The Glory of the Conquered Part 10

The doctor was leaning forward in his chair. He was beginning to grow fearful of the emphasis put upon this thing which could make no vital difference.

Karl stopped as though he had reached the end of his story. But the silence was wearing on him. His eyes had a hunted look.

"Why, you can see for yourself," he said--and this was the note of appeal--"that that could not make any vital difference."

Dr. Parkman was looking at him narrowly. His own breath was coming hard.

He saw at last that he would have to ask.

"The--other?" he said, succeeding fairly well in gaining a tone of indifference.

"Heavens--how you fellows nag for details! How you drag at a man! Well, the other--if you're so anxious to know"--the doctor's heart sank before the defiance of that--"the other is"--he looked all about him as one hunted, desperate, and then snapped it out and turned away, and instantly the room grew frightfully still.

It struck Dr. Parkman like a blow from which one must have time to recover. Steeled though he was to the hearing of tragic facts, he was helpless for the minute before this. And then, refusing to let it close in upon him, it was he who turned recklessly a.s.sertive, defiantly insistent.

"Any fool would know it's not that," he said, his gruff voice touched with bravado.

There was one of those strange changes then. Karl turned and faced him.

"How do you know?" he asked, with a calm not to be thrust aside. "How do you know it's not that? You can't be sure," he pursued, and there was fairly cunning in forcing his friend upon it, cutting off all escape, "but there are just fifty chances out of a hundred that it _is_ that. And if it is," with a cold, impersonal sort of smile--"would you give very much for my chances of sight?"

"You're talking like a fool!"--but beads of perspiration were on the doctor's forehead. And then, the professional man getting himself in hand: "You're overworked, Karl. You're nervous. Why I can fix this up for you. I'll just--" but before that steady, understanding gaze he could not go on.

"Not on me, Parkman--," slowly and very quietly--"not on me. I know the ropes. Don't try those little tricks on me. I don't need professional coddling, and I don't need professional lies. You see I happen to know just a little about the action of germs. We'll do the usual things, of course--that's mere scientific decency, but if this thing has really gotten in its work--oh I've studied these things a little too long, old man, I've watched them too many times, to be able to fool myself now."

"Well you will at least admit," said Parkman--brusque because he was afraid to let himself be anything else--"that there are fifty chances out of a hundred in your favour?"

Karl nodded; he had leaned back in his chair; he seemed terribly tired.

"Come now, old chap--it isn't like you to surrender before the battle.

We'll prepare to meet the foe--though I give you my word of honour I don't expect the enemy to show up. This isn't in the cards. I _know_ it."

Karl roused a little. There was a bracing note in that vehemence. "Well, don't ask me to do any crossing of a bridge before I come to it. I think our friend down stairs is thinking of hospitals and nurses and all kinds of quirks that would drive me crazy. Tell him I know what I'm about. Tell him to let me alone!"

"All right," laughed the doctor, knowing Karl too well to press the matter further just then, "though, of course, common-sense demands quiet and a dark room."

"Ernestine will darken our rooms at home," said Karl stubbornly.

It was strange how quickly they could turn to the refuge of everyday phrases, could hide their innermost selves within their average selves as the only shelter which opened to them. There was something Dr. Parkman wanted to do for him, and they went into the treatment room. In there they spoke about meeting for dinner,--Ernestine had asked the doctor to come out. Georgia and her mother were coming too, Karl told him, and the interview closed with some light word about not being late for dinner.

CHAPTER XIV

"TO THE GREAT UNWHIMPERING!"

"Tell me some good stories about doctors," said Georgia; "I want to use them in something I'm going to write."

"Isn't it dreadful?" said Mrs. McCormick, turning to Dr. Parkman, "she even interviews people while they eat!" Mrs. McCormick had that manner of some mothers of seeming to be constantly disapproving, while not in the least concealing her unqualified admiration.

"I'm not interviewing them, Mother. Skillful interviewers never interview. They just get people to talk."

"But what is it you're going to write," asked the doctor, "a eulogy or denunciation?"

"Both; something characteristic."

"Meaning that something characteristic about doctors would include both good and bad?"

"Well, they're pretty human, aren't they?" laughed Georgia.

"And think how grateful we should be," ventured Karl, "for the inference of something good."

Dr. Parkman looked over at him with a hearty: "That's right," relieved that his friend could enter into things at all.

In the library before they came in, things had gone badly. Mrs. McCormick held persistently to the topic of Karl's eyes, putting forth all sorts of "home remedies" which would cure them in a night. He had grown nervous and irritable under it, and Mrs. Hubers several times had come to the rescue with her graciousness. She was worried herself; the doctor could see that in the way she looked from her husband to him, scenting something not on the surface. He was just beginning to fear the dinner was going to be miserable for them all, when Miss McCormick broke the tension by asking for stories.

"Tell us what you're going to write, Georgia," said Ernestine, she too seizing at it gratefully, "and then our doctors will have a better idea of what you want."

"Well, I was talking to Judge Lee the other day, and he told me some good stories about lawyers--characteristic stories, you know. So I thought I would work up a little series--lawyers, doctors, ministers and so on, and see how nearly I could reach the characteristics of the professions through the stories I tell of them; not much of an idea, perhaps--but I know a man who will buy the stuff."

Ernestine was smiling in a knowing little way. "Do you want to begin with something really characteristic?" she asked.

"That's it. Something to strike the nail on the head, first blow."

"Then lead off with the story of Pasteur's forgetting to go to his own wedding. There's the most characteristic doctor story I know of."

"That's a direct insult," laughed Karl.

"Why, not at all, Karl," protested Mrs. McCormick, "every one knows you were on hand for _your_ wedding."

"Yes, and a good thing he was," declared Ernestine. "I don't think I should have been as meek and gentle about it as the bride of Pasteur. I fancy I would have said: 'Oh, really now--if it's so much trouble, we'll just let it go.'"

"No, Ernestine," said Mrs. McCormick, seriously, after the laugh, "I don't believe you would have said that,"--and then they laughed again.

"Well, it's a good story," she insisted; "and characteristic. I believe after all that Pasteur was a chemist and not a doctor, but the doctors have appropriated him, so the story will be all right."

"If you want to tell some stories about Pasteur," said Karl, "tell about his refusing the royal decoration. He told the Emperor that the honour and pleasure of doing such work as his was its own reward, and that no decoration was needed. That story made a great hit in the scientific world."

"But is it characteristic?" asked Georgia, slyly.

"Well," he laughed, "it ought to be."

"Another one of the independent kind," said Parkman, "is on Bilroth. He was summoned to appear at a certain hour before the Emperor of Austria.

Bilroth was with a very sick patient until the eleventh hour and arrived a little late in business clothes. The scandalised chamberlain protested, telling him he could not go in like that. Whereupon Bilroth bl.u.s.tered out: 'I have no time to spare. Tell His Majesty if he wishes to see me, I am here. If he wants my dress suit, I will have a boy bring it around.'"

"Did he get in?" asked Mrs. McCormick, anxiously.