The Glory of the Conquered Part 1

The Glory Of The Conquered.

by Susan Glaspell.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

ERNESTINE

She had promised to marry a scientist! It was too overwhelming a thought to entertain standing there by the window. She sought the room's most comfortable chair and braced herself to the situation.

If, one month before, a gossiping daughter of Fate had come to her with--"Shall I tell you something?--_You_ are going to marry a man of science!"--she would have smiled serenely at Fate's amusing mistake and responded--"My good friend, it is quite true that great uncertainty attends this subject. So much to be expected is the unexpected, that I am quite willing to admit I _may_ marry the hurdy-gurdy man who plays beneath my window. I know life well enough to appreciate that I _may_ marry a p.a.w.nbroker or the Sultan of Turkey. I a.s.sert but one thing. I shall _not_ marry a 'man of science.'"

And now, not only had she promised to marry a man of science, but she had quite overlooked the fact of his being one! And the thing which stripped her of the last shred of consistency was that she was to marry, not the every-day, average "man of science," but one of the foremost scientists of all the world! The powers in charge of things matrimonial must be smiling a quiet little smile to-night.

But ah--here was the vindication! He had not _asked_ her to marry him. He had simply come and told her she _was_ to marry him. And he was a great, strong man--far more powerful than she. She had had positively nothing to do with it! Was it _her_ fault that he chanced to be engaged in scientific pursuits? And when he took her face so tenderly in his two hands--looked so far down into her eyes--and told her in a voice she would follow to the ends of the earth that he _loved_ her--was there any time then to think of paltry non-essentials like art and science?

But she thought of them a little now. How could she get away from them when each year of her past marched slowly in front of her, paused for an instant that she might get a full view, and then pa.s.sed grinningly back to the abyss of things gone, from over the shoulder tossing straight into her consciousness a jeering, deep sinking "_You too?_"

Ernestine Stanley--that was the name she read in one of her books open beside her. Why her very _name_ stood for that quarrel which had rent all the years!

Until she was ten years old she had been nameless. She had been You--and Baby--and Dear--and Mother's Girl--and Father's Girl, but her mother and father had been unable to agree upon a name for her. Each discussion served to send them a little farther apart. Finally they spoke of Ernestine and reached the point of agreement through separate channels.

Her father approved it for what it meant in the dictionary;--her mother for the music of its sound. That told the whole story; their att.i.tudes toward her name spoke for the things of themselves bestowed upon her.

Her father had been a disciple of exact science,--a professor of biology.

He believed only in that which could be reduced to a formula. The knowable was to him the only real. He viewed life microscopically and spent his portion of emotion in an aggressive hatred of all those things which he consigned to the rubbish heap labeled non-scientific.

And her mother--she never thought of her mother without that sad little shake of her head--was a dreamer, a lover of things beautiful, a hater of all she felt to be at war with her G.o.ds. Ernestine's loyalty did not permit the a.n.a.lysis to go further, except to deplore her mother's unhappiness as unnecessary. Even when a very little girl she wondered why her father could not have his bottles and things, and her mother have her poems and the things she liked, and just let each other alone about it. She wondered that long before she appreciated its significance.

As she grew a little older she used to wonder if something inside her would not some day be pulled in two. It seemed the desire of each of her parents to guide her from what they saw as the rocks surrounding her.

Elementary science was all mixed up with Keats and Heine and Byron.

Another one of her early speculations was as to whether or not poetry and science really meant to make so much trouble.

Of course from the very first there had been the blackboard--the blackboard and all its logical successors. As perversity would have it, it was her father bought her that blackboard. It was to help turn her in the way she should go, for upon this blackboard she was to do her sums.

But the sums executed thereon were all performed when some one was standing at her shoulder, while many were the hours spent in the drawing of cats and dogs and fish and birds, of lakes and trees and other little girls and boys. She never had that being-pulled-in-two feeling when she and the blackboard were alone together. The blackboard seemed the only thing which made her all one, and she often wished her father and mother loved their things as she did hers, for if they were only _sure_, as she was, then what some one else said would not matter at all.

They lived in a university town, her father being a professor in the school. In the later years of her college life he forced her into the scientific courses which she hated. She sighed even now at the memory of those weary hours in the laboratory, though while hating the detail of it, she responded, as her father had never done, to the glimpses she caught of the thing as a whole. It was ironical enough that the only thing she seemed to get from her scientific studies was an enthusiasm for the poetry of science. In those days many thoughts beat hard against the door of Ernestine's loyalty. Why did not her mother see all this--and make her father see it? Was there not a point at which they could have met--and did they not fail in meeting because neither of them went far enough?

