"Ernestine—little one," he whispered, the light not going from his face—"you loved me—like that?"

"You see, Karl,"—it was this must reach him—"what you have to live for now?"

But he did not get that. He was filled with the wonder of that which he was seeing.

"You see, old man," said Parkman, sharply, "what you've got ahead of you?"

But he only murmured, happily, faintly, as one about to fall asleep: "She loved me—like that."

It terrified her; it seemed, not as though the great idea were holding him, but as though he were taking it away with him, even as though well content to go, having this to take with him from life.

"Karl—Karl!" she sobbed—"don't you see how I love you?—don't you see you must live now—for me?"

But he had far transcended all sense of suffering or loss, even her suffering and loss. Her plea—she herself—could not reach him. He and the great idea were going away together. And that light did not leave his face.

It was so that he sank into a sleep. He did not hear Ernestine's sobs; he knew nothing of her pleading cries. In a frenzy of grief she felt him going out to where she could not reach him. She called to him, and he did not answer. She pressed close to him, and he did not know that she was there.

But the great idea was with him. It lighted his face to the last. It was as if that were what he was taking with him from life. It was as if that, and that alone, he could keep.

"Karl—Karl!" she cried, terrorised—"look at me! Speak to me! I am here! Ernestine is here!"—And then, the strongest word of woman to man—"I'm frightened! Oh take care of me—Karl—take care of me!"

Dr. Parkman tried to take her away, but she resisted fiercely, and they let her stay. And during the few hours which followed she never ceased her pleading—to him to come back to her, to them to help. Crazed with the consciousness of his slipping from her, wild beyond all reason with the thought that her kisses could not move him, her arms could not hold him, her passion lashed to the uttermost in the thought that she must claim him now or lose him forever, she pleaded with all the eloquence of human voice and human tears. She could not believe it—that he was there beside her and would not listen to her pleadings. Again and again she told him that she was frightened and alone; that—surely that—he must hear. It could not be that he was there beside her, breathing, moving a little now and then, and did not hear her call for help.

And when at last she heard some one speak a low word, and saw some one bend over him to close his eyes, she uttered one piercing, heartbreaking cry which they would bear with them so long as they lived. And then, throwing herself upon him, shielding him, keeping him, there came the wild, futile call of life to death—"Karl!—Karl!—Karl!"



PART THREE



CHAPTER XXXVII

BENEATH DEAD LEAVES

The cold March rain drove steadily against the car window. His thoughts were like that,—cold, ugly, driving thoughts. Looking out at the bleak country through which they were passing he saw that dead leaves were hanging forlornly to bare trees. His hopes were like that,—a few dead hopes clinging dismally to the barren tree of experience. So it seemed to Dr. Parkman as he looked from the car window at the country of hills and hollows through which he was passing. The out-lived winter's snow still in the hollows, last summer's leaves blown meaninglessly about, denied even the repose of burial, the cheerless wind and the cheerless rain—it matched his mood.

Almost a year had gone by, and Dr. Parkman was going out to see Ernestine. Every mile which brought him nearer, brought added uncertainty as to what he should say when he reached her. What was there for him to say? The dead leaves of her hopes were all huddled in the hollow. Was he becoming so irrational as to think he could give life to things dead? Was she not right in wishing to cover them up decently and let them be? Was anything to be gained in blowing them about as last summer's leaves were being blown about now by the unsparing, uncaring winds of March?

She was out where she had lived as a girl,—living in the very house which had once been her home. He had understood her going. It was the simple law of living things. The animal wounded beyond all thought of life seeks only a place of seclusion.

But when Georgia returned from her visit to Ernestine the month before, she came to him with:

"Dr. Parkman, you must do something for Ernestine!" And after she had told him many things, and he questioned still further, she said, in desperate desire to make it plain—"She is becoming a great deal like you!"

And from then until the time of starting on this trip he had had no peace.

He understood; understood far more deeply than she who would have him see. Was any one better qualified to understand that thing than he?

Well,—what then? What now? Was there any other thing to expect? Was he, of all men, going to her with platitudes about courage and faith? And even so, would sophistry avail anything? Did he not know Ernestine far too well far that?

His own face bore the deep marks of hard and bitter things. But the loss and the sorrow showed themselves in strange ways, little understood as manifestations of grief. He ran his automobile faster, showed even less caution than before in his business ventures, had less and less to say, was called more and more strange by those associated with him. And the thing which mocked him most of all was that the year had been attended with the greatest professional successes of his life. He never heard his plaudits sounded without a curse in his heart.

"It went mighty hard with Parkman not to be able to save Hubers," medical men said with growing frequency as the year advanced. But there were none of them who dreamed into what deep and vital things the cut had gone. With his own will and his own skill he patched it up on the surface, not the man to leave his wound exposed to other eyes. But he knew its hopelessness too well ever to try and reach the bottom of the wound. It was not a good, clean, straight cut such as time expects to heal. Indeed it was not a cut at all; nothing so wholesome and reachable as that. It was a destroying force, a thing burrowing at the springs of life, a thing which made its way through devious paths to vital sources. Did a patched up surface mean anything to a thing like that?

The evening of the day he had seen Georgia, and she told him of Ernestine, he sat a long time in his office alone. The grey ashes of his own life seemed spread around him. And it was he, who was asked, out of this, to rekindle a great flame? And what flame? What was there left for Ernestine? Ask her to come back—to what? Fight—for what?

He did not know, or at least he said he did not know, and yet he, like Georgia, saw it as all wrong, unendurable, not to be countenanced, that Ernestine should shut herself out from life.

Perhaps he was going to her because he knew so well the desolation of ashes. Was it because he had lived so long among them that he hated to see another fire go out? Could it be that a man who had dwelt long among ashes knew most surely the worth of the flame?

He had reached the end of his journey. He had come to the western college town for which he had set out. From the window he could see some of the college buildings. Yes, this was the place.

