"Oh, I do. I see the other point. You hate to stop work for,"--he cleared his throat--"for a year."

"A year," said Beason dismally, "is such a long time to lose."

The man had nothing to say to that. His head sank a little. He seemed to be thinking.

Finally he came out of his reverie; seemed to come from a long way off.

"And where are you going, my boy?" he asked kindly. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going clear out West," said Beason gloomily. "Father has something for me with a company in the Northwest."

"Out there!"--an eager voice rang out, a voice which rested on a smothered sob. "Great heavens, man, you're going out there? Out there to the mountains and the forests? Out there where you can see the sun come up and go down, can see--can see--" but his voice trailed off to a strange silence.

"I never cared much for scenery," said Beason bluntly, "and I care a lot for--all this I'm leaving."

"We don't really leave a thing," said the man--his voice was low and tired--"when we're coming back to it. The only real leave-takings are the final ones."

Beason shifted in his chair. Some of these things were not just what he had expected.

"Beason,"--something in his voice now made the boy move a little nearer--"I'm sorry for your disappointment, but I wish I could make you see how much you have to live for. Get in the habit of looking at the sunsets, Beason. Take a good many long looks at the mountains and the rivers. It's not unscientific. You know,"--with a little whimsical toss of his head--"we only have so many looks to take in this world, and when we're about through we'd hate to think they'd all been into microscopes and culture ovens. And don't worry too much, Beason, about things running into your plans and knocking them over. You know what that wise old Omar had to say about it all." He paused, and then quoted, very slowly, each word seeming to stand for many things:

And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, shall know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

"And--will--pour,"--he repeated the three words. And then his head drooped, his hands fell laxly at his sides. It seemed it was not of Beason he had been thinking as he looked Fate in the face with that taunt of the old Persian poet.

But he looked at him after a moment, came back to him. He saw that the boy was disappointed. The gloom with which he had come had not lifted from his face. That would not do. He was not going to fail his student like that.

"Why, look here, Beason," he said in a new tone, all enthusiasm now, "maybe you'll shoot a bear. I have a presentiment, Beason, that you will, and when you're eighty-five and have your great grandchild on your knee, you'll think a great deal more about that bear than you will about the year you missed here at school. Now brace up! Hard knocks wake a fellow up. You'll come back here and do better work for your year of roughing it--take my word for it, you will."

Beason had brightened. "And you think,"--he grew a little red--"that when I come back I can have my old place here with you?"

The man drew in his breath, drew it in rather hard; something had taken the enthusiasm away.

"I'll do my little part, Beason," he said, exceedingly quietly, "to see that you are not overlooked when you come back."

The boy rose to go. "I do feel better," he said clumsily, but with heartiness.

He looked around the room. "I hate to leave it. I've had some good times here, and I'm--fond of it." The man was leaning against the wall. He did not say anything at all.

Then Beason held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, "and--thank you."

For a minute there was no reply, nothing save the very cold hand given in response to Beason's. But that was only for the instant. And then the man in him, those things which made him more than a great scientist, things more than mind, not even to be comprehended under soul, those fundamental things which made him a man, rose up and conquered. He straightened up, smiled a little, and then heartily, quite sunnily, came the words: "Take a brace, Beason--take a good brace. And good luck to you, boy--good luck."

The door had closed. At last he was alone again. Dizzy with the strain he staggered to a chair. For a long time he sat there, many emotions struggling in his face. He could not see it yet--not quite. It was all very new, and uncertain. But 'way out there in the darkness it seemed there was perhaps something waiting for him to grasp. He would never give that other message, but it might be, if he worked hard enough, and never faltered, he could learn to say to the world which had given him this, say heartily, quite sunnily: "Good luck to you. Good luck."

CHAPTER XVII

DISTANT STRAINS OF TRIUMPH

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 a.s.surance 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sed 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.