A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  Lorry, thinking with horror of what her father was writing about Johnny, who had been stricken almost to his own death, hardly heard the old doctor. “Now,” he said, “if I was a head-shrinker, and employed by the Army, know what I’d do? I wouldn’t kick out the psychopaths and the bloodthirsty neurotics. They’d be the first I’d pick; I’d even look for ’em hopefully. They’d do the best job in the world, on the double, too.”

  The girl knew he was trying, mercifully, to distract her attention from the black grief in this house, and she tried to smile at him. “Uncle Al, they should make you a five-star general,” she said. But she was thinking with loathing of her father, whom she loved. She added, “I called Mother tonight, poor dear. She’s coming in to see me tomorrow, and she’s asked me—she begged me—not to let people know I’m here. For—for his sake. How she can love him I don’t know. I promised, though, I’d keep out of sight and wouldn’t go to the funeral, where there’ll probably be his photographers.”

  “That’s why we’re going to give Johnny a shot of something a couple of hours before, so he can’t go either. Well, poor Esther.” He heaved a deep sigh, and reached out to take Lorry’s hand. His swollen eyes blinked movingly. “My girl, my sweet, wonderful girl. Lorry, I didn’t want you to know; I even forgot all about you. But you’re a comfort to me now.”

  She had told him of the children, and he blinked damply again. “Poor kids. They’d be the best thing in the world for Johnny, and maybe he knows that, and maybe he thinks if he talked to them he’d break down, and perhaps forget how he wants to kill the man or men who burned down his house. Oh yes, there’s evidence of arson.”

  “I know. Mrs. Burnsdale told me.” Lorry lifted her head sharply, and her voice rose. “These insinuations in that paper! Are they insinuations—Oh, no, God, no! He—couldn’t be thinking of that! He can’t be as bad as that!”

  “Your dad would think of anything, do anything, to get rid of Johnny, one way or another. Wait, honey. Sit down. He won’t dare say anything really libelous; there’s the laws. He’s going as far as he can. We’re watching.”

  The actual funeral was private. The dcotor had arranged I that, and so it was that only a few friends were there. Johnny was not there while the services went on in the museumlike parlor; he had been dragged, not by assent, but because the doctor had given him several capsules in the morning and had said in a loud voice, “Johnny, if you want to hold up today, you’d better take these.” Johnny, who had not eaten since Christmas Eve—and today was Saturday—took the capsules just to be relieved of the doctor’s insistence, and then clumsily climbed to his room and fell face-down on the bed. He did not wake until ten o’clock that night.

  The children were permitted to attend the services in the house, and they sat close to Emilie’s casket and did not cry. The doctor pitifully wondered what they were thinking. They were so very grave, even Pietro. He and Jean knelt by the casket before the services, beads slipping through their hands. The minister was a shy young man who was painfully disturbed about the whole matter. He had a child Emilie’s age, and each time he glanced down at the little face on the white pillow he thought of his Toby, and his eyes filled with tears.

  A mob gathered on the sidewalk outside, a sullen mob of men. The doctor said to Father Krupszyk and the rabbi, “What the hell are they doing here?”

  The rabbi said sadly, “It is an old mob. I know them well.”

  The children were not permitted to go to the cemetery. “I know, I know!” the doctor told them irascibly when they pleaded. “But look. We let you attend the services at home, and your father wouldn’t have wanted that, either. Don’t ask for more. This is what they call a compromise.”

  Boys of the Sunday-school class were the pallbearers, and among them was the tall and lanky figure of Lon Harding, whose face was so swollen with tears that it was almost unrecognizable. “I don’t care if it’ll look funny, having me stand head and shoulders over those kids,” he had obstinately told the funeral directors. “I loved that kid. She was my pet. I planted lilac bushes for her.” The doctor upheld him.

