"Give you up! Now what kind of reviving fluid did Miss Lewis produce for you? What in the world are you talking about? Do you think you're any grand exception in not seeing your first operation through? Hum! Ask some of these nurses around here. Some of the doctors too, only they won't tell the truth. My first day in the dissecting room was a day of about thirty minutes. So you see you have plenty of company in your weak-mindedness."
She brightened then to the extent of looking willing to be comforted. "But it's humiliating, doctor, to think you're going to accomplish some big thing and then be absolutely overcome by a little incidental thing that doesn't happen to appeal to your senses. It's awful to have your senses get ahead of your soul like that," she laughed.
"Hum!"—Dr. Parkman had a "hum" all his own. "There's nothing unique in that experience, either. The spirit is willing, but the stomach is weak—to put it in exact terms. As a matter of fact, that's what life is made up of—having great purposes overthrown by minor inconveniences. Many a man can get hold of a great idea, but very few of them can stick by it through the things that make them uncomfortable. That's the reason most dreamers fail—they're not willing to come down out of the clouds and get to work at things that turn their stomachs!"
"Well, I'm not like that!" she flashed back at him.
"You? I know you're not. Some ancestor of yours gave you a big bump of stubbornness—for which you should look back to him with gratitude. Stubborn people aren't easily put out of the race. Now I'll tell you why I wanted you to come down here," he went on, more seriously. "I want you to see the thing just as it is. I want you to get the conception of it as a whole. I don't want you to become short-sighted. Some people look so much through the microscope that they forget how to look any other way. That's the difference between Karl and some of those fellows you're associated with now. That Willard and Lane and young Beason are the scientific kind, too abominably scientific to forge ahead. Don't lose sight of what you are doing. All these things you are doing now are simply a means to an end. You are to be one of the instruments employed—as you put it yourself one day—but make yourself such a highly-organised, responsive instrument that you're fairly alive with the idea yourself. See? That's where your real value will come in. You know,"—it was Dr. Parkman now who breathed the enthusiasm which draws one to a light out beyond obstacle and difficulty—"I'm beginning to see the thing more and more as actual fact. I caught the idea from the first, and then it seemed it simply had to be done because it was such a great thing to do, but I'm getting it more and more now just as a practical, matter-of-fact thing. And it isn't so far away,—not so very. You see, after all, Mrs. Hubers, you don't have to do it all. It would be stupid to set a race horse at a job that could be just as well accomplished by a plug. Any well-trained man can do certain things for Karl—but it's the touch of the artist—the things that make it real—it's making the blind man see—doing the impossible!—that's your work. Why, I can fairly see the whole thing," he went on—"Karl and you and some good assistant. He'll get both points of view then—he can't miss anything. The other fellow can give him certain technicalities you might miss—and then you'll turn in and bring it to his vision. A clear statement of facts could never make a blind man see. And then it will be your business to keep the spirit right—that's the real point, after all. Why, I can see it just as clearly as I could see that work to be done in there!"— pointing to the operating room.
It was another Ernestine now. She rose to it as the warrior to the trumpet call. He knew that the right word had been said.
"Now I don't think it will hurt you to see some of these operations," he went on, in more business like way. "Not only to help with observations for Karl, but—well, just to see it for yourself. Nothing will make this quite so real and vital to you as to see it actually breaking down human organisms, destroying life. I want you to get an eye for the thing as a whole:—see it as it is now, see the need of making it some other way. You must have more than a desire to help Karl—you must have an enthusiasm for the thing itself. You'll get so then that when you see an operation like this you won't see just some broken-down, diseased tissue that makes you feel weak-kneed, but you'll see something to get in and fight. Oh, it's a battle—so get your fighting blood up! Remember that you'll have to have enough for two. You know, what you must do for Karl is not only give him back the weapons with which to fight, but you must rouse his soldier's blood,—see what I mean?"
It was a joy to watch the response. He could see weariness and discouragement slipping from her as she spoke.
He was thinking to himself that she was superb, but aloud he said, "This is a good specimen in here. If you'll just come into the next room I'd like to go over it with you. I think I can make a few things clear."
She was radiant then, happy that he had so soon forgotten her first failure, appreciating his assumption that she was ready even now to go on with the fight.
"She will carry it through," thought Dr. Parkman, as he finally left the hospital. "And, by the good Lord, I believe that Karl Hubers is going to get back in the game and win! Nasty blow to the woman haters," he mused, as he looked in upon an office full of waiting patients,—"a very nasty blow."
CHAPTER XXVIII
WITH BROKEN SWORD
He wished that Ernestine would come home. He had let Ross go at four, and it was lonesome there alone. In spite of the fact that she was away so much, Ernestine was almost always there when he wanted her most. That was just one of the wonderful things about Ernestine. Something must have detained her to-day.
He reached over on the table for his copy of "Faust." It had become his habit to pick it up when he did not care to sit face to face with his own thoughts. It seemed to hold some word for everything in life. Its universality made it a good friend.
It was becoming easier to read with his fingers, but he had never come into the old joy in reading that there had been in the days when he could see it. And it seemed to him that there was an unnecessary clumsiness about the whole thing. He had worked out a little idea of his own for which he was going to have a model made. He believed it might help some—at any rate he had enjoyed working it out. "If a fellow feels like inventing, he simply must invent something, whether it amounts to anything or not," he had explained to Ernestine.
He did not read consecutively to-night, but just a line here and there, getting a little of wit, a little of philosophy, a dash or two of sarcasm, an occasional gleam of sentiment; he liked to take it that way at times like this; it seemed if not one thing, then surely another, must keep him from the things into which it would be so easy to slip to-night.
"Restless activity proves the man!"—several times his fingers went over that, and his responsive face told that to his mind it brought a poignant meaning, and to his heart an understanding and a sadness. He closed the book, and sat there thinking. He seemed very self-contained—quiet, poised, but the understanding eye would have known that he was thinking deep thoughts, facing hard truths.
Once at a horse race he had seen a horse which had just been lamed tied near the track. It heard the ringing of the gong, heard the music of the other horses' feet, heard, saw, smelled, sensed in every way the race that was going on. A weakness in one foot could not kill the spirit of a race horse. Tied there beside the track, watching others struggling for the race! He had wondered about that horse, then, had been sure from the quivering of its nostrils, the pawing of its foot, the passionate trembling of its whole superb body that it suffered. Thinking back to it to-night he had good reason to know that he had been right that day.
It was queer about life. In some ways so incomprehensively great and superb, and yet so easy to be overthrown. Great purposes seemed very great, but was a thing really great when it was so easily undermined? Was there not a dizzying instability about it all?
