The very first week was the worst of all. No one knew what to do with her; as this was her own idea, an idea no one else pretended to understand, it was expected she make some suggestions for the proper disposition of herself. But poor Ernestine did not know enough about it to make disposition of herself. She could only smile with a courageous serenity, and ask that she be shown how to help about things. And so Mr.

Willard, who was in charge of Karl's laboratory, and who was Karl without Karl's genius, turned her over to Mr. Beason, his a.s.sistant. Beason would show her how to "help."

Her sense of humour helped her there. It was amusing that one who was learning to "help" should be such an enc.u.mbrance. And there were many amusing things about Mr. Beason. He was afraid of her because she was a woman, for like reason disapproving of her presence in the laboratory, and yet there was an unconscious deference, the same kind of veneration he would have paid Karl's old coat, or his pipe.

John Beason had never been shaken by a genuine emotion until the day he read that Dr. Karl Hubers had lost his eyesight and must give up his work. In the horror, the rage and the grief which swept over him then, Beason rose to the heights of a human being, never to be quite without humanship again. When he came back that fall, Professor Hastings was quick to sense the change.

Beason was given a place in Dr. Hubers' old laboratory, as one of Mr.

Willard's a.s.sistants. That first morning, after he had been in there about an hour, he came out to Professor Hastings, who chanced to be alone.

"I don't know whether I want to stay in there or not," the boy jerked out.

He told him that Dr. Hubers would like to have him there. "You know he liked you," he said simply.

Beason sat a long time pondering. "Well, they'll never have another man like him," he said at last, savagely, and choking a little.

After the first few weeks his att.i.tude toward Ernestine took on a complexity an a.n.a.lysis of which would have greatly astounded Mr. Beason himself. He did a great deal of pondering as to whether it would really be possible for Dr. Hubers to go on with his work. It seemed to him it would not be, but a few things Mrs. Hubers had said in a very simple way had opened up a great deal of speculation as to what was possible and what was not. And the thing which made him grow so quickly into an unconscious respect for her was her a.s.sumption that the most important thing in the world was that Dr. Hubers should go on with his work. Now that looked as though she had some sense, Beason admitted. Of course the ridiculous part was thinking _she_ was the one to bring it about, when anybody would know it would have to be some one--well, some one like himself. But then it was just like a woman to think she could do anything she took it into her head to do. Of course she would very soon find out that she couldn't, but if she proved some one else could, why then she wouldn't be so bad, after all.

Ernestine was quick to see that the way to enlist Mr. Beason was to talk to him about Karl. They were alone in the laboratory for an hour each morning, and during that period she always managed to say something about Dr. Hubers to leave Beason closer to her at the end of the hour than he had been at the beginning. There were more ways than one of winning a scientific victory, she concluded, half humorously, but with a touch of sadness. She was beginning to see that it was a battle which demanded tact and diplomacy quite as much as brains and skill. She must not only furnish enthusiasm for herself, she must inspire all a.s.sociated with her if she were to gain from them what they had to give.

It was after she had one day spoken with unusual freedom of the suffering which surged beneath Karl's calm acceptance of the inevitable that Beason took his first firm stand in her behalf.

"Well now, of course," he conceded, after a long time of turning it over in his mind, "you really don't have to _know_ much, do you? The great thing for you to learn is to tell exactly how results look. It isn't as if you had to reason and think,"--that was Beason's supreme rise to graciousness.

"Why, you have the idea exactly, Mr. Beason," she replied, admiringly, and Beason grasped that he had manifested rare insight.

"Well now,"--doubtfully--"I suppose you might practice on me. Practice is what you need. I haven't looked at any of those things over there. See if you can give me an idea of what they are."

She did her best, blundering freely, and thinking with an inward smile that she had not counted on anything so difficult as translating things to Beason.

Then he took the tube from her hand and explained how she had failed to get the significant things, and how valueless she would be unless she made the determining points stand out. He was very blunt and unflattering, but she was grateful to him from the bottom of her heart.

