_ PART THREE
CHAPTER XLI. 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. _