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 The only thing for which you'd be willing to let the whole world slip away from you is an old-fashioned, out-of-date thing called love—just the primitive, fundamental love there is between a man and a woman.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!"
CHAPTER XXVII
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.