THE HOME-COMING
"Yes, suh, Chicago only two hours, suh," and the porter smiled broadly.
There was both memory and anticipation in that smile.
The car was almost empty. Across the aisle a man slept peacefully; a
little farther ahead a young lady read of the joys and sorrows of a
knight and his lady who had lived some several hundred years before, and
still farther on a lady all in black was looking from the window,
evidently lost to sorrows of more recent date. As no one was paying any
attention to the man and woman back there in the rear of the car it was
perfectly safe, when the porter passed on, for her hand to slip over into
his.
He responded with that quiet, protecting smile which always made it seem
no bad thing could ever come to her.
"Almost home, dear," he said, and then for a long time neither of them
spoke. Many big forces flowed freely into the silence of that moment.
She looked up at him at last with a smile which broke from her
seriousness as a ripple breaks from a wave.
"Suppose we had to say everything in words!"
"Suppose we had to walk on one leg!"
"Oh, but that--you know, Karl, it's a little like the rivers and the
ocean. The words are the rivers flowing into the ocean of silence. Rivers
flow into oceans--but do they _make_ them? And then the ocean gives back
to the rivers in the things which it breathes out. There are so many
reasons why it seems like that."
"Ernestine, where did you get all this? I sometimes think I'm not square
with you at all. Why, I've been in all those places before! I saw the Bay
of Naples long before I ever saw you--and yet I didn't really see it
before at all. Don't you see? Eyes and appreciation and every decent
thing I take from you. Where did you get it all, Ernestine?"
She pushed back a little curl which was always coming loose,--he loved
that little curl for always coming loose.
"Perhaps I 'got it' from that way you have of looking at me--the way
you're looking at me now; or maybe I got it from the way you say
'Ernestine'--the way you said it just now. But does it matter much what
comes from which?"--with which bit of lucidity she wrinkled up her nose
at him in a way which always vanquished argument and returned to the
silence which seemed waiting to claim her.
He watched her then; he loved so to do that--just see how far he could
follow. Ernestine seemed to draw things to her in a way very wonderful to
him.
"You know, liebchen,"--as he saw that steady light of resolution shine
through the veil of her tenderness--"it seems so queer to me that you
really _do_ anything."
"Well for a neatly turned compliment--"
"I mean it seems so queer you should really _amount_ to anything."
"Now before you overwhelm me with further adulation, what _are_ you
talking about?"
"I'm talking about your being an artist. I can't get used to your being
anything but _Ernestine_! That day last spring when we went to see your
Salon picture, and when those chaps were talking to you, and I realised
that they just simply accepted you as one of them--that you belonged, and
that that was all there was about it--I, oh I had such a funny feeling
that day. And now, a minute ago, when I saw that look, I had it again."
"Why, Karl, you don't _mind_, do you?"
"No, it's just that it seems queer. You see you're such a wonderful
sweetheart, it's hard to think of you as anything else. I'll never forget
that day over there. Something just seemed to leap up within you. I--well
I think I was a little scared--or was I awed? Something that was shining
from your eyes made me feel things in my backbone."
"But you're glad?" she laughed.
"Of course I'm glad; and I'm proud. But it's--queer."
She smiled at him understandingly; the understandingness of her smile
always went beyond her words. It was a beautiful face upon which he
watched the play of lights, saw the changing currents of thought and
dreams and purpose. But the thing most rare in it, that which made one
quite forget accepted standards, was the steadfastness with which a
certain great light shone through the aura of her tenderness. There were
moments in which she transcended both her beauty and her beauty's
weaknesses.
As the flower to the sun, naturally, quietly, inevitably, she had
expanded under the breath of life. With the fullness of a rich nature she
had responded to the touch of the spirit of living. Love loved her for
what she had been able to take.
And in the year which had passed, life, with tender rather than defacing
lines, had put upon her face the touch of sorrow. Europe meant more to
her than an Old World civilisation, more than tradition, beauty or art.
It even meant more than the place where she had spent those first dear
months of her love. It meant to her the place where she had hoped with
woman's dearest hope, and where she had given up the child which should
have been hers. Her tenderest, deepest thoughts were not of the wonders
and beauties she had seen; they were of the dreams within, of the holy
happiness of first knowledge, and then the grief in giving up the much
desired, which she had known only in anticipation. The most cherished
memories of their love were memories of those days in which he had
comforted her, of the tenderness with which he had consoled, the strength
with which he had upheld. Those hours had reached far into her soul,
deepening it, giving her, as if in compensation, new channels for love,
new understanding of those innermost things of life. But in those first
days, even while the soul of the woman was deepening, the bruised heart
was as the heart of a child. It was as a child she had been to him in
those days, and he had comforted her as one would comfort an idolised
child, whose hurt one strove to take wholly unto one's self. The memory
of those hours knit them together as no other thing could have done.
Looking down at her face now he saw that look he had come to know--that
far-away, frightened, wistful look. Very gently he laid his hand upon her
knee.
"I am going to make you so happy. Life is going to be so beautiful," he
said.
She smiled at him, but the tears were in it.
"Yes, Karl--I know. But now that we are coming home--together--alone,
doesn't it seem--"
He turned away. The man had suffered too.