He smiled a little as he lighted his pipe. He seemed to be doing a great deal of speculating these days. What if he too were to be graduated into the bigger field of philosophy? But he shook his head, still smiling a little. If he ever entered the bigger field of philosophy he was sure he would not be carried there in other men's elevators, that he would not arrive in the jaunty, well-groomed state of Ross and his sort. No, if he ever found the bigger field of philosophy, it would be after he had scaled slippery crags and forded great rivers, after he had pushed his way through brambles and across sharp stones, after he had many times lost his footing, and had many times stopped to rest, believing he could go no farther. It was after some such quest that he might perhaps find his way up into the bigger field of philosophy. But he would not find Ross there. Ross and his fellows were down in a nice little garden that had been fixed up for them. That was it: the garden of philosophy,—a garden made by man, in which there were little artificial lakes and shrubbery set out in attractive designs. A very nice garden indeed, where the sun shone and where it was true pretty flowers would grow—but ah, one did not feel the wind upon one's face down in that sheltered garden as he believed one would feel it up there on the lonely heights to which one had climbed alone! And the garden of philosophy—he was smiling at his fancy, but it interested him—was electric lighted, while up there on the big wide sweep, one came very close to the stars.
What was philosophy, anyway? With Ross it seemed a matter of speaking the vocabulary of philosophers. It was so, he knew, with many men. And yet, as to the thing itself, it was not a mere learning a system of thought, acquiring the easy use of a peculiar kind of words. It was not fair, after all, to judge a thing by the people least fitted to understand it. Perhaps philosophy was conquering life. Perhaps it was learning to take life in good part, making up one's mind to write good text-books if it seemed certain the writing of text-books were to be one's part. Perhaps it was just holding one's place. The mere thing of holding one's place seemed a bigger thing now than it once had. He wondered. He was wondering about many things these days, and perhaps he had already scaled a crag or two, for he was able sometimes, in spite of the deep sadness of his face, to smile a little in his wonderings.
Ernestine was her sweetest self when she came in a little later. "I'm glad you were late," he said, after her affectionate protestations regarding her shortcomings, "you haven't been this nice for a long time."
She threw aside her hat and coat and took her favourite place on the low seat beside him. "Don't you remember, liebchen, how it was over there in Europe—after you'd treated me badly, you were always so nice, that I used to be quite tempted to make you be horrid?"
"I never was horrid to you," she protested.
"You're never horrid any more," he said, and, strangely enough, he said it sadly.
"Well, do you want me to be?"
"Yes! I wish you'd turn in once in a while and call me an old brute, and say you wished you'd never seen me, and didn't know how in heaven's name you were going to go on living with me!"
"Karl," she gasped—"are you going crazy?"
"No—at least I hope not. But you're just nice to me all the time, because—because I'm blind! I don't like it! I wish you'd swear at me sometimes!"
"Well, in the first place," laughing, but serious too,—it had come so heatedly, "it isn't my way to swear at any one. I never did swear at you. Why should I begin now?"
"Oh, swear was figurative language," he laughed.
"And of all things for a man to harrow up his soul about! Not liking it because his wife is never horrid to him!"
"It's not as crazy as it sounds. Are you and I a couple of plaster saints? Well, hardly! Then why don't we have any quarrels? It's just because you're sorry for me! I'll not have you being sorry for me!" he concluded, almost angrily.
But when she kissed him, he could not resist a smile. "You don't know much, do you, Karl? Don't you know that we don't quarrel about little things, because we've had so many big things on hand? We don't swear at each other, because—"
"Because we have so many other things to swear at," he finished for her.
"That's it. All our fighting emotion is being used up."
"Oh, you're such a genius for making things seem right! Now looking at it that way, I'm quite reconciled to your being nice to me. Still I want you to promise that if you ever feel like swearing, you will."
"I promise," she responded solemnly.
"Don't do things—or not do things—because you're sorry for me,
Ernestine."
"We are 'sorry for' people who are unequal to things. I'm sorry with you, not for you, Karl."
"Ernestine,"—with an affectionate little laugh—"is there anything you don't understand?"
"You might play a little for me," he said after a silence. "Play that thing that ends in a question."
"Of Liszt's?"
"Yes; the one that leaves you wondering."
At first she had resented bitterly her not being able to play more satisfyingly. If only music were her work! It seemed an almost malicious touch that fate, in taking away Karl's own work, had also shut him out from hers. Resentment at that had made it hard for her to play for him at all, at first. But she had overcome that, and had been able to make music mean much to them both. They loved especially the music which seemed to translate for them things within their own hearts.
But to-night when Ernestine had left him pondering a minute the question he said Liszt always left with him, she turned, eagerly it seemed, to lighter things. She played a little Nevin, played it with a lightness, gladsomeness, he had never felt in her touch before. He said Nevin helped him to see things, that he could see leaves moving on their branches, could see the shadows falling on the hillsides where the cattle were grazing, as he listened to Nevin. But it did not bring the pictures to-night. It opened up new fears.
"Ernestine," he said abruptly, "come here."
"Are you ever frightened, Ernestine?" he asked of her, still in that abrupt, strange manner.
"Frightened—about what?"
"Frightened about having to live all your life with me!"
For a moment she did not answer. Then, her voice quiet with the quiet that would hold back anger: "Karl, do you think you are treating me very kindly to-night? Saying these strange things I cannot understand?"
"But, Ernestine—look here! You're young—beautiful—love life. Doesn't it ever occur to you that you're not getting enough fun out of things?"
"Karl,"—and there was a quivering in the voice now—"do you think I have been thinking lately about 'getting fun out of things'?"
"No, but that's just it! You ought to be thinking about it! Ernestine—think of it! How are you going to go on forever loving a blind man?"
For answer, she knelt down beside him, her arms about his neck, her cheek against his.
"Yes—I know—in that way. But in the old way of the first days? I was so different then. How can you love me now, the way you did then? What do I do now but sit in a chair and try to be patient? Look at a man like Parkman! That's life. Ernestine"—drawing her close, a sob in his voice—"liebchen,—can you?"
She longed to tell him then; it would mean so much to tell him now,—Karl was so troubled to-night. But the time was not ripe yet; she must not spoil it all. And so instead she talked to him of how real power comprehended more than activity, how depth of understanding, great things of the soul, were more masterful than those outer forces men called "life." Ernestine seldom failed in being convincing when she felt things as she now felt this.
"You always have the right word," he said at last. "You can always get ahead of the little blue devils."
"Oh, Karl," she murmured, very low, her heart too full to resist this—"some day I can show you better what I expect of life."
"Of course," he mused, after a silence, "you have your work."
