The Glory of the Conquered Part 7

Ernestine worked that winter as she had never worked before. That first day had not been a deceptive one. She had done some of the things which something within her heart a.s.sured her that day she could do. The best thing she had done she sent to Laplace, as he had asked her to. "It's considered rather superior to disdain the Salon," she said to Karl, the day they packed the canvas, "but Paris seems the only way of proving to Americans that good can come out of America."

She had heard from Laplace that the picture would be hung. His brief comment had been that America could not be so bad as was sometimes said.

She was eager now to hear more about it. She would surely have a letter very soon. And she and Karl were so happy! It had been such a glorious, wholesome, splendidly worth while winter.

It was one afternoon in early spring that over in the laboratory John Beason and Professor Hastings were talking of Dr. Hubers. "But that isn't all of it," said Professor Hastings in the midst of a discussion. "This fanaticism for veracity Huxley talks about isn't all of it by any means.

Any of us can get together a lot of facts. It takes the big man to know what the facts mean."

"Somebody said that truth was the soul of facts," said Beason, in the uncertain way he talked of anything outside tabulated knowledge. "But I suppose that's just one of those things people say."

"Yes--but is it? Isn't it true? Why is Hubers greater than the rest of us? It isn't that he works harder. We all work. It isn't that he's more exact. We're all exact. Isn't it that very thing of having a genius for getting the soul out of his facts? That man looks a long way ahead--smells truth away off, as it were. I tell you, Mr. Beason, scientific training kills many men for research work. They're afraid to move more than inch by inch. They won't take any jumps. Now Dr. Hubers jumps; I've seen him do it. Of course, after he's made his jump he goes back and sees that there aren't any ditches in between, but he's not afraid of a leap in the dark. That's his own peculiar gift. Most of us are not made for jumping."

"But that doesn't sound like the scientific method," said Beason, brows knitted.

"I'll admit it wouldn't do for general practice," replied the older man, a twinkle in his eye. "The spirit has to move you, or you wouldn't gain anything but a broken neck."

"Yes, but that thing of a spirit moving you," said Beason, more sure of himself here, "that does not belong in science at all; that is a part of religion."

"And to a man like Dr. Hubers"--very quietly and firmly--"science is religion."

Beason pondered that a minute. "They're entirely distinct," was his conclusion.

"So it seems to you; but I'm a year or two older than you are, Mr.

Beason, and the longer I live the more firmly I believe that there is such a thing as an intuitive sense of truth. If there isn't, why is Dr.

Hubers a greater man than I am?"--and with that he left him, smiling a little at how it had never occurred to Beason to say anything polite.

Beason was in truth much perturbed. It was not pleasing to have the greatness of his idol explained on unscientific principles. He did not like that idea of the jumps. Jumping sounded unscientific, and what could be worse than to say of a man that he was not scientific? Preposterous to say the greatest things of science were achieved by unscientific methods!

To-day Dr. Hubers had been all afternoon alone in his laboratory. Some one had brought him in some luncheon at noon, but since one o'clock the door had not opened, and now it was almost five. What was going on in there? Even Beason had the imagination to wonder.

Could he have seen he would not have been much enlightened. The man was sitting before a table, his arms reaching out in front of him--some tubes, his microscope, other things he had been working with within reach, but unheeded now. For he was not seeing now the detail, the immediate. This was not one of those moments of advancing step by step.

The light in those eyes of wonderful sight was the light from a farther distance. A way had opened ahead; far out across dim places he could see it now. The afternoon had been a momentous one. He had taken a step leading to a greater height, and with the greater height came a wider vision. A few of those minutes such as he was living now fires a man for months--yes, years, of work. Ahead were days when the fires of inspiration would be in abeyance, when the work would be only a working of step by step--detail, some would call it drudgery. But it is in these moments of inspiration man qualifies for the fight. In the hours of working onward toward the light he may grow very weary, but he can never forget that one day, for just a moment, the light opened to him. Moments such as Karl Hubers was living now mark the great man from the small.

And his glowing moment was more than a promise; it was also a reward. It was spring now, and all through the winter he had worked hard. He had come back in the fall determining in the grat.i.tude of his great happiness to do the best work of his life. He pulled his microscope over in front of him and looked over it after the manner of one dreaming. How many days he had come to it eager to note the slightest significance in its variations of colour, for the staining of the slides made colour count in his work almost as it did in Ernestine's, only to be met with the non-essential, more of the husk and no sight of the kernel. He smiled a little to think what a bulky and stupid volume it would make were he to write down all he had done. If each hope, each possibility, each experiment and verification were to be put down, he could quite rival in bulk a government report. And if added to that should be a report of the cases he had watched, the operations he had attended, the attempts at getting living matter and of working with dead, how large and how useless that volume would be were it to contain it all! He had done days and days of useless work to get the slightest thing that was significant.

Only the week before Ernestine had laughingly read him an article one of the popular magazines printed on cancer research. The whole thing is becoming a farce--so said the popular magazine. Every once in a while some man issues a report saying the germ is in sight. Then another man appears with a still more learned report saying it is not a germ at all.

All doing different things, and all sure they are on the right track!

Meanwhile the disease is on the increase, surgery cannot meet it satisfactorily, and while laboratories pursue the peaceful tenor of their way, men and women are dying hard deaths which no one seems able to stay.

Truly, the man behind the microscope is a very slow man the article had concluded.

No doubt that seemed true. He could see the writer's point of view well enough. The things the man behind the microscope did accomplish sounded so very easy that the on-looker could give only indolence and stupidity as the reason for not accomplishing a great deal more.

