PATCHWORK QUILTS
And now that the first ten minutes had passed he felt anew the futility
of his errand. His first look into her face made him certain he might
better have remained in Chicago. The thing which cut off all approach was
that she too had done some work on the surface.
It seemed to him as he sat there in utter silence that he had been
brutal, not alone to her heart, but to his own, that he asked too much,
not only of her command, but of his. He had come to talk of Ernestine and
the future; the things about him drew him overmasteringly to Karl and the
past.
She had taken him to her little sitting room up stairs, forced to do so
because the fire down stairs had gone out. He understood now why it was
she had faltered so in asking him to come up here. Here was Karl's big
chair--many things from their library at home. It was where she lived
with her past. She wanted no one here.
She would make no attempt at helping him. She sat there in silence, her
face white, almost stern. In her aloofness it was as though she were
trying to hold herself, from the consciousness of his presence.
He too remained silent. For he was filled with the very things against
which he had come to protest.
It was Karl who was very close; it was the thoughts of Karl's life which
filled him. His heart had never been so warm for his friend, his
appreciation had never been so great as now. Karl, and all that Karl
meant, had never been so close, and so dear. And the words he finally
said to Ernestine, words of passionate tenderness spoken in utter
unconsciousness of how far he had gone from his purpose, were: "I do not
believe any of us half appreciated Karl!"
Startled, she gave him a long, strange look. "No, Dr. Parkman,"--very
low--"neither do I."
"I have been looking into it since. I wanted to throw Karl's results to
the right man. He was head and shoulders above them all."
There was a slow closing of her eyes, but she was not shrinking from him
now;--this the kind of hurt she was able to bear.
"If he had been left to work out his life--" but he stopped, brought
suddenly to a sense of how far he had lost himself.
She too saw it. "Dr. Parkman,"--with a smile which put him far from
her--"_this_ is what you came to say? You think _I_ need any incitement?
You needn't, Dr. Parkman,"--with rising passion--"you needn't. Every
time I leave this room two things are different. I have more love for
Karl--more hate for his destroyers. And those two passions will feed upon
me to the end of my life!"
Instinctively he put out a protesting hand. It was too plain that it was
as she said.
"More love for Karl--more hate for his destroyers,"--she repeated it with
a passionate steadfastness as though it comprehended the creed of her
life.
"His--destroyers?" he faltered. "What do you mean--by that?"
And she answered, with a directness before which dissembling and evasion
crumbled away: "Read the answer in your own heart.
"And if you cannot look into your own heart," she went on, unsparingly,
"if your own heart has been shut away so long that it is closed even to
yourself, then look into your looking-glass and read the answer there.
Let the grey hairs in your own head, the lines in your own face,--yes,
the words of your own mouth--tell you what you would know of Karl's
destroyers."
He drew in his lips in that way of his; one side of his face twitched
uncontrollably. He had come to reach her soul, reach it if must be
through channels of suffering. He had not thought of her reaching his
like this.
But she could not stop. "And if you want to know what I have gone
through, look back to what you have gone through yourself--then make
some of those hours just as much stronger as love is stronger than
friendship--and perhaps you can get some idea of what it has been to me!"
He was dumb before that. Putting it that way there was not a word to say.
He saw now the real change. It was more than hollowed cheeks and eyes
from which the light of other days had gone, more than soft curves
surrendered to grief and youth eaten out by bitterness. It was a change
at the root of things. A great tide had been turned the other way. But in
the days when happiness softened her and love made it all harmonious he
had never felt her force as he felt it now. Reach this? Turn this? The
moment brought new understanding of the paltriness of words.
It was she who spoke. "Dr. Parkman,"--looking at him with a keenness in
which there was almost an affectionate understanding--"you did not say
what you intended to say when you came into this room. You intended to
speak of me--but the room swept you back to Karl. Oh--I know. And it is
just because you _were_ swept back--care like this--that I am going to
tell you something.
"Doctor,"--blinded with tears--"we never understood. None of us ever knew
what it meant to Karl to be blind. After--after he had gone--I found
something. In this book"--reaching over to Karl's copy of Faust--"I found
a letter--a very long letter Karl wrote in those last few days, when he
was there--alone. I found it the day I went out to the library alone--the
day before they--broke it up. Oh doctor--_what it told!_ I want you to
know--" but she could not go on.
When she raised her head the fierce light of hate was burning through the
tears. "Can you fancy how I hate the light? Can you fancy with what
feelings I wake in the morning and see it come--light from which Karl was
shut out--which he craved like that--and could not have? Do you see how
it symbolises all those other things taken from him and me? He talked of
another light--light he must gain for himself--light which the soul must
have. And Karl was longing for the very light I was ready to bring! He
would have believed in it--turned to it eagerly--the letter shows that.
Do you _wonder_ that there is nothing but darkness in my soul--that I
want nothing else? Look at Karl's life! Always cut off just this side of
achievement! Every battle stopped right in the hour of victory! Made
great only to have his greatness buffetted about like--_held up for
sport!_--I _will_ say it! "--in fierce response to his protesting
gesture--"It's true!"
He tried to speak, but this was far too big for words which did not come
straight from the soul.
"Do you know what I am doing now?" She laughed--and none of it had told
as much as that laugh revealed. "I am making patchwork quilts! Can
you fancy anything more worthless in this world than a patchwork
quilt?--cutting things up and then sewing them together again, and making
them uglier in the end than they were in the beginning? Do you know
anything more futile to do with life than that? Well that's where my
life is now. My aunt had begun some, and I am finishing them up. And
once--once--" but the sob in her voice gathered up the words.
He wanted to speak then; that sob brought her nearer. But she went on:
"I sit sewing those little pieces together--a foolish thing to do, but
one must be doing something, and as I think how useless it is there comes
the thought of whether it is any more useless than all the other things
in life. Is it any more useless than surgery? For can a great surgeon
save his best friend? Is it any more useless than science--for can
science do anything for her own? Is it any more useless than ambition and
purpose and hope--for does not fate make sport of them all? Is it any
more useless than books--for can books reach the hearts which need them
most? Is it any more useless than art--for does art reach realities? Is
it any more useless than light--for can light penetrate the real
darkness? Is it,"--she wavered, quivered; she had been talking in low,
quick voice, her eyes fixed on something straight ahead, as though
reading her words out there before her. And now, as she held back, and he
saw what she saw and could not say, he asked for her, slowly: "Is it any
more useless than love?"