Читать книгу In the Dwellings of the Wilderness онлайн | страница 4

Abruptly his voice ceased. In the darkness neither could see the other's face. Deane sat and listened silently, immeasurably surprised. Merritt the hardheaded, Merritt the practical, who would sneer at sentimentality, to rhapsodise thus? Deane knew that it is precisely the man most reserved and self-contained, who, when he speaks at all, will go to greater lengths even than the habitually confiding, and lay bare the deep, shy heart of him to its very roots. Deane also knew that when this rare mood fastens on such an one it is to be marvelled at and its tale held sacred; for always it will mark some crisis in the man's life, the outward sign of a stress which perhaps none but himself may know. And because Deane's every nerve thrilled in response to the suggestion in Merritt's words, and because that might be said in darkness, between men, which daylight would show up pitilessly and render commonplace and futilely inane, Deane said slowly, staring up at the great stars that blazed above them:

"I didn't know you felt like that about it too."

Merritt countered with quick eagerness.

"Do you? Can you put yourself back in that old vanished life when you come upon the broken corpse of it here, and reverence it? Can you build these ruined walls again, and see, instead of mounds and trenches, a city with tower-capped walls, and groves of trees, and gardens, teeming with human life whose very ashes have dissolved? That's what I do, every time. It began when I was a little shaver, back home. They wanted to make an engineer of me, but I said I'd rather dig up things that other people had built than spend my time building things for other people to dig up. It sort of took a grip on me—and it never let go."

Deane nodded sympathetically in the darkness.

"I know what you mean, all right. But—well, I had no idea that you felt—er—this way about it."

Merritt laughed.

"I don't know what made it all ooze out to-night," he confessed. "But I've been thinking about it a lot. It '11 be a big thing, Deane. It will mean a good deal to all of us, if we can put it through."