Jonathan’s voice was actually gentle when he said, “Did your father have other relatives, those close to him?”
“No, he had no one. He had been an orphan for years. He had no brothers or sisters, and only distant cousins he rarely saw. They lived hundreds of miles away; they didn’t even correspond. He had no one but Mama and me.” She paused. “Sometimes I think he thought he had only Mama!” Her voice broke.
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” said Jonathan. He thought of that quiet scholar whose only joy and laughter came from his wife. “I’m sure he knew, and knows, that he has a very devoted daughter, one of the best.”
She looked up at him, startled and suspicious, but his face was so kind that she swallowed quickly and tried to keep from bursting into tears. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I had only Mama and Papa myself, no sisters, no brothers, though I have gone out into the world far more than ever my parents did. I believe in wide associations and participations, and being part of humanity and events. I belong to many charitable committees and boards, and we do a great deal of good.”
“I’m certain of that,” said Jonathan, and refrained from wincing again. “As I see it, your father took your mother’s death very calmly and sensibly.”
The girl hesitated. “Indeed he did. Except he did one strange thing. He did not go to her funeral. In fact, on the morning of her funeral he disappeared. He was gone for two days. I did not notify the police. After all, I knew Papa would never be guilty of anything—exaggerated, if you follow me. I had never seen him much disturbed in all my life. He had a most equable temper and a consistent way of looking at life, and was very balanced. Once there had been
a
fear that he would lose his eyesight; that was four years ago. Mama went quite to pieces and we had a frightful time with her. But Papa never lost his equilibrium. Mama almost lost her mind with joy when the doctor notified us that he had been mistaken in his diagnosis, but Papa only smiled. He always had perfect control of himself and stability. I think I resemble him a little there.”
“Yes,” said Jonathan. “Yet, he disappeared on the day of your mother’s funeral and stayed away two days. How did he appear when he returned, and what did he say?”
“He was very pale and exhausted but very calm, as usual. He gave me no explanation and I asked for none. He never spoke of Mama again. Not once, in eleven months. It is as if she had never lived and he had never known her, and she had never been in this house or in our house in New York. He went back to the university and then decided on a sabbatical to write his novel about Chaucer. My father is a very distinguished man,” the girl added with pathetic pride. “He has received many honors and awards from famous scholars and their committees. He has spoken in London, Paris and Berlin, and he is
a
brilliant linguist, speaking foreign languages perfectly. He was much acclaimed everywhere he went. He has thought of this book for years and discussed it almost every night with Mama. They were like eager children about it. I’m glad that I can take Mama’s place in this one thing, at least.”
“Has he never visited her grave?”
The girl looked up at him, startled. “It is very odd that you should ask that! No, he has never gone to her grave. He has never even asked in what section of the cemetery she is buried. I never asked him to go with me at any time, for he was healing so nicely and I did not want to open his wounds again.”
The trite words and clichés did not seem unpleasant to Jonathan but only very sad, for they had the freshness of devotion and grief. This girl was not so strong-minded as she believed she was. In her own way she had been as lonely and deprived as her father. What was wrong with such ostensibly independent and equable people? Were they really too sensitive to endure living without the safeguards of love, protective love, about them, and without the strength of others? Were they too proud to admit their terrible need? Must they condemn themselves to death in silence when the one reason for their living had vanished?
“And your father has seemed in good health, and sleeps well, since your mother died?”
The girl thought. “No,” she said at last. “Of course, Papa never complains. He was never stout, but now he is quite gaunt. I’m sure you’ve noticed that. He eats very little, even of his favorite dishes. And I hear him walk up and down for hours in his room every night, back and forth, without saying a word. I thought he was thinking of his book. He was, wasn’t he?” Her tone was suddenly girlish and abjectly pleading, for she had begun to follow the torturous way Jonathan was talking.
