Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (133 page)

I
never
had
a
chance,
after
my
own
accident,
to
consult
Wender. I
stuck
to
Europe
unbrokenly
for
many
years,
as
he
stuck
to
America. Both
Wender
and
I,
I
fancy,
were
chary
of
writing
what
might
have been
written.
Some
day,
I
thought,
we
would
meet
and
have
the whole
thing
out;
but
that
day
never
came.
Suddenly,
one
autumn,
I had
news
of
his
death.
He
was
a
member
of
a
summer
expedition
in Utah
and
northern
Arizona—I
think
I
mentioned
that
he
had
gone in
for
American
ethnology.
There
are,
as
every
one
knows,
rich
finds in
our
western
States
for
any
one
who
will
dig
long
enough;
and
they were
hoping
to
get
aboriginal
skulls
and
mummies.
All
this
his
sister referred
to
when
she
wrote
me
the
particulars
of
his
death.
She
dwelt with
forgivable
bitterness
on
the
fact
of
Wender's
having
been
told beforehand
that
the
particular
section
he
was
assigned
to
was
free from
rattlesnakes:
"Perhaps
you
know,"
she
wrote,
"that
my
brother had
had,
since
childhood,
a
morbid
horror
of
reptiles."
I
did
know it—Lithway
had
told
me.
Wender's
death
from
the
bite
of
a
rattlesnake
was
perhaps
the
most
ironic
of
the
three
adventures;
for
Wender was
the
one
of
us
who
put
most
faith
in
the
scenes
produced
on
the stage
of
Braythe.
I
never
heard
Wender's
theory;
but
I
fancy
he
realized,
as
Lithway
and
I
did
not,
that
since
the
"ghosts"
we
saw
were not
of
the
past
they
must
be
of
the
future—a
most
logical
step,
which I
am
surprised
none
of
us
should
have
taken
until
after
the
event.

Wender's
catastrophe
killed
in
me
much
of
my
love
of
wandering. At
least,
it
drove
me
to
Harry
Medway;
and
Harry
Medway
did
the rest.
I
am
not
afraid
of
another
warrior's
cutting
at
me
with
his
assegai; but
I
do
not
like
to
be
too
far
from
specialists.
I
have
already
been warned
that
I
may
sometime
go
blind;
and
I
know
that
other
complications
may
be
expected.
Pathology
and
surgery
are
sealed
books
to me;
but
I
still
hold
so
far
to
logic
that
I
fully
expect
to
die
some
time as
an
indirect
result
of
that
wound.
The
scar
reminds
me
daily
that its
last
word
has
not
been
said.

I
am
a
fairly
old
man—the
older
that
I
no
longer
wander,
and
that I
cling
so
weakly
to
the
great
capitals
which
hold
the
great
physicians. The
only
thing
that
I
was
ever
good
at
I
can
no
longer
do.
Curiosity has
died
in
me,
for
the
most.part;
one
or
two
such
mighty
curiosities have
been,
you
see,
already
so
terribly
appeased.
But
I
think
I
would rise
from
my
death-bed,
and
wipe
away
with
my
own
hand
the
mortal sweat
from
my
face,
for
the
chance
of
learning
what
it
was
that
drove Mrs.
Lithway,
in
midwinter,
from
Braythe.
If
I
could
once
know
what she
saw
on
the
staircase,
I
think
I
should
ask
no
more
respite.
The
scar might
fulfill
its
mission.