Gods Men (36 page)

“William never did quite know what to do with his family,” he now said.

“Are they queer, Father?” Candace's blue eyes were always frank. “I can't seem to remember even his mother very well.”

“I suppose anybody that goes off to foreign countries is queer in a way,” he replied. “Ordinary folks stay at home. Still, they are always taking up collections in churches and all that. William's father is no more than a preacher who goes beyond what's considered his average duty. ‘Go ye into all the world,' and so on. But nobody much takes it seriously, except a few. They're always good men, of course.”

“And the women?”

“I don't believe Mrs. Lane would have gone on her own hook. I suppose she went because he did. Not too much sympathy between them, as I remember.”

He did not want to tell his daughter that he remembered Mrs. Lane as a pushing sort of woman. Maybe she wasn't. People often became pushing when they were with a rich man. He had got used to it. Anyway, it was all in the family now.

“Jeremy's little Mollie is a cute trick,” he said, smiling.

“She is,” Candace agreed. “Ruth tells me she talks all the time. When she comes here she is shy and won't say a word.”

“She talks to me if I'm by myself. It's wonderful to watch the first opening of a child's mind.”

“Ruth and I are going to have to look after Mother and Father Lane. William is working on a new paper.”

“What's he want with more work?” Roger took out his pipe. He had not begun smoking until recently and he still felt strange with the toy. But he had wanted something to occupy his hands.

“The Duke of Gloucester knits,” he said, perceiving a gleam now in his daughter's candid blue eyes. “That's all very well for an Englishman. We American men aren't up to it yet I don't really like this smoking, but it takes time to fill the pipe and light it and it goes out a good deal. It's all occupation.”

“What's the matter with you American men?” Candace asked, her eyes bright, her mouth demure.

“An Englishman is never afraid of being laughed at,” Roger replied. “He just thinks the other fellow is a fool. But Americans still can't risk anybody laughing at them. I can't, myself. Tough as I am I couldn't knit, even if I wanted to. I don't want to, though.”

“You don't want to smoke, either,” she mocked.

He grinned at her sheepishly and went on with his maneuvers while she watched, still ready to laugh. “I guess I like to play with fire,” he said when at last he was puffing smoke, his eyes watering. “What I like best is getting it ready and striking the match.”

“Oh, you.” She yawned softly. “No, I'm not sleepy. I keep worrying about what I'll do with William's parents. Why don't you help me? Suppose they want to stay here in the house all winter?”

“Let them do what they want and you go your ways,” he replied. “Be nice to them and leave them free. That's what most old folks want. Don't worry yourself.”

“Didn't you ever worry about anything?”

“Sure I did. When I was young I worried my stomach into a clothes wringer. One day a doctor said I'd be dead in a year. I made up my mind I wouldn't. But I had to quit worryin' my stomach. Lucky the Stores were on their feet. That was the time I knew Jeremy never would take over. Well, I didn't need him, as it turned out, or anybody. It's a great thing to be able to manage your own business. I kind of hoped once that William would come in, but it's just as well. William is cut out for what he's doing.”

“What do you think William really wants, Father?”

So seldom did she ask a serious question that he looked rather startled and put his pipe on the table to have it out of the way.

“What do you mean, Candy?”

“Well, we have lots of money.”

“It's wonderful what he's done.”

“But he doesn't enjoy it. Even when we have a dinner party it seems he can't enjoy it. It has to be more than a party, somehow. And there is no use taking a vacation. When we went to France last summer, he spent the whole time arranging for a European edition. I went around by myself until in Paris I met some of the girls I'd known in school.”

“William's ambitious,” Roger said reluctantly.

“For what, Father?”

“I don't believe he knows,” Roger said. “Maybe that's what bothers him. He don't know what to do with himself.”

There was something so astute in this that Candace laid it aside for further thought.

“I wish I could teach him how to play games and enjoy horseback riding.”

“He rides well enough.”

“He does everything well, and doesn't care for any of it. I love him and I don't understand him.”