He rose and put on his coat. A few minutes later he was standing on the station platform, watching the on-going train. Then he turned, with decision, in the direction Georgia had bade him go.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

PATCHWORK QUILTS

And now that the first ten minutes had passed he felt anew the futility of his errand. His first look into her face made him certain he might better have remained in Chicago. The thing which cut off all approach was that she too had done some work on the surface.

It seemed to him as he sat there in utter silence that he had been brutal, not alone to her heart, but to his own, that he asked too much, not only of her command, but of his. He had come to talk of Ernestine and the future; the things about him drew him overmasteringly to Karl and the past.

She had taken him to her little sitting room up stairs, forced to do so because the fire down stairs had gone out. He understood now why it was she had faltered so in asking him to come up here. Here was Karl's big chair—many things from their library at home. It was where she lived with her past. She wanted no one here.

She would make no attempt at helping him. She sat there in silence, her face white, almost stern. In her aloofness it was as though she were trying to hold herself, from the consciousness of his presence.

He too remained silent. For he was filled with the very things against which he had come to protest.

It was Karl who was very close; it was the thoughts of Karl's life which filled him. His heart had never been so warm for his friend, his appreciation had never been so great as now. Karl, and all that Karl meant, had never been so close, and so dear. And the words he finally said to Ernestine, words of passionate tenderness spoken in utter unconsciousness of how far he had gone from his purpose, were: "I do not believe any of us half appreciated Karl!"

Startled, she gave him a long, strange look. "No, Dr. Parkman,"—very low—"neither do I."

"I have been looking into it since. I wanted to throw Karl's results to the right man. He was head and shoulders above them all."

There was a slow closing of her eyes, but she was not shrinking from him now;—this the kind of hurt she was able to bear.

"If he had been left to work out his life—" but he stopped, brought suddenly to a sense of how far he had lost himself.

She too saw it. "Dr. Parkman,"—with a smile which put him far from her—"this is what you came to say? You think I need any incitement? You needn't, Dr. Parkman,"—with rising passion—"you needn't. Every time I leave this room two things are different. I have more love for Karl—more hate for his destroyers. And those two passions will feed upon me to the end of my life!"

Instinctively he put out a protesting hand. It was too plain that it was as she said.

"More love for Karl—more hate for his destroyers,"—she repeated it with a passionate steadfastness as though it comprehended the creed of her life.

"His—destroyers?" he faltered. "What do you mean—by that?"

And she answered, with a directness before which dissembling and evasion crumbled away: "Read the answer in your own heart.

"And if you cannot look into your own heart," she went on, unsparingly, "if your own heart has been shut away so long that it is closed even to yourself, then look into your looking-glass and read the answer there. Let the grey hairs in your own head, the lines in your own face,—yes, the words of your own mouth—tell you what you would know of Karl's destroyers."

He drew in his lips in that way of his; one side of his face twitched uncontrollably. He had come to reach her soul, reach it if must be through channels of suffering. He had not thought of her reaching his like this.

But she could not stop. "And if you want to know what I have gone through, look back to what you have gone through yourself—then make some of those hours just as much stronger as love is stronger than friendship—and perhaps you can get some idea of what it has been to me!"

He was dumb before that. Putting it that way there was not a word to say.

He saw now the real change. It was more than hollowed cheeks and eyes from which the light of other days had gone, more than soft curves surrendered to grief and youth eaten out by bitterness. It was a change at the root of things. A great tide had been turned the other way. But in the days when happiness softened her and love made it all harmonious he had never felt her force as he felt it now. Reach this? Turn this? The moment brought new understanding of the paltriness of words.

It was she who spoke. "Dr. Parkman,"—looking at him with a keenness in which there was almost an affectionate understanding—"you did not say what you intended to say when you came into this room. You intended to speak of me—but the room swept you back to Karl. Oh—I know. And it is just because you were swept back—care like this—that I am going to tell you something.

"Doctor,"—blinded with tears—"we never understood. None of us ever knew what it meant to Karl to be blind. After—after he had gone—I found something. In this book"—reaching over to Karl's copy of Faust—"I found a letter—a very long letter Karl wrote in those last few days, when he was there—alone. I found it the day I went out to the library alone—the day before they—broke it up. Oh doctor—what it told! I want you to know—" but she could not go on.

When she raised her head the fierce light of hate was burning through the tears. "Can you fancy how I hate the light? Can you fancy with what feelings I wake in the morning and see it come—light from which Karl was shut out—which he craved like that—and could not have? Do you see how it symbolises all those other things taken from him and me? He talked of another light—light he must gain for himself—light which the soul must have. And Karl was longing for the very light I was ready to bring! He would have believed in it—turned to it eagerly—the letter shows that. Do you wonder that there is nothing but darkness in my soul—that I want nothing else? Look at Karl's life! Always cut off just this side of achievement! Every battle stopped right in the hour of victory! Made great only to have his greatness buffetted about like—held up for sport!—I will say it! "—in fierce response to his protesting gesture—"It's true!"

He tried to speak, but this was far too big for words which did not come straight from the soul.

"Do you know what I am doing now?" She laughed—and none of it had told as much as that laugh revealed. "I am making patchwork quilts! Can you fancy anything more worthless in this world than a patchwork quilt?—cutting things up and then sewing them together again, and making them uglier in the end than they were in the beginning? Do you know anything more futile to do with life than that? Well that's where my life is now. My aunt had begun some, and I am finishing them up. And once—once—" but the sob in her voice gathered up the words.

He wanted to speak then; that sob brought her nearer. But she went on:

"I sit sewing those little pieces together—a foolish thing to do, but one must be doing something, and as I think how useless it is there comes the thought of whether it is any more useless than all the other things in life. Is it any more useless than surgery? For can a great surgeon save his best friend? Is it any more useless than science—for can science do anything for her own? Is it any more useless than ambition and purpose and hope—for does not fate make sport of them all? Is it any more useless than books—for can books reach the hearts which need them most? Is it any more useless than art—for does art reach realities? Is it any more useless than light—for can light penetrate the real darkness? Is it,"—she wavered, quivered; she had been talking in low, quick voice, her eyes fixed on something straight ahead, as though reading her words out there before her. And now, as she held back, and he saw what she saw and could not say, he asked for her, slowly: "Is it any more useless than love?"



