HER VISION
Some of the university people came over that night to see Karl. Ernestine
was glad of that, for she had been dreading the evening. Their talk of
the afternoon had made it more clear and more hard than it had ever been
before.
Her mothering instinct had been supreme that summer. It had dominated her
so completely as to blur slightly the clearness of her intellectual
vision. To be doing things for him, making him as comfortable as
possible, to find occupation for him as one does for the convalescent, to
hover about him, showering him with manifestations of her love and
woman's protectiveness--it had stirred the mother in her, and in the
depths of her sorrow there had been a sublime joy.
Now she could not see her way ahead. It was her constant doing things to
"make it up to him" had made the summer bearable at all. With the
clearing of her vision her sustaining power seemed taken from her.
"And how has it gone with you this summer?" Professor Hastings asked,
holding both of her hands for a minute in fatherly fashion as she met him
in the hall.
He scarcely heard her reply, for the thought came to him: "If he could
only see her now!"
It was her pride and her wistfulness, her courage and her appeal, the
union of defiance and tenderness which held one strangely in the face of
Ernestine. She was as the figure of love standing there wounded but
unvanquished before the blows of fate.
"Professor Hastings has come to see you, Karl," she said, as they entered
the library; and as he rose she laid her hand very gently upon his arm, a
touch which seemed more like an unconscious little movement of affection
than an assistance.
"Good for Hastings!" said Karl, with genuine heartiness.
"And have a good many thought waves from me come to you this summer?" he
asked, shaking Karl's hand with a warmth which conveyed the things he
left unsaid.
"Yes, they've come," Karl replied. "Oh, we knew our friends were with
us,"--a little hastily. "But we've had a pretty good summer--haven't we,
Ernestine?" turning his face to her.
"In many ways it has been a delightful summer,"--her voice now had that
blending of defiance and appeal, and as she looked at her husband and
smiled it flashed through Professor Hastings' mind--"He knew she did
that!"
"You see,"--after they were seated--"I was really very uneducated. Isn't
it surprising, Hastings, how much some of us don't know? Now what do you
know about the history of art? Could you pass a sophomore examination in
it? Well, I couldn't until Ernestine began coaching me up this summer.
Now I'm quite fit to appear before women's clubs as a lecturer on art.
Literature, too, I'm getting on with; I'm getting acquainted with all the
Swedes and the Irishmen and the Poles who ever put pen to paper."
"Karl," she protested--"Swedes and Irishmen and Poles!"
"Isn't that what they are?" he demanded, innocently.
"Well they're not exactly a lot of immigrants."
"Yes they are; immigrants into the domain of my--shall I say
intellectuality?"
They laughed a little, and there was a moment's pause. "Tell me about
school," he said, abruptly, his voice all changed.
Professor Hastings felt the censorship of Ernestine's eyes upon him as he
talked; they travelled with a frightened eagerness from the face of the
man who spoke to him who listened. He could see them deepen as they
touched dangerous ground, and he wondered how she could go on living with
that intensity of feeling.
"Beason is back," he said, in telling of the returnings and the changes.
"Beason!"--Dr. Hubers' voice rang out charged with a significance the
older man could not understand. "You say Beason is back?"--the voice then
was as if something had broken.
"Yes, it was unexpected. He had thought he would be West this year, but
things turned out better than he had expected."
"Yes, he told me--in April, that he would be West this year." As he sank
back, his face in repose, Professor Hastings saw something of what the
summer had done.
Ernestine's eyes were upon him, a little reproachful, and beseeching. But
before he could think of anything redeeming to say two other university
men had been admitted.
It was hard at first. Dr. Hubers did not rouse himself to more than the
merest conventionality, and all the rest of it was left to his wife, who,
however, rose to the situation with a superb graciousness. Finally they
touched a topic which roused Karl. His mind reached out to it with his
old eagerness and virility, and they were soon in the heat of one of
those discussions which wage when men of active mind and kindred interest
are brought together.
Ernestine sat for a little time listening to them, grateful for the
relaxation of the tension, more grateful still for this touch of Karl's
old-time self. But following upon that the very consciousness that they
saw the real Karl so seldom now brought added pain. What would the future
hold? What could it hold? Must he not go farther and farther from this
real self as he adjusted himself more and more fully to the new order of
things?
Watching him then, as he talked and listened, she could appreciate anew
what Karl's eyes had meant to his personality. It almost broke her heart
to see him lean forward and look in that half-eager, half-fretted way
toward the man who was speaking, as though his blindness were a barrier
between their minds, a barrier he instinctively tried to beat down.
She wanted to get away, and she felt they would get along better now
without her. So she left them, laughingly, to their cigars and their
discussion.
She wandered about the house listlessly, mechanically doing a few things
here and there. And then, still aimlessly, she went up to her studio. She
sat down on the floor, leaning her head against the couch. Just then she
looked like a very tired, disappointed child.
And it was with something of a child's simplicity she saw things
then. Was it right to treat Karl that way--Karl who was so great and
good--could do such big things? Was it fair or right that Karl should be
unhappy--Karl who did so much for other people, and who had all this
sweetness and tenderness with the greatness?
What could she do for Karl? She loved him enough to lay down her life for
him. Then was there not some way she could use her life to make things
better for him?
