ASH HEAP AND ROSE JAR
As she broke then to the sobs for which he had hoped, something of
tremendous force stirred within the man; and he felt that if he could
bring her from the outer darkness where she had been carried, back to the
things which were her soul's own, that his own life, his whole life, with
all of the dark things through which it had passed, would have found
justification. He had tried to save Karl, and failed. But there was left
Ernestine. And it seemed to him--he saw it simply, directly,
unquestioningly--that after all he would not have failed Karl if he could
do what it was in his heart to do now for her.
Looking at her bowed head he saw it all--the complete overthrow, the rich
field of life rendered barren waste. Barren waste--but was that true for
Ernestine? Did there not remain for her the scent of the field? The
memory of that glorious, luxuriant growth? With _him_ barren waste--but
for her did there not grow in the field of life some things which were
everlasting? With the quickness with which he saw everything he saw that
it was the picture of his own barrenness could show her most surely the
things which for her remained.
He drew back from the thought as one draws away from the rude touch upon
a wound. Lay bare the scars of his life that another profit by their
ugliness? Years of habit were against it; everything fundamentally
himself was against it. But he was a man who had never yet shrunk from
the thing he saw was right to do. The cost of an accomplishment never
deterred him from a thing he saw must be accomplished. With each second
of listening to her sobs, he was becoming once more the man who masters,
the man ruthless and unsparing in his purposefulness.
"Ernestine," he began, and his voice was very strange, for it knew it was
to carry things it had never carried before, "you and I are similarly
placed in that we have both lost the great thing of life. But there is
something remains to each of us. Life has left something to us both. To
you it has left a rose jar. To me--a heap of ashes."
It came with the moment's need. It comprehended it so well the channels
long closed seemed of themselves to open. In the clearness with which he
saw it, the fullness with which he felt it, he lost himself.
"Do you know that you have no right to cry out against life? Do you know
that there are men and women who would lay down their lives--yes, and
give up their immortal souls--for hours which you have had? Do you know
that you have no right to say Karl Hubers was mocked by fate, made sport
of, buffetted about? Do you know,"--his face went white as he said this,
slowly--"that I would be a thousand times willing to give up my two
eyes--yes, and lay down my life--just to _know_, as he knew, that love
was great and life was good?"
The tears remained undried upon her cheek. He held her.
"Look deeper. There is another way to read Karl's life--a deeper truth
than those truths you have been seeing.
"Ernestine, we all dream of love; we all desire it. It is only at rare,
rare times it comes as it came to you. And I say to you--and I mean it
from the bottom of my heart--that if you had been forced to give up your
love in the first hour of its fulfillment, for all that you should thank
God through the remainder of your life that it had been yours. For you
_had_ it!--and nothing, loss, death, defeat, disappointment of every
kind, can strip from your soul the consciousness that once, no matter for
how short a time, love in its fullness and perfection was yours. Long,
lonely years may come, and all hard things may come, but through it all
the thing to keep your soul in tune is the memory of some one perfect
hour."
Stillness followed that, the stillness which was silence. She had not
moved.
"You dreamed your dream,"--and in his voice now the beautiful things of
appreciation and understanding. "I know your dream. You dreamed of
growing old together; of taking from life everything there was together;
of achieving to the uttermost; of rejoicing in each other's victories,
growing more and more close together. I know your dream--a beautiful
dream. Giving up some things as the changing years do their work, and
taking on the other things, the more quiet, in fact finer things, that
come with the years. Oh, yes--don't think I do not know that dream. To
walk together down the years, meet them fearlessly, gladly, in the
thought that they but add to the fullness of your love--I know--I know.
And now that it is not to be as you thought, you say life has left
nothing to you; that you hate it; will have none of it. Oh, Ernestine, if
you could only know how rich you are!"
Then harshly, rudely, the change; the voice which had seemed to caress
each word was now like a lash.
"Suppose you didn't have the luxury of giving yourself up to your own
heart? Suppose that every day and night of your life, you had to fight
memory, knowing it held nothing for you but jeers and mockery and things
too damnable for words! Suppose you had to fairly forbid yourself to
think of the beautiful things of life! Suppose that what had been the
most beautiful moments of your life were made, by memory, the most
hideous! Suppose the memory of his kiss always brought with it the
consciousness of his falseness; that his words of love never came back to
you without the knowledge that he had been laughing at you in his heart
all the time! Suppose you could never get away from the damning truth
that what you gave from the depth of your heart was tossed aside with a
laugh! Suppose you had given the great passion of your life, the best
that was in you, to a liar and a hypocrite! Suppose you had been made a
fool of!--easy game! _Then_ what of life?--your belief in love?--thoughts
of fate? Great God, woman, can't you see what you have got?"
After the throbbing moment which followed that there came a great quiet;
slowly passion settled to sadness. He seemed to have forgotten her, to be
speaking instead to his own heart, as he said, very low, his voice
touched with the tenderness of unrelinquished dreams: "To have had one
hour--just one perfect hour, and then the memory of that untarnished
forever--it would be enough."