CHAPTER XXXIX

ASH HEAP AND ROSE JAR

As she broke then to the sobs for which he had hoped, something of tremendous force stirred within the man; and he felt that if he could bring her from the outer darkness where she had been carried, back to the things which were her soul's own, that his own life, his whole life, with all of the dark things through which it had passed, would have found justification. He had tried to save Karl, and failed. But there was left Ernestine. And it seemed to him—he saw it simply, directly, unquestioningly—that after all he would not have failed Karl if he could do what it was in his heart to do now for her.

Looking at her bowed head he saw it all—the complete overthrow, the rich field of life rendered barren waste. Barren waste—but was that true for Ernestine? Did there not remain for her the scent of the field? The memory of that glorious, luxuriant growth? With him barren waste—but for her did there not grow in the field of life some things which were everlasting? With the quickness with which he saw everything he saw that it was the picture of his own barrenness could show her most surely the things which for her remained.

He drew back from the thought as one draws away from the rude touch upon a wound. Lay bare the scars of his life that another profit by their ugliness? Years of habit were against it; everything fundamentally himself was against it. But he was a man who had never yet shrunk from the thing he saw was right to do. The cost of an accomplishment never deterred him from a thing he saw must be accomplished. With each second of listening to her sobs, he was becoming once more the man who masters, the man ruthless and unsparing in his purposefulness.

"Ernestine," he began, and his voice was very strange, for it knew it was to carry things it had never carried before, "you and I are similarly placed in that we have both lost the great thing of life. But there is something remains to each of us. Life has left something to us both. To you it has left a rose jar. To me—a heap of ashes."

It came with the moment's need. It comprehended it so well the channels long closed seemed of themselves to open. In the clearness with which he saw it, the fullness with which he felt it, he lost himself.

"Do you know that you have no right to cry out against life? Do you know that there are men and women who would lay down their lives—yes, and give up their immortal souls—for hours which you have had? Do you know that you have no right to say Karl Hubers was mocked by fate, made sport of, buffetted about? Do you know,"—his face went white as he said this, slowly—"that I would be a thousand times willing to give up my two eyes—yes, and lay down my life—just to know, as he knew, that love was great and life was good?"

The tears remained undried upon her cheek. He held her.

"Look deeper. There is another way to read Karl's life—a deeper truth than those truths you have been seeing.

"Ernestine, we all dream of love; we all desire it. It is only at rare, rare times it comes as it came to you. And I say to you—and I mean it from the bottom of my heart—that if you had been forced to give up your love in the first hour of its fulfillment, for all that you should thank God through the remainder of your life that it had been yours. For you had it!—and nothing, loss, death, defeat, disappointment of every kind, can strip from your soul the consciousness that once, no matter for how short a time, love in its fullness and perfection was yours. Long, lonely years may come, and all hard things may come, but through it all the thing to keep your soul in tune is the memory of some one perfect hour."

Stillness followed that, the stillness which was silence. She had not moved.

"You dreamed your dream,"—and in his voice now the beautiful things of appreciation and understanding. "I know your dream. You dreamed of growing old together; of taking from life everything there was together; of achieving to the uttermost; of rejoicing in each other's victories, growing more and more close together. I know your dream—a beautiful dream. Giving up some things as the changing years do their work, and taking on the other things, the more quiet, in fact finer things, that come with the years. Oh, yes—don't think I do not know that dream. To walk together down the years, meet them fearlessly, gladly, in the thought that they but add to the fullness of your love—I know—I know. And now that it is not to be as you thought, you say life has left nothing to you; that you hate it; will have none of it. Oh, Ernestine, if you could only know how rich you are!"

Then harshly, rudely, the change; the voice which had seemed to caress each word was now like a lash.

"Suppose you didn't have the luxury of giving yourself up to your own heart? Suppose that every day and night of your life, you had to fight memory, knowing it held nothing for you but jeers and mockery and things too damnable for words! Suppose you had to fairly forbid yourself to think of the beautiful things of life! Suppose that what had been the most beautiful moments of your life were made, by memory, the most hideous! Suppose the memory of his kiss always brought with it the consciousness of his falseness; that his words of love never came back to you without the knowledge that he had been laughing at you in his heart all the time! Suppose you could never get away from the damning truth that what you gave from the depth of your heart was tossed aside with a laugh! Suppose you had given the great passion of your life, the best that was in you, to a liar and a hypocrite! Suppose you had been made a fool of!—easy game! Then what of life?—your belief in love?—thoughts of fate? Great God, woman, can't you see what you have got?"

After the throbbing moment which followed that there came a great quiet; slowly passion settled to sadness. He seemed to have forgotten her, to be speaking instead to his own heart, as he said, very low, his voice touched with the tenderness of unrelinquished dreams: "To have had one hour—just one perfect hour, and then the memory of that untarnished forever—it would be enough."

Her heart rushed passionately to its own defence; she wanted to tell him no! She wanted to tell him it was cruel to be permitted to live for a time in a beautiful country, only to be turned out into the dark. She wanted to tell him that to know love was to need it forever. But his head had fallen to his hand; he seemed entirely lost to her, and even now she knew his answer to what she would say. "But you had it," he would reply. "The cruel thing would be to awaken and find no such country had ever existed." They would get no closer than that, and with new passionateness her heart went out to Karl. Karl would understand it as it was to her!

He too felt that they could come no closer than this. They sat there in the gathering twilight with their separate thoughts as souls sit together almost in the dark, seeing one another in shadow, across dim spaces.

