CHAPTER XIV
"TO THE GREAT UNWHIMPERING!"
"Tell me some good stories about doctors," said Georgia; "I want to use them in something I'm going to write."
"Isn't it dreadful?" said Mrs. McCormick, turning to Dr. Parkman, "she even interviews people while they eat!" Mrs. McCormick had that manner of some mothers of seeming to be constantly disapproving, while not in the least concealing her unqualified admiration.
"I'm not interviewing them, Mother. Skillful interviewers never interview. They just get people to talk."
"But what is it you're going to write," asked the doctor, "a eulogy or denunciation?"
"Both; something characteristic."
"Meaning that something characteristic about doctors would include both good and bad?"
"Well, they're pretty human, aren't they?" laughed Georgia.
"And think how grateful we should be," ventured Karl, "for the inference of something good."
Dr. Parkman looked over at him with a hearty: "That's right," relieved that his friend could enter into things at all.
In the library before they came in, things had gone badly. Mrs. McCormick held persistently to the topic of Karl's eyes, putting forth all sorts of "home remedies" which would cure them in a night. He had grown nervous and irritable under it, and Mrs. Hubers several times had come to the rescue with her graciousness. She was worried herself; the doctor could see that in the way she looked from her husband to him, scenting something not on the surface. He was just beginning to fear the dinner was going to be miserable for them all, when Miss McCormick broke the tension by asking for stories.
"Tell us what you're going to write, Georgia," said Ernestine, she too seizing at it gratefully, "and then our doctors will have a better idea of what you want."
"Well, I was talking to Judge Lee the other day, and he told me some good stories about lawyers—characteristic stories, you know. So I thought I would work up a little series—lawyers, doctors, ministers and so on, and see how nearly I could reach the characteristics of the professions through the stories I tell of them; not much of an idea, perhaps—but I know a man who will buy the stuff."
Ernestine was smiling in a knowing little way. "Do you want to begin with something really characteristic?" she asked.
"That's it. Something to strike the nail on the head, first blow."
"Then lead off with the story of Pasteur's forgetting to go to his own wedding. There's the most characteristic doctor story I know of."
"That's a direct insult," laughed Karl.
"Why, not at all, Karl," protested Mrs. McCormick, "every one knows you were on hand for your wedding."
"Yes, and a good thing he was," declared Ernestine. "I don't think I should have been as meek and gentle about it as the bride of Pasteur. I fancy I would have said: 'Oh, really now—if it's so much trouble, we'll just let it go.'"
"No, Ernestine," said Mrs. McCormick, seriously, after the laugh, "I don't believe you would have said that,"—and then they laughed again.
"Well, it's a good story," she insisted; "and characteristic. I believe after all that Pasteur was a chemist and not a doctor, but the doctors have appropriated him, so the story will be all right."
"If you want to tell some stories about Pasteur," said Karl, "tell about his refusing the royal decoration. He told the Emperor that the honour and pleasure of doing such work as his was its own reward, and that no decoration was needed. That story made a great hit in the scientific world."
"But is it characteristic?" asked Georgia, slyly.
"Well," he laughed, "it ought to be."
"Another one of the independent kind," said Parkman, "is on Bilroth. He was summoned to appear at a certain hour before the Emperor of Austria. Bilroth was with a very sick patient until the eleventh hour and arrived a little late in business clothes. The scandalised chamberlain protested, telling him he could not go in like that. Whereupon Bilroth blustered out: 'I have no time to spare. Tell His Majesty if he wishes to see me, I am here. If he wants my dress suit, I will have a boy bring it around.'"
"Did he get in?" asked Mrs. McCormick, anxiously.
"I think he did, although undoubtedly Miss McCormick will be too modern to say so."
"There was a story I always liked about a Vienna doctor," he continued; he was anxious to guide the stories, for Karl had seemed suddenly to sink within himself. He understood why—he might have foreseen where this would lead. For there were other stories of medical men, stories which fitted a little too closely just now; he was especially sorry he had mentioned Bilroth. "This shows another side of the doctor," he went on, after a minute, "and as you are going to give good as well as bad, this may help out on the good side—there's where you will be short. A woman came to see this doctor regarding her consumptive son. He told her there was nothing he could do for him, adding: 'If you want him to live, you must take him to Italy.' The woman broke down and told him she could not do that, that she had no money. The doctor sat there thinking a moment, and then sent over to the bank and got her a letter of credit covering the amount involved. Another doctor, who happened to be near, asked why he did that. 'You can't possibly support all your needy patients,' he said; 'why did you choose this particular case? Of course,' he added, 'it was very good of you.' 'No,' said the doctor, 'it was not good of me. There was nothing good about it. But I was guilty of proposing to her something I knew she could not do. After opening up that possibility it was my obligation to see that she could fulfill it. I suggested what I knew to be the impossible; after I suggested it, it was my business to make it possible.' Don't you think that a pretty good sense of justice?" he asked of Ernestine.
"What might be called an inner squareness," said Georgia, as Ernestine responded only with the fine lights the story had brought to her eyes.
Karl did not seem to have heard the story. Ernestine looked toward him anxiously.
"Now I'm going to tell a story," she said, with a gaiety thrown out for rousing him, "a very fine story;—every one must listen." He looked over at her and smiled at that, listening for her story.
"This man's name can't be printed, because he lives in Chicago and it might embarrass him,"—Karl and Dr. Parkman exchanged glances with a smile. "This is a characteristic story, as it shows a doctor's tyranny. There was a boy taken ill at a little town near Chicago. The country doctor telephoned up to the boy's father, and the father telephoned the family physician who, from the meagre facts, scented appendicitis. I don't know how he knew it was bad, but I believe a good doctor is a pretty good guesser. At any rate he suspected this was serious, and told the father they would have to go down there at once. The father said there was no Sunday train. 'Then get a special,' said the doctor. 'We'll probably have to bring him up to the hospital to operate, and can't do it in the automobile.' The father protested against the special, saying it would be very expensive and that he did not think it necessary. The doctor said he did think it necessary or he would not have suggested it. The father demurred still more and the doctor rang off. Then you called up the railroad office, yourself—wasn't that it?" turning to Dr. Parkman, who grew red and looked genuinely embarrassed. "Oh dear,"—in mock dismay—"now I've mixed it up, haven't I? Well, this doctor—I'm not saying anything about who he is—called up the railroad office and calmly ordered the special. I must not forget to say that the man who did not want to spend the money had an abundance of money to spend. Then he called the boy's father and said, 'Be at the station in twenty minutes. The special will be waiting. You will have nothing to do but sign the check.'"
