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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Magnificent Obsession," Lloyd C. Douglas presents a gripping narrative that weaves together themes of love, redemption, and spiritual awakening. The novel, set in the early 20th century, employs a straightforward yet evocative literary style that enhances its profound philosophical inquiries. Douglas explores the dichotomy between materialism and altruism, creating a rich tapestry of characters whose lives intertwine within a framework of divine providence and the transformative power of selfless love. Engaging the reader's emotional and moral senses, the novel invites contemplation on the meaning of purpose and sacrifice. Lloyd C. Douglas, a former minister and a keen observer of human behavior, draws upon his theological background to inform the moral dimensions of the narrative. His experiences navigating the complexities of faith and humanity profoundly influenced his writing. "Magnificent Obsession" reflects Douglas's belief in the capacity for personal transformation and the interplay of love and duty, serving as a spiritual mirror to his own convictions and values. I enthusiastically recommend "Magnificent Obsession" to readers seeking a thought-provoking and uplifting story that transcends time. This novel not only entertains but also challenges the reader to reflect on their priorities and the impact of their actions on the lives of others. Douglas's masterful storytelling and insightful themes will resonate with anyone exploring the depths of human experience. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Magnificent Obsession
Table of Contents
Introduction
A reckless life collides with a quiet ethic of service, igniting a struggle between self-centered ambition and transformative generosity. Lloyd C. Douglas frames that conflict with disarming directness, using a single moral dilemma to open a path toward inner renovation. The novel’s energy comes from the friction between outward success and inward purpose, asking how one might change not just habits but the hidden motives that drive them. Rather than celebrating sudden triumph, it traces a gradual reorientation of character. Readers are invited into a story that treats conscience as action, compassion as discipline, and opportunity as responsibility.
First published in 1929, Lloyd C. Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession belongs to the tradition of inspirational fiction, mixing elements of domestic drama, medical settings, and spiritual inquiry. Its world is recognizably early twentieth-century America, with hospitals, small-town social circles, and professional ambition shaping the characters’ choices. The time of publication, on the cusp of economic upheaval, gives the book a backdrop of uncertainty that sharpens its questions about worth and work. Without dwelling on historical detail, the narrative uses familiar modern institutions to explore timeless concerns, situating private transformation within public life and the ordinary pressures of contemporary society.
The premise centers on a chance emergency that ties the fate of a carefree young man to that of a widely respected physician. A lifesaving intervention for one coincides with a loss for the other, leaving behind a chain of consequences that cannot be easily undone. What begins as shock and guilt becomes a search for the principle that shaped the doctor’s influence, a code of conduct oriented toward quiet, unadvertised help. As the protagonist tests this demanding path, the novel keeps its focus on interior change made visible through steady, practical deeds rather than grand declarations.
Douglas writes with a clear, earnest voice that blends narrative momentum with reflective pauses. Scenes of crisis are balanced by intimate conversations and solitary recalibrations, allowing readers to trace moral development without losing the thread of story. The style favors accessible prose and unvarnished emotion, yet it avoids cynicism, emphasizing sincerity over irony. Medical details and professional routines provide texture without turning the book into technical drama. The prevailing mood is hopeful but sober, aware of human limits while confident that disciplined goodwill can reshape a life. The result is a reading experience that is both tender and bracing.
At its core, Magnificent Obsession explores anonymity in generosity, the ethics of influence, and the paradox that self-forgetfulness can foster abiding strength. It considers how purpose emerges from responsibility assumed rather than recognition pursued, and how habit can train sentiment into steadfastness. The novel also engages questions at the crossroads of science and moral vision, showing how skill acquires meaning when aligned with service. In tracing this arc, Douglas suggests that character is crafted in the hidden places where choices are made without applause. The theme of quiet benevolence challenges the notion that good must be seen to be real.
These concerns resonate strongly today, when visibility often substitutes for value and public metrics can eclipse private integrity. Readers may recognize familiar tensions around ambition, compassion fatigue, and the ethics of charitable action in a world of constant display. The book’s insistence on humility, persistence, and accountability speaks to professionals and volunteers alike, and to anyone weighing how to convert conviction into habit. It raises practical questions about how we give, whom we serve, and what we keep to ourselves. By foregrounding motive and method, it invites contemporary reflection without requiring prior agreement on doctrine or dogma.
