"The only thing seems queer to me," said a meek looking woman, taking advantage of the outbreak, "is that he don't look at your tongue. Down in Indiana, where I come from, they always look at your tongue. There's a lot of questions he don't ask," she ventured, looking around for either assent or information.
"He asks all there's any need of," the first woman assured her. "I guess you aren't very sick," turning, witheringly, to Ernestine.
And then they went back to their waiting; those who had rocking chairs rocking, those who had magazines reading, or turning leaves at least, some just sitting there and looking into space. It must take away all sense of freedom to feel that people like this, sick people for whom everything was hard, were always waiting for one.
She would tell the doctor how she had been well-nigh mobbed by loyal patients. They were like a great family; she knew well enough they did considerable grumbling, but her remark put her without the fold, and from her as an alien, criticism was not to be brooked. By the glare with which the first woman still regarded her she was sure she was suspected of being an agent sent there by some inferior doctor to try and get Dr. Parkman's patients away from him.
Ernestine was tired, and she believed she would have to admit that she was nervous. She had been working harder, she supposed, than she should, but the further she went the more she saw to do, and something from within was eternally pushing her on.
As she waited, her mind turned to the stories that office must hold. How much of anxiety and suffering and sorrow and tragedy—and occasional joy—it must know. The mothers who brought children whom others had declared incurable—how tense these moments of waiting must be for them! The husband and wife who came together to find out whether she would have to have the operation—how many of the crucial moments of life were lived in such places as this! The power in these doctors vested! The power of their voice, their slightest glance, in holding men from the brink of despair! Who could know the human heart better than they? They did not meet the every day men and women well groomed with restraints and pretence. For it was an hour when the soul was stripped bare that the doctor looked in upon it. Men were various things to various people, but to the doctor they came very close to being themselves. Too much was at stake to dissemble here. When phantoms of fear and death took shape in the shadows one sought the doctor—and told the truth.
She had a fancy which moved her then. She saw the men like Dr. Parkman fighting darkness down in the valley, while from the mountain peak adjacent men like Karl turned on, as with mighty search-lights, more, and ever more, of the light. And what were the search-lights for if not to be turned down into the valley?
"What time did you go to bed last night?" he demanded, after they had shaken hands in the inner office.
"Why—did you see the light?" she faltered;—she had made a promise against late hours.
"The light—no; but I see your face now, and that's enough. Was it two—or worse?"