"Well," said Mrs. McCormick, when Ernestine stopped as though through, "would the father pay for it, and did the boy have to have an operation, and did he get well?"
"Mother doesn't like this new way of telling a story," said Georgia; "she likes to hear the got-married-and-lived-happily-ever-after part."
"I'm sure no one said anything about getting married in this," said Mrs.
McCormick, serenely.
"But don't you think that a fine doctor story?" Ernestine asked smilingly of Dr. Parkman.
"A very bad story to tell. Miss McCormick's general reader will say—: 'Oh yes, of course, he was just bound to have an operation.'"
"Georgia,"—this was from the man at the head of the table, and there was something in his voice to arrest them all—"if you are in earnest about wanting stories of doctors, why don't you tell some of the big ones? Some of the stories medical men have a right to be proud of?"
"What are they?" she asked, promptly. "Tell me some of them."
Dr. Parkman's eyes were on his plate. He was handling his fork a little nervously.
"If I were going to tell any stories about medical men," Karl went on, and in his quiet voice there was still that compelling note, "it seems to me I should want to say something about the doctors who died game—just a little something about the men who took their medicine and said nothing; men with the nerve to face even their own understanding—cut off, you see, from the refuge of fooling themselves. Ask Dr. Parkman about the surgeons who lost their hands or their lives through infection. Those are the stories he knows that are worth while. He's only giving you the surface of it, Georgia. Tell him you'd like a little of the real thing. Ask him about the men who died slow deaths, looking a fatal future in the face from a long way off. He mentioned Bilroth just now, telling a funny story about him. There's a better story than that to tell about Bilroth. You know he was the man who knew so much about the heart; he probably understood the heart better than any other man. And by one of those leering tricks of fate, he had heart disease himself. He watched his own case and made notes on it, that his profession might profit by his destruction. There you have something worth writing about! In his last letter home, he said he had ten days to live—and he missed it by just one; he lived eleven. If you're going to tell any stories about Bilroth, tell that one, Georgia. And then a story or two showing that while many men take chances, it's the doctor who takes them most understandingly. Why medical science is full of an almost grotesque courage! Don't you begin to see how the doctor's been trifling with you, Georgia?"
He paused, but no one felt the impulse to speak. His eyes were hidden by the dark glasses he was wearing because of that cold, or whatever it was, in his eyes, but his face told the story of an alert mind, a heart responsive to the things of which he spoke. Then he went on and talked a little, quietly enough, but with a passionateness, a high note of understanding, of the men who had had the nerve—eyes open—to face the things fate handed them. It was as if he were looking back over the whole sweep of the world and picking from many times and many places the men whose souls had not flinched to the death. And at the last he said, smiling—the kind of smile one meets with a tear—"Let's have a little toast." He raised his glass of claret and for a minute looked at it in silence. And then he said slowly, his very quiet voice and that little smile tempering the words:
"Here's to all those fellows who went down without the banners or the trumpets!—To the boys who took the starch out of their own tragedies!—To those first class sports who made no fuss about their own funerals! Here's to the Great Unwhimpering!"
Dr. Parkman choked a little over his wine, the tightening in Ernestine's throat made it hard for her with hers, Georgia's cheeks were burning with enthusiasm for the story she saw now she could write, and even Mrs. McCormick had no questions as to just what men had died that way. Then it was Karl himself who abruptly turned the conversation to the more shallow channels of dinner talk.
After that he was not unlike a man who had had a little too much champagne. He startled them with the nimbleness of his wit, the light play of his fancy. It was as though he had a new vocabulary, a lighter one than was commonly his. There was a sort of delicate frolicsomeness in his thought.
For a reason unknown to her, it troubled Ernestine. She looked from Karl to Dr. Parkman, but the doctor had that impenetrable look of his. What was the matter with him? He had talked so freely during the early part of the dinner, and now he seemed to have dropped out of it entirely. She caught him looking at Karl once; the keen, narrow gaze of physician to patient. Then she saw, distinctly, that his face darkened, and after that, when he smiled at the things which were being tossed back and forth between Karl and Georgia, it was what she called to herself a "made-up smile"; and once or twice when Karl said something especially funny, she was quite sure she saw Dr. Parkman wince.
A lump rose in Ernestine's throat; Karl seemed to have slipped away from her. This was a mood to which she could not respond and it seemed he did not expect her to. Almost all of his talk was directed to Georgia, who, with her quick wit and inherent high spirits, was enjoying the pace he set her. It seemed to resolve itself into a duel of quick, easy play of thought and words between those two. But the things they said did not make Ernestine laugh. She smiled, as Dr. Parkman did, a "made-up" smile.
She had always enjoyed Karl's humour immensely, but now, though she had never seen him as brilliant, something about him pulled at her heart. She could not restrain a resentfulness at Georgia for encouraging him. For she could not get away from the feeling that all of this was not grounded on the thing which was Karl himself. It was like nothing in the world so much as the breeziness of a mind which had let itself go. She was glad when at last she could rise from the table.
In the library it was as though he were holding on to Georgia, determined not to let her out of the mood into which he had brought her. The things of which he talked were things having no bearing whatever upon himself. If she had not been there, had simply heard of the things said, she would not have recognised Karl at all. For the first time since they had known one another, Ernestine felt left out,—alone.
Mrs. McCormick said that they must go, but Karl protested. "We're having such a good time," he said, "don't think of going."
But Georgia had an engagement. She insisted at last that they must go. Dr. Parkman had remained too, although Ernestine was satisfied he was not enjoying things.
"Why, what in the world have you done to Karl?" laughed Georgia, pinning on her hat. "I haven't had such good fun for months. I had no idea he was such a gem of a dinner man."
"I do not think Karl is very well," said Ernestine, a little coolly.
"Well? Why, bless you, I never saw him in such exuberant mood."
"Didn't they make the words fly?" laughed Mrs. McCormick. "My dear, you and the doctor and I were quite left behind."
"It seemed that way," said Ernestine, trying to keep her chin from quivering.
When she returned to the library, Dr. Parkman and Karl were evidently just closing a discussion for Karl was saying, heatedly: "Now just let me manage things in my own way!"
The doctor seemed reluctant to leave. Ernestine was alone with him for a minute in the hall, and she was sure he started to say something once and then changed it to something else. But when he did leave, it was with merely the conventional goodbye.