Approached as a story of consequence and renewal, Magnificent Obsession offers the satisfactions of an earnest moral drama sustained by human-scale stakes. It promises readers a journey from impulsiveness toward intentionality, from scattered sympathy toward disciplined care, and from restless desire toward a coherent vocation. Without relying on sensational twists, it builds quiet suspense out of choices that gradually reconfigure a life. The book rewards patient attention, fostering empathy for flawed people learning hard lessons in ordinary places. Above all, it proposes that the most transformative work may happen unseen, and that such work can leave a lasting, hopeful imprint.
Synopsis
Robert Merrick, a privileged young man, survives a boat accident through emergency equipment rushed to his aid. On the same day, a widely admired physician in the community dies because that life-saving apparatus is unavailable for him. The accident links the two events, and the town quietly assigns blame to the reckless survivor. Merrick, shaken by the unintended cost of his rescue, confronts a reputation he has not earned yet cannot refute. His previous indifference gives way to unease and curiosity about the man whose loss everyone mourns. The contrast between their livesself-indulgence and self-givingbecomes the opening tension of the narrative.
Seeking to understand the physician he seemingly displaced, Merrick encounters a confidant who hints at a private discipline that shaped the doctors influence. It is a simple but demanding rule: render assistance anonymously, refuse repayment or recognition, and allow good deeds to generate unforeseen capacities in the giver. This principle, kept quiet to preserve its effectiveness, is described as a practical law rather than a creed. Intrigued yet skeptical, Merrick experiments with unobtrusive kindness. Small actsperformed without signatures or explanationsbegin to alter his outlook. The idea that strength follows secret service challenges his habits and offers a new direction.
In learning about the physicians household, Merrick meets the widow, whose dignity and resolve reflect the loss felt throughout the town. He is drawn to her integrity and seeks opportunities to assist, yet he cannot reveal the original connection that binds their fates. Attempts to help appear clumsy or intrusive, widening the distance between them. Recognizing that influence cannot be borrowed and goodwill cannot be purchased, he resolves to change himself rather than press for acceptance. The encounter solidifies his purpose: to make restitution through growth, not display, and to align his life with the unadvertised generosity he admires.
A sudden misfortune strikes close to home, traceable in part to Merricks impulsive pursuit of personal desire. The consequences are severe and lasting, affecting the future of someone he cares about and intensifying his sense of responsibility. Confronted with the limits of intention without discipline, he chooses a long path rather than quick remedies. He commits to rigorous study and a vocation of service, setting aside comforts that once defined him. The guiding principle of hidden beneficence remains in place, not as penance but as method. What follows is a gradual reconstruction of character trained on measurable usefulness.
Years of preparation follow. Merrick undertakes foundational coursework, endures failures, and submits to exacting mentors who discount his wealth and demand competence. He studies in renowned clinics abroad, observing the precision and humility required of those entrusted with critical decisions. Outside the classroom, he practices the discipline he learned: quiet generosity targeted to needs, with no traceable source. The two tracksskill and servicebegin to reinforce one another. He sees how technical mastery gains meaning when paired with unpublicized aid, and how anonymous giving sharpens attention to others. The obsession becomes constructive focus, replacing self-absorption with steady purpose.
Returning to a professional setting, Merrick approaches practice with restraint. He builds a reputation for careful work while avoiding social display. Discreet interventionsdebt relieved here, access arranged therecontinue under cover. His path naturally intersects again with people connected to the late physician, including the widow, whose circumstances have changed. Their renewed contact is tentative and formal, shaped by boundaries neither can easily cross. She remains unaware of many links that explain his concern, and he chooses not to disclose them. The narrative emphasizes patience, competence, and the tested value of doing necessary work without fanfare.
