A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  16

  “You’re crazy!” said Dr. McManus, in as much of a shout as his voice could produce. “Lorry, you can’t go away now—just when you were beginning to stir things up. What about your smoke articles, eh?”

  Lorry sat with him in his monstrously ugly Victorian parlor, which he had not changed since the death of his parents. The girl had always considered it one of the most beautiful rooms she had ever seen, in spite of its crimson and blue dusty velvets and velveteens, its twisted porcelain grotesqueries, its black ebony or black walnut furniture carved to the last expiring inch, its fireplace vases filled with stiff autumn leaves or lacquered cattails, its black and white engravings or dull and static portraits hanging on violently flowered walls, and its red Brussels rug. For here the doctor had read to her when she had been a child, or had told her odd or humorous stories, and had fed her with huge sugar cookies, which she ate while listening to him and idly watching the green light that filtered through the thick trees outside and into the twilight of the massive room.

  The light was not green now, for wet yellow rags were falling from the elms, and the scarlet tatters of the maples were drifting in the damp wind. She sat stiffly across from the doctor, who eyed her irascibly. She was dressed in a brown suit for traveling; her bags were locked in her car, which stood outside. The luminous quality of her pale face was obscured in weariness and pain, and her lips were white. She said, “Those articles will never get published. I found out, this morning, that he—he—had told the assistant editors that anything I wrote must be submitted to him first for approval.” Her lips narrowed. “I’ve outlived my usefulness. Uncle Al, I think I have done enough. And, besides—”

  Dr. McManus waited. But Lorry smoothed the gloves over and over in her hands, and bent her head. The old doctor felt a strong twinge of compassion. He said, “You’ll want me to write to you, Lorry? You’ll want me to tell you everything. You’ll want to know about your father, eh?”

  She said simply, “Yes.” There was no hatred in her eyes now.

  The doctor lit another cigarette from the end he had smoked down almost to a nubbin. He puffed, and stared before him with the most malignant expression. Then he said, “Lorry, you’re a big girl. Part of the trouble between you and your father is your own fault. You deified him, until a few years ago. That was wrong. You weren’t a kid; you were in your twenties, and you should’ve known better. I’m holding no brief for Mac; I think he stinks. I always thought he stank. He’s an egotistic, posturing, lying, elegant sonofabitch. Yes, ma’am. He was that way as a kid. He was right there for you to see. You didn’t see, so you blame him for your own blindness. When you got your eyesight back you hated him for being what he always had been.

  “You know his background. His father was a schoolteacher here in Barryfield, where Mac was born. I knew your grandfather well, an ineffective kind of a fellow, meek-spoken, pedantic, full of schoolteacherish dogmas. He bowed and he scraped, and because he thought he was superior to everybody else, he hated those who were more powerful because they had more money. He poisoned Mac; that was inevitable. He loved money more than his immortal soul—if he had one, which I doubt. But because he didn’t have money he pretended that it was worthless, and at the same time that those who had it were the only significant people in the world. Mac might have been a sneering, superior kind of prig, when he was a boy, but, like you, he believed his father. That kind of weakness runs in the family, don’t it?”

  He leered at the girl, who had lifted her head with taut interest. “Well, Lorry, he was like you in more than one way. He adored that whining idiot of a father of his. ‘Society’ was ‘doing something’ to his dad. So society must be punished. The only way to punish society was to get as much money as possible, and then to get power over society, and make it scrape to him as his father had scraped to it. Scratch any of these wealthy pseudo-liberals or fascists or Communists and you’ll find a story like that in the background somewhere. There never was any movement that didn’t begin with secret human emotions of either love or hate. But, my girl, mostly it’s revenge.”

  “I always thought our family had been rich for generations,” said Lorry, with sick wonder.

  “Oh,” chortled the doctor, shaking a sly finger at her, “that’s just Mac’s grand illusion. He really believes it himself, now. Why didn’t he tell you his father was just a poor schoolteacher in the beginning, and just made his fortune, by accident, in oil? I’ll tell you why. He was ashamed that he once was poor! He, the great liberal, is so ashamed, the idiot, that he can’t bear to remember. To him it was a disgrace. To him it was horrible that he ever lived among the blessed poor he now pretends to champion in those rags of his. He hates the poor, the underprivileged, the masses. Like all the others of his kind, he’s built up something that doesn’t exist—the mass man. Why? Because he wants to use the mass man not only to revenge himself upon his ‘betters’ for the humiliation of poverty he once suffered from them, but even more because he wants to revenge himself on the poor for once having had to live among them.