And even from his own point of view, with his own knowledge of all the facts in the case, he had no doubt that once done it would sound so easy that he would stand amazed to think it had not been done before. Let the unknown become the known, and even the trained worker cannot look upon it as other than a matter of course. It was so easy now to meet diphtheria.

Strange they had let so many children die of it! It was so very easy now to give a man an anesthetic. Fearful how they had let a man suffer through every stroke of the knife, or die for need of it! Should he blame the man outside for looking at it that way when even to him things accomplished took on that matter of course aspect?

He began putting away his things. It was Ernestine's birthday, and he had promised to be home early, for they were going to the theatre. "It will be like all the rest," he mused. "Once done, it will seem so easy that we will wonder why it was not done long before." Again the fire leaped high within him. To do it! Perhaps after all he did see it too complexly. He must not let the husk dull his eye to the kernel. A man building a beautiful tower must erect a scaffold. But the scaffolding should not make him forget the tower! Some way in this last hour his mind had seemed to clear. His immense amount of useless work was not hanging about his neck like a millstone. Something had cut that away. He was free from it all. He could feel within himself that his approach to his problem was better than it had been before. Perhaps he had made the mistake of the others of looking at it as something fearfully complex, something it would be the hardest thing in all the world for any man to do. It all looked more simple now. It was as if muscles strained to the point of tenseness had relaxed, and in an easy and natural way he foresaw victory as a logical part of his work.

He was happy to-night, light-hearted. The windows of the laboratory were open to the soft air of that glorious day of early spring, and his spirit was open too, open to the soul of the world, taking unto itself the sweet and simple spirit of the men who have done the greatest things. From his window he could see one of the tennis courts. Some of the students were playing. "Good!" he exclaimed enthusiastically to himself, as he watched a return that had looked impossible. He was glad they were playing tennis. Why shouldn't they?

Professor Hastings heard him whistling softly to himself--a German love song--as he walked through the big laboratory, and catching a glimpse of the younger man's face, he nodded his head and smiled. It had been a good afternoon--that was plain. Now let there be more afternoons like this--and then--to think it should be done right here under his very eyes! Was not that joy enough for any man?

On the steps of the building Karl stopped suddenly, put his hand in his inner pocket and drew out a small box. Yes, it was there all right, and a girl pa.s.sing up the steps just then was amazed and much fluttered to think Dr. Hubers should be smiling so beautifully at her. In fact, Dr. Hubers did not know that the girl was pa.s.sing. She had simply been in the direction of his smile; and he was smiling because it was Ernestine's birthday, and because he had so beautiful a present for her. He walked along very fast. He could scarcely wait to see her face when he gave it to her. Too bad he had kept her waiting so long!

CHAPTER XI

PICTURES IN THE EMBERS

They were back home now.

"Why, Mary has intuitions," laughed Ernestine, when she saw that a fire had been lighted in the library, and was in just the proper state for seeing pictures. "A girl who knew we would want a fire has either been in love or ought to be. At any rate, she knows we are."

"This is the kind of a night when a fire serves artistic purposes only.

You don't need it, so you have to enjoy it all the more."

"Still, these spring evenings are damp," she insisted, defending the fire. "It doesn't feel at all uncomfortable."

"And looks immense," he added, turning down the gas and pulling up a seat just right for sitting before the fire.

She leaned over, holding her hand so close to the flame that he wondered at first what she was doing.

"See!" she cried, "see my ruby in the firelight, Karl! It's just a piece of it right up here on my hand!"

"And I suppose,"--seeming to be injured--"that during the remainder of my life, I may play second fiddle to that ring. Oh, Ernestine--you're a woman! I was mortified to death at the theatre. You didn't look at the play at all. You just sat and looked down at that ring. Oh, I saw through that thing of not being able to fasten your glove!"

She was twisting her hand about to show off the stone--any woman of any land who has ever owned a ring knows just how to do it.

"See, dear!" she laughed exultantly, "it _is_ fire! You can see things in it just as you can in the coals."

But he was not looking at the ring. There were things to be seen in her face and he was looking at them. He loved this child in her. Was it in all women when they love, he wondered, as many other men have wondered of other women, or was it just Ernestine?

"It was a dreadful thing for you to get it," she scolded,--these affectionate scoldings were a great joy to him. "It's a ridiculous thing for a poor college professor--that's you--to buy a ruby ring. Why, rubies exist just to show millionaires how rich they are! And it's a scandalous thing for a poor man's wife--that's I--to be wearing a real ruby!" Then her other hand went over the ring, and clasping both to her breast she laughed gleefully: "But it's mine! They'll not get it now!"

"Who wants it, foolish child?" he asked, pressing her head to his shoulder and holding the ring hand in his.

She moved a little nearer to him.

"See some pictures for me in the fire," she commanded. "See something nice."

"I see a beautiful lady wearing a beautiful ring. See?--right under that top piece of coal. The ring is growing larger and larger and larger. Now it is so large you can't see the lady at all, just nothing but the ring."

She laughed. "Now see one that isn't silly. See a beautiful one."

"Liebchen, I see two people who are growing old. See?--right down here.

One of them must be sixty now, and one about seventy, but they're smiling just as they did when they were young. And they're whispering that they love each other a great deal better now than they did in those days of long ago; that it has grown and grown until it is a bigger thing than the love of youth ever dreamed of."

"That _is_ nice," she murmured happily. "That would be a nice picture to paint." They were silent for a time, perhaps both seeing pictures of their own. "It's growing late," said Ernestine, a little drowsily, "but then, I'll never have this birthday again."