SCIENCE AND SUPER-SCIENCE
"Insubordinate children who play off from school in the morning must work
in the afternoon," Karl said at luncheon, and they went to their work
that afternoon with freshened spirit.
When the McCormicks gave up their flat at Christmas time, Beason had come
to live with the Hubers. Ernestine prided herself upon some cleverness in
having rented two rooms without Karl's suspecting it was a matter of
renting the rooms. When he engaged Ross as his secretary in the fall she
said it would be more convenient for them all for Mr. Ross to have his
room there. They had an extra room, so why not? She did not put it the
other way--that she felt the house more expensive than they should have
now. Of course Karl would make money in his books--that had been settled
in advance, but things had changed for them, and Ernestine felt the need
of caution. Then as to Beason, she said there was that little room he
could have, and it would do the boy good to be there. "You like John,"
she said to Karl, "and as he has not yet been graduated into philosophy,
he may be more companionable than Mr. Ross." And Karl said by all means
to have Beason if it wouldn't bother her to have him around.
She was glad of that for more reasons than a reduced rent; Beason had
become a great help to Ernestine. After he came there to live they fitted
up some things for her in her studio, and she managed to get in a number
of extra hours when Karl thought she was busy with her pictures.
In her glow of spirit this afternoon--that walk in the park had meant so
much as holding promise for the future--Ernestine was even willing to
admit, looking back upon it, that the winter had not been nearly so bad
as one would suppose. Mr. Beason and Mr. Ross were both, in their
differing ways, alert and interesting, and there had been some good
wrangles around the evening fire. Other people had found them out, and
they had drawn to them an interesting group of friends. So the days had
flowed steadily on, a brave struggle to meet life in good part, keep that
good-fellowship of the spirit.
One of the hardest things of all had been deceiving Karl. Her reason
justified it, but it hurt her heart. They had been able to do it,
however, better than she would have believed possible. Mr. Ross was with
him most of the time when she was not, and had frequently been forced to
intercept some caller who was close to an innocent remark about Mrs.
Hubers being over at the university. Several times Karl had caught the
odour of the laboratory about her, and she had been forced to explain it
as the odour of the studio; and more than once, in the midst of a
discussion, her interest had beguiled her into some surprisingly
intelligent remark, and she had been obliged to invent laughing reasons
for knowing anything about it. It hurt her deeply to take advantage of
Karl's blindness in keeping things from him, even though the motive was
all love for Karl, and determination to help. She would be so glad when
all that was over, and she thought as she worked along very hard that
afternoon that perhaps it would not be many days now until Karl should
know.
That would be for Dr. Parkman to say; so many vital things seemed left to
Dr. Parkman. "Did you ever think," she said, turning to Mr. Beason, who
was busy at the table beside her, "what the doctor really counts for in
this world?"
"Yes--in a way," said Beason, adjusting his microscope, "but then I never
was sick much."
"Well, I didn't mean just taking one's pulse," she laughed. "It seems to
me they mean more than prescriptions. For one thing, I think it's rather
amusing the way they all practice Christian Science."
"Why--what do you mean?" he demanded, aroused now, and shocked.
"Oh, I've come to the conclusion that a modern, first-class doctor is a
Christian Scientist who preserves his sanity"--she paused, laughing a
little at Beason's bewildered face, and at the thought of how little her
formula would be appreciated in either camp. "I've noticed it down at Dr.
Parkman's office," she went on. "It's quite a study to listen to him at
the telephone. He will wrangle around all sorts of corners to get
patients to admit something is in better shape than it was yesterday, and
though they called up to say they were worse, they end in admitting they
are much better. He just forces them into saying something is better, and
then he says, triumphantly, 'Oh--that's fine!'--and the patient rings off
immensely cheered up."
"That's a kind of trickery, though," said Beason.
"Pretty good kind of trickery, if it helps people get well."
"Well I shouldn't care to be a practicing physician," Beason declared,
"just for that reason. That sort of business would be very distasteful to
me."
Ernestine was about to say something, and then relegated it to the things
better left unsaid; but she permitted herself a wise little smile.
"I don't think it's such an awfully high grade of work," he went on. "In
a way it is--of course. But there's so much repetition and routine; so
much that doesn't count scientifically at all--doesn't count for anything
but the patient."