  “Nobody,” went on the doctor to the tense and listening girl, “ever brought out the fact that Marx was a comparatively well-off man, and all his pals with him. They came from sound middle-class city families. Being sound and middleclass wasn’t enough for ’em, the insane brutes. They wanted money and money and money, and power and power and power. So up they built the ‘masses,’ a pure invention of theirs, so they’ll have somebody to oppress. And get revenge on.”

  The doctor stood up, and waddled up and down the cluttered floor. “That’s the history of those Communists who were never really poor, and those who are wealthy now. However, let’s not simplify too much. Your dad and his kind are one part of Communism. There’s another kind, and this kind will do in your dad and his friends very fast, if they ever come to power in this country, just as they liquidated your dad’s kind in every other country when they came to power.

  “I’m speaking of the fanatic, the zealot. They’re born in every generation. An intelligent doctor can spot these fellers, male and female alike, right in the kindergarten, or in the primary grades, anyway. One of these days we’ll have real psychiatrists looking for ’em, not the Freudian headshrinkers we have nowadays, who are even partial, some of ’em, to the kind of perverted minds the fanatics and zealots have. They’re sort of partial to the intense, perverted innocence these crazy folks carry around with them, for there’s nothing so damnably, dangerously innocent-looking as a man who believes fervently and absolutely in hatred.”

  The doctor said, still scowling formidably, “Well, Lorry, I’ve told you about your dad. Are you going to desert him now, seeing you understand?”

  She was silent; her face stiffened. The doctor shook his head. “Y’know, I thought you’d be a help to Johnny and the kids. You seemed to go for the whole bunch. Jean. Johnny. First time I’ve seen you alive for years. And now you run out on ’em.”

  To his interested amazement, Lorry colored violently. She said. “I—don’t want to get emotionally involved with—anybody. Too much wear and tear.”

  Dr. McManus came closer to her, squinting. “Oho. So that’s it. It’s not all your dad, then. You’re running away, kid. Somethin’ prick you?” he asked with malicious interest, as the girl jumped to her feet. “What is it? Johnny?”

  She shouted at him, “Damn you, Uncle Al! Look at me! Remember me! Can you see me as a minister’s wife? Even if he ever thought of it, which he wouldn’t? Can you see me trailing him sentimentally, with big cow eyes, mooing around after him, doing ‘good works’ for him? Oh, shut up!”

  She caught up her gloves and purse, and gave the doctor the full blue blast of her eyes. “Let’s be realistic. I’m not living a romance. Johnny—and me! For God’s sake! He’s a fossil, I’m telling you. An anachronism.’’

  “Pretty lively for a fossil,” said the doctor, with his gloating grin. “What’s an anochronism? Something out of time and place. Sure he is, in the general vi
ew. Believes in sin, for Pete’s sake. You know what, honey? There sure is sin. You’ve got to accept and acknowledge it. And then you’ve got to do something about it. Johnny’s the boy. We need a few more anachronisms in the world, that’s certain.”

  Lorry slumped wearily. “Uncle Al, I’m not the sacrificing kind; I’m not morbid. I couldn’t be his wife, and I’m not going to be a handmaiden to anybody. I’m not interested, in any event, in marrying anybody.”

  “Course not,” said the doctor coolly. “You’re still in love with your dad. Way back in that silly head of yours is poor old Mac dressed in white armor or something. In spite of everything. You just can’t stand getting even an honest glimpse of him, and that’s unfair. Once in a while you do, and then off you go to New York or Europe or wherever.”

  “Look who’s the head-shrinker now!” Lorry screamed in a white fury. “Why don’t you set up a couch?”

  The doctor chuckled. “Hey, wait, honey.” But Lorry had rushed out of the room, and then out of the house. The door crashed behind her. Dr. McManus could see the girl throwing herself wildly into her car. It roared off so fast that her head snapped back, and her hat fell over her eyes. Dr. McManus chewed his thumbnail dourly. He said aloud, “Funny. Lorry was never the girl to run away from truth, slamming doors behind her. Must have touched a mighty bloody incision in her psyche, or something. The poor girl. Well, she’ll get to thinking—maybe.”