As cases accumulate, Merrick applies his abilities to immediate problems and long-range preventions, often through intermediaries. He witnesses cumulative effects: opportunities open for beneficiaries, resentments soften, and his own judgment steadies. Yet challenges persist. Public recognition tempts efficiency; privacy sometimes obscures accountability. He navigates the tension between personal attachment and impartial duty, particularly where his past intersects with present obligations. The towns earlier perceptions do not vanish quickly, and misunderstandings require forbearance rather than argument. The story keeps attention on process over display, showing how consistent, concealed benevolence can alter a communitys tone over time.
A decisive test arrives in the form of a complex medical crisis involving someone central to his journey. The situation concentrates multiple strands: professional competence, moral responsibility, and the unspoken history linking several characters. Merrick must weigh disclosure against discretion, and individual desire against the claims of care. Preparation meets circumstance as he applies what years of study and quiet practice have formed in him. Outcomes hinge not only on technique but also on trustearned or withheldand on whether the discipline of anonymous service can stand in a moment when identities and motives press toward the surface.
The resolution underscores the books central message: purposeful, unpublicized service can transform a life and radiate influence without overt claims. The narrative positions generosity as a practice rather than sentiment, one that organizes ambition, skill, and relationships. Merricks trajectory from indebted survivor to useful practitioner illustrates restitution through contribution, not display. The earlier physicians legacy persists as a working method accessible to anyone willing to give without credit. By concluding with renewed commitments rather than grand declarations, the story affirms character as a cumulative outcome of habit, and suggests that quietly redirected energy can answer loss with durable good.
Historical Context
Set in an unnamed Midwestern resort community during the 1910s–1920s, Magnificent Obsession unfolds amid lakeside cottages, motorboats, and the new ubiquity of automobiles that linked cities to vacation towns. The atmosphere reflects a United States transitioning from Progressive Era reform to Jazz Age affluence. Hospitals had become central civic institutions, with charity wards serving the poor and private rooms signaling class distinctions. Urban centers such as Chicago and Detroit radiated economic energy across the Great Lakes region, while university towns and teaching hospitals shaped professional life. Within this milieu, the novel situates physicians, nurses, clergy, and a wealthy leisure class whose habits, accidents, and philanthropy reveal the era’s social hierarchy and moral anxieties.
A decisive backdrop is the Progressive Era transformation of American medicine. Abraham Flexner’s report (1910), financed by the Carnegie Foundation and modeled on Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, closed substandard schools and elevated laboratory-based training. The American College of Surgeons (founded 1913 in Chicago) promoted rigorous standards, and the Hospital Standardization Program began in 1918. By the 1920s, aseptic technique, ether and nitrous oxide anesthesia, and routine X‑ray diagnostics (discovered 1895, widely adopted by 1910) were reshaping care. The novel’s Dr. Hudson embodies the ethical modern physician devoted to skill and service, while Robert Merrick’s decision to pursue surgical training mirrors the prestige and social responsibility attached to the profession in this reforming climate.
Equally central is the rise of emergency medicine and mechanical resuscitation. The Dräger Pulmotor, a portable oxygen device developed in Germany around 1907, spread to North America soon after; by 1911, major U.S. fire departments and industrial plants were acquiring such apparatus for drowning and gas-inhalation rescues. Public campaigns taught Schafer’s prone-pressure method (1903) for artificial respiration, and oxygen therapy gained clinical credibility. The novel’s pivotal lakeside rescue, dependent on scarce equipment and trained hands, captures the real-world drama of early twentieth-century lifesaving technology. Its plot tension—who receives the device first, and at what cost—reflects the period’s logistical limits, triage ethics, and the public fascination with scientific heroism during accidents on the nation’s waterways.
The Social Gospel movement framed a moral vocabulary for service between the 1890s and 1920s. Figures such as Walter Rauschenbusch (Christianity and the Social Crisis, 1907; Christianizing the Social Order, 1912) and Washington Gladden in Columbus, Ohio, urged Christians to address systemic poverty, urban hazards, and inequity. Settlement-house work, notably Jane Addams’s Hull-House in Chicago (founded 1889), fused charity with civic reform. Lloyd C. Douglas, ordained in the early 1900s and active as a prominent pastor in Ann Arbor, Michigan (1915–1921), and later in major pulpits including Los Angeles, wrote amid this discourse on anonymous giving, humility, and social duty. The novel’s code of quiet benevolence explicitly echoes the era’s Protestant ethic that valorized unadvertised, restorative service.