It was when she was in her senior year that her father died. She finished out her laboratory work with lavish conscientiousness, feeling a new tenderness of him in the consciousness that his ideas for her had failed.

That hour before his funeral, when she sat beside him alone, stood out as among the very vivid moments of her life. The tragedy of his life seemed that he had failed in impressing himself. His keenness of mind had not made for bigness. Life had left an aggressiveness, a certain sullenness in the lines of his face. His mind and his soul had never found one another--was it because his heart had closed the channel between the two?

And then they went to New York and Ernestine began her study of art.

A great light seemed turned back over it all tonight. She understood much now which she had lived through wonderingly. She seemed now really to know that girl who went to New York with all the dreams of all her years calling upon her for fulfillment. She knew what that girl had dreamed when she dreamed she knew not what; knew what she thought when she thought the undefined. She smiled understandingly, tenderly, at thought of it all--the bounding joy and the stubborn determination, the fearing and the demanding and the resolving with which she began her work. She was a great deal like a child on the long-promised holiday, and much like the pilgrim at the shrine. Somewhere between those two was Ernestine that first winter in New York.

It was after the second year, after that strange mixture of things within her had unified to fixed purpose, and after it had become quite certain her dreams had not played her false, that the other big change had come.

Her mother slipped away from the life which had never held her in the big grip of reality. She had been so long a longing looker-on from the outer circle that the slipping away was the less hard. Ernestine stopped work in order to care for her, reproaching herself with never having been able to give to her mother with the unrestraint and bounteousness she had given to her work. During those last weeks she often found her mother's eyes--sombre, brooding eyes--following her about the room like the spirit of unrest.

"Try to be happy, Ernestine," she said, when about to leave the house in which she had ever been a stranger. "Life is so awful if you are not happy."

She took her back to the little town and put her away beside the man with whom her soul had never been at peace. That first night she awakened in the dark hours and fancied she heard them quarreling. The hideous fancy would not let her go to sleep, though she told herself over and over that surely death would bring them the peace life had so long withheld.

She went back to her work then with a new steadiness; loneliness feeding the fire of consecration. Often when alone in her room at night she felt those disappointed eyes following her about, heard again that plaintive: "Try to be happy, Ernestine. Life is so awful if you are not happy." She had many times opened the book in which her mother copied the poems written at intervals during the years, but always would come the feeling of their holding something at which it would be hard to look. To-night, with her new understanding, this wondrous new touchstone, she took them from her trunk with eagerness. She longed now to know the secret of her mother's life; she would know why happiness had pa.s.sed her by.

There was tragedy in those little poems--a soul's long tragedy in their halting lines, in the faltering breath with which they were sung. Indeed they were not the songs of a poet at all; they were but the helpless reaching out of an unsatisfied, unanch.o.r.ed soul. The blackboard had never given back what it should; the crayon would not write. Was it true there were countless souls who went away like this--leaving unsaid a word they had craved to say?

"For our souls were not in tune"--was a line she found in one of the verses and which she sat a long time pondering. Was not the secret of it here? This the rock which held the wreckage of their lives?

She left her room and went out of doors. The night was very still.

A tender peace brooded over the world. She lifted her eyes to the stars--her soul to the great Wonder. Enveloping her was Life--drawing her straight to the heart of things was Love. Doubts and speculations and ominous memories seemed blown away by the breath of the night. The years had no lesson to teach save this--One must love! All that was wrong in the world came through too little loving. All that was great and beautiful sprang from love which knew not doubts nor fears. What was a "point of view" when one throbbed with the memory of his good-bye kiss!

There was a force which moved the world. She was in the grip of that force to-night. All else was but the tiny whirlpool against the mighty current. And she was not afraid. Love would deal kindly with her own.

She lifted her soul to the great Mother and Father of the world. "Oh take me and teach me!"--was her pa.s.sionate prayer.

CHAPTER II

THE LETTER

What was that story the old Greeks told about love being the union--or reunion--of the two halves of an originally perfect whole? The envious G.o.ds--who were a very bad lot--cut the original perfect being in two.

