Читать книгу Disputed Passage - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 4

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It was late afternoon, the twenty-fourth of December. All day the sky had been heavily overcast and for the past two hours the snow had been tumbling down in big wet flakes that gave no promise of remaining to provide sport.

The street-lights in the down-town business district had come on at three. Motor-cars churned and slithered and spun their chains in the brown slush as they backed away from curbs. Littered shops wearied of their own disorder and drooping sales-girls candidly yawned while mumbling praises of their tousled merchandise.

All of the students who could manage it had left three days ago for the holiday recess. Only a few of the University buildings on the main campus showed lights. The professors were helping their wives decorate small trees with baubles and tinsel; performing the rite with dignity and precision, and saving the tissue-paper.

Out in the Medical College zone the streets were almost deserted. There was a light in the Bursar’s office in the Administration Building, and in the anatomical laboratory on the top floor of Lister Hall; but the rest of the institution had gone out of business.

Three of Mrs. Doyle’s roomers had stayed on. Bugs Cartmell was remaining because he had recently acquired a new stepfather and didn’t want to go home; Tony Wollason, because he lived in Wyoming and couldn’t afford to go home; Jack Beaven, because he had no home to go to.

The widow Doyle, tall, gaunt, and grim, who had housed five student generations of medics and spoke their patter with amazing fluency, was just back from having a chiropractic adjustment for the relief of her sciatica. She sat placidly rocking in the bay-window of her small living-room, chewing gum and perusing the current issue of her favorite magazine, Astrology. Christmas had never disturbed her routine. If parents of small children wanted to turn their houses upsidedown for a week, and litter their rooms with pine-needles, all well and good; but Mrs. Doyle saw no reason for the nuisance and expense of holiday decorations at her house. It had not been her policy to coddle her tenants. Some landladies of her acquaintance went out of their way to be nice to their students, and a precious lot of thanks they got for it. They would prime their pens on your rugs, wipe their razors on your towels, and polish their shoes with your curtains, no matter how much you pampered them. Mrs. Doyle was about as maternal as an incubator.

The house was quiet, dimly lighted, and chilly. Tony, having slept most of the day, had gone down town to a movie. Bugs had received by express a bottle of bootleg whisky from his elder brother in New York, craftily packed in a box marked ‘storage battery.’ Having generously planned to share the gift with his fellow-lodgers upon their return, he decided to sample it and make sure it would be good for them. One couldn’t be too careful, these days. Confident of its quality, Bugs now observed that his feet were damp. Exchanging the shoes for his well-worn moccasins, he padded down to the kitchen where he hoarsely requested a pitcher of hot water, a handful of sugar cubes, and the loan of the nutmeg shaker.

Mrs. Doyle, who had not served as his chambermaid for two and a third years without learning something about his habits, remarked that his cold must have come on very suddenly. Sniffing him diagnostically as he stood by her side waiting for the kettle to boil she added, ‘But I don’t suppose you’ll need a doctor.’ Then she grinned almost archly, as to say that while it was certainly none of her business if he wanted to indulge himself a little—seeing it was Christmas ’n’ all—he needn’t imagine he was putting anything over. Bugs receipted the meaningful smirk with a rather rakish smile. No, he wouldn’t need a doctor, he said; didn’t believe in doctors, anyway; if he got too sick he would send for a faith-healer. Retiring to his untidy room on the third floor he had presently gone to bed, contentedly jingled, with a copy of Arrowsmith, a new novel which was said to deal with the medical profession. Some day, he reflected, he would write one himself. Nobody would like it, but it would be the truth.

Beaven had asked permission to work in the anatomical laboratory during the Christmas vacation. There was nothing unusual about the request except that first-year students were not in the habit of applying for such permits, which were mostly issued to seniors doing research on their graduation theses. Ordinarily, one asked Tubby’s consent. But Jack wasn’t seeking favors of Tubby, so he had put his request through the Dean’s office, a procedure strictly in order, and the permission had been formally granted. Doubtless Tubby’s O.K. had been secured, but Jack had spared himself the necessity of a personal interview.

The relation between the two had been a source of considerable amusement and conjecture. The earlier fear that Tubby, exasperated over his humiliation, might punish the whole class for Beaven’s impudence, had been promptly relieved. He was impatient, exacting, sarcastic; but no worse than his reputation for ungraciousness.

The battle between the professor and his unlucky disciple continued unabated. Sometimes the class was much annoyed. But the animosity had its droll moments, too. From the first day, Tubby made it a point to badger Beaven about his religious upbringing and the piety he had imputed to him, invariably addressing him in the classroom with honeyed phrases implying that he was likely to be offended if not handled tenderly. Had Jack been a member of some monastic order, appearing in gown and cowl, tonsured and barefooted, he couldn’t have been treated with more deference. At times, Tubby’s mockery was so labored as to be very tiresome. On these occasions, Beaven’s replies took no account of the mood in which the questions had been asked. Once in a while, Jack would play up to the role assigned him, and the dialogue had large possibilities, but before they were done with it, Tubby would be peevish. One day when the discussion related to the various phenomena of the endocrine glands, and much talk was made of physical functions speeded or retarded by mental states—the supernormal strength of the frenzied, the curious achievement of ‘second wind’ by track athletes, etc.—Tubby had spoken of the adrenalin suddenly poured into the blood stream of men on the battle-field, as a prophylaxis against hemorrhage, and raised the question whether the glands might—in an emergency—provide immunity against disease.

‘Brother Beaven,’ said Tubby, ‘when Saint Francis kissed the leper, do you think his piety may have accounted for the fact—if it is a fact—that he did not contract the disease himself?’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Jack, soberly. ‘In the brotherhood to which I belong we frequently kiss lepers.’