"Yes," replied Ernestine, and something in her voice puzzled him, "I have my work."
He would have been startled could he have seen her face just then. For Ernestine was so happy to-night. She had come away from the hospital with a song in her heart; a song of resolution and of triumph. She had never foreseen the future so clearly; the time had never seemed so close at hand; it had never been this real before. Just in front of her as she sat there beside Karl was the Gloria Victis, that statue for which he had cared so little at first, but which in these later days she often found him dwelling upon with his hands in lingering touch of appreciation. To her the statue had come to hold many meanings; she looked at it now with shining eyes. Karl had held so tight to the broken sword—how splendid then that he should win the fight despite it all.
And she felt she had never risen so completely to the idea of Karl's greatness as she did to-day. What was there in the afternoon had meant so much to her? Was it actually seeing things as they were, or was it the things Dr. Parkman had said to point the way anew? There was to-night a new tide of appreciation, a larger understanding, more passionate response to this thought of Karl as greatest of them all. Looking at his face as he sat there in deep thought, she saw the marks of his greatness upon it just as plainly as she saw those other marks of his suffering.—This man stop work? Such as he out of the race?
She remembered the letters they had received when the news of his blindness had gone out. She had wept over them many times, but it seemed she had never grasped their significance before. They were from men of science, from doctors, from students, and from many plain people unknown outside their small communities, who wrote to say they were sorry. They had seen about him once or twice in the magazines, they said, or perhaps their own doctor at home had told them of him, and they were so interested because their wife or husband or mother had died of cancer, and they knew what an awful thing it was. It should have been some one whom the world needed less than it needed him, these plain people said.
Her eyes filled with a rush of tears. This was her Karl—he with whom all the world grieved! She recalled the editorials in the scientific papers, telling of the things he had done, the things it had been believed by them all he would achieve. This was her Karl!—this man whose withdrawal from active participation had been told of by great scientists everywhere as a world-wide calamity. How quiet and unassuming and simple he had been about it all—he whose stepping-out had been felt around the world!
And, now, some day before long she would come to him with: "Karl, I have found a new way of fighting with broken swords; take a good grip on the sword, a good strong grip, and let us turn back to the fight!"
She turned to him with that quick passionateness he loved in her so well. "I love you," she said, and though she had said it many times in other days, it had never sounded just like that before.
CHAPTER XXIX
UNPAINTED MASTERPIECES
Georgia was to be married. It was the week before Christmas, and on the last day of the year she would become Mrs. Joseph Tank. She had told Joe that if they were to be married at all they might as well get it over with this year, and still there was no need of being married any earlier in the year than was necessary. She assured him that she married him simply because she was tired of having paper bags waved before her eyes everywhere she went, and she thought if she were once officially associated with him people would not flaunt his idiosyncrasies at her that way. And then Ernestine approved of getting married, and Ernestine's ideas were usually good. To all of which Joe responded that she certainly had a splendid head to figure it out that way. Joe said that to his mind reasons for doing things weren't very important anyhow; it was doing them that counted.
Yesterday had been her last day on the paper. She had felt queer about that thing of taking her last assignment, though it was hard to reach just the proper state, for the last story related to pork-packers, and pork-packing is not a setting favourable to sentimental regrets. It was just like the newspaper business not even to allow one a little sentimental harrowing over one's exodus from it. But the time for gentle melancholy came later on, when she was sorting her things at her desk just before leaving, and was wondering what girl would have that old desk—if they cared to risk another girl, and whether the other poor girl would slave through the years she should have been frivolous, only to have some man step in at the end and induce her to surrender the things she had gained through sacrifice and toil. As she wrote a final letter on her typewriter—she did hate letting the old machine go—Georgia did considerable philosophising about the irony of working for things only to the end of giving them up. She had waded through snowdrifts and been drenched in pouring rains, she had been frozen with the cold and prostrated with the heat, she had been blown about by Chicago wind until it was strange there was any of her left in one piece, she had had front doors—yes, and back doors too, slammed in her face, she had been the butt of the alleged wit of menials and hirelings, she had been patronised by vapid women as the poor girl who must make her living some way, she had been roasted by—but never mind—she had had a beat or two! And now she was to wind it all up by marrying Joseph Tank, who had made a great deal of money out of the manufacture of paper bags. This from her—who had always believed she would end her days in New York, or perhaps write a realistic novel exposing some mighty evil!
"Ah, well—it's all in the day's work!"—she had been saying that to herself as she covered her typewriter, and then, just as she was fearing that her exit would be a maudlin one, Joe called up to say that he did not think it would be too cold for the machine, and why not spin out somewhere on the North Shore for a good dinner? Now that had been nice of Joe, for it tided her over the good-byes.
To-day she was engaged in the pre-nuptial rite of destroying her past, indulging in the letter destroying ceremonial which seems always to attend the eve of matrimony. It was so that Ernestine found her when she stopped on her way from the university that afternoon.
Mrs. McCormick was sewing yards upon yards of lace on something when Ernestine came in. "She's right in there," she said, referring to Georgia in a sepulchral tone which might fittingly have been employed for: "The remains have been laid out in the front room."
Georgia herself, though not sepulchral, was subdued. "My, but I'm glad you've come," she said, brushing aside several hundred letters that Ernestine might have a place to sit down. "I'm having the most terrible twinge of conscience."
"Why, what about?"
Georgia pointed to the clock. "Think of my not being at the office! I ought to be hanging around now for an afternoon assignment."
"You'll get over that," Ernestine assured her, cheerfully.
"Oh, I suppose so. One gets over everything—even being alive. Meanwhile, behold me,"—with a great sweep of her arms—"surrounded by my blighting past."
"That one looks like Freddie Allen's writing," said Ernestine, giving an envelope at her foot a little shove.
"It is," said Georgia, with feeling; "yes—it is. Poor Freddie—he was such a nice boy."
"I suppose he's nice still," observed Ernestine.
"Oh, I suppose so. I'm sure I don't know. He's way back there in the dim past."
"Well, do you want him up here in the sunny present?" Ernestine inquired, much entertained.
"No, oh no—if I had wanted him I would have had him," with which reversion to the normal Georgia they laughed understandingly.
She shook herself free of the dust of her past then, piled up the pillows and settled herself on the bed. "But we had some good times back there in the dim past, didn't we, Ernestine?"
"Some of them were good times," replied Ernestine, a little soberly.
"Of course our college life would have been happier if we had been able to pull down that sophomore flag. I've always thought Jack Stewart might have done a little better with that. But as long as we kept Jim Jones away from every party in his junior year, perhaps we should be satisfied." Georgia sighed heavily. "And it is a joy to think back to your telling the dean he didn't have the courage of his convictions when he let them fire Stone for heresy. Oh there are a good many things to be thankful for. You always had lots of nerve when it came to a show-down. You looked so lady-like, and yet you really weren't at all."
