"Try to be happy, Ernestine," she said, when about to leave the house in which she had ever been a stranger. "Life is so awful if you are not happy."
She took her back to the little town and put her away beside the man with whom her soul had never been at peace. That first night she awakened in the dark hours and fancied she heard them quarreling. The hideous fancy would not let her go to sleep, though she told herself over and over that surely death would bring them the peace life had so long withheld.
She went back to her work then with a new steadiness; loneliness feeding the fire of consecration. Often when alone in her room at night she felt those disappointed eyes following her about, heard again that plaintive: "Try to be happy, Ernestine. Life is so awful if you are not happy." She had many times opened the book in which her mother copied the poems written at intervals during the years, but always would come the feeling of their holding something at which it would be hard to look. To-night, with her new understanding, this wondrous new touchstone, she took them from her trunk with eagerness. She longed now to know the secret of her mother's life; she would know why happiness had passed her by.
There was tragedy in those little poems—a soul's long tragedy in their halting lines, in the faltering breath with which they were sung. Indeed they were not the songs of a poet at all; they were but the helpless reaching out of an unsatisfied, unanchored soul. The blackboard had never given back what it should; the crayon would not write. Was it true there were countless souls who went away like this—leaving unsaid a word they had craved to say?
"For our souls were not in tune"—was a line she found in one of the verses and which she sat a long time pondering. Was not the secret of it here? This the rock which held the wreckage of their lives?
She left her room and went out of doors. The night was very still. A tender peace brooded over the world. She lifted her eyes to the stars—her soul to the great Wonder. Enveloping her was Life—drawing her straight to the heart of things was Love. Doubts and speculations and ominous memories seemed blown away by the breath of the night. The years had no lesson to teach save this—One must love! All that was wrong in the world came through too little loving. All that was great and beautiful sprang from love which knew not doubts nor fears. What was a "point of view" when one throbbed with the memory of his good-bye kiss!
There was a force which moved the world. She was in the grip of that force to-night. All else was but the tiny whirlpool against the mighty current. And she was not afraid. Love would deal kindly with her own. She lifted her soul to the great Mother and Father of the world. "Oh take me and teach me!"—was her passionate prayer.
CHAPTER II
THE LETTER
What was that story the old Greeks told about love being the union—or reunion—of the two halves of an originally perfect whole? The envious gods—who were a very bad lot—cut the original perfect being in two. Then love is a finding of one's own—also, a getting ahead of the gods. I have more respect for the old Greeks to-night than I ever had before! But you cannot know just how it is. You are younger than I, and I do not believe the fear of life passing you by ever entered and chilled your heart. You were always sure it was coming some time, weren't you, my new-found little one? You could not have had that calm, sweet look in those big eyes of yours had you feared the best of life might be withheld from you. But can you fancy what it would mean to have felt for many years that somewhere there was a cool, sweet spring of eternal joy, and to become fearful your footsteps might never lead you to those blessed waters? And then can you fancy the profound thankfulness that would fill one's being, when after long wandering, after several mistakes and disappointments, the music of those waters was borne to the ear? And when, almost fearful to believe, and yet very, very sure, one stepped a little nearer, can you fancy the joy in finding the cooling breeze from that eternal spring upon one's face, of seeing it there as one had ever dreamed of it, knowing that beside it one could drink deep—long and very deep—of those life-giving, soul-satisfying waters? Can you fancy the all-pervading thankfulness, almost unbelievable joy, in that first hour of standing beside the long-desired, the half-despaired of water of life?
"Thank God I was not weak enough to resign the whole for the half! There was once a voice said to me: 'This is a pretty good spring. There is not much chance of your finding the other. Why not take this?' But something—your voice from a far distance?—called me on.
"A strange enough letter for a man to be writing the girl who has just promised to marry him! Conventionally, I suppose, I should say to you: 'I never knew anything like this before.' And instead I am saying: 'There was something once of somewhat similar exterior. But I was mistaken. I was disappointed.' But doesn't this make you see—dear new love—dear real love—how happy I am, and why?
"But you poor little girl—how I've cheated you! Why, liebchen—God bless the Germans for inventing that name for you—you were entitled to weeks and weeks of beautiful, delicate courtship. Will you forgive me for jumping right over those days when I should have sent you roses and nice pretty notes, and prepared you in proper and approved way for all of this? But I had been waiting for you so long that when I found you, I just couldn't wait a minute longer.
"And it was Georgia—my red-headed, freckled, foolish cousin Georgia did this! Why, liebchen, I'll take my oath right this minute Georgia hasn't a freckle! I'm even willing—(oh Lord, am I?—Yes, by the gods I am)—to read every abominable line she writes for that abominable paper. Am I an ingrate? Didn't Georgia bring me to you?—and is anything too much, even to the reading of her stuff—yes, by Jove, and liking it?
"Now prepare yourself to receive the sympathy of every one you know when you tell them you are going to marry me. Some kind of divine hallucination is upon you, acting for my good, and you do not see how profoundly you are to be pitied. But other people will see, and will tell you about it, only you will think they are under a hallucination, which is one of the phases of yours. The truth is I am a grubbing old scientist. I prowl around in laboratories and don't know much of anything else, and more than half the time my hands are stained with unaesthetic colours you won't like at all. And they tell me I have a foolish way of sitting and thinking about one thing, and that sometimes I don't do things I say I am going to—meet my appointments and things like that, although of course that won't apply to you. And here you might have married some artist chap, or society fellow who would know all about the proper thing!
"But never mind, poor little girl—I'll make it up to you. You may miss some of the lesser, but you'll have the greater. You'll have the love that enfolds one's whole being—the love that is eternal. Yes, dear—eternal. The mariner has his compass, the astronomer his stars, the Swiss peasant has his Alps—and we have our love. It must mean all those eternal things to us. Don't you feel that it will?
"This train is rushing along jostling my hand so I can scarcely write. But then my heart is rushing on jostling my brain so I can scarcely think, so perhaps my handwriting matches my thoughts.
"And we'll work! We'll work to prove how much we love—is there better reason for working than that? I can work now as I never did before, for don't I want to prove to this old world that I appreciate its bringing me to you? And you'll teach me about this art of yours, won't you, my little girl with the long, serious name? I'm ignorant, sweetheart, I don't know much about pictures, but don't you think that I can learn? Why, liebchen, I'm learning already! I never knew what they meant by lights and shadows until I saw your face.
"But tell me, how does it happen your hair grows back from your temples that way? Why, no one else's hair does that. And where did you