Bobby Merrick’s recent spectacular contribution to the cause of brain surgery had been made much of by the press, somewhat to his own dismay; for he had the honest scientific worker’s shyness of publicity. It had been quite embarrassing to see his invention described in the argot of journalistic ballyhoo, and he was not nearly so grateful as he would have liked to be for the well-intended eulogies on the editorial pages of the dailies, and the sentimental twaddle which embellished his biography in the digests and reviews.
Of course, it really had been a corking story, well worth its two-column head on page one. The scribes had left nothing out. Young Doctor Merrick’s utter abandonment of the leisure to which he had access by virtue of his large fortune, to give himself tirelessly to the most difficult and discouraging speciality known to surgery, was played up for all that the traffic would bear. Had he not promptly barricaded himself against the fleet of feature writers who bore down upon him, the matter would unquestionably have been worse.
“You really owe something to your public!” one of them had twittered, as if she were talking to some movie-struck flapper who had won The Times’ beauty contest.
It was even recalled that Doctor Merrick’s life had been saved, some years ago, at the same hour when another eminent brain surgeon, the late Dr. Wayne Hudson, had drowned in Lake Saginack. One paper (pink) had broadly wondered if the wealthy young Merrick’s immediate decision to enter a medical school where he trained to espouse brain surgery might have been influenced, if not indeed directly caused, by that tragedy; but, lacking the details, and unable to twist them out of the unhappy hero or his associates, it had been content to toss out the hint and let the public draw its own conclusions.
Within eighteen hours after the news broke, Bobby had decided that if the liabilities of front page publicity were pitted against the assets accruing therefrom, his account with Fame was already in the red. It was obvious that a new star was better off for a low visibility. His mail was crammed with importunities from every known species of beggar; appeals from alleged philanthropies ranging all the way from foundations guaranteeing international understanding to wildcat altruistics for the relief of hectored blue-jays. He was the recipient of home-brewed poetry extolling his merits, slobbering songs hymning his praise and hopeful of publication at his expense, saccharine love letters, many of them enclosing photographs. He was besieged for luncheon talks. He became a fugitive, darting from cover to cover.
Even out at Windymere, where he sought seclusion for a weekend, shortly after the persecution set in, he was exasperated to find his grandfather proudly and—for him—garrulously accommodating a severely tailored young woman who required some intimate knowledge of Bobby’s boyhood to adorn a magazine story.
“Ah—Robert—surprised to see you!” exclaimed old Nicholas. “We were just speaking of you. This young lady …”
“Yes, I see,” Bobby had responded icily. “I dare say she will pardon us if we change the subject.”
“That I will not!” giggled the visitor.
Nicholas had looked very foolish and helpless over the situation until Bobby came to his relief by summoning Meggs.
“Tell Stephen to drive this lady down to the station, Meggs. She is anxious to make the 4:16.”
As for his colleagues in the profession, their gratitude and generous felicitations had been a source of much pleasure. Every day brought dignified encomiums from well-known men of his own speciality, thanking him for the unselfish manner in which he had promptly made his find available to his fellows. He had had letters from every civilized country of the world.
Now that sufficient time had elapsed for his sudden fame to jellify, Bobby had shyly crept out into the open to resume his normal schedule of activities and recreations. He had not yet become accustomed to the stares, whispers, and nudges, which singled him out in public places; but, seeing he couldn’t sneak about forever like a hunted thing, he masked his self-consciousness the best he could and took his punishment with an assumption of nonchalance. Today he had even risked going to church.
Doctor McLaren had preached a scholarly sermon to a large audience of good-looking people—fully half of whom were under forty—on a topic he hoped would be of special interest to his important guest.
Indeed, what Dr. Robert Merrick was going to think of that sermon had loomed so large in the popular young preacher’s mind, while preparing his discourse, that it was with much difficulty he had restrained himself from the use of a scientific phraseology quite beyond the ken of his customers—albeit, as church audiences went, they intellectually registered A-plus; and freely admitted it. Grace Church was quite conscious of its modernity.
“Really, the most forward-looking—indeed the only forward-looking church in town!”—Mrs. Sealback was remembered to have said in prefacing her suggestion of Doctor McLaren as the proper person to invoke the divine blessing on that session of the Social Congress which had programmed a discussion of Birth Control.
“As to what?” President-of-the-Social-Congress Mrs. Cordelia Kunz of Grand Rapids had inquired drily, tapping her notes with a cunning little lorgnette. “Forward-looking on economic questions, social problems, political issues—or merely posing as the last outpost of orthodoxy?”
Mrs. Sealback, slightly dizzied and not a little nettled, had replied that she was sure she didn’t know exactly how far or in what direction Grace Church led the way to freedom—and snapped her purse several times, quite noisily, to emphasize her disclaimer of further interest in the matter—unaware that the brusque gavel-swinger from up state had indeed touched a mighty live wire.
Obedient to the necessary precautions, however, Doctor McLaren had made a few last-minute substitutions for certain erudite terms he feared might overshoot his congregation; but, even with these begrudged alterations in the cause of clarity, the address was as one scientist to another, and the people who heard it were at once flattered and befuddled by its charming inexplicability. They,
