At Twilight
A breeze from the May world without blew through the class-room, andas it lifted his papers he had a curious sense of freshness andmustiness meeting. He looked at the group of students before him,half smiling at the way the breath of spring was teasing the hair ofthe girls sitting by the window. Anna Lawrence was trying to pinhers back again, but May would have none of such decorum, and onlywaited long enough for her to finish her work before joyouslyundoing it. She caught the laughing, admiring eyes of a boy sittingacross from her and sought to conceal her pleasure in herunmanageable wealth of hair by a wry little face, and then the eyesof both strayed out to the trees that had scented that breeze forthem, looking with frank longing at the campus which stretchedbefore them in all its May glory that sunny afternoon. He rememberedhaving met this boy and girl strolling in the twilight the eveningbefore, and as a buoyant breeze that instant swept his own face hehad a sudden, irrelevant consciousness of being seventy-three yearsold.Other eyes were straying to the trees and birds and lilacs of thatworld from which the class-room was for the hour shutting them out.He was used to it--that straying of young eyes in the spring. Formore than forty years he had sat at that desk and talked to youngmen and women about philosophy, and in those forty years there hadalways been straying eyes in May. The children of some of those boysand girls had in time come to him, and now there were other childrenwho, before many years went by, might be sitting upon those benches,listening to lectures upon what men had thought about life, whiletheir eyes strayed out where life called. So it went on--May,perhaps, the philosopher triumphant.As, with a considerable effort--for the languor of spring, or someother languor, was upon him too--he brought himself back to thepapers they had handed in, he found himself thinking of those firstboys and girls, now men and women, and parents of other boys andgirls. He hoped that philosophy had, after all, done something morethan shut them out from May. He had always tried, not so much toinstruct them in what men had thought, as to teach them to think,and perhaps now, when May had become a time for them to watch thestraying of other eyes, they were the less desolate because of thehabits he had helped them to form. He wanted to think that he haddone something more than hold them prisoners.There was a sadness to-day in his sympathy. He was tired. It washard to go back to what he had been saying about the differentthings the world's philosophers had believed about the immortalityof the soul. So, as often when his feeling for his thought dragged,he turned to Gretta Loring. She seldom failed to bring a revival ofinterest--a freshening. She was his favourite student. He did notbelieve that in all the years there had been any student who had notonly pleased, but helped him as she did.He had taught her father and mother. And now there was Gretta,clear-eyed and steady of gaze, asking more of life than either ofthem had asked; asking, not only May, but what May meant. For Grettathere need be no duality. She was one of those rare ones for whomthe meaning of life opened new springs to the joy of life, for whomlife intensified with the understanding of it. He never said a thingthat gratified him as reaching toward the things not easy to say butthat he would find Gretta's face illumined--and always that eagerlittle leaning ahead for more.She had that look of waiting now, but to-day it seemed less anexpectant than a troubled look. She wanted him to go on with what hehad been saying about the immortality of the soul. But it was not somuch a demand upon him--he had come to rely upon those demands, asit was--he had an odd, altogether absurd sense of its being a fearfor him. She looked uncomfortable, fretted; and suddenly he wasstartled to see her searching eyes blurred by something that must betears.She turned away, and for just a minute it seemed to leave him aloneand helpless. He rubbed his forehead with his hand. It felt hot. Itgot that way sometimes lately when he was tired. And the close ofthat hour often found him tired.He believed he knew what she wanted. She would have him declare hisown belief. In the youthful flush of her modernism she was impatientwith that fumbling around with what other men had thought. Despisingthe muddled thinking of some of her classmates, she would have himput it right to them with "As for yourself--"He tried to formulate what he would care to say. But, perhaps justbecause he was too tired to say it right, the life the robin in thenearest tree was that moment celebrating in song seemed moreimportant than anything he had to say about his own feeling towardthe things men had thought about the human soul.It was ten minutes before closing time, but suddenly he turned tohis class with: "Go out-of-doors and think about it. This is no dayto sit within and talk of philosophy. What men have thought aboutlife in the past is less important than what you feel about itto-day." He paused, then added, he could not have said why, "Anddon't let the shadow of either belief or unbelief fall across thedays that are here for you now." Again he stopped, then surprisedhimself by ending, "Philosophy should quicken life, not deaden it."They were not slow in going, their astonishment in his wanting themto go quickly engulfed in their pleasure in doing so. It was onlyGretta who lingered a moment, seeming too held by his manner insending her out into the sunshine to care about going there. Hethought she was going to come to the desk and speak to him. He wassure she wanted to. But at the