They left the building and sauntered slowly across the campus. Almost in the centre of the quadrangle Ernestine stopped and looked all around. She was beginning to feel what it was for which the University of Chicago stood. It was not "college life," all those things vital to the undergraduate heart, which this university suggested. She fancied there might be things the undergraduate would miss here; she was even a little glad her own college days had been spent at the smaller school. As she stood looking about at building upon building she had visions, not of boys and girls singing their college songs, but of men and women working their way toward truth. She looked from one red roof to another, and each building seemed to her a separate channel through which men were working ahead to the light. It was a place for research, for striving for new knowledge, for clearing the way. She turned her face for the moment to the north; there was great Chicago, where men fought for wealth and power, Chicago, with all the enthusiasm of youth, and the arrogance of youthful success, with all the strength of youthful muscle, all the power and possibility of young brain and heart. This seemed far away from the Board of Trade, from State Street and Michigan Avenue. But was not the spirit of it all one? This, too, was Chicago, the Chicago which had fought its way through criticism, indifference and jeers to a place in the world of scholarship. People who knew what they were talking about did not laugh at the University of Chicago any more. It had too much to its credit to be pa.s.sed over lightly. Men were doing things here; she felt all about her the ideas here in embryo. How would they develop?

Where would they strike? What things now slumbering here would step, robust and mighty, into the next generation?

And greatest of all these was Karl! She turned to him with flushed, glowing face. He had been watching her, following much of her thought.

"I like this place," she said--her eyes telling all the rest. "I was not sure I was going to, but I do."

CHAPTER IX

AS THE SURGEON SAW IT

"But, Karl, you _must!_"

"I tell you, my dear, I can't!"

"Well, I think it's just--"

"Now, Ernestine,"--in tones maddeningly calm and conciliatory--"you go on down to Parkman's office and I'll come just as soon as I can. Now be sensible--there's a good girl."

"Well, I call it _mean!_"--this after hanging up the receiver. "I don't care,"--still talking into the telephone, as if there were satisfaction in having something understand--"it's not _nice_ of Karl."

They had an engagement with Dr. Parkman for dinner at his club, to meet some people he wanted her to know, and now Karl had telephoned from the laboratory at the last minute that he was not ready to leave and for her to go on down alone.

"And he'll come late--and not dressed--and they'll think,"--she went over and sat down by the window to enjoy the mournful luxury of contemplating just what they would think.

Couldn't he go over to the laboratory a little earlier in the morning and finish up this terribly important thing? Was it nice of a man to have people being _sorry_ for his wife? Was it considerate of Karl to ask her to put on this pearl-coloured dress and then let her go down in the train all alone?

She would telephone Dr. Parkman that they could not come. Then Karl would be sorry! But no--severely and with dignity--she would show that one member of the family had some sense of the conventions. Oh, yes--this in long-suffering vein--she would do _her_ part, and would also do her best to make up for Karl. No doubt she might as well become accustomed to that first as last.

Going down in the train she had a very clear picture of herself as the poor, neglected wife of the man absorbed in his work. She saw so many reasons for being unhappy. Was it kind the way Karl had told her in that first letter about some other woman in his life, and then had never so much as revealed to her that other woman's name? Where did this woman live? When had Karl known her? How _well_ had he known her? And all the while her sense of humour was striving to make attacks upon her and the consciousness in her inmost heart that all this was absurd and most unworthy only made her the more persistently forlorn.

She had never been to Dr. Parkman's office, and she was not very familiar with Chicago--had it never occurred to Karl she might get lost and have some unfortunate experience? But fate did not favour her mood, and she reached the office in safety. Dr. Parkman did not seem at all surprised at seeing her alone, which flamed the fire anew.

"He hasn't backed out?" he demanded, laughing a little.

She explained with considerable dignity that her husband had been detained at the laboratory, that he regretted it exceedingly, but would be with them just as soon as circ.u.mstances permitted.

He took her into his private office, and Ernestine was too sincere a lover of beautiful things to be wholly miserable in a room like that.

"Why, this doesn't look like an office," she exclaimed. "It's more like a pet room in a beautiful home."

He laughed, not mirthfully.

"I hardly think you could call it that, but this is where I spend a good deal of my time, so I tried to make it livable."

He was busy at his desk, and she watched his hands. She was thinking that she would like to paint a picture and call it "The Surgeon." She would leave the man's face and figure in shadow, concentrating the light upon those hands, letting them tell their own story.

