Now they both looked at Robert. Robert said, “You have —you have, Mr. Witherby, some of the usual signs of advanced age—”
The old man actually paled and now he no longer smiled. “Don’t say that to him!” Jonathan exclaimed. “If there’s one thing he hates it is the mere suggestion of mortality. Haven’t you noticed that, in the wicked? Call them any names you wish, murderers, liars, thieves, perjurers, traitors, sadists, and they’ll forgive you. But remind them that they are about to shuffle off and you’ve made an enemy for life. And an enemy like old Jonas here is a very formidable thing. He has ways of reaching out, even from his bed, to strangle people.”
Robert heard himself saying, “But, Mr. Witherby, you are remarkably well-preserved, and with care should live—should five—a considerable time longer.”
Mr. Witherby’s color returned. “I intend to do that, Doctor. Indeed. My parents lived far into their nineties. I love life, Doctor. I find it endlessly amusing, endlessly fascinating. I always have. You mustn’t listen to Jonathan, who could find thousands of flaws in a saint. I never had any need to injure anyone, for I inherited all my money and have increased it. I’ve been unfortunate in my family. My poor first wife came of unstable forebears; I was warned. My poor sons inherited her predisposition. But there, I mustn’t burden you with my troubles. Jonathan, when can I leave here?”
“Today. When Prissy comes. That should brighten up her life when you tell her! But, if I were you, I’d buy a mongrel and feed him off your plate before you eat, after this.”
“Oh, Jonathan! You mustn’t say such crude things.” He giggled like a boy. “Prissy knows my will I have an autopsy ordered.”
Robert did not know if he was serious. He was bewildered again; yet he retreated a step from the old man.
“Good,” said Jonathan. “Though if I perform the autopsy and even find cyanide, I’ll say ‘from natural causes.’ After all, Prissy’s had to stand you for three years. She deserves some consideration. Bob?”
“I’d like to talk with you a moment outside,” said Robert
“Why, why?” cried Mr. Witherby, staring from one to the other. “Are you trying to hide something from me? Is there something really wrong?” He was nakedly terrified.
“I only wish there were,” said Jonathan. “Sad to say, there isn’t, though it’s still a mystery to me why you collapsed. I think I’ll warn Prissy not to be too hasty in the future.” He bowed derisively to the old man and followed Robert out of the room. They stood in the corridor. Robert said to him angrily, “I don’t know what all this is about!”
“And you didn’t smell anything?”
Robert pressed his lips hard together. “It may be I am suggestible. I thought I—” He stopped. “You smelled a stench?”
Robert moved his head with fresh anger. Jonathan said, “You were quite right, and I’m pleased with you. Dee-lighted, as Teddy Roosevelt would say. That is the most contemptible and vicious monster you probably ever met in your life, and I doubt you’ll ever meet another as bad. He drove his wife to her death with his sweet malignance and malice, and he drove one son into madness and the other to the bottle. And I’m willing to bet everything I have that never once in their lives did he ever raise his voice to them or threaten them or speak roughly to them. I bet he never did anything violent in his whole existence, nor inspired open fear. Yet, he really frightened his wife to death and so scared his sons that they ran away from him in the only ways they could. You see, soft and gentle characters are particularly susceptible to the presence of evil. But I’m tough. I know all about him.”
Robert looked involuntarily at the closed door. “You don’t believe in demonic possession, do you?” asked Jonathan. “Well, I do. There may be many things I don’t believe, but I believe in a personal Satan, and old Witherby’s one of his best friends. Jonas never swore, to anyone’s knowledge; the parsons love him. Children adore him, and so much for that business of ‘children always know.’ That mass of flowers in there wasn’t sent by hypocrites but by people who really admire the old bastard. But I never go in there without making the sign against the evil eye,” and he smiled and held out his right hand, extended two fingers and thrust them downward. “My Catholic training. I had a superstitious nurse, too, when I was a kid.”
He began to walk down the corridor and Robert had to follow him. Jonathan pushed his hands in his pockets again and bent his dark head. “It was something in you that made you smell something, and if a doctor can’t smell evil, then he isn’t a doctor in the true sense. There were some houses old Dr. Bogus wouldn’t enter for a handful of gold twenty-dollar pieces, and I know why. He was afraid.”
