_ PART TWO
CHAPTER XXVI. 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!" _