She walked slowly back to the library. Karl was sitting in the Morris chair, his elbow upon one arm of it, his hand to his forehead. His whole bearing had changed; it was as though he had let down. Again it seemed as though in the last hour he had been intoxicated, and this the depression to follow that kind of exuberance. But he looked up as he heard her, and smiled a little, a wan, tired smile. She was beside him in an instant.
"You seemed so happy this afternoon, dear," she said, stroking his hair, "and now you seem so tired. Aren't you well, Karl?" she asked, a little timidly.
His face then mirrored a dissatisfaction, a sort of resentment.
"I talked like a fool this afternoon!" he said gruffly.
"Why, no, dear, only—not quite like yourself."
"Well, the fact of the matter is"—this after a minute's thought—"I have a frightful headache. I suppose it comes from this trouble with my eyes. I thought I wasn't going to be able to keep up, and in my efforts to do it, I"—he paused and then laughed rather harshly—"overdid it."
He seemed anxious for her reply to that.
"I knew it was something like that," she said simply. Then, after a minute: "Is there anything I can do for the head?"
He told her no, but that he believed he would turn the chair around with his back to the light.
"And I won't talk, dear," he said gently; "I'll just rest a little."
She helped him with the chair and for a minute sat there on a low seat beside him.
"You know, sweetheart," resting her cheek upon his hand, "I don't like those dark glasses at all. I'll be so glad when you don't have to wear them."
"Why?" he asked, his voice a little muffled.
"Because they shut me out. I always seem closer to you when I can look into your eyes.—Oh—does it pain so?" as he drew sharply away.
"That did hurt," he admitted, his voice low. "I—I'd better not talk for a little, dear."
So she said if there was nothing she could do for his head, she would leave him while she wrote a couple of letters.
For a long time he sat there without moving. It was the exhaustion which follows intoxication, for he had indeed intoxicated himself that afternoon, and with an idea. It had come about so strangely. After they sat down to dinner, he had been on the point a half a dozen times, of excusing himself on the plea of a bad headache. Then when they began to talk about doctors, those other things had come to him, and it was as though the spirit of all those men who had gone down that way entered into him, came so close, possessed him so completely, that he could not hold back those words about them. A spirit quite beyond his control had moved him to that little toast. After that, something—perhaps a spark from the nerve of those men of whom he had spoken—brought his mind firmly into possession of the feeling that everything was all right. It was not that he argued himself out of his fears, but rather that something brought the assurance of its being all right, and after that there came a number of arguments sustaining the conviction. Just before dinner he had gone over to the laboratory and looked at the culture. It had not shown anything at all. At the time he accepted that as a matter of course—it was not time for it to show anything. But looking back on it after this conviction came to him, he took the very fact of its not showing anything as proof that there was nothing there to show. His mind only grasped one side of it—that it showed nothing at all. Brightening under that he began to talk lightly, to joke with Georgia, and talking that way seemed to enable him to keep hold of the conviction that everything was all right. The more he talked, the more sure he was of it, the gayer he felt, the more disposed to let his mind run wild. He was a little afraid if he stopped talking, this beautiful conviction of its being all right would leave him. So he made Georgia keep at it, Georgia was the one could play that sort of game.
As he talked, new arguments came to him. The oculist! At first he had thought it a bad thing that the oculist could not tell what was the matter. Now he seized upon that as proving there was nothing the matter at all. And Dr. Parkman had said, at the last, that it did not amount to anything. At the time that had been a mere conventional phrase, but now, in his exhilaration, he seized upon it as indisputable truth. But always there was the feeling that he must keep on feeling this way, or the conviction, and all that it meant, would go. That was why he clung to Georgia. Finally he reached the point where he could distinctly remember getting the other stuff—the stuff which did not make any difference—on his hands. He could fairly see it on his hands, could remember distinctly getting it in his eye. And then Georgia had said something about going, and he had begged her not to go. But she insisted, and he began to feel then that the exhilaration was wearing off, that he was coming back to face things; to the doubt, the uncertainty, the suffering. And now that he had come back to things as they were, he felt inexpressibly tired.
He went over it again and again, trying to gain something now, not from any form of excitement, but from things as they were. Suddenly his face brightened. He sat there in deep thought, and then at last he smiled a little. Whatever happened must have occurred Friday afternoon. But he had never in all his life felt as happy about his work as he did before he left the laboratory Friday afternoon. Could a man feel like that, would it be in the heart of things to let a man feel that way, if he had already entered upon the road of his destruction? It had been more than a happiness of the mind; it was a happiness of the soul, and would not a man's soul send out some note of warning? And then that same evening when he and Ernestine sat before the fire! If already this grim fate had entered into their lives, would not their love, would not her love, all intuition, deep-seeing, feeling that which it could not understand, have felt in that moment of supreme happiness, some token of what was ahead? It could not be that the world jeered at men like that. Their love would have told them something was wrong.
Ernestine came in just then and he called her to him.
"Liebchen," he said, "I've been thinking about that evening of your birthday, about how beautiful it was. Weren't you happy, dear, as we sat there before the fire?"
"So happy, Karl," she murmured, warmly glad to have her own Karl again.
"Everything seemed so beautiful; everything seemed so perfectly right."
He drew her to him with a passion she did not understand. His Ernestine! His wife! She who communed with love, whose harmony with the great soul of things was perfect—they could not have deceived her like that! Ernestine and love dwelt too closely together. She would have received some sign.
For a time that calmed and sustained him; he believed in it; it was his weapon to use against the doubts and terrors which preyed upon him. But the gloom of his soul seemed to thicken with the deepening of the night. His heart grew cold with the coming of the shadows. The passing of day inspired in him fears not to be reasoned away.
He grew very nervous during the evening and finally said he must go over to the laboratory and arrange some things for morning. Ernestine protested against it—and if he must go would he not let her go with him? But he told her he believed it would be better for his head if he walked alone for just a little while. He did not have a headache more than once in five years, he assured her, laughing a little, and when he did, it was apt to upset him.
When he came back at last—it seemed to her a very long time—she saw, watching from the window, that he was walking very slowly, almost as if exhausted She could not hold back her alarm at his white, worn face. Something in it gripped at her heart.
"Is it worse, dear?" she asked anxiously.
"It's a little bad—just now. I'll go to bed. It will be better then." He spoke slowly, as though very tired.
"Won't you take something for it, Karl?" she persisted. "Won't you?"
"I do not know of anything to take that would do any good,
Ernestine,"—and he could not quite keep the quiver out of those words.
"But other people take things. There are things. Let me go out and get you something."
He shook his head.
