The Glory of the Conquered Part 39

"Ernestine," he said at the last, and his face was white and his voice trembled, "you have known. It came to you. You had it. It came to you as June to the roses,--in season, right. I grant you it was short. I grant you it was hard to see it go. But you _had_ it! Say that to yourself when you go to sleep at night. Say it to yourself when you wake in the morning. And some day you will come to see what it means just to know that you know, and then your understanding and your heart will go out to all who have never known. You will pity all who scoff and all who yearn, and you will say to yourself: 'The world needs to know more about love.

More than knowledge or science or any other thing, the world needs more faith in love.' Then some day you will see that you not only know but have power to make it plain, and you will not hold back any longer then.

And _there_ is to be the real victory and completion of Karl Hubers'

life!--there the real triumph over fate--that triumph of the spirit of love. I see it now. I see it all now. And my good-bye word to you is just this--I do not believe you are going to withhold from Karl the immortality which should be his."

CHAPTER XL

"LET THERE BE LIGHT"

Hours had pa.s.sed, and still she could not master the sobs. It seemed no one had ever been as cruel as Dr. Parkman had been to her that afternoon.

Karl would understand!--and in her pa.s.sionate need of Karl's understanding she turned at last to the letter of which she had spoken, the letter which always seemed a little like Karl's voice speaking from out the silence.

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

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

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

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

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

"Liebchen, you hear a lot of talk about the beauties of resignation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is life like that? Don't we understand things until we are out of them?

By Jove, is it true that we have to _get_ out of them, in order to understand them? And if that's true, is it the understanding that's the goal? Is it--oh, I don't know--I'm sure I don't know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She read the last of it, as always, with sobs uncontrollable. Dr.

Parkman--everything--was forgotten. It was Karl alone in the library, longing for her, needing her--and she not there.

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

CHAPTER XLI

WHEN THE TIDE CAME IN

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

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

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

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

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