CHAPTER XXIV
LOVE CHALLENGES FATE
The doctor hung up the receiver slowly and with meditation. And when he turned from the telephone his thoughts did not leave the channel to which it had directed them. What was it Mrs. Hubers wanted? Why was she coming to the office at four that afternoon? Something in her voice made him wonder.
He had offered to go out, but she preferred coming to the office. Evidently then she wished to see him alone; and she had specified that she come when he could give her the most time. Then there was something to talk over. He had asked for Karl, and she answered, cheerfully, that he was well. "And you?" he pursued, and she had laughed with that—an underlying significance in that laugh perplexed him as he recalled it, and had answered buoyantly: "I? Oh, splendid!"
It did not leave his mind all day; he thought about it a great deal as he drove his car from place to place. It even came to him in the operating room, and it was not usual for anything to intrude there.
He reached the office a few minutes ahead of the hour, but she was waiting for him. She rose as she saw him at the door and took an eager step forward. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes very bright, and her smile, as she held out her hand, had that same quality as her voice of the morning.
She was so far removed from usual things that she resorted to no conventional pleasantries after they had entered the doctor's inner office, and she waited for him to attend to a few little things before giving her his attention. He knew by the way her eyes followed him about that she was eager to begin, and while there was a little timidity about her it seemed just a timidity of manner, of things exterior, while back of that he felt the force of her poise.
He had never seen her so beautiful. She was wearing a brown velvet suit, a golden brown like some of the glints in her hair and some of the lights in her eyes. Her eyes, too, held that something which puzzled him. It was a windy day, and her hair was a little disarranged, which made her look very young, and her veil was thrown back from her face just right to make a frame for it. Why could not all women manage those big veils the way some women did, he wondered.
He sat down in the chair before his desk, and swung it around facing her.
Then he waited for her to speak.
That little timidity was upon her for the second, but she broke through it, seeming to shake it off with a little shake of her head. "Dr. Parkman," she said—her voice was low and well controlled—"I have come to you because I want you to help me."
He liked that. Very few people came out with the truth at the start that way.
"I wonder if you know," she went on, looking at him with a very sweet seriousness, "that Karl is very unhappy?"
His face showed that that was unexpected. "Why, yes," he assented, "I know that his heart has not been as philosophical as some of his words; but"—gently—"what can you expect?"
She did not answer that, but pondered something a minute. "Dr. Parkman," she began abruptly, "just why do you think it is Karl cannot go on with his work? I do not mean his lectures, but his own work in the laboratory, the research?"
Again he showed that she was surprising him. "Why surely you understand that. It is self-evident, is it not? He cannot do his laboratory work because he has lost his eyes."
"Eyes—yes. But the eye is only an instrument; he has not lost his brain." The flush in her cheeks deepened. Her eyes met his in challenge. Her voice on that had been very firm.
He was quick to read beyond the words. "You are asking, intending to ask, why he could not go on, working through some assistant?"
"I want to know just what is your idea of why he cannot. All the things of mind and temperament—things which make him Karl—are there as before. Are we not letting a very little thing hold us back?"—there was much repression now, as though she must hold herself in check, and wait.
"I've thought about it too!" he exclaimed. "Heaven knows I've tried to see it that way. But my conclusion has always been like Karl's: the handicap would be too great."
"Why?" she asked calmly.
"Why? Why—because," he replied, almost impatiently, and then laughed a little at his woman's reason.
"I'll tell you why!"—her eyes deepening. "I'll tell you the secret of your conclusion. You concluded he could not go on with his work just because no assistant could be in close enough touch with Karl to make clear the things he saw."
He thought a minute. Then, "That's about it," he answered briefly.
"You concluded that two men's brains could not work together in close enough harmony for one man's eyes to fit the other man's brain."
"You put it very clearly," he assented.
She paused, as though to be very sure of herself here. "Then, doctor, looking a little farther into it, one sees something else. If there were some one close enough to Karl to bring to his brain, through some other medium than eyes, the things the eyes would naturally carry; if there were some one close enough to make things just as plain as though Karl were seeing them himself, then"—her voice gathered in intensity—"despite the loss of his eyes, he could go right on with his work."
"Um—well, yes, if such an impossible thing were possible."
"But it is possible! Oh if I can only make you see this now! Doctor, don't you see it? I am closer to him than any one in the world! I am the one to take up his work!"
He pushed back his chair and sat staring at her speechlessly.
"Dr. Parkman," she began—and it seemed now that he had never known her at all before—"most of the biggest things ever proposed in this world have sounded very ridiculous to the people who first heard of them. The unprecedented has usually been called the impossible. Now I ask you to do just one thing. Don't hold my idea at arm's length as an impossibility. Look it straight in the face without prejudice. 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. I can get the science but they could never get the spirit. After all, isn't there some meaning in that old phrase 'a labour of love'? Doctor"—her smile made it so much clearer than her words—"did you ever hear of knowledge and skill working a miracle? Do you know anything save love which can do the impossible?"
He did not speak at once. He did not find it easy to answer words like that. "But, my dear Mrs. Hubers," he finally began—"you are simply assuming—"
"Yes,"—and the tenderness leaped suddenly to passion and the passion intensified to sternness—"I am simply assuming that it can be done, and through obstacle and argument, from now until the end of my life, I am going on assuming that very thing, and furthermore, Dr. Parkman,"—relaxing a little and smiling at him under standingly—"just as soon as the light has fully dawned upon you, you are going to begin assuming that, and you are the very man—oh, I know—to keep on assuming it in the face of all the obstacles which the University of Chicago—yes, and all creation—may succeed in piling up. There is one thing on which you and I are going to stand very firmly together. That thing,"—with the deep quiet of finality—"is that Karl shall go on with his work."
Dr. Parkman had never been handled that way before; perhaps it was its newness which fascinated him; at any rate he seemed unable to say the things he felt he should be saying.
"Dr. Parkman, the only weak people in this world are the people who sit down and say that things are impossible. The only big people are the people who stand up and declare in the face of whatsoever comes that nothing is impossible. For Karl there is some excuse; the shock has been too great—his blindness has shut him in. But you and I are out in the light of day, doctor, and I say that you and I have been weaklings long enough."
He had never been called a weakling before—he had never thought to be called a weakling, but the strangeness of that was less strange than something in her eyes, her voice, her spirit, which seemed drawing him on.