Then love is a finding of one's own--also, a getting ahead of the G.o.ds. I have more respect for the old Greeks to-night than I ever had before! But you cannot know just how it is. You are younger than I, and I do not believe the fear of life pa.s.sing you by ever entered and chilled your heart. You were always sure it was coming some time, weren't you, my new-found little one? You could not have had that calm, sweet look in those big eyes of yours had you feared the best of life might be withheld from you. But can you fancy what it would mean to have felt for many years that somewhere there was a cool, sweet spring of eternal joy, and to become fearful your footsteps might never lead you to those blessed waters? And then can you fancy the profound thankfulness that would fill one's being, when after long wandering, after several mistakes and disappointments, the music of those waters was borne to the ear? And when, almost fearful to believe, and yet very, very sure, one stepped a little nearer, can you fancy the joy in finding the cooling breeze from that eternal spring upon one's face, of seeing it there as one had ever dreamed of it, knowing that beside it one could drink deep--long and very deep--of those life-giving, soul-satisfying waters? Can you fancy the all-pervading thankfulness, almost unbelievable joy, in that first hour of standing beside the long-desired, the half-despaired of water of life?

"Thank G.o.d I was not weak enough to resign the whole for the half! There was once a voice said to me: 'This is a pretty good spring. There is not much chance of your finding the other. Why not take this?' But something--your voice from a far distance?--called me on.

"A strange enough letter for a man to be writing the girl who has just promised to marry him! Conventionally, I suppose, I should say to you: 'I never knew anything like this before.' And instead I am saying: 'There was something once of somewhat similar exterior. But I was mistaken. I was disappointed.' But doesn't this make you see--dear new love--dear _real_ love--how happy I am, and why?

"But you poor little girl--how I've cheated you! Why, liebchen--G.o.d bless the Germans for inventing that name for you--you were ent.i.tled to weeks and weeks of beautiful, delicate courtship. Will you forgive me for jumping right over those days when I should have sent you roses and nice pretty notes, and prepared you in proper and approved way for all of this? But I had been waiting for you so long that when I found you, I just couldn't wait a minute longer.

"And it was Georgia--my red-headed, freckled, foolish cousin Georgia did this! Why, liebchen, I'll take my oath right this minute Georgia hasn't a freckle! I'm even willing--(oh Lord, _am_ I?--Yes, by the G.o.ds I _am_)--to read every abominable line she writes for that abominable paper. Am I an ingrate? Didn't Georgia bring me to _you?_--and is anything too much, even to the reading of her stuff--yes, by Jove, and _liking_ it?

"Now prepare yourself to receive the sympathy of every one you know when you tell them you are going to marry me. Some kind of divine hallucination is upon you, acting for my good, and you do not see how profoundly you are to be pitied. But other people will see, and will tell you about it, only you will think _they_ are under a hallucination, which is one of the phases of _yours_. The truth is I am a grubbing old scientist. I prowl around in laboratories and don't know much of anything else, and more than half the time my hands are stained with unaesthetic colours you won't like at all. And they tell me I have a foolish way of sitting and thinking about one thing, and that sometimes I don't do things I say I am going to--meet my appointments and things like that, although of course that won't apply to you. And here you might have married some artist chap, or society fellow who would know all about the proper thing!

"But never mind, poor little girl--I'll make it up to you. You may miss some of the lesser, but you'll have the greater. You'll have the love that enfolds one's whole being--the love that is eternal. Yes, dear--eternal. The mariner has his compa.s.s, the astronomer his stars, the Swiss peasant has his Alps--and we have our love. It must mean all those eternal things to us. Don't you feel that it will?

"This train is rushing along jostling my hand so I can scarcely write.

But then my heart is rushing on jostling my brain so I can scarcely think, so perhaps my handwriting matches my thoughts.

"And we'll work! We'll work to prove how much we love--is there better reason for working than that? I can work now as I never did before, for don't I want to prove to this old world that I appreciate its bringing me to you? And you'll teach me about this art of yours, won't you, my little girl with the long, serious name? I'm ignorant, sweetheart, I don't know much about pictures, but don't you think that I can learn? Why, liebchen, I'm learning already! I never knew what they meant by lights and shadows until I saw your face.

"But tell me, how does it happen your hair grows back from your temples that way? Why, no one else's hair does that. And where did you learn about tilting your chin forward like that and looking straight out of your eyes at one? It is so strange--no one else does any of those things.

I've often thought of the many things in science I do not understand and never will, but they are the very simplest things imaginable in comparison with that puzzling way you smile, the wonderful way your face lights up when you are happy.

"Are you looking up at the stars? I think you are. And in the heavens do you see one newly discovered, unvanishable star? That is the star of our love, dear,--the star which has changed heaven and earth. Are you dreaming about it all?--Oh but I know you are. I will fulfill those dreams, dear girl. I have waited for you too long, I prize you too inestimably not to consecrate my life to the fulfilling of those dreams."