The tearing open of his heart had left him weakened with pain. Perhaps that was why he was so very tired, and perhaps it was because he was so tired that this thought of growing old came back to him. It seemed to him now, leaning back in his chair and filled with the things of which he had spoken, that almost as great as a living presence with which to share the years, would be that thing of growing old with a beautiful memory. It would be a supreme thing to have a hand in your hand, a face against your face, a heart against your heart as you stepped on into the years; but if that could not be, and perfection is not given freely in this life, surely it would keep the note of cheer in one's voice, the kindly gleam in one's eye, to bring with one into old age the memory of a perfect love. It would be lonely then when one sat in the twilight and dreamed—but what another loneliness! If instead of holding one's self away from one's own heart, one could turn to it with: "She loved me like that. Her arms have been about my neck in true affection; her whole being radiated love for me; she had no words to tell it and could tell it only with her eyes and with the richness and the lavishness of her kisses. She would have given up the world for me; she inspired me to my best deeds; she comforted me in my times of discouragement and rejoiced with me in my hours of cheer. She is not here now, and it is lonely, but she has left me, in spirit, the warmth of her presence, the consciousness that she loved me with a love in which there was no selfishness nor faltering, and the things she has left me I can carry through life and into eternity."

And all of that was Ernestine's could she but see her way to take it!

He knew that it was growing late. "I must go," he said, but still he sat there, knowing he had not finished what he had come to say. But need he say it? Would it avail anything? Must not all human souls work their own way through the darkness? And when the right word came, must it not come from Karl himself, through some memory, some strange breath of the spirit? He knew, but she would have to see it for herself. That each one's seeing it for one's self was what made life hard. Would there not surely come a day, somewhere in the upward scale, where souls could reach one another better than this?

But he had stirred her; he knew that by the way she was looking at him now. Finally she asked, tremblingly, a little resentfully: "Dr. Parkman, what is it you would have me do?"

"Do something with your life," was his prompt reply. "Help make it right for Karl."

She caught that up breathlessly. "Make it right for Karl?"

"You say he was always cut off just this side of achievement. Then you achieve something which will at least show what he was able to inspire."

That sunk so deep that her face went very white.

"But you do not understand," she whispered passionately. "You mean that I should paint—and I tell you I cannot. I tell you it is dead!"

"Not necessarily that you should paint. Not just now, if you cannot. But come back into touch with life. Do something to force yourself back into it, and then let life itself show you that the other things are not dead after all."

"But I do not want to!" came bitterly from her.

"Sometimes," he said, with more of his usual manner, "we do things we do not want to, and through the doing of them, we get to want to. Do something!—whether you want to or not. Stop doing futile things and dwelling on the sense of their futility. Why, Ernestine, come up to the hospital and go to work as a nurse! Heaven knows I never expected to advise you to do that, but anything—painting pictures or scrubbing floors—that will bring you back to a sense of living—the obligations of life—show you that something is yours that life and death and hell can't take from you!"

And still he sat there, thinking. In just a moment he must go—go away leaving her alone with the years which awaited her. For just an instant it seemed as though all of the past and all of the future were in his keeping. What word leave with her? He knew by her passionate breathing that he had reached her. And now he was going away. Could he have done more—reached deeper? In this, too, had he failed? What word leave with her? His heart was so full of many things that his mind did not know what to choose. He remembered the day she had come to him filled with the spirit to ride down an adverse fate and win triumph from defeat. Her splendid spirit then! Would that spirit ever come again? Could it?

Karl was very close in those final moments, and even more close than Karl was the spirit of love. Many precious things seemed in his keeping just then.

"Ernestine," he said at the last, and his face was white and his voice trembled, "you have known. It came to you. You had it. It came to you as June to the roses,—in season, right. I grant you it was short. I grant you it was hard to see it go. But you had it! Say that to yourself when you go to sleep at night. Say it to yourself when you wake in the morning. And some day you will come to see what it means just to know that you know, and then your understanding and your heart will go out to all who have never known. You will pity all who scoff and all who yearn, and you will say to yourself: 'The world needs to know more about love. More than knowledge or science or any other thing, the world needs more faith in love.' Then some day you will see that you not only know but have power to make it plain, and you will not hold back any longer then. And there is to be the real victory and completion of Karl Hubers' life!—there the real triumph over fate—that triumph of the spirit of love. I see it now. I see it all now. And my good-bye word to you is just this—I do not believe you are going to withhold from Karl the immortality which should be his."



CHAPTER XL

"LET THERE BE LIGHT"

Hours had passed, and still she could not master the sobs. It seemed no one had ever been as cruel as Dr. Parkman had been to her that afternoon. Karl would understand!—and in her passionate need of Karl's understanding she turned at last to the letter of which she had spoken, the letter which always seemed a little like Karl's voice speaking from out the silence.

Old and worn and blurred with the grief spent upon it, the letter bore upon itself the record of the year's desolation. It had lived through things never to be told,—never to be comprehended.

"Lonesome days, liebchen,"—he had written. "It would seem almost like a rush of light to feel you standing in the doorway now.

"My letters which I send you will tell you I am well, getting along all right, that I love you. These are some other things. If I think they will hurt you, I will not let you see them. But I will feel better to get them said, and of course the easiest way to say them is to say them to you.

"I can't write. I wish I could. There are things 'way back in my thoughts I should like to say, and say right. For I've done some thinking this year, liebchen—while I sat here writing text-books there came a good many thoughts.

"Text-books—any fool can write them! Lectures on what other men have done—what do I care about them? I'll do it, for I have to, but I want somebody to know—I want you to know that I know it doesn't amount to a hill of beans!

"Liebchen, you hear a lot of talk about the beauties of resignation. Don't you ever believe any of it. We don't get resigned to things that really count. But what we do get, is courage to bear them. I'm not resigned and I don't want to be! But I will try to be game about it, and we can't be game while we are sore. I know that because the times I've been least game are the times I was most sore. Wonder if anybody can make any sense out of that?

