr. Avery, and they found Jack at the foot of the elevator shaft. It was
+known that Ben Armstrong and Jack had quarrelled the day before; it was
+known that Jack was quick-tempered; it is known that he bought that
+evening the pistol which was found on the floor by Ben, loaded, with one
+empty shell. That's the story."
+
+The steady voice stopped a moment and the young man shivered slightly;
+his look was strained. Steadily he went on.
+
+"That's the story. From that the coroner's jury have found that Jack
+killed Ben Armstrong--that he bought the pistol to kill him, and went
+to his rooms with that purpose; that in his haste to escape, he missed
+seeing that the elevator was down, as Mr. Newbold all but missed seeing
+it later, and jumped into the shaft and was killed instantly himself.
+That's what the jury get from the facts, but it seems to me they're
+begging the question. There are a hundred hypotheses that would fit
+the case of Jack's innocence--why is it reasonable to settle on the
+one that means his guilt? This is my idea. Jack and Ben Armstrong had
+been friends since boyhood and Jack, quick-tempered as he was, was
+warm-hearted and loyal. It was like him to decide suddenly to go to Ben
+and make friends. He had been to a play in the evening which had more
+or less that _motif_; he was open to such influences. It was like
+the pair of them, after the reconciliation, to set to work looking at
+Jack's new toy, the pistol. It was a brand-new sort, and the two have
+been interested always in guns--I remember how I, as a youngster, was
+impressed when Ben and Jack bought their first shot-guns together. Jack
+had got the pistol at Mellingham's that evening, you know--he was likely
+to be keen about it still, and then--it went off. There are plenty of
+other cases where a man has shot his friend by accident--why shouldn't
+poor Jack be given the benefit of the doubt? The telephone wouldn't
+work; Jack rushed out with the same idea which struck Mr. Newbold later,
+of getting Dr. Avery--and fell down the shaft.
+
+"For me there is no doubt. I never knew him to hold malice. He was
+violent sometimes, but that he could have gone about for hours with
+a pistol in his pocket and murder in his heart; that he could have
+planned Ben Armstrong's death and carried it out deliberately--it's
+a contradiction in terms. It's impossible, being Jack. You must know
+this--you know your son--you know human nature."
+
+The rapid _resume_ was but an impassioned appeal. Its answer came
+after a minute; to the torrent of eager words, three words:
+
+"Thank you, Dick."
+
+The absolute lack of impression on the man's judgment was plain.
+
+"Ah!" The clergyman sprang to his feet and stood, his eyes blazing,
+despairing, looking down at the bent, listless figure. How could he let
+a human being suffer as this one was suffering? Quickly his thoughts
+shifted their basis. He could not affect the mind of the lawyer; might
+he reach now, perhaps, the soul of the man? He knew the difficulty,
+for before this his belief had crossed swords with the agnosticism of
+his uncle, an agnosticism shared by his father, in which he had been
+trained, from which he had broken free only five years before. He had
+faced the batteries of the two older brains at that time, and come out
+with the brightness of his new-found faith untarnished, but without, he
+remembered, scratching the armor of their profound doubt in everything.
+One could see, looking at the slender black figure, at the visionary
+gaze of the gray wide eyes, at the shape of the face, broad-browed,
+ovalled, that this man's psychic make-up must lift him like wings into
+an atmosphere outside a material, outside even an intellectual world.
+He could breathe freely only in a spiritual air, and things hard to
+believe to most human beings were, perhaps, his every-day thoughts. He
+caught a quick breath of excitement as it flashed to his brain that now,
+possibly, was coming the moment when he might justify his life, might
+help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a
+prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose
+concentration lifted the eyes below him, that brooded, stared.
+
+"I can't bear it to stand by and see you go under, when there's help
+close. You said that if you could believe that they were living, that
+you would have them again, you would be perfectly happy no matter how
+many years you must wait. They are living as sure as I am here, and as
+sure as Jack was here, and Jack's mother. They are living still. Perhaps
+they're close to you now. You've bound a bandage over your eyes, you've
+covered the vision of your spirit, so that you can't see; but that
+doesn't make nothingness of God's world. It's there--here--close,
+maybe. A more real world than this--this little thing." With a boyish
+gesture he thrust behind him the universe. "What do we know about the
+earth, except effects upon our consciousness? It's all a matter of
+inference--you know that better than I. The thing we do know beyond
+doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy.
+How is that something the same as the body--the body that gets old
+and dies--how can it be? You can't change thought into matter--not
+conceivably--everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part
+die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is
+the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has
+grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in it will stand free
+to sunlight and air--just at the beginning of life, as a plant is when
+it breaks through earth in the spring. It's the seed in the ground,
+and it's the flower in the sunlight, but it's the same thing--the same
+life--it is--it _is_." The boy's intensity of conviction shot like
+a flame across the quiet room.
+
+"It is the same thing with us too. The same spirit-substance underlies
+both worlds and there is no separation in space, only in view-point.