"Karl has lost his eyes. Has he lost his brain—any of those things which make him Karl? All that has been taken away is the channel of communication. I am not presuming to be his brain. All I ask is to carry things to the brain. Why, doctor,—I'm ashamed, mortified—that we hadn't thought of it before!"
"But—how?" he finally asked, weakly enough.
"I will go into Karl's laboratory and learn how to work—all that part of it I want you to arrange for me. After all, I have a good foundation. I think I told you about my father, and how hard he tried to make a scientist of me? And it was queer about my laboratory work. It was always easy for me. I could see it, all right—enough my father's child for that, but you see my working enthusiasm and ambition were given to other things. Now I'll make things within me join forces, for I will love the work now, because of what it can do for Karl. I need to be trained how to work, how to observe, and above all else learn to tell exactly what I see. I shall strive to become a perfectly constructed instrument—that's all. And I will be better than the usual laboratory assistant, for not having any ideas of my own I will not intrude my individuality upon Karl—to blur his vision. I shall not try to deduce—and mislead him with my wrong conclusions. I shall simply see. A man who knew more about it might not be able to separate what he saw from what he thought—and that would be standing between Karl and the facts."
He was looking at her strangely. "And your own work—what would be happening to it, if you were to do—this?"
"I have given my own work up," she said, and she said it so simply that it might have seemed a very simply matter.
"You can't do that," he met her, sharply.
"Yes,"—slowly—"I can. I love it, but I love Karl more. If I have my work he cannot have his, and Karl has been deprived of his eyes—he is giving up the sunlight—the stars—the face he loves—many things. I thought it all out last night, and the very simple justice of it is that Karl is the one to have his work."
She was dwelling upon it,—a wonderful tenderness lighting her face; for the minute she had forgotten him.
Then suddenly she came sharply back to the practical, brought herself ruthlessly back to it, as if fearing it was her practicality he would question. "Besides, Karl's work is the more important. Nobody is going to die for a water colour or an oil painting; people are dying every day for the things Karl can give. But, doctor,"—far too feminine not to press the advantage—"if I can do that, don't you think you can afford to break through your conservatism and—you will, doctor, won't you?"
But Dr. Parkman had wheeled his chair about so that she could not see his face. His eyes had grown a little dim.
"You see, doctor,"—gently,—"what I am going to give to it? Not only the things any one else could give, but all my love for Karl, and added to that all those things within myself which have heretofore been poured into my own work. I can paint, doctor, you and I know that, and I think you know something of how I love it. Something inside of me has always been given to it—a great big something for which there is no name. Now I am going to just force all that into a new channel, and don't you see how much there will be to give? And in practical ways too I can make my own work count. I know how to use my hands—and there isn't a laboratory assistant in the whole University of Chicago knows as much about colour as I do!"—she smiled like a pleased child.
He looked at her then—a long look. He had forgotten the moisture in his eyes,—he did not mind. And it was many years since any one had seen upon Dr. Parkman's face the look which Ernestine saw there now.
"Isn't it strange, doctor," she went on, after a pause, "how we think we understand, and then suddenly awake to find we have not been understanding at all? Karl and I had a long talk yesterday, and in that talk he seemed able to let me right into it all. All summer long I did my best, but I see now I had not been understanding. And understanding as I do now—caring as I care—do you think I can sit quietly by and see Karl make himself over to fit this miserable situation? Do you think I am going to help him adjust himself to giving up the great thing in him? No—he is not going to accept it! I tell you Karl is to be Karl—he is to do Karl's work—and find Karl's place. Why I tell you, Dr. Parkman, I will not have it any other way!"
It was a passionate tyranny of the spirit over which caution of mind seemed unable to prevail. His reason warned him—I cannot see how this and this and that are to be done, but the soul in her voice seemed drawing him to a light out beyond the darkness.
"Doctor,"—her eyes glowing with a tender pride—"think of it! Think of Karl doing his work in spite of his blindness! Won't it stand as one of the greatest things in the whole history of science?"
He nodded, the light of enthusiasm growing more steady in his own eye.
"But I have not finished telling you. After our talk yesterday it seemed to me I could not go on at all. I didn't know what to do. In the evening I was up in my studio—"—she paused, striving to formulate it,—"No, I see I can't tell it, but suddenly things came to me, and, doctor, I understand it now better than Karl understands it himself."
He felt the things which she did not say; indeed through it all it was the unspoken drew him most irresistibly.
"I'll not try to tell you how it all worked itself out, but I saw things very clearly then, and all the facts and all the reason and all the logic in the world could not make me believe I did not see the truth. My idea of taking it up myself, of my being the one to bring Karl back to his work, seemed to come to me like some great divine light. I suppose," she concluded, simply, "that it was what you would call a moment of inspiration."
She leaned her head back as though very tired, but smiling a little. He did not speak; he had too much the understanding heart to intrude upon the things shining from her face.
"I could do good work, doctor. I've always felt it, and I have done just enough to justify me in knowing it. I don't believe any one ever loved his work more than I love mine, and last night when I saw things so clearly I saw how the longing for it would come to me—oh, I know. Don't think I do not know. But something will sustain me; something will keep my courage high, and that something is the look there will be on Karl's face when I tell him what I have done. You see we will not tell Karl at first; we will keep it a great secret. He will know I am working hard, but will think it is my own work. If we told him now he would say it was impossible. His blindness, the helplessness that goes with it, has taken away some of his confidence, and he would say it could not be done. But what will he say,"—she laughed, almost gleefully—"when he finds I have gone ahead and made myself ready for him? When you tell him I can do it—and the laboratory men tell him so? He will try it then, just out of gratitude to me. Oh, it will not go very well at first. It is going to take practice—days and weeks and months of it—to learn how to work together. But, little by little, he will gain confidence in himself and in me, he will begin getting back his grip—enthusiasm—all the things of the old-time Karl, and then some day when we have had a little success about something he will burst forth—'By Jove—Ernestine—I believe we can make it go!'—and that," she concluded, softly, "will be worth it all to me."
Again a silence which sank deeper than words—a silence which sealed their compact.
She came from it with the vigorously practical, "Now, Dr. Parkman,"—sitting up very straight, with an assertive little gesture—"you go out to that university and fire their souls! Wake them up! Make them see it! And when do you think I can begin?"
That turned them to actual issues; he spoke freely of difficulties, and they discussed them together calmly. Her enthusiasm was not builded on dreams alone; it was not of that volatile stuff which must perish in detail and difficulty. She was ready to meet it all, to ponder and plan. And where he had been carried by her enthusiasm he was held by her resourcefulness.