"Life's queer—you can't get around that. Making us one thing and then making us be another. What are we to think of it, liebchen? Seems as if we could get on better if we could just get a line on the scheme of things, understand what it is all about, and the why. Or isn't there any why? I like a why for things. It gives them their place. I don't like disorder, and senselessness, and if there isn't any why—why then—See what I'm getting at?

"What are you going to do when your force pushes you on to a thing which is closed to you? Stop the force? Well, doesn't that stop yourself? Turn it somewhere else? Easy to say in working out a philosophy,—not so easy to do.

"Where's the end of it?—that's what I want to know. I'm one of those practical chaps who wants to see an end in sight.

"Ernestine, light's a great thing. Light's the great thing. I never knew that until I went blind. You have to stay a long time in the darkness to know just what it is light means.

"They call great men 'great lights.' 'And then came the light,' they say, regarding the solving of some great thing. 'He brought the light'—that's what I wanted to do! They tell about science bringing the light. I know now what a tribute they pay when they say that. Light of understanding, light of truth—and ah, mein liebchen, the light of love—and well do I know how that light can shine into the darkness!

"'More light'—Goethe said, when he was going out into the dark. A great thing to ask for. I know how he felt!—'And God said—Let there be light'—I don't wonder that story has lived a long time.

"My books are finished. Now what?—more books?—lectures?—some kind of old woman's make-shift? Sit here and watch my red blood dry up? Sit here like a plant shrivelling away in the darkness? Be looked after and fussed over and have things made as easy for me as possible? I don't know—I can't see—

"There, liebchen—I've taken a brace. I took a long drink of courage, and I'm in better shape. Often when I get like that I've been tempted to take a long drink of something else—but I never have. Whiskey's for men who feel good; men who haven't much to fight. Not for me—not any such finish as that.

"I'm making bad business of this letter. I wanted to tell things, tell what light was and what darkness was; but I can't do it. Many things have been circling around my thoughts and I thought I might get hold of a few of them and pull them in. But I can't seem to do it. I never was much good at writing things out; it's hard to get words for things that aren't even full-born thoughts.

"My work was great, liebchen—great! A constant piercing of the darkness with light—a letting in of more light—new light. I can understand now why I loved it; where the joy was; what it was I was doing.

"Is life like that? Don't we understand things until we are out of them? By Jove, is it true that we have to get out of them, in order to understand them? And if that's true, is it the understanding that's the goal? Is it—oh, I don't know—I'm sure I don't know.

"But look here, liebchen,—is it true that while I had the light, I didn't have it at all,—didn't know what it meant? Did I have to lose it in order to get it? For isn't it having a thing to understand it—more than it's having it to really have it and not understand? See what I mean? Those are some of the things circling around on the outside.

"Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I think the light was shut out that the greater light might come. Sometimes I think we scientists haven't the right line on the world at all. Why, Ernestine, sometimes I think it's miles deeper than we ever dreamed! A hodge-podge—this letter. Like my life, starting out one thing, and ending up another, or rather not ending up anything at all—a going to pieces in the midst of my philosophy—a not being sure of anything—a constant 'perhaps.'"

"I'm lonesome. I'm tired. I don't feel well. The old ladies would say I'm 'under the weather.' Why, I can't even keep feeling right when you're away.

"I want you. I want you—here—now. I can't talk to you on this infernal machine, my hands groping around just as senselessly as my thoughts. I tell you, liebchen, blindness is bad business. It sounds well in a poem, but it's a bad thing to live with. It's bad to wake up in the night sometimes and think that it will be daylight soon and then remember that it will never be daylight for you again!

"I wish you were here. I'm just in the mood for talking—not talking, perhaps, but having you close to me, and understanding.

"There's one thing that there's no perhaps about. That's you. There's no perhaps when it comes to our love. There's no perhaps—

"Now, that made me fall a-dreaming. I stopped writing and lighted my pipe and sat a long time, thinking of you. It's 'our hour'—I know that, because I heard the clock strike. Where are you? Why aren't you here?

"I want you. Believe I said that before, but if I said it a thousand times, I couldn't make it strong enough. I don't know why I want you like this—this soul want. It isn't just your kisses, your sweetness, the dear things about you. I want you to be here to understand—for you would—you do.

"My light in the darkness, my Ernestine! I shall never let you go away again. The darkness is too dark without you.

"Evening now, for again I stopped; too tired, too quiet, someway, to feel like writing. I am going to bed. I wish you were here for your good-night kiss. I wish you were here just to tell me that you understand all these things I have not been able to say. I wish you were here to tell me—what in my heart I know—that you are going to bring me the light, that love will light the way. I wish you were here to tell me that what my eyes cannot tell you, as they used to, you can read now just by the beating of my heart, just through the fullness of our silences.

"Oh, little one—your eyes—your dear eyes—your lovely hair—your smile—your arms about my neck—your whispered word in my ear—your soft cheek against mine—your laugh—your voice—your tenderness—I want it all to-night—and the Ernestine of the silences—the Ernestine who understands without knowing—helps without trying.

"Soon you will be back. That will be sunrise after long darkness.

"Good-night. It's hard to leave you—so lonesome—wanting you so. Again, good-night, dear girl for whom my arms are yearning. Bless you, sweetheart—God bless you—and does God, Himself, know what you have been to me?"

She read the last of it, as always, with sobs uncontrollable. Dr. Parkman—everything—was forgotten. It was Karl alone in the library, longing for her, needing her—and she not there.

"Oh, Karl—Karl!" she sobbed across the black chasm of the year—"if I could only have had that hour!"



CHAPTER XLI

WHEN THE TIDE CAME IN

But the days which came then were different. Dr. Parkman had stirred her to a discontent with despair.

She had come West with Georgia and Joe. For five days they had been at this little town on the Oregon coast. Through the day and through the night she listened to the call of the sea. It stirred her strangely. At times it frightened her.