  It was his afternoon for hospital calls, but he went to the parsonage, which looked unusually bleak and dismal in the autumn’s hollow light. Johnny was surprised to see him; the young minister seemed very despondent and preoccupied. The sound of busy young voices could be heard from the dining room, though the door was shut. “Sol Klein just left, doctor,” said Johnny, leading the way into the wretched parlor where he had been working on his next sermon. “He thinks Jean’s coming along fine.”

  “I didn’t come to see Jean, exactly,” said the old man, groaning as he let himself down on the leprous sofa. “Frank to say, I don’t know why I did come. How’s the old—lady—who’s teaching the kids? Getting anywheres?”

  Johnny’s exhausted face brightened, and now the scar on his temple was less conspicuous. “Father John Kanty’s been awfully good. He sent his old retired schoolteacher here to teach Jean and Pietro, and she refuses to take a cent for it. Miss Coogan. Pietro goes early to school for his catechism, and Miss Coogan teaches it to Jean. And you know what? She offered to take on Max, Kathy, and Emilie.” For a moment his eyes became more brooding and tired. “She says the kids are all unusually bright. Max and Kathy are learning like wildfire, and Jean and Pietro are really geniuses! Miss Coogan may be exaggerating but she says Jean and Pietro are already up to fourth grade in their work, and they ought to be ready for their regular grades next September, if they keep on this way. The kids seem to act as if it’s all a very exciting game.”

  The doctor nodded with approval, but at the same time he was disturbed by the worn and anxious look on Johnny’s face. Then he said, “Come on, something’s bothering you. Tell Papa. It isn’t Jean; he’s coming along miraculously, Sol tells me. Why shouldn’t he? He’s got Sol, who drools over him as if he was his own kid; special for Sol.”

  Johnny hesitated. “It’s Emilie, doctor. She’s failing. Every time there’s a smog she gets sicker. She grows a little weaker every day.”

  “Hm,” said Dr. McManus thoughtfully. “I suppose the best thing would be to get her in some high hospital or sanitarium, away from here, where she’ll have good air.”

  “Yes,” said Johnny, in a sick voice. “But, you see, even Dr. Kennedy—Tim—admits she wouldn’t get any benefit from that, separated from the kids and me. It might even make her worse.”

  The doctor said, “Look, Johnny, you’ve seen the world; you’re realistic. You got a kind of miracle with Jean, but that was because Sol Klein gave him everything he had—and Lorry gave him something she didn’t know she had. But you can’t expect another miracle for Emilie. You saw her X rays; Kennedy’s one of the best heart men in the country. Mayo wanted him a year ago, and still wants him. Tim don’t hold out any hope for the baby. You know that. Just make her as comfortable as possible. Johnny, you ain’t holding out for a second miracle, are you?”

  Johnny replied simply, “No. I did, some time ago. But not now. Something tells me that Emilie is going to die; a finality came to me one night, when I was praying for her. I—I have always believed that even death had a meaning, in the lives of people. I’m afraid I don’t, now. I keep thinking of what Emilie has suffered from her very birth—from beasts. Why can’t she live, and grow up to be a happy, healthy woman, as Kathy will be?”

  Dr. McManus shifted his bulk uneasily on the sofa. “Johnny, I don’t know. But you’re the parson. You ought to know.”

  Johnny said, his voice rising with desperation and grief, “I don’t! God forgive me, I don’t! I’m full of rebellion. I shout at God. I get only silence. How can I talk to my congregation about the mercy of God when He doesn’t answer me Himself, when I pray about Emilie?”

  The doctor squinted at him. “Johnny, I’m not the religious kind. Me, I’m a hard realist; the world made me that way. But I’ve listened to you. Maybe the answer’s waiting, and will show up in time. Maybe you couldn’t understand now. Hell, I’m talking like a parson myself.” He lit a cigarette, frowned at it, and muttered, “War’s over; why aren’t the damned things tasting right yet? Johnny, you believe in the hereafter, don’t you? I don’t, of course.”

  Johnny did not reply. In distraction, he turned away and stared through the window.

  The doctor heaved a gargantuan sigh. “Okay, Johnny. You don’t need to answer. Let’s look at it this way. The baby will—go—before she’s even had time to know anything about death. From what Tim tells me, she’ll just fade out gently; going to sleep. So—no fear, no anxiety. And look what you’re giving her in the meantime. Love, protection, security. Think of the millions of even healthy kids who don’t get a tenth of that!”