The class thought this was going to be a lot of fun, and gave rapt attention to the combatants, all eyes bright with expectation.

‘And you find that it does you no damage?’ queried Tubby.

‘Not to us, sir. It is our method of administering euthanasia.’

Everybody laughed and felt that Beaven had scored a point. Tubby didn’t like it. For a moment it seemed that he was about to carry on with the serious discussion of his theme. Then he decided to put Beaven on the spot.

‘That brings up an interesting question,’ he said, severely. ‘You seem to speak favorably of euthanasia. Are there any circumstances under which a doctor might seem justified by giving his patient a painless death?’

The class sobered. It looked as if Tubby was trying to back his victim into a corner where any attempt at persiflage might be easily misinterpreted.

‘It is against the law,’ Jack replied.

‘Is that the reason you would not do it?’

‘It is a good enough reason.’

‘Then you are never going to kill anybody when you are a doctor?’

‘Very likely, sir; but not intentionally.’

‘Your murders will all be accidental?’

‘Yes, sir—that is, all of them that I commit in a strictly professional capacity.’

Tubby grunted, and resumed his lecture where he had left off. It was clear to everybody, including himself, that the interlude hadn’t been a very dignified performance; nor had he succeeded in making Beaven appear ridiculous.

One method of hectoring, which Tubby had practiced freely during the early days of the semester, had been abandoned. He had a trick of organizing the questions he put to Beaven in such a manner that they admitted of but one reply; questions so elementary that a high-school student with a sketchy knowledge of Physiology would have been considered a dolt if he had muffed them. But it was to be noticed that Tubby had discontinued this tactic. After the first couple of weeks, the class having had time to turn in some assigned anatomical drawings, Tubby left off treating Beaven as if he were a numbskull. Quite to the contrary, he now began the habit of singling him out when the question was exceptionally difficult. On these occasions, Tubby was sour but civil. It would grow very quiet in the classroom. Everybody would expect—and hope—that Tubby, upon receiving a correct reply to a hard question, might be decent enough to express his commendation. But he would merely nod briefly and proceed with the quiz.

‘I can’t see what he thinks he’s going to gain,’ the comely Gillette remarked, one day, when they happened to find themselves paired in the straggling procession that ambled down the walk to the street. ‘He knows you’re the best student in the class, and admits it by the sort of questions he asks you. Why does he keep on trying to poke fun at you?’

‘He doesn’t like me,’ said Jack.

‘Well—he certainly has got a nerve!’ complained Winifred, sympathetically.

Jack grinned and reminded her that Tubby was a nerve specialist. He felt silly over Winifred’s solicitude.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ she continued, ‘how he seems to spend more time at your table in the lab than with anyone else. I often wonder: does he go over there just to annoy you and find fault? One day I saw him snarling at you, and then he picked up your notebook and pinched on his cute little lorgnette and scowled at your drawing for a long time, and then scribbled something on it, and almost threw it at you. And then stalked away, mad as a wet hen.’

Jack shook his head.

‘It wasn’t quite that bad,’ he said. ‘Tubby was just making a little suggestion; something he hadn’t mentioned in class. It spoiled my drawing, so I had it to do over; but it was a very interesting——’ To Winifred’s surprise, Jack suddenly interrupted himself to say, ‘Hold out your hand. Spread out your fingers. Bend back the little one. Stretch it out. Now bend back the next one. Notice the difference. See how much more freedom you have with the little finger?’

Winifred obeyed him, critically surveying her hand. It was a very shapely hand, she was pleased to note, and she hoped he might think so. Perhaps he would say something to that effect, when the impromptu lesson was over. But he didn’t.

‘That’s because,’ he went on, as unmoved by the beauty of her hand as he might have been if it belonged to a cadaver, ‘there’s a different tendon structure serving the little finger; not very much, but enough difference to be noticed; slightly different caliber of nerve-fiber, too. That’s what Tubby was calling my attention to.’

‘Mighty small matter to be making such a big fuss about,’ she grumbled, loyally.

‘Maybe—but it’s these small matters that have made Tubby a great anatomist.’

Winifred pouted in his behalf, firming a very pretty mouth.

‘So you still think he’s great,’ she said, ‘after the rotten way he has treated you.’

‘Of course,’ declared Jack. ‘Tubby’s attitude toward me has nothing to do with his ability as a scientist.’

She regarded him with wide, perplexed eyes, almost as if they were total strangers, and did not reply for a long moment.

‘I’m almost afraid of you,’ she said, at length. ‘I believe you’re as cold-blooded as Tubby is. You two pretend to hate each other, but you don’t; not really. I’ll bet you’re as nearly alike as identical twins. I think I know now why Tubby comes to your table and growls at you. He knows you’ve got something.’

‘Pish!’ said Jack.

‘And I know something else,’ Winifred went on, impressively. ‘Yesterday he ordered your table to be pushed over on the north side, next to a window. And I said to Millicent Reeves, “I’ll bet Tubby has put him over there, by that draughty window, so he will be cold and uncomfortable.”’

Jack laughed.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘It is chilly over there.’

Winifred lifted a hand in contradiction.

‘Ah, no, Brother Beaven. He put you over there so you would have the advantage of that north light.’

‘Nonsense! I’m the last fellow in the world that Tubby would befriend. See here—he doesn’t show any partiality. Hasn’t he given you a square deal?’

‘Sure! And he didn’t scribble anything on my paper about that what-you-may-call-it tendon in the fingers.’

‘Extensor,’ supplied Jack. ‘Extensor digiti quinti proprius, for short.’

‘Wow!’ said Winifred, wincing. ‘What a pretty mouthful! Do you try to remember all that stuff? I’m sure I don’t.’