The age of organized philanthropy supplied another crucial context. Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth essay (1889) justified large-scale giving for public goods, while the Rockefeller Foundation (chartered 1913 in New York) invested in medical research, public health, and educational reform that complemented post‑Flexner standards. Community Chest campaigns began in Cleveland in 1913 and proliferated in the 1920s, coordinating donations for hospitals and relief agencies. Yet public naming rights and donor prestige often accompanied gifts. Magnificent Obsession diverges by extolling secret benefaction: a wealthy heir, Robert Merrick, learns to direct resources anonymously, dramatizing a countercurrent to conspicuous philanthropy and highlighting debates over motive, dignity of recipients, and the moral economy of charity in modern American cities.
Prohibition and its antecedent temperance activism shaped the moral climate. The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919 and implemented via the Volstead Act in January 1920, while the Anti‑Saloon League (headquartered in Westerville, Ohio) and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (founded 1874) framed abstinence as civic duty. Despite speakeasies and bootlegging, the period’s reformist language linked personal restraint to public welfare. Though not a novel about alcohol, Magnificent Obsession aligns with this ethical atmosphere: it contrasts heedless indulgence in leisure and speed with disciplined, socially minded transformation. Scenes of accidental injury on water and roadways resonate with contemporary concerns about reckless modern pleasures and the need for morally guided, community‑protective behavior.
The consumer boom of the 1920s intensified class contrasts and accident risks that the story channels. By 1929, Americans owned roughly 23 million automobiles—about one for every five people—and traffic deaths rose into the tens of thousands annually. Country clubs, resort marinas, and suburban expansion showcased conspicuous leisure, while hospitals navigated rising costs and uneven access to care. The Baylor Plan in Dallas (1929) pioneered prepaid hospital insurance, indicating systemic strains. Published in 1929 as markets crashed, the novel’s celebration of service over display reads as a corrective to Jazz Age extravagance. Merrick’s redirection of wealth toward unpublicized aid counters the era’s consumer ethos and anticipates Depression‑era debates on mutual aid, institutional charity, and social responsibility.
As social and political critique, the book indicts a culture that prized status, spectacle, and transactional charity while leaving medical and personal crises to chance. It exposes class divides through unequal access to skilled care and equipment, and it challenges the prestige economy of named donations by modeling anonymous, reparative giving. The physician’s vocation is presented as civic stewardship rather than profit. In a United States that lacked universal health insurance and relied on voluntary hospitals, the narrative implies that moral commitment must bridge institutional gaps. Its ethic of disciplined service and quiet restitution thus interrogates Jazz Age inequality and urges a recalibration of wealth, responsibility, and dignity within modern community life.
Magnificent Obsession
CHAPTER I
IT had lately become common chatter at Brightwood Hospital—better known for three hundred miles around Detroit as Hudson's Clinic—that the chief was all but dead on his feet. The whole place buzzed with it.
All the way from the inquisitive solarium on the top floor to the garrulous kitchen in the basement, little groups—convalescents in wheeled chairs, nurses with tardy trays, lean internes on rubber soles, grizzled orderlies trailing damp mops—met to whisper and separated to disseminate the bad news. Doctor Hudson was on the verge of a collapse.
On the verge?...Indeed! One lengthening story had it that on Tuesday he had fainted during an operation—mighty ticklish piece of business, too—which young Watson, assisting him, was obliged to complete alone. And the worst of it was that he was back at it again, next morning, carrying on as usual.
An idle tale like that, no matter with what solicitude of loyalty it might be discussed at Brightwood, would deal the institution a staggering wallop once it seeped through the big wrought-iron gates. And the rumour was peculiarly difficult to throttle because, unfortunately, it was true.
Obviously the hour had arrived for desperate measures.
Dr. Malcolm Pyle, shaggy and beetle-browed, next to the chief in seniority, a specialist in abdominal surgery and admiringly spoken of by his colleagues as the best belly man west of the Alleghenies, growled briefly into the ear of blood-and-skin Jennings, a cynical, middle-aged bachelor, who but for his skill as a bacteriologist would have been dropped from the staff, many a time, for his rasping banter and infuriating impudences.