"But what is science for?" she demanded, aggravated now. "Has medical
science any value save in its relation to human beings?"
"Oh yes, I know--in the end," he admitted vaguely.
"All this laboratory work is simply to throw more power into the hands of
the general practitioner. It's to give him more light. It's just because
his work _is_ so important that this work has any reason for being. Dr.
Hubers saw it that way," she concluded, with the air of delivering the
unanswerable.
"But even that wasn't just what I meant," she went on, after they had
worked silently for a few minutes. "What I was thinking about was the
superdoctor."
Beason simply stared.
"No, not entirely crazy," she laughed. "For instance: what can a man do
for nervous indigestion without infusing a little hope? Think of what
doctors know--not only about people's bodies, but about their lives.
Cause and effect overlap--don't they? Half the time a run down body means
a broken spirit, or a twisted life. How can you set part of a thing right
when the whole of it's wrong? How _can_ a doctor be just a doctor--if
he's a good one?"
But nothing "super" could be expected of Beason. His very blank face
recalled her to the absurdity of getting out of focus with one's
audience.
She herself felt it strongly. It seemed to her that Dr. Parkman's real
gift was his endowment in intuition. When all was going well she heard
nothing from him; but let things begin to drag, and the doctor appeared,
rich in resources. He seemed to have in reserve a wide variety of
stimulants.
He looked in upon them often. Whenever in their neighbourhood he stopped,
and though frequently he could not so much as take time to sit down,
the day always went a little better for his coming. "If the end of the
world were upon us, Dr. Parkman could avert the calamity for a day or
two--couldn't he, Karl?" Ernestine had laughed after one of his visits.
This proved to be one of the days of his stopping in, and he arrived just
as Karl was dictating a few final sentences to Mr. Ross. While they were
finishing--he said he was not in a hurry today--he took a keen look at
Karl's face. His colour was not good--the doctor thought; in fact several
things were not to his liking. "Too many hard times with himself," he
summed it up.--"Droopy. Needs a bracer. Needs to get back in the
harness--that's the only medicine for him."
He had been thinking about that very seriously of late. Ernestine was at
least in position now to show the possibilities of the situation, and
working with Karl would do more for her in a month than working along
this way would do in five. Why not? No matter how long they waited it was
going to be hard at first. The deep lines in Karl's face furnished the
strongest argument against further waiting.
"What have we here?" he asked, picking up one of the embossed books lying
open on the table near Karl.
"I presume that's my Bible," Karl replied.
"Has it come to this?" the doctor asked dryly.
"Didn't we ever tell you the story of my Bible?"
"No. You never did. I never suspected you had one."
"Oh yes; the Bible was the first book of this sort I had. It was sent to
me by some home missionary society, some woman's organization--"
"Fools!" broke in Parkman.
"They saw in the paper about my eyes and so they said to themselves--'Now
here is a good chance to convert one of those ungodly scientists.' So
they sent the Bible along with a nice little note saying that now I
would have time to read it, and perhaps all of this was the hand of
God leading me--you can construct the rest. Well." he paused with a
laugh--"Ernestine was mad."
"I should hope so!" growled Parkman.
"She was so divinely angry that in having fun with her I overlooked being
enraged myself. Oh, if I could only give you any idea of how incensed she
was! I think she intended notifying the Chicago police. Really I don't
know to what lengths she would have gone had it not been for my
restraining influence. And then she constructed a letter. It was a
masterpiece--I can tell you that. She compared me to them--greatly to
their disadvantage. She spoke of the various kinds of religious
manifestation--again greatly to their disadvantage."
"Did she send it?" laughed the doctor.
"No. I persuaded her that well-intentioned people should receive the same
kindly tolerance we extend to the mentally defective. The writing of the
letter in itself half way contented her--it was such a splendid
expression of her emotions. Poor old girl," he added musingly, "she was
feeling pretty sore about things just then."
"But the sequel is the queer part," he went on. "I began to read their
Bible, and I like it. It's part of the irony of fate that I haven't
gotten from it the things they intended I should; but I tell you part of
this Old Testament is immense reading. You know, Parkman, I suppose we're
prejudiced ourselves. We don't see the Bible as it is itself. We see it
in relation to a lot of people who surround it. And because we don't care
for some of them we think we shouldn't care for it. Whereas the thing in
itself," he concluded cheerfully, "is just what we'd like."
