Out of the Ashes

by Ethel Watts Mumford Grant

"It's I--Marcus," he said. "I am coming for you this morning. Yes, I'm taking a holiday, and I'm going to bring you back to the library to see a new acquisition of mine--that will interest you. Then you and Dorothy will lunch with Polly. Dorothy can join us at one o'clock. This is a private view--for you alone.... You will? That's good! Good-by."

Noises in the resonant hall and the opening of the great doors announced the arrival of the moving van and its precious contents, before Saunders, his eyes bulging with excitement, rushed in with the tidings of the coming of the world famous Heim Vandyke. With respectful care the great canvas was brought in, unwrapped and lifted to its chosen hanging place.

Seated in his armchair, Gard with mixed emotions watched it elevated and straightened. The pictured face smiled down at him--impersonal yet human, glowing, vivid with color, alive with that suggestion of eternal life that art alone in its highest expression can give. Card's smile was enigmatical; his eyes were sad. His imagination pictured to him Mrs. Marteen as she had sat before him in her self-contained stateliness and announced with indifferent calm that the Vandyke had been but a ruse to gain his private ear.

Gard rose, approached the picture, and for an instant laid his fingers upon its darkened frame. The movement was that of a worshiper who makes his vow at the touch of some relic infinitely holy.

Then he returned to his seat and for some time remained wrapped in thought. These moments of introspection, of deep self-questioning, had become more and more frequent. He had made in the past few months a new and most interesting acquaintance--himself. All the years of his over-hurried, over-cultivated, ambitious life he had delved into the psychology of others. It had been his pride to divine motives, to dissect personalities, to classify and sort the brains and natures of men. Now for the first time he had turned the scalpel upon himself. He was amazed, he was shocked, almost frightened. He could not hide from himself, he was no longer blind, the searchlight of his own analysis was inexorably focused on his own sins and shortcomings--his powers misused, his strength misdirected, his weaknesses indulged, because his strength protected them. In these hours of what he had grown to grimly call his "stock taking," he had become aware of a new and all-important group of men. Where before he had reckoned values solely by capacities of brain and hand, he found now a new factor--the capacity of heart. Ideals that heretofore had borne to his mind the stamp of weakness, now showed themselves as real bulwarks of character. The men who had fallen by the wayside in the advance of his pitiless march to power, were no longer, to his eyes, types of the unfit, to be thrust aside. Some were men, indeed, who knew their own souls, and would not barter them.

In his mind a vast readjustment had taken place. Words had become bodied, the unseen was becoming the visible--Responsibility, Honesty, Fairness, Truth! they had all been words to conjure with--for use in political speeches, in interviews--because they seemed to exercise an occult influence upon the gullible public. "Law," "Peace," "Order," "The Greatest Good to the Greatest Number," he had used them all as an Indian medicine-man shakes bone rattles, and waves a cow's tail before the tribe, laughing behind his gaping mask at the servile acceptance of his prophecies. One and all these Cunjar Gods he had believed to be only bits of shell and plaited rope, had come to life--they were gods, real presences, real powers. He had invoked them only to deceive others--and, behold! he it was who knew not the truth.

The high tower of his heaven-grasping ambitions seemed suddenly insecure and founded upon shifting sands. The incense the sycophant world burned before him became a stench in his nostrils. The fetishes he had tossed to the crowd now faced him as real gods; and they were not to be blinded with dust, nor bought with gold. The specious and tortured verbiage of twisted law never for one moment deceived the open ears of Justice, even though it tied her hands, and her voice was the voice of condemnation. Honor--he had sold it. Faith--he had not kept it. Truth--he had distorted to fit whatever garb he had chosen for her to wear. And, withal, he had hailed himself conqueror; had placed his laurels himself upon his head, ranking all others beneath him. The clamor of the mob he had interpreted as acclaim. Now he heard above the applause the hoarse chorus of disdain and fear. It had been his pride to see men fall back and make way at the very mention of his name. Now he felt that they shrank from him--not before his greatness, but from his very contact. He had driven his fellow creatures from him, and in return, they withdrew themselves.

If they came to him fawning, they but showed their lower natures. He had not called forth the power for good, from these the necromancy of his personality had touched. He had conjured evil, he had pandered to base forces.

The realization had not come easily. His habits of thought would return and blind him as of old. He had laughed at himself; he had derided the new gods, he had disobeyed them and their strange commands--only to return crestfallen, contrite, feeling himself unworthy. He became aware that he had run a long and victorious race for a prize he had craved--only to find that the goal to which it brought him was not that of his old desires. That was but withered leaves, spattered with the blood of those who lost. He had turned from it, and now his steps sought another conquest and another reward. He must strive for a goal unseen, but more real and more worthy than the little crowns of little victories.

His somber thoughts left him refreshed, as if from a bath of deep, clear waters. His spirit felt clean and elated as it rose from the depths. It was with a smile that he pushed back his chair and rose from the table where, for a full hour, he had sat in silent self-communing. He still smiled as he entered the motor and was driven to Mrs. Marteen's.