He looked at her in his keen, deep-seeing way. She had an uncomfortable sense that he had a distinct impulse toward a smile.

"Hughes, one of our young doctors, will point out a few things to you as we go along, and I'll go over it with you afterwards."

Then they went into the operating room.

She fought hard against the smell of ether, and managed to hold herself quite firm against it. But there was a ghastliness in the whole thing which frightened her.

The patient was lying there on the operating table, covered with sheets, looking as if dead. It was a woman who was to be operated on, and Ernestine could not overcome the idea that it was a dreadful thing for her to be there alone, surrounded by strange people who were acting in so unconcerned a manner. They did not seem to be thinking in the least of what life and death meant to this woman. One young doctor was showing something to another, and they laughed right out loud! The woman whose life was at stake was not impressing them any more than--not any more than that terrible looking little instrument which the nurse handed to Dr. Parkman.

Her dizzy vision got Dr. Parkman's face as he leaned over his patient.

She had never seen such a look of concentration; he did not know anything in the world then save the thing he was doing. And the concentration was enveloped in so tremendous a coolness. But her own face must have warned the nurse who was looking after her, for she whispered, "Suppose you come over here by the window until they have started. There is no need for you to watch while they are making the incision."

So she stood there with her back to them, looking out at a little park across from the hospital. Down there, men and women were moving about quite as usual; one girl was laughing very heartily about something.

Strange that people should be laughing!

"Now you might come over here," said the nurse, as pleasantly and easily as though saying, "Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?"

She tried then with all her might to take it as the rest of them were taking it. But they were operating on the stomach, and her first glimpse caused an almost uncontrollable sinking in the knees. Her ears began to pound, but by listening very hard she could hear what Dr. Hughes was saying. He was saying something about its being a very nice case, and she wondered if the woman were married, and if she had any children, and then she knew how irrelevant and unprofessional that was. Dr. Hughes was telling her to look at something, and she did look, and she saw Dr.

Parkman's hands, only it seemed they were not human hands at all, but some infallible instrument, an instrument with an unconquerable soul,--and then everything was dancing before her eyes, her ears were pounding harder and harder, her knees sinking, everything swaying, some one had hold of her, and some one else, a great many miles away was saying--"Take her out!"

When she opened her eyes, she was lying on a couch in an anteroom, the nurse bending over her. The attendant smiled pleasantly, no more agitated than before. "Too bad," she said; "a good many of us take it like that at first."

But Ernestine was not to be comforted. It meant too much to her. The tears were running down her face, but suddenly she brushed them angrily aside, and sat up. "I'm going back," she said resolutely.

"Oh, but you mustn't," protested the nurse,--"not today. It really wouldn't do. And anyway they must be almost through. Dr. Parkman works so rapidly."

It was a very disheartened Ernestine who sat there then alone. "What will Dr. Parkman think of me?" she bewailed to herself. "He will never want to have anything more to do with me. He will be so disgusted that he will let me alone now. And how am I to get along without him? Oh, _why_ am I such a fool?"

The whole day had been hard, she was tired out when she came, and this was too much. So she just lay back on the couch and cried. It was so that Dr. Parkman found her when he came briskly in at the close of the operation.

"Why, what's the matter?" he demanded. "Heard some bad news?"

"_Bad_--news!" she choked out; "no, I haven't heard any bad news--except that I'm an utterly worthless, weak-minded fool!"

"And where did you hear that?" he pursued.

"Oh, doctor--I'm so ashamed! But if you'll only give me another chance!

If you'll just not give me up for a little while yet!"

"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 b.u.mp of stubbornness--for which you should look back to him with grat.i.tude.

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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sistant.

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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sionate 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?"