WITH BROKEN SWORD
He wished that Ernestine would come home. He had let Ross go at four, and
it was lonesome there alone. In spite of the fact that she was away so
much, Ernestine was almost always there when he wanted her most. That was
just one of the wonderful things about Ernestine. Something must have
detained her to-day.
He reached over on the table for his copy of "Faust." It had become his
habit to pick it up when he did not care to sit face to face with his own
thoughts. It seemed to hold some word for everything in life. Its
universality made it a good friend.
It was becoming easier to read with his fingers, but he had never come
into the old joy in reading that there had been in the days when he could
_see_ it. And it seemed to him that there was an unnecessary clumsiness
about the whole thing. He had worked out a little idea of his own for
which he was going to have a model made. He believed it might help
some--at any rate he had enjoyed working it out. "If a fellow feels like
inventing, he simply must invent something, whether it amounts to
anything or not," he had explained to Ernestine.
He did not read consecutively to-night, but just a line here and there,
getting a little of wit, a little of philosophy, a dash or two of
sarcasm, an occasional gleam of sentiment; he liked to take it that way
at times like this; it seemed if not one thing, then surely another, must
keep him from the things into which it would be so easy to slip to-night.
"Restless activity proves the man!"--several times his fingers went over
that, and his responsive face told that to his mind it brought a poignant
meaning, and to his heart an understanding and a sadness. He closed the
book, and sat there thinking. He seemed very self-contained--quiet,
poised, but the understanding eye would have known that he was thinking
deep thoughts, facing hard truths.
Once at a horse race he had seen a horse which had just been lamed tied
near the track. It heard the ringing of the gong, heard the music of the
other horses' feet, heard, saw, smelled, sensed in every way the race
that was going on. A weakness in one foot could not kill the spirit of a
race horse. Tied there beside the track, watching others struggling for
the race! He had wondered about that horse, then, had been sure from the
quivering of its nostrils, the pawing of its foot, the passionate
trembling of its whole superb body that it suffered. Thinking back to it
to-night he had good reason to know that he had been right that day.
It was queer about life. In some ways so incomprehensively great and
superb, and yet so easy to be overthrown. Great purposes seemed very
great, but was a thing really great when it was so easily undermined? Was
there not a dizzying instability about it all?
He smiled a little as he lighted his pipe. He seemed to be doing a great
deal of speculating these days. What if he too were to be graduated into
the bigger field of philosophy? But he shook his head, still smiling a
little. If he ever entered the bigger field of philosophy he was sure he
would not be carried there in other men's elevators, that he would not
arrive in the jaunty, well-groomed state of Ross and his sort. No, if he
ever found the bigger field of philosophy, it would be after he had
scaled slippery crags and forded great rivers, after he had pushed his
way through brambles and across sharp stones, after he had many times
lost his footing, and had many times stopped to rest, believing he could
go no farther. It was after some such quest that he might perhaps find
his way up into the bigger field of philosophy. But he would not find
Ross there. Ross and his fellows were down in a nice little garden that
had been fixed up for them. That was it: the garden of philosophy,--a
garden made by man, in which there were little artificial lakes and
shrubbery set out in attractive designs. A very nice garden indeed, where
the sun shone and where it was true pretty flowers would grow--but ah,
one did not feel the wind upon one's face down in that sheltered garden
as he believed one would feel it up there on the lonely heights to which
one had climbed alone! And the garden of philosophy--he was smiling at
his fancy, but it interested him--was electric lighted, while up there on
the big wide sweep, one came very close to the stars.
What was philosophy, anyway? With Ross it seemed a matter of speaking the
vocabulary of philosophers. It was so, he knew, with many men. And yet,
as to the thing itself, it was not a mere learning a system of thought,
acquiring the easy use of a peculiar kind of words. It was not fair,
after all, to judge a thing by the people least fitted to understand it.
