But within himself he had not gone far. Ernestine knew something of that—though he had tried his best with Ernestine, and Parkman knew, for Parkman had a way of knowing everything.
And yet they did not know it all. The waking up in the night and knowing it would not be any more light in the morning! Hearing the clock strike four or five, and thinking that in a little while he would be getting up and going to work, only to remember he would never be going to work in that old way again! The waking in the morning feeling like his old self, strength within him, his mind beseeching him to start in! No man had ever suffered with the craving for strong drink as he suffered for the work taken from him.
He had, by what grit he could summon, gone along for five months. But ahead were five years, ten years, thirty years, perhaps, and what of them? Each day was a struggle; the living of each day a triumph. Through thousands of days should it be the same?
It was the future which took hold of him then—smothered him. He went down before the vision of those unlived days, the grim vision of those relentless, inevitable days, standing there waiting to be lived. It was desolation. The surrender of a strong man who had tried to the uttermost.
Whether it was because he upset a chair, whether she heard him groan, or whether she just knew in that way of hers that it was time for her to be there, he did not know. But he felt her at the door, and held out beseeching arms.
He crushed her to him very close. He wanted to bring her more close than she had ever come before. For he needed her as he had not needed her until this hour. "Ernestine! Ernestine!"—the sob in his voice was not to be denied—"What am I going to do?"
"Karl,"—after her moment of passionate silence—"tell me this. Doesn't it get any better? One bit easier?"
"No!"—that would have no denying; and then: "Oh but I'm the brute to talk to you like this, after you've been"—again he swept her into his arms—"what you have been to me this summer."
She guided him to a chair and knelt beside him. She held his hand for a minute as the mother holds the hand of the child in pain. And then she began, her voice tender, but quietly determined: "Karl dear—let's be honest. Let's not do so much pretending with each other. For just this once let's look it right in the face. I want to understand—oh how I want to! What's the very worst of it, dear? Is it—the work?"
"Yes!"—the word leaped out as though let loose from a long bondage. "Ernestine—no one but a man can quite see that. What is a man without a man's work? What is there for him to do but sit around in namby-pamby fashion and be fussed over and coddled and cheered up! Lord"—he threw away her hands and turned his face from her—"I'd rather be dead!"