"Doctors don't take much stock in medicine," he said, with a touch of his usual humour.
She wanted to stay with him until he went to sleep. She wanted to put cold cloths on his head. It was hard to avoid Ernestine's tenderness.
"It did not show anything," he assured himself, pleadingly, when alone. "It only showed that it was going to show in the morning. I knew that. I knew all the time I was going to know in the morning. I'll not go to pieces. I'll not be a fool about it," he kept repeating.
But a little later Ernestine was sure she heard him groan. She could not keep away from that.
"Oh, sweetheart," she murmured, kneeling by his bed, "I can't bear it not to help you. Let me do just some little thing," she pleaded.
He put his hand over in hers. "Hold it, dear; if you aren't too tired. I don't want to talk,—but hold on to my hand."
His grip grew very tight after a minute. She was sure his head must be paining terribly. If only he would take something for it!
In a little while he grew very quiet. Soon she was sure that he was asleep. But after she had at last stolen away he turned and buried his face in his arms.
CHAPTER XV
THE VERDICT
It was Monday morning now. The hours of that night had been hours of torture. Sleep had come once or twice, but sleep meant only the surrender of his mind to the horrors which preyed upon it. He could, in some measure, exert a mastery when awake, but no man is master of his dreams. His dreams put before him all those things his thoughts fought away. In his dreams, there was a fearful thing pursuing him, reaching out for him, gaining upon him with each step. Or sometimes, it stalked beside him, not retreating, not advancing, but waiting, standing there beside him with grim, inexorable smile. It was after waking from such dreams that he breathed his prayer that this night pass. No matter what be ahead, he asked that this night pass away.
After he was up he found himself able to go on in much the usual way. When Ernestine came in and asked about his head, he told her it was better; when she wanted to know about his eyes, he said they were not any better yet, but that that was something which would simply have to run its course. She begged him not to go over to the university, but he told her it was especially important to go this morning. He added that he might not be there very long.
He ate his usual breakfast. A truth that would shake the foundations of his life might be waiting for him just ahead, and yet he could make his usual laughing plea for a second cup of coffee. Undoubtedly it was so with many men; beneath a mail of conventions and pleasantries they lived through their fears and sorrows alone.
Something clutched at his heart as he kissed Ernestine good-bye and there was a momentary temptation. Could he face it alone, if he had to face it? To have her with him! But he put that aside; not alone for her sake, but because he felt that after all there were things through which one must pass alone. But after he had reached the door, he came back and kissed her again. What if he were to go down into a place too deep for his voice to reach her?
There was some solace, assurance, in the naturalness of things about him. Everything else was just the same; it did not seem that it could be part of natural law then for his own life to be entirely overturned.
And the world was so beautiful! It was a buoyant spring morning. There was assurance in the song of the birds, in the perfume of flowers and trees. The air upon his face was soft and reassuring. This seemed far away from the hideous phantoms of the night. Why the world did not feel like tragedy this morning!
He had a lecture at eight o'clock, and he made up his mind he would give it. In the night he had thought of going first of all to the laboratory. The truth would be waiting for him there. But it was his business to give the lecture and he could not be sure of giving it if he went to the laboratory first. A man had no right to let his own affairs interfere with his work. Oh yes—by all means, he would give the lecture. In spite of his prayer that the uncertainty should end, he reached out for another hour of holding it off.
He knew as the hour advanced that he had never done better work in the lecture room. He pinned his mind to it with a rigidity which prompted him to put the subject as though it were the most vital thing in all the world. He threw the whole force of his will to filling his mind with the things of which he spoke that he might not yield so much as an inch to the things which waited just outside.
He talked until the last minute; in fact, he went so much over his time that another class was waiting at the door. He clung to those last moments with the desperation of the drowning man to the splintered piece of board. After it was over, just as he was yielding the desk to the man who followed him, one of his students approached him with a question and the thankfulness, the appeal, almost, in the smile with which he received him, mystified the student until he stammered out his question bewilderedly.
He could wait no longer now. That room belonged to others. The next period was his usual hour in the laboratory. It was an hour which on Monday morning he could, if he wished, spend alone.
His temples were beating, thundering. His hands were so cold that they seemed things apart from him. But his mouth—how parched it was!—was set very hard, and his steps, though slow, was firm.
In the outer laboratory, Professor Hastings stopped him, remonstrating against his working when he was having trouble with his eyes. He assured him, elaborately, that he was taking care of them, that probably he would not be in there long.
He opened the door of his laboratory and passed in. He closed it behind him, and stood there leaning against it. He was all alone now. There was nothing in the room but himself and the truth which was waiting for him.
He put his book down upon the table. He walked over and sat down before the culture oven. He must get this over with! He was getting sick. He could not stand much more.
With firm, quick hand he wrenched open the doors. He put his hand upon what he knew to be the tube. He pulled it out, turned around to the light and held it up between him and the window. For one moment he looked away;—how parched his mouth was! And then, a mighty will turning his eyes upon it, in one long gaze he read the plain, unmistakable, unalterable truth. He had never seen a better culture. Science would perhaps commit itself no further than to say his eyes had become inoculated with the most virulent germ known to pathology. But out beyond the efforts which would be made to save him, he read—written large—the truth.
He was going blind.
CHAPTER XVI
"GOOD LUCK, BEASON!"
Minutes passed and nothing happened. There was no sound of splintering glass. The tube did not fall from his hands. Not so much as gasp or groan broke the stillness of the laboratory. He did not seem to have moved even the muscle of a finger.
He faced it. He understood it. He faced it and understood it as he had no other truth in all his life. No merciful, mitigating force caused his mind to totter. With fairly cosmic regularity, cosmic inevitability, comprehension struck blow after blow.
He was going blind. He had spent his life studying the action of such forces as this. He knew them! A man who knew less would have hoped more. Some idle dreamer might attempt to push one star closer to another. An astronomer would not do that.
He was going blind. He could no more do his work without his eyes than the daylight could come without the sun. Fate jeered at him: "Your eyes are gone, but your life will remain." It was like saying to the sun: "You are not to give any more light, but you are to go on shining just the same."
He was going blind. The world which had just opened to him—the world of sunsets and forests and mountains and seas gulped to black nothingness!
Blind! Swept under by a trick he would not have believed possible from his most careless student! Mastered by the things he had believed he controlled! Meeting his life's destruction from the things which were to bring his life's triumph! In that moment of understanding's throwing wide her gates to torture, fate stood out as the master dramatist. Making him do it himself! Working it out of a mere fool's trick!
