OLD-FASHIONED LOVE
Karl's new secretary was what Karl himself called "one of those
philosophical ducks." "That is," he explained to Ernestine, "he is one of
those fellows who has been graduated from science into philosophy."
"But wouldn't you get on better with one of the scientific students who
hadn't been graduated yet?" she laughed.
"Oh, no; no, I don't mind having a graduate. Ross can do the work all
right. I'm lucky to get him. There aren't many of them who are
stenographers, and then he can give me most of his time. He's finishing
up for his Ph.D."
"And was he really a student of science in the beginning?"
"Well, after a fashion. The kind that is graduated into philosophy."
"Karl," she laughed, "despite your proud boast to the contrary, you're
bigoted. It's the bigotry of science."
"No, it's having science patronised by these fellows who don't know
anything about it. If they'd once roll up their sleeves and do some
actual work they'd give up that idea of being so easily graduated. But
they want to get where they'll not have to work. Philosophy's a lazy
man's job."
"There you go again! A clear case of the scientific arrogance."
"No, they amuse me; that's all. 'I had a great deal of science in my
undergraduate work,' Mr. Ross said, 'but I feel now that I want to go
into the larger field of philosophy.'"
"Karl," she laughed, a little amused and a little indignant, "did he
actually say that to you?"
"He actually did. And with the pleasantest, most off-hand air. It was on
the tip of my tongue to reply: 'Fortunately, science never loses anything
in these people she graduates so easily into philosophy.'
"I wonder what they think," he went on, "when we turn them upside down
two or three times a century? It doesn't seem to worry them any. 'Give me
some eggs and some milk and some sugar and I'll make a nice pudding,'
they say--that's about what goes into a pudding, isn't it? And then they
take the stuff in very thankless fashion, and when their pudding is done,
they say--'Isn't it pathetic the way some people spend their lives
producing nothing but eggs and milk and sugar?' And the worst of it is
that half the time they spoil our good stuff by putting it together
wrong."
"Such a waste of good eggs and milk and sugar," she laughed.
"But fortunately it is a superior kind of eggs and milk and sugar that
can't be hurt by being thrown together wrong. The pudding is bad, but the
good stuff in it is indestructible. And as we don't have to sit down to
their table, why should we worry over their failures?"
"Why, indeed? But then, I don't agree that all puddings are bad."
"No, not all of them. But it rubs me the wrong way to see bad cooks take
such liberties with their materials."
"Because good eggs and milk and sugar aren't so easy to produce," she
agreed.
"Some of us have paid a pretty good price for them," he said.
That turned them to the things always close to them, and they were silent
for a time. It was Saturday evening, and on Monday Ernestine would begin
her new work. Dr. Parkman had arranged it for her--she did not know how,
but it had been done, and Professor Hastings, who would have her in
charge, was eager to give all possible help. That day, while Karl was
busy, she had been reading a book Dr. Parkman had given her. He would
keep her supplied with the best things for her to read, he said,
selecting that which was vital, so that she would not waste time
blundering through Karl's library at random. Dr. Parkman was being so
splendid about it all. He was a man to give himself to a thing without
reservations; if he helped at all he made his help count to the
uttermost. She felt him back of her as a force which would not fail. And
she would show him his confidence was not misplaced--his support not
given to a vain cause! Resolution strengthened within her as the way was
cleared. Unconsciously she caught Karl's hand and held it tight in both
of hers.
"You know, liebchen," he said, caressing her hand in response, "I've done
considerable thinking of late. Perhaps a fellow thinks more about things
when he is not right in them, and it seemed to me to-day, when I was
thinking over these things suggested by Ross, that the reason most people
don't get on better with their work is just because they don't care for
it enough. You have to love a thing to do much with it. Take it in any
kind of scientific work; the work is hard, there is detail, drudgery, and
discouragement. You're going to lose heart and grip unless you have that
enthusiasm for the thing as a whole. You must see it big, and have
that--well, call it fanaticism, if you want to--a willingness to give
yourself up to it, at any rate. The reason these fellows want to get into
the 'bigger field of philosophy' is because they've never known anything
about the bigger field of science."