"Well, I don't know whether I like that or not."
"I mean not so lady-like that it interfered with anything you wanted to do. You'd speak up in the pleasantest, most agreeable voice and say the most dreadful things. I'll never forget the day you told "Prof" Moore in class that you had always had a peculiar aversion to the Pilgrim Fathers."
"I always did," Ernestine said fervently.
"Then one day when we had spent an hour trying to tell what Shakespeare meant by some line you said you thought quite likely he put it in just because there had to be another line. And "Prof" Jennings conditioned you on the whole year's work—remember?"
"I have reason to," laughed Ernestine.
"The funny part of it was that you never seemed to think you were saying anything startling. Like the day you contended in ethics that you thought frequently it was better to be pleasant than truthful. Kitty Janeway was so shocked at that. I wonder if Kitty Janeway is any happier with her second husband than she was with her first?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Ernestine in a rather far-away voice.
"I'll send all the girls cards," said Georgia, and again she sighed heavily. "The cards are going to look very nice," she added, a little more hopefully.
"Ernestine?"—after a little pause.
"Yes?"
"You and I are hanging right over the ragged edge of thirty."
"Horrors!—Georgia; is this your idea of furnishing pleasant entertainment for a guest?"
"But I was just thinking how many things have happened to us since we were twenty-two."
"I was thinking of that a minute ago myself."
"To you, especially. Now, I never supposed when we were in college that you were going to marry Karl Hubers."
"No," laughed Ernestine, "neither did I."
"I mean I never associated you two with one another. And now I can't think of you separately. And then your father and mother, and then Karl losing—heavens, but I'm cheerful! Now, isn't it just like me," she demanded, angrily, "to act like a fool just because I'm going to be married? If I keep on I'll find myself weeping because Socrates is dead. And I never do weep, either. I tell you that Joe Tank's a terrible man," she laughed, brushing away some tears.
"I don't think you're going to have much to weep about, Georgia. I know you're going to be happy."
"Well, if I'm not it won't be Joe's fault. Unless it is his fault on account of its not being his fault. What I mean is that good-natured people are sometimes aggravating."
"Oh he'll not always be good-natured," she reassured her.
Ernestine said then that she must go, and was standing at the door when Georgia burst forth: "Oh Ernestine—I'm so glad I remembered. You really must go down to the Art Institute and see those pictures by that Norwegian artist—I shouldn't dream of pronouncing his name. They go away this week, and it would be awful for you to miss them."
A wistfulness, fairly pain, revealed itself for an instant in Ernestine's face. And then, as if coming into consciousness of the look: "I know," she said briefly. "I read about them. I've been—thinking about it. I did see some of them in Europe, but of course I should love to see them again."
"I wish you would, my dear; perhaps"—a little fearfully—"they'd make you feel like getting to work yourself. Ernestine,"—gathering courage—"it's awful for you to let your work go this way. Every one says so. I was talking to Ryan the other day—you know who he is? He asked all about you, and if you were doing anything now, and when I told him I was afraid not he fairly flew into a rage, said that was just the way—the people who might be great didn't seem to have sense enough to care to be."
That brought the quick colour. "Perhaps Mr. Ryan does not understand everything in life," she said, coolly.
"Now, Ernestine—he was lovely about you. Would he have shown any feeling at all if he didn't care a great deal for your work? Does any one fly into a rage at my not painting? He said you were one American woman who was an artist instead of 'a woman who paints.' It seems he saw the Salon picture. Oh, he said beautiful things about you."
Ernestine did not answer. She was standing there very quietly, her hand on the knob. "Now, Ernestine," Georgia went on, after the manner of one bound to have it out, "I've tried all winter to cultivate repression. I don't know what it is you are trying to do over there in the laboratory. You asked me to do two things—not to ask you about it, and not to mention it to Karl. I haven't done either, but I want to tell you right now if you have any idea of giving up your own work I think it's time for your friends to inquire into your mental workings! The very fact you don't want Karl to know about it shows you know very well he won't think it's right. Anything that relates to his work can be done by people who do that kind of work a great deal better than you can. Really, Ernestine, the thing is positively fanatical. And anyway,"—this with the air of delivering the overpowering—"I don't think it is at all nice the way you are taking other men into your confidence and deceiving Karl."
She met that with a little laugh. "Dear me—what laudable sentiment. I've always heard there was no one half so proper as the girl about to be married. Never mind, Georgia,"—a little more seriously, a little as if it would not be hard to cry—"Karl will forgive me—some day."
"But, Ernestine, I want you to work! Can't you see how awful it is for you not to—express yourself?"
"I am going to express myself," she answered, lightly enough, but after she had gone Georgia wondered just what she had meant by that.
She decided, when she came out of the apartment building, that she would take a little walk. It was just cold enough to be exhilarating, and she felt the need of something bracing. She was wishing as she walked along very fast, responding to the keen, good air, that Karl were with her now. Karl did not exercise enough, and when he did yield to her supplications and go for a walk with her he did not seem to enjoy it as she wished he might. "After a while, liebchen," he would say. "I'll be more accustomed to things after a while. And meanwhile there's plenty of fresh air right here in our back yard." "But it isn't just getting the fresh air," she would protest, "it's enjoying it while you're getting it."—"Wait till spring comes," he would sometimes answer. "I'm going to get out more then."
When she saw she was near one of the stations of the Illinois Central she stopped, a little confused. Could it be she had meant all the time to come here? Looking to the south, she saw that at the next station, not three blocks away, the train which would take her to the city in ten minutes was just arriving. The Art Institute was only two blocks from the Van Buren Street station;—those facts associated themselves quickly in her mind. She looked at her watch: not quite three. Karl had said he would be busy with Mr. Ross until five. She stood there in hesitation. She had seen no pictures since—oh it was too long ago to remember. What harm could it do her? And anyway—this with something of the uprising of the truant child—it was Christmas time! Every one else was taking a vacation, why—but here it was all swept into the imperative consciousness that she had no time to lose, and she was at the ticket window before she was quite sure that she had made up her mind.
It was all so strange then; exhilaration mounted high for a little while, but there followed a very tense excitement. She tried to laugh at herself, contend that she was coming for enjoyment, relaxation, that it was absurd to go to pieces this way; but things long suppressed called for their own, and the man to whom she gave her admission fee wondered for a long time after she had passed him just what it was about her seemed so strange.