Blind?—Blind? But his eyes fitted his brain so perfectly it was through them all knowledge came to him. They were the world's great channel to his mind. It was through his eyes he knew his fellow beings. The lifting of an eyebrow, a queer twist to a smile—those things always told him more than words. And—but here he staggered. The mind could get this, as it had all else, but on this the heart broke. Ernestine!—that smile—the love lights in her eyes—the glints of her dear, dear hair—The tube fell from his hand. His head sank to the table. He was buried now under an agony beyond all power to lift.
Whether it was minutes or hours which passed then, he never knew in the days which followed. Time is not measured by common reckoning on the hill of Calvary.
The thing which brought him from under the blow at last was a blinding rage. He wanted to take a revolver and blow his brains out, then and there. He—a man supposed to have a mind! He—counted a master of those very things! And now, what? Manhood, power, himself gone. Stumbling through his days! Useless!—a curse to himself and everyone else. Groping about in the dark—a thing to be pitied and treated well for pity's sake! Cared for—looked after—helped! That beat down the bounds of control. He did things then which he never remembered and would not have believed.
It all rushed upon him—the birthday night—the crafty, insidious mockery through every bit of it, until everything to which he had held tottered about him, and goaded beyond all power to bear there came a slow, comprehending, soul-deep curse on the world and all that the world had done. And then, out of the darkness, through the blackened, dizzying, tottering mass—a voice, a face, a smile, a touch, a kiss, and the curses gave way to a sob and things steadied a little. No, not the world and everything it had done, for it was a world which held Ernestine, a world which had given Ernestine to him for his.
He fought for it then: for his faith in the world, his belief in the things of love. It was the fight of his life, the fight for his own soul. Come what might in the future, it was this hour which held the decisive battle. For if he could not master those things which were surging upon him, then the things which made him himself were gone for all time. And when sense of the underlying cunning of the blow brought the surrendering laugh close to his parched lips it was held back, held under, by that ever recurring memory of a touch, a voice, a face. It was Ernestine, their love, fighting against the powers of damnation for the rescue of his soul.
Even in the battle's heat, he had full grasp of the battle's significance, knew that all the future hung upon making it right this hour with his own soul. His face grew grey and old, he concentrated days of force into minutes, but little by little, through a strength greater than that strength with which men conquer worlds, a force greater than the force with which the mind's big battles are won, by a force not given many since the first of time, he held away, beat back, the black tides ready to carry him over into that sea of bitterness from which lost souls send out their curses and their jeers and their unmeetable silences.
He tried to see a way. He tried to reach out to something which should help him. Standing there amid the wreck of his life, he tried to think, even while the ruins were still falling about him, of some plan of reconstruction. It was like rebuilding a great city destroyed by fire; the brave heart begins before the smoke has cleared away. But that task is a simple one. The city destroyed by fire may be rebuilded as before. But with him the master builder was gone. Out of those poor, scarred, ungeneraled forces which remained, could he hope to bring anything to which the world would care to give place?
He could see no way yet. All was chaos. And just then there came a knock at the door.
He paid no heed at first. What right had the world to come knocking at his door? What could he do for any one now?
The knock was repeated. But he would not go. If it were some student, what could he do for him? He could only say: "I can do nothing for you. Go to some one else." And should it be one of his fellow professors, come to counsel with him, he could only say to him: "I have dropped out. Go on without me. I wish you good luck."
That message he had thought to give!—and now—
Again the knock, timidly this time, fearing a too great persistency, but reluctant to go away. He would go in just a minute now. There would not come another knock. Well, let him go. When all the powers of fate had gathered round to mock and jeer was it too much to ask that there be no other spectators? Was not a man entitled to one hour alone among the ruins of his life?
He who would gain entrance was starting, very slowly, to walk away. He listened to him take a few steps, and then suddenly rose and hurried to the door. He was not used to turning away his students unanswered.
It was Beason who turned eagerly around at sound of the opening door.
Beason—of all people—that boy who never in the world would understand!
He was accustomed to reading faces quickly and even through his dark glasses his worried eyes read that Beason was in trouble, moved by something from the path in which he was wont to go.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you," stammered the boy, as he motioned him to a chair.
"Oh—that's all right; I wasn't doing anything, very important. Just—finishing up something," he added, glad, when he heard his own voice, that it was only Beason.
"I'm in trouble," blurted out Beason, "and I—I wanted to see you."
The man was sitting close to a table, and he rested his elbow upon it, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
"Trouble?" his voice was kind, though a little unsteady. "Why, what's the trouble?"
"I've got to stop school! I've got to give up my work for a whole year!"
The hand still shaded his darkened eyes. His mouth was twitching a little.
"A year, Beason?" he said—any one else would have been struck with the note in it—"You say—a year?"
"Yes," said Beason, "a whole year. My father has had some hard luck and can't keep me here. I'd try to get work in Chicago, and stay on, but I not only have to make my own way, but I must help my mother and sister. Next year another deal my father's in will probably straighten things out, and then I suppose I can come back."
The man very slowly nodded his head. "I see," he said, his voice coming from 'way off somewhere, "I see."
"It's tough!" exclaimed Beason bitterly—"pretty tough!"
Dr. Hubers had turned his chair away from Beason, and with closed eyes was facing the light from without. There was a long pause. Beason waited patiently, supposing the man to be thinking what to say about so great a difficulty.
"As I understand it," he said, turning around at last, "it's like this. You are to give up your work at the university for a year—just one short little year—and do something else; something not so much in your line, perhaps, but something which will be helping those you care for—making it easier for some one else. It's to be your privilege, as I understand it, to fill a man's place. That's about it, isn't it?"
"But that's not the point! I thought,"—in an injured, almost tearful voice—"that you would understand."
"Oh, I do. I see the other point. You hate to stop work for,"—he cleared his throat—"for a year."
"A year," said Beason dismally, "is such a long time to lose."
The man had nothing to say to that. His head sank a little. He seemed to be thinking.
Finally he came out of his reverie; seemed to come from a long way off. "And where are you going, my boy?" he asked kindly. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going clear out West," said Beason gloomily. "Father has something for me with a company in the Northwest."
"Out there!"—an eager voice rang out, a voice which rested on a smothered sob. "Great heavens, man, you're going out there? Out there to the mountains and the forests? Out there where you can see the sun come up and go down, can see—can see—" but his voice trailed off to a strange silence.
"I never cared much for scenery," said Beason bluntly, "and I care a lot for—all this I'm leaving."