  The photographers were already waiting in the lonely, desolately white cemetery when the funeral party arrived, the white hearse leading. They snapped many pictures. Later, under the picture that was printed there were about three lines. “Very few attended the funeral of Emilie (last name unknown) yesterday morning, who died in the mysterious fire on Christmas Eve and who was buried today. The police are still searching for alleged arsonists, and known arsonists have been brought in for questioning.”

  Emilie went down into the grave, and the doctor thought, Well, honey lamb, no one can hurt you now, never again. God bless you, bless you, bless you.

  His face, and the faces of the clergymen and Doctors Sol Klein and Tim Kennedy, filled the photograph.

  Lorry remained in town. She stayed upstairs with the children, when visitors arrived, for her mother’s sake. No one outside the house knew she was there. She told her mother, “I’ve got to stay. I’ve got to wait until I know he’s better. Uncle Al says if he doesn’t begin to eat properly in a day or two he’s going to take him to the hospital and start forcible feeding. He will, too,” Lorry added with a faint smile. “Uncle Al says nothing gets people to eating heartily so quickly as a tube in the stomach or a long needle in the arm.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do with the kids if it weren’t for you, Miss Lorry,” Mrs. Burnsdale would say. She herself was at loose ends, until Lorry and the doctor suggested that she might like to do all the cooking. “But the other help; they’d be offended,” said the poor woman eagerly. This, however, was arranged tactfully, and Mrs. Burnsdale was occupied so completely that she found her grief for Emilie and Johnny almost endurable.

  New Year’s Eve came in with purified skies. Now deep snows lay in the valley and on the mountains. New Year’s Day was not a celebration, but Mrs. Burnsdale had cooked a huge roast and everyone pretended to enjoy it, except Johnny, who rarely left his room, and would eat nothing. Lorry entertained the children, sang to them softly in the back parlor, told them stories. She forced them to go out in the air, to try the new sleds and other outdoor gifts the doctor and friends had given them for Christmas, and which had been safely stored in the parish hall. Lon Harding, who felt himself responsible for the whole family, would take them to the zoo or to a show, or even to his own gym at school to let them admire his talents at basketball and other sports. For now it was January 5, and school had begun again.

  Johnny was eating a very little, in his room. The doctor had told him bluntly, “I’ll have you declared incompetent, so help me God, man, unless you cooperate with us. I’m not telling you to go out, or anything, or resume normal life, becuase I know what you’re going through, but if you don’t eat I’ll take you to the hospital and you’ll have something else to think about, believe me.”

  Johnny did not answer, but dimly he understood that the doctor was not speaking mere threats. He did not want to see the children, yet he felt he could not leave the house where they were. He would catch glimpses of them at a distance; they did not run to him, because they had been told not to by the doctor. But he never stopped or looked at them, never went into the back parlor where Miss Coogan was again teaching them. He had not gone into his church since Christmas Eve. At times he wandered in white speechlessness about the doctor’s house, as if searching for something, and hardly aware that he was searching. Every hour or so he came to life long enough to call the police and ask them if they had any news for him. His eyes retained their terrible, fixed look of preoccupation. He no longer wore his clerical clothing; he wore one of the old civilian suits, bought long before the war. It hung shapelessly on his thin body.

  Sometimes he gazed about him, blinking, as if wondering where he was. If Mrs. Burnsdale spoke to him he did not seem to hear her. When he slept, it was only after a sedative. He would say only one thing, when pressed by the doctor: “I must find them. I’ve got to find them.” And his fac
e would become even more terrible. He never spoke of Emilie. He never asked about her funeral.

  His friends, the priest and the rabbi, came almost every day. Fellow ministers, almost strangers, also came. He would listen politely to their expressions of condolence, but his steadily shrinking face told them that he did not hear them at all. He seemed to be able to endure the ministers more comfortably than the priest and the rabbi, for he knew that the latter loved him and he could not stand love now. It was a fear to him. He felt that if he even acknowledged it he would crack asunder and be devastated, and he would have to begin the long road back from hatred and grief, and this he did not want to do. He wanted to retain his rage, his turning away from God.