Jonathan went to her and took her hand and held it warmly. “Miss Elvira,” he said, “I wish you were my sister. I truly do. I need a sister like you. I’d like to have a daughter almost exactly like yourself. Please don’t look so incredulous; I mean it.
“Do you know what is wrong with your father? He is deliberately dying of grief for your mother. Everything else is shut out from him—you, his book, his work, his students, his friends. He has locked himself in a cave and is dying in darkness. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Now she was crying and did not know it.
“Tell me,” he said, “what kind of a woman was your mother?”
“Oh, she was gentle and sweet and loving. A little woman, not tall like me.” The girl snuffled frankly into her handkerchief. “Soft, plump. Papa used to call her his little bird. She was like a bird, to tell the truth. Not chirpy, but singing and gay. She used to tease me that I had no sense of humor at all, and I suppose I really don’t. It wasn’t that Mama was frivolous. She just accepted life and everything in it, and thought the world was wonderful even when it manifestly was not. She was very religious, too. She wanted everybody to—love God. Papa and I are agnostics, but sometimes, because of what Mama was, I thought there might really be a God, and I think Papa sometimes speculated on that, too. But it all left when Mama died. It was as if—as if—every- thing had been washed over with gray, so that there wasn’t much color remaining in the world.”
Robert had been listening in silence and in pity, and in surprise, too, at Jonathan’s comforting of the girl, who had seemed such a formidable piece of self-righteous and narrow-minded intensity. Live and learn, thought young Robert.
“Your father,” said Jonathan, “has been desperately trying to suppress his grief, to override it, to surmount it. He never gave it a chance to spend itself, and so he is still wounded, still suffering, perhaps more than he was at the very beginning. It is poisoning him. It is killing him. He wants to die. He sees no reason for living any longer.”
The girl was shattered. “And I thought he was so very brave, and I was trying to measure up to his bravery myself, and all the time poor Papa—”
“And poor you,” said Jonathan.
“Oh,” cried Elvira, “what does it matter about me! But Papa is everything, important, needed, not to be replaced. Why can’t he understand that?”
“Because I am afraid he always thought he never had anyone but your mother. I know that sounds harsh. But if you had been openly grieved, he would have comforted you and grieved with you, and you would have both been healed together. He thinks you are very strong and do not need him or anyone else. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing?”
“But, I’m not strong at all!” the girl blurted, and then she colored and looked abashed and sheepish. “I’m the ridiculous one. Do you know, Doctor, I always thought I should protect my unworldly parents!”
“One of these days,” said Jonathan, “you are going to be a wonderful wife and mother, and I hope you have a dozen children, except that you’ll probably spoil them to death. I envy the man you are going to marry, though I hope he will be the kind you won’t have to protect and would be outraged if you tried it.”
“No,” said Elvira, “Papa needs me. I have dedicated myself to him.”
Not if I can help it, thought Jonathan, and patted the hand he still held. He said, “Do you have some spirits in the house? No. Well, I keep a flask of brandy in my bag. Elvira, do you trust me now?”
She looked up at him in hesitating wonderment. Then she said, “Why, Doctor, I believe I do. I really believe I do!” And smiled weakly through her tears.
Jonathan said to Robert, “Would you mind staying here alone with Elvira, Bob? I want to talk with her father.”
He went back to the sick man’s room and asked Mr. Kitchener and Maude to leave. Then he drew a chair to Dr. Burrows’ bedside, and carefully poured a good round drink of brandy into a glass. “I want you to drink every drop of this,” he said. “All at once. No sipping.” He smiled kindly.
Dr. Burrows made a slow negative movement with his head. Jonathan put his arm about the thin shoulders and forced them upright and plumped the pillows under him. “Take your choice,” he said. “You can swallow it or I’ll give it to you as an enema. Either way is effectual, but one is less pleasant than another and a little messier.”
The very shadow of a smile appeared on the high and unworldly face. Jonathan put the glass to Elmo’s mouth and held it there until every drop was swallowed. It took considerable time. It had been a redoubtable amount. Elmo’s face was quite suffused in consequence, and Jonathan then let him he back on his pillows. “A little water? Though it would be a shame to spoil the after-bouquet. No water? Good.”
