Chapter XLII: “No, doctor, not with that hand!”

It was Dr. Becker who spoke, developing with his new degree a new authority. He led his chief back into the house, made him sit down, and sent Chat for whisky. For Trench was white and faint, and had started out with his arm still in the sling.

The case was simple enough. On June 22, Trench had infected the tip of his best finger. The accident was not due to any excited assistant. He did the thing himself, in the course of showing a fresh specimen to a visiting surgeon. The whole right arm had swollen almost instantly, and had to be lanced four times. Also he had spent that number of days in bed. In short, the children of Halsted had come within an ace of losing the hand that had helped them so often. They had not lost it, but that finger-tip would have to be re-educated.

Therefore on Sunday morning, June 28, 1914, Trench was obliged to telephone Edith that those about him were tyrants, and that he should be unable to hear her prove life something more than photochemistry. She expressed her sympathy, and said that the subject would keep.

Soon after eleven that morning, as he lay on the couch in the library, Trench received Jaffer’s first cable. He read it with joy, and called Chatterjee.

“Say, old man,”—he had caught the human trick of that from Saadi,—“didn’t I hear you mention your acquaintance with Miss Bridgman?”

“You did, doctor. I feel like Saadi, who was always declaring himself a barbarian, or some such thing.”

“Then change your feelings, my son, and change your Calcutta clothes to American, and kindly go at once to call on the lady. I want you to tell her all about your poet who looks like Tennyson—I forget his name. And incidentally don’t fail to give her this cable. Read it yourself, if you want to. You didn’t know that Jaffer was asked to call on Saadi.”

Chat wanted to say “Oh, didn’t I?” but he intended to make no more breaks. He read the message while he was changing his clothes, and couldn’t for the life of him understand who, besides himself, had been sending messages to Saadi via Jaffer.

After Edith Bridgman received the message, there wasn’t much conversation about Mr. Tagore. She simply introduced the courteous youth to her sister, got them to talking, excused herself, and scurried out of the house.

“Elsie, my dear girl, what do you think of that?”

Elsie studied it, and got out an atlas and Saadi’s scrapbooks, and looked up Serajevo. Neither of them had heard of the place before. There were probably numerous references to it in the clippings printed in Cyrillic, but they couldn’t even find the word there, the letters were so strange. Finally Edith sent home for a volume of the encyclopædia, and when it came they studied Bosnia for two hours.

“It’s a great mystery, Edith. Would you—could you—stay with me until to-morrow?”

Edith stayed. That evening Elsie made her beguile the hours with some account of the studies that had occupied her all the year. With growing wonder she soon made her narrow biology to the subject of embryology. And awe filled her heart as she listened. Little had she dreamed what infinite and impersonal lines of force met within her own body, finding their sole significance in the miracle of personal love.

Next morning Edith was the first one up, and she made Elsie stay in bed. A little lovering would not hurt Elsie, just now. While the teakettle was boiling, Edith brought in the morning paper, and glanced it through in the kitchen.

Of course the news of the assassination caught her eye, and made her heart stand still. All her old fears came back, or rather a wholly new set of worse ones. Saadi—so his wife had said—was going to attempt something dangerous, and Saadi was a revolutionist. His name was not given in the paper, but these first reports were not to be trusted.

Her first thought was to burn the paper before Elsie saw it. But Elsie would be sure to ask for it, being very much alive to daily news, and much grieved that the socialist daily had to suspend, and disgusted that big business kept certain news out of the other papers. And no sooner had Elsie drunk her coffee and eaten her toast than she did ask for the paper. Edith went and got it, and pointed at once to the Serajevo story.

Elsie ran it through, and her dark eyes kindled. “Poor boy, poor boy!” she exclaimed.

“What are you saying? Do you think he knew of this? Did he tell you anything?”

“Never a word, Edith. But it is all as clear as the day. He tried to stop it, and he didn’t succeed. He told me that he was going to stop some sort of Satan business.—Well, all we can do is to wait.”

And there they sat and waited, for Edith wouldn’t let her get up. They talked of many things until nearly noon, when Elsie insisted on rising and getting luncheon herself.

After that was eaten, Elsie was persuaded to go for a drive with Helena. Edith telephoned Dr. Trench, asking him to send any further message to the flat, where she would remain to receive it.

But no cable came that afternoon from Jaffer. Only there came Stepan Beg’s two drafts on Serajevo, one for Trench and one for Elsie, together with a note in German, “repeating the grateful salaams he had so often sent by Saadi.” Trench understood now why those salaams had never reached him. He sent Chat over to show the note to Miss Bridgman, and to leave for Mrs. Sereef the wedding gift sent by her father-in-law. This time Chat went with an understanding heart, having had all explained to him.

It was late in the afternoon of the next day when Trench got Jaffer’s second wire—laboriously printed on the parapet of the Saadi bridge, and cautiously worded in case it should fall into the hands of the Austrian patrol:

Cetinje, June 30, 1914.

Dr. Trench, Halsted Street, Chicago.

Dead. He waged war against war.

R. R. J.

Trench sank into a chair, stricken, and closed his eyes. But he kept saying to himself, “Thank God, thank God.” He did not intend it as prayer or praise, but it was perilously near the line.

Half an hour later he ascertained that Edith was still with Elsie. He waited till next morning, however, in order to give Elsie a night’s rest. Then he went to the flat, found Edith alone in the front room, and silently showed her the message.

Edith as silently read it. She asked him to remain, in case the shock made medical attendance necessary. Then she went into Elsie’s bedroom.

“My dear, dearest girl—are you brave this morning?”

Elsie turned her great dark eyes toward her friend, and again they seemed to kindle.

“Give it to me!”

Edith obeyed, kneeling beside her as she read. The yellow paper slowly crumpled in Elsie’s clenched hand, and her very lips grew white, but her eyes blazed.

“I’m going to get up! There’s a man within me, and he shall never say that I lay crying when his father had just died for the workers.”

Edith saw that it would be unwise to protest. She helped her dress, and they both went into the living room. Elsie spoke.

“Dr. Trench, you have been a good friend to my husband. If it had not been for you he would have done some reckless and destructive thing. But now he has done a reckless thing that is constructive, and he and I are glad to pay the price.”

“I am proud to have known him, Mrs. Sereef, and proud to know you. I owe him more than I can well explain or understand. But you will draw on me for anything—money, counsel, or blood—so long as we both live.”

Elsie took his hand silently. Then she turned and went into the kitchen. It is true that when she was there alone she leaned against the wall, gasping “Saadi, Saadi,” but the evidence of her grief was not heard in the other room.

Trench rose, and Edith walked beside him, into the hall. As they stopped, she lifted her eyes to Trench—and Trench knew. She held out her left hand to meet the one uninjured, but instead of taking it he put his left arm about her, as Jaffer had put an arm about Saadi. From each person sprang that which might still have been held in leash, for each soul—poor discarded name for something—was mightier than the passion. She leaned her head against his breast, and he kissed her forehead.

“You see what life is like.”

“I am not afraid. Is it worth while without me?”

“Yes! Without heaven and even without you!”

“Then take me!”

“My beautiful, we both are scarred, but you had a father, let your son say so.”

“My great impersonal man, scars are not transmitted.”

“Thank God for that! And Jaffer has sent a ruby that shall cover yours.”

“A ruby! There should be one for Elsie, too. I saw the web of life like an opal, full of scars. But I saw it change to a ruby, hiding them all.”

THE END

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