Chapter XX

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.