The Bacillus of Beauty Part 12

"Well, good-by, Helen 'Lizy," he said.

"Good-by, Father."

For weeks I had been eager to be off, but as the train began to move and I looked back at his patient figure--he made no more show of his deep emotion than if the parting were for a day--a big lump rose in my throat at leaving him and Ma--old before their time with toil and privation and planning and striving for me.

I knew how lonely it would be in the sitting room that night without me.

Father with closed eyes jogging away in his chair, Mother bolt upright and thin and prim, forever at her knitting or sewing; no sound but the chair and the ticking clock upon the shelf--that night and every night. And the early bedtime and the early morning and the long, long day--what a contrast to this!

I pressed my face against the window, but a rush of tears blurred all the dear, familiar landmarks--Barzillai Foote's red barn, the grain elevator at the siding, the Hartsville road trailing off over the prairie; I would have given worlds to be in the top buggy again, moving homeward, instead of going swiftly out, out, alone, into the world. Three months ago! I did not dream what miracles were in store!

And so one day I reached the New York I had dreamed about. It wasn't as a shrine of learning that it appealed to me, altogether; but as a wonderful place, beautiful, glittering, feverish with motion, abounding with gayety, thronged with people, bubbling with life.

How it fascinated me!

Just at first of course I was lonely because John had not yet come, and Mrs. Baker, mother's cousin, was away from home. But I soon made friends with my cousins, Ethel and Milly; shy, nice girls, twins and precisely alike, except, that Ethel is slightly lame. And at my boarding place I made the acquaintance of an art student from Cincinnati three or four years older than I, who proposed that we should become girl bachelors and live in a studio.

"But I didn't know people ever lived in studios," I objected.

"Oh, you dear goose!" said Kathryn Reid--it's really her name, though of course I call her Kitty--"Live in studios? Bless you, child, everybody does it. And I know a beyewtiful studio that we can have cheap, because we're such superior young persons; also because it's ever so many stories up and no elevator. Can you cook a little? Can you wash dishes, or not mind if they're not washed? You got the blessed b.u.mp of disorder? You good at don't care? Then live with me and be my love. You've no idea the money you'll save."

That's just the way Kitty talks. You can't induce her to be serious for three minutes at a time--I suppose it's the artistic temperament. But she's shrewd; studio life _is_ better than the kind of boarding house we escaped from. And so jolly! Kitty has more chums than I, of course. Her brother, Prosper K., and Caroline Bryant--"Cadge," for short--a queer girl who does newspaper work and sings like an angel, are the ones I see most.

Though for that matter the city's full of girls from the country, earning or partly earning their living. One will be studying music, another art; one "boning" at medicine, another selling stories to the newspapers and living in hope of one day writing a great American play or novel. Such nice girls--so brave and jolly.

My new home is in a building on Union Square. And I like it--the place, the people, the glimpse of the wintry Square, the roaring city life under my window. I'm sure I don't want a quiet room. It's such fun, just like playing house, to be by ourselves and independent of all the world. I think it's an intoxicating thing, just at first, for a girl to be really independent. Boys think nothing of it; it's what they've been brought up to expect.

Well, I tore myself away from the dear place to get at my work. I really mean to work hard and justify Father's sacrifices. I tried to take singing lessons, because John is so fond of music, but there I made a dismal failure; I had, three months ago, neither ear nor voice. The day before the fall semester opened, I climbed the long hill to Barnard College, fell in love with its gleaming white and gold, so different from the State University, and arranged for a course in biology. Then I began physical culture in a gymnasium.

I couldn't have made a queerer or a better combination. For it was in the Barnard laboratory that I met Prof. Darmstetter; and it was my bearing, my unending practice of the West Point setting-up drill, my Delsarte, my "harmonic poise" and evident health that drew his attention to me.

How well I remember the day I made his acquaintance! I had entered the laboratory without knowing what manner of man he was, for all my arrangements about my course had been made with clerks. So it was with genuine surprise that I turned from an inspection of the apparatus to answer when a squeaking voice at my elbow suddenly saluted me:--

"Mees Veens.h.i.+p, not so?"

The owner of the voice was a little old fellow, whose dry, weazened face gave no hint of his years. I guessed that he was probably seventy, though he might as easily be much younger. His skin was parchment-coloured and cross-hatched by a thousand wrinkles and the hair under his skull-cap was as white as snow, but he was as bright of eye and brisk of manner as a youth of twenty.

"Yes, sir," I replied rather awkwardly; "I am Miss Wins.h.i.+p."

"V'at for you study biology?" was his surprising query, uttered in a tone between a squeak, a snarl, and a grunt.