The whole man stood for force. She was sure that he always had his way about things, that he simply took for granted having his own way. Yet there was something in which he had not had his way. Karl had told her a little about that; she must ask him more about it. It seemed suddenly that there was something pathetic about this beautiful room. Did it not reflect a man trying to make up to himself for the things he did not have? It was a room which suggested pleasant hours and fine, quiet enjoyment. The deep, leather chairs seemed made for long, intimate conversations. The dark red tapestry, the oak panelling, this richly toned rug, the few real pictures, the little odds and ends suggestive of remote corners of the world--it seemed a setting for some beautiful companionship, some close sympathy, a place where one would like to sit for hours and be just one's self. But was not Dr. Parkman's life lacking in the very things of which this bespoke an appreciation? There was a subtle pathos in a beautiful room which breathed loneliness. She thought of their own library at home, quick to sense the difference.

The doctor went into an adjoining room, and her thoughts were broken by the low murmur of voices. Then the inner door opened; he was showing a man through to the outer office. The man stumbled over the rug, and at his exclamation Ernestine looked up. Her own face paled; she half rose from her chair;--the native impulse to do something. She looked at Dr.

Parkman. His face was entirely masked. The man pa.s.sed into the outer room, leaving behind him something which caused Ernestine's heart to beat fast.

The doctor walked slowly over to his chair and sat down. He seemed unconscious of her for a moment, and then he looked at her and saw that she had seen and that she wanted to know.

"You'd think a man would get used to it," he said in his short, gruff way. "You'd think it would become a matter of course, but it doesn't.

That man's wife is dying of cancer. It's not an operable case. I told him that to-day. He asked for the truth and I gave it. I even gave my estimate of the time." He swung his chair around and looked out at the roof of the building below, and then turned sharply back to her. "You said a while ago that this looked like a home. Well, it's not. It's like a good many other things--empty show. Where that man lives, it's not much for looks, but it _is_ a home, and this means--breaking it up. In there a minute ago, I told him he had to lose the only thing in life he cares anything about. He--oh, well!" and with one of his abrupt changes, he turned away.

But Ernestine was leaning forward in her chair. Her lips were parted. Her eyes were very dark.

"Cancer--you say, doctor?"--her voice was so low he could barely catch it. "Cancer?"

He nodded, looking at her intently.

"But that's what Karl's working on! That's what Karl's doing this very minute!"

"Yes, and do you ever think of it like that? Do you ever think of the lives and homes he is going to save; the tragedies and heartbreaks he is going to avert; the children he is going to keep from being motherless or fatherless if he does do this thing?--and I believe with all my heart he will! I tell you, Mrs. Hubers, you want to help him! I'm not sorry you saw that little thing just now. It will show you the other side of it--the human side. And there wasn't anything unusual in it. All over the world, physicians are doing this same thing every day--telling people it's hopeless, admitting there's nothing to be done. Then think of the tremendousness of this work Karl Hubers is doing!--where it strikes--the hearts breaking for it--the thousands praying for it! Is it any wonder we're watching it? Interested? I tell you _we_ know what it means."

She was unconscious of the tear on her cheek, of the quivering of her face.

"And Karl is doing that? _That_ is what Karl's work means?"

"Karl's work simply means giving into our hands the power to save more lives. Now we're doing the best we can with what we have--but G.o.d knows we're short on power! We're groping around in the dark. Karl's work means letting in the light."

His voice had grown warm. Something had fallen from him--leaving him himself. In his eyes was a wealth of unspeakable feeling.

"Doctor, I want to thank you!"--but it was her face thanked him most eloquently.

She was glad when he left her for a minute before they finally went away.

Her heart was very full. This was Karl! This the real meaning of Karl's work! To think she had looked at it in that small, paltry way--that even in her thoughts she had put the slightest stumbling block in his path.

This very afternoon had come new inspiration and she had resented it, had said small, mean things in her heart because he stayed to work out his precious thoughts. Why, it would have been fairly criminal for Karl to run away from that call of his work!

She wanted to tell him all about it; she yearned to "make it up to him,"

make him more happy than he had ever been before. She dwelt upon it all until, when Dr. Parkman came in for her, he was startled at the light shining from her face.

CHAPTER X

KARL IN HIS LABORATORY

One of their favourite speculations, as the days went on, was as to whether any one had ever been so happy before. They argued it from all sides, in a purely unprejudiced and dispa.s.sionate manner, and always arrived at the conclusion that of course no one ever had. "Because,"

Ernestine would say, "no one ever had so many reasons for being happy."

"And if they had," he would respond, "they would have said something about it."