  Another minister was temporarily taking his place. Dr. McManus, in a pathetic but useless attempt to stir Johnny, removed the great candelabra from the church and pointedly placed them in the parlor where he could not help seeing them when he went into the room. He went into the parlor more frequently than into any other room. But he never looked at the candelabra. He had one small and unchanging world like the grave, with but one desire.

  If he saw Lorry he gave no sign of recognition. She would put herself in his way, and he would pass her without a glance. She would speak to him, in a broken voice, and he would not answer. “Doesn’t he know I’m here?” she asked Dr. McManus. “Yes, he does, honey,” replied the old doctor. “But he won’t have you, just as he won’t have John Kanty and the rabbi. Because he knows you love him, and he doesn’t want love. He wants hate. If you went into him, in his room, right now and said, ‘They’ve got the man who did it,’ he’d jump out of his chair and be out of the house in five minutes, racing for the police station.”

  Lorry said, in tears, “Well, I don’t blame him. And I understand.”

  The doctor, worn out with worry, worn out with work, for there were so many operations these days, ran his fingers wearily through his hair, which he never seemed to comb. “He talks to me, sometimes, in a dull kind of way, because he’s afraid of me, afraid of what I might do to him, and so I keep scaring him about hospitals, and he feels he has to appease me some way. God, Lorry. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  She became stern. “Uncle Al, he had so much faith. Faith was as much a part of him as his eyes, his hands. He had so much love—for God. In the name of God he forgave so many things. Why doesn’t he turn to God now? Doesn’t he believe any longer?”

  “Maybe, but just a little. I’ve talked to John Kanty about it. He says it sometimes happens, especially with men like Johnny. If someone had blinded or crippled him, out of hate or craziness, there Johnny would have been, comforting him, forgiving him, protecting him, and talking about God. He would have hung on his own cross, consoling his enemy, forgetting his own agony. But he goes crazy when someone or something hurts one of his kids. Why, I remember the time Max’s neck was cut. He was almost out of his mind, for a while. I don’t know what would’ve happened if Max’d died. Something like this, I suppose.

  “In some distorted way, too, he’s holding God accountable for Emilie. If Emilie had just faded away, peaceful, the way she was supposed to, he’d have had his faith back in a couple of days. But the way things happened”—the doctor shook his head. “Even if they’d all had a happy life until now—the kids—it mightn’t have been too bad, either. If they ever do find the man who did it, they’d better watch him. Johnny will tear him apart.” He added, “I think he’s hating God, deep inside him.”

  But it was Lorry who obtained the first response from Johnny. She found him sitting in the dark parlor at twilight, where he had sat at the head of Emilie’s casket. His head was bent, his arms dangling between his knees. She approached him, and said, “Johnny? Speak to me, Johnny.” And she held out her arms to him imploringly.

  He lifted his head slowly, and his sunken eyes regarded her dazedly. Then he said, “Lorry?” His voice was very faint. “Lorry, Lorry. Don’t bother me, Lorry. Go away, please.” She stepped back, and then agony rushed over his face. “The box, the box, you gave me—it’s gone too.”

  She reported this to Dr. McManus, who became excited. “He’s coming out of it, maybe!” He called Father Krupszyk and asked him to come in that evening. He called the old rabbi, who was ill, partly from influenza and partly from grief for his friend. He had been forbidden to leave his bed.

  “We’ll jump him all at once, the three of us,” Dr. McManus said to the priest and Lorry that night. “We’ll give him hell; we’ll catch him off balance.”

  Father Krupszyk was dubious. “Suppose we just get his full attention first, doctor? You don’t whip a dying horse, you know. But perhaps you could give him something to arouse him for a little while, just so we can reach him.”

  28

  The children were in bed, and Lorry was in her room, praying with all her heart, her tears running over her clasped hands. “It was because of him that I came to know You, and to work for You, Father,” she pleaded. “We all need him so much. We love him so much. And we need him and love him because You made him necessary to us. Help us, help us, tonight!”

