LEARNING TO BE KARL'S EYES
She wondered many times in the next few months why she had put it in that
very simple, self-evident way.
For there are things harder than to go barefoot and hungry and
friendless. Those are the primitive things, to be met with one's
endowment of primitive courage, elemental strength. But poise of spirit
can not be wrested from elemental courage. To carry one's carefully
wrapped up burden with the nonchalance of the day--nature forgot to make
endowment for that; it is something then to be worked out wholly by one's
self.
Persecution she could have endured like a Spartan; but it was almost
unendurable to be tolerated. She was sure it would have been easier if
only they had been rude to her. To be openly jeered at would fire her
soul. But there was so little in their manner either to kindle enthusiasm
or stir aggressiveness. She began to think that the most trying thing in
the world was to have people polite to one.
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 assistant. 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 encumbrance. 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 assistants. 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 attitude toward Ernestine took on a
complexity an analysis 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 assumption 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 associated 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 gratitude 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 assuring 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 passed 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 passionate 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 assured 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 assert 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."
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 bump of
stubbornness--for which you should look back to him with gratitude.
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
associated 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 assistant.
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 assumption 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."