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 dispassionate 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."
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 assured 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 gratitude 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 passing 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 passing. 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!