How good it was! How good to be back among her own kind of things! In the laboratory every one knew more than she did; there she was repressed, humble even, gratefully accepting the crumbs of knowledge falling from their tables. It was good to feel for a little while that she was some place where she knew a great deal about things. She wished Mr. Willard or Mr. Beason would happen along that she might give them some insight into the colossalness of their ignorance.
She turned down the corridor leading to the room where she would find the special exhibit. She stopped before many of the pictures—reverting to that joy of the spirit in dominance. There was exultation, almost rapture, in this quick, firm rush of understanding; deep joy in just knowing the good from the bad.
But when she reached the pictures she had come to see it was different. She walked to the middle of the room, and in one slow sweep of glance, punctuated with long pauses, took them in. And she responded to them with a warm, glad rush of tears.
They fell upon her artist's soul as the very lovely rain upon the thirsty meadow. They drew her to them as the mother the homesick child, and like the homesick child, back at last after weary days, she knew only that she had come home. In this first overflowing moment there was no thought of colour—brush work—this or that triumphant audacity; it was a coming to her own, a home-coming of the spirit—the heart's passionate thankfulness, the heart's response.
A few minutes of reverent pause, a high delight, deep response, and then—the inevitable. Clear as a bell upon the midnight air was that call from soul to kindred soul. Assurance and longing and demand possessed her beyond all power to stay. The work she stood before now called to her as naturally and inevitably as the bird to its mate, as undeniably as the sea to the river, as potently as spring calls upon earth for its own, as autumn calls to summer for harvest time.
It frightened her. It seemed something within her over which she had no control. It surged through her as far beyond all reason as the tides of the sea are beyond the hand of man. It was procreative power demanding fulfillment as the child ready for birth demands that it be born.
She was conscious of some one's having come into the room. That her face might not be seen she turned away and sat down before one of the pictures. She was quivering so passionately that it seemed almost impossible to hold herself within command.
The girl who had come in was moving restlessly from one picture to another; at last she walked over and sat down on the seat by Ernestine.
"I think I like this one best," she said, abruptly, nodding to the picture before them.
Ernestine nodded in reply. She was not sure what would happen were she to speak. The girl she supposed to be one of the students there.
"I would give anything in the world—just anything in the world—if I could do it too!"
At the passion of that she turned quickly and looked at the girl. In spite of the real feeling of her tone a fretful look was predominant in her face.
"Do you—work hard?" she asked, merely to relieve the pause.
"Work—yes; but mere work won't do it. I can't do anything like this,"—it was in bitterness she said it.
"Very few can, you know," murmured Ernestine.
"Yes—but I want to! I don't care anything about life—I don't care anything about anything—if I can't paint!"
It struck her immediately as so entirely wrong. She looked at the girl, and then again at the pictures. All the great things they conveyed were passing her by. She missed the essence of it. The greatness of the work merely moved her to anger because she was not great herself. It was an attitude to close the soul.
"But you should care for life," she said, in her very gentle way. "Do the best you can with your own work, but work like this should, above everything else, make you care for life."
The girl moved impatiently. "You don't understand. I guess you are not an artist," and she rose and went away.
Ernestine smiled a trifle, but the strange little interview had opened up a long vista. The girl represented, in extreme measure, but fundamentally, the professional attitude. Most artists saw work in relation to themselves. Pictures were either better or worse than they could do. They came to the great things like these, seeking something, usually some mechanical device, to take away to their own work. She could see so plainly now the shallowness of that.
Her own mood had changed,—broken. Perhaps it was the consciousness that she too had been seeing it in relation to herself, or it may have been but natural reaction. The big uprising was dying down; the heat of the passion had passed; it was all different now, and in the wake of her brimming moment there came the calm that follows storm, the sadness of spirit which attends the re-enthronement of reason, but also the understanding, far-seeingness, which is the aftermath of great passion like that.
There had come to her, as she sat there beside the girl, a throbbing determination to do both things. The thought had come before, but always to be banished. It came now with new insistence just because anything else seemed so impossible. There had never come, even to the outermost edge of her consciousness, the thought of giving up the work she was going to do for Karl. Her hardest hour had never even suggested the possibility of surrender. Her love had seen its way; her life had been consecrated. But now, when it seemed no longer within her power to deny the work for which she had been ordained, it seemed that to fulfill both things was the one thing possible. But in this after-moment of unblurred understanding she saw she could do both things only by taking from the things she gave to Karl. It would mean giving her soul to the one, and what she had left to the other. And she knew that she could never do what she meant to do for Karl unless she gave everything within herself to that cause. The chief aim of her struggle in the laboratory had not been to acquire knowledge and usefulness—that she could do, she knew; her real aim had been to give to Karl's work the things she had always given to her own. With a divided soul she could do no more for him than any other assistant. She was seeking to give him herself. Oh no—it was simple enough; she had no thought of offering Karl an empty vessel.
Her mind saw it all, her will never wavered, but the bruised, conquered spirit quivered under the pain. A long time she sat there, and as the hour went by a strange thing happened. The pictures were healing the spirit which they had torn. As they had first moved her to the frenzy for achievement, had then left her with the pain of relinquishment, they were bringing her now something of the balm of peace. How big they were!—first passion, then pain, then understanding, now strength.
Ernestine came in that hour to see a great truth. It was something she worked out for herself, something taught her by life and her own heart, and that is why it reached her soul as it could never have done had she but read it in books. She came to see that the greatest thing in life was to be in harmony with the soul of the world. She came into the understanding that to do that, one need not of necessity paint great pictures, one need not stand for any specific achievement, one need only so work out one's life that one made for harmony and not for discord. The greatest thing pictures could do was to draw men into this world harmony. These pictures were great because they reached the soul, and she came to see, and this is what few do see, that the soul which is reached is not less great than the soul which has spoken. She too could have been one of the souls to speak; she accepted that in the simplicity with which we receive the indisputable, but it was good to think that she would not have failed utterly in fulfilling herself, if at the end, no matter through what, she made for harmony, and not for discord.
She grew so quiet then: the quiet of deep understanding. A long time she sat before a picture of light out beyond some trees. Oh what a world—with the light coming through the trees like that, and men to see it, and make it seen! She wished Karl might see these pictures; she looked at them with a new intentness,—she would tell Karl all about them; he would be so glad she had come.
She rose to go. Once more she looked around at the pictures, and to her eyes there came a dimness, and to her spirit a deep and tender yearning. There would be joy in having done such work as this. But there were other things! To work out one's life as bravely and well as one knew how, to do what seemed best, to be faithful and unfailing to those who were nearest one, to be willing to lay down one's life for one's love,—perhaps when the end of the world was reached, and all things translated in terms of universal things, to have done that would itself mean the painting of a masterpiece. Perhaps the God of things as they are would see the unpainted pictures.