She loved that fire in his voice, that rare, fine light which at times
like this shone from his face. In such moments, he seemed a man set
apart; as one divinely appointed. It filled her heart with a warm, glad
rush to think it was she would bring him back to his own. It was she
would reseat Karl on his throne. And what awaited him then? Might not his
possibilities be greater than ever before? Would not determination rise
in him with new tremendousness, and would not hope, after its rebirth in
despair, soar to undreamed of heights? Would not the meditation of these
days, the new understanding rising from relinquishment and suffering,
bring him back to his work a scientist who was also philosopher?
She believed that that would be true, that the things his blindness
taught him to see would more than atone for the things shut away. And
would not she herself come to love the work just because of what it meant
to Karl? Care for it because of what it could do for him? Loving it first
because he loved it, would not she come to love it for itself?
A quiver of pain had drawn the beautiful light from his face. "Tell me
about your work, dear," he said abruptly. "You haven't said much about it
of late."
She turned away her face. She was always forgetting that he could not see
her face.
"You know you must get to work, sweetheart," he went on as she did not
answer. "I am expecting great things of my little girl."
"I hope you will not be disappointed," she answered, very low.
"Of course I'll not be--if you just get to work. Now when are you going
to begin?"
"I'm going to begin Monday," replied Ernestine.
"Good! Painting some great picture?"
She hesitated. "I hope it will be a great picture."
"Tell me about it."
"I can tell you better, dear, when it is a little farther along."
"You love your work, Ernestine. You have the real, true, fundamental love
for it. I always loved to see your face light up when you spoke of your
work. Is your face lighted up now?" he asked, a little whimsically, but
earnestly.
She laughed, but the laugh caught in her throat.
"Will you tell me about your picture as it progresses, dear? Don't be
afraid to talk to me of your work, Ernestine. Things will be less hard
for me, if I think you are happy. And it will be good to know there is to
be some great thing come of our love, dear. I want something to stand for
it, something beautiful and great."
"There will be!" she said passionately. "There is going to be."
"I know," he said gently. "I am sure of it."
He stroked her face lovingly then. He loved so to do that.
"Will you mind much, Karl," she began, a little timidly, "if I am away
from you some this year?"
"Away from me?" he asked, startled. "Why, what do you mean, Ernestine?"
"Oh, not that I am going away," she hastened. "But, as I say, I am going
to begin my work on Monday, and part of the time I shall be working, away
from home."
"You mean in some studio?"
Her face grew troubled; she frowned a little, bit her lip, but after a
second's hesitation, answered: "Yes."
"Found some fellow to study with?"
And again she answered yes.
"Well now look here, liebchen, have I been such a brute that you thought
I wouldn't want you to set foot out of the house? I didn't suppose there
was anyone here you'd have much to gain from, but if there is, so much
the better. I want you to go right ahead and do your best--don't you know
that?"
But there was a note of forced cheer in it. It would be hard for Karl to
feel she was not in the house, when he had come to depend on her for so
many things. She could not tell him why she was willing to be away from
him. It hurt her to think he might feel she did not understand.
A little later Georgia and her mother and Georgia's Mr. Tank came over to
see them. During the summer Ernestine and Karl had been bestowing an
approving interest on Georgia and Joseph Tank. Karl liked him; he said
the fellow laughed as though there was no reason why he shouldn't. "He
doesn't know everything," he told Ernestine, "but knows too much to seem
to know what he doesn't."
Georgia had been disposed to be apologetic about Mr. Tank's paper bags,
and Karl had retorted: "Great Scott, Georgia, is there anything the world
needs much worse than paper bags?"
To-night Mr. Tank was all enthusiasm about a ball game he had attended
that afternoon. He gave Karl the story of the game in the picturesque
fashion of a man more eager to express what he wishes to say than to
guard the purity of his English. "Oh, it was hot stuff, clear through,"
he concluded. "Bully good game!"
"It is sometimes almost impossible for me to tell what Georgia and Mr.
Tank are talking about," sighed Mrs. McCormick. "They use so many words
which are not in the dictionary. Now when people confine themselves to
words which are in the dictionary, I am always able to ascertain their
meaning."
