"LET THERE BE LIGHT"
Hours had passed, and still she could not master the sobs. It seemed no
one had ever been as cruel as Dr. Parkman had been to her that afternoon.
Karl would understand!--and in her passionate need of Karl's
understanding she turned at last to the letter of which she had spoken,
the letter which always seemed a little like Karl's voice speaking from
out the silence.
Old and worn and blurred with the grief spent upon it, the letter bore
upon itself the record of the year's desolation. It had lived through
things never to be told,--never to be comprehended.
"Lonesome days, liebchen,"--he had written. "It would seem almost like a
rush of light to feel you standing in the doorway now.
"My letters which I send you will tell you I am well, getting along all
right, that I love you. These are some other things. If I think they will
hurt you, I will not let you see them. But I will feel better to get them
said, and of course the easiest way to say them is to say them to you.
"I can't write. I wish I could. There are things 'way back in my thoughts
I should like to say, and say right. For I've done some thinking this
year, liebchen--while I sat here writing text-books there came a good
many thoughts.
"Text-books--any fool can write them! Lectures on what other men have
done--what do I care about them? I'll do it, for I have to, but I want
somebody to know--I want _you_ to know that I know it doesn't amount to a
hill of beans!
"Liebchen, you hear a lot of talk about the beauties of resignation.
Don't you ever believe any of it. We don't get resigned to things that
really count. But what we do get, is courage to bear them. I'm not
resigned and I don't want to be! But I will try to be game about it, and
we can't be game while we are sore. I know that because the times I've
been least game are the times I was most sore. Wonder if anybody can make
any sense out of that?
"Life's queer--you can't get around that. Making us one thing and then
making us be another. What are we to think of it, liebchen? Seems as if
we could get on better if we could just get a line on the scheme of
things, understand what it is all about, and the why. Or isn't there any
why? I like a why for things. It gives them their place. I don't like
disorder, and senselessness, and if there isn't any why--why then--See
what I'm getting at?
"What are you going to do when your force pushes you on to a thing which
is closed to you? Stop the force? Well, doesn't that stop yourself? Turn
it somewhere else? Easy to say in working out a philosophy,--not so easy
to do.
"Where's the end of it?--that's what I want to know. I'm one of those
practical chaps who wants to see an end in sight.
"Ernestine, light's a great thing. Light's _the_ great thing. I never
knew that until I went blind. You have to stay a long time in the
darkness to know just what it is light means.
"They call great men 'great lights.' 'And then came the light,' they say,
regarding the solving of some great thing. 'He brought the light'--that's
what I wanted to do! They tell about science bringing the light. I know
now what a tribute they pay when they say that. Light of understanding,
light of truth--and ah, mein liebchen, the light of love--and well do I
know how that light can shine into the darkness!
"'More light'--Goethe said, when he was going out into the dark. A great
thing to ask for. I know how he felt!--'And God said--Let there be
light'--I don't wonder that story has lived a long time.
"My books are finished. Now what?--more books?--lectures?--some kind of
old woman's make-shift? Sit here and watch my red blood dry up? Sit here
like a plant shrivelling away in the darkness? Be looked after and fussed
over and have things made as easy for me as possible? I don't know--I
can't see--
"There, liebchen--I've taken a brace. I took a long drink of courage, and
I'm in better shape. Often when I get like that I've been tempted to take
a long drink of something else--but I never have. Whiskey's for men who
feel good; men who haven't much to fight. Not for me--not any such finish
as that.
"I'm making bad business of this letter. I wanted to tell things, tell
what light was and what darkness was; but I can't do it. Many things have
been circling around my thoughts and I thought I might get hold of a few
of them and pull them in. But I can't seem to do it. I never was much
good at writing things out; it's hard to get words for things that aren't
even full-born thoughts.
"My work was great, liebchen--great! A constant piercing of the darkness
with light--a letting in of more light--new light. I can understand now
why I loved it; where the joy was; what it was I was doing.
"Is life like that? Don't we understand things until we are out of them?
By Jove, is it true that we have to _get_ out of them, in order to
understand them? And if that's true, is it the understanding that's the
goal? Is it--oh, I don't know--I'm sure I don't know.
"But look here, liebchen,--is it true that while I had the light, I
didn't have it at all,--didn't know what it meant? Did I have to lose it
in order to get it? For isn't it _having_ a thing to understand it--more
than it's having it to really have it and not understand? See what I
mean? Those are some of the things circling around on the outside.
"Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I think the light was shut out that the
greater light might come. Sometimes I think we scientists haven't the
right line on the world at all. Why, Ernestine, sometimes I think it's
miles deeper than we ever dreamed! A hodge-podge--this letter. Like my
life, starting out one thing, and ending up another, or rather not ending
up anything at all--a going to pieces in the midst of my philosophy--a
not being sure of anything--a constant 'perhaps.'"
"I'm lonesome. I'm tired. I don't feel well. The old ladies would say I'm
'under the weather.' Why, I can't even keep feeling right when you're
away.
"I want you. I want you--here--now. I can't talk to you on this infernal
machine, my hands groping around just as senselessly as my thoughts. I
tell you, liebchen, blindness is bad business. It sounds well in a poem,
but it's a bad thing to live with. It's bad to wake up in the night
sometimes and think that it will be daylight soon and then remember that
it will never be daylight for you again!
"I wish you were here. I'm just in the mood for talking--not talking,
perhaps, but having you close to me, and understanding.
"There's one thing that there's no perhaps about. That's you. There's no
perhaps when it comes to our love. There's no perhaps--
"Now, that made me fall a-dreaming. I stopped writing and lighted my pipe
and sat a long time, thinking of you. It's 'our hour'--I know that,
because I heard the clock strike. Where are you? Why aren't you here?
"I want you. Believe I said that before, but if I said it a thousand
times, I couldn't make it strong enough. I don't know why I want you like
this--this soul want. It isn't just your kisses, your sweetness, the dear
things about you. I want you to be here to understand--for you would--you
do.
"My light in the darkness, my Ernestine! I shall never let you go away
again. The darkness is too dark without you.
"Evening now, for again I stopped; too tired, too quiet, someway, to feel
like writing. I am going to bed. I wish you were here for your good-night
kiss. I wish you were here just to tell me that you understand all these
things I have not been able to say. I wish you were here to tell me--what
in my heart I know--that you are going to bring me the light, that love
will light the way. I wish you were here to tell me that what my eyes
cannot tell you, as they used to, you can read now just by the beating of
my heart, just through the fullness of our silences.
"Oh, little one--your eyes--your dear eyes--your lovely hair--your
smile--your arms about my neck--your whispered word in my ear--your soft
cheek against mine--your laugh--your voice--your tenderness--I want it
all to-night--and the Ernestine of the silences--the Ernestine who
understands without knowing--helps without trying.
"Soon you will be back. That will be sunrise after long darkness.
"Good-night. It's hard to leave you--so lonesome--wanting you so. Again,
good-night, dear girl for whom my arms are yearning. Bless you,
sweetheart--God bless you--and does God, Himself, know what you have been
to me?"
She read the last of it, as always, with sobs uncontrollable. Dr.
Parkman--everything--was forgotten. It was Karl alone in the library,
longing for her, needing her--and she not there.
"Oh, Karl--Karl!" she sobbed across the black chasm of the year--"if I
could only have had that hour!"