Jennings quickly passed the word to internal-medicine Carter, who presently met eye-ear-nose-and-throat McDermott in the hall and relayed the message.
"Oh, yes, I'll come," said McDermott uneasily, "but I don't relish the idea of a staff meeting without the chief. Looks like treason."
"It's for his own good," explained Carter.
"Doubtless; but...he has always been such a straight shooter, himself."
"You tell Aldrich and Watson. I'll see Gram and Harper. I hate it as much as you do, Mac, but we can't let the chief ruin himself."
* * * * *
Seeing that to-morrow was Christmas, and this was Saturday well past the luncheon hour, by the time Pyle had tardily joined them in the superintendent's office each of the eight, having abandoned whatever manifestation of dignified omniscience constituted his bedside manner, was snappishly impatient to have done with this unpleasant business and be off.
When at length he breezed in, not very convincingly attempting the conciliatory smirk of the belated, Pyle found them glum and fidgety—Carter savagely reducing to shavings what remained of a pencil, Aldrich rattling the pages of his engagement book, McDermott meticulously pecking at diminutive bits of lint on his coat sleeve, Watson ostentatiously shaking his watch at his ear, Gram drumming an exasperating tattoo on Nancy Ashford's desk, and the others pacing about like hungry panthers.
"Well," said Pyle, seating them with a sweeping gesture, "you all know what we're here for."
"Ab-so-lute-ly," drawled Jennings. "The old boy must be warned."
"At once!" snapped Gram.
"I'll say!" muttered McDermott.
"And you, Pyle, are the proper person to do it!" Anticipating a tempestuous rejoinder, Jennings hastened to defend himself against the impending din by noisily pounding out his pipe on the rim of Mrs. Ashford's steel waste basket, a performance she watched with sour interest.
"Where do you get that 'old boy' stuff, Jennings?" demanded Pyle, projecting a fierce, myopic glare at his pestiferous crony. "He's not much older than you are."
Watson tilted his chair back on its hind legs, cautiously turned his red head in the direction of Carter, seated next him, and slowly closed one eye. This was going to be good.
"Doctor Hudson was forty-six last May," quietly volunteered the superintendent, without looking up.
"You ought to know," conceded Jennings drily.
She met his rough insinuation with level, unacknowledging eyes.
"May twenty-fifth," she added.
"Thanks so much. That point's settled, then. But, all the same, he wasn't a day under a hundred and forty-six when he slumped out of his operating room, this morning, haggard and shaky."
"It's getting spread about too," complained Carter.
"Take it up with him, Doctor Pyle," wheedled McDermott. "Tell him we all think he needs a vacation—a long one!"
Pyle snorted contemptuously and aimed a bushy eye-brow at him.
"Humph! That's good! 'Tell him we all think,' eh? It's a mighty careless, offhand damn that Hudson would give for what we all think! Did you ever..." He pointed a bony finger at the perspiring McDermott, "...did you ever feel moved to offer a few comradely suggestions to Dr. Wayne Hudson, relative to the better management of his personal affairs?"
McDermott rosily hadn't, and Pyle's dry voice crackled again.
"As I thought! That explains how, with so little display of emotion, you can advise somebody else to do it. You see, my son,"—he dropped his tone of raillery and became sincere—"we're dealing here with an odd number. Nobody quite like him in the whole world...full of funny crotchets. In a psychiatric clinic—which this hospital is going to be, shortly, with the entire staff in strait-jackets—some of Hudson's charming little idiosyncrasies would be brutally referred to as clean-cut psychoses!"
The silence in Mrs. Ashford's office was tense. Pyle's regard for the chief was known to be but little short of idolatry. What, indeed, was he preparing to say? Did he actually believe that Hudson was off the rails?
"Now, don't misunderstand!" he went on quickly, sensing their amazement. "Hudson's entitled to all his whimsies. So far as I'm concerned, he has earned the right to his flock of phantoms. He is a genius, and whosoever loveth a genius is out of luck with his devotion except he beareth all things, endureth all things, suffereth long and is kind."
