It worried Ernestine when she saw Dr. Parkman's motor car stopping before the house early Tuesday morning. He had been there the afternoon before, and then again late in the evening, bringing another doctor with him. He said that they simply came to help keep Karl amused; but surely he would not be coming again this morning if there were not something more serious than she knew. Karl had come home from the university about noon the day before, saying that his head was bad and he was going to consider himself "all in" for the day. Something about him had frightened her, but he insisted that it only showed what a headache could do to a fellow who was not accustomed to it. He had remained in his darkened room all day, not even turning his face from the wall when she came in to do things for him. That worried her, and even the doctor's assurance that he was not going to be ill had not sufficed. In fact, she thought Dr. Parkman was acting strangely himself.
"I was out in this part of town and thought I'd drop in," he told her, as she opened the door for him.
"You're not worried about Karl?" she demanded.
He was hanging up his cap. "You see, I don't want him to get up and go over to the university," he said, after a minute's pause, in which she thought he had not heard her question. "That wouldn't be good for his eyes."
"Well, doctor, what is it about his eyes? Is it just--something that must run its course?"
"Oh, yes," he answered, and she was a little hurt by the short way he said it. Was it not the most natural thing in the world she should want to know? Really, doctors might be a little more satisfactory, she thought, as she told him he would find Karl in his room.
She herself went into the library. Down in the next block she saw the postman, and thought she would wait for him. She felt all unnerved this morning. Things were happening which she did not understand, and then she felt so "left out of things." She wanted to do things for Karl; she would love to hover over him while he was not well, but he seemed to prefer being let alone; and as for Dr. Parkman, there was no sense in his adopting so short and professional a manner with her.
But as she stood there by the window, the bright morning sunlight fell upon her ruby, and she smiled. She loved her ring so! It was so dear of Karl to get it for her. The warm, deep lights in it seemed to symbolise their love, and it would always be associated with that first night she had worn it, that beautiful hour when they sat together before the fire. That had been its baptism in love.
The postman was at the door now, and she hurried to meet him. She was much interested in the mail these days, for surely she would hear any time now regarding her picture in Paris.
It had come! The topmost letter had a foreign stamp, and she recognised the writing of Laplace.
Heart beating very fast, she started up to her studio. She wanted to be up there, all by herself, when she read this letter. As she passed Karl's door she heard Dr. Parkman telling about having punctured a tire on his machine the night before. Of course then everything really was all right, or he would not have talked about trivial things like that.
Her fingers fumbled so that she could scarcely open the envelope. And then she tried to laugh herself out of that, prepare for disappointment. Why, what in the world did she expect?
As she read the letter her face went very white, her fingers trembled more and more. Then she had to go back and read it sentence by sentence. It was too much to take in all at once.
It was not so much that it had been awarded a medal; not so much that a great London collector--Laplace said he was the most discriminating collector he knew--wanted to buy it. The overwhelming thing was that the critics of Paris treated it as something entitled to their very best consideration. The medal and the sale might have come by chance, but something about these clippings he had enclosed seemed to stand for achievement. They said that "The Hidden Waterfall," by a young American artist, was one of the most live and individual things of the exhibition. They mentioned things in her work which were poor--but not one of them passed her over lightly!
She grew very quiet as she sat there thinking about it. The consciousness of it surged through and through her, but she sat quite motionless. It seemed too big a thing for mere rejoicing. For what it meant Was that the years had not played her false. It meant the justification--exaltation--of something her inmost self.
And it meant that the future was hers to take! She leaned forward as if looking into the coming years, eyes shining with aspiration, cheeks flushed with triumph. She quivered with desire--the desire to express what she knew was within her.
It was while lost to her joy and her dreaming that she heard a step upon the stairs. She started up--instantly broken from the magic of the moment. Perhaps Karl needed her. And then before she reached the door she knew that it was Karl himself. How very strange!
"Oh, Karl!"--not able to contain it a minute--"I want to tell you--" and then, startled as he stumbled a little, and going down a few steps to meet him--"but isn't there too much light up here? Shouldn't you stay down in the dark?"
"I don't want to stay down in the dark!"--he said it with a low intensity which startled her, and then she laughed.