Jack frowned down upon her like an elder brother.

‘You’d better,’ he said. ‘There will be an examination, some day. Tubby may be negligent about his parlor manners, but he wants everybody to know the Latin names for things.’

At the corner their steps lagged. Winifred drew a sigh and remarked that all work and no play might make Jack a dull boy. She looked him straight in the eyes as she said it, and his heart missed a beat. He had a fleeting notion to do something about it.

‘Good-bye,’ she said, caressing the word provocatively.

‘Good-bye,’ said Jack.

He sensed a sudden glow of well-being as he pursued his way down the street with lengthened stride and squared shoulders. It hadn’t occurred to him why the damned old beast had moved him into that draughty corner. The girl had guessed the reason. Tubby wanted to give him a chance to do his best. Tubby hated him like hell, but was on his side when it came to the pursuit of their common task. Tubby deserved a spanking, but he was a great scientist. Jack laughed; laughed aloud; and then suddenly remembered that to laugh aloud—by oneself—was a sign of madness. For the moment, he had forgotten all about Winifred.

A few days later—it was nearly six o’clock—Jack was conscious of someone at his elbow. He had been working since four on a piece of independent research on the structure of the left subclavian vein. Tubby had remarked, seemingly rather more to himself than the class, ‘The left subclavian vein: well—do your best. And when you have done your best, you will still have much to learn. I recommend your diligent study of it.’ Jack had taken the hint and had stayed after the usual laboratory hours to do a painstaking dissection.

‘Hello,’ he said, absently. ‘You still here?’

‘My last drawing bounced back on me,’ muttered Winifred. ‘He told me to do it over. And now everybody’s gone, and this place is dreadfully spooky. I’ve got the jitters.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jack, comfortingly. ‘These people are harmless. Some of them were public nuisances, while they were alive, but they’re philanthropists now.’ He straightened an aching spine, and regarded her with a friendly grin. ‘This fellow,’ said Jack, patting his cadaver cordially on the chest, ‘committed suicide after having forged a note for a sizable sum of money. The man who lost the money is probably at home, by this time, reading the evening paper. He is well-to-do, highly respected, and after dinner he and his wife will go somewhere for a game of bridge. But—he will never have a chance to serve his generation in a big way because, after all’s said to his credit, he is just another run-o’-the-mine citizen. When he dies, the lodge will turn out in plumes and mothballs, and bury him. Maybe taps will be blown at his grave, if he was something in the war. But—my friend here,’ continued Jack, ‘is offering the medical profession some information about the left subclavian vein—but I wish he wouldn’t be so darned reticent.’

Winifred eyed him steadily, her inviting lips pursed. She shook her head. It was a pretty head. She had just suffered a permanent.

‘I don’t know how you can do it,’ she said, slowly. ‘You love it, don’t you? I hate it! I loathe it!’ She tucked her forehead into the crook of her arm, and shuddered.

‘Maybe you should be doing something else,’ suggested Jack, fraternally. ‘Maybe you should be at home, serving on the hospitality committee for the Junior League.’

Now Winifred was going to cry. Jack regarded her with apprehension but with interest. He had been looking ahead, in the textbooks, and presently he would be studying the various phenomena of the lachrymal glands. He didn’t want Winifred to cry, but if she was going to cry he felt that he might as well note all the phases of it that could be viewed externally.

‘Come on,’ she entreated, brokenly. ‘Let’s leave these rotten old corpses—and go out and have dinner—someplace—and——Oh, I’m so dreadfully fed up with this terrible business.’ She drew a long breath, with a sob in it, and pushed her face deep into his white smock. Jack patted her arm.

There was a sound of brisk footsteps. Professor Milton Forrester had ineptly chosen this high-geared moment for an excursion from his office into his private laboratory. He paused, outraged at the sight which smote his gaze. Winifred detached herself from Jack’s shoulder, and regarded the enemy with frightened, tearful eyes. Jack felt as foolish as he looked. Tubby bore down on them indignantly.

‘Well!’ he snorted. ‘If this isn’t the last place in the world for people to make love! It’s a wonder the whole roomful of cadavers doesn’t sit up and laugh! Now—you get out of here—both of you—and attend to your mooning elsewhere!’ He strode off, stiffly, toward his laboratory. At the door he paused to say, ‘Beaven—I’m surprised at you. I had hoped——’ He shook his head, disgustedly, opened the door, and disappeared.

‘Maybe you’d better run along now,’ said Jack, thickly. ‘I think we’ve done enough to ourselves, for one session.’

‘I’m awfully sorry, Jack,’ murmured Winifred. ‘My fault. All of it. He’ll hate you, now, worse than ever. Please forgive me.’

Never had a day passed more quickly. He had gone to the anatomical laboratory at nine, presently realizing—when he glanced up to find himself alone—that it was noon. After a while the others drifted in, tied on their aprons, lighted their pipes. It was to be hoped that no one of his elders and betters would stroll over to see what he was up to. He could imagine Jim Wentworth, whom he knew slightly, glancing at his sketch and saying with a grin, ‘You’d better not try to stand on your head, little one, until you learn how to walk.’

Jack was not engaged on any required problem today. He was attempting to satisfy his curiosity about something that probably had no practical value at all.

Shortly before vacation, the class had been studying the head. Tubby had called attention to the quite elaborate fan-shaped muscular equipment extending above and behind the ear, an ingenious device for which there was but little use. He had added that it was a vestigial remain of muscles which were very important and active long ago when men’s ears were as mobile as the ears of dogs. Now that we had escaped from the jungle and were no longer preyed upon by an assortment of stealthy enemies, we were not required to be on the jump.

