The Glory of the Conquered Part 40

There was no human being in sight. Man, and all to which man blinded one, were far away. She was alone with things as they were, alone with the forces which made the world and life, and as the tides of the sea brought close to her wave after wave, so the mind's tides were bringing close to her wave upon wave of understanding.

Fate had washed them away just as this ocean would wash away the child's playhouse built upon the sands. They had believed they could make their lives, that it was for their spirit to elect what they should do, their hands build as they had willed; and all that the spirit had willed to do, and all that the hands set about to achieve, was washed away by just one of those waves of fate which rolled in and took them with no more of regret, no more of compa.s.sion, than the sea would have in washing away the play-house built upon the sands. And if the sea were chidden for having taken away the house upon the sands, which meant much to some one, it would quite likely answer grimly: "I did not know that it was there."

She laughed--and Karl would have hated life for bringing Ernestine to that laugh. But she laughed to think how she had looked fate in the face with the words: "I will prevail against you!" Would the child, building its house upon the sand and saying to the ocean: "I will not let you take my house!" be more absurd than she?

What she had believed to be the tremendous force of her spirit had been as one grain of sand against the tides of ocean. What was one to think of it all then--of human love which believed itself created for eternity, of dreams which one's soul persuaded one would come true, of aspirations born in a hallucination of power, of that spark within one which played one false, of believing one could master fate only to find one had erected a child's house upon the sands, and that what had been achieved in consciousness of great power could be swept away so easily that the ocean was not even conscious of having taken it unto itself?

Very sternly, very understandingly, their lives swept before her anew.... Just one little wave from the tide of fate had lapped up, unknowingly, uncaringly, that house upon the sand which a delusion of the spirit had made seem a castle grounded in eternity. Why blind one's self to the truth and call life fair? For what had they fought and suffered and believed and hoped? Just to hear the mocking voice of the outgoing tide?

The fury of the sea was creeping into her blood. Rage possessed her. All of her spirit, mightier than ever before, went out to meet the spirit of the sea--hating it, defying it, understanding its own futility, and the more hot from the sense of impotence. That died to desolation. She had never been so wholly desolate--the sea so mighty, she so powerless. Fate and human souls were like that.

Karl--where was he? Swept out by the ocean of fate. To what sh.o.r.e had he been carried? What thought he of the tide which had carried him out from her? Was his soul, like hers, spending itself in the pa.s.sion of rebellion--so mighty as to shake the foundations of one's being, so futile as to prevail against not one drop of water in that sea of fate?

Time pa.s.sed; the tide was still coming in, nearing its height. But to the sea there had come a change. The spirit of it seemed different. For a long time she sat there dimly conscious of a difference, and then it seemed as though the sea were trying to reach her with something it had to bring.

She tried to shake herself free from so strange a fancy, but it held her, and for a long time she sat there motionless, looking out at the sea with all her eyes, reaching out to it with all her soul, becoming more and more still,--a hush upon her whole being,--moved, held, unreasoningly expectant.

The sea seemed trying to make her ready. Each wave which beat upon the rocks beat against her consciousness, driving against her mood and spirit, as if clearing a way, making her ready, open, to what would come.

It seemed finally to have cleared her whole being, driven away all which might impede. It seemed now as though she could take in things not seen or heard. There was that strange openness of the spirit, that hush, that unreasoning expectancy.

All at once it rushed upon her, filling her overwhelmingly. It said that there was a sea mightier than what she called the sea of fate; it told of a sea of human souls over which fate only seemed to prevail. A great rush of truth filled her with this--It was the belief in the omnipotence of fate which was the real delusion of the spirit.

Over and over again, with steadily rising tide, it told her that,--no more to be reasoned away than the sea, resistless as the tide.

She never knew in after years just what it was happened in that hour. She could not have told it, for it was not a thing for words to compa.s.s. But after that great truth had rushed full upon her, sweeping away the philosophy of her bitterness, Karl's spirit, something sent out from him to her, seemed to come in with the tide. He pleaded with her. He asked her to stop fighting and come back to the soul of things. He asked her to be Ernestine--his Ernestine. He told her that his own spirit could not find peace while hers was waging war and full of bitterness. He wanted her to make a place for them both in that great world-harmony of their belief. He told her that out where souls see in wider sweeps, they know that there is a spirit over which death and fate cannot prevail.

Darkness came on, but she had no thought of fear. And before she turned away something had risen from the dead. Out of woe and despair, defeat and bitterness, out of loneliness and a broken heart, something was born again. Karl asked that she make it right with the world. Karl asked for a child of their love. And at the last it was the call of the child to the mother which she heard. It was the maternal instinct of the spirit which answered.

Very late that night, after she had sat long at her window, looking up at the stars, waiting, a great light seemed to appear, and shimmering against the sky, high above the tides of the sea, she saw the picture which she would paint.

CHAPTER XLII

WORK THE SAVIOUR

For more than three years then they saw nothing of Ernestine. She left this note for Georgia: "I am sorry to seem erratic, but I cannot wait for you. I am going away at once. I am going first to New York, and then, I think, to Paris. I am going to do something which I can do better there than anywhere else. Thank you, Georgia, for everything. It must be satisfying to feel one has succeeded as beautifully in anything as you have succeeded in being a friend to me. Do not worry. There is nothing now to worry about. You will be glad to know that I am going back to my work."

A little later Dr. Parkman had this from her from New York: "I am sailing for Paris. I am going to work. I see it all now; all that you would have me see, and more. Some day I will try to show you just how well I see it.

"I do not know how I am going to bear part of it--the going back where we were so happy. But I _will_ bear it, for nothing shall keep me from the work I see before me.

"Thank you--for all that you have done, and most of all for all that you have been. My idea is all comprehended in this: To the very uttermost of my power, I am going to make it right for Karl."

