“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.