Karl awoke next morning with the sense of something wrong. Something was making him uncomfortable, but he was not wide enough awake at first to locate the trouble. He lay there dozing for a few minutes and when he roused again he knew that his eyes were hurting badly. He awakened instantly then. His eyes? Why, they had bothered him a little all day yesterday. Was there something the matter with them?
He got up, raised the shade and looked in the glass. They looked badly irritated, both of them. They felt wretchedly; he could scarcely keep looking into the glass. Then leaning over the dressing table, he looked more closely. He thought he saw something he did not like. He took a hand mirror and went to the window. He could see better now, and the better light verified the other one. It was true that in the corner of one eye there was a drop of pus. In the other there was a suggestion of the same thing.
He began to dress, proceeding slowly, his brows knitted, evidently thinking about something, and worried. Then he opened a drawer, took out a handkerchief, got the drop of pus from his eye and arranged the handkerchief for preserving it.
He would find out about that, and the sooner the better! He did not like it. He would see an oculist, too, this morning. It was plain he was going to have some trouble with his eyes.
Ernestine noticed them at once. What made them so red?--she wanted to know. Did they hurt? And wasn't there something he could put in them? He told her he was going to look after them at once. He could not afford to lose any time, and of course he could do nothing without his eyes.
Immediately after breakfast he started over to the laboratory.
It was Sunday morning and there would be no one there, which was so much the better. He wanted to get this straightened out.
He had his head down all the way over to the university, partly because his eyes bothered him and partly because he was thinking hard. The trouble had evidently been coming on yesterday. He stopped short. That trick Parkman told him about! But of course--moving on a little--that could not have anything to do with this. He had no recollection--he was very sure--then he walked faster, and the lines of his mouth told that he was troubled.
When he reached the laboratory he began immediately upon the microscopic examination. He hoped he could get at it through that, for the culture process meant a long wait. But after fifteen minutes of careful work the "smear" proved negative. There remained then only the longer route of the culture.
He did not begin upon that immediately. He sat there trying to think back to just what it was he had been doing Friday afternoon. The latter part of the afternoon he had been sitting here by this table. That was the time he was so buoyed up--getting so fine a light on the thing. It was the cancer problem then--but in the nature of things nothing could have happened with that. But there were always other things--all those things known to the pathological laboratory.
He turned around toward the culture oven, opened the outer door and through the inner door of glass looked in at the row of tubes. He was trying to recall what it was he had been working with the earlier part of Friday afternoon.
He knew now; one of the tubes had brought it to him. Yes, he knew now, and within him there was a pause, and a stillness. Right over there was where he sat preparing some cultures. There were two things with which he had been working;--again a pause, and a stillness. One of them could not make any serious difference; he went that far firmly, and then his heart seemed to stand quite still, waiting for his thought to go on. But he did not go on; there was a little convulsive clutching of his consciousness, and a return, with acclaim, to the fact that
that could not make any serious difference. He clung there; he would not leave that; doggedly, defiantly, insistently, all-embracingly he affirmed that
that could not make any serious difference. It was without opening his thought to anything further that he got out his things and began preparing the culture.
He was so accustomed to this that it went very mechanically and quickly. He took one of the test tubes arranged for the process in the culture oven and with the small wire instrument he had there, lifted the drop of pus on the handkerchief into the bullion of the tube. He did it all very carefully, very exactly, just as he always did. Then he put the tuft of cotton over the top and placed the tube in that strange-looking box commonly called a culture oven. In twenty-four hours he would know the truth. He adjusted the gas with a firm hand, arranging with his usual precision this thing which outwardly was like any of his experiments and which in reality--but he would not go into that.
Now for an oculist. His eyes were hurting badly; it was time to do whatever there was to be done. After all he was rather jumping at conclusions. There was a big chance that this was just something characteristic to eyes and had no relation to the things of his work. He seized upon that, ridiculing himself for having looked right over the most simple and natural explanation of all. Did not a great many people have trouble with their eyes?
That nerved him up all the way down town. He was almost ready to think it a great joke, the way he had hurried over to the laboratory and had gone at it in that life-and-death fashion.
He knew that the oculist in Dr. Parkman's building was a good one, and so he went there. It was a little disconcerting when he stepped into the elevator to meet Dr. Parkman himself. He had not thought of trying especially to avoid the doctor, but he had wanted to see the oculist first and get the thing straightened out. He was counting a great deal now on the oculist.
"Hello!" said the doctor, seeming startled at first, and then after one sharp glance: "Going up to see me?"
"Well, yes, after a little. Fact of the matter is I thought I'd run in and let this eye fellow take a look at me."
"Eyes bothering you?"
"Somewhat." He said it shortly, almost curtly.
When they reached the fifth floor, Dr. Parkman stepped out with him, although he himself belonged farther up.
"I know him pretty well," he explained, "I'll go with you."
He could not very well say: "I would rather you would not," although for some reason he felt that way.
It was soon clear to their initiated minds that the oculist did not know the exact nature of the trouble. He admitted that the case perplexed him. He, too, must make an examination of the pus. He treated Karl's eyes, and advised that they begin upon an immediate and aggressive course of treatment. Dr. Parkman, observing Karl's growing irritability, said that he would look after all that, see that the right thing was done.
As he walked out of that office Karl was a little dizzy. His avenue of hope had grown narrower. It was not, then, some affection characteristic of eyes. It was, after all, something from without. It was, in all probability, one of two things,--it was either--but again he did not go beyond the first, telling himself with nervous buoyancy that
that would not make any serious difference.
