WHEN THE TIDE CAME IN
But the days which came then were different. Dr. Parkman had stirred her
to a discontent with despair.
She had come West with Georgia and Joe. For five days they had been at
this little town on the Oregon coast. Through the day and through the
night she listened to the call of the sea. It stirred her strangely. At
times it frightened her.
She did not know why she should have wished to come. Perhaps it was
because it seemed a reaching out to the unknown. After she had known
she was to go, she would awaken in the night and hear the far-off
roll of the Pacific, and would lie there very still as if listening
for something from the farther unknown. Her whole being was
stirred--drawn--unreasoningly expectant. There were moments when she
seemed to just miss something to which she was very close.
To-day she had walked clear around the bend. The little town and pleasant
beach were hidden from view, and there was only the lighthouse out among
the rocks, and the sea coming in wild and mighty to that coast to which
no mariner would attempt to draw near.
It was the hour of the in-coming tide, and as the sea beat against the
rocks it seemed as omnipotent and relentless as that sea of fate against
which nothing erected by man could hope to prevail.
There was no human being in sight. Man, and all to which man blinded one,
were far away. She was alone with things as they were, alone with the
forces which made the world and life, and as the tides of the sea brought
close to her wave after wave, so the mind's tides were bringing close to
her wave upon wave of understanding.
Fate had washed them away just as this ocean would wash away the child's
playhouse built upon the sands. They had believed they could make their
lives, that it was for their spirit to elect what they should do, their
hands build as they had willed; and all that the spirit had willed to do,
and all that the hands set about to achieve, was washed away by just one
of those waves of fate which rolled in and took them with no more of
regret, no more of compassion, than the sea would have in washing away
the play-house built upon the sands. And if the sea were chidden for
having taken away the house upon the sands, which meant much to some one,
it would quite likely answer grimly: "I did not know that it was there."
She laughed--and Karl would have hated life for bringing Ernestine to
that laugh. But she laughed to think how she had looked fate in the face
with the words: "I will prevail against you!" Would the child, building
its house upon the sand and saying to the ocean: "I will not let you take
my house!" be more absurd than she?
What she had believed to be the tremendous force of her spirit had been
as one grain of sand against the tides of ocean. What was one to think of
it all then--of human love which believed itself created for eternity, of
dreams which one's soul persuaded one would come true, of aspirations
born in a hallucination of power, of that spark within one which played
one false, of believing one could master fate only to find one had
erected a child's house upon the sands, and that what had been achieved
in consciousness of great power could be swept away so easily that the
ocean was not even conscious of having taken it unto itself?
Very sternly, very understandingly, their lives swept before her
anew.... Just one little wave from the tide of fate had lapped up,
unknowingly, uncaringly, that house upon the sand which a delusion of the
spirit had made seem a castle grounded in eternity. Why blind one's self
to the truth and call life fair? For what had they fought and suffered
and believed and hoped? Just to hear the mocking voice of the outgoing
tide?
The fury of the sea was creeping into her blood. Rage possessed her. All
of her spirit, mightier than ever before, went out to meet the spirit of
the sea--hating it, defying it, understanding its own futility, and the
more hot from the sense of impotence. That died to desolation. She had
never been so wholly desolate--the sea so mighty, she so powerless. Fate
and human souls were like that.
Karl--where was he? Swept out by the ocean of fate. To what shore had he
been carried? What thought he of the tide which had carried him out from
her? Was his soul, like hers, spending itself in the passion of
rebellion--so mighty as to shake the foundations of one's being, so
futile as to prevail against not one drop of water in that sea of fate?
Time passed; the tide was still coming in, nearing its height. But to the
sea there had come a change. The spirit of it seemed different. For a
long time she sat there dimly conscious of a difference, and then it
seemed as though the sea were trying to reach her with something it had
to bring.
She tried to shake herself free from so strange a fancy, but it held her,
and for a long time she sat there motionless, looking out at the sea with
all her eyes, reaching out to it with all her soul, becoming more and
more still,--a hush upon her whole being,--moved, held, unreasoningly
expectant.
The sea seemed trying to make her ready. Each wave which beat upon the
rocks beat against her consciousness, driving against her mood and
spirit, as if clearing a way, making her ready, open, to what would come.
It seemed finally to have cleared her whole being, driven away all which
might impede. It seemed now as though she could take in things not seen
or heard. There was that strange openness of the spirit, that hush, that
unreasoning expectancy.
All at once it rushed upon her, filling her overwhelmingly. It said that
there was a sea mightier than what she called the sea of fate; it told of
a sea of human souls over which fate only seemed to prevail. A great rush
of truth filled her with this--It was the belief in the omnipotence of
fate which was the real delusion of the spirit.
Over and over again, with steadily rising tide, it told her that,--no
more to be reasoned away than the sea, resistless as the tide.
She never knew in after years just what it was happened in that hour. She
could not have told it, for it was not a thing for words to compass. But
after that great truth had rushed full upon her, sweeping away the
philosophy of her bitterness, Karl's spirit, something sent out from him
to her, seemed to come in with the tide. He pleaded with her. He asked
her to stop fighting and come back to the soul of things. He asked her to
be Ernestine--his Ernestine. He told her that his own spirit could not
find peace while hers was waging war and full of bitterness. He wanted
her to make a place for them both in that great world-harmony of their
belief. He told her that out where souls see in wider sweeps, they know
that there is a spirit over which death and fate cannot prevail.
Darkness came on, but she had no thought of fear. And before she turned
away something had risen from the dead. Out of woe and despair, defeat
and bitterness, out of loneliness and a broken heart, something was born
again. Karl asked that she make it right with the world. Karl asked for a
child of their love. And at the last it was the call of the child to the
mother which she heard. It was the maternal instinct of the spirit which
answered.
Very late that night, after she had sat long at her window, looking up at
the stars, waiting, a great light seemed to appear, and shimmering
against the sky, high above the tides of the sea, she saw the picture
which she would paint.