CHAPTER XXX
EYES FOR TWO
"This day smells as though it had been made in the country," Karl said, leaning from the dining room window which Ernestine had thrown wide open as she rose from the breakfast table.
"Yes, and looks that way," she responded, leaning out herself, and taking a long draught of the spring.
"Let's take a walk," he said abruptly.
"Except when you asked me to marry you—you never proposed a more delightful thing," she responded with gayer laugh than he had heard for a long time.
"Suppose we walk down through the park and take a look at the lake," he suggested.
"I call that a genuine inspiration!"—losing no time in getting Karl's things and her own.
Nothing could have pleased her more than this. It seemed beginning the spring right.
"I can fancy we are in Europe," he said, after they had gone a little way, and she laughed understandingly;—this seemed closer to the spirit of the old days than they had come for a long time.
Her guiding hand was on his arm, but more as if she liked to have it there, than as though necessary. "Your little finger could pilot me through Hades" he said, lovingly, gratefully, as a light touch told him of a step to go down, and again she laughed; it was very easy to laugh this morning.
The winter, full of hard things for them both, had gone now, and spring, as is spring's way, held promise. In the laboratory they no longer treated Ernestine with mere courteous interest. That day in December when she went down to Dr. Parkman's operation had marked a change. Since then there had been a light ahead, a light which shed its rays down the path she must go.
What did it matter if she were a little stupid about this or that, if Mr. Beason was unconsciously rude or Mr. Willard consciously polite? For she knew now—and did anything matter save the final things? With her own feeling of its not mattering their attitude had seemed to change; she became more as one with them—she was quick to get that difference. "You're arriving on the high speed," Dr. Parkman had assured her when he visited the laboratory a few days before.
So she knew why she was happy, for added to all that was it not a glorious and propitious thing that Karl felt like taking a walk? Did it not argue a new interest in life—a new determination not to be shut off from it? And Karl—why did he too seem to feel that the spring held new and better things? Was it just the call of spring, or did Karl sense the good things ahead? Could it be that her soul, unable to contain itself longer, had whispered to his that new days were coming?
"Why, even a fellow on his way to the penitentiary for life would have to get some enjoyment out of this morning," he said, after they had stood still for a minute to listen to the song of a bird, and had caught the sweetness of a flowering tree.
"And oh, Karl," she laughed, joyously, "you're not on your way to the penitentiary for life."
"No," he said, and he seemed to be speaking to something within himself rather than to her,—"I'm not!"
They had reached Jackson Park, and sat down for a little rest before they should wend their way on to the lake. "Oh, Ernestine," he said, taking it in in long breaths, feeling the dew upon his face, and hearing the murmur of many living things,—"tell me about it, dear. I want to see it too!"
"Karl—every tree looks as though it were just as glad as we are! Can't you feel that the trees feel just as we do about things? The leaves haven't all come out yet, some of them are holding themselves within themselves in a coy little way they have—although intending all the time to come out just as fast as ever they can. And it's that glorious, unspoiled green—the kind nature uses to make painters feel foolish. Oh, nature's having much fun with the painters this morning. Right over there,"—pointing with his finger—"is such a beautiful tree. I like it because all of its branches did not go in the way they were expected to go. Several of them were very perverse children, who mother trunk thought at one time were going to ruin her life, but you know lives aren't so easily ruined after all. 'Now you go right up there at an angle of twenty-two degrees,' she said to her eldest child. 'Not at all,' said the firstborn, 'I intend to lean right over here at whatsoever angle will best express my individuality.' And though the mother grieved for a long time she knows now—Karl—how foolish we are! But listen. You hear that bird who is trying to get all of his soul into his throat at once? He's 'way up there on the top branch, higher than everything else, and so pleased and proud that he is, and he's singing to a little blue cloud straight above him, and I tell you I never saw such blue—such blue within blue. Its outside dress is a very filmy blue, but that's made over an under dress of deeper blue, and there's just a little part in it where you can see right into the heart, and that's a blue so deep and rich it makes you want to cry. And oh, Karl—the heart itself has opened a little now, and you can get a suggestion, just a very indefinite suggestion—but then all inner things are indefinite—that inside the heart of the cloud is its soul, and you are permitted one fleeting glimpse to tell you that the soul of the cloud is such a blue as never was dreamed of on land or on sea."
"I can see that cloud," he said,—"and the bird looking up at it, and the tree whose eldest child was so perverse and so—individual."
"And, Karl," she went on, in joyous eagerness, "can't you see how the earth heaved a sigh right here a couple of hundred centuries ago—now don't tell me the park commissioners made them!—and that when it settled back from its sigh it never was quite the same again? It was a sigh of content—for the little slopes are so gentle. Gentle little hills are sighs of content, and bigger ones are determinations, and mountains—what are mountains, Karl?"
"Mountains are revolutionary instincts," he said, smiling at her fancifulness—Ernestine was always fanciful when she was happy.
"Yes, that's it. Sometimes I like the stormy upheavals which change the whole face of the earth, but this morning it's nice to have just the little sighs of content. And, dear—now turn around and look this way. You can't really see the lake at all—but you can tell by looking down that way that it is there."
"How can you tell, liebchen?" he asked, just to hear her talk.
"Oh, I don't know how you can. It's not scientific knowledge—it's—the other kind. The trees know that the lake is there."
"Let's walk down to the lake," he said. "I want to feel it on my face.
And oh, liebchen—it's good to have you tell about things like this."
As they walked she told him of all she saw: the people they met, and what she was sure the people were thinking about. Once she laughed aloud, and when he asked what she was laughing at, she said, "Oh, that chap we just passed was amusing. His eyes were saying—'My allowance is all gone and I haven't a red sou—but isn't it a bully day?'"
"There's no reason why I should be shut out from the world, Ernestine," he said vigorously, "when you have eyes for two."
"Why, that's just what I think!" she said, quickly, her voice low, and her heart beating fast.
The shadows upon the grass, the nursemaids and the babies, the boys and girls playing tennis, or just strolling around happy to be alive—she could make Karl see them all. And as they came in sight of the lake she began telling him how it looked in the distance, how it seemed at first just a cloud dropped down from the sky, but how, upon coming nearer, it was not the stuff that clouds are made of, but a live thing, a great live thing pulsing with joy in the morning sunshine. She told him how some of it was blue and some of it was green, while some of it was blue wedded to green, and some of it too elusive to have anything to do with the spectrum. "And, dearie—it is flirting with the sunlight—flirting shamefully; I'm almost ashamed for the lake, only it's so happy in its flirtation that perhaps it is not bothered with moral consciousness. But it seems to want the sunlight to catch it, and then it seems to want to get away, and sometimes a sunbeam gets a little wave that stayed too long and kisses it right here in open day—and isn't it awful—but isn't it nice?"