“Of what?” Robert was feeling more confidence and was ashamed of himself.
“Of corruption. He told me, when he was a very old man, that you can catch an illness from a diseased soul just as you can catch it from a diseased body. And it’s true. He also said it was a killing disease, and it is. Stay away from corrupt people, and they’re more numerous than you think.”
“Superstition,” said Robert. “A mentally ill person—”
“Do you think old Jonas is mentally ill?”
“Well. No. I don’t think so. But you never can tell. An alienist, perhaps— I’ve been reading some of Freud’s work—”
Jonathan laughed. “Freud? That incestuous pervert? Yes, he did commit incest, you know. Quite freely and with enjoyment. He projected his own perversions on the whole of humanity. Of course, he did light up, with his own hellish light, some pretty filthy corners and attics and cellars in other people, because he was familiar with those places in his own soul, too. But he was at a loss in the company of good people; actually lost. He couldn’t accept virtue. He thought it hypocrisy, lies or hysteria. You’d better look more closely at him.”
“The field of mental illness,” Robert began, in a somewhat pompous tone.
“Oh, we’ll explore it all right! But there is something to the ancient snake pits, you know. They did cure people; shock, they say. Perhaps. I think they just scared, literally, the hell out of them. A rough way of exorcism.”
He grinned at Robert. Then someone exclaimed, “Oh, there you are, Jon!” Robert turned and saw three young people approaching with smiles and outstretched hands. One, he saw, was a plump young priest with a kind and boyish face. One was a pretty woman, fashionably dressed in a soft gray silk suit with a lace jabot at her throat and a severe sailor hat of straw on her pile of blond hair. The third was evidently her husband, a loose-jointed young fellow with a bush of auburn curls and large light eyes. For some reason Robert felt a sense of reprieve, or freshness, as if he had just emerged into
light from some dank and malodorous cave. He saw open faces, candid and honest, and a vivid youthfulness and sincerity and an actual childlike pleasure.
“How are you, Father McNulty?” said Jonathan, shaking hands briefly with the priest “Beth, dear. Howard.” He indicated Robert. “My replacement, Dr. Morgan. Fresh as a daisy, isn’t he, and I guarantee that he’s just as innocent too.”
Robert, newly annoyed, shook hands. “Beth and Howard Best,” said Jonathan. “Martha’s parents.”
Robert was frightened. He looked from one smiling face to the other and he wanted to run away. But Jonathan had firmly gripped his arm. “Let’s go to the waiting room down the corridor,” said Jonathan. “I’ve just seen Martha. I want to tell you about her.”
They all went with him, chattering serenely, and Robert thought of the dying child who was waiting for them. Beth prattled, “I’ve been worrying so about Martha, and Howard says I’m ridiculous. I am, aren’t I, Jon? When can we take her home?” She smiled back at Robert shyly. “I hope you’ll like Hambledon, Doctor. Such a nice town and we’re right up-to-date; I heard you were from Philadelphia. Well make you welcome, you’ll seel But do try to make dear Jon stay, won’t you? We simply can’t let him go! We love him so much!”
This dumfounded Robert The priest slowed down to walk beside him and he was looking at Robert with curiosity. “From Philadelphia, eh? I was a curate there. Not for long, thank God, and I mean that, Doctor.” He laughed. His laughter was rich and friendly. “The old Father was a Tartar. But fledgling priests have to expect that. Soften us up, take the pomposity out of us, strip us down to the shivering hide, then throw us out naked and full of gratitude to anyone agreeable enough to pick us up and dust us off and take us home.”
His mother was right, thought Robert. The Papist clergy were full of levity. Then he was embarrassed at his thought Father McNulty was hardly older than himself. How did one address a priest? He couldn’t say “Father.” What did the Bible say about that? “Call no one your father except Him Who is in Heaven,” or something like that. Robert was confused. He said, “Well, sir, I suppose every profession has its drawbacks,” and felt like a fool. The young priest only smiled with the utmost friendliness. He had a face like an apple, with a double chin and light smooth hair and a dimple in his right cheek; his eyes were warm gold.
