Claire Part 26

Claire turned and looked at them, her eyes sternly reproachful toward Philip.

"One can't help thinking," she said. "I can't."

"I shouldn't want you to," Lawrence returned. "Indeed, I'm grateful to you for making me think, too."

"She started you off, did she?" Philip smiled.

Lawrence did not answer, and Philip sat down by the fire where he could watch Claire as she worked.

After a time Lawrence said thoughtfully: "If one could establish some sort of a relation between himself and the ultimate first cause of all this blind snowstorm we call life, things might get shaped with some measure for perspectives."

"Yes," Philip a.s.sented. "I manage to establish one, though I confess it isn't clearly logical."

"What is it?" Lawrence asked.

"Simply having faith; hope, if you prefer it."

"But faith in what, and what do you base it on?"

"Oh, on my experience."

"I wonder if we really matter at all to the rest of the scheme," Claire voiced.

"I am inclined to think not," replied Lawrence. "We matter only to ourselves, and what we can do with the universe around us."

"We matter to G.o.d, I think," said Philip. "I don't mean in the old accepted sense; but we must matter to Him in some way, perhaps as your statue here matters to you."

Lawrence chuckled weakly. "It mattered tremendously when I was doing it. Now it doesn't in the least matter. I shouldn't care if you burned it as firewood."

"But you must care," Claire protested, feeling that he was losing interest in his work because of her.

"I don't see why. I haven't any real a.s.surance as to its value. It may be good, more likely it isn't; in any case, I have turned it loose to shift for itself. It can survive or not; its doing so is immaterial.

Perhaps as immaterial as my existence is to the Great Artist who conceived the botched job called me."

"But, Lawrence, why insist that you don't matter to Him?"

"Oh, because I am scarcely aware of Him at all; indeed, I am not aware of Him, and I am sure He isn't aware of me."

"You have not any way to prove that," declared Philip.

"True, except that I can imaginatively comprehend the size of time and s.p.a.ce, and all that is therein. I know my own size, and I can readily imagine that the creator of the whole is no more aware of me than I am, say, of a small worm that may be in the heart of my cherub there."

"We do seem pretty small in the face of the stars," said Claire.

"Yes, and so impossible," added Lawrence. "I didn't realize until to-day how utterly impossible I really am."

"But, impossible or not, here you are," Philip laughed.

"Yes, here I am and there I may be, but in either place I am not especially possible. You are; you can go out and make a definite, independent impression on life; that makes you possible in that you are forcing recognition of power and capability. I can't do that. The impression I make is one of incapability. For myself I am impossible, and for others more so."

"Which has nothing to do with G.o.d," said Philip, in his tone a touch of distaste.

Lawrence recognized it and became silent.

Claire made him take the quinin and heated bricks for his feet. Philip went out to cut wood for the fire, leaving her alone with the sick man.

She was so full of her own wickedness, as she conceived it, that she dared not tell him her thoughts. She wanted to explain that she loved him, that she had loved him all along, but she could not. She looked at him, and felt sure that he had now no love for her.

Lawrence was trying to follow out in his mind a searching inquiry as to his relation to life. "If I could only establish that," he thought, "I could get myself straight and there would be something to start from. If I knew which way to move!" But he was unable to do any coherent thinking. His head ached, his lips burned with fever, and his body kept him busy with the sensation of pain. It seemed to him that illness made his state more detestable, but it also offered him a chance of escape from the whole drab business. He was quite sure that he wanted to escape, and he would not have believed it if any one had told him that he would resist death to the uttermost; yet deep within him was that will to live which had made him the creative artist. It was working, unknown to him, now, toward the reconstruction he so needed.

He turned restlessly, and muttered something about his foolishness.

Claire came and sat beside him silently. She was wondering what would happen if she should tell him of her discovery of herself.

"Claire!" Lawrence spoke. "Is it possible for any one to get his life platform built so that it will stand without that first great plank?"

"What plank?"

"G.o.d."

"I don't know."

"It seems to me that you couldn't have shaken me so yesterday if I had been built up right."

"Lawrence," she said piteously, "I didn't mean to do that, to say that."

He waved her words aside. "Never mind, Claire, it did me good. I was not realizing, quite, just what I was. I'm finding it out, and when I get right I'll be all the better for it."

"But you don't know why I did it."

"Yes, I do, but it doesn't matter, anyway. What was behind your words doesn't count so long as you told the truth."

"But it does count, and I didn't tell the truth."

"I'm afraid you did. Please don't try to cover it with kind fibs now."

"I sha'n't, but you don't understand."

"Well, Claire, it doesn't matter, as I said. What is it to me what you do or don't do, so long as you bring me face to face with more truth?"

She thought he was telling her that he cared nothing for her. She did not blame him, yet there was a tiny streak of pride that said, "At least Philip finds me worth while."

"It is simply my own salvation that is involved," Lawrence went on.

"Well, I hope you find it," she said simply.

"I must find it to live," he answered.

"And how do you propose to find it?"