‘You should easily locate, on the cartilaginous rim of your own ear,’ remarked Tubby, ‘a trace of the tip which used to sweep about with the swiftness and certainty of movement still displayed by the human eye.’

It was rather odd, Jack thought, that the tip of the dawn man’s ear should have degenerated through disuse until you could hardly find it, while the muscles which had served the ear’s necessities—a million years ago—showed no signs of atrophy.

Nobody in the class had raised the question. Tubby had volunteered no further information on the matter. The dissection had proceeded and the scheduled drawings had been made, quite as if there was nothing peculiar about the auricular muscles which had been loafing on the job for innumerable ages. The class had picked its way, routinishly, through these muscle-fibers, tagging the arteries and veins and nerves with red, blue, and black threads, as usual. And, having drawn their charts, had moved along next day to a similar examination of the frontalis.

Jack hadn’t been satisfied with this ear business, and wanted another go at it for his own private information. Already the study of nerve structure had begun to be of peculiar interest to him. He realized it was rather silly to be thinking—in his first year—of going in for neurological surgery as a specialty, but something told him it was likely to turn out that way.

This probability presented an annoying problem. Had he discovered in himself a special concern for something else—internal medicine, for instance—he would be seeing less of Tubby Forrester as the years passed. If he went in for neurological surgery, the time would come when he might be at Tubby’s elbow all the day long—a most undesirable situation.

Sometimes, when Tubby had been particularly mean to him in the classroom, Jack would swear that this settled it. He would leave off concentrating his attention on nerves. Next day he would be in the library, absorbed in Ransom, Whitaker, and Quain, pretending not to notice Miss Selfridge’s sniff when he asked for them—as if she was thinking, ‘Sonny—you’d better stick to good old Gray until you learn where all the bones are.’

It was four o’clock now. On the tall desk beside his operating-table, Jack had painstakingly drawn a good sketch of the auricular muscles—a much more complete and detailed drawing than he had done previously as a requirement. In the microscope he had sharpened the focus of the stereoscopics upon the tiny tendril of nerve-fiber, and was studying it with an absorption so complete that he was startled to find Tubby beside him.

‘Nice way for a pious young Christian to spend Christmas Eve,’ said Tubby. ‘I should have thought you might be playing Santa Claus at some Sunday School festivity.’

Jack straightened, blinking a little as he eased out of his eye-strain.

‘They wouldn’t have me,’ he drawled. ‘Not chubby enough.’ He blandly looked Tubby up and down, his eyes lingering briefly in the vicinity of the great man’s midriff.

‘May I venture to inquire,’ asked Tubby, with elaborate courtesy, ‘what you think you are doing?’

Jack nodded his head toward the drawing and Tubby, adjusting his glasses, gave it a glance.

‘I thought you had already done this. I seem to recall that we passed it, some days ago.’

‘Yes, sir. I was just curious about it.’ Jack proceeded to explain the nature of his inquisitiveness, rather reluctantly, for he didn’t want Tubby to make sport of him. It was all very well if Tubby, wanting to punish him, held him up to open ridicule before the class, savagely raking him as a prig. But he hoped for some degree of fairness and sincerity when it came to a matter of scientific inquiry.

‘Far as I can see,’ concluded Jack, ‘the nerves in control of these non-functioning muscles are of the same structure and caliber as those of the frontalis. Why haven’t they atrophied?’

‘What do you want to know for?’ growled Tubby, resetting the stereoscopics to his own astigmatism, and squinting at the tiny thread of nerve.

‘Oh—just curiosity,’ replied Jack, lamely, and half-ashamed of the confession. He wondered if Tubby would be cad enough to make some contemptuous allusion to it later in the classroom.

Tubby tucked his pince-nez back in his breast pocket.

‘I see you’re interested in nerves. Why?’

‘I’ve often wondered,’ said Jack, in a tone barely audible, as if he were speaking to himself. Then, with animation, ‘Would you be good enough to tell me, sir, what I want to know about this nerve?’

Tubby, who had been carrying his overcoat on his arm, put it on and buttoned it.

‘No!’ he snapped. ‘I’ll not tell you!’

He needn’t be so damned brutal about it, thought Jack, flushing with anger.

‘I’ll not tell you,’ repeated Tubby—‘because I don’t know. And I don’t thank you for stirring the question up.’ He tugged on his gloves, with quick little jerks.

‘Then—I suppose nobody knows,’ said Jack.

Tubby darted a searching look.

‘Are you trying to say something smart, young man?’ he challenged, his jaw thrust out pugnaciously.

‘No, sir. I never was more honest in my life. I think that if you do not know, it is unlikely that anybody else does.’

‘Humph!’ muttered Tubby. He turned to go, took a few steps, returned, elbowed Jack away from the microscope, peered into it for a long moment, and having grunted another ‘Humph,’ stiffened his back and marched out of the room.

Jack turned his head to watch this pompous retreat; then grinned, and growled deep in his throat, ‘Merry Christmas—Towser.’

Noisily closing the laboratory door behind him, Doctor Forrester proceeded through the dimly lighted lecture amphitheater to his office. He had a call to make before dinner, and had forgotten the street address.

Snapping on the lamps, he drew out a large metal drawer from the cabinet of case-histories, extracted the page he sought, and put on his glasses. A good deal of misery had been boiled down into the succinct, cold-blooded phrases detailing the clinical log of William Mason, forty, carpenter, resident of Elmersville, married, no children; state charge.

Forrester’s eye ran swiftly through the report, stirring afresh an indignation that—six weeks ago—had furnished him the materials for a whole day of fiery speeches.