"Are august dignitaries of reason and judgment likely to rise up and make it very unpleasant for you after I've gone?" she asked him, laughingly, when she had risen to go.
"Very likely to," he laughed.
"Tell them it's not their affair! Tell them to do what they're told and not ask too many questions!"
"I'll try to put them in their proper place," he assured her.
He watched her as she stood there buttoning her glove—slight, almost frail, scarcely one's idea of a "masterful woman." It struck him then as strange that she had not so much as asked for pledge of his allegiance. What was it about her—?
She was holding out her hand. Something in her eyes lighted and glorified her whole face. "Thank you, doctor," she said, very low.
For a long time he sat motionless before his desk. He was thinking of many things. "Nothing in which to believe," he murmured at last, looking about the room still warm with the spirit she had left—"nothing in which to believe—when there is love such as this in the world?"
CHAPTER XXV
DR. PARKMAN'S WAY
The next morning Dr. Parkman turned his automobile in the direction of the University of Chicago. There was a very grim look on his face as he sent the car, with the hand of an expert, through the crowded streets. He had his do-or-die expression, and the way he was letting the machine out would not indicate a shrinking back from what lay before him. He rather chuckled once; that is, it began in a chuckle, and ended with the semblance of a grunt, and when he finally swung the car down the Midway, he was saying to himself: "Glad of it! I've been wanting for a long time to tell that Lane what I thought of him."
Inquiries over the telephone had developed the fact that through some shifting about, Dr. George Lane was temporary head of the department; it was to Dr. George Lane then that Dr. Parkman must go with the matter in hand this morning. That had seemed bad at first, for Lane was one man out there he couldn't get on with and did not want to. They always clashed; upon their last meeting Lane had said—"Really now, Dr. Parkman, don't you feel that a broader culture is the real need of the medical profession?" and Parkman had retorted, "Shouldn't wonder, but has it ever struck you, Dr. Lane, that a little more horse sense is the real need of the university professor?" He declared, grimly, as he finally drew his car to a snorting stop at the university that he would have to try some other method than "firing his soul," as Ernestine had bade him do. "In the first place," he figured it out, "he has no soul, and if he had, I wouldn't be the one to fire it with anything but rage." But the doctor was not worrying much about results. He thought he had a little ammunition in reserve which assured the outcome, and which would enable him, at the same time, to "let loose on Lane," should the latter show a tendency to become too important.
The erudite Lane was a neatly built little fellow, very spick and span. First America and then England had done their best—or worst—by him. Just as every hair on his head was properly brushed, so Dr. Parkman felt quite sure that every idea within the head was properly beaten down with a pair of intellectual military brushes, one of which he had acquired to the west, and the other to the east of the Atlantic. "I suppose he's a scholar," mused the doctor, as he surveyed the back of the dignitary's head while waiting, "but what in God's name would he do if he were ever to be hit with an original idea?"
"Ah, yes, Dr. Parkman, we so seldom see you very busy men out here. We always appreciate it when you busy men look in upon us."
Now the tone did not appeal to Dr. Parkman, and with one of his quick decisions he bade tact take itself to the four winds, leaving him alone with his reserve guns.
"I always appreciate it," he began abruptly, not attempting to deny that he was a busy man, "when people take as little of my time as possible. I will try to do unto others as I would that others do unto me."
By the merest lifting of his eyebrows, Lane signified that he would make no attempt at detaining the doctor longer than he wished to stay. He awaited punctiliously the other man's pleasure, silently emphasising that the interview was not of his bringing about. "Thinks I'm a boor and a brute," mused Parkman.
"What I wanted to see you about," he began, "relates to Dr. Hubers."
"Ah, yes—poor Hubers. A remarkable man, in many ways. It is one of those things which make one—very sad. We wanted him to go on with his lectures, but he did not seem to feel quite equal to it."
"Huh!"—that might mean a variety of things. The tone of patronage infuriated Karl's friend. "Jealous—sore—glad Karl's out of it," he was interpreting it.
Then he delivered this very calmly: "Well, the fact of the matter is, that among all medical men, and in that part of the scientific world which I may call the active part—the only part of any real value—Karl Hubers is regarded so far above every other man who ever set foot in this university that all the rest of the place is looked upon as something which surrounds him. Over in Europe, they say—Chicago?—University of Chicago? Oh, yes—yes indeed, I remember now. That's where Hubers is.'"
"The professor," as Dr. Parkman frequently insisted on calling him, showed himself capable of a rush of red blood to the face, and of a very human engulfing of emotion in a hurried cough. "Ah, I see you are a warm friend, Dr. Parkman," quickly regaining his impenetrable superiority, and smiling tolerantly. "But looking at it quite dispassionately, putting aside sympathy and all personal feeling, I have sometimes felt that Dr. Hubers, in spite of his—I may say gifts, in some directions, is a little lacking in that broad culture, that finer quality of universal scholarship which should dominate the ideal university man of to-day."
Dr. Parkman was smiling in a knowing way to himself. "I see what you mean, Professor, though I would put it a little differently. I wouldn't call him in the least lacking in broad culture, but he is rather lacking in pedantry, in limitations, in intellectual snobbery, in university folderols. And of course a man who is actually doing something in the world, who stands for real achievement, has a little less time to look after the fine quality of universal scholarship."
Perhaps Lane would have been either more or less than human, had he not retorted to that: "But as to this great achievement—it has never been forthcoming, has it?"
The doctor had a little nervous affection of his face. The corner of one eye and one corner of his mouth sometimes twitched a little. People who knew him well were apt to grow nervous themselves when they made that observation. But as no one who knew him chanced to be present, the storm broke all unannounced.
"For which," he snarled out, "every cheap skate of a university professor who never did anything himself but paddle other men's canoes, for which every human phonograph and intellectual parrot sends out thanks from his two-by-four soul! But among men who are men, among physicians who have cause to know his worth, among scientists big enough to get out of their own shadows, and, thank God, among the people who haven't been fossilised by clammy universities out of all sense of human values—among them, I say, Karl Hubers is appreciated for what he was close to doing when this damnable fate stepped in and stopped him!"
The man of broad culture, very white as to the face, rose to his fullest height. It should not be held against him that his fullest height failed in reaching the other man's shoulder. "If there is nothing further," he choked out, "perhaps we may consider the interview concluded?"
"No," retorted Parkman serenely, "the interview has just begun. It's your business, isn't it, to listen to matters relating to this department?"
