The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1907-05-10
CHAPTER XXI.


Ih "Other Mems Shoes" Lode
rose from his seat and made
his apologies to Lillian.
At any other moment he might have
pondered ove= her manner Of accept
ing them-the easy Indifference with
which she let him go. But vastly
keener issues were claiming his atten
lion, issues whose results were wide
and black.
He left the theater and, refusing the
Overtures of cabmen, set himself to
walk to Chilcote's house. His face
was hard and emotionless as he hur-
rled forward, but the chaos in his mind
found expression in the unevenness of
his pace. To a strong man the con-
fronting of difficulties is never alarm
ing and is often fraught with inspira-
ton, but this applies essentially to the
difficulties evolved through the weak
ness, the folly or the force of another;
when they arise from within the mat
ter Is of another character. 1t Is in
presence of his own soul, and in that
presence alone, that a man may truly
measure himself.
AS Loder walked onward, treading
the whole familiar length of traffic
filed street, he realized for the first
time that he was standing before that
solemn tribunal-that the hour had
come when he must answer to himself
for himself The longer and deeper an
oblivion the more painful the awaken
ing. For months the song of self had
beaten about his ears, deadening all
other sounds; now abruptly that song
had ceased, not considerably, not lin
geringly, but with a suddenness that
made the succeeding silence very ter
rible
He walked onward, keeping his d.
through the fire as surely as though
actual flames rose about his feet, and
whatever the result, whatever the fiber
of the man who emerged from the. or
deal, the John Loder who had hewn
his way through the past weeks would
exist no more. The triumphant egotist,
the strong man who by his own
strength had kept his eyes upon one
point, refusing to see in other direc-
lions, had ceased to be.
Keen though 1t was, his realization |
of this crisis in his life had come with |
slowness. When Lillian
Astrupp had given her dictum. when |
the music If the orchestra had ceased |
and the curtain risen on the second act |
of the play, nothing but sense of |
had filed his mind. In
that moment the great song was 81
enced, not by any portentous episode,
not by any incident that could have
ent dignity to its end. but, with the
'ull measure of life's irony, by a trivial
Iocial commonplace. In the first SEN
'ation of blank loss his faculties had
)een numbed. In the quarter of an
lour that followed the rise Of the cur
ain he had sat staring at the stage,
eeing nothing hearing nothing, filed
With the enormity of the void that sud
lenly surrounded him. Then from
abit, from constitutional tendency, he
lad begun slowly and perseveringly
o draw first one thread and then an
ther from the tangle of his thoughts,
0 forge with doubt and difficulty the
hahn that was to draw him toward the
uture.
It was upon this same incomplete
nd yet tenacious chain that his mind
,orked as he traversed the familiar
treets and at last gained the house he
ad so easily learned to call home.
As he inserted the latchkey and felt J.
move smoothly in the lock a momen- j
Try revolt against his own judgment, I
Is own censorship. swung him sharply .
ward reaction. But It is only the ,
lind who can walk without tremor
! the edge Of an abyss, and there was b
} longer handage across his eyes,
he reaction Jared up like strip of 0
yhted paper: then, like strip Of
,hted paper, 1t dropped back to ashes. q
e pushed the door open and slowly q
ossed the hall. p
The mounting of staircase Is often
? index to mans state of mind AS ~
der assembled the stairs of Chilcote's
use his shoulders lacked their stiff IL
IS, his head was no longer erect. He
wed as though his feet were weight y
He had ceased to be the man of III
lievement whose smallest opinion al
npels consideration. In the privacy W
solitude he was the mere human flot- pt
n to which he had once compared pa
nself--the fiotsam that. dreaming It tn
, found harbor, wakes to find itself
prey of the incoming tide.
lie paused at the head Of the stairs to ~
ly his resolutions. Then, still walk W
heavily, he passed down the corrl- ~
to Ewes room. 1t was suggestive III
his character that, having made his 81 -,
ision, he did not daily over its per- -,
nance. without waiting to knock, I'VE
turned the handle and walked into PC
room.
looked precisely as II always look 80
but to Loder the rich, subdued col "a.
~ of books and iowers-the whole sa,
of culture and repose that the place g.
to hold a deeper ~,
ming than before. and II was on the ~