Read Ebook: An index finger by Abrojal Tulis

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Ebook has 354 lines and 90763 words, and 8 pages

"One of my people," she answered.

"Does she live here?"

"She is here sometimes, not always."

"Well, she must be a beautiful woman--even more beautiful than you depict her."

"You understand," said the child. "I cannot put her on paper as I see her. I know but little of drawing, but I am always trying to draw faces--the faces of my own people--and trees, for they are my own people too; but I am never satisfied with my work. They do not get on the paper as they are in my mind."

"Why not have some instruction?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

The stranger understood, but in order not to seem to, he began to pick up some scattered leaves of paper near him. Seeing that they contained writing he was about to lay them down with an apology when the child said:

"It is a letter I have written to Helen, the woman whose picture you have just been looking at. You may read it, only not aloud. I couldn't stand that."

"But why should I read it at all?" he said. "It would be impertinent on my part. Besides, I am not afflicted with the despicable vice of curiosity."

"If you don't mind, I wish you would read it," she said. "It may help me. You will understand when you have finished." But she looked ill at ease, nevertheless.

The stranger read:

MY DEARLY BELOVED HELEN:--Since you went away I am very lonely indeed. None other is so near and dear to me as you. I fill the hours with thoughts of you--thoughts so intense and absorbing that at times I actually see you by my side. But, alas! you do not stay when you come like that. You fade out of my sight; you go back to your world and I cannot follow you only with my thoughts, my dreams, my love and my letters.

But I shall go and find you some day. I shall be one of the people of your world, and shall be busy with work which shall fill my time, my brain and my heart. I shall meet all my people there--my very own people, and shall love them and work with them and know loneliness no more. I have a story to tell you, Dear Heart. It is this:

In a world nameless to all mankind, lived a woman, sweet and fair. It was a beautiful world. There the men were all true and the women all faithful. Misery was unknown and none sought happiness, for all possessed it.

But this one woman dreamed dreams and saw visions. She heard voices calling to her from another world--a world whose people sought continually and vainly to attain a condition they knew only in name, and which they called Happiness. All believed in the existence of this condition and gave chase to it, each in his own way, but none found it. Often hearing the voices of these unhappy people and seeing them in visions, this woman longed to go and help them. The longing disturbed the harmony of life in all her world, until it was decreed that she must leave it and go to that other whose vibrations of anguish had shaken the spheres. But they did not tell her of her destiny. "She will know when she is there," they said.

So she slept, and the sleep was long in the eyes of the children of Time.

When she awoke, memory was gone, and everything had to be learned over again. At first her consciousness was very dim, and her strength feeble, and having slept so long she could scarcely keep awake at all.

But after a time a faint memory of the past came to her, and she saw that all was different from that other time, which now seemed like a dream. This was not the same world, nor were these the same people she had known, for she was in the sad world she had seen in visions, whose people so persistently and often frantically sought Happiness and never found it--and that sad world was this in which we live.

She was changed in appearance, too, for when she looked in a mirror she saw a face that was new to her and a tiny figure. She was like a child, and everybody called her a child, though to herself she seemed not to be a child, because part of her memory had come back, and it was the memory of a woman.

It was very hard to feel like a full-grown person in mind and be treated like a creature with almost no mind at all. One of the most painful things she saw was that sometimes the most ignorant and unfeeling were in positions of power over sensitive children. She suffered much from the very beginning of consciousness.

To go back to the world she could so dimly remember was her one dream. But when she spoke of it those about her laughed and said she had never been in any other world, because there was no other.

Once in a dream she went back, or perhaps it was that some of her old friends came to her. They told her to be patient; that she had been sent to help the unhappy ones who had so often called to her; that scattered all over the planet in which she dwelt now were others like herself, who had come for the same purpose; that she would meet them from time to time and that would pay her for much of her pain.

They said, too, that she had a particular work to do here and could not leave until it was done, but she must find out what it was herself; that the road would often seem very hard and very long, but it had an end, and if she did her work well--

There the dream ended; but it comforted her, all unfinished as it was.

"I will paint pictures," she said, "for always in my mind are noble faces and figures, like the gods when they walked among men, and these shall show mankind how glorious it can itself become."

Beautiful creations, perfect shapes of beauty came forth from her hand, but the world, for the most part, passed them by. It said, "We see nothing in these," and it spoke the truth, for that in them could only be seen by those like unto them.

A few, however, stood before them filled with delight. They were people of the planet from which the artist came, and they recognized their kindred in the faces and forms she had depicted; but she herself was never satisfied with what she had done. Within her mind, faces more glorious, and forms more perfect struggled for expression.

"I have a tale to tell," she said, "that many will be glad to hear, for it contains help for all." But again the world did not understand. It said, "The people of this book are impossible people, and what is the author trying to say? We see nothing in it." A few only understood; but these were of her planet.

"Now," she said, "I will write again, and this time the world will read and be charmed. I will give it what it wants, not what I want to give it."

She spoke truly. She wrote and many were pleased; but the people of her planet closed her book with pain in their faces, and she herself found no joy in it. To her conscience she made this excuse: "I want bread and the easy, comfortable things of life, and the world wants foolishness, so we exchange products. Some day I will write that which pleases myself. Then I shall make no concessions, no bids for favor. I shall say what I feel and think."

Time went on, and the world became interested in new names, and almost forgot hers. Days of discouragement and distress arrived. The ease which she had bought by pleasing the commonplace, vanished, and loneliness, ill-health and poverty came in its stead. Weary and sick unto death in spirit and body, she longed to end it all, and so longing fell asleep, and sleeping dreamed.

She saw again the faces of those from her other world who had come to comfort her when a child. One, the most beautiful of all, and yet just now the saddest, seemed nearer and dearer than the others. It was a glorious face, radiant with strength and sweetness, a type of perfect womanhood. All her life it had visited her in dreams and haunted her imagination. Sometimes the name that belonged to it hovered on her lips, yet was never spoken, for it always vanished before it took shape in her mind.

"Did you find your work?" they asked.

"I tried hard, dear friends," she said. "I have not been idle." But their faces showed no joy.

"Have I not done my work well?" she questioned, beginning to be afraid.

"Have you given your best?" they asked.

A flush of shame covered her face. "No; the world did not want it."

They were silent, and there was that in their eyes which made her more and more ashamed.

"I needed bread," she said, anxious to make excuse.

"Is bread all that is worth striving for, that you paid for it so high a price?" they asked.

She was silent.

"Did you come to please or help the people of this world?" they asked.

"You told me long ago that I came to help," she answered, "but they made it very hard. When I wrote that which burned within my soul they cared not to hear it, but wanted something that entertained and diverted them from what they call the cares of life; and I--well, I was often hungry--so I gave them what they wanted."

"And did they reward you?"

"You see I have nothing," she answered. "For a time I had some of the possessions all value so much; but they are gone."

"You tried to tell these people what you thought and felt, but they would not listen, you say; so you told them little foolish tales, like those that please children, but instruct not, help not, and thus you passed your life neglecting to unfold your own soul by expressing it truly. Only the weak and feeble of will, or the indolent and indifferent, turn back at the first obstacle. Where was your faith?"

"I sold it, as you see, for a pitiful price," she answered, weeping.

"And were you satisfied?"

"Never. My conscience always lashed me. I have been punished already. Give me no further penance."

"It is not ours to punish or pardon, nor in all the universe is there either punishment or pardon. There is only unchangeable, ever-active law. Had you done your work well"--

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