The waiting room was empty and full of sun and comfortable modern furniture, and Beth sat down and took off her gloves and kept her eyes affectionately on Jonathan, who sat down very close to her. “Weill” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it a lovely day! Howard, you absolutely must not light that smelly pipe! Not in a hospital. We just ran into Father McNulty,” she said to Jonathan. “He was coming to see Martha, too. Isn’t that nice?” Her pretty face was artless and flushed with sun and fair as a rose.
“My pipe doesn’t smell,” said Howard Best. He patted his wife’s shoulder. “It’s better than those coffin nails Jonathan smokes and warns everybody not to put in their own mouths. Well, Jon, when can we take our girl home?”
“Just as soon as her fever goes down,” said Jonathan. He was rubbing the thick gold chain that spanned his middle. He looked at the priest. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
Howard Best slowly took the unlit pipe from his mouth. “What? Is there anything wrong—with Martha?”
Beth had stopped smiling. Her pretty color disappeared. “Martha? Martha?”
In the mysterious way of the clergy Father McNulty understood. He saw Jonathan’s grave face, the wide cheekbones, which were now stark, the evasive eyes. He said to Mrs. Best, “Now, Beth. Let’s hear what Jonathan has to say.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my girl?” asked Howard Best in a changed voice. “Why, old Louis Hedler said it was anemia—”
“Martha!” cried Beth, in the ancient tones of a frightened mother, and the priest reached out and took her hand and held it firmly.
Robert stood at a distance and again wanted to run and knew he must stay, even though no one noticed him now.
“In a way,” said Jonathan in a gentle voice, “it is, indeed, anemia. I took a blood test this morning.
I
don’t know why it wasn’t done before.”
“So?” said Howard. “It’s anemia. That’s not very serious, is it?”
“Oh, no, it can’t be serious!” said Beth in a voice like a prayer. “Not our sweet little girl!”
“It is best to be euphemious with a patient or his relatives,” Robert had been taught. “One must Inspire Hope.” Perhaps, he thought, wretchedly. He himself had seen practically moribund patients suddenly brighten and almost miraculously recover; he had seen deathbeds quicken into life. He had seen dying men open their eyes and live. But there had never been a case of acute leukemia—that most rare, that almost unknown and mysterious disease—that had recovered. The White Sickness of the Greeks, the silent ghost that struck a mortal blow and never repented.
It was a lie, and a cruel one, to give hope where there was no hope.
Jonathan said, looking into Beta
‘s
widened eyes, “Martha has acute leukemia, Beth.”
The parents visibly relaxed. They had never heard of the disease. Nor had the priest, it was evident. Now they were hopefully puzzled. “What’s that?” asked Howard. “One of your new diseases, which your microscopes just discovered?”
“No. It’s very old. But very rare.” Jonathan hesitated. “And there’s no cure.”
One of Beth’s hands flew to her mouth. “You mean,” she whispered, “like consumption?”
“Beth, dear,” said Jonathan, “we can cure tuberculosis now. Sometimes. I wish to God it was only that. Acute leukemia—it can’t be cured.”
“Do you mean she’ll have it all her life, like the effects of infantile paralysis?” asked Howard, sitting down with new stiffness as if he were afraid he would break. “How do we deal with it? Special tonics? Seaside? Mountains?” He paused. “What the hell is it, anyway?” and his voice rose.
The priest held Beth’s struggling and desperate hand tighter. Jonathan said, “I’d rather have it myself, I swear to God, than to tell you this, Howard. You see, there’s nothing anyone can do. We call it, roughly speaking, cancer of the blood-making organs.”
“Cancer!” screamed Beth, and now she frantically pulled away from the priest and jumped to her feet. Her face was terrible. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! Children don’t get cancer! It’s just old people! Martha doesn’t have cancer! I won’t believe it—it’s wrong, it’s cruel, of you, Jon! Cruel, cruel, cruel, to say such a thing!”
“But true,” he said almost inaudibly. Howard stood up and caught his trembling wife to him and she hid her face on his shoulder and shook her head over and over in utter denial, and groaned, “God, God, God.”
“I never heard of leuk—what do you call it?” said Howard, holding his wife tightly. “Blood? Cancer? Tumor? Why, Martha has no tumors—it—”