"It is; but as I am accustomed to meeting men of some—"
"Manners?" supplied the doctor pleasantly. "As I am accustomed to men of a somewhat different type,"—he picked the phrase punctiliously, manifestly a conservative, even in war—"I was naturally unprepared for the nature of your remarks."
"Oh well, the unexpected must be rather agreeable when one leads so cut and dried a life. But what I want to see you about," he went on, quite as though he had dropped the most pleasant thing in the world, "is just this. I want you to give the use of Dr. Hubers' laboratory, his equipment and at least one of his assistants, to Dr. Hubers' wife, that she may get in shape to work with him as his assistant, and enable him to carry on his work and do those things, which, as you correctly state, are still unachieved."
Now the delivering of that pleased Dr. Parkman very much. He scarcely attempted to conceal his righteous pride.
"Really, now," gasped the head of the department, after a minute of speechless staring, "really, now, Dr. Parkman, you astonish me."—"That's the truth, if he ever spoke it," thought the doctor grimly."—Dr. Hubers' wife, I understand you to say?"—and he of erudition was equal to a covert sneer—"just what has she to do with it, please?"
"She has everything to do with it. In the first place, she is rather interested in Dr. Hubers. Then she's a remarkable woman. Needs to freshen up on some things, needs quite a little coaching, in fact; but in my judgment the best way for Hubers to go on with his work—you didn't think for a moment he was out of it, did you?—is for his wife to get in shape to work with him. That can be arranged all right?" he concluded pleasantly.
Then Dr. George Lane spoke with the authority in him vested. "It certainly can not," he said, with an icy decisiveness.
"But why not?" pursued Parkman, innocently.
"Oh, now, don't misunderstand me, Professor. I didn't for a minute expect that you were to give any of your valuable time to Mrs. Hubers. Hastings is the fellow I'd like her turned over to. He's a friend of mine, and he's in sympathy, you know, with Dr. Hubers' work. All you'll have to do is to tell Hastings to do it," explained the doctor, expansively.
The head of the department quite gleamed with the pride of authority as he pronounced: "Which you may be very certain I shall not do."
"No?" said Parkman, leaning over the desk a little and looking at him.
"You say—no?"
"I do," replied the man in authority, with brevity, emphasis and finality.
Dr. Parkman leaned back in his chair and seemed to be in deep thought.
"Then the popular idea is all wrong, isn't it?"
"I am at a loss to know to what popular idea you refer," said the professor, with a suitable indifference.
"Oh merely to the popular idea that this place amounts to something; that it has let go of a little mediaevalism, and is more than a crude, cheap pattern—funny what ideas people get, isn't it? Now there are people who think the university here puts a value on individuality, that it would actually bend a rule or two to fit an individual case, in fact that it likes initiative, encourages originality, wouldn't in the least mind having a few actual achievements to its credit."
"At the same time," goaded from his icy calm—"it does not propose to make itself ridiculous!"
"And doing a rather unconventional thing, in order to bring about a very great thing, would be making itself ridiculous, would it?"
"I fail to see how anything so preposterous could bring about good results," said the man in authority, introducing into that a note of dismissal.
"Do you?" replied Parkman, not yet dismissed. "Well, if you will pardon a little more plain speaking, I will say that this is something I know a good deal more about than you do."
"We have made other arrangements for the laboratory," and the professor picked up a paper from his desk and looked it over, nice subtilties evidently being lost.
"So? Going to give it to some fellow who will devote himself, after the fashion of university men, to verifying other men's conclusions?"
Then Dr. Parkman rose. "Well," he said, "you've had your chance. You had a chance to do something which would give this place an excuse for existing. I'm sorry you weren't big enough to take it.
"I fear medical men may feel some little prejudice about this," he remarked, easily—not in the least as though dealing in heavy ammunition. "Hubers commands the medical men, you know. They care more for him than for all the rest of the fellows out here put together. About that medical school of yours," he said, meditatively, "that you're pushing so hard just now,—to whom shall I tender my resignation as chairman of the committee I'm on? And, at the same time, I'll just be released from the lectures I was to give in the winter quarter. I'm entirely too busy to spend my time on a place that doesn't care for anything but dead men's bones. Lewis and Richmond will probably want to pull out too. Of course," he went on, seemingly to himself, "a thing like this will unfortunately be noised about, and all doctors will be a little sore about your not caring to stand by Hubers. But I suppose I had better see the president about all that. He gets home next week? And, come to think of it, I'm pretty close to a couple of members of the board. I operated on both Lessing and Tyler. Both of those fellows have a notion they owe their lives to me. That makes people feel rather close to one, you know. But then, of course, you don't know—why should you? And, dear me—there's that rich old patient of mine, Burley. Now isn't it strange,"—turning genially to Lane, as if merely interesting him in a philosophical proposition—"how one thing leads to another? I fear Burley may not be so interested in making that gift to the new medical building, if he knows I've cut loose from the place. The president will feel rather sore about that, too,—you know how the president is about such things. But then,"—shrugging his shoulders indifferently—"he needn't feel sore at me."
Dr. George Lane was swallowing very hard. Though learned, he was not dull. Word by word he had drunk in the bitter truth that this big, dark, gruff, ill-mannered man was not to be put down with impunity. Call it bullying—any hard name you would, there was no evading the fact that it was power in sledge hammer strokes. "The professor" was just wise enough to see that there lay before him the unpleasant task of retraction.
"Ah—of course, doctor," he began, striving for nonchalance, "do not take this as too final. You see anything so unusual as this will have to come before the committee. You did not present it to me—ah—very fully, but the more I consider it, the more I am disposed to think it is a thing we—may care to undertake. I—will present it."
"Oh, don't bother about that," said the doctor pleasantly. "I wouldn't worry the committee about it, if I were you. I can get a down-town laboratory all right. I simply thought I would give the university a chance at the thing. It doesn't matter," he concluded, opening the door.
"Well now, I'll tell you, doctor," said Lane, and part of his face was white, and part of it was red, "while you're out here, you would better go up and see Hastings. I'm sure I can say—speaking for the committee—that we will be very glad to have Mrs. Hubers here."
"I fired his soul all right," thought the doctor, grimly, as he walked up to find Hastings. "Those little two by fours!"
CHAPTER XXVI
OLD-FASHIONED LOVE
Karl's new secretary was what Karl himself called "one of those philosophical ducks." "That is," he explained to Ernestine, "he is one of those fellows who has been graduated from science into philosophy."
