Susan Glaspell

“ I sit sewing those little pieces together—a foolish thing to do, but one must be doing something, and as I think how useless it is there comes the thought of whether it is any more useless than all the other things in life. Is it any more useless than surgery? For can a great surgeon save his best friend? Is it any more useless than science—for can science do anything for her own? Is it any more useless than ambition and purpose and hope—for does not fate make sport of them all? Is it any more useless than books—for can books reach the hearts which need them most? ”

“ Parkman's thought flowed steadily on.
He was thinking that after all there were better things to do with fate than damn it. If ever a man would seem justified in spending his soul in the damning of fate, that man, it seemed to him, was the friend beside him. And while he had done some of it, perhaps a great deal more than any one knew, it had not been his master-passion. His master-passion had been to press on—press on to be knew not what—there was the glory of it! It was easy enough to work toward a goal sighted ahead; but it took a Karl Hubers to work on through the darkness. ”

“ I—oh, Karl—can't we do something? Can't we do something about it?"
"I was selfish to tell you—but it is good to have you understand."
But she had not let go that idea of something being done. "Karl, couldn't you go on with it? Isn't there some way? Can't we find a way?"
He shook his head. "I have thought of it by the hour—gone over every side of it. But work like that takes a man's whole being. It takes more than mere eyes and hands—more than just mind. You must have the spirit right for it—all things must work together. It's not the sort of work to do under a handicap. ”

“ Ernestine, we all dream of love; we all desire it. It is only at rare, rare times it comes as it came to you. And I say to you—and I mean it from the bottom of my heart—that if you had been forced to give up your love in the first hour of its fulfillment, for all that you should thank God through the remainder of your life that it had been yours. For you had it!—and nothing, loss, death, defeat, disappointment of every kind, can strip from your soul the consciousness that once, no matter for how short a time, love in its fullness and perfection was yours. ”

“ Long, lonely years may come, and all hard things may come, but through it all the thing to keep your soul in tune is the memory of some one perfect hour."
Stillness followed that, the stillness which was silence. She had not moved.
"You dreamed your dream,"—and in his voice now the beautiful things of appreciation and understanding. "I know your dream. You dreamed of growing old together; of taking from life everything there was together; of achieving to the uttermost; of rejoicing in each other's victories, growing more and more close together. I know your dream—a beautiful dream. ”

“ Look at a man like Parkman! That's life. Ernestine"—drawing her close, a sob in his voice—"liebchen,—can you?"
She longed to tell him then; it would mean so much to tell him now,—Karl was so troubled to-night. But the time was not ripe yet; she must not spoil it all. And so instead she talked to him of how real power comprehended more than activity, how depth of understanding, great things of the soul, were more masterful than those outer forces men called "life." Ernestine seldom failed in being convincing when she felt things as she now felt this. ”

“ You wouldn't be willing to lay down your life for intellectual companionship. You wouldn't be willing to go barefoot and hungry and friendless for kindred tastes. Don't for one minute believe you would! The only thing for which you'd be willing to let the whole world slip away from you is an old-fashioned, out-of-date thing called love—just the primitive, fundamental love there is between a man and a woman. If you haven't it, Georgia—hold back. If you have,"—a wonderful smile of understanding glowed through a rush of tears—"oh, Georgia, if you have!" ”

“ Parkman, some one, would do something about it; protesting in a fierce outburst of the love which rose within her that it did not matter, that she would make it all up to him—their love make it right—in one moment stricken dumb as comprehension of it grew upon her, in another wildly defying fate, but always clinging to him, holding him so close, trying, though frightened and broken, to stand between him and the awful thing as the mother would stand between the child and its destroyer, Ernestine left with that hour things never to be claimed again. ”

“ For it was an hour when the soul was stripped bare that the doctor looked in upon it. Men were various things to various people, but to the doctor they came very close to being themselves. Too much was at stake to dissemble here. When phantoms of fear and death took shape in the shadows one sought the doctor—and told the truth.
She had a fancy which moved her then. She saw the men like Dr. Parkman fighting darkness down in the valley, while from the mountain peak adjacent men like Karl turned on, as with mighty search-lights, more, and ever more, of the light. ”

“ She is not here now, and it is lonely, but she has left me, in spirit, the warmth of her presence, the consciousness that she loved me with a love in which there was no selfishness nor faltering, and the things she has left me I can carry through life and into eternity."
And all of that was Ernestine's could she but see her way to take it!
He knew that it was growing late. "I must go," he said, but still he sat there, knowing he had not finished what he had come to say. But need he say it? Would it avail anything? Must not all human souls work their own way through the darkness? ”

“ Who would do more for Karl than any one else on earth? Who is closer to him than any one else in the world? Who can make him see without seeing?—yet, know without knowing? Dr. Parkman,"—voice eager, eyes very tender—"is there any question in your mind as to who can come closest to Karl?"
"But—but—" he gasped.
"I know," she hastened—"much to talk over; so many things to overcome. But won't you be very fair to me and look at it first as a whole? The men in Karl's laboratory know more about science than I do. But they do not know as much about Karl. They have the science and I have the spirit. ”