Perhaps philosophy was conquering life. Perhaps it was learning to take
life in good part, making up one's mind to write good text-books if it
seemed certain the writing of text-books were to be one's part. Perhaps
it was just holding one's place. The mere thing of holding one's place
seemed a bigger thing now than it once had. He wondered. He was wondering
about many things these days, and perhaps he had already scaled a crag or
two, for he was able sometimes, in spite of the deep sadness of his face,
to smile a little in his wonderings.
Ernestine was her sweetest self when she came in a little later. "I'm
glad you were late," he said, after her affectionate protestations
regarding her shortcomings, "you haven't been this nice for a long time."
She threw aside her hat and coat and took her favourite place on the low
seat beside him. "Don't you remember, liebchen, how it was over there in
Europe--after you'd treated me badly, you were always so nice, that I
used to be quite tempted to make you be horrid?"
"I never was horrid to you," she protested.
"You're never horrid any more," he said, and, strangely enough, he said
it sadly.
"Well, do you _want_ me to be?"
"Yes! I wish you'd turn in once in a while and call me an old brute, and
say you wished you'd never seen me, and didn't know how in heaven's name
you were going to go on living with me!"
"Karl," she gasped--"are you going _crazy_?"
"No--at least I hope not. But you're just nice to me all the time,
because--because I'm blind! I don't like it! I wish you'd _swear_ at me
sometimes!"
"Well, in the first place," laughing, but serious too,--it had come so
heatedly, "it isn't my way to swear at any one. I never did swear at you.
Why should I begin now?"
"Oh, swear was figurative language," he laughed.
"And of all things for a man to harrow up his soul about! Not liking it
because his wife is never horrid to him!"
"It's not as crazy as it sounds. Are you and I a couple of plaster
saints? Well, hardly! Then why don't we have any quarrels? It's just
because you're sorry for me! I'll not have you being sorry for me!" he
concluded, almost angrily.
But when she kissed him, he could not resist a smile. "You don't know
much, do you, Karl? Don't you know that we don't quarrel about little
things, because we've had so many big things on hand? We don't swear at
each other, because--"
"Because we have so many other things to swear at," he finished for her.
"That's it. All our fighting emotion is being used up."
"Oh, you're such a genius for making things seem right! Now looking at it
that way, I'm quite reconciled to your being nice to me. Still I want you
to promise that if you ever feel like swearing, you will."
"I promise," she responded solemnly.
"Don't do things--or not do things--because you're sorry for me,
Ernestine."
"We are 'sorry for' people who are unequal to things. I'm sorry with you,
not for you, Karl."
"Ernestine,"--with an affectionate little laugh--"is there _anything_ you
don't understand?"
"You might play a little for me," he said after a silence. "Play that
thing that ends in a question."
"Of Liszt's?"
"Yes; the one that leaves you wondering."
At first she had resented bitterly her not being able to play more
satisfyingly. If only music were her work! It seemed an almost malicious
touch that fate, in taking away Karl's own work, had also shut him out
from hers. Resentment at that had made it hard for her to play for him at
all, at first. But she had overcome that, and had been able to make music
mean much to them both. They loved especially the music which seemed to
translate for them things within their own hearts.
But to-night when Ernestine had left him pondering a minute the question
he said Liszt always left with him, she turned, eagerly it seemed, to
lighter things. She played a little Nevin, played it with a lightness,
gladsomeness, he had never felt in her touch before. He said Nevin helped
him to see things, that he could see leaves moving on their branches,
could see the shadows falling on the hillsides where the cattle were
grazing, as he listened to Nevin. But it did not bring the pictures
to-night. It opened up new fears.
"Ernestine," he said abruptly, "come here."
"Are you ever frightened, Ernestine?" he asked of her, still in that
abrupt, strange manner.
"Frightened--about what?"
"Frightened about having to live all your life with me!"