"I've always heard there was nothing so perverse as a sick man. I'll tell you what's the matter with you. You're lonesome. You're tired of getting along without me--now aren't you? But we'll go down to the library, and down there I'll tell you--oh,
what I'll tell you! I thought Dr. Parkman was going to stay with you a while,"--as he did not speak--"or I shouldn't have come away."
He had seated himself, and was rubbing his head, as though it pained him. His eyes were hidden, but his face, in this bright light, made her want to cry, it told so plainly of his suffering. He reached out his hand for hers. "I didn't want him any longer, liebchen,"--he said it much like a little child--"I want--you."
"Of course you do,"--tenderly--"and I'm the one for you to have. But not up here. The light is too bright up here."
She pulled at his hand as if to induce him to rise. But he made no movement to do so, and he did not seem to have heard what she said. "Ernestine," he said, in a low voice--there was something not just natural in Karl's voice, a tiredness, a something gone from it--"will you do something for me?"
She sat down on the arm of his chair, her arm about him with her warm impulsiveness. "Why Karl, dear"--a light kiss upon his hair--"you know I would do anything in the world for you."
"I want you to show me your pictures,"--he said it abruptly, shortly. "I want to look at them this morning;--all of them."
"But--but Karl," she gasped, rising in her astonishment--"not
now!"
"Yes--now. You promised. You said you'd do anything in the world for me."
"But not something that will hurt you!"
"It won't hurt me,"--still abruptly, shortly.
"But I know better than that! Why any one knows that eyes in bad condition mustn't be used. And looking at pictures--up here in this bright light--so needless--so crazy,"--she laughed, though she was puzzled and worried.
He was silent, and something in his bearing went to her heart. His head, his shoulders, his whole being seemed bowed. It was so far from Karl's real self. "Any other time, dear," she said, very gently. "You know I would love to do it, but some time when you are better able to look at them."
"I'm just as able to look at them now as I will ever be," he said, slowly. "Ernestine--please."
"But Karl,"--her voice quivering--"I just can't bear to do a thing that will do you harm."
"It won't do me harm. I give you my word of honour it won't make any serious difference."
"But Dr. Parkman said--"
"I give you my word of honour," he repeated, a little sharply.
"All right, then," she relented, reluctantly, and darkened the room a little.
"Dear,"--sitting on a stool beside him--"you're perfectly sure this trouble with your eyes isn't any more serious than you think?"
"Yes," he answered, firmly enough, but something in his voice sounded queer, "I'm perfectly sure of that."
"Show me your pictures, Ernestine," laying his hand upon her hair; "I've taken a particular notion that I want to see them."
"But first"--carried back to it--"I want to tell you something." She laughed, excitedly. "I was coming down to tell you as soon as the doctor left. Oh Karl--my picture in Paris--I heard from it this morning, and its success has been--tremendous!" She laughed happily over the word and did not think why it was Karl's hand gripped her shoulder in that quick, tight way. "Shall I read you all about it, dear? And then will you promise to cheer right up?"
Still that tight grip upon her shoulder! It hurt a little, but she did not mind--it just showed how much Karl cared. The hand was still there as she read the letter, and then the clippings which told of the rare quality of her work, predicted the great things she was sure to do,--sometimes it tightened a little, and sometimes it relaxed, and once, with a quick movement he stooped down and turned her ring around, turning the stone to the inside of her hand.
When she had finished he was quite still for a long minute. He was breathing hard;--Karl was excited about it too! And then he stooped over and kissed her forehead, and it startled her to feel that his lips were very cold.
"Liebchen," he said, his voice trembling a bit--Karl did care so much!--"I am glad." For a minute he was very still again, and then he added, seeming to mean a different thing by it--"I am very glad."
"It's gone to my head a little, Karl! Oh I'm perfectly willing to admit it has. I don't think I should appreciate the Gloria Victis very much myself this morning," she laughed, happily.
She was too absorbed to notice the quick little drawing in of his breath, or his silence. "After all, it would be a sorry thing if I didn't succeed," she pursued, gayly, "for you stand so for success that we couldn't be so close together--could we, dear--if I were a dismal failure?"
"You think not?" he asked--and she wondered if he had taken a little cold; his voice sounded that way.
"Oh I don't mean that too literally. But I like the idea of our going through the same experiences--both succeeding. It seems to me I can understand you better this morning than I ever did before. I read a little poem last night, and at the time I liked it so much. It is about success, or rather about not succeeding. But I'm afraid it wouldn't appeal to me very much just now,"--again she laughed, happily, and it was well for the happiness that she was not looking at him then.