"Not like sounding brass," interpolated Jennings piously.
"Apropos of brass," growled Pyle, "but—no matter...We all know that the chief is the most important figure in the field of brain surgery on this continent. But he did not come to that distinction by accident. He has toiled like a slave in a mill[1q]. His specialty is guaranteed to make a man moody; counts himself lucky if he can hold down his mortality to fifty per cent. What kind of a mentality would you have"—shifting his attention to Jennings, who grinned, amiably—"if you lost half your cases? They'd soon have you trussed in a big tub of hot water, feeding you through the nose with a syringe!"
"You spoke of the chief's psychoses," interrupted McDermott, approaching the dangerous word hesitatingly. "Do you mean that—literally?"
Pyle pursed his lips and nodded slowly.
"Yes—literally! One of his notions—by far the most alarming of his legion, in so far as the present dilemma is affected—has to do with his curious attitude toward fear. He mustn't be afraid of anything. He must live above fear—that is his phrase. You would think, to hear his prattle, that he was a wealthy and neurotic old lady trying to graduate from Theosophy[2] into Bahaism..."
"What's Bahaism?" inquired Jennings, with pretended naïveté.
"Hudson believes," continued Pyle, disdainful of the annoyance, "that if a man harbours any sort of fear, no matter how benign and apparently harmless, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost. For years, he has been so consistently living above fear[3]—fear of slumping, fear of the natural penalties of overwork, fear of the neural drain of insomnia...Haven't you heard him discoursing on the delights of reading in bed to three o'clock?...fear of that little aneurism he knows he's got—that he has driven himself at full gallop with spurs on his boots and burrs under his saddle, caroling about his freedom, until he's ready to drop. But whoever cautions him will be warmly damned for his impertinence."
Pyle had temporarily run down, and discussion became general. Carter risked suggesting that if the necessary interview with the chief required a gift for impertinence, why not deputize Jennings? Aldrich said it was no time for kidding. McDermott again nominated Pyle. Gram shouted, "Of course!" They pushed back their chairs. Pyle brought both big hands down on his knees with a resounding slap, rose with a groan, and sourly promised he'd have a go at it.
"Attaboy!" commended Jennings paternally. "Watson will do your stitches, afterwards. He has been getting some uncommonly nice cosmetic values, lately, with his scars; eh, Watty?"
The disorder incident to adjournment spared Watson the chagrin of listening to the threatened report of Jennings' eavesdropping, an hour earlier, on the dulcet cooing of a recently discharged patient, back to tender her gratitude. Emboldened by his rescue, he dispassionately told Jennings to go to hell, much to the latter's faunlike satisfaction, and the staff evaporated.
"Let's go and eat," said Pyle.
As they turned the corner in the corridor, Jennings slipped his hand under Pyle's elbow and muttered, "You know damned well what ails the chief, and so do I. It's the girl!"
"Joyce, you mean?"
"Who else?" Jennings buttoned his overcoat collar high about his throat and thrust his shoulder against the big front door and an eighty-mile gale. "Certainly, I mean Joyce. She's running wild, and he's worrying his heart out and his head off!"
"Maybe so," Pyle picked his footing carefully on the snowy steps. "But I don't believe it's very good cricket for us to analyze his family affairs."
"Nonsense! We're quite past the time for indulging in any knightly restraints. Hudson's in danger of shooting his reputation to bits. Incidentally, it will give the whole clinic a black eye when the news spreads. If the chief is off his feed because he's fretting about his girl, then it's high time we talked candidly about her. She's a silly little ass, if you ask my opinion!"
"Well, you won't be asked for your opinion. And it's no good coming at it in that mood. She may be, as you say, a silly little ass; but she's Hudson's deity!"
Jennings motioned him to climb into the coupé and fumbled in his pockets for his keys.
"She wasn't behaving much like a deity—unless Bacchus, perhaps—the last time I saw her."
"Where was that?"
"At the Tuileries, about a month ago, with a party of eight or ten noisy roisterers, in the general custody of that good-for-nothing young Merrick—you know, old Nick Merrick's carousing grandson. Believe me, they were well oiled."