For a moment she did not answer. Then, her voice quiet with the quiet
that would hold back anger: "Karl, do you think you are treating me very
kindly to-night? Saying these strange things I cannot understand?"
"But, Ernestine--look here! You're young--beautiful--love life. Doesn't
it ever occur to you that you're not getting enough fun out of things?"
"Karl,"--and there was a quivering in the voice now--"do you think I have
been thinking lately about 'getting fun out of things'?"
"No, but that's just it! You _ought_ to be thinking about it!
Ernestine--_think_ of it! How are you going to go on forever loving a
blind man?"
For answer, she knelt down beside him, her arms about his neck, her cheek
against his.
"Yes--I know--in that way. But in the old way of the first days? I was so
different then. How _can_ you love me now, the way you did then? What do
I do now but sit in a chair and try to be patient? Look at a man like
Parkman! That's life. Ernestine"--drawing her close, a sob in his
voice--"liebchen,--_can_ you?"
She longed to tell him then; it would mean so much to tell him now,--Karl
was so troubled to-night. But the time was not ripe yet; she must not
spoil it all. And so instead she talked to him of how real power
comprehended more than activity, how depth of understanding, great things
of the soul, were more masterful than those outer forces men called
"life." Ernestine seldom failed in being convincing when she felt things
as she now felt this.
"You always have the right word," he said at last. "You can always get
ahead of the little blue devils."
"Oh, Karl," she murmured, very low, her heart too full to resist
this--"some day I can show you better what I expect of life."
"Of course," he mused, after a silence, "you have your work."
"Yes," replied Ernestine, and something in her voice puzzled him, "I have
my work."
He would have been startled could he have seen her face just then. For
Ernestine was so happy to-night. She had come away from the hospital with
a song in her heart; a song of resolution and of triumph. She had never
foreseen the future so clearly; the time had never seemed so close at
hand; it had never been this real before. Just in front of her as she sat
there beside Karl was the Gloria Victis, that statue for which he had
cared so little at first, but which in these later days she often found
him dwelling upon with his hands in lingering touch of appreciation. To
her the statue had come to hold many meanings; she looked at it now with
shining eyes. Karl had held so tight to the broken sword--how splendid
then that he should win the fight despite it all.
And she felt she had never risen so completely to the idea of Karl's
greatness as she did to-day. What was there in the afternoon had meant so
much to her? Was it actually seeing things as they were, or was it the
things Dr. Parkman had said to point the way anew? There was to-night a
new tide of appreciation, a larger understanding, more passionate
response to this thought of Karl as greatest of them all. Looking at
his face as he sat there in deep thought, she saw the marks of his
greatness upon it just as plainly as she saw those other marks of his
suffering.--This man stop work? Such as he out of the race?
She remembered the letters they had received when the news of his
blindness had gone out. She had wept over them many times, but it seemed
she had never grasped their significance before. They were from men of
science, from doctors, from students, and from many plain people unknown
outside their small communities, who wrote to say they were sorry. They
had seen about him once or twice in the magazines, they said, or perhaps
their own doctor at home had told them of him, and they were so
interested because their wife or husband or mother had died of cancer,
and they knew what an awful thing it was. It should have been some one
whom the world needed less than it needed him, these plain people said.
Her eyes filled with a rush of tears. This was her Karl--he with whom all
the world grieved! She recalled the editorials in the scientific papers,
telling of the things he had done, the things it had been believed by
them all he would achieve. This was her Karl!--this man whose withdrawal
from active participation had been told of by great scientists everywhere
as a world-wide calamity. How quiet and unassuming and simple he had been
about it all--he whose stepping-out had been felt around the world!
And, now, some day before long she would come to him with: "Karl, I have
found a new way of fighting with broken swords; take a good grip on the
sword, a good strong grip, and let us turn back to the fight!"
She turned to him with that quick passionateness he loved in her so well.
"I love you," she said, and though she had said it many times in other
days, it had never sounded just like that before.