A dozen years ago, Mason had begun to suffer burning pains in the lower part of his back. He had consulted a physician in the little town where he lived, and was given amateur massage and hot fomentations—and bromides. For more than a year he continued, with increasing discomfort, to pursue his trade. The pain becoming unbearable, he had consulted another physician in the slightly larger neighboring town of Kenwood. His tonsils and four teeth were removed. Six months later another doctor had operated on him for hernia, followed shortly by an appendectomy. Two years afterwards he was hospitalized again and an extension apparatus was applied to his legs for eight weeks.

Then they had all given it up. Mason was helplessly bed-ridden, nursed by his wife who supported them by home baking.

Three months ago, Mason, having applied for examination in the University Clinic, had made the journey on a stretcher. A careful survey of the case showed that the patient had a lumbosacral tumor of the spinal cord.

Forrester had fumed and raged when he made this discovery. Throwing all discretion and diplomacy to the winds, he had had his say about the case. By rights, William Mason ought to sue the state for damages. He had been put to unspeakable agony, he had lost a dozen years out of his working life, had spent his savings and surrendered his home. It was the state’s fault. The state had licensed men to practice medicine and surgery who regarded their vocation as a mere trade—a mere source of food supply, ‘like a truck-patch.’ Perhaps they thought they meant well, romping up and down the country-side with their self-assured manner and their impressive little leather satchels, earning plaudits for their attentiveness, their kind words, their soothing smiles, but not knowing whether they were afoot or on horseback when it came to making a scientific diagnosis. Mason had been given the dirtiest kind of a dirty deal.

Next morning after Doctor Forrester had performed the operation—a laminectomy on the twelfth thoracic and first three lumbars—removing an incredibly large encapsulated tumor, he determined to make the shocking affair known. All that day he had recounted the steps in Mason’s case for the benefit of his classes; had waived the scheduled lectures; had engaged in a furious lambasting of the State Legislature, the Medical Association, and the public’s laissez-faire attitude toward incompetence in the most important profession.

‘It all goes to show,’ he had declaimed, ‘what comes of a lack of training, lack of self-discipline, lack of capacity for personal sacrifice in school and during internship.

‘William Mason is a typical victim of malpractice. Some of you are unwittingly making preparations to go forth to commit similar crimes. You are eager to get out of training and set up business for yourselves. Some selfish little fluff is yapping at you to hurry up and marry her. Your parents think you ought to be earning money pretty soon. You’re tired of the long hours, the strict supervision, the monotonous hospital food, the drudgery, the screams, and the stinks. So—you pop out, with your little black satchel, to rub horse liniment on William Mason’s rump; or, in a brilliant display of acumen, to yank his tonsils out. A dozen years later, some sour old curmudgeon, who wasn’t in such a hurry to hang out a shingle, finds an aged tumor in Mason’s spinal cord.’

That had been a very noisy day in the Forrester classroom. He had raked the whole lexicon to find strong enough phrases.

‘I hope you are not gathering from my heated remarks,’ he had cautioned, ‘that I am emotionally upset about William Mason, as an individual. The fact that he spent twelve years in abject misery is most emphatically none of my business. His aches and pains haven’t cost me one minute’s sleep. The world is full—has ever been full—of aches and pains. I am not the least bit sentimental on that subject. Nor is it my affair if Mason’s wife had to bake cookies to support him. She might have been engaged in a less interesting occupation.

‘But I have been losing sleep over the deplorable conditions which permit these injustices. I feel responsible. It is my duty to help prepare physicians to do something better for William Mason than sit by his bed twice a week, and look again at his tongue, and tell him to buck up bravely. I tell you—part of your shame as an incompetent is my shame!’

He had felt that these speeches had really done some good. It seemed that his classes were doing more serious work; not so many absences; not so many asinine replies to simple questions. William Mason had been put to a lot of suffering, but his case had served a very good purpose. Somebody should tell the chap that. It would be interesting to observe his reaction.

Forrester glanced at his watch and was startled to find how long he had been standing here, brooding over the Mason incident. He noted the address—121 South Hemlock. He remembered now, having had occasion to look it up only yesterday.

The Masons had been advised to go into furnished rooms for a few weeks, so that he might be available to the clinic. The man would have to be under supervision for some time. He couldn’t be discharged now and sent back to Elmersville where the medical profession would have nothing for him but sympathy and sleeping-powders.

The streets were slippery and Forrester drove with caution. He wore a scowl. It was rather awkward—his feeling of obligation to have a look at Mason, this afternoon. People were so soft and silly about Christmas. These Masons unquestionably felt grateful to him for the operation. The woman had tried to make a fuss over him in the hospital. How often he was obliged to put up with this sort of thing. It always embarrassed him; made him suspect that his colleagues were grinning behind his back. Sometimes he had been required to be almost rude, realizing that he was hurting their feelings; but—he could trust the tear-wipers and back-patters to attend to these damaged sensibilities.

He rang the bell and heard it jingle in the second-floor flat. Mrs. Mason, a shawl about her shoulders, hurried down the stairs. She peered at him with bewilderment for a moment; then smiled the sort of welcome she might have bestowed upon a relative.

‘Why—it’s Doctor Forrester! I never seen you without your long white coat and cap. Come in, please. Bill will be so glad.’ She closed the door behind them; and, still holding onto the knob, lowered her voice to say, ‘And oh—Doctor Forrester—you can’t ever know what it has meant to Bill and I—all those wonderful things to eat.’ The big tears ran unchecked, while Forrester stared at her in dismay. Some blundering fool at the grocery store—in spite of strict instructions—had let them know.

He made an impatient gesture up the cold stairway, and Mrs. Mason piloted him through the stuffy little living-room to the bedside.

‘Well, Mason; how goes the battle?’ demanded Forrester.