He sat back in his chair and crossed his elegant legs and looked at his watch. Then he stood up and walked about the room, picking up a book here and there and examining it. “Isn’t Chaucer a little rich for innocent American minds?” he asked. “Remember, we have Anthony Comstock and other little Cromwells here. We’re an awfully naive people, and a very simple one, and not too bright as yet. We still don’t like to admit that ladies have legs and bowels and bladders, and are as avid after what is called ‘carnal knowledge’ as we are. We still don’t want to admit that the world is a very evil place, and a bloodthirsty one, even a frightful one. We’d prefer to believe that it is sweet and lovely, full of laughing children and women who live only for others, and rulers who have the best interests of their people at heart. History, I read in some editorial a few weeks ago, is the evil page of the past, the far past. But from now on history will have nothing to record but the happiness of races and brotherly love and festivals and meeting-of-hands-across-the-sea, and the flowery dells of May, and songs, songs, songs. No more czars, no more kings, no more emperors, no more kaisers. Just one long lovefest of harmonious nations. That’s what I read. Do you know what I call that?”
Dr. Burrows was watching him with eyes which were miraculously clearing. He shook his head. So Jonathan told him in a few pungent words. Dr. Burrows was very still a moment. Then he laughed. It was a low and uncertain laugh, but it was certainly a laugh.
“Have another drink,” said Jonathan, and this time Dr. Burrows did not protest. He even lifted one tremulous hand to guide the glass more carefully. “Ah,” he said, when every drop was gone.
Jonathan sat down again. “A real lively book about Chaucer, with no Latin passages to save the sensibilities of the innocent, and with ye olde Saxon adequately and lustily translated so even a ‘pure’ child could understand most of it—I favor the
Canterbury Tales
myself—would be spectacular in America. Of course, the censors would be howling after it and you, and you’d probably have the exciting experience of being thrown into jail for a time, with every judge and every emancipated woman and every self-righteous man screaming for your blood. Isn’t it strange that so many want to keep the rest of us from what they call corruption, when the only real corruptions are politicians, governments, liars, hypocrites, and the new breed who are calling themselves ‘the lovers-of-men’? That’s true corruption for you! Nothing that is real and honest is corrupt in itself. Isn’t that what St. Paul said? Yes. It is what comes out of a man which soils him, and not that which goes into him.”
Then Elmo spoke for the first time in days, and in a strong voice. “I quite agree with you, Doctor. I emphatically agree. You don’t know the struggles I have with my students. Very uninformed and simpleminded, faced with true corruption every day and never recognizing it until it is too late, and then most of them think it is the noblest thing in the world and not the vilest.”
“We need a lot of brave men to help fight the authentic corruption which is growing in America,” said Jonathan. “This is going to be a very corrupt century. The signs are all here. But I will give you my theories, and my fears, some other time. You know, of course, that you never had a stroke at all?”
“I know.” Elmo’s eyes were strongly bright now, and his color had changed for the better. He even hitched himself higher on his pillows. “It was just that—” He stopped.
“You didn’t want to live any longer after your wife died. I know. I’ve had a long talk with your daughter, a marvelous girl, one in a blue moon. America would be the better for several more million like her.”
The dark sorrow and suffering had returned to Elmo’s face, and the tragedy.
“Elvira? She is a very strong and brave girl, Elvira. She needs no one but herself.”
“She needs you,’” said Jonathan, and now he was not smiling but was stern. “I talked with her. It’s funny, but she thinks you are the strong and brave one, needing no one but yourself. Did it ever occur to you that the poor child is suffering terribly over her mother? But she is trying to keep a stiff spine—for your sake—so you won’t suffer for her and so distract yourself from your precious work.”
“Elvira?” Elmo was flabbergasted and then passionately interested.