last she went hastily, and hethought, just before she turned her face away, that it was a tear hesaw on her lashes.Strange! Was she unhappy, she through whom life surged so richly?And yet was it not true, that where it gave much it exacted much?Feeling much, and understanding what she felt, and feeling for whatshe understood--must she also suffer much? Must one always pay?He sighed, and began gathering together his papers. Thoughts aboutlife tired him to-day.On the steps he paused, unreasonably enough a little saddened as hewatched some of them beginning a tennis game. Certainly they werelosing no time--eager to let go thoughts about life for itspleasures, very few of them awake to that rich life he had tried tomake them ready for. He drooped still more wearily at the thoughtthat perhaps the most real gift he had for them was that unexpectedten minutes.Remembering a book he must have from the library, he turned back. Hewent to the alcove where the works on philosophy were to be found,and was reaching up for the volume he wanted, when a sentence from alowly murmured conversation in the next aisle came to him across thestack of books."That's all very well; we know, of course, that he doesn't believe,but what will he do when it comes to himself?"It arrested him, coming as it did from one of the girls who had justleft his class-room. He stood there motionless, his hand stillreaching up for the book."Do? Why, face it, of course. Face it as squarely as he's facedevery other fact of life."That was Gretta, and though, mindful of the library mandate forsilence, her tone was low, it was vibrant with a fine scorn."Well," said the first speaker, "I guess he'll have to face itbefore very long."That was not answered; there was a movement on the other side of thebarricade of books--it might have been that Gretta had turned away.His hand dropped down from the high shelf. He was leaning againstthe books."Haven't you noticed, Gretta, how he's losing his grip?"At that his head went up sharply; he stood altogether tense as hewaited for Gretta to set the other girl right--Gretta, sosure-seeing, so much wiser and truer than the rest of them. Grettawould laugh!But she did not laugh. And what his strained ear caught at lastwas--not her scornful denial, but a little gasp of breath suggestinga sob."Noticed it? Why it breaks my heart!"He stared at the books through which her low, passionate voice hadcarried. Then he sank to the chair that fortunately was beside him.Power for standing had gone from him."Father says--father's on the board, you know" (it was the firstgirl who spoke)--"that they don't know what to do about it. It's notjustice to the school to let him begin another year. These thingsare arranged with less embarrassment in the big schools, where a manbegins emeritus at a certain time. Though of course they'll pensionhim--he's done a lot for the school."He thanked Gretta for her little laugh of disdain. The memory of itwas more comforting--more satisfying--than any attempt to put itinto words could have been.He heard them move away, their skirts brushing the book-stacks inpassing. A little later he saw them out in the sunshine on thecampus. Gretta joined one of the boys for a game of tennis.Motionless, he sat looking out at her. She looked so very young asshe played.For an hour he remained at the table in the alcove where he hadoverheard what his students had to say of him. And when the hour hadgone by he took up the pen which was there upon the study table andwrote his resignation to the secretary of the board of trustees. Itwas very brief--simply that he felt the time had come when a youngerman could do more for the school than he, and that he should likehis resignation to take effect at the close of the present schoolyear. He had an envelope, and sealed and stamped the letter--readyto drop in the box in front of the building as he left. He hadalways served the school as best he could; he lost no time now, onceconvinced, in rendering to it the last service he could offerit--that of making way for the younger man.Looking things squarely in the face, and it was the habit of alifetime to look things squarely in the face, he had not been longin seeing that they were right. Things tired him now as they had notonce tired him. He had less zest at the beginning of the hour, morerelief at the close of it. He seemed stupid in not having seen itfor himself, but possibly many people were a little stupid in seeingthat their own time was over. Of course he had thought, in a vagueway, that his working time couldn't be much longer, but it seemedpart of the way human beings managed with themselves that things ineven the very near future kept the remoteness of future things.Now he understood Gretta's troubled look and her tears. He knew howthose fine nerves of hers must have suffered, how her own mind hadwanted to leap to the aid of his, how her own strength must havetormented her in not being able to reach his flagging powers. Itseemed part of the whole hardness of life that she who would carethe most would be the one to see it most understandingly.What he was trying to do was to see it all very simply, inmatter-of-fact fashion, that there might be no bitterness and theleast of tragedy. It was nothing unique in human history he wasfacing. One did one's work; then, when through, one stopped. Hetried to feel that it was as simple as it sounded, but he wonderedif back of many of those brief letters of resignation that came atquitting-time there was the hurt, the desolation, that there was nouse denying to himself was back of his.He hoped that most men had more to turn to. Most men ofseventy-three had grandchildren. That would