And so she sat there, her thoughts brooding over him, too tired for
anything but very simple thinking, too worn for passion, but filled with
the sadness of a grieving child. It was after she had been looking
straight at it for a long time that she realised she Was looking at a
picture on her easel.
Dimly, uncaringly, she knew what the picture was. But she was thinking
only of Karl. It was a long time before her mind really followed her eyes
to the picture.
It was a sketch of a woman's face. She remembered what a splendid model
she had had for it. And then suddenly her mind went full upon it; her
whole bearing changed; she leaned forward with a passionate intentness.
Unsatisfied longing, disappointed motherhood, deep, deep things stirred
only to be denied! Yes, the model had been a good one, but it was from
her own soul the life things in that face had come.
It brought them all back now--all those things she had put into it. A
great wave of passion and yearning swept through her;--new questionings,
sorrow touched with resentment, longing mingled with defiance. Why could
not this have gone right with them? What it would have meant to Karl in
these days!--sustained, comforted, kept strong.
The pain of those first days was translated by the deeper understanding
of these. Her eyes were very deep, about her mouth an infinite yearning
as she asked some of those questions for which God had no answer.
But there was something about the picture she did not like. She looked at
it with a growing dissatisfaction. And then she saw what it was. The
woman was sinking to melancholy. She bowed under the hand of fate. She
did not know why, this night of all others, she should resent that. What
did she want? What could she expect?
She stirred restlessly under the dissatisfaction. It seemed too much
fate's triumph to leave it like this. Not this surrender, but a little of
the Spartan, a touch of sternness, a little defiance in the hunger, an
understanding--that was it!--a submission in which there was the dignity
of understanding. Ah--here it was!--a knowing that thousands had endured
and must endure, but as an echo from the Stoics--"Well?"
The idea fascinated her--swept through her with a strange, wild
passion. She scarcely knew what she was doing, when, after a long
time of looking at the picture, she began getting out her things. Her
face had wholly changed. She too had now the understanding, stern,
all-comprehending--"Well?"--for fate.
She could work! That was the thing remained. She would not bow down under
it and submit. She would work! She would erect something to stand for
their love--something so great, so universal and eternal that it would
make up for all taken away. She would crystallise their lives into
something so big and supreme that Karl himself, feeling, understanding
that which he could not see, would come at the end into all the
satisfaction of the victor! Could she do greater things for him than
that?
She glowed under the idea. It filled, thrilled, intoxicated her. And she
could do it! As she saw that a few master strokes were visualising her
idea she came into greater consciousness of her power than she had ever
had before.
It all flowed into big new impetus for her work. A year before she had
wanted to work because she was so happy, now with a fierce passion she
turned to her work as the thing to make it right for their lives. Out of
all this she would rise to so great an understanding, so supreme a power
that they too could hurl their defiant--"Well?"--at the fate which had
believed them conquered. In the glow and the passion and the exaltation
of it she felt that nothing in the world, no trick of fate, no onslaught
of God or man, could keep her from the work that was hers. She had a
vision of hosts of men, all powers of fate, marching against her, and
she, unfaltering, serene, confident, just doing her work! It was one of
the perfect moments of the divine intoxication.
It was in the very glow of it that the strange thing happened. The lights
from her ruby, caught in a shaft of light, blurred her vision for an
instant, and in that same instant, as if borne with the lights of the
stone, there penetrated her glowing, exuberant mood--quick, piercing,
like an arrow shot in with strong, true hand--"He loves his work just
like this. You know now. You understand."
Her mood fell away like a pricked bubble. The divine glow, that
passionate throbbing of conscious power, made way for the comprehension
of that thing shot in upon her like a shaft.--"He loves his work just
like this. You know now. You understand."
She had been standing, and she sank to a chair. Like all great changes it
sapped up strength. The blood had cooled too suddenly, and she was weak
and trembling--but, oh, how she understood! He himself did not understand
it as she understood it now.
Pushing upon him--dominating him--clamouring--crowding for outlet when
outlet had been closed--gathering, growing, and unable to find its valve
of escape--why it would crowd upon him--kill him! Beat it down? But it
was the deathless in him. With human strength put out a fire that was
divine?
She covered her face with her hands to shut it out. But she could not
shut it out; it was there--a thing to be faced, not evaded--a thing which
would grow, not draw away. And she loved him so! In this moment of
perfect understanding, this divine camaraderie of the soul--knowing that
they were touched with the same touch--drew from a common fount--she felt
within her a love for him, an understanding, which all of the centuries
behind her, the eternity out of which she had come--had gone to make.
And then, grim, stern, she put her intellect upon it. She went over
everything he had said that afternoon. Each thought of it opened up new
channels, and she followed them all to their uttermost. And in that
getting of it in hand there was more than insight, knowledge, conviction.
There was a complete sensing of the truth, a comprehending of things just
without the pale of reason.
Her face pale, her eyes looking into that far distance, she sat there for
more than an hour, oblivious for the first time since his blindness to
the thought that Karl might be needing her, lost to all conventional
instincts as hostess. Hard and fast the thoughts beat upon her, and then
at last in the wake of those thoughts, out beyond, there was born a great
light. It staggered her at first; it seemed a light too great for human
mind to bear. But time passed, and the light burned on, steady, fixed,
not to pass away. And in that momentous hour which words are quite
powerless to record, something was buried, and something born.