"But wouldn't you get on better with one of the scientific students who hadn't been graduated yet?" she laughed.
"Oh, no; no, I don't mind having a graduate. Ross can do the work all right. I'm lucky to get him. There aren't many of them who are stenographers, and then he can give me most of his time. He's finishing up for his Ph.D."
"And was he really a student of science in the beginning?"
"Well, after a fashion. The kind that is graduated into philosophy."
"Karl," she laughed, "despite your proud boast to the contrary, you're bigoted. It's the bigotry of science."
"No, it's having science patronised by these fellows who don't know anything about it. If they'd once roll up their sleeves and do some actual work they'd give up that idea of being so easily graduated. But they want to get where they'll not have to work. Philosophy's a lazy man's job."
"There you go again! A clear case of the scientific arrogance."
"No, they amuse me; that's all. 'I had a great deal of science in my undergraduate work,' Mr. Ross said, 'but I feel now that I want to go into the larger field of philosophy.'"
"Karl," she laughed, a little amused and a little indignant, "did he actually say that to you?"
"He actually did. And with the pleasantest, most off-hand air. It was on the tip of my tongue to reply: 'Fortunately, science never loses anything in these people she graduates so easily into philosophy.'
"I wonder what they think," he went on, "when we turn them upside down two or three times a century? It doesn't seem to worry them any. 'Give me some eggs and some milk and some sugar and I'll make a nice pudding,' they say—that's about what goes into a pudding, isn't it? And then they take the stuff in very thankless fashion, and when their pudding is done, they say—'Isn't it pathetic the way some people spend their lives producing nothing but eggs and milk and sugar?' And the worst of it is that half the time they spoil our good stuff by putting it together wrong."
"Such a waste of good eggs and milk and sugar," she laughed.
"But fortunately it is a superior kind of eggs and milk and sugar that can't be hurt by being thrown together wrong. The pudding is bad, but the good stuff in it is indestructible. And as we don't have to sit down to their table, why should we worry over their failures?"
"Why, indeed? But then, I don't agree that all puddings are bad."
"No, not all of them. But it rubs me the wrong way to see bad cooks take such liberties with their materials."
"Because good eggs and milk and sugar aren't so easy to produce," she agreed.
"Some of us have paid a pretty good price for them," he said.
That turned them to the things always close to them, and they were silent for a time. It was Saturday evening, and on Monday Ernestine would begin her new work. Dr. Parkman had arranged it for her—she did not know how, but it had been done, and Professor Hastings, who would have her in charge, was eager to give all possible help. That day, while Karl was busy, she had been reading a book Dr. Parkman had given her. He would keep her supplied with the best things for her to read, he said, selecting that which was vital, so that she would not waste time blundering through Karl's library at random. Dr. Parkman was being so splendid about it all. He was a man to give himself to a thing without reservations; if he helped at all he made his help count to the uttermost. She felt him back of her as a force which would not fail. And she would show him his confidence was not misplaced—his support not given to a vain cause! Resolution strengthened within her as the way was cleared. Unconsciously she caught Karl's hand and held it tight in both of hers.
"You know, liebchen," he said, caressing her hand in response, "I've done considerable thinking of late. Perhaps a fellow thinks more about things when he is not right in them, and it seemed to me to-day, when I was thinking over these things suggested by Ross, that the reason most people don't get on better with their work is just because they don't care for it enough. You have to love a thing to do much with it. Take it in any kind of scientific work; the work is hard, there is detail, drudgery, and discouragement. You're going to lose heart and grip unless you have that enthusiasm for the thing as a whole. You must see it big, and have that—well, call it fanaticism, if you want to—a willingness to give yourself up to it, at any rate. The reason these fellows want to get into the 'bigger field of philosophy' is because they've never known anything about the bigger field of science."
She loved that fire in his voice, that rare, fine light which at times like this shone from his face. In such moments, he seemed a man set apart; as one divinely appointed. It filled her heart with a warm, glad rush to think it was she would bring him back to his own. It was she would reseat Karl on his throne. And what awaited him then? Might not his possibilities be greater than ever before? 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? Care for it because of what it could do for him? Loving it first because he loved it, would not she come to love it for itself?
A quiver of pain had drawn the beautiful light from his face. "Tell me about your work, dear," he said abruptly. "You haven't said much about it of late."
She turned away her face. She was always forgetting that he could not see her face.
"You know you must get to work, sweetheart," he went on as she did not answer. "I am expecting great things of my little girl."
"I hope you will not be disappointed," she answered, very low.
"Of course I'll not be—if you just get to work. Now when are you going to begin?"
"I'm going to begin Monday," replied Ernestine.
"Good! Painting some great picture?"
She hesitated. "I hope it will be a great picture."
"Tell me about it."
"I can tell you better, dear, when it is a little farther along."
"You love your work, Ernestine. You have the real, true, fundamental love for it. I always loved to see your face light up when you spoke of your work. Is your face lighted up now?" he asked, a little whimsically, but earnestly.
She laughed, but the laugh caught in her throat.
"Will you tell me about your picture as it progresses, dear? Don't be afraid to talk to me of your work, Ernestine. Things will be less hard for me, if I think you are happy. And it will be good to know there is to be some great thing come of our love, dear. I want something to stand for it, something beautiful and great."
"There will be!" she said passionately. "There is going to be."
"I know," he said gently. "I am sure of it."
He stroked her face lovingly then. He loved so to do that.
"Will you mind much, Karl," she began, a little timidly, "if I am away from you some this year?"
"Away from me?" he asked, startled. "Why, what do you mean, Ernestine?"
"Oh, not that I am going away," she hastened. "But, as I say, I am going to begin my work on Monday, and part of the time I shall be working, away from home."
"You mean in some studio?"
Her face grew troubled; she frowned a little, bit her lip, but after a second's hesitation, answered: "Yes."
"Found some fellow to study with?"
And again she answered yes.
"Well now look here, liebchen, have I been such a brute that you thought I wouldn't want you to set foot out of the house? I didn't suppose there was anyone here you'd have much to gain from, but if there is, so much the better. I want you to go right ahead and do your best—don't you know that?"
But there was a note of forced cheer in it. It would be hard for Karl to feel she was not in the house, when he had come to depend on her for so many things. She could not tell him why she was willing to be away from him. It hurt her to think he might feel she did not understand.