"Did you—did she recognize you?"
"Oh, quite so! Came fluttering over to our table to speak to me!"
"Humph! She must have been pickled! I thought she was getting on, all right, at a girls' school in Washington...Didn't know she was home."
Jennings warmed his engine noisily, and threw in the clutch.
"Maybe she was sacked."
Pyle made some hopeless noises deep in his throat.
"Too bad about old Merrick...Salt of the earth; finest of the fine. He's had more than his share of trouble. Did you ever know Clif?"
"No. He was dead. But I've heard of him. A bum, wasn't he?"
"That describes him; and this orphan of his seems to be headed in the same direction."
"Orphan? I thought this boy's mother was living—Paris or somewhere."
"Oh yes, she's living; but the boy's an orphan, for all that. Born an orphan!" Pyle briefly reviewed the Merrick saga.
"Perhaps," suggested Jennings, as they rolled into the club garage, "you might have a chat with old Merrick, if he's such a good sort, and tell him his whelp is a contaminating influence to our girl."
"Pfff!" Pyle led the way to the elevator.
"Well, if that proposal's no good, why don't you go manfully to the young lady herself and inform her that she's driving her eminent parent crazy? Put it up to her as a matter of good sportsmanship."
"No," objected Pyle, hooking his glasses athwart his nose to inspect the menu, "she would only air her indignation to her father. And he likes people to mind their own business—as you've discovered on two or three occasions. He keeps his own counsel like a clam, and doesn't thank anybody for crashing into his affairs, no matter how benevolent may be the motive...It would be quite useless, anyway. Joyce can't help the way she's made. She is a biological throwback to her maternal grandfather. You never knew him. He was just putting the finishing touches to his career as a periodical sot when I arrived in this town, fresh from school. Cummings was the best all 'round surgeon and the hardest all 'round drinker in the state of Michigan for twenty years; one of these three-days-soused and three-weeks-sober drunkards. This girl evidently carries an over-plus of the old chap's chromosomes."
"You mean she is a dipsomaniac?"
"Well—that's a nasty word. Let's just say she's erratic. Ever since she was a little tot, she has been a storm centre. Sweetest thing in the world when she wants to be. And then all hell breaks loose and Hudson has to plead with the teachers to take her back. Oh, she's given him an exciting life; no doubt of that! And lately it's booze!"
"Hudson knows about that part of it, of course!"
"I presume so. How could he help it? She makes no secret of it. At all events, she's no hypocrite."
Jennings sighed.
"Rather unfortunate she has this one embarrassing virtue; isn't it? But, that being the case, I dare say she'll have to go to the devil at her own speed. We must persuade Hudson, however, to clear out and take a long leave of absence. He can take her along. Lay it on with a heavy hand, Pyle. Be utterly ruthless! Tell him it affects us all. That ought to fetch him. I never knew anybody quite so sensitive to the welfare of other people. Save that card for the last trick: tell him if he doesn't clear out, for a while, he will do up the rest of us!"
* * * * *
For the first half hour of their conference, which was held in the chief's office the following Tuesday, Pyle stubbornly held out for a trip around the world, Joyce to accompany her father. Indeed, the idea had seemed so good that he had armed himself with a portfolio of attractive cruise literature. He had even made out an intriguing itinerary—Hawaii, Tahiti, ukeleles—Pyle was a confirmed land-lubber with a dangerously suppressed desire to lie on his back, pleasantly jingled, under a trans-equatorial palm, listening to the soft vowels of grown-up children unspoiled by civilization—the Mediterranean countries, six months of hobnobbing with brain specialists in Germany. The latter item had been included as a particularly tempting bait. Hudson had often declared he meant to do that some day.
The chief listened preoccupiedly; tried to seem grateful; tried to seem interested; but as Pyle rumbled on with his sales-talk the big man grew restless, refilled his fountain-pen, rearranged his papers in neater piles, had much difficulty hunting a match-box. Then he shook his head, smiling.