In so many ways she told how the lake seemed to her—how it seemed to her eyes and how it seemed to her heart and how it seemed to her soul, how it looked, what it said, what it meant; what the clouds thought of it, and what the sunlight thought of it, what the wind thought of it, what the dear babies on the shore thought of it, and what it thought of itself. She could not have talked that way to any one else, but it was so easy for her heart to talk to Karl's heart. One pair of eyes could do just as well as two when hearts were tuned like this!
And then, when she did not feel like talking any more, they stood there and learned many things from the voice of the lake itself. "Ernestine," he said, when they turned from it at last, "it seems to me I never saw Lake Michigan quite so well before."
CHAPTER XXXI
SCIENCE AND SUPER-SCIENCE
"Insubordinate children who play off from school in the morning must work in the afternoon," Karl said at luncheon, and they went to their work that afternoon with freshened spirit.
When the McCormicks gave up their flat at Christmas time, Beason had come to live with the Hubers. Ernestine prided herself upon some cleverness in having rented two rooms without Karl's suspecting it was a matter of renting the rooms. When he engaged Ross as his secretary in the fall she said it would be more convenient for them all for Mr. Ross to have his room there. They had an extra room, so why not? She did not put it the other way—that she felt the house more expensive than they should have now. Of course Karl would make money in his books—that had been settled in advance, but things had changed for them, and Ernestine felt the need of caution. Then as to Beason, she said there was that little room he could have, and it would do the boy good to be there. "You like John," she said to Karl, "and as he has not yet been graduated into philosophy, he may be more companionable than Mr. Ross." And Karl said by all means to have Beason if it wouldn't bother her to have him around.
She was glad of that for more reasons than a reduced rent; Beason had become a great help to Ernestine. After he came there to live they fitted up some things for her in her studio, and she managed to get in a number of extra hours when Karl thought she was busy with her pictures.
In her glow of spirit this afternoon—that walk in the park had meant so much as holding promise for the future—Ernestine was even willing to admit, looking back upon it, that the winter had not been nearly so bad as one would suppose. Mr. Beason and Mr. Ross were both, in their differing ways, alert and interesting, and there had been some good wrangles around the evening fire. Other people had found them out, and they had drawn to them an interesting group of friends. So the days had flowed steadily on, a brave struggle to meet life in good part, keep that good-fellowship of the spirit.
One of the hardest things of all had been deceiving Karl. Her reason justified it, but it hurt her heart. They had been able to do it, however, better than she would have believed possible. Mr. Ross was with him most of the time when she was not, and had frequently been forced to intercept some caller who was close to an innocent remark about Mrs. Hubers being over at the university. Several times Karl had caught the odour of the laboratory about her, and she had been forced to explain it as the odour of the studio; and more than once, in the midst of a discussion, her interest had beguiled her into some surprisingly intelligent remark, and she had been obliged to invent laughing reasons for knowing anything about it. It hurt her deeply to take advantage of Karl's blindness in keeping things from him, even though the motive was all love for Karl, and determination to help. She would be so glad when all that was over, and she thought as she worked along very hard that afternoon that perhaps it would not be many days now until Karl should know.
That would be for Dr. Parkman to say; so many vital things seemed left to Dr. Parkman. "Did you ever think," she said, turning to Mr. Beason, who was busy at the table beside her, "what the doctor really counts for in this world?"
"Yes—in a way," said Beason, adjusting his microscope, "but then I never was sick much."
"Well, I didn't mean just taking one's pulse," she laughed. "It seems to me they mean more than prescriptions. For one thing, I think it's rather amusing the way they all practice Christian Science."
"Why—what do you mean?" he demanded, aroused now, and shocked.
"Oh, I've come to the conclusion that a modern, first-class doctor is a Christian Scientist who preserves his sanity"—she paused, laughing a little at Beason's bewildered face, and at the thought of how little her formula would be appreciated in either camp. "I've noticed it down at Dr. Parkman's office," she went on. "It's quite a study to listen to him at the telephone. He will wrangle around all sorts of corners to get patients to admit something is in better shape than it was yesterday, and though they called up to say they were worse, they end in admitting they are much better. He just forces them into saying something is better, and then he says, triumphantly, 'Oh—that's fine!'—and the patient rings off immensely cheered up."
"That's a kind of trickery, though," said Beason.
"Pretty good kind of trickery, if it helps people get well."
"Well I shouldn't care to be a practicing physician," Beason declared, "just for that reason. That sort of business would be very distasteful to me."
Ernestine was about to say something, and then relegated it to the things better left unsaid; but she permitted herself a wise little smile.
"I don't think it's such an awfully high grade of work," he went on. "In a way it is—of course. But there's so much repetition and routine; so much that doesn't count scientifically at all—doesn't count for anything but the patient."
"But what is science for?" she demanded, aggravated now. "Has medical science any value save in its relation to human beings?"
"Oh yes, I know—in the end," he admitted vaguely.
"All this laboratory work is simply to throw more power into the hands of the general practitioner. It's to give him more light. It's just because his work is so important that this work has any reason for being. Dr. Hubers saw it that way," she concluded, with the air of delivering the unanswerable.
"But even that wasn't just what I meant," she went on, after they had worked silently for a few minutes. "What I was thinking about was the superdoctor."
Beason simply stared.
"No, not entirely crazy," she laughed. "For instance: what can a man do for nervous indigestion without infusing a little hope? Think of what doctors know—not only about people's bodies, but about their lives. Cause and effect overlap—don't they? Half the time a run down body means a broken spirit, or a twisted life. How can you set part of a thing right when the whole of it's wrong? How can a doctor be just a doctor—if he's a good one?"
But nothing "super" could be expected of Beason. His very blank face recalled her to the absurdity of getting out of focus with one's audience.
She herself felt it strongly. It seemed to her that Dr. Parkman's real gift was his endowment in intuition. When all was going well she heard nothing from him; but let things begin to drag, and the doctor appeared, rich in resources. He seemed to have in reserve a wide variety of stimulants.
He looked in upon them often. Whenever in their neighbourhood he stopped, and though frequently he could not so much as take time to sit down, the day always went a little better for his coming. "If the end of the world were upon us, Dr. Parkman could avert the calamity for a day or two—couldn't he, Karl?" Ernestine had laughed after one of his visits.