A little later Georgia and her mother and Georgia's Mr. Tank came over to see them. During the summer Ernestine and Karl had been bestowing an approving interest on Georgia and Joseph Tank. Karl liked him; he said the fellow laughed as though there was no reason why he shouldn't. "He doesn't know everything," he told Ernestine, "but knows too much to seem to know what he doesn't."
Georgia had been disposed to be apologetic about Mr. Tank's paper bags, and Karl had retorted: "Great Scott, Georgia, is there anything the world needs much worse than paper bags?"
To-night Mr. Tank was all enthusiasm about a ball game he had attended that afternoon. He gave Karl the story of the game in the picturesque fashion of a man more eager to express what he wishes to say than to guard the purity of his English. "Oh, it was hot stuff, clear through," he concluded. "Bully good game!"
"It is sometimes almost impossible for me to tell what Georgia and Mr. Tank are talking about," sighed Mrs. McCormick. "They use so many words which are not in the dictionary. Now when people confine themselves to words which are in the dictionary, I am always able to ascertain their meaning."
"I'm long for saying a thing the way I can get it said," laughed Tank. "And I'm long for this new spelling. I never could get next to the old system, and now if they push this deal through, I can pat myself on the back and say, 'Good for you, old boy. You were just waiting for them to start in right.' It would be such a good one on the teachers who bumped my head against the wall because I didn't begin pneumonia with a p and every other minute run in an i or an e I had sense enough to know had no business there at all. Oh, I'm long for taking a fall out of the old spelling book."
"I do hope, Karl," admonished Mrs. McCormick, "that you will use your influence with scholars to see that the dictionary is let alone. It is certainly a very profane and presumptuous thing to think of changing a dictionary,"—turning to Ernestine for approval.
"When I was a child," observed Georgia, "I had a sublime and unquestioning faith in two things,—the Bible and the dictionary. The Bible was written by God and the dictionary by Noah Webster, and both were to remain intact to the end of time. But the University of Chicago is re-writing the Bible, and 'most any one who feels like it can take a hand at the dictionary, so what is there left for a poor girl to believe in?"
"Believe in the American dollar," said Tank cheerfully. "That's the solidest thing I've ever been up against."
Mrs. McCormick left them to call upon a friend who lived next door, Karl and Mr. Tank turned to frenzied finance, and Georgia and Ernestine wandered away by themselves—Ernestine surmised that Georgia wanted to talk to her.
"How goes it at The Mail?" she asked.
"Oh—so so," said Georgia fretfully. "Newspaper work is a thankless job."
"Why, Georgia, I thought you loved it so."
"Oh, yes,—yes, in a way, I do. But it's thankless. And you never get anywhere. You break your neck one day, and then there's nothing to do the next, but start in and break it again. You're never any better to-day for yesterday's killing. Now with you—when you paint a good picture, it stays painted."
"Why don't you get married?" asked Ernestine, innocently.
"Married! Pooh—that would be a nice thing!"
"Indeed it would. If you care for the man."
Georgia was fidgeting; it was plain she wanted to talk about marriage, if she could do so without seeming to be vitally interested in the subject.
"I mean it, Georgia," Ernestine went on. "If you care for him, marry him."
"Care for whom?" Georgia demanded, and then coloured and laughed at the folly of her evasion. "Well, the fact of the matter is," she finally blurted out, "I don't know whether I do or not. Now, in a way, I do. That is, I want him to care for me, and I shouldn't like it if he sailed away to the Philippine Islands and never showed up again, but at the same time—well, I don't think even you could get up much sentiment about paper bags, and besides"—tempestuously—"the name Tank's preposterous!"
Ernestine laughed. "What are those terms the lawyers are so fond of—immaterial, irrelevant, and something else? Georgia, once when I was a little girl and went to visit my grandmother, I had a stubborn fit and wouldn't eat any dinner because the dining-room table had such ugly legs. And the dinner, Georgia, was good."
It was Georgia who laughed then. "But Ernestine"—with a swift turn to seriousness—"you're not a fair sample; you and Karl are—exceptional. You see you have so much—intellectual companionship—sympathetic ideas—kindred tastes—don't you see what a fool I'd make of myself in judging the thing by you?"—she ended with a little gulp which might have been a laugh or might have been something else.
Ernestine was giving some affectionate rubs to her brass coffee pot. When she raised her head it was to look at Georgia strangely. She continued to look, and the strangeness about her intensified. "Shall I tell you something, Georgia?"—her voice low and queer. "Something I know? You wouldn't be willing to fight 'till you dropped for sympathetic ideas. 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!"
CHAPTER XXVII
LEARNING TO BE KARL'S EYES
She wondered many times in the next few months why she had put it in that very simple, self-evident way.
For there are things harder than to go barefoot and hungry and friendless. Those are the primitive things, to be met with one's endowment of primitive courage, elemental strength. But poise of spirit can not be wrested from elemental courage. To carry one's carefully wrapped up burden with the nonchalance of the day—nature forgot to make endowment for that; it is something then to be worked out wholly by one's self.
Persecution she could have endured like a Spartan; but it was almost unendurable to be tolerated. She was sure it would have been easier if only they had been rude to her. To be openly jeered at would fire her soul. But there was so little in their manner either to kindle enthusiasm or stir aggressiveness. She began to think that the most trying thing in the world was to have people polite to one.
The very first week was the worst of all. No one knew what to do with her; as this was her own idea, an idea no one else pretended to understand, it was expected she make some suggestions for the proper disposition of herself. But poor Ernestine did not know enough about it to make disposition of herself. She could only smile with a courageous serenity, and ask that she be shown how to help about things. And so Mr. Willard, who was in charge of Karl's laboratory, and who was Karl without Karl's genius, turned her over to Mr. Beason, his assistant. Beason would show her how to "help."
Her sense of humour helped her there. It was amusing that one who was learning to "help" should be such an encumbrance. 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. When he came back that fall, Professor Hastings was quick to sense the change.
Beason was given a place in Dr. Hubers' old laboratory, as one of Mr. Willard's assistants. That first morning, after he had been in there about an hour, he came out to Professor Hastings, who chanced to be alone.
"I don't know whether I want to stay in there or not," the boy jerked out.
He told him that Dr. Hubers would like to have him there. "You know he
liked you," he said simply.
Beason sat a long time pondering. "Well, they'll never have another man like him," he said at last, savagely, and choking a little.
