two years had passed since their marriage. nacha had taken up the management of her mother's house, and was proving skillful at a task which her sister's flight to a distant province with her new husband greatly simplified for her.
for monsalvat her devotion knew no bounds. with nacha beside him he scarcely needed eyes; but he could not reconcile himself to his uselessness. if he had only been able at least to go on working for the poor and the oppressed! he had to content himself with gathering together the children of the neighborhood and teaching them whatever he could, without the use of his sight. it annoyed him not to be able to teach them to read; for he believed that if ever the world was to be made new it would be through love, and through books! of these last he gave as many as he could afford to the boys and girls who showed promise of making good use of what he taught them.
the presence of this blind man was a strange note in the little middle class boarding house. the students all felt a deep and affectionate veneration for him. many of them became his friends, and not a few his true disciples. they read to him, and together they discussed articles and books; but these young people liked best to hear him talk of that vision which never ceased to shine in his darkness. at times his words flamed with the passion for justice within him. at others they seemed to pour out quietly and evenly like so many beams of that light in which, to his listeners, beauty and truth was revealed.
since he had come there to live, gross words and vulgar anecdotes had vanished as if by magic. at the long dinner-table there seemed now always to be something to talk about; for the students shared their day's experiences and discoveries with don fernando, and the ideas they had found interesting grew and became animate as they discussed them with their blind host.
when they sat together in the evening, talking and dreaming of new forms of beauty which might come into being on the earth, there would come a hush as the blind man spoke of his gods: life and love, and mankind. his fervent words sowed faith in the young hearts of his hearers.
so the days passed, and the night in which he lived was no longer tragic as at first; but sweet, peaceful, and alive with familiar voices. for him there gleamed little familiar stars in the depths of that all-enveloping darkness.
weeks and months passed; and the last days of july arrived in a tragic year, feverish days when war stepped into the scene and claimed every conversation wherever a group gathered. the sirens of the newspaper buildings gave the news which set moving through the city crowds sick with dread, bewildered, obsessed by images of war, delirious. newspaper headlines, infected by the general madness, grew to enormous size, quivering before the eyes of their troubled readers; and the familiar world was clad in the terrible strangeness of a bad dream.
monsalvat could not escape learning the monstrous news. his face drawn and pale, he listened to the reading of newspapers, countless newspapers; and in the squares and public places he heard the distress and horror of the throng. yet even then his hard-won serenity did not abandon him.
the great war began, and one afternoon in august the students brought in the news that the german cavalry was invading france. most of the students were already at the dinner-table. those who came in cried out from the doorway:
"it's begun. germany has invaded french soil!"
the brutal news was a whip-lash to all those gathered there. they were silent a moment, and then came a flood of words, words of amazement, of imprecation, or of sympathy. one student jumped to his feet with a cry of "vive la france!"
but the blind man said nothing. he seemed lost in his own thoughts. at last, at a chance word, he began to speak, and his voice betrayed his distress, though serenity, optimism, illusion, still possessed him.
"this war is a monstrous crime," he said, "the greatest crime ever yet committed on this earth. not so much on account of the millions of human beings it will destroy, as because it tears to shreds one of the finest illusions ever dreamed by generous hearts."
a shadow passed over his face:
"but in spite of everything, let the infamy of this war be welcome! they have willed it, they shall have it!"
his hearers looked at one another with questioning eyes. then in a flash they understood.
"who are they?" "those," he replied, "who, controlling forces, abuse them; who, possessing plenty, let the hungry starve; who, enjoying happiness, stir not a finger to make a better world, that all may have their chance to live, and love, and give! the powerful, i mean, who change life to death, and love to hatred!"
"but the day is coming," he cried. "this war is indeed the beginning of der tag! i feel it coming—a part of it is here already within my heart. i do not know how it is to come, whether little by little, or suddenly, flamingly, like an avenger!"
"but i know that the day is coming—the day that will be sacred to justice!"
in the silence that followed, the young minds to whom he had spoken thought of what such a day would mean, to each of them, to all whom they knew; and the eyes of some of those who listened, dreaming and desiring better things, grew wet....
at the far end of the table, monsalvat, head erect, sat gazing at the future, at what lay beyond the great crime, at that dawn whose splendor would justify the hopes of the dead, and the efforts of the living.
and his night lifted and lightened with the radiance of innumerable stars.