  “Thanks,” said Johnny, with sad humility. He sat down again. He began to drum on his creaking desk with both hands, and stared blankly before him.

  The doctor went on: “Hell, the world ain’t such a fine, attractive place. What do the Chinese say? ‘Each man lives a life of quiet desperation.’ That’s right; he does. Life’s a damned, unsatisfying thing under the best of circumstances. Things get lent to you, if you’re lucky. And then they’re snatched away. Johnny, I never told you much about my wife. Sweetest, finest girl in the world; died when our child was born. Aside from my father, she was the only thing I ever loved. And then she died, and I stood at the grave; stayed there while they let her down; wouldn’t move away, in spite of fools tugging at me. And then I cursed God. Why’d Ann have to die, eh? And the baby too? I walked away from that grave, when the last clod was thrown on it, and not before, and everything I ever believed left me.”

  Johnny had lifted his bent head, and now he was gazing at the old doctor intently.

  The doctor squinted at the ceiling reflectively. “Know something? I made a kind of oath to myself. I hated God. I said I’d work my fool head off to snatch people out of pain and death. I kind of thought of God as a Moloch who destroyed the finest and the best and the loveliest. So I’d defeat Him. I’d keep His victims out of His burning hands. I’d make Him sorry He ever tangled with me! Yes sir. He’d be sorry.” The doctor chuckled grimly. “So—I didn’t have much money then—I got Ann’s insurance money, and I went to Europe. I studied in Heidelberg; I studied in London. When the money ran out I still studied. My father sent me some. I starved. But I was on the track of the Enemy! I worked in Edinburgh hospitals for nothing. I worked everywhere for nothing. Never told anybody but you before. Tired of the saga, eh?”

  “Tell me,” said Johnny.

  “Thanks. You know what? I pulled scores out, when they were in extremis! Especially young women, and kids. Got them when they were rattling. Yes sir. I invented operating
techniques never heard of before; used widely now. Know something? I even operated on the heart! One of the first doctors to do so. Men on the verge of the grave; relatives howling; doctors shaking their fool heads. And then I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. Took out cancerous stomachs, while doctors held their breath and muttered about murder.” Dr. McManus sat up, and shook his finger at Johnny. “Know what? In ten years I had only two deaths, from any cause at all! A record, I tell you! I got citations, dozens of ’em! Fool things. Some say, ‘In the cause of humanity.’ Rot. I was just fighting God.” He smirked. “You see, I still believed in God then, in a perverted way. Now I don’t. Well, not much, anyway. Got hundreds of pounds of letters from grateful patients and their families. You know, I’m thinking of something. Maybe if Ann and the baby hadn’t died, I’d just have been a family doctor, dozing away comfortably in this wretched town, and then inheriting the money from my uncle, and then retiring. And all the people I’d saved, thousands of them over the years, would’ve been dead.”

  He grumbled, “Don’t know if I did them a favor, after all, keeping ’em alive. In this goddam world.”

  “But you keep on, just the same, though you don’t think of God as the Eenemy any more,” said Johnny gently.

  “Well, yes. Crazy thing, isn’t it? But can’t stand pain and death and suffering. Something drives me on.” The doctor grinned, his stained teeth showing between his livid lips. “Can’t figure it out.”

  Johnny looked down at his clasped hands. “I can,” he said. And in his heart he prayed, “Father, forgive me. Just give me strength. Just let me understand.”

  Dr. McManus waited, knowing he was praying, and then in the gentlest voice Johnny had ever heard him use, he said, “You parsons are always saying nobody’s born in vain, but for a purpose. So was Emilie.”

  He paused, then said, “How’d you like Lorry’s reporting of your sermon? Stirred up the town, I hear. Sol Klein, and the other bright, shiny boys, discuss it very seriously, in the doctors’ dining room. You and Jean’ve done a lot for Sol. Told me he goes almost every Friday night to temple. ‘Have to set a good example for the children,’ he tells me, looking me hard in the eye as though he thought I was going to laugh. ‘Well,’ says I, “why do you boys and girls pick on your poor old rabbi, eh?’ And he says, ‘I’ve been having some talks with him. I’m president of the men’s club. And I was an usher at the holidays. We can give our rabbi some new ideas, perhaps, if we cooperate a little more with him.’ And then I had to laugh, and he laughed too.”