After the first few weeks his attitude toward Ernestine took on a complexity an analysis of which would have greatly astounded Mr. Beason himself. He did a great deal of pondering as to whether it would really be possible for Dr. Hubers to go on with his work. It seemed to him it would not be, but a few things Mrs. Hubers had said in a very simple way had opened up a great deal of speculation as to what was possible and what was not. And the thing which made him grow so quickly into an unconscious respect for her was her assumption that the most important thing in the world was that Dr. Hubers should go on with his work. Now that looked as though she had some sense, Beason admitted. Of course the ridiculous part was thinking she was the one to bring it about, when anybody would know it would have to be some one—well, some one like himself. But then it was just like a woman to think she could do anything she took it into her head to do. Of course she would very soon find out that she couldn't, but if she proved some one else could, why then she wouldn't be so bad, after all.
Ernestine was quick to see that the way to enlist Mr. Beason was to talk to him about Karl. They were alone in the laboratory for an hour each morning, and during that period she always managed to say something about Dr. Hubers to leave Beason closer to her at the end of the hour than he had been at the beginning. There were more ways than one of winning a scientific victory, she concluded, half humorously, but with a touch of sadness. She was beginning to see that it was a battle which demanded tact and diplomacy quite as much as brains and skill. She must not only furnish enthusiasm for herself, she must inspire all associated with her if she were to gain from them what they had to give.
It was after she had one day spoken with unusual freedom of the suffering which surged beneath Karl's calm acceptance of the inevitable that Beason took his first firm stand in her behalf.
"Well now, of course," he conceded, after a long time of turning it over in his mind, "you really don't have to know much, do you? The great thing for you to learn is to tell exactly how results look. It isn't as if you had to reason and think,"—that was Beason's supreme rise to graciousness.
"Why, you have the idea exactly, Mr. Beason," she replied, admiringly, and Beason grasped that he had manifested rare insight.
"Well now,"—doubtfully—"I suppose you might practice on me. Practice is what you need. I haven't looked at any of those things over there. See if you can give me an idea of what they are."
She did her best, blundering freely, and thinking with an inward smile that she had not counted on anything so difficult as translating things to Beason.
Then he took the tube from her hand and explained how she had failed to get the significant things, and how valueless she would be unless she made the determining points stand out. He was very blunt and unflattering, but she was grateful to him from the bottom of her heart. "You see you do have to have some brains after all," he concluded with a sigh.
But after that he frequently devoted his entire hour to helping her. He had come to accept her as one of his duties, and Beason was not one to neglect his appointed task. Day by day she gained a great deal from the uncompromising Mr. Beason.
In fact, after those first uncertain weeks, she gained a great deal from every one. Gradually it began to systematise itself, and Ernestine's good sense, her earnestness, which was fairly devotion, her respect for every one's knowledge and gratitude for all help—to say nothing of her eyes and smile and voice—slowly penetrated even the conservatism of science.
Dr. Parkman did not neglect her. He came out often and spent an hour in the laboratory, bringing things for her to work with. Perhaps the doctor saw that quite as much as his help, she needed the prestige his attention would give. It was no small thing to have the great Dr. Parkman giving her his time. "Upon my soul," Mr. Willard said one day, after the doctor had been there a long time and had seemed very much in earnest, "I don't believe Parkman's the man to spend his time on a wild goose chase!"
"It doesn't seem so, does it?" said Professor Hastings ingenuously.
"Why, think what that man's time is worth!" continued Mr. Willard, growing more and more impressed.
"I don't know any one else out here who would get much of it," Professor
Hastings ventured.
"Well, she is a remarkable woman," Willard said then, insistently.
And Professor Hastings—understanding many things about human beings—said he was really coming to feel that way himself.
Ernestine was alone in the laboratory one bright morning in December. Mr. Beason had just gone away after assuring her anew that she had a very great deal to learn. Perhaps it was funny, but one was not always in the mood for humorous things. Sometimes one felt more like putting one's head down on the table and having a good cry. Her hands were not quite steady, as she went about the work Beason had patronisingly left for her to do, and out of the mists which blinded her there came a picture of her own quiet studio at home, where she had worked with her own things, things with which she was supreme. She saw herself at her easel, working in that quick, sure way of hers, no one to tell her some one else could do it a great deal better, and that it was extremely doubtful whether she could ever do anything at all. A longing to be back there doing the things she knew she could do, a longing to have again that sure sense of her work as good, swept over her then. She was accustomed to a sense of mastery; it was that made some of these things so hard. It was not easy to make over one's soul, even when it was love called one on. As she went steadily ahead with her task, working out painstakingly the correction Beason had made, she wondered whether there were as many tears back of other smiles as there had often been back of hers.
But she had been able to smile!—that was something for which to give thanks. Not even Karl himself would ever know what she had gone through, but what she had gone through was of small consequence could she but push her way on to what she was confident awaited her. There was sustaining power in that thought: her hands did not tremble now, her eyes were clear; she worked on steadily and firmly.
One thing which had unnerved her was that Karl had seemed to hate to have her go away that morning. He had followed her out into the hall. "Working so hard, liebchen?" he said—and was it not wistfully? Perhaps he had not felt like work himself and had wanted her to stay at home with him. It hurt cruelly to think Karl might not understand her willingness to be away from him so much.
His presence was always with her in the laboratory. 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.
She was constantly brought to see the difference between him and these other men; every hour she spent there brought deeper appreciation of Karl's greatness, clearer sense of it. And when their kindly patronage sometimes passed from the amusing to the insufferable, she would think how Karl, master of them all, took her so unreservedly into his mind and heart, cherishing her ideas and opinions as quite the most vital things in all the world, and sometimes that would help her to smile, and not infrequently it made her long to hurl a test-tube at the self-satisfied head of Mr. Beason. But always, in the end, it caused her to set her whole being with new persistence, more passionate stubbornness, in this determination to achieve.
It was while she was still alone that Professor Hastings came in with a note he had just received for her. "It's from Dr. Parkman," she said as she tore it open hastily.
She read a little of it and then sat down. He thought for a moment that she was going to cry.
"Dr. Parkman wants me to come down to one of his operations this afternoon,"—she looked up at him appealingly. "I—I never went to anything like that," she added, with a tremulous laugh.
"What does he say about it?" he asked, anxiously.
"Merely—merely that it will be a good cancer operation, and that I had better begin on that part of the work. He says he would be willing to do that, but he thinks it will help me to be able to make some of the observations for Dr. Hubers myself. I—well, it sometimes makes me sick to see things I don't like,"—laughing a little, and plainly unnerved.