The sick man’s eyes lighted. He reached out his hand, which the doctor grasped by the wrist. There was a minute of silence. Forrester did not take out his watch; had his ear attentive to the busy little clock on the bureau.

‘Turn over and let me see your back.... Bring that light over here.... Hold it—so.’ He drew up the sheet again, pocketed his glasses, nodded his head. ‘Very good. Doing nicely.’

‘Doctor’—Mason cleared his throat—‘That was an awful fine thing you did for us. We know you are a big man, with a lot o’ folks to worry about. And we certainly thank you for thinking of us—‘specially now.’

‘It’s made Christmas mighty happy for us,’ put in Mrs. Mason. ‘Hasn’t it, Bill?’

‘I’ll say. You’ve got a heart, Doc! You’re not only a big surgeon. You’re a prince.’ Bill, overcome by his own words, wiped his nose on the corner of the sheet.

‘We was almost afraid of you,’ ventured Mrs. Mason; adding, recklessly, ‘One of the nurses said you was too busy to take any store of common folks.’

Forrester was stroking his gloves onto his fingers with impatience. He felt he had to say something to clear this matter up.

‘Mr. Mason—and Madam—I hope you will understand my exact motives in ordering this food. The fact that it has come to you on Christmas is a mere coincidence, I assure you. I am much interested in your case—as a matter of professional concern. I would like to bring you into my student clinic, within the next four weeks, with your normal activities fairly well resumed. You can assist me by taking proper care of yourself, and making every effort to build up your strength. I feared that you might try to live on poor food, for reasons of economy. I don’t want any of that!’ His voice shrilled to lecture-room pitch. He turned almost belligerently to Mrs. Mason. ‘And I don’t want you skimping on food, either! You’re thin as a rail. First thing you know, you’ll be flat, and then he’ll have you to fret about. And that will detain his convalescence. I intend to see to it that you both are provided with proper nourishment. But what I have done is strictly professional!’ He glared more fiercely at Mrs. Mason as he observed a timid smile puckering her lips. This ignorant woman wasn’t getting the idea, at all. ‘Strictly professional!’ he repeated.

‘But—how about the holly wreath, Doctor? Did you mean for Bill and I to eat that?’ She took Bill’s hand as if to solicit his support of her audacity.

‘Holly? Holly?’ Forrester made an earnest task of buttoning his gloves. ‘Humph! Well! I had forgotten. A trifle—I’m sure. The important thing is that I want you, Mason, to give me a good blood count within the next few days.’

To his wife’s amazement, Bill let loose a half-hysterical haw-haw, the doctor regarding him with somber disapproval.

‘You can’t kid me, Doc—God bless yuh!’

‘Nor me, neither,’ declared Mrs. Mason, bravely. ‘You done it out o’ the kindness of your big heart. Perfessional—Pooh! We never had a better friend. Look what you done for him, a’ready! And now these presents!’

‘Well—well—have it your own way,’ grumbled Forrester, in the tone he often employed with psychopathic patients. Taking up his hat, he moved toward the door. Mrs. Mason said she would go down with him, but he assured her, with frosty dignity, that he could let himself out.

‘Merry Christmas, Doc!’ called Bill.

Forrester paused, blinked a few times, and replied, stiffly, ‘Oh, yes—of course—of course.’

‘Merry Christmas, Doctor Forrester,’ said Mrs. Mason, tenderly.

‘Yes, yes. Quite so.... Good evening.’

He closed the door and made his way gingerly down the poorly lighted stairway, climbed into his coupé, fumbled for his cigarettes, struck a match, spun his engine, and scooted off through the slush in the direction of the University Club where he was having dinner with an old bachelor crony, Linton, of the Law Faculty.

He found him in the library, deep in a big leather chair.

‘Hi, Scrooge,’ drawled Linton, dragging himself to his feet. ‘You’re late. I thought maybe you had gone caroling.’

Tony and Bugs were engaged in a laborious discussion of what’s-it-all-about-anyway when Jack returned at nine. Pausing at the open doorway of Cartmell’s disheveled room, he peered into the smoke-fog and grinned understandingly.

‘Come in,’ said Bugs, thickly, ‘and improve your mind. Important words are being uttered and much truth is coming to light.’

‘“In vino veritas,”’ added Tony, with deep solemnity.

‘Smells more like whisky,’ said Jack.

‘The fellow has the nose of a chemist,’ muttered Bugs. ‘Bring a glass, Doctor, and we’ll see how much veritas you are able to contribute.’

In dressing-gown and slippers Jack presently joined them, poured himself a small nip from the depleted bottle, gulped and shuddered, filled his pipe, and dumped the miscellaneous contents of a chair onto the floor. ‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ he said. ‘As you were.’

Bugs, sprawled on the bed, rose on one elbow, propping his head up with his hand.

‘Perhaps you’d better give your family an account of your recent movements,’ he suggested, paternally. ‘It’s very late for you to be out. Have you been down among the bright lights, observing the antics of the quick, or up in the lab, consorting with the dead?’

‘He smells like the lab,’ remarked Tony.

‘Then we don’t care to hear anything about your adventures,’ decided Bugs. ‘Tony and I have just passed a unanimous resolution, after a learned debate, to the effect that the medicine man has as good a right as a plumber to live a normal life; three meals regularly, seven hours’ sleep—all served in one piece—a decent house to live in, preferably in the suburbs of a small village, a wife, children, flower garden——’

‘With plenty of ground,’ interposed Tony, ‘for vegetables and chickens—and a nice fat pig in a pen.’

‘No, shir!’ objected Bugs. ‘I’ve been telling him you can’t have vegetables and chickens. But’—wistfully—‘I’d rather like to have a pig-pen.’