"We don't really leave a thing," said the man—his voice was low and tired—"when we're coming back to it. The only real leave-takings are the final ones."
Beason shifted in his chair. Some of these things were not just what he had expected.
"Beason,"—something in his voice now made the boy move a little nearer—"I'm sorry for your disappointment, but I wish I could make you see how much you have to live for. Get in the habit of looking at the sunsets, Beason. Take a good many long looks at the mountains and the rivers. It's not unscientific. You know,"—with a little whimsical toss of his head—"we only have so many looks to take in this world, and when we're about through we'd hate to think they'd all been into microscopes and culture ovens. And don't worry too much, Beason, about things running into your plans and knocking them over. You know what that wise old Omar had to say about it all." He paused, and then quoted, very slowly, each word seeming to stand for many things:
And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, shall know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
"And—will—pour,"—he repeated the three words. And then his head drooped, his hands fell laxly at his sides. It seemed it was not of Beason he had been thinking as he looked Fate in the face with that taunt of the old Persian poet.
But he looked at him after a moment, came back to him. He saw that the boy was disappointed. The gloom with which he had come had not lifted from his face. That would not do. He was not going to fail his student like that.
"Why, look here, Beason," he said in a new tone, all enthusiasm now, "maybe you'll shoot a bear. I have a presentiment, Beason, that you will, and when you're eighty-five and have your great grandchild on your knee, you'll think a great deal more about that bear than you will about the year you missed here at school. Now brace up! Hard knocks wake a fellow up. You'll come back here and do better work for your year of roughing it—take my word for it, you will."
Beason had brightened. "And you think,"—he grew a little red—"that when
I come back I can have my old place here with you?"
The man drew in his breath, drew it in rather hard; something had taken the enthusiasm away.
"I'll do my little part, Beason," he said, exceedingly quietly, "to see that you are not overlooked when you come back."
The boy rose to go. "I do feel better," he said clumsily, but with heartiness.
He looked around the room. "I hate to leave it. I've had some good times here, and I'm—fond of it." The man was leaning against the wall. He did not say anything at all.
Then Beason held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, "and—thank you."
For a minute there was no reply, nothing save the very cold hand given in response to Beason's. But that was only for the instant. And then the man in him, those things which made him more than a great scientist, things more than mind, not even to be comprehended under soul, those fundamental things which made him a man, rose up and conquered. He straightened up, smiled a little, and then heartily, quite sunnily, came the words: "Take a brace, Beason—take a good brace. And good luck to you, boy—good luck."
The door had closed. At last he was alone again. Dizzy with the strain he staggered to a chair. For a long time he sat there, many emotions struggling in his face. He could not see it yet—not quite. It was all very new, and uncertain. But 'way out there in the darkness it seemed there was perhaps something waiting for him to grasp. He would never give that other message, but it might be, if he worked hard enough, and never faltered, he could learn to say to the world which had given him this, say heartily, quite sunnily: "Good luck to you. Good luck."
CHAPTER XVII
DISTANT STRAINS OF TRIUMPH
It worried Ernestine when she saw Dr. Parkman's motor car stopping before the house early Tuesday morning. He had been there the afternoon before, and then again late in the evening, bringing another doctor with him. He said that they simply came to help keep Karl amused; but surely he would not be coming again this morning if there were not something more serious than she knew. Karl had come home from the university about noon the day before, saying that his head was bad and he was going to consider himself "all in" for the day. Something about him had frightened her, but he insisted that it only showed what a headache could do to a fellow who was not accustomed to it. He had remained in his darkened room all day, not even turning his face from the wall when she came in to do things for him. That worried her, and even the doctor's assurance that he was not going to be ill had not sufficed. In fact, she thought Dr. Parkman was acting strangely himself.
"I was out in this part of town and thought I'd drop in," he told her, as she opened the door for him.
"You're not worried about Karl?" she demanded.
He was hanging up his cap. "You see, I don't want him to get up and go over to the university," he said, after a minute's pause, in which she thought he had not heard her question. "That wouldn't be good for his eyes."
"Well, doctor, what is it about his eyes? Is it just—something that must run its course?"
"Oh, yes," he answered, and she was a little hurt by the short way he said it. Was it not the most natural thing in the world she should want to know? Really, doctors might be a little more satisfactory, she thought, as she told him he would find Karl in his room.
She herself went into the library. Down in the next block she saw the postman, and thought she would wait for him. She felt all unnerved this morning. Things were happening which she did not understand, and then she felt so "left out of things." She wanted to do things for Karl; she would love to hover over him while he was not well, but he seemed to prefer being let alone; and as for Dr. Parkman, there was no sense in his adopting so short and professional a manner with her.
But as she stood there by the window, the bright morning sunlight fell upon her ruby, and she smiled. She loved her ring so! It was so dear of Karl to get it for her. The warm, deep lights in it seemed to symbolise their love, and it would always be associated with that first night she had worn it, that beautiful hour when they sat together before the fire. That had been its baptism in love.
The postman was at the door now, and she hurried to meet him. She was much interested in the mail these days, for surely she would hear any time now regarding her picture in Paris.
It had come! The topmost letter had a foreign stamp, and she recognised the writing of Laplace.
Heart beating very fast, she started up to her studio. She wanted to be up there, all by herself, when she read this letter. As she passed Karl's door she heard Dr. Parkman telling about having punctured a tire on his machine the night before. Of course then everything really was all right, or he would not have talked about trivial things like that.
Her fingers fumbled so that she could scarcely open the envelope. And then she tried to laugh herself out of that, prepare for disappointment. Why, what in the world did she expect?
As she read the letter her face went very white, her fingers trembled more and more. Then she had to go back and read it sentence by sentence. It was too much to take in all at once.
It was not so much that it had been awarded a medal; not so much that a great London collector—Laplace said he was the most discriminating collector he knew—wanted to buy it. The overwhelming thing was that the critics of Paris treated it as something entitled to their very best consideration. The medal and the sale might have come by chance, but something about these clippings he had enclosed seemed to stand for achievement. They said that "The Hidden Waterfall," by a young American artist, was one of the most live and individual things of the exhibition. They mentioned things in her work which were poor—but not one of them passed her over lightly!
She grew very quiet as she sat there thinking about it. The consciousness of it surged through and through her, but she sat quite motionless. It seemed too big a thing for mere rejoicing. For what it meant Was that the years had not played her false. It meant the justification—exaltation—of something her inmost self.