She did not know why she should have wished to come. Perhaps it was because it seemed a reaching out to the unknown. After she had known she was to go, she would awaken in the night and hear the far-off roll of the Pacific, and would lie there very still as if listening for something from the farther unknown. Her whole being was stirred—drawn—unreasoningly expectant. There were moments when she seemed to just miss something to which she was very close.

To-day she had walked clear around the bend. The little town and pleasant beach were hidden from view, and there was only the lighthouse out among the rocks, and the sea coming in wild and mighty to that coast to which no mariner would attempt to draw near.

It was the hour of the in-coming tide, and as the sea beat against the rocks it seemed as omnipotent and relentless as that sea of fate against which nothing erected by man could hope to prevail.

There was no human being in sight. Man, and all to which man blinded one, were far away. She was alone with things as they were, alone with the forces which made the world and life, and as the tides of the sea brought close to her wave after wave, so the mind's tides were bringing close to her wave upon wave of understanding.

Fate had washed them away just as this ocean would wash away the child's playhouse built upon the sands. They had believed they could make their lives, that it was for their spirit to elect what they should do, their hands build as they had willed; and all that the spirit had willed to do, and all that the hands set about to achieve, was washed away by just one of those waves of fate which rolled in and took them with no more of regret, no more of compassion, than the sea would have in washing away the play-house built upon the sands. And if the sea were chidden for having taken away the house upon the sands, which meant much to some one, it would quite likely answer grimly: "I did not know that it was there."

She laughed—and Karl would have hated life for bringing Ernestine to that laugh. But she laughed to think how she had looked fate in the face with the words: "I will prevail against you!" Would the child, building its house upon the sand and saying to the ocean: "I will not let you take my house!" be more absurd than she?

What she had believed to be the tremendous force of her spirit had been as one grain of sand against the tides of ocean. What was one to think of it all then—of human love which believed itself created for eternity, of dreams which one's soul persuaded one would come true, of aspirations born in a hallucination of power, of that spark within one which played one false, of believing one could master fate only to find one had erected a child's house upon the sands, and that what had been achieved in consciousness of great power could be swept away so easily that the ocean was not even conscious of having taken it unto itself?

Very sternly, very understandingly, their lives swept before her anew.... Just one little wave from the tide of fate had lapped up, unknowingly, uncaringly, that house upon the sand which a delusion of the spirit had made seem a castle grounded in eternity. Why blind one's self to the truth and call life fair? For what had they fought and suffered and believed and hoped? Just to hear the mocking voice of the outgoing tide?

The fury of the sea was creeping into her blood. Rage possessed her. All of her spirit, mightier than ever before, went out to meet the spirit of the sea—hating it, defying it, understanding its own futility, and the more hot from the sense of impotence. That died to desolation. She had never been so wholly desolate—the sea so mighty, she so powerless. Fate and human souls were like that.

Karl—where was he? Swept out by the ocean of fate. To what shore had he been carried? What thought he of the tide which had carried him out from her? Was his soul, like hers, spending itself in the passion of rebellion—so mighty as to shake the foundations of one's being, so futile as to prevail against not one drop of water in that sea of fate?

Time passed; the tide was still coming in, nearing its height. But to the sea there had come a change. The spirit of it seemed different. For a long time she sat there dimly conscious of a difference, and then it seemed as though the sea were trying to reach her with something it had to bring.

She tried to shake herself free from so strange a fancy, but it held her, and for a long time she sat there motionless, looking out at the sea with all her eyes, reaching out to it with all her soul, becoming more and more still,—a hush upon her whole being,—moved, held, unreasoningly expectant.

The sea seemed trying to make her ready. Each wave which beat upon the rocks beat against her consciousness, driving against her mood and spirit, as if clearing a way, making her ready, open, to what would come.

It seemed finally to have cleared her whole being, driven away all which might impede. It seemed now as though she could take in things not seen or heard. There was that strange openness of the spirit, that hush, that unreasoning expectancy.

All at once it rushed upon her, filling her overwhelmingly. It said that there was a sea mightier than what she called the sea of fate; it told of a sea of human souls over which fate only seemed to prevail. A great rush of truth filled her with this—It was the belief in the omnipotence of fate which was the real delusion of the spirit.

Over and over again, with steadily rising tide, it told her that,—no more to be reasoned away than the sea, resistless as the tide.

She never knew in after years just what it was happened in that hour. She could not have told it, for it was not a thing for words to compass. But after that great truth had rushed full upon her, sweeping away the philosophy of her bitterness, Karl's spirit, something sent out from him to her, seemed to come in with the tide. He pleaded with her. He asked her to stop fighting and come back to the soul of things. He asked her to be Ernestine—his Ernestine. He told her that his own spirit could not find peace while hers was waging war and full of bitterness. He wanted her to make a place for them both in that great world-harmony of their belief. He told her that out where souls see in wider sweeps, they know that there is a spirit over which death and fate cannot prevail.

Darkness came on, but she had no thought of fear. And before she turned away something had risen from the dead. Out of woe and despair, defeat and bitterness, out of loneliness and a broken heart, something was born again. Karl asked that she make it right with the world. Karl asked for a child of their love. And at the last it was the call of the child to the mother which she heard. It was the maternal instinct of the spirit which answered.

Very late that night, after she had sat long at her window, looking up at the stars, waiting, a great light seemed to appear, and shimmering against the sky, high above the tides of the sea, she saw the picture which she would paint.



CHAPTER XLII

WORK THE SAVIOUR

For more than three years then they saw nothing of Ernestine. She left this note for Georgia: "I am sorry to seem erratic, but I cannot wait for you. I am going away at once. I am going first to New York, and then, I think, to Paris. I am going to do something which I can do better there than anywhere else. Thank you, Georgia, for everything. It must be satisfying to feel one has succeeded as beautifully in anything as you have succeeded in being a friend to me. Do not worry. There is nothing now to worry about. You will be glad to know that I am going back to my work."