+Life goes on--it's just transfigured. It's as if a bandage should be
+lifted from our eyes and we should suddenly see things in whose presence
+we had been always."
+
+The rushing, eager voice stopped. He bent and laid his hand on the older
+man's and stared at his face, half hidden now in the shadows of the
+lowering fire. There was no response. The heavy head did not lift and
+the attitude was unstirred, hopeless. As if struck by a blow he sprang
+erect and his fingers shut hard. He spoke as if to himself, brokenly.
+
+"He does not believe--a single word--I say. I can't help him--I
+_can't_ help him."
+
+Suddenly the clinched fists flung out as if of a power not their own,
+and his voice rang across the room.
+
+"God!" The word shot from him as if a thunderbolt fell with it. "God!
+Lift the bandage!"
+
+A log fell with a crash into the fire; great battling shadows blurred
+all the air; he was gone.
+
+The man, startled, drew up his bent shoulders, and pushed back a lock of
+gray hair and stared about, shaking, bewildered. The ringing voice, the
+word that had flashed as if out of a larger atmosphere--the place was
+yet full of these, and the shock of it added a keenness to his misery.
+His figure swung sideways; he fell on the cushions of the sofa and his
+arms stretched across them, his gray head lying heedless; sobs that tore
+roots came painfully; it was the last depth. Out of it, without his
+volition, he spoke aloud.
+
+"God, God, God!" his voice said, not prayerfully, but repeating the
+sound that had shocked his torture. The word wailed, mocked, reproached,
+defied--and yet it was a prayer. Out of a soul in mortal stress that
+word comes sometimes driven by a 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 trial?"
+
+"No." A slight spasm twisted the smiling lines of the man's mouth, but
+it was gone and the mouth smiled still.
+
+A horror-struck expression gleamed for a second from the anxious eyes of
+the brother-in-law, but he controlled it quickly. He spoke gently. "Tell
+me about it--it will do you good to talk."
+
+The judge turned from the fire, and at sight of his flushed cheeks and
+lighted eyes the other shrank back, and the judge saw it. "You needn't
+be alarmed," he said quietly. "Nothing is wrong with me. But something
+has happened, as I told you, and everything--is changed." His eyes
+lifted as he spoke and strayed about the room as if considering a change
+which had come also to the accustomed setting.
+
+A shock of pity flashed from the other, and was mastered at once. "Can
+you tell me what has happened?" he urged. The judge, his face bright
+with a brightness that was dreadful to the man who watched him, held his
+hand to the fire, turning it about as if enjoying the warmth. The other
+shivered. There was silence for a minute. The judge broke it, speaking
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Suppose you had been born blind, Ned," he began, "and no one had ever
+given you a hint of the sense of vision, and your imagination had never
+presented such a power to your mind. Can you suppose that?"
+
+"I think so--yes," the brother-in-law answered, with careful gentleness,
+watching always the illumined countenance. "Yes, I can suppose it."
+
+"Then fancy if you will that all at once sight came, and the world
+flashed before you. Do you think you'd be able to describe such an
+experience?"
+
+The voice was normal, reflective. Many a time the two had talked
+together of such things in this very room, and the naturalness of the
+scene, and of the judge's manner, made the brother-in-law for a second
+forget the tragedy in which they were living.
+
+"Why, of course," he answered. "If one had never heard of such a power
+one's vocabulary wouldn't take in the words to describe it."
+
+"Exactly," the judge agreed. "That's the point I'm making. Perhaps now I
+may tell you what it is that has happened. Or rather, I may make you
+understand how a definite and concrete event has come to pass, which I
+can't tell you."
+
+Alarm suddenly expressed itself beyond control in the brother-in-law's
+face. "John, what do you mean? Do you see that you distress me? Can't
+you tell clearly if some one has been here--what it is, in plain
+English, that has happened?"
+
+The judge turned his dreamy, bright look toward the frightened man. "I
+do see--I do see," he brought out affectionately. "I'll try to tell, as
+you say, in plain English. But it is like the case I put--it is a
+question of lack of vocabulary. A remarkable experience has occurred in
+this room within an hour. I can no more describe it than the man born
+blind could describe sight. I can only call it by one name, which may
+startle you. A revelation."
+
+"A revelation!" the tone expressed incredulity, scarcely veiled scorn.
+
+The judge's brilliant gaze rested undisturbed on the speaker. "I
+understand--none better. A day ago, two hours ago, I should have
+answered in that tone. We have been trained in the same school, and have
+thought alike. Dick was here a while ago and said things--you know what
+Dick would say. You know how you and I have been sorry for the lad--been
+indulgent to him--with his keen, broad mind and that inspired
+self-forgetfulness of his--how we've been sorry to have such qualities
+wasted on a parson, a religion machine. We've thought he'd come around
+in time, that he was too large a personality to be tied to a treadmill.