"What was it?" he asked, as he saw she was going to turn around to him. "Say it."
"Part of it was like this":
'Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear.'
"Say that last verse again," he said, his voice thick and low;--Karl was so different when he was sick!
"As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear."
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" she said, as he did not speak.
"Beautiful? I don't know. I suppose it is. I was thinking that quite likely it is true."
"But I didn't suppose you would care about it, Karl. I supposed you would feel about it as you did about the statue."
"I wonder," he began, slowly, not seeming sure of what he wanted to say--"how much the comprehension, the understanding of things, that the loss would bring, would make up for the success taken away? I wonder just what the defeated fellow could work out of that?"
"But dearie,
is it true? Why can failure comprehend success any more than success can comprehend failure?"
"It's different," he said, shortly.
"How do you know?" she asked banteringly. "What do you know about it? You don't even know how to spell the word failure!"
He started to say something, but stopped, and then he stooped over and rested his head for a minute upon her hair. "Tell me about your picture, Ernestine," he said, quietly, after that. "Tell me just what it is."
"The Hidden Waterfall? Why you know it, Karl."
"Yes, but I want to hear you talk about it. I want to hear you tell just what it means."
"Well, you remember it is a child standing in a beautiful part of the woods. It is spring-time, as it seems best it should be when you are painting a child in the woods. I tried to make the picture breathe spring, and you know one of the writers said that the delicious thing about it was the way you got the smell of the woods;--that pleased me. Behind the child, visible in the picture, but invisible to the child, is a waterfall. The most vital thing in the universe to me was to have that waterfall make a sound. I think it does, or the picture wouldn't mean anything at all. And then of course the heart of the picture is in the child's face--the puzzled surprise, the glad wonder, and then deeper than that the response to something which cannot be understood. It might have been called 'Wondering,' or even 'Mystery,' but I liked the simpler title better. And I like that idea of painting, not just nature, but what nature means to man. I want to get at the response--the thing awakened--the things given back. Don't you see how that translates the spirit there is between nature and man--stands for the oneness?"
He nodded, seeming to be thinking. "I see," he said at last. "I wonder if you know all that means?"
"Why, yes, I think I do. My next picture will get at it in a--um--a more mature way."
"Tell me about it."
"I don't know that I can, very well. It's hard to put pictures into words. I fear it will sound very conventional as I tell it, but of course it is what one puts into it that makes for individuality. It is in the woods, too. You know, Karl, how I love the woods. And I
know them! It is not spring now, but middle summer; no suggestion of fall, but mature summer. A girl--just about such a girl as I was before you came that day and changed everything--had gone into the woods with a couple of books. She had been sitting under a tree, reading. But in the picture she is standing up very straight, leaning against the tree, the books overturned and forgotten at her feet--drawn into the bigger book--see? It is not that she has consciously yielded herself. It is not that she is consciously doing anything. She is listening--oh how she listens and longs! For what, none of us know--she least of all. Perhaps to the far off call of life and love speaking through the tender spirit of the woods. Oh how I love that girl!--and believe in her--and hope for her. In her eyes are the dreams of centuries. And don't you see that it is the same idea--the oneness--the openness of nature to the soul open to it?"
"And you are going to make the woods very beautiful?" he asked, after a little thought. "More than just the beauty of trees and grass and colour?"
"Yes, the beauty that calls to one.
"Then," he said this a little timidly--"might it not be striking to have your girl, not really seeing it with the eyes at all? Have her eyes--closed, perhaps, but she feeling it, knowing it, in the higher sense really seeing it, just the same?"
She thought about that a minute. "N--o, Karl; I think not. It seems to me she must be open to it in every way to make it stand for life, in the sense I want it to."
"Perhaps," he said, his voice drooping a little. And then, abruptly: "Have you done any of that?"
"Oh, just some little sketches."
"Show me the little sketches," he begged. "I want to see them all."
"Oh, but Karl, they wouldn't convey the idea at all. Wait until it is farther along."
"No, please show them this morning,"--softly, persuasively.
