XIV
Young Merrick discovered, within a week, that when a man begins to suspect he is slipping mentally his disorder fattens on itself.
He became morbidly introspective, exaggerated the significance of his little tricks of manner, caught himself doing things automatically and wondered what else he might have been doing of which he had no recollection.
Then, in the course of two hours, one Friday morning, Pyle had said, “You’re not quite par these days. Something bothering you? …” Watson had said, “I’ll look after that Weber case, Merrick. She had a notion you’re too young. Silly nonsense, but we’ll have to humour her …” Nancy Ashford had said, “What is it, Bobby? Tired?”
That settled it. At noon he told Pyle he was going out to the country for a couple of weeks. He spent the afternoon gutting his little laboratory, assisted by an orderly who packed the apparatus into boxes. His first intention was to store the stuff in his suite of rooms near the hospital. On second thought, he shipped the whole of it out to Windymere. Perhaps he might amuse himself if time dragged.
Farmers along the roads near Lake Saginack grew accustomed to the sight of a tall, slender chap, in knickers and white sweater, walking rapidly on the highway; learned who he was; vainly speculated about the cause of his leisure. One tale had it that he was discharged from the hospital for drunkenness, another that he had decided to give up medicine and loaf. Meggs’ curiosity, reaching that state of compression which demanded that he either blow off or blow up, ventured to inquire of Bobby why he had come home, and was informed that his young master was recovering from “a slight touch of leprosy.”
Old Nicholas aged markedly during the first week, but made a gallant effort to disguise his worry, a well-intended deceit which added to his grandson’s anxieties. The old man’s excessive solicitude annoyed him. He reproached himself for making wild remarks for the sole purpose of seeing to what ridiculous lengths he might lead his Grandpère in assenting solemnly to his nonsense.
“Believe I could persuade him a cloud resembled a camel,” thought Bobby, “and then talk him into the notion that it looked like a hawk.”
More than two weeks had passed before he had any inclination to rig his laboratory. Somehow it seemed related to his mental dishevelment, and the thought of it had been repugnant. One morning at breakfast, he announced impulsively that he wanted the use of an attic room for a workshop.
Nicholas was delighted. Carpenters, plumbers, and electricians were in the house before noon, taking orders from a young scientist who obviously knew exactly what he wanted, surprising them with the breadth of his practical information about their trades.
That night at dinner, Bobby was more like himself than he had been at any time since his homecoming.
The farmers who lived near the highway missed him; presumed he had finished his vacation, or he had been reinstated at the hospital, or had gone “gallavanting to furrin parts.”
Old Nicholas worried more about him now than before; feared his close confinement in the attic would do him harm.
Bobby rarely came down to the first floor. Most of his meals were sent up to him, and as often as not the tray was returned almost untouched.
It was on Thursday about nine. The lights in the laboratory had burned all Wednesday night. Bobby was haggard and stubbly with three days’ beard. Meggs had tried the door, found it locked; had knocked and been told to go away.
Taking in his left hand the tiny knife, attached to the end of a long green cord, Bobby reached up and slowly moved the lever along the dial of the rheostat.
The little scalpel came alive!
For a long time he sat there on his laboratory stool with the dynamic thing in his hands, too deeply stirred to make a sound, trembling with ecstatic happiness.
Then he switched off the current, put down the scalpel on the bench, rose, stretched his long arms until every fibre was at top torsion, and laughed boyishly.
Old Nicholas was quite swept off his moorings when Bobby strode into the library, shaggy as a tramp, hollow-eyed, pasty from lack of sleep, and said he wanted to use the telephone.
“Is anything the matter, Robert?” he quavered, rising hurriedly, and taking him by the arm.
Bobby shook his head and smiled. The operator was in the process of giving him his connection.
“I want to talk to Doctor Pyle, Nancy … No! Everything’s quite all right! … Yes … That you, Doctor Pyle? … I wish you would come out here! … Yes—very urgent! … That’s fine! Thanks! Bring your bag along and we’ll put you up!”
“What’s it all about, son? Feel all right?” Nicholas had dropped into a chair and his face was twitching.
“Very much all right!” shouted Bobby, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you about it after a little! I want to run up and shave first. Then I want my breakfast … Meggs! … I’ll be down again in a half-hour for a thick slice of ham, two eggs turned, a pair of flapjacks, and a pot of strong coffee.”
Doctor Pyle was consumed with curiosity when he arrived. Nicholas could not tell him exactly what was wanted. He was to go up to the attic when he came. Robert wished to see him there.
“You can come along, Grandpère!” called Bobby from the head of the stairs.
Nicholas trudged wheezily after Pyle, and they entered the laboratory.
