DISTANT STRAINS OF TRIUMPH
It worried Ernestine when she saw Dr. Parkman's motor car stopping before
the house early Tuesday morning. He had been there the afternoon before,
and then again late in the evening, bringing another doctor with him. He
said that they simply came to help keep Karl amused; but surely he would
not be coming again this morning if there were not something more serious
than she knew. Karl had come home from the university about noon the day
before, saying that his head was bad and he was going to consider himself
"all in" for the day. Something about him had frightened her, but he
insisted that it only showed what a headache could do to a fellow who was
not accustomed to it. He had remained in his darkened room all day, not
even turning his face from the wall when she came in to do things for
him. That worried her, and even the doctor's assurance that he was not
going to be ill had not sufficed. In fact, she thought Dr. Parkman
was acting strangely himself.
"I was out in this part of town and thought I'd drop in," he told her, as
she opened the door for him.
"You're not worried about Karl?" she demanded.
He was hanging up his cap. "You see, I don't want him to get up and go
over to the university," he said, after a minute's pause, in which she
thought he had not heard her question. "That wouldn't be good for his
eyes."
"Well, doctor, what is it about his eyes? Is it just--something that must
run its course?"
"Oh, yes," he answered, and she was a little hurt by the short way he
said it. Was it not the most natural thing in the world she should want
to know? Really, doctors might be a little more satisfactory, she
thought, as she told him he would find Karl in his room.
She herself went into the library. Down in the next block she saw the
postman, and thought she would wait for him. She felt all unnerved this
morning. Things were happening which she did not understand, and then
she felt so "left out of things." She wanted to do things for Karl; she
would love to hover over him while he was not well, but he seemed to
prefer being let alone; and as for Dr. Parkman, there was no sense in his
adopting so short and professional a manner with her.
But as she stood there by the window, the bright morning sunlight fell
upon her ruby, and she smiled. She loved her ring so! It was so dear of
Karl to get it for her. The warm, deep lights in it seemed to symbolise
their love, and it would always be associated with that first night she
had worn it, that beautiful hour when they sat together before the fire.
That had been its baptism in love.
The postman was at the door now, and she hurried to meet him. She was
much interested in the mail these days, for surely she would hear any
time now regarding her picture in Paris.
It had come! The topmost letter had a foreign stamp, and she recognised
the writing of Laplace.
Heart beating very fast, she started up to her studio. She wanted to be
up there, all by herself, when she read this letter. As she passed Karl's
door she heard Dr. Parkman telling about having punctured a tire on his
machine the night before. Of course then everything really was all right,
or he would not have talked about trivial things like that.
Her fingers fumbled so that she could scarcely open the envelope. And
then she tried to laugh herself out of that, prepare for disappointment.
Why, what in the world did she expect?
As she read the letter her face went very white, her fingers trembled
more and more. Then she had to go back and read it sentence by sentence.
It was too much to take in all at once.
It was not so much that it had been awarded a medal; not so much that a
great London collector--Laplace said he was the most discriminating
collector he knew--wanted to buy it. The overwhelming thing was that the
critics of Paris treated it as something entitled to their very best
consideration. The medal and the sale might have come by chance, but
something about these clippings he had enclosed seemed to stand for
achievement. They said that "The Hidden Waterfall," by a young American
artist, was one of the most live and individual things of the exhibition.
They mentioned things in her work which were poor--but not one of them
passed her over lightly!
She grew very quiet as she sat there thinking about it. The
consciousness of it surged through and through her, but she sat quite
motionless. It seemed too big a thing for mere rejoicing. For what it
meant Was that the years had not played her false. It meant the
justification--exaltation--of something her inmost self.
And it meant that the future was hers to take! She leaned forward as if
looking into the coming years, eyes shining with aspiration, cheeks
flushed with triumph. She quivered with desire--the desire to express
what she knew was within her.
It was while lost to her joy and her dreaming that she heard a step upon
the stairs. She started up--instantly broken from the magic of the
moment. Perhaps Karl needed her. And then before she reached the door she
knew that it was Karl himself. How very strange!
"Oh, Karl!"--not able to contain it a minute--"I want to tell you--" and
then, startled as he stumbled a little, and going down a few steps to
meet him--"but isn't there too much light up here? Shouldn't you stay
down in the dark?"
"I don't want to stay down in the dark!"--he said it with a low intensity
which startled her, and then she laughed.
"I've always heard there was nothing so perverse as a sick man. I'll tell
you what's the matter with you. You're lonesome. You're tired of getting
along without me--now aren't you? But we'll go down to the library, and
down there I'll tell you--oh, _what_ I'll tell you! I thought Dr. Parkman
was going to stay with you a while,"--as he did not speak--"or I
shouldn't have come away."
He had seated himself, and was rubbing his head, as though it pained him.
His eyes were hidden, but his face, in this bright light, made her want
to cry, it told so plainly of his suffering. He reached out his hand for
hers. "I didn't want him any longer, liebchen,"--he said it much like a
little child--"I want--you."
"Of course you do,"--tenderly--"and I'm the one for you to have. But not
up here. The light is too bright up here."
She pulled at his hand as if to induce him to rise. But he made no
movement to do so, and he did not seem to have heard what she said.
"Ernestine," he said, in a low voice--there was something not just
natural in Karl's voice, a tiredness, a something gone from it--"will you
do something for me?"
She sat down on the arm of his chair, her arm about him with her warm
impulsiveness. "Why Karl, dear"--a light kiss upon his hair--"you know I
would do anything in the world for you."
"I want you to show me your pictures,"--he said it abruptly, shortly. "I
want to look at them this morning;--all of them."
"But--but Karl," she gasped, rising in her astonishment--"not _now_!"
"Yes--now. You promised. You said you'd do anything in the world for me."