They stepped into an elevator and went up. He knew Parkman would ask him questions now, but it seemed he could not get away from the doctor if he tried. He felt just at present as though he had not strength to resist any one. That oculist, he admitted to himself, had taken a good deal of starch out of him.
When they reached the office, Dr. Parkman offered him a drink; that irritated him considerably.
"Why no," he said, fretfully, "No--I don't want a drink. Why should I take a drink? Did you think I was all shot to pieces about something?"
The doctor was looking over his mail, fingering it a great deal, but not seeming to accomplish much of anything with it. At last he wheeled around toward him.
"What's the matter with your eyes?" he asked with disconcerting directness.
"How should I know?" retorted Karl, heatedly, almost angrily. "What do I know about it? If an oculist can't tell--you say he is a good one--why should you expect me to?" And then he added with a touch of eagerness, as if seizing upon a possibility: "I don't believe that fellow amounts to much. I think I'll go out now and hunt up somebody who knows something."
"The man's all right," said Dr. Parkman shortly. His own foot was tapping the floor nervously. "You ought to have some idea," he added, with what he felt to be brutal insistence, "as to whether or not you got anything in your eyes."
"Well, I haven't! I don't know anything about it."
But he was breathing hard. His whole manner told of fears and possibilities he was not willing to state. He would tell what he thought now in just a minute; the doctor knew that.
He began with insisting, elaborately, that he never got things on his hands--that was not his way; and even if he did get something on his hands, he wouldn't get it in his eyes; even if he did rub his eyes sometimes--he didn't admit it--but even if he did, would he be such a fool as to rub them when he had something on his hands? But if, in spite of all those impossibilities, just admitting for the sake of argument, and because Parkman insisted on being ominous, that it was something like that, there were two things it might be. It might be--he named the first with emphasis, and Dr. Parkman, after a minute's thought, heaved a big sigh of unmistakable relief.
"Now you see that couldn't make any vital difference," Karl added, with a debonair manner, a thin veneer of aggressiveness.
The doctor was leaning forward in his chair. He was beginning to grow fearful of the emphasis put upon this thing which could make no vital difference.
Karl stopped as though he had reached the end of his story. But the silence was wearing on him. His eyes had a hunted look.
"Why, you can see for yourself," he said--and this was the note of appeal--"that that could not make any vital difference."
Dr. Parkman was looking at him narrowly. His own breath was coming hard. He saw at last that he would have to ask.
"The--other?" he said, succeeding fairly well in gaining a tone of indifference.
"Heavens--how you fellows nag for details! How you drag at a man! Well, the other--if you're so anxious to know"--the doctor's heart sank before the defiance of that--"the other is"--he looked all about him as one hunted, desperate, and then snapped it out and turned away, and instantly the room grew frightfully still.
It struck Dr. Parkman like a blow from which one must have time to recover. Steeled though he was to the hearing of tragic facts, he was helpless for the minute before this. And then, refusing to let it close in upon him, it was he who turned recklessly assertive, defiantly insistent.
"Any fool would know it's not that," he said, his gruff voice touched with bravado.
There was one of those strange changes then. Karl turned and faced him.
"How do you know?" he asked, with a calm not to be thrust aside. "How do you know it's not that? You can't be sure," he pursued, and there was fairly cunning in forcing his friend upon it, cutting off all escape, "but there are just fifty chances out of a hundred that it
is that. And if it is," with a cold, impersonal sort of smile--"would you give very much for my chances of sight?"
"You're talking like a fool!"--but beads of perspiration were on the doctor's forehead. And then, the professional man getting himself in hand: "You're overworked, Karl. You're nervous. Why I can fix this up for you. I'll just--" but before that steady, understanding gaze he could not go on.
"Not on me, Parkman--," slowly and very quietly--"not on me. I know the ropes. Don't try those little tricks on me. I don't need professional coddling, and I don't need professional lies. You see I happen to know just a little about the action of germs. We'll do the usual things, of course--that's mere scientific decency, but if this thing has really gotten in its work--oh I've studied these things a little too long, old man, I've watched them too many times, to be able to fool myself now."
"Well you will at least admit," said Parkman--brusque because he was afraid to let himself be anything else--"that there are fifty chances out of a hundred in your favour?"
Karl nodded; he had leaned back in his chair; he seemed terribly tired.
"Come now, old chap--it isn't like you to surrender before the battle. We'll prepare to meet the foe--though I give you my word of honour I don't expect the enemy to show up. This isn't in the cards. I
know it."
Karl roused a little. There was a bracing note in that vehemence. "Well, don't ask me to do any crossing of a bridge before I come to it. I think our friend down stairs is thinking of hospitals and nurses and all kinds of quirks that would drive me crazy. Tell him I know what I'm about. Tell him to let me alone!"
"All right," laughed the doctor, knowing Karl too well to press the matter further just then, "though, of course, common-sense demands quiet and a dark room."
"Ernestine will darken our rooms at home," said Karl stubbornly.
It was strange how quickly they could turn to the refuge of everyday phrases, could hide their innermost selves within their average selves as the only shelter which opened to them. There was something Dr. Parkman wanted to do for him, and they went into the treatment room. In there they spoke about meeting for dinner,--Ernestine had asked the doctor to come out. Georgia and her mother were coming too, Karl told him, and the interview closed with some light word about not being late for dinner.