LOVE'S OWN HOUR
It was Sunday, and Ernestine was going away next morning. She had told
Karl the day before; it alarmed him at first, for he telephoned Dr.
Parkman, asking him to come out. When the doctor arrived he demanded the
truth as to Ernestine. Had anything happened? Was she not well? He was so
relieved at the doctor's assurance that Ernestine was perfectly well, and
was going away because of her work, that he accepted the situation more
easily than she had anticipated. "Perhaps it will do me good, liebchen,"
he told her. "I fear I'm getting to be a selfish brute--taking everything
for granted and not appreciating you half enough."
But that afternoon it was Ernestine herself who was forced to fight hard
for cheerfulness. She did not want to go away. She was curiously
depressed about it, and resentful. More than once she was on the point of
telephoning to Dr. Parkman that she could not leave Karl.
Georgia and Joe and Mrs. McCormick came in about five and Georgia's
spirit seemed to blow through the house like a strong, full current of
bracing air. She and Joe had returned from California the night before,
and there were many things to tell about their trip. Mrs. McCormick said
it was indeed curious how some people always had so many more adventures
than other people had. She wondered why it was she never met any of these
amusing persons Georgia was always telling about.
Their visit did Ernestine much good. It was impossible to feel blue or
have silly forebodings in the presence of so much naturalness and cheer
as always emanated from Georgia. Those hearty laughs had cleared the
atmosphere for her.
"Look here, liebchen," said Karl, emerging from a brown study, "we must
fix up a code."
"A code, dear?"
"For your writing to me. You see Ross will have to read the letters, and
how can you say in every other line you love me, with that duffer reading
it out loud?"
"Oh, Karl--how stupid of me not to learn writing the other way! You see
it never occurred to me I would be away from you. Couldn't I take that
manual, and make it out from that?"
"Well--you might, but we'll do both; it will be fun to have a code. Now,
when you say--'I am a trifle tired,' you mean--'Oh, sweetheart, I am so
lonesome for you that I am never going away again!'"
"But won't Mr. Ross think it strange if I say in each letter that I am a
trifle tired?"
"What do we care what he thinks? They're not his letters, are they? And
when you say--'New York seems most attractive,'--you mean--'Oh, dearest,
I never dreamed I loved you so much! I am finding out in a thousand new
ways how much I care, and never, never, shall we be separated again.'"
"And when I say, 'I send you my love'--it will be perfectly proper for
Mr. Ross to read that, I mean--'Dear love--I send you a thousand kisses,
and I would give the world for one minute now in your arms.'"
And so they arranged it,--revising, enlarging, going over it a great many
times to have it all certain--there was such a tender kind of fun in it.
As to the other side of it, Karl of course could write to her on his
typewriter.
It was a beautiful evening they had sitting there before the fire. She
saw pictures for him, and he even saw some pictures for her,--he said a
blind man could see certain pictures no one else could possibly see. They
spoke of how they had never been separated since their marriage, of how
strange it would seem to be apart, but always of how beautiful to be
together again. There was such a sweetness, tenderness, in the sadness
which hung about their parting. They made the most of their pain, as is
the way of lovers, for it drew them together in a new way, and each kiss,
each smallest caress, had a new and tender significance.
"You'll be back in time for your birthday, Ernestine?"
"Oh, yes; I'm only going to stay a week."
"I thought you said, perhaps two?"
"Did I? Well I've decided one will be enough."
"Ernestine, what have you been painting? Tell me, dear. That's one thing
I'm a little disappointed in. I do so want to keep close to your work."
"Well, Karl," after a silence, "that picture I have been working on this
winter is hard to tell about because it is in a field all new to me. It
is a picture which emphasises, or tries to, what love means to the
world,--a picture which is the outgrowth of our love. I am not sure that
it is good in all its technical features, but I believe there is
atmosphere in it, poetic feeling, and, back of that, thought, and soul,
and truth. I think there is harmony and richness of colour. Some people
will say it is very daring, and no one will call it conventional, but I
am hoping,"--Ernestine's voice was so low and full of feeling he could
scarcely get the words--"that it is going to be a very great picture--the
greatest I have ever done. Some of it has been hard for me, dear. In
truth I have been much discouraged at times. But great things are not
lightly achieved, Karl, and if this is anything at all, it is one of the
great things. As to the subject, detail, I am going to ask you to wait
until I come back. I have been keeping it for you as a little surprise.
Perhaps it will help some of your lonely hours, dear"--her voice
quivered--"to think about the beautiful surprise. And if it seems strange
sometimes that I could bring myself to go away from you, will you not
bear in mind, Karl dear, that I am doing it simply that the great
surprise may be made perfect for you? It is a whim of mine to keep this a
great secret; in the end I know you will forgive the secrecy. And when I
come back"--her voice was stronger, fuller now--"I am going to make you
see it just as plainly as you ever saw anything in all your life!"
"You must! I couldn't bear it to be shut out from your work."
"You are not going to be shut out from my work!"--she said it with an
intensity almost stern.
"I want your life to be happy, Ernestine," he said, after a time, and the
words seemed to have a new meaning spoken out of this mood of very deep
tenderness. "I don't want it to be darkened. I want my love to make you
happy--in spite of it all."
"It does," she breathed,--"it does."
"But I want you to be--as you used to be! I haven't been fair in letting
this make such a difference with us."
"Karl--how can you talk like that, when you have been so--splendid?"
"But you see I don't want to be splendid," he said whimsically. "I'd
rather be a brute than be splendid. And I want you to love me always as
you did at first--just because you couldn't help yourself."
"I can not help myself now," she laughed. "I am just as helpless as I
ever was."
And then a long and very precious silence. She was filled with many
things too deep for utterance, even had she been free to speak. She
thought of her birthday night a year before, their happiness then, all
that had come to them since, all that love had meant, the great things it
was to do for them. She looked at Karl's face--his fine, strong face
which seemed the very soul of the mellow fire-light. How would that dear
face look when she told him what she had done? Convinced him that great
things were before him now? Would it not be that his determination not to
fail her would stir fires which, even in his most triumphant days, had
slumbered?
But from exultation in all that, she passed to the heart's pain in
leaving him. She moved a little closer, took his hand and rested it
lovingly against her cheek. She had never been away from Karl. Tears came
at the thought of it now.
And he must have been thinking of what Ernestine had meant to him
in the last year, for of a sudden he stooped down and with his old
abandonment, with all the fullness of the first passion and the tender
understanding of these later days, gathered her into his arms. "Oh,
Ernestine," he whispered--breathing into her name all that was in his
heart--"_Ernestine!_"