A little later Dr. Parkman had this from her from New York: "I am sailing for Paris. I am going to work. I see it all now; all that you would have me see, and more. Some day I will try to show you just how well I see it.

"I do not know how I am going to bear part of it—the going back where we were so happy. But I will bear it, for nothing shall keep me from the work I see before me.

"Thank you—for all that you have done, and most of all for all that you have been. My idea is all comprehended in this: To the very uttermost of my power, I am going to make it right for Karl."

Six months later she wrote him this:

"Dear Doctor: Thank you for attending to those things for me. It infuriated me at first to think that the only thing in money left by the work of Karl's great life was the money from those books which I resented so bitterly. But how wrong to see it that way—for Karl would be so happy to know that the brave work he did after his blindness was helping me now. But I never spend a dollar of this money without thinking of the mood—the circumstances—out of which it was earned.

"No—no money for the work he did for the blind. Karl intended that as a gift. He would be so glad to know of its usefulness. He thought it all wrong that books for the blind were so expensive, and so many of the great things not to be had.

"Karl used to repeat a little verse of Heine, which he translated like this:"

'At first I did not even hope, And to a hostile fate did bow— But I learned to bear the burden— Only do not ask me how.'

"I have learned to bear it here in Paris—only do not ask me how. I could not say. I do not know.

"But I want to tell you of a few of the good things. You would not believe what that work in the laboratory has done for me. It has given me a new understanding of colour—new sense of it, new power with eye and hand, a better sense of values. Would you have thought of that? And do you not see the reasons for my being glad?

"What I have done so far is but leading up to what I am going to do. That is so vital that it must not be done too quickly. I must get my hand in, gain what there is to be gained here, that the work I am going to do for Karl may have the benefit of it all. But I have made innumerable sketches, and it is growing all the time. There need be no fear of my losing it. I could no more lose it than I could lose my own soul. It grows as I grow. Sometimes I think I should wait ten years—but I shall not.

"Yes, the critics like the picture of which you speak. Of course I am painting all the time—other things—various things. But it all seems like practice work to me—a mere getting ready."

And then, after a long time, this:—"This is my birthday;—a day linked more closely than I could ever tell with Karl, our life and work and love. If I had looked forward from one happy birthday I had and seen what was ahead—how it would be with me now—I never could have gone on. We go on by not knowing what is waiting for us, and day by day we bear what we would have said, looking ahead, we never could endure—and that is human life.

"I have been so lonely to-day that I must write this little word to one who will understand. I turn to you as one close to us in those dear days, one who cared for and appreciated Karl, understood something of the kind of love that was ours. Doctor—it was so wonderful! So wonderful that it seems to me sometimes the universe must have existed through the centuries just that our love might be born. I think of it as the one perfect flower of creation.

"I want you to know that I have come to see the worth—pricelessness—of my memories. Karl's love for me lights up my life with a glory nothing can ever take away. I think we do not have even our memories until we have earned them. I have tried to come back to my own, to take my place. I am trying to be of that great harmony of the world in which Karl and I believed, and as my spirit turns from discord and seeks harmony, I am given my memories, the memories of those many perfect days, and I am never too lonely nor too desolate to thank God that to me was left the scent of the roses.

"Oh, Doctor—where is he now? Do you ever think of all that? No one who has ever loved and lost can remain secure in his materialism. I begin to see that the beautiful thoughts, the poems, of immortality, eternity, of its all coming right, have sprung from the lonely hearts of great lovers. For they would not have it any other way—they could only endure it by having it so, and, ah, Doctor—far greater than any proof of science or logic, is there not proof in this? Lifting up their hearts in hours of desolation were not the men and women born for great loves and great sorrows granted a vision of the truth?

"We do not know. None of them know. We hope and wait and long for the years to tell us the truth. And while we wait and hope, we work, and try to make our lives that which is worthy our love. That endeavour, and that alone, makes life bearable."

After a year of silence he received this letter: "Doctor, it is finished. I will not tell you the things they are saying of it here, for you will read it in the papers. The papers here are full of it; I think I have never seen so much about any picture.

"But it is more important that I tell you this: They are seeing it, even now, as I intended it should be seen—a work of love, a memorial, an endeavour to make it right for him. I have cared more for what the scientific people, Karl's own kind, have said of it, than the artists. They claim it as their own, say they are going to have it, get it some way,—must have it. Do you not see how that means the fulfillment of my desire?

"Of course you know that it is a picture of Karl. But the critics here call it less a portrait than the incarnation of an idea. Light and truth sweeping in upon a human soul—one of them expressed it. But why try to tell you of that? When you see it you will understand what it is I have tried to do. And you shall see it soon. After it is exhibited here they want it in Vienna, and I cannot refuse, for Karl loved Vienna, and then a short time in London, and then I come with it to America, and to Chicago. I am bringing it home, Doctor, for even though it find final resting place in that great temple of science in Paris, I have the feeling, in taking it to Chicago, that I am bringing it home. And the first day it is exhibited there I want you and me to go to it together, as Karl would like that we should.

"I am so tired that I do not believe I shall ever be quite rested again. For the last three months I lived with the picture, my heart and mind knew nothing else. But the day I finished it my strongest feeling was a regret that it was finished, a yearning to go on with it forever. For doctor, I painted my heart, my life, everything that I had within myself, everything I had taken from Karl, into that picture. I am lonely now without it, for it made my life.

"It has revived Karl's whole story. They tell it here—oh so lovingly. I heard one man from the Institute telling it all to a younger man as they stood before it yesterday. I have moved them to a new sense of Karl's greatness; it has been my glorious privilege to perpetuate him, make sure his place, reveal him—for that is what I have sought to do. Was not life good to me to give me power to do that thing?

"We shall be together in Chicago very soon—you and Karl and I. For as the days go on Karl comes closer. I hope, most of all, that the picture will bring him very close to you."