help, surrounding onewith a feeling of the naturalness of it all. But that school hadbeen his only child. And he had loved it with the tenderness onegives a child. That in him which would have gone to the child hadgone to the school.The woman whom he loved had not loved him; he had never married. Hislife had been called lonely; but lonely though it undeniably hadbeen, the life he won from books and work and thinking had kept thechill from his heart. He had the gift of drawing life from allcontact with life. Working with youth, he kept that feeling foryouth that does for the life within what sunshine and fresh air dofor the room in which one dwells.It was now that the loneliness that blights seemed waiting forhim.... Life used one--and that in the ugly, not the noble senseof being used. Stripped of the fine fancies men wove around it, whatwas it beyond just a matter of being sucked dry and then thrownaside? Why not admit that, and then face it? And the abundance withwhich one might have given--the joy in the giving--had no bearingupon the fact that it came at last to that question of getting oneout of the way. It was no one's unkindness; it was just that lifewas like that. Indeed, the bitterness festered around the thoughtthat it was life itself--the way of life--not the brutalityof any particular people. "They'll pension him--he's done a lot forthe school." Even the grateful memory of Gretta's tremulous,scoffing little laugh for the way it fell short could not follow tothe deep place that had been hurt.Getting himself in hand again, and trying to face this as simply andhonestly as he had sought to face the other, he knew that it wastrue he had done a great deal for the school. He did not believe ittoo much to say he had done more for it than any other man.Certainly more than any other man he had given it what place it hadwith men who thought. He had come to it in his early manhood, and ata time when the school was in its infancy--just a crude, strugglinglittle Western college. Gretta Loring's grandfather had been one ofits founders--founding it in revolt against the crampingsectarianism of another college. He had gloried in the spirit whichgave it birth, and it was he who, through the encroachings ofproblems of administration and the ensnarements and entanglements ofpracticality, had fought to keep unattached and unfettered thatspirit of freedom in the service of truth.His own voice had been heard and recognised, and a number of timesduring the years calls had come from more important institutions,but he had not cared to go. For year by year there deepened thatpersonal love for the little college to which he had given theyouthful ardour of his own intellectual passion. All his life'shabits were one with it. His days seemed beaten into the path thatcut across the campus. The vines that season after season went alittle higher on the wall out there indicated his strivings by theirown, and the generation that had worn down even the stones of thosefront steps had furrowed his forehead and stooped his shoulders. Hehad grown old along with it! His days were twined around it. It wasthe place of his efforts and satisfactions (joys perhaps he shouldnot call them), of his falterings and his hopes. He loved it becausehe had given himself to it; loved it because he had helped to bringit up. On the shelves all around him were books which it had beenhis pleasure--because during some of those hard years they were tobe had in no other way--to order himself and pay for from his ownalmost ludicrously meagre salary. He remembered the excitement therealways was in getting them fresh from the publisher and bringingthem over there in his arms; the satisfaction in coming in next dayand finding them on the shelves. Such had been his dissipations, hisindulgences of self. Many things came back to him as he sat theregoing back over busy years, the works on philosophy looking downupon him, the shadows of that spring afternoon gathering around him.He looked like a very old man indeed as he at last reached out forthe letter he had written to the trustees, relieving them of theirembarrassment.Twilight had come on. On the front steps he paused and looked aroundthe campus. It was growing dark in that lingering way it has in thespring--daylight creeping away under protest, night coming gently,as if it knew that the world having been so pleasant, day would beloath to go. The boys and girls were going back and forth upon thecampus and the streets. They could not bear to go within. For morethan forty years it had been like that. It would be like that formany times forty years--indeed, until the end of the world, for itwould be the end of the world when it was not like that. He was gladthat they were out in the twilight, not indoors trying to gain frombooks something of the meaning of life. That course had itssatisfactions along the way, but it was surely no port of peace towhich it bore one at the last.He shrunk from going home. There were so many readjustments he mustmake, once home. So, lingering, he saw that off among the trees agirl was sitting alone. She threw back her head in a certain wayjust then, and he knew by the gesture that it was Gretta Loring. Hewondered what she was thinking about. What did one who thought thinkabout--over there on the other side of life? Youth and age looked atlife from opposite sides. Then they could not see it alike, for whatone saw in life seemed to depend so entirely upon how the light wasfalling from where one stood.He could not have said just what it was made him cross the campustoward her. Part of it was the desire for human sympathy--one thing,at least, which age did not deaden. But that