“Hello, Doctor Pyle,” greeted Bobby radiantly. “Got something to show you! Wanted you to be the first to see it!”
He held up the gleaming little scalpel, dependent from yards of green-clad wiring, leading to a tall cabinet.
“Take it in your hand! … Now look!” He stepped to the switchboard and drew a lever.
“Look out!” he warned, as Pyle lifted the knife for closer inspection. “Don’t let it burn you! … Know what it is, don’t you?”
Pyle slowly nodded his head, eyes still intent upon the glowing blade.
“Humph! … Cuts and cauterizes instantly, eh? … Hummm! … Takes care of the haemorrhage as it goes, eh? … Hummm! … Well—that means we’re to have some new brain surgery, doesn’t it?”
He reached out a hairy hand.
“I needn’t tell you what you’ve done, Merrick! … Thank you for letting me be the first to congratulate you!”
Then, turning to old Nicholas, who had been standing by, his face puckered with baffled curiosity, he also extended his hand to him.
“Mr. Merrick, your grandson has invented a device that will completely revolutionize brain surgery, and make a new science of it! Operations which have never yet been successfully performed will now be comparatively safe. Within the next thirty days, his name will be as familiar in the clinics of Europe as yours is among manufacturers of motor cars!”
Old Nicholas’ chin vibrated spasmodically. All he could say was “Indeed! … Indeed!”
He threw an arm around his grandson’s broad shoulders, and mumbled,
“Why, Bobby! … Indeed!”
Pyle could not stay the night, but consented to remain for dinner which was called earlier than usual for his convenience. When he had gone, old Nicholas and Bobby, deep in their chairs in the library, talked of the invention.
To the latter’s pleased surprise, the old man asked questions which showed with what tenacity he had retained his interest in physics; for there had been a time when Nicholas Merrick had had to know a great deal about electricity.
Bobby was so delighted with the lucidity of his grandfather’s queries and the comments, that he drew the small coffee-table between their chairs and proceeded to make a detailed diagram of his coagulation cautery, Nicholas following with keen attention.
“It was the vacuum tubes that had you stumped, eh? … And the success of that came, you say, as a sort of bolt out of the blue … How do you mean?”
“Did you ever go to bed, Grandpère, with a problem on your mind, and find in the morning that you’d worked it, somehow, in your sleep?”
Nicholas rubbed his jaw.
“I’ve heard of such things. Can’t say I ever had that experience myself … Was that what happened to you?”
Bobby pushed the table away, and shifted his chair until their knees touched.
“Grandpère,” he said, soberly, “I’m going to tell you something that you may have trouble believing. It’s a long story, and I’ll have to begin at the beginning.”
Nicholas’ contribution to the conversation, during the next hour and a half, was limited to an occasional “Indeed! … Incredible! … You don’t tell me!”
When finally Bobby had made an end of it, the old fellow sat for a long time in deep meditation.
“I had never suspected, Bobby, that you were interested in religion.”
“Not sure that I am, Grandpère.”
“But that’s what this is! You’ve been talking about this ‘Major Personality’ that supplies our personalities with added energy, as we ask for it and obey the rules for getting it … Well—that’s God, isn’t it?”
“Doubtless … Just another way of saying it, maybe.”
“I’ve always shied off from the subject, Bobby. But, of late, it has been much on my mind. I’m quite disturbed, these days. I’m in a mental revolt against death. It’s sneaking up on me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Death holds all the trump cards … It takes me a little longer to get out of bed in the morning than a month ago. It is just a bit harder to climb the stairs than it was last week. The old machine is running down. I don’t want to die. I understand that when a man actually faces up to it, nature compounds some sort of an anaesthesia which numbs his dread and makes it seem right enough; but that thought brings me small comfort. I have been accustomed to meeting all my emergencies with my eyes open, and I don’t get much consolation out of the thought that I’m to be doped into a dull apathy—like a convict on the way to execution—as I face this last one … I wouldn’t mind so much if there was anything—after that … Bobby, do you believe in immortality?”
“I wish I was as sure of a few other things that bother me,” replied Bobby, instantly, “as I am of the survival of personality. Once you’ve experienced a vital contact with the Major Personality, Grandpère, you become aware that the power of it is quite independent of material things … To my mind, that’s clear. Personality is all that matters! The roses in that vase have no meaning for each other; no meaning for themselves. A tiger doesn’t know he is a tiger. Nothing in the world has any reality except as it is declared real by our personalities. Count personality out of the scheme, and there’s no significance left to anything! Include personality in the scheme, and the whole business is automatically explained!