That was three months before, and to-day he had this note from her, dated Chicago:—"Yes, I am here, and the picture is here. The public exhibit does not open for a few days, but the picture will be hung this morning, and we may see it this afternoon. I shall be there at three, waiting for you."



CHAPTER XLIII

"AND THERE WAS LIGHT"

He spent the intervening hours restlessly; the hands of his watch moved slowly; his duties occupied only a small portion of his mind.

He was at the Institute at just three, and they directed him where to go. His heart was beating fast as he walked down the corridor. The hand which he laid upon the door-knob shook a little.

He opened the door, and a woman came toward him with outstretched hand.

It was Ernestine—but the three years had done much.

Older—greater—a more steady flame—a more conscious power—grief transmuted to understanding—despair risen to resolution—she had gone a long way. He looked at her in silence—reading, understanding. It was all written there—the story of deep thinking and deeper loving, of battles and victories, and other battles yet to fight, the poise which attends the victor—yes, she had gone a long way. And as she spoke his name, and smiled a little, and then could not repress the tears which his presence, all that it meant, brought, he saw, shining through her tears, that light of love's own days.

She turned and walked to the other side of the room, and he knew that she was taking him to the picture.

She watched his face as he took it in, and she knew then that she had done her work.

For a long time he said nothing, and when at last he turned to her, eyes dim, voice husky, it was only to say: "I can say—nothing. There are—no words."

He turned back to the picture, she standing silent beside him, reading in his face that with each moment he was coming into more perfect understanding.

For she had painted Karl's face as it was just before he went into the silence. She had caught the look which illumined his face that day on his death bed when she told him what she had done. She had painted Karl as he was in that moment of perfect understanding—the joy which was uplift, the knowledge which was glory. She had perpetuated in her picture the things which Karl took with him from life. It was Karl in the supreme moment of his life—the moment of revelation, transfiguration, the moment which lighted all the years.

It was triumph which she had perpetuated in the picture. She was saying to the world—He did not achieve what he set out to achieve, but can you say he failed when he left the world with a soul like this?

He saw that it was what she had done with light which made the picture, from the standpoint of her art, supreme. The critics said that no one had ever done just that thing with light before—painted light in just that spirit of loving and understanding it; less light, indeed, than light's significance. They said that no one before had painted the kind of light which could make a blind man see. For he was blind—the picture told that, but it seemed no one had ever had light quite as understandingly as he had it there.

"You feel it, doctor?" she asked at last, timidly. "You see it all?"

He nodded. It seemed so far beyond any word of his.

But she wanted to talk to him about it. "You see what it has meant to me? Why I loved it and lived for it? Oh doctor—I wanted to show that he was greater than all the great things he sought to do! The night this picture came to me it set my blood on fire, and at no moment since, no matter how tired or lonely or discouraged—have I lost my love for it—belief in it. It seems so right. It seems to stand for so many things. They call it a masterpiece of light—and isn't it fine—great—right, that Karl's portrait should be a masterpiece of light?"

For a long time he was lost to it. It was as she said—right. To the blind man had come the light; to the man of science the light of truth, and to the human soul, about to set out on another journey, had come the perfect understanding of what had lighted the way for him here.

When he turned to her at last she was looking at the picture with such love in her eyes as he had never seen. Her lips were parted—tremulous; there were tears upon her cheeks; her whole face quivered with love and longing. He saw then, in that one glance before he turned away, that time and death held no sway over such a love as this.

"I did not mean to," she faltered. "But I have not seen the picture myself for a long time, and your being here—"

She broke down there, and he summoned no word with which to answer her sobs.

"Dr. Parkman,"—raising a passionate face—"I want you to know that if this were the greatest picture the world had ever seen—if it were a thousand times greater than anything the world had ever known—I would throw it away—obliterate it—gladly—joyously—for just one touch of Karl's hand!"

"Yes," he murmured, more to himself than to her, "and if you were not like that you never could have done it."

"What it cost!"—he heard her whisper. "What it cost!"

He told her that it had ever been so. That the great things were paid for like that. That so many of the things which had lived longest and gone deepest had come from broken hearts and souls tried almost beyond their power for suffering. He told her that the future would accept this, as it had the others, without knowing of its cost, that a myriad of broken hearts had gone into the sum of the world's achievement.

In the half hour which followed, as they sat there, speaking sometimes of Karl, more often silent, some things seemed to pass from the man's heart, other things to come. And as at the last he rose to go, for he felt she would like a little time alone, he said, and his face and his voice gave much which the words missed: "Ernestine, you have done more than you know. For me too—you have made it right."

She sat a long time before her picture, dreaming of Karl. She whispered his name, and he seemed to answer with, "Liebchen—brave liebchen—you have been good to me."

To her too the hour brought new light. It came to her now that she had won a victory for them, not because she had painted a great picture, but because she had brought them back to that world harmony from which they seemed for a time to have gone. She had won, not through the greatness of her achievement, but through having made it right with her own soul. The picture itself was a thing of canvas and paint; it was the spirit out of which it grew—his spirit and hers—was the thing everlasting. She was sure that Karl too knew now that it was having the spirit right which counted. The "perhaps" of his letter was surely answered for him now.

And out of this closeness to the past there opened to her a little of her own future—things she would do. For she must work,—theirs a love which made for work. There was much more to paint, much to show how she and Karl loved the world, what they held it worth,—and all of it to speak for their love, glorify, immortalise it.

She dreamed deeply and tenderly—the past so real to her, Karl, their love, so great.

Now she must go. To-morrow many others would come. Artists would come to pronounce her work good, wonder how she had done this or that. Doctors and the university men would come, proud to speak of Karl, claim him as their own. But ah—who would understand the tears and heart's blood out of which it had come? Who would know? Who could?

"Karl," she murmured at the last—eyes dim with loving tears—"dear Karl,"—dwelling with a long tenderness upon the name—"did I indeed bring you the light?"

THE END