was not the whole ofit, nor the deepest thing in it. It was an urge of the spirit tofind and keep for itself a place where the light was fallingbackward upon life.She was quiet in her greeting, and gentle. Her cheeks were stillflushed, her hair tumbled from her game, but her eyes werethoughtful and, he thought, sad. He felt that the sadness wasbecause of him; of him and the things of which he made her think. Heknew of her affection for him, the warmth there was in heradmiration of the things for which he had fought. He had discoveredthat it hurt her now that others should be seeing and not he, painedher to watch so sorry a thing as his falling below himself, woundedboth pride and heart that men whom she would doubtless say had neverappreciated him were whispering among themselves about how to getrid of him. Why, the poor child might even be tormenting herselfwith the idea she ought to tell him!That was why he told her. He pointed to the address on the envelope,saying: "That carries my resignation, Gretta."Her start and the tears which rushed to her eyes told him he wasright about her feeling. She did not seem able to say anything. Herchin was trembling."I see that the time has come," he said, "when a younger man can domore for the school than I can hope to do for it."Still she said nothing at all, but her eyes were deepening and shehad that very steadfast, almost inspired look that had so many timesquickened him in the class-room.She was not going to deny it! She was not going to pretend!After the first feeling of not having got something needed he roseto her high ground--ground she had taken it for granted he wouldtake."And will you believe it, Gretta," he said, rising to that groundand there asking, not for the sympathy that bends down, but for ahand in passing, "there comes a hard hour when first one feels thetime has come to step aside and be replaced by that younger man?"She nodded. "It must be," she said, simply; "it must be very muchharder than any of us can know till we come to it."She brought him a sense of his advantage in experience--his riches.To be sure, there was that.And he was oddly comforted by the honesty in her which could notstoop to dishonest comforting. In what superficially might seem herfailure there was a very real victory for them both. And there wasnothing of coldness in her reserve! There was the fulness ofunderstanding, and of valuing the moments too highly for anythingthere was to be said about it. There was a great spiritual dignity,a nobility, in the way she was looking at him. It called upon thewhole of his own spiritual dignity. It was her old demand upon him,but this time the tears through which her eyes shone were tears ofpride in fulfilment, not of sorrowing for failure.Suddenly he felt that his life had not been spent in vain, that thelives of all those men of his day who had fought the good fight forintellectual honesty--spiritual dignity--had not been spent in vainif they were leaving upon the earth even a few who were like thegirl beside them.It turned him from himself to her. She was what counted--for she waswhat remained. And he remained in just the measure that he remainedthrough her; counted in so far as he counted for her. It was as ifhe had been facing in the wrong direction and now a kindly hand hadturned him around. It was not in looking back there he would findhimself. He was not back there to be found. Only so much of himlived as had been able to wing itself ahead--on in the direction shewas moving.It did not particularly surprise him that when she at last spoke itwas to voice a shade of that same feeling. "I was thinking," shebegan, "of that younger man. Of what he must mean to the man whogives way to him."She was feeling her way as she went--groping among the many dimthings that were there. He had always liked to watch her face whenshe was thinking her way step by step."I think you used a word wrongly a minute ago," she said, with asmile. "You spoke of being replaced. But that isn't it. A man likeyou isn't replaced; he's"--she got it after a minute and came forthwith it triumphantly--"fulfilled!"Her face was shining as she turned to him after that. "Don't yousee? He's there waiting to take your place because you got himready. Why, you made that younger man! Your whole life has been agetting ready for him. He can do his work be cause you first didyours. Of course he can go farther than you can! Wouldn't it be asorry commentary on you if he couldn't?"Her voice throbbed warmly upon that last, and during the pause thelight it had brought still played upon her face. "We were talking inclass about immortality," she went on, more slowly. "There's oneform of immortality I like to think about. It's that all those whofrom the very first have given anything to the world are living inthe world to-day." There was a rush of tears to her eyes and ofaffection to her voice as she finished, very low: "You'll never die.You've deepened the consciousness of life too much for that."They sat there as twilight drew near to night, the old man and theyoung girl, silent. The laughter of boys and girls and thegood-night calls of the birds were all around them. The fragrance oflife was around them. It was one of those silences to which comeimpressions, faiths, longings, not yet born as thoughts.Something in the quality of that silence brought the rescuing senseof its having been good to have lived and done one's part--thatsense which, from places of desolation and over ways rough and steepand dark, can find its way to the meadows of serenity.
At Twilight was featured as
TheShort Story of the Day on
Thu, Apr 28, 2016
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