_ PART THREE
CHAPTER XXXVII. BENEATH DEAD LEAVES
The cold March rain drove steadily against the car window. His thoughts were like that,--cold, ugly, driving thoughts. Looking out at the bleak country through which they were passing he saw that dead leaves were hanging forlornly to bare trees. His hopes were like that,--a few dead hopes clinging dismally to the barren tree of experience. So it seemed to Dr. Parkman as he looked from the car window at the country of hills and hollows through which he was passing. The out-lived winter's snow still in the hollows, last summer's leaves blown meaninglessly about, denied even the repose of burial, the cheerless wind and the cheerless rain--it matched his mood.
Almost a year had gone by, and Dr. Parkman was going out to see Ernestine. Every mile which brought him nearer, brought added uncertainty as to what he should say when he reached her. What was there for him to say? The dead leaves of her hopes were all huddled in the hollow. Was he becoming so irrational as to think he could give life to things dead? Was she not right in wishing to cover them up decently and let them be? Was anything to be gained in blowing them about as last summer's leaves were being blown about now by the unsparing, uncaring winds of March?
She was out where she had lived as a girl,--living in the very house which had once been her home. He had understood her going. It was the simple law of living things. The animal wounded beyond all thought of life seeks only a place of seclusion.
But when Georgia returned from her visit to Ernestine the month before, she came to him with:
"Dr. Parkman, you
must do something for Ernestine!" And after she had told him many things, and he questioned still further, she said, in desperate desire to make it plain--"She is becoming a great deal like you!"
And from then until the time of starting on this trip he had had no peace.
He understood; understood far more deeply than she who would have him see. Was any one better qualified to understand that thing than he?
Well,--what then? What now? Was there any other thing to expect? Was he, of all men, going to her with platitudes about courage and faith? And even so, would sophistry avail anything? Did he not know Ernestine far too well far that?
His own face bore the deep marks of hard and bitter things. But the loss and the sorrow showed themselves in strange ways, little understood as manifestations of grief. He ran his automobile faster, showed even less caution than before in his business ventures, had less and less to say, was called more and more strange by those associated with him. And the thing which mocked him most of all was that the year had been attended with the greatest professional successes of his life. He never heard his plaudits sounded without a curse in his heart.
"It went mighty hard with Parkman not to be able to save Hubers," medical men said with growing frequency as the year advanced. But there were none of them who dreamed into what deep and vital things the cut had gone. With his own will and his own skill he patched it up on the surface, not the man to leave his wound exposed to other eyes. But he knew its hopelessness too well ever to try and reach the bottom of the wound. It was not a good, clean, straight cut such as time expects to heal. Indeed it was not a cut at all; nothing so wholesome and reachable as that. It was a destroying force, a thing burrowing at the springs of life, a thing which made its way through devious paths to vital sources. Did a patched up surface mean anything to a thing like that?
The evening of the day he had seen Georgia, and she told him of Ernestine, he sat a long time in his office alone. The grey ashes of his own life seemed spread around him. And it was he, who was asked, out of this, to rekindle a great flame? And what flame? What was there left for Ernestine? Ask her to come back--to what? Fight--for what?
He did not know, or at least he said he did not know, and yet he, like Georgia, saw it as all wrong, unendurable, not to be countenanced, that Ernestine should shut herself out from life.
Perhaps he was going to her because he knew so well the desolation of ashes. Was it because he had lived so long among them that he hated to see another fire go out? Could it be that a man who had dwelt long among ashes knew most surely the worth of the flame?
He had reached the end of his journey. He had come to the western college town for which he had set out. From the window he could see some of the college buildings. Yes, this was the place.
He rose and put on his coat. A few minutes later he was standing on the station platform, watching the on-going train. Then he turned, with decision, in the direction Georgia had bade him go. _