"Oh, no," he assured her; "it will not be that bad." But he added, uneasily: "Dr. Parkman seems anxious for you to come?"
"No, not particularly anxious; he simply tells me to be there at two o'clock."
"I suppose then you'd better go," he laughed. "You won't mind much. You may to-day, but you'll become accustomed to it very soon. And it is important. Some one else might do it, but it will help your own understanding of the subject, make your equipment that much better. It's a great thing for you to have Dr. Parkman's help. And he is so pleased with your progress. He told me the other day that he thought it absolutely phenomenal the way you were getting on."
"Did he?" she asked eagerly, for she had learned to seize upon all which would buoy her up.
"We all think so," he replied earnestly. "Even Mr. Willard, who, as you may have observed, is not an enthusiast, said the other day that you were becoming really useful."
She brightened, and then laughed. She had never supposed she would be inordinately pleased to have a man like Mr. Willard say she was really useful.
"While Mr. Beason went so far as to assert that you had a general intelligence not unlike that of a man."
She laughed heartily at that. "Well, I'm afraid they won't think I have the nerve or sense of a man when I get in the operating room this afternoon," she said with a wry little face.
"Well, remember what it's all for," he said, in that simple way of his which went so far because it was so direct, "and remember that we are all believing in you."
In response to that she went back to her work with new resolution.
It was a little before two when her lagging footsteps brought her in sight of the hospital. "Why, I act as though I were going to my own execution," she told herself scornfully. Ever since receiving the note, she had been trying not to think about what was before her; but it was here now, a fact to be faced. Conquering an impulse to turn about and beat a hasty retreat, she advanced with a brisk and business-like air she was sure would deceive the most knowing of hospital attendants.
They seemed to know about her in the office, and took her up to one of the rooms adjoining the operating room. The hospital was a very large place, and there were a great many odours she did not like. She hated herself for being so silly about things! Through the open door she saw many faces: white faces, thin faces, faces drawn with pain, faces robbed of hope, faces fretful, and faces indifferent, and she caught sight of one girl whose very happy eyes looked out from a face which bore the record of much pain. A story easy to read: she had been very ill, but now she was getting well. And how calm and well-ordered a place it was— strange how they could keep so unruffled a surface over so turbulent a sea!
A nurse upstairs said that Dr. Parkman had told her to look after Mrs. Hubers. She dressed her in a white gown and talked to her pleasantly about operations in general. Ernestine was glad that this very rational being did not know how hard she was struggling to keep her teeth from chattering.
In a minute, Dr. Parkman himself came in, he, too, in white gown, ready for the operation. He looked so strange; to her nervous vision, supernatural, a being from other worlds, holding the destiny of this one in those strong, supple, incisive fingers. "I don't suppose you'll enjoy this much," he said, "but you'd better get used to them. Karl may need you to do some of this for him, and you wouldn't like it not to be able to."
"No, indeed," she replied, heartily—very heartily. "I'm so glad to come."
He looked at her in his keen, deep-seeing way. She had an uncomfortable sense that he had a distinct impulse toward a smile.
"Hughes, one of our young doctors, will point out a few things to you as we go along, and I'll go over it with you afterwards."
Then they went into the operating room.
She fought hard against the smell of ether, and managed to hold herself quite firm against it. But there was a ghastliness in the whole thing which frightened her.
The patient was lying there on the operating table, covered with sheets, looking as if dead. It was a woman who was to be operated on, and Ernestine could not overcome the idea that it was a dreadful thing for her to be there alone, surrounded by strange people who were acting in so unconcerned a manner. They did not seem to be thinking in the least of what life and death meant to this woman. One young doctor was showing something to another, and they laughed right out loud! The woman whose life was at stake was not impressing them any more than—not any more than that terrible looking little instrument which the nurse handed to Dr. Parkman.
Her dizzy vision got Dr. Parkman's face as he leaned over his patient. She had never seen such a look of concentration; he did not know anything in the world then save the thing he was doing. And the concentration was enveloped in so tremendous a coolness. But her own face must have warned the nurse who was looking after her, for she whispered, "Suppose you come over here by the window until they have started. There is no need for you to watch while they are making the incision."
So she stood there with her back to them, looking out at a little park across from the hospital. Down there, men and women were moving about quite as usual; one girl was laughing very heartily about something. Strange that people should be laughing!
"Now you might come over here," said the nurse, as pleasantly and easily as though saying, "Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?"
She tried then with all her might to take it as the rest of them were taking it. But they were operating on the stomach, and her first glimpse caused an almost uncontrollable sinking in the knees. Her ears began to pound, but by listening very hard she could hear what Dr. Hughes was saying. He was saying something about its being a very nice case, and she wondered if the woman were married, and if she had any children, and then she knew how irrelevant and unprofessional that was. Dr. Hughes was telling her to look at something, and she did look, and she saw Dr. Parkman's hands, only it seemed they were not human hands at all, but some infallible instrument, an instrument with an unconquerable soul,—and then everything was dancing before her eyes, her ears were pounding harder and harder, her knees sinking, everything swaying, some one had hold of her, and some one else, a great many miles away was saying—"Take her out!"
When she opened her eyes, she was lying on a couch in an anteroom, the nurse bending over her. The attendant smiled pleasantly, no more agitated than before. "Too bad," she said; "a good many of us take it like that at first."
But Ernestine was not to be comforted. It meant too much to her. The tears were running down her face, but suddenly she brushed them angrily aside, and sat up. "I'm going back," she said resolutely.
"Oh, but you mustn't," protested the nurse,—"not today. It really wouldn't do. And anyway they must be almost through. Dr. Parkman works so rapidly."
It was a very disheartened Ernestine who sat there then alone. "What will Dr. Parkman think of me?" she bewailed to herself. "He will never want to have anything more to do with me. He will be so disgusted that he will let me alone now. And how am I to get along without him? Oh, why am I such a fool?"
The whole day had been hard, she was tired out when she came, and this was too much. So she just lay back on the couch and cried. It was so that Dr. Parkman found her when he came briskly in at the close of the operation.
"Why, what's the matter?" he demanded. "Heard some bad news?"
"Bad—news!" she choked out; "no, I haven't heard any bad news—except that I'm an utterly worthless, weak-minded fool!"
"And where did you hear that?" he pursued.
"Oh, doctor—I'm so ashamed! But if you'll only give me another chance!
If you'll just not give me up for a little while yet!"