"You see you do have to have some brains after all," he concluded with a sigh.

But after that he frequently devoted his entire hour to helping her. He had come to accept her as one of his duties, and Beason was not one to neglect his appointed task. Day by day she gained a great deal from the uncompromising Mr. Beason.

In fact, after those first uncertain weeks, she gained a great deal from every one. Gradually it began to systematise itself, and Ernestine's good sense, her earnestness, which was fairly devotion, her respect for every one's knowledge and grat.i.tude for all help--to say nothing of her eyes and smile and voice--slowly penetrated even the conservatism of science.

Dr. Parkman did not neglect her. He came out often and spent an hour in the laboratory, bringing things for her to work with. Perhaps the doctor saw that quite as much as his help, she needed the prestige his attention would give. It was no small thing to have the great Dr. Parkman giving her his time. "Upon my soul," Mr. Willard said one day, after the doctor had been there a long time and had seemed very much in earnest, "I don't believe Parkman's the man to spend his time on a wild goose chase!"

"It doesn't seem so, does it?" said Professor Hastings ingenuously.

"Why, think what that man's time is worth!" continued Mr. Willard, growing more and more impressed.

"I don't know any one else out here who would get much of it," Professor Hastings ventured.

"Well, she is a remarkable woman," Willard said then, insistently.

And Professor Hastings--understanding many things about human beings--said he was really coming to feel that way himself.

Ernestine was alone in the laboratory one bright morning in December. Mr.

Beason had just gone away after a.s.suring her anew that she had a very great deal to learn. Perhaps it was funny, but one was not always in the mood for humorous things. Sometimes one felt more like putting one's head down on the table and having a good cry. Her hands were not quite steady, as she went about the work Beason had patronisingly left for her to do, and out of the mists which blinded her there came a picture of her own quiet studio at home, where she had worked with her own things, things with which she was supreme. She saw herself at her easel, working in that quick, sure way of hers, no one to tell her some one else could do it a great deal better, and that it was extremely doubtful whether she could ever do anything at all. A longing to be back there doing the things she knew she could do, a longing to have again that sure sense of her work as good, swept over her then. She was accustomed to a sense of mastery; it was that made some of these things so hard. It was not easy to make over one's soul, even when it was love called one on. As she went steadily ahead with her task, working out painstakingly the correction Beason had made, she wondered whether there were as many tears back of other smiles as there had often been back of hers.

But she had been able to smile!--that was something for which to give thanks. Not even Karl himself would ever know what she had gone through, but what she had gone through was of small consequence could she but push her way on to what she was confident awaited her. There was sustaining power in that thought: her hands did not tremble now, her eyes were clear; she worked on steadily and firmly.

One thing which had unnerved her was that Karl had seemed to hate to have her go away that morning. He had followed her out into the hall. "Working so hard, liebchen?" he said--and was it not wistfully? Perhaps he had not felt like work himself and had wanted her to stay at home with him. It hurt cruelly to think Karl might not understand her willingness to be away from him so much.

His presence was always with her in the laboratory. The days brought a very clear picture of Karl at work there, a new understanding of his adjustment to his work, firmer comprehension of his love for it. Often a sense of the terribleness and wrongness of his disaster would rush over her, crowding her heart with the old rebellion and bitterness. Again and again she lived through the hour Karl had spent there alone, facing the truth, and then a horror of those things with which she worked, those awful things which had destroyed Karl's eyes, would take hold of her as a physical fear, a repulsion, almost impossible to fight.

She was constantly brought to see the difference between him and these other men; every hour she spent there brought deeper appreciation of Karl's greatness, clearer sense of it. And when their kindly patronage sometimes pa.s.sed from the amusing to the insufferable, she would think how Karl, master of them all, took her so unreservedly into his mind and heart, cherishing her ideas and opinions as quite the most vital things in all the world, and sometimes that would help her to smile, and not infrequently it made her long to hurl a test-tube at the self-satisfied head of Mr. Beason. But always, in the end, it caused her to set her whole being with new persistence, more pa.s.sionate stubbornness, in this determination to achieve.