"And how go your own books?" Dr. Parkman asked him.
Karl shrugged one shoulder in a nervous little way he had acquired.
"Oh--so, so. Pretty fair, I guess." His face settled into a gloom then,
but almost immediately he roused himself from it to say, in a voice more
cheerful than spontaneous: "They'll be finished in a couple of weeks. I'm
both glad and sorry. Don't know just what I'll go at then."
Again he seemed to settle into the gloom which the doctor could see was
ever there waiting to receive him. But again he roused himself almost
immediately. Was it this way with the man all the time? A continuous
fight against surrendering? "But I'm mighty thankful I've had the books,"
he said. "They've pulled me through the winter, and they've enabled me to
make a living. Lord, but a man would hate not to make a living!" he
concluded, straightening up a trifle, more like the Karl of old.
The sheer pathos of it had never come home to the doctor as it did with
that. A man who should have stood upon the very mountain peaks of fame
now proudly claiming that he was able to make a living! But if it brought
home the pathos of the situation it also brought new sense of the manhood
of Karl Hubers. It was great--Parkman told himself--great! A man who felt
within himself all the forces which make for greatness could force
himself into the place of the average man, and thank the Lord that he was
able to make a living!
"Here's a little scheme I've worked out," Karl said, and opening one of
the drawers of the library table, pulled out the model for the idea he
had worked out for reading and writing in Braille.
It was the first Dr. Parkman had heard of it; he wanted to know all about
it, and Karl explained how it had seemed to him as soon as he learned how
the blind read and wrote that the thing could be simplified and vastly
improved. So he had worked this out; he explained its points of
difference, and wanted to know what Parkman thought of it.
"Why, man," exclaimed the doctor, "it strikes me you've revolutionized
the whole business. But--why, Karl--nobody ever thought of this before?"
"The usual speech," laughed Karl.
"But in this case it seems so confoundedly true."
"Well I believe it will help some, and I'll be glad of that," he added
simply. "Oh I have some more schemes. If I've got to be blind I'm going
to make blindness a better business."
"Our old friend the devil didn't do so well then after all," said Dr.
Parkman quietly. "He closed up one channel, but he didn't figure on your
burrowing another."
Karl laughed. "Oh this won't worry him much; it came so easily I can't
think it amounts to a great deal. But as long as I was used to scheming
things out it--amused me, exercised a few cells that were in pretty bad
need of a job. And I have other ideas," he repeated.
Parkman asked what Karl intended to do with his model, offering some
suggestions. The doctor was more than interested and pleased; he
was deeply stirred. "Why, confound the fellow," he was saying to
himself,--"they _can't_ knock him out! They knock him down in one place,
and he bobs up in another!" The ideas of this brain were as difficult to
suppress as certain other things in nature. Dam up one place--they find
another.
They smoked their cigars and talked intermittently then; they were close
enough together to be silent when they chose. And all the while the
undercurrent of Dr. Parkman's thought flowed steadily on.
He was thinking that after all there were better things to do with fate
than damn it. If ever a man would seem justified in spending his soul in
the damning of fate, that man, it seemed to him, was the friend beside
him. And while he had done some of it, perhaps a great deal more than any
one knew, it had not been his master-passion. His master-passion had been
to press on--press on to be knew not what--there was the glory of it! It
was easy enough to work toward a goal sighted ahead; but it took a Karl
Hubers to work on through the darkness.
And ah, there was a good time coming! The doctor's sombre face relaxed to
a smile. His own life seemed almost worth living now just because he had
been able to take a hand--yes, and play a few good cards--in this little
game. Those things Karl had shown him today made it seem there was all
the finer joy in bringing him back to the things which were his own. He
had been thrust from out the gates, but he had not sat whimpering outside
the wall. He had gone on and sought to find a place in that outer world
in which he found himself. And now he should come back to his own through
gates of glory.
Karl asked him about Ernestine then. How was she looking; was she
thin--pale? Her face felt pale to him, he said. He had urged her to work,
because he knew she would be happier so, but Parkman must see to it she
did not overwork. Had he seen the picture on which she was working so
hard? He asked that wistfully; and the doctor's face was soft, and a
gentleness crept into his voice as he said he believed he was to see the
great picture very soon now. And then, after a silence, Karl said,
softly, very tenderly--"Bless her gamey little heart!"