"Because I wish to learn," I replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"No, mine vriendt," he snapped, "you do not vish to learn. You care not'ing for science. You are romantic, you grope, you change, you are unformed. In a vord, you are a voman. You haf industry--mine Gott, yes!-- and you vill learn of me because I am a man and because you haf not'ing better to do. And by-and-by behold Prince Charming--and you vill meet and marry and forget science. V'at for I vaste my time vit' you? Eh? I do not know any voman who becomes a great scientist. Not so? T'ose young vomen, t'ey vaste t'eir time and t'ey vaste mine."

I followed his gesture and saw two or three nice-looking girls in big checked ap.r.o.ns amiably grinning at me. One of them by a solemn wink conveyed the hint that such hazing of new arrivals was not unusual.

"You're paid to waste your time on me," I answered hotly. "I'm here to work and to listen to you; my plans are my own affair, and if I never become a great scientist, I don't see what difference that makes to you."

The meekest looking girl gasped, wide eyed at my temerity. But Prof.

Darmstetter's shrewd little eyes twinkled with rea.s.suring good-nature.

"Vell, vell, ve shall see," said he, wagging his head; "maybe I find some use for you. I vatch you. Maybe I find for you some use t'at you don't expect, eh? Ve shall see."

So he walked away, shrugging his shoulders and snapping his fingers and muttering to himself: "Ve shall see; we shall see." And at times throughout the session he chuckled as if he had heard of an excellent joke.

"Good gracious!" I whispered to one of the ap.r.o.ned girls that had watched the encounter--students like myself--"that's an encouraging reception, isn't it?"

"It is," she gravely replied. "We're all jealous of you. You are evidently destined to become Prof. Darmstetter's favourite pupil. I know I cried half the night at the way he greeted me. We were all watching you and you got off easy. Brought an ap.r.o.n? I can lend you one, if you didn't. It's pretty mussy here."

"Thank you," I said, "but really I can't get my mind off Prof.

Darmstetter, all in a minute so. What sort of a man is he?"

"Oh, irritating sometimes, but a genius; I suppose his treatment of the girls is a sample of his Early Teutonic ideas of civility. He likes better to teach the Columbia boys--says their work in future years'll do him more credit. But we get used to him and don't mind it, we who were here last year. And he's a great scientist; has a world-wide reputation. He almost lives in the laboratory, here and at Columbia; has no home life or friends or relatives. And oh, it's such a privilege," she said with a sudden change of tone, a schoolmistressly manner, looking upon me more austerely, "to study under such a man. He is a Master."

The Master! She little knew how true was the word! To-morrow, if his secret and mine were known, the world would hail him as its lord. He would be a greater man than has yet lived on the earth. Armies would fight for his favour at the bidding of queens--to get what I have! And to think that chance led me from two thousand miles away, straight to him.

From the first he seemed to take an interest in my doings. He never troubled himself to be polite, but he watched me; always he watched me. I often saw him chuckling and rubbing his hands as if in approbation. But of what? Not of my work, for of that he never took the slightest notice, except when I compelled him to do so by some question.

Then, in quick-flung sentences, he would condense the results of a lifetime of study into phrases filled with meaning, that seemed to cast light upon principles, not facts, and make wonderfully clear the very purpose of Nature. Then indeed he almost forgot that we were women, and talked with kindling enthusiasm of his pet subject. I ceased to wonder that he held such high rank in college.

Under such conditions I made rapid progress. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, though I was not absorbed in it, like most of my companions; but I was quick enough to keep pace with them and to make occasional shrewd suggestions that pleased Prof. Darmstetter not half so much as some sudden display of spirit. He did not seem to care whether I became a student. And always he watched me, for what purpose I could not determine.

My home life--if existence in a studio can be so called--was merry. I was learning the ways of the world. I liked the life. I wrote to John almost every day. The freedom of the den, the change from rote lessons to post- graduate work was pleasant. I was happy.

Happy? I must have dreamed it.

What I thought happiness was nothing to what I now know happiness can be.

CHAPTER V.

THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS.

If I have dwelt so long upon the laboratory and its master, it is because there the great blessing came that has glorified my whole existence. This was the way of it.

One day I asked Prof. Darmstetter some question about the preparation of a microscopic slide from a bit of a frog's lung.

"Vait!" he snapped, "I vill speak vit' you aftervards."

The girls prophesied the terrible things that were to happen, as they lingered in the cloak room, waiting their turn on the threadbare spot in the rug which a rich girl had bought to cover the threadbare spot in the carpet in front of the mirror. "Now you'll catch it!" the last one said, as she carefully put her hat straight with both hands and ran out of the room.

When I returned to the laboratory Prof. Darmstetter motioned me to a chair and took one opposite, from which he fixed his keen eyes upon my face.

Again he seemed weighing, judging, considering me with uncanny, impersonal scrutiny.

"How I despise t'ose vomen!" he said at last, throwing up his hands with an impatient gesture.

Used to his ways, I waited in silence.