“Something like that,” agreed Bobby.
“I wonder if we modernists,” said McLaren, after a considerable pause, “are not somewhat in the predicament of Moses, who had enough audacity to lead the slaves out of their bondage, but lacked the ingenuity to take them on into a country that would support them. We’ve emancipated them; but—they’re still wandering about in the jungle, dissatisfied, hungry, making occasional excursions into paganism and experimenting with all manner of eccentric cults, longing for the spiritual equivalent of their repudiated superstitions—sometimes even wishing they were back in the old harness!”
“It’s worth while to have fetched them out of that,” said Bobby. “It ought to be equally interesting to lead them on. They mustn’t go back! But they will—if they’re not pointed to something more attractive than the jungle you say they’re in.”
As he left the house at four, McLaren followed him out to his big coupé parked at the kerb.
“Merrick,” he said rather timidly, “would it be asking too much of you to come to my church again next Sunday? I’m going to have something a little more constructive to offer—and I’d like your reaction.”
“I would gladly, but I shall be on the briny deep. Sailing Saturday to France, en route to Vienna to see a colleague. I’ll be happy to come when I return.”
He stepped on the starter and the powerful engine hummed.
McLaren gripped his hand.
“Merrick—just a minute! … We modernists have been trying to show how religion is not at odds with science. What we’ve got to do now is to show how religion is a science! Isn’t that what you mean?”
“Exactly! Nothing less or else than that! You have it! More power to you! See you in September!”
XIX
Maxine Merrick, pouring their coffee in the sunny breakfast room of her over-Louised apartment in Boulevard Haussmann near the Etoile, glanced up shyly at her distinguished guest, finding it difficult to identify him as her son.
His mouth was somehow different. Ungifted with any capacity for character analysis, she was unable to define the change, but some dormant instinct told her it was other than merely functional; it was organic, structural.
It was not an austere mouth, neither was it pessimistic; but it had put off its adolescent wistfulness. It no longer entreated or anticipated, or even inquired; it accepted. The mouth had none of the tight-buckled smugness of self-imputed infallibility; none of the haughty protrusion of authority in repose; but it looked as if it were concerned only with facts, and had learned to be very particular about them. If they had really been shown to be facts, the mouth accepted them—let the facts be fair as a May morning or ugly as sin.
And his eyes were somehow different. They seemed deeper set, not as if they had winced but retreated from sights they had found disagreeable—experienced eyes that were used to looking at suffering, but not without great cost to themselves. They were not sad or weary eyes, but one felt they had seen so much they would not again widen readily with surprise. They did not cynically defy you to startle them; but you knew there was nothing you would be likely ever to say or do that would make them blink with amazement.
There was a difference in his hands; same long, slender, artist fingers—but they had left off groping uncertainly for things. They had achieved a sureness, a poise, a confidence not to be had at less expense than the honest, tireless, discriminating experience of dealing with facts—let the facts be no end unpleasant.
In short, they were the mouth, eyes, and hands of a surgeon.
Bobby’s decision to go in for a profession had failed to impress her favourably. Beyond a feeling—which she tardily and peevishly expressed—that he was enslaving himself unnecessarily, she had been left unstirred by his resolution. His completion of his medical course evoked only a request that now he was finished with school she dared say he would be able to run over and spend the summer with her. Later, when he had settled to the routine of an occupation demanding a devotion all but cloistral, she confided to her intimates how unfair it was that he should give his life to strangers when his own widowed mother stood in such desperate need of him. Her infrequent notes, in purple ink and big sprawling letters, blubbered with self-pity and petulant accusations of indifference; but her mileage was about as good as ever, and she was rarely alone except when asleep.
When, however, it had been called to her attention—she never read the journals or reviews herself—that a young Doctor Merrick of Detroit—could it possibly, her informant wondered, be her own Bobby?—had been making himself famous by the invention of a remarkable surgical instrument, her pride knew no limits. Suddenly aware that she had sacrificially offered him, years ago, on the altar of humanitarian service, and had been waiting hopefully for the day when her unselfish renunciation of her maternal claims on him might be publicly recognized, Maxine hastened to collect the tribute due her valiant and uncomplaining martyrdom, inviting all and sundry to view the stake whereon she had sizzled through the long-drawn days when her faith and hope were under fire.
For the space of a week she romped about among her acquaintances, accepting with happy tears their high-keyed chirps of felicitation, and cabled a mawkishly sentimental message to her son which fervently thanked the good God for making all her wonderful dreams come true, and cost her four hundred and fifteen francs.
This morning, Maxine lacked but a decade of looking her age, and felt even closer to it than she appeared. At no little cost she had planned the brilliant luncheon she was giving today