There was a hint of fear in her voice; only a hint, but he did not want to hear it. He was getting too old for sorrow. He could not even read a sad book any more. When it began to get sad he shut it up. He had seen too much trouble that he could not help, or maybe he did not want to help.

“You don't have to understand people,” he said in his driest tones. “There's so much talk about understanding this and that nowadays. Most of the time nobody understands anything. If you love him, you don't need to bother about understanding, I reckon. Just take him as he acts.”

He began to feel restless as he always did when he smelled trouble. He had a wonderful sense of smell for trouble and when he caught that acrid stench, however faint, he went somewhere else. So now, though he loved his daughter, he rose and put his cold pipe into his pocket.

“I guess I'll be getting along home.” He bent over her and kissed her hair. “Don't you worry, my girl. Just treat the old folks nice and let them do what they want.”

“Good night, Father, and thank you.”

He ambled out of the room and she sat a few minutes alone. She was shrewd in her naïve way and she knew his willful avoidance of trouble. But she was enough like him to sympathize with it. What he had said was comforting. It was easiest, after all, not to worry about understanding people, and surely easy just to love them, whatever they did, so long as they were not cruel in one's presence. And William was never cruel to her or to the children. He had never whipped the boys, however impatient he became. Jeremy, in a flurry of wrath, could upturn the fluffy skirts of a small girl over his knee and give her a couple of paddles and then, his anger vented, turn her upright again and kiss her soundly. William did not kiss his sons, either. He never touched them.

Ah well, she was glad she loved him. Love, her father had said, was enough.

The moment William looked at his father as he came off the train, he knew that here was an old man come home to die. The sight and the knowledge stunned him. As always when he was moved he felt speechless. Ruth stood beside him and on the other side were Candace and Jeremy together. They had not brought the children because of the crowd and the late hour. The lights of the station fell upon his father's white face and gaunt frame. He had grown a beard, but even its whiteness did not make the white face less pale. His mother was stouter and older, as strong as ever. It was she who saw them first and she who greeted them. He felt her firm kiss on his cheek.

“Well, William!”

“Yes, Mother.”

But he kept looking at his father. This old, old man, this delicate ghost, the dark eyes living and burning and the pale lips folded quietly together in the white beard! He took his father's hand and felt it crumple into a few bones in his palm.

“Father—” he cried, and put his arms around his father's shoulders. He turned to Jeremy. “You take care of them, Jeremy—the women and the—the baggage. I'm going to get my father out of this.”

“But he's ever so much better,” his mother cried.

“He doesn't look better to me,” William said. His lips felt stiff and he wanted to cry. He pulled his father away, his arm still about the thin old body. “Come along, Father. The car is here.” Why hadn't his mother told him?

The chauffeur was standing at the open door of the car. William helped his father in and wrapped the rug warmly about his knees. “Drive straight home, Harvey,” he called through the speaking tube.

The heavy car swayed slowly into the traffic. William sat looking at his father. “How do you really feel?”

Dr. Lane smiled and looked no less ghostly. “You didn't think I would look the same after all the years?”

It was the first time he had spoken and his voice was soft and high, almost like a child's.

“But are you well?” Now that William was alone with his father he could control his unexpected tenderness.

“Not quite,” his father said.

He looked so patient, so pure, that William felt he saw him for the first time. To his own surprise he wanted to take his father's hand and hold it, but he felt ashamed and did not.

“Have you seen the doctor?” He spoke again with his usual abruptness.

“Yes, that is why we left Peking so suddenly. He thought I should be examined here.” Dr. Lane's smile was tinged with unfailing sweetness.

“What did he say it was?”

“It seems I have had sprue for a long time without quite knowing it. It destroys the red corpuscles, I believe.” Dr. Lane spoke without interest in his corpuscles.

William heard and made up his mind quickly. He would get the best man in the world on tropical diseases—send to London for him if necessary. He felt an imperious anger harden his heart. “I should have thought Mother would have noticed.”

“One doesn't notice, I suppose, living in the same house for so many years,” his father replied. “I didn't notice even myself. Tired, of course, but I thought I was just getting old.”