  She changed her dress to one of light-blue wool, her hair loosely coiled at the nape of her neck. She could do nothing with her emaciated face, in which her turquoise eyes seemed far too large and distended. Then she went downstairs. Johnny was sitting, as usual, in his old place, silent as ever, as engrossed as ever in his own thoughts. But the doctor had given him a stimulant, and this had made him dully restless. He wrung his hands, he clasped his hands tightly over his knees, he moved his head as if in pain, and sometimes he glanced up unseeingly. Father Krupszyk was already there, and the doctor. Johnny had not spoken to them.

  When Lorry came in quietly, Johnny’s head jerked up and she knew he saw her clearly before he averted his head again. She sat down near the doctor and waited. She did not know what anyone would do. They would have to await some signal, either from Johnny or from some mysterious force. Father Krupszyk’s lips were moving silently, and he held a small prayer book in his hand. Dr. McManus, almost as restless as Johnny, moved incessantly in his chair.

  The candelabra had been brought into the dark parlor, and they stood at each end, filling the big room with soft and shifting radiance. Sometimes Johnny glanced at them with dim surprise, as if wondering what they were. Sometimes he looked at the three people, now, and his brow wrinkled like a man suffering from amnesia, who is trying to remember. Somewhere a clock ticked remorselessly, and the winter wind tried the windows angrily.

  Then Father Krupszyk stood up and approached Johnny. He waited until Johnny looked at him, and then he tried to hold that feverishly bright eye. He began to speak with force and quiet surety.

  “Johnny, I feel that Our Lord has sent us to you tonight, and that He has given you a solemn command to listen. For we are not here for your sake, but for those who love you, and those you have utterly abandoned in your preoccupation with your own grief.

  “Men who are called to serve God must serve Him with all their hearts and all their souls. They must be all-understanding. They must know mankind, yet forgive it and love it. They must not think of themselves, and their own ideas of hatred or—vengeance.”

  Johnny’s eyes flickered, but there was no other movement in his face. He started to drop his head, then, as if someone had seized it, he lifted it.

  “You have failed, Johnny,” said the priest sternly. “You have failed God and man. We don’t need any explanations, or any pleas. We know, and we suffer with you. But you, a minister, have failed. Have you asked forgiveness for that?” He looked at Johnny’s worn civilian suit. He pointed at it. “You’ve taken off the vestments of your faith, in hate and defiance and rage. You have offended God, and that pleases you. You can’t stop believing in Him, so you offend Him. You’ve driven Him from your presence. Johnny, you are in hell.”

  Johnny’s expression remained motionless, but his eyes were flickering faster, not with shame or sorrow or sadness, but with unspeakable anger. Once they bl
azed out at the priest, and once he seemed about to speak. He watched, like a wild and wary animal, the closer approach of the priest, and he sat upright, pressing his back against the chair as if he were trying for escape.

  The priest continued in a louder, clearer voice. “Our Lord knew what He would have to endure in this world. You, as His minister, know only too well that the Way of the Cross is the way of those dedicated to His service. As willingly as He came, as willingly you took on the duties of His service—to bring men unto God.

  “Torture was the gift Our Lord offered to God, for He loved men and He lifted up His agony in their behalf. He hung upon His Cross, bleeding from the wounds of the flesh, and the wounds of His Spirit. Humbly, He raised all His Passion to the throne of God, in atonement for men’s sins, for the saving of men’s souls.

  “Johnny, what have you offered God, in your extremity? Your grief, your loss, your torment—as a gift, for the salvation of souls? Have you shown humility and have you said, as Our Lord said, ‘Thy will be done’? And have you then opened your soul, waiting for the answer which is ready for you, but which you will not have?”

  Johnny’s anger shot from his eyes, and his mouth opened. “Why, thank God,” said Dr. McManus.

  “No, listen to me,” said the priest, even more sternly, and pointed a restraining finger at Johnny. “Perhaps you’ll never listen to me again. Perhaps, if you reject what I say to you now, I’ll never come to this house again.”