And it meant that the future was hers to take! She leaned forward as if looking into the coming years, eyes shining with aspiration, cheeks flushed with triumph. She quivered with desire—the desire to express what she knew was within her.
It was while lost to her joy and her dreaming that she heard a step upon the stairs. She started up—instantly broken from the magic of the moment. Perhaps Karl needed her. And then before she reached the door she knew that it was Karl himself. How very strange!
"Oh, Karl!"—not able to contain it a minute—"I want to tell you—" and then, startled as he stumbled a little, and going down a few steps to meet him—"but isn't there too much light up here? Shouldn't you stay down in the dark?"
"I don't want to stay down in the dark!"—he said it with a low intensity which startled her, and then she laughed.
"I've always heard there was nothing so perverse as a sick man. I'll tell you what's the matter with you. You're lonesome. You're tired of getting along without me—now aren't you? But we'll go down to the library, and down there I'll tell you—oh, what I'll tell you! I thought Dr. Parkman was going to stay with you a while,"—as he did not speak—"or I shouldn't have come away."
He had seated himself, and was rubbing his head, as though it pained him. His eyes were hidden, but his face, in this bright light, made her want to cry, it told so plainly of his suffering. He reached out his hand for hers. "I didn't want him any longer, liebchen,"—he said it much like a little child—"I want—you."
"Of course you do,"—tenderly—"and I'm the one for you to have. But not up here. The light is too bright up here."
She pulled at his hand as if to induce him to rise. But he made no movement to do so, and he did not seem to have heard what she said. "Ernestine," he said, in a low voice—there was something not just natural in Karl's voice, a tiredness, a something gone from it—"will you do something for me?"
She sat down on the arm of his chair, her arm about him with her warm impulsiveness. "Why Karl, dear"—a light kiss upon his hair—"you know I would do anything in the world for you."
"I want you to show me your pictures,"—he said it abruptly, shortly. "I want to look at them this morning;—all of them."
"But—but Karl," she gasped, rising in her astonishment—"not now!"
"Yes—now. You promised. You said you'd do anything in the world for me."
"But not something that will hurt you!"
"It won't hurt me,"—still abruptly, shortly.
"But I know better than that! Why any one knows that eyes in bad condition mustn't be used. And looking at pictures—up here in this bright light—so needless—so crazy,"—she laughed, though she was puzzled and worried.
He was silent, and something in his bearing went to her heart. His head, his shoulders, his whole being seemed bowed. It was so far from Karl's real self. "Any other time, dear," she said, very gently. "You know I would love to do it, but some time when you are better able to look at them."
"I'm just as able to look at them now as I will ever be," he said, slowly. "Ernestine—please."
"But Karl,"—her voice quivering—"I just can't bear to do a thing that will do you harm."
"It won't do me harm. I give you my word of honour it won't make any serious difference."
"But Dr. Parkman said—"
"I give you my word of honour," he repeated, a little sharply.
"All right, then," she relented, reluctantly, and darkened the room a little.
"Dear,"—sitting on a stool beside him—"you're perfectly sure this trouble with your eyes isn't any more serious than you think?"
"Yes," he answered, firmly enough, but something in his voice sounded queer, "I'm perfectly sure of that."
"Show me your pictures, Ernestine," laying his hand upon her hair; "I've taken a particular notion that I want to see them."
"But first"—carried back to it—"I want to tell you something." She laughed, excitedly. "I was coming down to tell you as soon as the doctor left. Oh Karl—my picture in Paris—I heard from it this morning, and its success has been—tremendous!" She laughed happily over the word and did not think why it was Karl's hand gripped her shoulder in that quick, tight way. "Shall I read you all about it, dear? And then will you promise to cheer right up?"
Still that tight grip upon her shoulder! It hurt a little, but she did not mind—it just showed how much Karl cared. The hand was still there as she read the letter, and then the clippings which told of the rare quality of her work, predicted the great things she was sure to do,—sometimes it tightened a little, and sometimes it relaxed, and once, with a quick movement he stooped down and turned her ring around, turning the stone to the inside of her hand.
When she had finished he was quite still for a long minute. He was breathing hard;—Karl was excited about it too! And then he stooped over and kissed her forehead, and it startled her to feel that his lips were very cold.
"Liebchen," he said, his voice trembling a bit—Karl did care so much!—"I am glad." For a minute he was very still again, and then he added, seeming to mean a different thing by it—"I am very glad."
"It's gone to my head a little, Karl! Oh I'm perfectly willing to admit it has. I don't think I should appreciate the Gloria Victis very much myself this morning," she laughed, happily.
She was too absorbed to notice the quick little drawing in of his breath, or his silence. "After all, it would be a sorry thing if I didn't succeed," she pursued, gayly, "for you stand so for success that we couldn't be so close together—could we, dear—if I were a dismal failure?"
"You think not?" he asked—and she wondered if he had taken a little cold; his voice sounded that way.
"Oh I don't mean that too literally. But I like the idea of our going through the same experiences—both succeeding. It seems to me I can understand you better this morning than I ever did before. I read a little poem last night, and at the time I liked it so much. It is about success, or rather about not succeeding. But I'm afraid it wouldn't appeal to me very much just now,"—again she laughed, happily, and it was well for the happiness that she was not looking at him then.
"What was it?" he asked, as he saw she was going to turn around to him.
"Say it."
"Part of it was like this":
'Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break agonized and clear.'
"Say that last verse again," he said, his voice thick and low;—Karl was so different when he was sick!
"As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break agonized and clear."
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" she said, as he did not speak.
"Beautiful? I don't know. I suppose it is. I was thinking that quite likely it is true."
"But I didn't suppose you would care about it, Karl. I supposed you would feel about it as you did about the statue."
"I wonder," he began, slowly, not seeming sure of what he wanted to say—"how much the comprehension, the understanding of things, that the loss would bring, would make up for the success taken away? I wonder just what the defeated fellow could work out of that?"
"But dearie, is it true? Why can failure comprehend success any more than success can comprehend failure?"
"It's different," he said, shortly.
"How do you know?" she asked banteringly. "What do you know about it? You don't even know how to spell the word failure!"
He started to say something, but stopped, and then he stooped over and rested his head for a minute upon her hair. "Tell me about your picture, Ernestine," he said, quietly, after that. "Tell me just what it is."
"The Hidden Waterfall? Why you know it, Karl."
"Yes, but I want to hear you talk about it. I want to hear you tell just what it means."