Jack made a comprehensive gesture with his pipe-stem, and drawled, ‘What’s the matter with this one?’

‘We trust you are not trying to be offensive,’ said Bugs, with dignity. ‘You come in here reeking of a loathsome occupation, partake of our hospitality, throw our various necessities on the floor, and then insinuate that our room is untidy. Rank ingratitude.’

‘Rank is right,’ agreed Tony. ‘By the way—have you found out yet what made you wiggle your ears when you were a monkey, or whatever damn’-fool thing it was you wanted to know?’

‘Proceed, brothers,’ urged Jack. ‘I should like to hear more about this country doctor, with the chickens and the asparagus and the pig—and the medicine case filled with quinine, morphine, and castor-oil. Tubby ought to be here to make a few more remarks about the progress of medical science in Elmersville.’

Bugs sat up and extended an arm in a sweeping gesture.

‘Now—there you are! Let’s start from there. Take Tubby, for example. What d’you suppose that old killjoy gets out of life? Bachelor. Lives at a club. On duty seven days of the week.’

‘And on Sunday,’ added Tony. ‘That makes eight.’

‘Thanks. And trying to tell people,’ declaimed Bugs, ‘how they ought to live.’ He paused for reply.

‘Well—I’m not acting as Tubby’s attorney,’ countered Jack, ‘but——’

‘No!’ cut in Tony, ‘I shouldn’t think you would, after the dirty treatment you’ve had.’

‘That’s all true enough. Tubby has been very unpleasant. But that is a personal matter. He doesn’t like me; and, naturally, I don’t like him. All that is beside the point. It has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. I think I understand Tubby’s attitude about the medicine man. One thing is certain: you can’t be a doctor and raise chickens. I doubt whether you can be a really good doctor and have a home, a wife, social duties, children, care of a house, worry of family illness, monthly bills.’

‘Yeah—but look at us!’ grumbled Tony. ‘Here we are, on Christmas Eve, crowded into this frowsy old rat-hole——’

‘Shay, fellah,’ protested Bugs, ‘enough has been said about my humble abode. If you don’t like it, you can——’

‘Yeah—I know where you mean.’ Tony dismissed him with an overhand gesture. ‘And we’ll be spending Christmas in just such diggings until it’s time to move up to the top floor of the hospital annex for a few more years of captivity. Don’t you think we’ll deserve a home—ever?’

‘It isn’t a matter of deserving,’ said Jack. ‘It’s the nature of the job; that’s what we’re discussing. You think that a doctor can pursue a normal life. I disagree. I’ve given up the home idea—for good.’

‘You mean—you’re going to be an old bachelor—like Tubby?’ demanded Bugs, incredulously. ‘You’ll never get away with it. It must have been easy for Tubby. No woman would want him.’

‘That’s right,’ mumbled Tony. ‘Some gal will shout, “My hero!”—and take you into camp.’

‘I have only one interest in life now,’ declared Jack, resolutely, ‘and that’s scientific. That’s all. Nothing else matters. I may turn out to be no good at it, but—it won’t be because I wanted a home.’

‘O lit-tle town of Beth-le-hem——’

Mrs. Doyle had turned on her radio.

‘Guess you’re right, at that,’ conceded Bugs, indulgently, ‘A home is nothing but a millstone around your neck.... I wish the old lady would turn off that Sunday School entertainment. I never realized she was so darned sentimental.’

‘A-bove thy deep and dream-less sleep——’

Tony lifted himself out of his chair, stretched to full torsion, yawned mightily, and said he was going to bed.

‘The ev-er-last-ing Light——’

‘Me, too,’ said Jack. ‘Good night.’

‘Merry Christmas!’ drawled Bugs.

Retiring to his room, Jack disposed himself comfortably in two chairs, lighted his pipe, and listened. It was not a Sunday School entertainment. Sunday Schools didn’t furnish that kind of music. This was a choir of trained voices. Sunday Schools didn’t have trained voices. If you wanted to hear a really good interpretation of the old hymns, you had to call in singers from secular society. It took the world, the flesh, and the devil to make these expressions of religion inspirational. The idea had never occurred to him before—not just this way. Funny thing about that. Religion’s best art-forms—painting, sculpture, poetry, music, drama—had been composed and executed by people who were primarily artists concerned with art for art’s sake. Same way with healing, maybe. The greatest contributors to medicine and surgery weren’t the people who had been moved to holy pity by the world’s distress: they had gone in for science not because they were emotionally disturbed over human suffering but because they were intellectually curious and wanted to know to what lengths of discovery science might carry them.

‘No ear may hear His com-ing ...’

Nor had the scientists been trained and encouraged by organized religion. More often than not, religion had disapproved of them. Sometimes they had had to fight their way through the prophets and priests to lay hold upon the instruments of research.

‘The dear Christ en-ters in.’

Jack’s brooding eyes narrowed in serious concentration. An interesting question, this. Just where did ‘the dear Christ’ come into this picture? Whose side was He on? What did He think of the whole business? Did it offend Him to see the healing of the world’s diseases going forward in the hands of people who didn’t give a moment’s thought to the problem of ‘inspiration’? Maybe the solemn wiseacres had Him all wrong. Maybe ‘the dear Christ’ was concerned only with having the Truth come out and do its work—no matter who found it, or how. If that could be proved, well—it certainly would upset the apple-cart; but it would make ‘the dear Christ’ popular with the people who were pushing civilization forward. It would liberate Him from the tight little enclosures where He fraternized with the uninquisitive and the resigned. Science would claim Him! The researchists would shout to the sentimentalists, ‘He has been your exclusive property too long! He’s on our side!’ ... And they would hang His picture in the lab. In the anatomical lab, where Tubby could see it. Tubby wouldn’t object. All he cared for was science. If it could be shown that Christ was in favor of science, Tubby would be for Him. And they would hang His picture in the chemical lab. It might change their tactics. They couldn’t take much interest in poison gas if He was looking down at ’em and they knew He was concerned about chemical research.

