"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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sertive 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 a.s.sured her.

He watched her as she stood there b.u.t.toning 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 a.s.sured 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 G.o.d'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 dispa.s.sionately, 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 sn.o.bbery, 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 G.o.d, 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 d.a.m.nable 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 a.s.sistants, to Dr. Hubers' wife, that she may get in shape to work with him as his a.s.sistant, 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 p.r.o.nounced: "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?"