"I'm long for saying a thing the way I can get it said," laughed Tank.
"And I'm long for this new spelling. I never could get next to the old
system, and now if they push this deal through, I can pat myself on the
back and say, 'Good for you, old boy. You were just waiting for them to
start in right.' It would be such a good one on the teachers who bumped
my head against the wall because I didn't begin pneumonia with a p and
every other minute run in an i or an e I had sense enough to know had no
business there at all. Oh, I'm long for taking a fall out of the old
spelling book."
"I do hope, Karl," admonished Mrs. McCormick, "that you will use your
influence with scholars to see that the dictionary is let alone. It is
certainly a very profane and presumptuous thing to think of changing a
dictionary,"--turning to Ernestine for approval.
"When I was a child," observed Georgia, "I had a sublime and
unquestioning faith in two things,--the Bible and the dictionary. The
Bible was written by God and the dictionary by Noah Webster, and both
were to remain intact to the end of time. But the University of Chicago
is re-writing the Bible, and 'most any one who feels like it can take a
hand at the dictionary, so what is there left for a poor girl to believe
in?"
"Believe in the American dollar," said Tank cheerfully. "That's the
solidest thing I've ever been up against."
Mrs. McCormick left them to call upon a friend who lived next door, Karl
and Mr. Tank turned to frenzied finance, and Georgia and Ernestine
wandered away by themselves--Ernestine surmised that Georgia wanted to
talk to her.
"How goes it at _The Mail_?" she asked.
"Oh--so so," said Georgia fretfully. "Newspaper work is a thankless job."
"Why, Georgia, I thought you loved it so."
"Oh, yes,--yes, in a way, I do. But it's thankless. And you never get
anywhere. You break your neck one day, and then there's nothing to do the
next, but start in and break it again. You're never any better to-day for
yesterday's killing. Now with you--when you paint a good picture, it
stays painted."
"Why don't you get married?" asked Ernestine, innocently.
"Married! Pooh--that would be a nice thing!"
"Indeed it would. If you care for the man."
Georgia was fidgeting; it was plain she wanted to talk about marriage, if
she could do so without seeming to be vitally interested in the subject.
"I mean it, Georgia," Ernestine went on. "If you care for him, marry
him."
"Care for whom?" Georgia demanded, and then coloured and laughed at the
folly of her evasion. "Well, the fact of the matter is," she finally
blurted out, "I don't know whether I do or not. Now, in a way, I do. That
is, I want him to care for me, and I shouldn't like it if he sailed away
to the Philippine Islands and never showed up again, but at the same
time--well, I don't think even _you_ could get up much sentiment about
paper bags, and besides"--tempestuously--"the name Tank's preposterous!"
Ernestine laughed. "What are those terms the lawyers are so fond
of--immaterial, irrelevant, and something else? Georgia, once when I was
a little girl and went to visit my grandmother, I had a stubborn fit and
wouldn't eat any dinner because the dining-room table had such ugly legs.
And the dinner, Georgia, was good."
It was Georgia who laughed then. "But Ernestine"--with a swift turn to
seriousness--"you're not a fair sample; you and Karl are--exceptional.
You see you have so _much_--intellectual companionship--sympathetic
ideas--kindred tastes--don't you see what a fool I'd make of myself in
judging the thing by you?"--she ended with a little gulp which might have
been a laugh or might have been something else.
Ernestine was giving some affectionate rubs to her brass coffee pot. When
she raised her head it was to look at Georgia strangely. She continued to
look, and the strangeness about her intensified. "Shall I tell you
something, Georgia?"--her voice low and queer. "Something I _know_? You
wouldn't be willing to fight 'till you dropped for sympathetic ideas. You
wouldn't be willing to lay down your life for intellectual companionship.
You wouldn't be willing to go barefoot and hungry and friendless for
kindred tastes. Don't for one minute believe you would! The only thing
for which you'd be willing to let the whole world slip away from you is
an old-fashioned, out-of-date thing called love--just the primitive,
fundamental love there is between a man and a woman. If you haven't it,
Georgia--hold back. If you have,"--a wonderful smile of understanding
glowed through a rush of tears--"oh, Georgia, if you _have_!"