"But not something that will hurt you!"
"It won't hurt me,"--still abruptly, shortly.
"But I know better than that! Why any one knows that eyes in bad
condition mustn't be used. And looking at pictures--up here in this
bright light--so needless--so crazy,"--she laughed, though she was
puzzled and worried.
He was silent, and something in his bearing went to her heart. His head,
his shoulders, his whole being seemed bowed. It was so far from Karl's
real self. "Any other time, dear," she said, very gently. "You know I
would love to do it, but some time when you are better able to look at
them."
"I'm just as able to look at them now as I will ever be," he said,
slowly. "Ernestine--please."
"But Karl,"--her voice quivering--"I just can't bear to do a thing that
will do you harm."
"It won't do me harm. I give you my word of honour it won't make any
serious difference."
"But Dr. Parkman said--"
"I give you my word of honour," he repeated, a little sharply.
"All right, then," she relented, reluctantly, and darkened the room a
little.
"Dear,"--sitting on a stool beside him--"you're perfectly sure this
trouble with your eyes isn't any more serious than you think?"
"Yes," he answered, firmly enough, but something in his voice sounded
queer, "I'm perfectly sure of that."
"Show me your pictures, Ernestine," laying his hand upon her hair; "I've
taken a particular notion that I want to see them."
"But first"--carried back to it--"I want to tell you something." She
laughed, excitedly. "I was coming down to tell you as soon as the doctor
left. Oh Karl--my picture in Paris--I heard from it this morning, and its
success has been--tremendous!" She laughed happily over the word and did
not think why it was Karl's hand gripped her shoulder in that quick,
tight way. "Shall I read you all about it, dear? And then will you
promise to cheer right up?"
Still that tight grip upon her shoulder! It hurt a little, but she did
not mind--it just showed how much Karl cared. The hand was still there
as she read the letter, and then the clippings which told of the
rare quality of her work, predicted the great things she was sure to
do,--sometimes it tightened a little, and sometimes it relaxed, and once,
with a quick movement he stooped down and turned her ring around, turning
the stone to the inside of her hand.
When she had finished he was quite still for a long minute. He was
breathing hard;--Karl was excited about it too! And then he stooped over
and kissed her forehead, and it startled her to feel that his lips were
very cold.
"Liebchen," he said, his voice trembling a bit--Karl did care so
much!--"I am glad." For a minute he was very still again, and then he
added, seeming to mean a different thing by it--"I am very glad."
"It's gone to my head a little, Karl! Oh I'm perfectly willing to admit
it has. I don't think I should appreciate the Gloria Victis very much
myself this morning," she laughed, happily.
She was too absorbed to notice the quick little drawing in of his breath,
or his silence. "After all, it would be a sorry thing if I didn't
succeed," she pursued, gayly, "for you stand so for success that we
couldn't be so close together--could we, dear--if I were a dismal
failure?"
"You think not?" he asked--and she wondered if he had taken a little
cold; his voice sounded that way.
"Oh I don't mean that too literally. But I like the idea of our going
through the same experiences--both succeeding. It seems to me I can
understand you better this morning than I ever did before. I read a
little poem last night, and at the time I liked it so much. It is about
success, or rather about not succeeding. But I'm afraid it wouldn't
appeal to me very much just now,"--again she laughed, happily, and it was
well for the happiness that she was not looking at him then.
"What was it?" he asked, as he saw she was going to turn around to him.
"Say it."
"Part of it was like this":
'Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break agonized and clear.'
"Say that last verse again," he said, his voice thick and low;--Karl was
so different when he was sick!
"As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break agonized and clear."
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" she said, as he did not speak.
"Beautiful? I don't know. I suppose it is. I was thinking that quite
likely it is true."
"But I didn't suppose you would care about it, Karl. I supposed you would
feel about it as you did about the statue."
"I wonder," he began, slowly, not seeming sure of what he wanted to
say--"how much the comprehension, the understanding of things, that the
loss would bring, would make up for the success taken away? I wonder just
what the defeated fellow could work out of that?"
"But dearie, _is_ it true? Why can failure comprehend success any more
than success can comprehend failure?"
"It's different," he said, shortly.
"How do you know?" she asked banteringly. "What do you know about it? You
don't even know how to spell the word failure!"
He started to say something, but stopped, and then he stooped over and
rested his head for a minute upon her hair. "Tell me about your picture,
Ernestine," he said, quietly, after that. "Tell me just what it is."
"The Hidden Waterfall? Why you know it, Karl."
"Yes, but I want to hear you talk about it. I want to hear you tell just
what it means."
"Well, you remember it is a child standing in a beautiful part of the
woods. It is spring-time, as it seems best it should be when you are
painting a child in the woods. I tried to make the picture breathe
spring, and you know one of the writers said that the delicious thing
about it was the way you got the smell of the woods;--that pleased me.
Behind the child, visible in the picture, but invisible to the child, is
a waterfall. The most vital thing in the universe to me was to have that
waterfall make a sound. I think it does, or the picture wouldn't mean
anything at all. And then of course the heart of the picture is in the
child's face--the puzzled surprise, the glad wonder, and then deeper than
that the response to something which cannot be understood. It might
have been called 'Wondering,' or even 'Mystery,' but I liked the simpler
title better. And I like that idea of painting, not just nature, but
what nature means to man. I want to get at the response--the thing
awakened--the things given back. Don't you see how that translates the
spirit there is between nature and man--stands for the oneness?"
He nodded, seeming to be thinking. "I see," he said at last. "I wonder if
you know all that means?"
"Why, yes, I think I do. My next picture will get at it in a--um--a more
mature way."
"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 grass 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 entitled 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 assented, "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 assented wearily; "it is time now to go down where it is dark."