Six months later she wrote him this:

"Dear Doctor: Thank you for attending to those things for me. It infuriated me at first to think that the only thing in money left by the work of Karl's great life was the money from those books which I resented so bitterly. But how wrong to see it that way--for Karl would be so happy to know that the brave work he did after his blindness was helping me now. But I never spend a dollar of this money without thinking of the mood--the circ.u.mstances--out of which it was earned.

"No--no money for the work he did for the blind. Karl intended that as a gift. He would be so glad to know of its usefulness. He thought it all wrong that books for the blind were so expensive, and so many of the great things not to be had.

"Karl used to repeat a little verse of Heine, which he translated like this:"

'At first I did not even hope, And to a hostile fate did bow-- But I learned to bear the burden-- Only do not ask me how.'

"I have learned to bear it here in Paris--only do not ask me how. I could not say. I do not know.

"But I want to tell you of a few of the good things. You would not believe what that work in the laboratory has done for me. It has given me a new understanding of colour--new sense of it, new power with eye and hand, a better sense of values. Would you have thought of that? And do you not see the reasons for my being glad?

"What I have done so far is but leading up to what I am going to do. That is so vital that it must not be done too quickly. I must get my hand in, gain what there is to be gained here, that the work I am going to do for Karl may have the benefit of it all. But I have made innumerable sketches, and it is growing all the time. There need be no fear of my losing it. I could no more lose it than I could lose my own soul. It grows as I grow. Sometimes I think I should wait ten years--but I shall not.

"Yes, the critics like the picture of which you speak. Of course I am painting all the time--other things--various things. But it all seems like practice work to me--a mere getting ready."

And then, after a long time, this:--"This is my birthday;--a day linked more closely than I could ever tell with Karl, our life and work and love. If I had looked forward from one happy birthday I had and seen what was ahead--how it would be with me now--I never could have gone on. We go on by not knowing what is waiting for us, and day by day we bear what we would have said, looking ahead, we never could endure--and that is human life.

"I have been so lonely to-day that I must write this little word to one who will understand. I turn to you as one close to us in those dear days, one who cared for and appreciated Karl, understood something of the kind of love that was ours. Doctor--it was so wonderful! So wonderful that it seems to me sometimes the universe must have existed through the centuries just that our love might be born. I think of it as the one perfect flower of creation.

"I want you to know that I have come to see the worth--pricelessness--of my memories. Karl's love for me lights up my life with a glory nothing can ever take away. I think we do not have even our memories until we have earned them. I have tried to come back to my own, to take my place.

I am trying to be of that great harmony of the world in which Karl and I believed, and as my spirit turns from discord and seeks harmony, I am given my memories, the memories of those many perfect days, and I am never too lonely nor too desolate to thank G.o.d that to me was left the scent of the roses.

"Oh, Doctor--where is he now? Do you ever think of all that? No one who has ever loved and lost can remain secure in his materialism. I begin to see that the beautiful thoughts, the poems, of immortality, eternity, of its all coming right, have sprung from the lonely hearts of great lovers.

For they would not have it any other way--they could only endure it by having it so, and, ah, Doctor--far greater than any proof of science or logic, is there not proof in this? Lifting up their hearts in hours of desolation were not the men and women born for great loves and great sorrows granted a vision of the truth?

"We do not know. None of them know. We hope and wait and long for the years to tell us the truth. And while we wait and hope, we work, and try to make our lives that which is worthy our love. That endeavour, and that alone, makes life bearable."

After a year of silence he received this letter: "Doctor, it is finished.

I will not tell you the things they are saying of it here, for you will read it in the papers. The papers here are full of it; I think I have never seen so much about any picture.

"But it is more important that I tell you this: They are seeing it, even now, as I intended it should be seen--a work of love, a memorial, an endeavour to make it right for him. I have cared more for what the scientific people, Karl's own kind, have said of it, than the artists.

They claim it as their own, say they are going to have it, get it some way,--_must_ have it. Do you not see how that means the fulfillment of my desire?

"Of course you know that it is a picture of Karl. But the critics here call it less a portrait than the incarnation of an idea. Light and truth sweeping in upon a human soul--one of them expressed it. But why try to tell you of that? When you see it you will understand what it is I have tried to do. And you shall see it soon. After it is exhibited here they want it in Vienna, and I cannot refuse, for Karl loved Vienna, and then a short time in London, and then I come with it to America, and to Chicago.

I am bringing it home, Doctor, for even though it find final resting place in that great temple of science in Paris, I have the feeling, in taking it to Chicago, that I am bringing it home. And the first day it is exhibited there I want you and me to go to it together, as Karl would like that we should.

"I am so tired that I do not believe I shall ever be quite rested again.

For the last three months I lived with the picture, my heart and mind knew nothing else. But the day I finished it my strongest feeling was a regret that it was finished, a yearning to go on with it forever. For doctor, I painted my heart, my life, everything that I had within myself, everything I had taken from Karl, into that picture. I am lonely now without it, for it made my life.

"It has revived Karl's whole story. They tell it here--oh so lovingly. I heard one man from the Inst.i.tute telling it all to a younger man as they stood before it yesterday. I have moved them to a new sense of Karl's greatness; it has been my glorious privilege to perpetuate him, make sure his place, _reveal_ him--for that is what I have sought to do. Was not life good to me to give me power to do that thing?

"We shall be together in Chicago very soon--you and Karl and I. For as the days go on Karl comes closer. I hope, most of all, that the picture will bring him very close to you."

That was three months before, and to-day he had this note from her, dated Chicago:--"Yes, I am here, and the picture is here. The public exhibit does not open for a few days, but the picture will be hung this morning, and we may see it this afternoon. I shall be there at three, waiting for you."