# Rare Earth/Chapter 8

Chapter VIII
Sitting in his attic studio, Scobee Trent thought grimly of these things. It has been said that the World War was a war to end war. Perhaps it was. Though one might say in like manner that a man committed suicide to escape death. By the War little has been accomplished. The minds of men are still as chaotic as ever. There are easily as many criminals. But at least the War taught men to view death lightly, for sometimes life itself is as grim as death. So had it become to Scobee Trent. It was hard for him to take a philosophical view of his condition. Everything was changed. Rad was gone. Dallis beyond his reach. No longer could he see the sun or the cloud ships sailing the deep blue skies. How he had loved to dream about those phantom ships when he was a small boy.
There came a night when Scobee could not sleep. He lay and tossed upon his pillow in almost utter anguish. He felt as though he could not go on. Those meshes of blackness ​that engulfed him were frightful. The blackness was stifling, it caught in his throat, choking him. He could not breathe. His forehead was hot but beads of cold perspiration stood out upon it. At that moment he felt as though he were going out of his mind. He had not the strength to face the future. He could face war with a smile but that impenetrable endless blackness made him cringe. It held a sinister menace.
"It isn't so much that I can't sleep," he moaned, "as that I can't wake up. Oh, to be able to see again!"
In despair he rose to his feet and groped about in the darkness until he found his clothes. His hands shook like those of an old man as he dressed. Then slowly he mounted the stairs to the attic. He threw open the window and rested his burning forehead upon the sill. The cool night air brushed against his cheek fragrant with the odors of sweetsmelling trees and flowers. But even in the attic that night he could find no rest. If only he could escape from that terrible blackness. ​If only he could flee from it to a place where there was eternal light.
"Eternal light," mechanically he repeated the phrase over and over again. "Eternal light. Why, that must be death. No, death cannot be light. Death is this awful grim place of blackness in which I live."
He must get out into the fields. He must get away, keep moving onward, onward. Although he did not know it his mother had once attempted to flee from the wraiths of mist and fog that engulfed the house upon a certain day. She was trying to escape from those drifting clouds of gray menace.
Scobee wished to flee not from a gray menace but a black, a black morass that was limitless.
Cautiously so as to make no sound he felt his way down the stairs and out through the open door into the fields. The doors of the Trent homestead were always open during the spring and summer so that the smell of the fields might pervade the house.
At last Scobee was out in the road but still ​the feeling that he was a prisoner persisted. He wanted light even if he must die to attain it.
In no matter what direction he turned all was blackness. There was no escape. The cool night air rather than alleviating seemed to intensify his fever. He was on the verge of delirium. He could not think clearly. All that he was conscious of, the supreme effort of his will was to get away. And so he started running, running through the fields without any sense of direction, his only desire being to reach some place where there was a ray of light Once or twice his foot caught in a tuft of grass or the protruding root of a bush and he fell. Each time he rose to his feet again and emitted a savage cry. Nothing must stop him, nothing. It was a gallant decision though fruitless, for suddenly he ran full-tilt into one of the barns. The force of the impact was so terrific he was momentarily stunned. As he slipped to the ground, consciousness left him. It was well. For a moment at least his pitiful rebellion was subdued.
​But though there was silence everywhere Scobee was not alone in the fields that night. Hung Long Tom had been lying awake thinking. The tragedy that had overtaken his boy had well-nigh broken the old yellow man's heart There was scarcely a moment of the day or night when Hung Long Tom was not thinking deeply about Scobee's problem. If only he could do something for him. It was unbelievable that Scobee would never see again. There must be help for him somewhere but where was an alarming enigma. Steinlin was one of the best eye specialists in the world. Where Steinlin had failed it was not likely that another doctor could succeed. That wholesale slaughter in Europe had advanced science with tremendous strides even though it had almost dealt civilization a deathblow. It had given surgeons the opportunity for research on living bodies which usually could only be done on bodies of the dead. The War had made of Europe a vast experimental laboratory. It had given doctors the opportunity to cure wounds which the War itself had ​created. Steinlin was one of the miracle men who had come out of the War, yet for Scobee he was able to do nothing. Yes, it was a mighty problem which poor Hung Long Tom was attempting to solve.
That night he had heard Scobee cautiously moving about. He had heard him creep softly up the stairs. His ears were trained to catch the slightest tremor of sound. For always he had tried to hear the songs which the night wind sings through the willows and to catch the words of fragrant flowers uttered in perfumed melodies. Hung Long Tom was a mystic and a dreamer. Perhaps that is what made him so truly a realist, a realist who understood life.
For awhile he had lain there listening. He had heard Scobee moving about in the attic. He had heard him walk down the stairs. Not till Scobee was out of the house did Hung Long Tom rise to his feet. To slip into the loose suit which he always wore was but the space of a minute. Then he too crept down the stairs and out into the night. But to the ​eyes of Hung Long Tom the night presented a far different aspect than it had shown to Scobee. A pale yellow moon hung low in the sky. The stars were as bright as lanterns. The blue sky was as clear as though it were painted there. The air was as fragrant as a sprig of wistaria. Here and there in the distance the fronds of a tree loomed up in black silhouette against the blue gleam of the sky. Hung Long Tom sighed. All this beauty and Scobee not to be able to see it.
Meanwhile Scobee was out in the fields, running as though his very life depended upon it. Hung Long Tom followed leisurely after him. He sensed the tumult that was in the heart of the boy nor did he blame him for running away. He did not believe any harm could befall Scobee in that flat country. There was no traffic along the roads. Those slumbering trails held scant allure for speed-mad motorists, for most of the roads led to solitude, limitless fields of wheat with here and there a bit of a farmhouse hiding as though anxious to get away from the noise and roar of cities.
​Hung Long Tom made no effort to stop Scobee in his flight. He did not call after him. What would have been the use? He would probably not have heeded the call, nor even heard it. After all what could Hung Long Tom say even if he had succeeded in restraining him? What was there to say? It was best not to interfere. If Scobee exhausted himself, maybe he would sleep and sleep was the one thing he needed right then. Of course Hung Long Tom had not dreamed for a-moment that Scobee would run into one of the barns. It was a horrible thing to behold. It made Hung Long Tom shiver. As he saw what was about to happen, he cried out in alarm. But either Scobee was too far away or Hung Long Tom had cried out too late. Scobee struck the barn and fell, struck the barn like a moth beating its wings futilely against a window.
He was unconscious when Hung Long Tom came upon him though perhaps as much from exhaustion as from the effects of the blow. Hung Long Tom examined his body carefully but there seemed to be nothing much the ​matter with him. His forehead was bruised and bleeding slightly but aside from that he showed no evidence of being injured. Hung Long Tom rolled him into a more comfortable position. The soil by the barn was new-plowed and the warm smell of the loam was comforting. At last Scobee was sleeping on the breast of the earth even as his father had often slept when cares and worries beset him. And from the soil he drew strength, at least something of the peace of growing wheat seemed to seep into his tired body, for soon his breathing became even, as though his rest were deep. Once he opened his eyes, again he held out his hand as though to grasp for something that was beyond his reach. Occasionally he mumbled a bit in an unintelligible jargon such as one frequently employs in slumber.