“ One of them must be sixty now, and one about seventy, but they're smiling just as they did when they were young. And they're whispering that they love each other a great deal better now than they did in those days of long ago; that it has grown and grown until it is a bigger thing than the love of youth ever dreamed of."
"That is nice," she murmured happily. "That would be a nice picture to paint." They were silent for a time, perhaps both seeing pictures of their own. "It's growing late," said Ernestine, a little drowsily, "but then, I'll never have this birthday again." ”

“ And Ernestine had seen a teardrop on his face when he stood before her picture of rain in the autumn woods. That teardrop was very precious to her. It seemed she could work years on just the memory of it.
So there were many reasons why she felt like working this morning. All the loving and the living and the dreaming and the thinking and the working of a lifetime! Karl had understood. Her dream time! She loved that way of putting it. Beautiful days to be cherished forever! How rich she was in the things she had known! How unstinted love had been with her! ”

“ Would not determination rise in him with new tremendousness, and would not hope, after its rebirth in despair, soar to undreamed of heights? Would not the meditation of these days, the new understanding rising from relinquishment and suffering, bring him back to his work a scientist who was also philosopher?
She believed that that would be true, that the things his blindness taught him to see would more than atone for the things shut away. And would not she herself come to love the work just because of what it meant to Karl? ”

“ You know that I love you—that we have one of those supreme loves which come at rare times—perhaps for the sake of what you call faltering faith. But, Karl—this will sound hard—but after all, doesn't it fail? Fail of being supreme? Doesn't it fail if it is not—satisfying? I don't mean that it should make up to one for such a thing as being blind, but if in spite of love like ours life seems unbearable to you without your work—why then, dear, doesn't it fail? ”

“ No one who has ever loved and lost can remain secure in his materialism. I begin to see that the beautiful thoughts, the poems, of immortality, eternity, of its all coming right, have sprung from the lonely hearts of great lovers. For they would not have it any other way—they could only endure it by having it so, and, ah, Doctor—far greater than any proof of science or logic, is there not proof in this? Lifting up their hearts in hours of desolation were not the men and women born for great loves and great sorrows granted a vision of the truth? ”

“ Giving up some things as the changing years do their work, and taking on the other things, the more quiet, in fact finer things, that come with the years. Oh, yes—don't think I do not know that dream. To walk together down the years, meet them fearlessly, gladly, in the thought that they but add to the fullness of your love—I know—I know. And now that it is not to be as you thought, you say life has left nothing to you; that you hate it; will have none of it. Oh, Ernestine, if you could only know how rich you are! ”

“ Then, her voice quiet with the quiet that would hold back anger: "Karl, do you think you are treating me very kindly to-night? Saying these strange things I cannot understand?"
"But, Ernestine—look here! You're young—beautiful—love life. Doesn't it ever occur to you that you're not getting enough fun out of things?"
"Karl,"—and there was a quivering in the voice now—"do you think I have been thinking lately about 'getting fun out of things'?"
"No, but that's just it! You ought to be thinking about it! Ernestine—think of it! How are you going to go on forever loving a blind man?" ”

“ You have to stay a long time in the darkness to know just what it is light means.
"They call great men 'great lights.' 'And then came the light,' they say, regarding the solving of some great thing. 'He brought the light'—that's what I wanted to do! They tell about science bringing the light. I know now what a tribute they pay when they say that. Light of understanding, light of truth—and ah, mein liebchen, the light of love—and well do I know how that light can shine into the darkness! ”

“ Over there was the university. It had been a busy day at the university—old faces and new faces, all the exuberance of a new start, the enthusiasm for a clean slate—students anxious to make some particular class—how well he knew it all! Who was in his laboratory? Who working with his old things? To whom was coming the joy he had thought would be his? What man of all the world's men would achieve the things he had believed would crown his own life? ”

“ The days brought a very clear picture of Karl at work there, a new understanding of his adjustment to his work, firmer comprehension of his love for it. Often a sense of the terribleness and wrongness of his disaster would rush over her, crowding her heart with the old rebellion and bitterness. Again and again she lived through the hour Karl had spent there alone, facing the truth, and then a horror of those things with which she worked, those awful things which had destroyed Karl's eyes, would take hold of her as a physical fear, a repulsion, almost impossible to fight. ”

“ And there were many amusing things about Mr. Beason. He was afraid of her because she was a woman, for like reason disapproving of her presence in the laboratory, and yet there was an unconscious deference, the same kind of veneration he would have paid Karl's old coat, or his pipe.
John Beason had never been shaken by a genuine emotion until the day he read that Dr. Karl Hubers had lost his eyesight and must give up his work. In the horror, the rage and the grief which swept over him then, Beason rose to the heights of a human being, never to be quite without humanship again. ”