Her heart rushed passionately to its own defence; she wanted to tell him
no! She wanted to tell him it was cruel to be permitted to live for a
time in a beautiful country, only to be turned out into the dark. She
wanted to tell him that to know love was to need it forever. But his head
had fallen to his hand; he seemed entirely lost to her, and even now she
knew his answer to what she would say. "But you _had_ it," he would
reply. "The cruel thing would be to awaken and find no such country had
ever existed." They would get no closer than that, and with new
passionateness her heart went out to Karl. Karl would understand it as it
was to her!
He too felt that they could come no closer than this. They sat there in
the gathering twilight with their separate thoughts as souls sit together
almost in the dark, seeing one another in shadow, across dim spaces.
The tearing open of his heart had left him weakened with pain. Perhaps
that was why he was so very tired, and perhaps it was because he was so
tired that this thought of growing old came back to him. It seemed to him
now, leaning back in his chair and filled with the things of which he had
spoken, that almost as great as a living presence with which to share the
years, would be that thing of growing old with a beautiful memory. It
would be a supreme thing to have a hand in your hand, a face against your
face, a heart against your heart as you stepped on into the years; but if
that could not be, and perfection is not given freely in this life,
surely it would keep the note of cheer in one's voice, the kindly
gleam in one's eye, to bring with one into old age the memory of a
perfect love. It would be lonely then when one sat in the twilight and
dreamed--but what another loneliness! If instead of holding one's self
away from one's own heart, one could turn to it with: "She loved me like
that. Her arms have been about my neck in true affection; her whole being
radiated love for me; she had no words to tell it and could tell it only
with her eyes and with the richness and the lavishness of her kisses. She
would have given up the world for me; she inspired me to my best deeds;
she comforted me in my times of discouragement and rejoiced with me in my
hours of cheer. She is not here now, and it is lonely, but she has left
me, in spirit, the warmth of her presence, the consciousness that she
loved me with a love in which there was no selfishness nor faltering, and
the things she has left me I can carry through life and into eternity."
And all of that was Ernestine's could she but see her way to take it!
He knew that it was growing late. "I must go," he said, but still he sat
there, knowing he had not finished what he had come to say. But need he
say it? Would it avail anything? Must not all human souls work their own
way through the darkness? And when the right word came, must it not come
from Karl himself, through some memory, some strange breath of the
spirit? _He_ knew, but she would have to see it for herself. That each
one's seeing it for one's self was what made life hard. Would there not
surely come a day, somewhere in the upward scale, where souls could reach
one another better than this?
But he had stirred her; he knew that by the way she was looking at him
now. Finally she asked, tremblingly, a little resentfully: "Dr. Parkman,
what is it you would have me do?"
"Do something with your life," was his prompt reply. "Help make it right
for Karl."
She caught that up breathlessly. "Make it right for Karl?"
"You say he was always cut off just this side of achievement. Then you
achieve something which will at least show what he was able to inspire."
That sunk so deep that her face went very white.
"But you do not understand," she whispered passionately. "You mean that I
should paint--and I tell you I _cannot_. I tell you it is _dead!_"
"Not necessarily that you should paint. Not just now, if you cannot. But
come back into touch with life. Do something to force yourself back into
it, and then let life itself show you that the other things are not dead
after all."
"But I do not want to!" came bitterly from her.
"Sometimes," he said, with more of his usual manner, "we do things we do
not want to, and through the doing of them, we get to want to. Do
something!--whether you want to or not. Stop doing futile things and
dwelling on the sense of their futility. Why, Ernestine, come up to the
hospital and go to work as a nurse! Heaven knows I never expected to
advise you to do that, but _anything_--painting pictures or scrubbing
floors--that will bring you back to a sense of living--the obligations of
life--show you that something is _yours_ that life and death and _hell_
can't take from you!"
And still he sat there, thinking. In just a moment he must go--go away
leaving her alone with the years which awaited her. For just an instant
it seemed as though all of the past and all of the future were in his
keeping. What word leave with her? He knew by her passionate breathing
that he had reached her. And now he was going away. Could he have done
more--reached deeper? In this, too, had he failed? What word leave with
her? His heart was so full of many things that his mind did not know what
to choose. He remembered the day she had come to him filled with the
spirit to ride down an adverse fate and win triumph from defeat. Her
splendid spirit then! Would that spirit ever come again? Could it?
Karl was very close in those final moments, and even more close than Karl
was the spirit of love. Many precious things seemed in his keeping just
then.
"Ernestine," he said at the last, and his face was white and his voice
trembled, "you have known. It came to you. You had it. It came to you as
June to the roses,--in season, right. I grant you it was short. I grant
you it was hard to see it go. But you _had_ it! Say that to yourself when
you go to sleep at night. Say it to yourself when you wake in the
morning. And some day you will come to see what it means just to know
that you know, and then your understanding and your heart will go out to
all who have never known. You will pity all who scoff and all who yearn,
and you will say to yourself: 'The world needs to know more about love.
More than knowledge or science or any other thing, the world needs more
faith in love.' Then some day you will see that you not only know but
have power to make it plain, and you will not hold back any longer then.
And _there_ is to be the real victory and completion of Karl Hubers'
life!--there the real triumph over fate--that triumph of the spirit of
love. I see it now. I see it all now. And my good-bye word to you is just
this--I do not believe you are going to withhold from Karl the
immortality which should be his."