It was while she was still alone that Professor Hastings came in with a note he had just received for her. "It's from Dr. Parkman," she said as she tore it open hastily.

She read a little of it and then sat down. He thought for a moment that she was going to cry.

"Dr. Parkman wants me to come down to one of his operations this afternoon,"--she looked up at him appealingly. "I--I never went to anything like that," she added, with a tremulous laugh.

"What does he say about it?" he asked, anxiously.

"Merely--merely that it will be a good cancer operation, and that I had better begin on that part of the work. He says he would be willing to do that, but he thinks it will help me to be able to make some of the observations for Dr. Hubers myself. I--well, it sometimes makes me sick to see things I don't like,"--laughing a little, and plainly unnerved.

"Oh, no," he a.s.sured her; "it will not be that bad." But he added, uneasily: "Dr. Parkman seems anxious for you to come?"

"No, not particularly anxious; he simply tells me to be there at two o'clock."

"I suppose then you'd better go," he laughed. "You won't mind much. You may to-day, but you'll become accustomed to it very soon. And it is important. Some one else might do it, but it will help your own understanding of the subject, make your equipment that much better. It's a great thing for you to have Dr. Parkman's help. And he is so pleased with your progress. He told me the other day that he thought it absolutely phenomenal the way you were getting on."

"Did he?" she asked eagerly, for she had learned to seize upon all which would buoy her up.

"We all think so," he replied earnestly. "Even Mr. Willard, who, as you may have observed, is not an enthusiast, said the other day that you were becoming really useful."

She brightened, and then laughed. She had never supposed she would be inordinately pleased to have a man like Mr. Willard say she was really useful.

"While Mr. Beason went so far as to a.s.sert that you had a general intelligence not unlike that of a man."

She laughed heartily at that. "Well, I'm afraid they won't think I have the nerve or sense of a man when I get in the operating room this afternoon," she said with a wry little face.

"Well, remember what it's all for," he said, in that simple way of his which went so far because it was so direct, "and remember that we are all believing in you."

In response to that she went back to her work with new resolution.

It was a little before two when her lagging footsteps brought her in sight of the hospital. "Why, I act as though I were going to my own execution," she told herself scornfully. Ever since receiving the note, she had been trying not to think about what was before her; but it was here now, a fact to be faced. Conquering an impulse to turn about and beat a hasty retreat, she advanced with a brisk and business-like air she was sure would deceive the most knowing of hospital attendants.

They seemed to know about her in the office, and took her up to one of the rooms adjoining the operating room. The hospital was a very large place, and there were a great many odours she did not like. She hated herself for being so silly about things! Through the open door she saw many faces: white faces, thin faces, faces drawn with pain, faces robbed of hope, faces fretful, and faces indifferent, and she caught sight of one girl whose very happy eyes looked out from a face which bore the record of much pain. A story easy to read: she had been very ill, but now she was getting well. And how calm and well-ordered a place it was-- strange how they could keep so unruffled a surface over so turbulent a sea!

A nurse upstairs said that Dr. Parkman had told her to look after Mrs.

Hubers. She dressed her in a white gown and talked to her pleasantly about operations in general. Ernestine was glad that this very rational being did not know how hard she was struggling to keep her teeth from chattering.

In a minute, Dr. Parkman himself came in, he, too, in white gown, ready for the operation. He looked so strange; to her nervous vision, supernatural, a being from other worlds, holding the destiny of this one in those strong, supple, incisive fingers. "I don't suppose you'll enjoy this much," he said, "but you'd better get used to them. Karl may need you to do some of this for him, and you wouldn't like it not to be able to."

"No, indeed," she replied, heartily--very heartily. "I'm so glad to come."