The Glory of the Conquered Part 16

"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 gra.s.s 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sented, "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?"

"Yes," he said, and his voice was low and tired, "unless the greatest thing in the world is to submit to the inevitable."

She looked up quickly. "That doesn't sound like you."

"Doesn't it? Oh, well,"--with a little laugh--"you know a scientist is supposed to be capable of a good deal of change in the point of view."

He had risen, and was at the door. "It's been good of you to do all this, Ernestine."

"Why it has been a delight to me, dear; if only it hasn't hurt you. But it is time now to go down where it is dark."

"Yes," he a.s.sented wearily; "it is time now to go down where it is dark."

CHAPTER XVIII

TELLING ERNESTINE

He had thought to tell her on Tuesday, but after their talk, when he took his last look at her pictures--it had tortured both eyes and heart to do that, but he knew in the days ahead that he would be unsatisfied with having pa.s.sed it by--he could not bring himself then to do it. He could not keep it from her long now, but she was so happy that day in her triumph about the picture. He was going to darken all of her days to come; he would leave her this one more unclouded. But it was hard for him to go through with it. He longed for her so! He must have her help. He had asked for the pictures before telling her just because he knew it would be unbearable for them both, if she did know. It would need to be done in that casual way or not at all. It was strange how he felt he must see them. It was his longing to keep close to her. He could not bear the thought that his blindness might make him to her as something apart from life, even though the dearest thing of all. He must enter into every channel of her life.

It was Wednesday now, and he had told her. All the night before he had lain awake trying to think of words which would hurt her the least. He would put it very tenderly to his poor Ernestine. He would even pretend he saw some way ahead, something to do. Ernestine could not bear it unless he did that. It was the one thing which remained for him now--to make it easy for her.

This was firmly fixed in his mind when he told her that morning he wanted to talk to her about something and asked her to come into the library. He was sure he had himself well in hand; the words were upon his lips.

And then when he said: "I want to tell you something, dear--something that will hurt you very much. I never wanted to hurt you; I can not help it now,"--when he had said that, and she, with quick response to the sorrow in his voice, had knelt beside him, her arms about his neck, something,--the feel of her arms, the knowing there was some one now to help him--swept away the words and his broken-hearted cry had been: "Oh, sweetheart--help me! I'm going blind!"

Those first moments took from her something of youth and gladness she would never regain. First frozen with horror, then clinging to him wildly, sobbing that it could not be so--that Dr. Parkman, some one, would do something about it; protesting in a fierce outburst of the love which rose within her that it did not matter, that she would make it all up to him--their love make it right--in one moment stricken dumb as comprehension of it grew upon her, in another wildly defying fate, but always clinging to him, holding him so close, trying, though frightened and broken, to stand between him and the awful thing as the mother would stand between the child and its destroyer, Ernestine left with that hour things never to be claimed again. And when at last she began to sob--sobbing as he had never heard any one sob before--all his heart was roused for her, and he patted her head, kissed her hair, whispering: "Little one, little one, don't. We'll bear it together--some way."

During that hour she never loosened her arms about his neck. Deep in his despairing heart there glowed one warm spark. Ernestine would cling to him as she had never done before. G.o.d had not gone out of the world then.

He had let fate strike a fearful blow, but He had left to the wounded heart such love as this.

"Dear," she said at last, her cheek against his, her dear, quivering voice trying so hard to be brave, "if you feel like telling me everything, I would like to know. I will be quiet. I will be good. But I want to bear every bit of it with you. Every bit of it, darling--now, and always. That is all I ask--that you let me bear it with you."

The love, the understanding, the longing to help, which were in her voice opened that innermost chamber of his heart to her. If she had not won this victory now, she could never have done so in the days ahead. This hour made possible the other hours of pouring out his heart to her, taking her into it all. He told her the story of how it happened, the long, hard story which only covered days, but seemed to extend through years. He told of those hours of the day and night on the rack of uncertainty, of trying with the force of mind and soul to banish that thing which had not claimed him then, but stood there beside him, not retreating,--waiting. He told her of that lecture hour Monday morning when he literally divided himself into two parts, one part of him giving the lecture, giving it just as well as he had ever done, the other part battling with the phantom which he would vanquish or surrender to within an hour. And her only cry was: "You should have told me! You should have told me from the first!" And once he answered: "No, dear--no; before I knew I did not want to frighten you, and after--oh, Ernestine, believe me, sweetheart, I would have shielded you forever, no matter at what cost to myself--if only I could have done it!"