+We've thought that all along, haven't we? Well, Dick was here, and out
+of the hell where I was I thought that again. When he talked I thought
+in a way--for I couldn't think much--that after a consistent voyage of
+agnosticism, I wouldn't be whipped into snivelling belief at the end, by
+shipwreck. I would at least go down without surrendering. In a dim way I
+thought that. And all that I thought then, and have thought through my
+life, is nothing. Reasoning doesn't weigh against experience. Dick is
+right."
+
+The other man sat before him, bent forward, his hands on his knees,
+listening, dazed. There was a quality in the speaker's tone which made
+it necessary to take his words seriously. Yet--the other sighed and
+relaxed a bit as he waited, watched. The calm voice went on.
+
+"The largest event of my life has happened in the last hour, in this
+room. It was this way. When Dick went out I--went utterly to pieces.
+It was the farthest depth. Out of it I called on God, not knowing what
+I did. And he answered. That's what happened. As if--as if a bandage
+had been lifted from my eyes, I was--I was in the presence of
+things--indescribable. There was no change, only that where I was blind
+before I now saw. I don't mean vision. I haven't words to explain what
+I mean. But a world was about me as real as this; it had perhaps always
+been there; in that moment I was first aware of it. I knew, as if a door
+had been opened, what heaven means--a condition of being. And I knew
+another thing more personal--that, without question, it was right with
+those I thought I had lost and that the horror which seemed blackest
+I have no need to dread. I cannot say that I saw them or heard or
+touched them, but I was with them. I understand, but I can't make you
+understand. I told Dick an hour ago that if I could believe they were
+living, that I should ever have them again, I should be perfectly happy.
+That's true now. I believe it, and I am--perfectly happy."
+
+The listener groaned uncontrollably.
+
+"I know your thought," the judge answered the sound, and his eyes were
+like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong--my mind
+is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing
+eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I know. I
+am--perfectly happy."
+
+Then the man who listened rose from his chair and came and put a hand
+gently on the shoulder of the judge, looking down at him gravely. "I
+don't understand you very well, John," he said, "but I'm glad of
+anything--of anything"--his voice went suddenly. "Will you wait for me
+here a few minutes? I'm going home and I'll be back. I think I'll spend
+the night with you if you don't object."
+
+"Object! Wait!" The judge looked up in surprise, and with that he
+smiled. "I see. Surely. I'd like to have you here. Yes, I'll certainly
+wait."
+
+Outside in the hall one might have heard the brother-in-law say a low
+word or two to Miller as the man helped him on with his coat; then the
+front door shut softly, and he was gone, and the judge sat alone, his
+head thrown back against his chair, his face luminous.
+
+The other man swung down the dark street, rushing, agitated. As he came
+to the corner an electric light shone full on him and a figure crossing
+down toward him halted.
+
+"Father! I was coming to find you. Something extraordinary has happened.
+I was coming to find you."
+
+"Yes, Dick." The older man waited.
+
+"I've just left Charley Owen at the house--you remember Charley Owen?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, yes, you do--he's been here with--Jack. He was in Jack's class in
+college--in Jack's and Ben Armstrong's. He used to go on shooting trips
+with them both--often."
+
+"I remember now."
+
+"Yes, I knew you would." The young voice rushed on. "He has been away
+just now--down in Florida shooting--away from civilization. He got all
+his mail for a month in one lump--just now--two days ago. In it was a
+letter from Jack and Ben Armstrong, written that night, written
+together. Do you see what that means?"
+
+"What!" The word was not
+a question, but an exclamation.
+"What--Dick!"
+
+"Yes--yes. There were newspapers, too, which gave an account of the
+trial--the first he'd heard of it--he was away in the Everglades. He
+started instantly, and came on here when he had read the papers, and
+realized the bearing his letter would have on the trial. He has
+travelled day and night. He hoped to get here in time. Jack and Ben
+thought he was in New York. They wrote to ask him to go
+duck-shooting--with them. And, father--here's the most startling point
+of it all." As the man waited, watching his son's face, he groaned
+suddenly and made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Don't, father--don't take it that way. It's good--it's glorious--it
+clears Jack. My uncle will be almost happy. But I wouldn't tell him at
+once--I'd be careful," he warned the other.
+
+"What was it--the startling point you spoke of?"
+
+"Oh--surely--this. The letter to Charley Owen spoke of Jack's new
+pistol--that pistol. Jack said they would have target-shooting with it
+in camp. They were all crack shots, you know. He said he had bought it
+that evening, and that Ben thought well of it. Ben signed the letter
+after Jack, and then added a postscript. It clears Jack--it clears him.
+Doesn't it, father? But I wouldn't tell my uncle just yet. He's not fit
+to take it in for a few hours--don't you think so?"
+
+"No, I won't tell him--just yet."
+
+The young man's wide glance concentrated with a flash on his father's
+face. "What is it? You speak queerly. You've just come from there.
+How is he--how is my uncle?"
+
+There was a letterbox at the corner, a foot from the older man's
+shoulder. He put out his hand and held to the lid a moment before he
+answered. His voice was harsh.
+
+"Your uncle is--perfectly happy," he said. "He's gone mad."
+
+
+
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