‘It came upon th’ mid-night clear——’

The sweet old lyric reached into Jack’s memory and stirred him. He closed his eyes and let the pictures file by.... When he and Jean—his twin—had been little things, Father would go down stairs early, Christmas morning, to rouse the furnace. It was barely light. He and Jean would be pipping to go down and see the tree and the gifts. But they weren’t permitted; not until Father had played a few Christmas hymns on the phonograph. They must sit still in bed and listen. Mother would come and put her arms around them, and they would try to be very still.

‘O ye, be-neath life’s cru-shing load——’

Nobody was ever more sentimental than Mother. She certainly took her religion hard—and took it straight. When he and Jean were in high school, the family still ran the Christmas hymns on the phonograph before anyone went down—but Father.

‘Look now for glad and gol-den hours——’

Once, he and Jean had brought home a couple of records that weren’t exactly religious—according to Mother’s ideas. One was an old English ballad that had something in it about ale, and another was ‘Noel’ which she felt had been concocted under the wrong auspices. Mother wouldn’t have it. Christmas was a religious occasion, and you wanted to be mighty careful what brand of religion it was, too. ‘Ave Maria’ wasn’t quite the thing for Christmas morning, though Mother was uncompromising about the Virgin Birth. If you didn’t believe that, the whole thing fell to pieces, she said. And maybe it did.... Maybe it had!

‘Joy-ful all ye na-tions rise—

Join th’ tri-umph of th’ skies——’

They always had to attend everything the little church had to offer at Christmas time. Grandfather had been a Methodist preacher and it was up to the family to honor the faith he had toiled for. It had been the pure faith, once delivered unto the saints, and you weren’t allowed to ask any questions about it. Mother always grew nervous and petulant when you asked questions. Faith couldn’t grow in an atmosphere of doubt.

‘Veiled in flesh th’ God-head see—

Hail th’ In-car-nate Deity——’

Whenever people began raising queries they opened the way for Satan to come into their hearts and make them unhappy—unhappy and unworthy. Mother was very precious. She might have been pretty if she hadn’t worn her beautiful Titian hair that way. Sometimes a cute little curl would peep out from under her hat-brim and she would be prompt to tuck it back where it belonged. God didn’t go in much for pretty things. He liked plain people best and preferred them to wear dowdy clothes. My Uncle!—but it had stirred things up when Jean came home, one day, with her hair bobbed. He and Jean had been half-grown before they realized that Father was fairly well-to-do. Mother didn’t want them to know because she hoped to keep them unspotted from the world.

‘Sing, choirs of an-gels—

Sing in ex-ul-ta-tion——’

But they had loved her for her goodness and her tenderness. She would have crawled on her hands and knees over a road of cinders to get them something she thought they ought to like.

After Father was gone, she had redoubled her efforts to make them good. To be good meant to believe; believe the Word. No, no, darling—here is The Word. You must accept The Word—and be saved.

And when they had come home from college for Christmas vacation, in their freshman year, Mother had insisted on the early morning phonograph program, same as when they were tiny tots. This time, Mother operated the phonograph; and when it burst forth lustily with ‘He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love,’ Jean, who was sitting on the foot of his bed, put both hands over her ears. It was the third year of the World War.... Then Jean—how vividly he remembered the moment—she had her comb in her hand, and had been running it through her lovely corn-yellow hair. She tipped back her head, shook her curls, resumed her combing, and muttered, ‘It would be funny—if it wasn’t so terribly tragic.’

Now that Mother was gone, one remembered best the sweetness of her. There was no discounting the value of her beliefs in their effect upon her. She had gone through hell, at the last, with her inoperable cancer, but The Word had unquestionably come to the rescue. Everybody had marveled at her calmness. You could say what you pleased about religion as an opiate; sometimes that’s what you wanted—an opiate. Medical science could be grateful for some sedative strong enough to counteract pain, without doing any damage. There was no sense in sneering at religion because it made people contented with their disappointments and resigned to their incurable miseries. Religion had science licked at that point; no question.

‘Word of th’ Fa-ther—now in flesh ap-pear-ing——’

It would be a great thing to be able to believe that; to be able to return—even for an hour—to the ecstasy of complete trust in this declaration. Impossible, of course. It would demand a faith that not only passed all understanding but wilfully dodged facts already well in hand. The Plan of Salvation was idealistic enough, but it wasn’t working. It never had worked. It had helped Mother die quietly and with a smile, but it hadn’t done anything to keep her alive and give her back her health. If the world was to be saved, it would have to escape from its own bigotries, diseases, slaveries. The Plan hadn’t done much in this field. Science—not sentiment—was The Word.

The house was quiet. Mrs. Doyle had shut off the radio. Jack roused from his reverie and decided to write to Jean, at home in Oregon.

Dear Girl:

It is midnight here; nine with you. For the past hour I have been listening to Christmas carols on the landlady’s radio. All afternoon I worked in the lab. The two things don’t jibe.

I tried to get myself back into the state of mind we used to be in when we were children. I honestly wished I could. Something tells me that if you want to be happy, you’d better not begin asking questions—about anything. And that brings up the problem—What makes one want to be happy? Have you any right to be happy? Is that what we’re here for—to be happy?

He sat there for some minutes, tapping his teeth with his pen; decided impulsively that this wasn’t the sort of letter a man should write to his sister on Christmas Eve; crumpled the page and threw it into the waste-basket.