“You are going to rest now,” William commanded.

“That will be nice,” his father replied. His voice became fainter and fainter until with these words it was only a whisper. William took up the speaking tube. “Drive as fast as you can. My father is very tired.”

The car speeded under them smoothly. Dr. Lane leaned his head back against the upholstered seat and closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. William watched him in profound anxiety. He would get his own doctor tonight immediately after they reached home; he would be afraid to sleep unless somehow his father was fortified.

When the car drew up at the door he got out first and with the tenderness so strange to himself he helped his father up the steps and into the hall. The butler was waiting and took their hats and coats. At the foot of the great stairway he saw his father stand back and look up as though at a mountain he could not climb.

“I will carry you up,” William muttered.

“Oh no!” Dr. Lane gasped. “I shall be quite able in a moment.”

William did not hear him. In a daze of love such as he had never felt for any human creature, he lifted his father into his arms and, horrified at the lightness of the frame he held, he mounted the stairs. The old man, feeling his son's arms about him, gave himself up with a sigh and closed his eyes.

What befell William in the weeks that followed he was never able himself to understand. Its effects did not appear fully for many years. He seemed to be alone in the world with his father, and yet the dying saint was someone far beyond being only his father. For the time during which this presence was in his house William scarcely left his father's room. He discerned with new perception that this spirit, preparing for departure, was ill at ease except alone and he was therefore brutal with his mother. He said to Candace and Ruth, “Mother must not come near him. It is your business to see that she is taken out of the house on any pretext you can think of.”

He bullied the American doctors cruelly, declaring them incompetent. He himself cabled to the great English specialist in tropical diseases, Sir Henry Lampheer, demanding his instant attendance. Under the roaring waves of the Atlantic Ocean this communication went on, hour after hour.

Sir Henry's reply to William's command was British and stubborn.
HAVE CONSULTED WITH YOUR DR. BARTRAM. OBVIOUS MY SERVICES TOO LATE. STARVATION RESULT OF DESTROYED TISSUE. INJECTIONS MAY PROLONG LIFE.

William was imperious with the Englishman,
SET YOUR OWN PRICE.

Sir Henry lost patience and his haughty irritation carried clear beneath the raging Atlantic tides.
NO PRICE POSSIBLE FOR FOLLY OF LEAVING IMPORTANT PATIENTS HERE, ADVISE DEPENDING UPON YOUR OWN PHYSICIANS.

YOU PROPOSE TO LET MY FATHER DIE?

GOD DECREES,
Sir Henry cabled, refusing blame,
YOUR FATHER AN OLD MAN GRIPPED BY FATAL DISEASE.

MY FATHER COMES OF LONG-LIVED FAMILY, ALSO GREAT RESISTANCE OF SPIRIT,
William retorted.

To this affirmation Sir Henry replied coldly,
DIAGNOSIS CLEAR. INJECTIONS EMETINE, BLAND DIET, MILK, BANANAS, POSSIBLY STRAWBERRIES, CERTAINLY LIVER ESSENCE, ABSOLUTE REST, CONSULT BARTRAM.

The cables ticked themselves into hundreds of dollars, and after their futility William felt all the old rage of his boyhood mount into his blood. The damned superiority of the Englishman, the calm determination not to yield, the rigid heartless courtesy—he knew it all in Chefoo when the British Consul General's son was at the top of the top form.

Blind with fury, William shut off the Atlantic Ocean and the British Isles and all the rest of the world. He was in his office, having left his father for an hour with two trained nurses, and Ruth to see that the fools did not neglect him. Now he called in his chief editor, keeping his finger on the electric button until Brownell came in on the run, his eyes terrified.

“Hold up the new dummy,” William ordered. “My father is very ill. I can't get Lampheer to come over, he's determined to let my father die—just another American, I suppose—typical British! I don't know when I shall be back. I shall have to leave you in charge. If it's absolutely essential call me, but if it's not essential, I'll fire you.”