“I’ve thought a good deal about the soul lately, Grandpère. It strikes me that the things one reads about souls are frightfully misleading. They inquire, ‘What are you doing to, for, and with your soul?’ as they might ask ‘When are you going to turn in your old car?’ … I can’t say ‘my soul,’ as I would say ‘my hat,’ or ‘my canoe,’ or ‘my liver.’ … I am a soul! I have a body! My body is wearing out, and when I can’t tinker it back into service any more, I’ll drive it out to the junk-pile; but I don’t have to be junked with it! I’m tied up to the Major Personality! … like a beam of sunshine in the sun! … I’ll not lose my power unless He loses His! … If that’s religion, Grandpère, I’m religious! But I’d rather think of it as science!”
“Bobby—are you a Christian?”
“That’s what I’d like to know myself, Grandpère … For some time I have been very much absorbed by the personality of Christ. Here was the case of a man who made an absolutely ideal adjustment to his Major Personality. He professed to have no experience of fear. He believed he could have anything he wanted by asking for it … The story interests me at the point of his bland assurance that anybody else could do the same thing if he cared to. I’m amazed that more people aren’t interested in that part of it … Now—if that’s being a Christian, I’m a Christian.”
“Is that what the churches teach, Bobby?”
“I’m sure I don’t know; for I never go to them. From what I gather, they approach this whole subject sentimentally. They regard the soul as a sort of congenital disease that ought to be cured. The soul has been passed along, from one common carrier to another, like a trunk with a bent lock and a broken hinge, labelled ‘Received in Bad Order.’ … And as for the things you read in the papers about the churches, either they’re campaigning for money to build something, or helping to elect a new prosecuting attorney, or stopping a prizefight, or panning some other sect’s belief, or raising hell with one another inside their own bailiwick … Maybe you and I had better start a church; eh, Grandpère?”
“Very good,” approved Nicholas, grinning. “I’ll build it and you be the parson.”
“It would be just like all the rest of ’em … Nobody would want to go to the bother and expense of making his own connections with his Major Personality … He’d decide to sing about power … Fancy!—singing about power! Watt didn’t sing for his! And Faraday didn’t produce the dynamo by reciting ‘I believe in Volta, Maker of the dry battery and Father of the Leyden jar, and in his successor Ampere, who codified the formulae for electrodynamics, and in Ben Franklin who went at it with a kite.’ … No, sir! By the Great Horn Spoon—No! … Faraday did his in an attic, alone, on an empty stomach!” He rose with a prodigious yawn and sauntered toward the door.
“I’m off to Brightwood early in the morning … Think I’d better turn in!”
Old Nicholas struggled heavily to his feet.
“Bobby, I’m not physically able to go around trying to nose out some opportunity to experiment with your theory. Keep your eyes open and let me know if there’s anything I can do. You arrange for it: I’ll furnish the money.”
“That wouldn’t get you anywhere … You can’t do this with a cheque book! … By the way—did you know that old Jed Turner, up the road here, had to kill seventeen of his Holstein cows, last week? The State Vet condemned them as tuberculous … Jed’s all broken up about it.”
“I wonder if he has a telephone.”
“Oh, you can easily send for him to come over.”
Nicholas’ eyes brightened. He rubbed his hands.
“Thanks for telling me, Bobby. I’ll let you know how it comes out!”
“That you won’t! I never want to hear about it again!”
“Maybe you were thinking of doing it yourself,” said Nicholas. “If so, I’ll not get into it.”
“No, Holsteins are not in my line. That’s your job … And Grandpère—while you’re over in that neighbourhood—I noticed, the other day, that Jim Abbot’s ten-year-old boy is dragging a leg in a brace that didn’t look right to me … Why don’t you hop into your car tomorrow, and have Stephen drive you about through the district? You’ll be amazed what it does to you to make connections with people who need you! … Oh, I know you’ve done a lot. It was big stuff when you contributed a hundred thousand to the hospital in Axion; but you couldn’t do it without getting your name on a bronze tablet in the main hall. You drop in at Jim Abbot’s and inquire all about the boy. If they ask you to stay for noon dinner—corned beef and cabbage—you stay! I know you can’t eat boiled cabbage at home, because it isn’t good for you; but you’ll be able to eat it at Abbot’s, and it won’t hurt you a bit. I’ll guarantee that on my honour as a medic!”
“Run along to bed!” Nicholas slapped him vigorously on the back. “Glad we had this talk! Glad your worries are all over! Now you can be happy again!”
“I’m not looking for happiness, Grandpère … She’s out of my reach!”
“Since when was happiness a she?”
“Mine is!”
“Going to tell me about that, too?”
“Sometime, maybe … Good night, Grandpère.”