By Monday, Trench was all in a glow about the pavilion. He forgot that he
was an atom. He swore to himself that if the Massachusetts General could
get constructive work done, Lister could.
But Monday evening his glow was chilled by Saadi Sereef, who came into
the library holding the evening paper in his hand. Trench, having had one
consultation with Drummond, was awaiting another, and was turning the
leaves of a medical journal.
“Doctor, why they call it Easter? Dictionary says Teutonic goddess of
spring. But were human sacrifices offered?”
“I don’t know. What excuse for mischief are you seeking?”
“Excuse for New York, by golly! Look, doctor. Here are names of four
boys. This morning New York offered all to goddess of Easter.”
“Ah! the gunmen.”
“Not men, doctor. Boys. Kids.”
Trench nodded. “I daresay they died game. Here in Chicago I knew Ewald,
Frank, Phil, and Tommy. They too died game.”
“What! No remorse?”
“Not a bit.”
They looked at each other. Saadi’s eyes were misty, and the doctor’s
fingers had closed around the medical journal as if holding a severed
limb together.
Trench spoke, slowly and softly. “Tom was one of eleven children, as nice
a little boy as you ever saw. His mother couldn’t—really—with eleven
to look after. There was a fine school across the street, locked for
seventeen hours each day. There was a saloon around the corner, and
a hole under the viaduct. He had those two resources, and he had us
around him—a million miles away. They killed a truck-farmer with no more
compunction than we had killed their souls. But perhaps we had better not
say souls.”
“I guess doctor had better say it. In Halsted we talk Halsted.”
“All right—killed their souls. And—you’d better forget them, like the
rest of us.”
Saadi gave a muscular twist which was half shrug and half shiver.
“Chicago is not afraid? Even Black Austria would be afraid.”
The bell rang, and Saadi rose to go.
Drummond came in as Saadi went out, and banker and physician got down to
business. To quote words once applied to a less humane plot, the great
consult began. After it was over, Trench sat up most of the night making
drawings. Tuesday morning the sheets were in the hands of an architect
with a demand for clean blue-prints within twenty-four hours. Trench
telephoned for a reservation on the Limited for Wednesday afternoon. He
was going to New York, for a talk with one or two hospital men.
The prints were delivered early Wednesday morning, and Trench was looking
them over when Saadi dropped in again.
“I do not wish to intrude, doctor.”
“You are most welcome, Saadi. I’ve seen very little of you this year.”
“Well, doctor, I see plans of building. Doctor will not build one more
Menagerie. Doctor will sure not build Mosque. Therefore doctor will build
hospital for kids.”
Trench laid the plans aside. “And Saadi,” he said, “will keep his mouth
shut for a month or so.”
Saadi bowed. “What doctor says to Saadi is more binding than laws
of Shariat. But on St. George’s day, Saadi will celebrate. April
twenty-third is doctor’s birthday, and in Balkans April twenty-third,
old style, is birthday of St. George. St. George is patron of kids. St.
George was fond of lilies of valley, and in this room on this table it
will be one dozen dozen.”
“Thank you, my son. But you and I aren’t much on symbols, and I am
already enough in your debt.”
Saadi stared. “You—you Schwabski hakim! You save my life, you give me
home,—and you dare say thing like that!”
“I mean,” said Trench, “that during these months in which you have been
mostly absent from me in the spring, you have taught me something. I have
been shivering lest you should carry some of our common ideas farther
than I carry them.”
“Doctor means Saadi is awful warning?”
“That’s too strong, but let it go at that. Well, I’m talking like a man
of leisure. Fact is, I’m not going to college to-day. I’m off to New
York.”
“So? Doctor will miss one day of Surgical Congress.”
“I’m not going to the Congress.”
“Well, doctor, I hope Trench hospital kids will not have to fight Wu’s
kids.”
“I hope not.”
“It will come, doctor. Panama Canal settles it. But I much prefer peace.”
Trench surveyed him quizzically. “I seem to note a fall of temperature.”
“Doctor thinks I have passed crisis? Doctor thinks I may get well?”
“I hope so. What serum have you been using?”
“Oh, mixture. Trench and Jew mixture.”
“Ah, Becker has been good for you.”
“I did not say Becker. I have been reading New Testament. It is wild
Jewish book, all about Bogs coming down as doves, and prophets born
without influence of centrosomes. It is not so much commonsense as Koran,
but I am sick of commonsense. It is full of wild dreams about all men
must stick together in peaceful love, because Bog sent down son to die
for all. That is craziest pipedream in world, worse than what Chat says
legend of Buddha turning self into rabbit to feed brown men in famine.
Oh, much worse. But, doctor, think of nerve man must have to get off such
yarn as that. I like Issa of Galilee. He sure had nerve. Doctor, I did
even go once with Deland in prayer-meeting.”
It was impossible for Trench not to laugh. “I hope—” he began, but had to
stop and smother his amusement.
“Well, doctor hopes. This is third time he has hoped to-day. Hope is most
terrible of all passions. I think most likely hope is body itself. You
could say heart of hope, esophagus of hope.”
Having laughed again and recovered his poise, Trench assented. “I have
been discovering the same thing, Saadi.”
Saadi pulled out his watch and looked at it. “This walking rose which
Ameen calls Saadi will be late to class. Oh, gosh! I am tired of
medicine!”
“Tut, tut! You have stuck to it admirably.”
“Thank you, doctor, but I will never be consulting physician.”
“Why should you be? Such fellows as I are already out of date. Why not
spend a few years in my laboratory here? If you can find out what the
exact cause of rickets is, every negro in Chicago will bless you.”
Saadi was much amused. “I see Dr. Saadi Sereef analysing chemistry of
nigger-baby, world without end I don’t think.”
“Well, what do you really want to do?”
“Be surgeon in war, doctor, if it comes this summer. If not, get
acquainted with Ewald, Frank, Phil, and Tommy.”
“I told you,” said Trench in a low voice, “to forget those boys.”
“Doctor tells me things I cannot forget. It is not proper to hang boys
who are not twenty years old. Even in Black Austria it is not done.
Even in Black Austria—” Saadi was staring as if he saw a vision. Months
afterward, Trench remembered that look.
“Well, so long, doctor, and have nice trip. At last I go to college.”
But Saadi did not get to college that day. As he was descending the
stairs he was met by a youth in uniform, who removed his cigarette long
enough to ask if any guy named Sereef lived there. Saadi signed for the
message, took it to his room, and locked the door before reading it.
It was very short. It whitened his face and stretched him on Jaffer’s
leather couch. But he did not turn on the gas this time.