"And we are leaving it over there--over there, alone--away from us--the
life that should have been--"
With that he turned resolutely back to her.
"Ernestine, isn't there another way to look at it? It came of our love,
and now, dear, it has gone back into our love. It isn't something apart
from us,--something gone. We have taken it back unto ourselves. It is
here with us. The greater love we have--that is it, dear."
The flame of understanding leaped quickly to her eyes.
"Oh, I like that Karl," she whispered. "I like that better than anything
you ever said."
She turned then and looked from the window. Across the fields, over near
the horizon, she could see a little house. The smoke was curling from the
chimney. The autumn twilight had come on and they had lighted the lamp. A
bit of home! The tears came to her eyes--tears of tender anticipation.
She too was to make a home. And was it not good to think that smoke was
coming from many chimneys and many lamps were being lighted? Was it not
good to feel that the dear world was full of homes?
To the man this coming back to Chicago, returning to his work after the
year and a half he had been away, was charged with a happy significance.
As they drew nearer and nearer, an impatience possessed him to begin at
once; that desire of the worker to start in immediately. He had worked
some over there, had done a few things which were most satisfactory, but
he wanted now to settle down to actual work in his old place, 'with his
own things. He fell to wondering if they had changed the laboratory,
resentful at the possibility.
"Why look here, Ernestine," he suddenly burst forth, turning to her
eagerly, "to-morrow's a school day, we're late getting home, everything
is in swing--they're waiting for me, and, by Jove, I can just as well as
not begin to-morrow!"
A woman who never made one feel things in one's backbone might have
resented the quick, eager plunge into work, but Ernestine knew the love
of work herself, and her eyes brightened to his spirit.
"But dear me, Karl," after a second's hesitation, "it seems you should
take a day or two first."
"Why?" he demanded.
"Well,"--vaguely--"to get rested up."
"Rested up!" He stretched forth his arm and then doubled it back, and
they both laughed. "That's a joke--my getting rested up. Why I feel like
a fighting cock!"
"And crazy to get to work?"
"Getting that way. Oh, I tell you, Ernestine, there's nothing like it."
Again she did not mind; she understood. She looked at his glowing face,
all alight with enthusiasm for the work to which he was going back. She
was never tired of thinking how Karl's face was just what Karl's face
should be--reflective of a clear-cut, far-seeing, deeply comprehending
mind. It seemed all written there--all those things of mind and
character, and something too of those other things--the things which
were for her alone. Ernestine held that one could tell by looking at Karl
that he was doing some great thing.
"But see here, Dr. Hubers, a nice way you have of shirking your domestic
duties! Who is going to help me settle this famous house Georgia tells
about?"
"I'll do it at night," he protested eagerly. "I'll work every night until
the house is spick and span."
Ernestine sighed. "I have a sad feeling that our house never will be
spick and span. But we'll have some fun,"--eagerly--"fixing it up."
"Of course we'll have fun fixing it up! Georgia's sure to be on hand, and
I'll make old Parkman get busy too--do him good."
"I don't care about knowing a lot of men--"
"Well I should _hope_ not"
"You didn't let me finish. I was going to say that Dr. Parkman is one man
I do want to know."
"You'll like Parkman; and he'll like you. By Jove, he's got to! You
mustn't mind if he snaps your head off occasionally. His life's made
him savage, but even his life--he's had an awful one, Ernestine--couldn't
make him vicious. He's the gruffest, snarliest, biggest man I ever
knew--meaner than the devil, and the best friend on top of earth. And
Lord, how he works! I don't know any other three men could swing the same
load. And I tell you, Ernestine, he's great. There's not a better surgeon
in all Europe. Parkman's a tremendous help to me. Oh, it's going to be
_great_ to get back!"
"We have some really nice things for our house," mused Ernestine. "I'm
glad we decided to take that rug for the library. Of course it seemed
pretty high, but a library without a nice rug wouldn't do at all--not for
us."
"No--that's right--library without a rug--now I wonder if I am to have my
old eight o'clock lecture hour? I _want_ that hour! I want to get all the
school business out of the way in the morning. I must have plenty of
uninterrupted time for myself. I tell you what it is, Ernestine, I'm
going to _get_ it! What I saw over there of the other fellows makes me
all the more sure of myself. And coming back now after being made all
over new--you see there's such a thing as inspiration in my work, just as
there is in yours. Of course it's work--work--work, work your way through
this and that, but there's something or other that leads you on--and I
_know_ I'm going to do something now!"
"I know it too, Karl," she responded, and the steadfastness shone strong
through the tenderness now. "We all know it."
"I've got to," he murmured--"got to." And then his whole mind seized upon
it; some suggestion had come to him, some of that inspiration of which he
had spoken. He sat there looking straight ahead, brows drawn, eyes
sometimes half closing, occasionally nodding his head as he saw a point
more clearly. He looked in such moments as though indeed made for
conquest,--indomitable. One could almost feel his mind at work, could
fancy the skillful cutting away of error, the inevitable working ahead to
truth.
At last he turned to her. "There's no reason for not beginning
to-morrow," he said, with the eagerness of a boy who would try a new gun
or fishing rod. "There are a whole lot of things I want to get right
at now."