She was puzzled, and reluctant, but she got them out, and with them other things to show him. He asked many questions. In the sketches she was going to develop he would know just how she was going to elaborate them. He asked her to tell just how they would look when worked out. "I'm a sick boy home from school," he said, "and I must be amused." And then he looked at her finished pictures; she protested against the intentness with which he looked at some of them, insisting they were not worth the strain she could see it was on his eyes. "It's queer about finished pictures," she laughed; "they're not half so great and satisfying as the pictures you are going to do next." It went through her with a sharp pain to see Karl hurting his eyes as she knew he was hurting them. She could not understand his insistence; it was not like him to be so unreasonable. And he looked so terribly--so worn and ill; if only he would go to bed and let her take care of him! But he seemed intent on knowing all there was to know about the pictures. A strange whim for him to cling to this way! As he looked he wanted her to talk about them--tell just what this and that meant, insisting upon getting the full significance of it all.
He had never before appreciated her firm grasp. Her work in these different stages of evolution gave him a clearer idea of how much she had worked and studied, how seriously and intelligently she had set out for the mastery of her craft. He had always known that the poetic impulses were there, the desire to express, the ideas, the delight in colour, but he saw now the other things; this was letting him into the workman's side of her work.
He spoke of that, and she laughed. "Yes, this is what they don't see. This is what they never know. Poetic impulses don't paint pictures, Karl. That's the incentive; the thing that keeps one at it, but you can't do it without these tricks of the trade which mean just downright work. I've never worked on a picture yet in which I wasn't almost fatally handicapped by this thing of not knowing enough. The bigger your idea, the more skill, cunning, fairly, you must have to force it into life."
She told him at last that they were through. They had even looked at rude little sketches she had made of places they had cared for in Europe. Indeed he looked very long at some of those little sketches of places they had loved.
"One thing more," he said; "you told me once you had some water colour daubs you did when a little girl. Let me look at them. I just want to see," he laughed, "how they compare."
And so she got them out, and they looked them over, laughing at them. "You've gone a long way," he said, pushing them aside, as if suddenly tired.
He leaned back in his chair, his hand above his eyes, as she began gathering up the things. "And so here I am," she said, waving her hand to include the things about her, "surrounded by the things I've done. Not a vast array, and some of it not amounting to much, but it's I, dear. It reflects me all through these years."
"I know," he said--"that's just it,"--and at the way he said it she looked up quickly. "You're tired, Karl. It's been too much. We'll go down stairs now, and rest."
He watched her as she gathered the things together. It seemed he had never really known this Ernestine before. Here was indeed the atmosphere of work, the joy of working, all the earnestness and enthusiasm of the real worker. And then, with masterful effort, he roused himself. He had not yet touched what he had come to know.
"I have been thinking," he began, "a little about the psychology of all this. You'll think I'm developing a wonderful interest in art, but you see I'm laid up and can't do my own work, so I'm entitled to some thoughts about art. Now these things you paint grow out of a mental image--don't they, dear? The things you paint the mind sees first, so that the mental image is the true one, and then you--approximate. I should think then that it might help you to
tell about pictures. For instance, if in painting a picture you had to tell about it to some one who did not look at it, wouldn't that make your own mental image more clear, and so help make it more real to you?'
"Why, Karl, I never thought of it, but,"--meditatively--"yes, I believe it would."
He turned away that she might not see the gladness in his face. "And it would be interesting--wouldn't it--to see just how good a conception you could give of the picture through words?"
"Yes," she said, interested now--"it would be a way of feeling one's own grip on it."
"Of course," he continued, "that couldn't be done except in a case, like yours and mine, where people were close together."
"Yes," she assented, "and that in itself would show that they were close together."
At that he laid a quick hand upon her hair, caressing it.
"Oh, after all, dear,"--gathering up the last of the sketches--"the greatest thing in the world is to do one's work--isn't it?"
"Yes," he said, and his voice was low and tired, "unless the greatest thing in the world is to submit to the inevitable."
She looked up quickly. "That doesn't sound like you."
"Doesn't it? Oh, well,"--with a little laugh--"you know a scientist is supposed to be capable of a good deal of change in the point of view."
He had risen, and was at the door. "It's been good of you to do all this, Ernestine."
"Why it has been a delight to me, dear; if only it hasn't hurt you. But it is time now to go down where it is dark."
"Yes," he assented wearily; "it is time now to go down where it is dark."