"Well, you remember it is a child standing in a beautiful part of the woods. It is spring-time, as it seems best it should be when you are painting a child in the woods. I tried to make the picture breathe spring, and you know one of the writers said that the delicious thing about it was the way you got the smell of the woods;—that pleased me. Behind the child, visible in the picture, but invisible to the child, is a waterfall. The most vital thing in the universe to me was to have that waterfall make a sound. I think it does, or the picture wouldn't mean anything at all. And then of course the heart of the picture is in the child's face—the puzzled surprise, the glad wonder, and then deeper than that the response to something which cannot be understood. It might have been called 'Wondering,' or even 'Mystery,' but I liked the simpler title better. And I like that idea of painting, not just nature, but what nature means to man. I want to get at the response—the thing awakened—the things given back. Don't you see how that translates the spirit there is between nature and man—stands for the oneness?"
He nodded, seeming to be thinking. "I see," he said at last. "I wonder if you know all that means?"
"Why, yes, I think I do. My next picture will get at it in a—um—a more mature way."
"Tell me about it."
"I don't know that I can, very well. It's hard to put pictures into words. I fear it will sound very conventional as I tell it, but of course it is what one puts into it that makes for individuality. It is in the woods, too. You know, Karl, how I love the woods. And I know them! It is not spring now, but middle summer; no suggestion of fall, but mature summer. A girl—just about such a girl as I was before you came that day and changed everything—had gone into the woods with a couple of books. She had been sitting under a tree, reading. But in the picture she is standing up very straight, leaning against the tree, the books overturned and forgotten at her feet—drawn into the bigger book—see? It is not that she has consciously yielded herself. It is not that she is consciously doing anything. She is listening—oh how she listens and longs! For what, none of us know—she least of all. Perhaps to the far off call of life and love speaking through the tender spirit of the woods. Oh how I love that girl!—and believe in her—and hope for her. In her eyes are the dreams of centuries. And don't you see that it is the same idea—the oneness—the openness of nature to the soul open to it?"
"And you are going to make the woods very beautiful?" he asked, after a little thought. "More than just the beauty of trees and grass and colour?"
"Yes, the beauty that calls to one.
"Then," he said this a little timidly—"might it not be striking to have your girl, not really seeing it with the eyes at all? Have her eyes—closed, perhaps, but she feeling it, knowing it, in the higher sense really seeing it, just the same?"
She thought about that a minute. "N—o, Karl; I think not. It seems to me she must be open to it in every way to make it stand for life, in the sense I want it to."
"Perhaps," he said, his voice drooping a little. And then, abruptly:
"Have you done any of that?"
"Oh, just some little sketches."
"Show me the little sketches," he begged. "I want to see them all."
"Oh, but Karl, they wouldn't convey the idea at all. Wait until it is farther along."
"No, please show them this morning,"—softly, persuasively.
She was puzzled, and reluctant, but she got them out, and with them other things to show him. He asked many questions. In the sketches she was going to develop he would know just how she was going to elaborate them. He asked her to tell just how they would look when worked out. "I'm a sick boy home from school," he said, "and I must be amused." And then he looked at her finished pictures; she protested against the intentness with which he looked at some of them, insisting they were not worth the strain she could see it was on his eyes. "It's queer about finished pictures," she laughed; "they're not half so great and satisfying as the pictures you are going to do next." It went through her with a sharp pain to see Karl hurting his eyes as she knew he was hurting them. She could not understand his insistence; it was not like him to be so unreasonable. And he looked so terribly—so worn and ill; if only he would go to bed and let her take care of him! But he seemed intent on knowing all there was to know about the pictures. A strange whim for him to cling to this way! As he looked he wanted her to talk about them—tell just what this and that meant, insisting upon getting the full significance of it all.
He had never before appreciated her firm grasp. Her work in these different stages of evolution gave him a clearer idea of how much she had worked and studied, how seriously and intelligently she had set out for the mastery of her craft. He had always known that the poetic impulses were there, the desire to express, the ideas, the delight in colour, but he saw now the other things; this was letting him into the workman's side of her work.
He spoke of that, and she laughed. "Yes, this is what they don't see. This is what they never know. Poetic impulses don't paint pictures, Karl. That's the incentive; the thing that keeps one at it, but you can't do it without these tricks of the trade which mean just downright work. I've never worked on a picture yet in which I wasn't almost fatally handicapped by this thing of not knowing enough. The bigger your idea, the more skill, cunning, fairly, you must have to force it into life."
She told him at last that they were through. They had even looked at rude little sketches she had made of places they had cared for in Europe. Indeed he looked very long at some of those little sketches of places they had loved.
"One thing more," he said; "you told me once you had some water colour daubs you did when a little girl. Let me look at them. I just want to see," he laughed, "how they compare."
And so she got them out, and they looked them over, laughing at them. "You've gone a long way," he said, pushing them aside, as if suddenly tired.
He leaned back in his chair, his hand above his eyes, as she began gathering up the things. "And so here I am," she said, waving her hand to include the things about her, "surrounded by the things I've done. Not a vast array, and some of it not amounting to much, but it's I, dear. It reflects me all through these years."
"I know," he said—"that's just it,"—and at the way he said it she looked up quickly. "You're tired, Karl. It's been too much. We'll go down stairs now, and rest."
He watched her as she gathered the things together. It seemed he had never really known this Ernestine before. Here was indeed the atmosphere of work, the joy of working, all the earnestness and enthusiasm of the real worker. And then, with masterful effort, he roused himself. He had not yet touched what he had come to know.
"I have been thinking," he began, "a little about the psychology of all this. You'll think I'm developing a wonderful interest in art, but you see I'm laid up and can't do my own work, so I'm entitled to some thoughts about art. Now these things you paint grow out of a mental image—don't they, dear? The things you paint the mind sees first, so that the mental image is the true one, and then you—approximate. I should think then that it might help you to tell about pictures. For instance, if in painting a picture you had to tell about it to some one who did not look at it, wouldn't that make your own mental image more clear, and so help make it more real to you?'
"Why, Karl, I never thought of it, but,"—meditatively—"yes, I believe it would."
He turned away that she might not see the gladness in his face. "And it would be interesting—wouldn't it—to see just how good a conception you could give of the picture through words?"
"Yes," she said, interested now—"it would be a way of feeling one's own grip on it."
"Of course," he continued, "that couldn't be done except in a case, like yours and mine, where people were close together."
"Yes," she assented, "and that in itself would show that they were close together."
At that he laid a quick hand upon her hair, caressing it.
"Oh, after all, dear,"—gathering up the last of the sketches—"the greatest thing in the world is to do one's work—isn't it?"