This proved to be one of the days of his stopping in, and he arrived just as Karl was dictating a few final sentences to Mr. Ross. While they were finishing—he said he was not in a hurry today—he took a keen look at Karl's face. His colour was not good—the doctor thought; in fact several things were not to his liking. "Too many hard times with himself," he summed it up.—"Droopy. Needs a bracer. Needs to get back in the harness—that's the only medicine for him."
He had been thinking about that very seriously of late. Ernestine was at least in position now to show the possibilities of the situation, and working with Karl would do more for her in a month than working along this way would do in five. Why not? No matter how long they waited it was going to be hard at first. The deep lines in Karl's face furnished the strongest argument against further waiting.
"What have we here?" he asked, picking up one of the embossed books lying open on the table near Karl.
"I presume that's my Bible," Karl replied.
"Has it come to this?" the doctor asked dryly.
"Didn't we ever tell you the story of my Bible?"
"No. You never did. I never suspected you had one."
"Oh yes; the Bible was the first book of this sort I had. It was sent to me by some home missionary society, some woman's organization—"
"Fools!" broke in Parkman.
"They saw in the paper about my eyes and so they said to themselves—'Now here is a good chance to convert one of those ungodly scientists.' So they sent the Bible along with a nice little note saying that now I would have time to read it, and perhaps all of this was the hand of God leading me—you can construct the rest. Well." he paused with a laugh—"Ernestine was mad."
"I should hope so!" growled Parkman.
"She was so divinely angry that in having fun with her I overlooked being enraged myself. Oh, if I could only give you any idea of how incensed she was! I think she intended notifying the Chicago police. Really I don't know to what lengths she would have gone had it not been for my restraining influence. And then she constructed a letter. It was a masterpiece—I can tell you that. She compared me to them—greatly to their disadvantage. She spoke of the various kinds of religious manifestation—again greatly to their disadvantage."
"Did she send it?" laughed the doctor.
"No. I persuaded her that well-intentioned people should receive the same kindly tolerance we extend to the mentally defective. The writing of the letter in itself half way contented her—it was such a splendid expression of her emotions. Poor old girl," he added musingly, "she was feeling pretty sore about things just then."
"But the sequel is the queer part," he went on. "I began to read their Bible, and I like it. It's part of the irony of fate that I haven't gotten from it the things they intended I should; but I tell you part of this Old Testament is immense reading. You know, Parkman, I suppose we're prejudiced ourselves. We don't see the Bible as it is itself. We see it in relation to a lot of people who surround it. And because we don't care for some of them we think we shouldn't care for it. Whereas the thing in itself," he concluded cheerfully, "is just what we'd like."
"And how go your own books?" Dr. Parkman asked him.
Karl shrugged one shoulder in a nervous little way he had acquired. "Oh—so, so. Pretty fair, I guess." His face settled into a gloom then, but almost immediately he roused himself from it to say, in a voice more cheerful than spontaneous: "They'll be finished in a couple of weeks. I'm both glad and sorry. Don't know just what I'll go at then."
Again he seemed to settle into the gloom which the doctor could see was ever there waiting to receive him. But again he roused himself almost immediately. Was it this way with the man all the time? A continuous fight against surrendering? "But I'm mighty thankful I've had the books," he said. "They've pulled me through the winter, and they've enabled me to make a living. Lord, but a man would hate not to make a living!" he concluded, straightening up a trifle, more like the Karl of old.
The sheer pathos of it had never come home to the doctor as it did with that. A man who should have stood upon the very mountain peaks of fame now proudly claiming that he was able to make a living! But if it brought home the pathos of the situation it also brought new sense of the manhood of Karl Hubers. It was great—Parkman told himself—great! A man who felt within himself all the forces which make for greatness could force himself into the place of the average man, and thank the Lord that he was able to make a living!
"Here's a little scheme I've worked out," Karl said, and opening one of the drawers of the library table, pulled out the model for the idea he had worked out for reading and writing in Braille.
It was the first Dr. Parkman had heard of it; he wanted to know all about it, and Karl explained how it had seemed to him as soon as he learned how the blind read and wrote that the thing could be simplified and vastly improved. So he had worked this out; he explained its points of difference, and wanted to know what Parkman thought of it.
"Why, man," exclaimed the doctor, "it strikes me you've revolutionized the whole business. But—why, Karl—nobody ever thought of this before?"
"The usual speech," laughed Karl.
"But in this case it seems so confoundedly true."
"Well I believe it will help some, and I'll be glad of that," he added simply. "Oh I have some more schemes. If I've got to be blind I'm going to make blindness a better business."
"Our old friend the devil didn't do so well then after all," said Dr. Parkman quietly. "He closed up one channel, but he didn't figure on your burrowing another."
Karl laughed. "Oh this won't worry him much; it came so easily I can't think it amounts to a great deal. But as long as I was used to scheming things out it—amused me, exercised a few cells that were in pretty bad need of a job. And I have other ideas," he repeated.
Parkman asked what Karl intended to do with his model, offering some suggestions. The doctor was more than interested and pleased; he was deeply stirred. "Why, confound the fellow," he was saying to himself,—"they can't knock him out! They knock him down in one place, and he bobs up in another!" The ideas of this brain were as difficult to suppress as certain other things in nature. Dam up one place—they find another.
They smoked their cigars and talked intermittently then; they were close enough together to be silent when they chose. And all the while the undercurrent of Dr. Parkman's thought flowed steadily on.
He was thinking that after all there were better things to do with fate than damn it. If ever a man would seem justified in spending his soul in the damning of fate, that man, it seemed to him, was the friend beside him. And while he had done some of it, perhaps a great deal more than any one knew, it had not been his master-passion. His master-passion had been to press on—press on to be knew not what—there was the glory of it! It was easy enough to work toward a goal sighted ahead; but it took a Karl Hubers to work on through the darkness.
And ah, there was a good time coming! The doctor's sombre face relaxed to a smile. His own life seemed almost worth living now just because he had been able to take a hand—yes, and play a few good cards—in this little game. Those things Karl had shown him today made it seem there was all the finer joy in bringing him back to the things which were his own. He had been thrust from out the gates, but he had not sat whimpering outside the wall. He had gone on and sought to find a place in that outer world in which he found himself. And now he should come back to his own through gates of glory.
Karl asked him about Ernestine then. How was she looking; was she thin—pale? Her face felt pale to him, he said. He had urged her to work, because he knew she would be happier so, but Parkman must see to it she did not overwork. Had he seen the picture on which she was working so hard? He asked that wistfully; and the doctor's face was soft, and a gentleness crept into his voice as he said he believed he was to see the great picture very soon now. And then, after a silence, Karl said, softly, very tenderly—"Bless her gamey little heart!"