No, much as he appreciated Pyle's friendly concern, he wasn't going around the world; not just now. Of course he had been sticking at it too steadily. Lately he had had it on his mind to build a little shack in some out of the way place, not too far off, and put in there from Friday afternoon to Tuesday morning, at least in decent weather, tramp, fish, botanize, read light novels, sleep, live the simple life. He would begin plans on such a place at once. Spring would be along soon.
"And—meantime?" persisted Pyle, gnawing at the tip of his uptilted little goatee.
Hudson rose, slammed a drawer shut with a bang, swung a leg over the corner of his desk, folded his arms tightly, and faced his counsellor with a mysterious grin.
"Meantime?...Pyle, I hope this won't knock you cold. I'm going down to Philadelphia, week after next, to marry my daughter's school friend, Miss Helen Brent."
Pyle's eyes and mouth comically registered such stunned amazement that the Hudson grin widened.
"And then the three of us will be spending a couple of months in Europe. I've arranged with Leighton to come over from the university and take care of such head cases as Watson can't handle. Watson's a good man; bright future. Oddly enough, I was on the point of asking you in to talk this over when you said you wished to see me."
Pyle bit off the end of a fresh cigar and mumbled felicitations, not yet sufficiently recovered to pretend enthusiasm.
"Doubtless you think me a fool, Pyle."
Hudson took a turn up and down the room, giving his colleague an opportunity to deny it if he wished. Pyle puffed meditatively.
"Seventeen years a widower," mused Hudson, half to himself. He paused at the far corner to straighten a disordered shelf of books.
"A man accumulates a lot of habits in seventeen years." He returned to his desk-chair. "Sounds like the wedding of January and June, eh?"
Had Jennings been in Pyle's place, his eyes would have twinkled as he replied, "January! What! You? January? Nonsense, Chief! Not a day over October, at the farthest!"
Pyle smiled wanly, and shifted his cigar to the other corner of his mouth.
"I came by this valuable new friendship early last year when Miss Brent was made Junior advisor to my Joyce."
Something of sympathetic comradeship in Pyle's reviving interest, now that he was partially coming to, encouraged Hudson to toss aside what remained of his reticence and tell it all.
To begin with—Miss Brent was an orphan; parents reputable Virginians; most interesting French background on her mother's side; same kind of blood that the guillotine spilt in 1789..." Quite pronouncedly Gallic, she is—at least in appearance."
Jennings, had he been there, would have been audacious enough to suggest, slyly chuckling, "Oh—in that case we should amend June to July!" Then he would have watched the chief's face intently.
But Pyle, who had no traffic with psychoanalysis, attached no significance whatever to the fact that the young lady's probable temperament was somewhat on the chief's mind.
"About Thanksgiving," Hudson was saying, "Miss Brent, after a brief encounter with influenza, left the school and spent a few days at home. No sooner was she gone than Joyce slipped out, one night; attended a party, down in the city; defied some house rules as to hours; flicked all her classes next day; stormed until the shingles rattled when they rebuked her; and, in short, contrived to get herself suspended, notwithstanding that her record—thanks to Miss Brent's influence—had been quite above reproach ever since she matriculated, a year ago last September."
The story went forward rather jerkily. Hudson was not given to confiding his perplexities to anybody. Pyle discreetly remained silent.
"Well—she came home and plunged immediately into a series of hectic affairs; out every night; in bed most of the day; nervous, testy, unreasonable. I can't tell you, Pyle, how thoroughly it did me in...She's all I have you know.
"At my wit's end, I suggested that she invite Miss Brent up to visit us through the holidays. Twice before had she been our guest for a few days, and I had seen something of her on my occasional visits to Washington. Believe me when I tell you that this charming girl was no more than across our threshold last week, than Joyce was another creature, poised, gracious, lovable—a lady!"
He paused to take his bearings before going further; impelled to explain how the swift movement of events, that first evening at dinner, amply accounted for his decision to ask Helen to marry him; reluctant, even in the interest of plausibility and self-defence, to give words to the memory of that occasion. It had all been so natural; so unimpeachably right; so precisely as it ought to be! He had remarked—perhaps a bit more ardently than he intended, for his heart was full—how happy it had made him—and Joyce—that she had come. "I don't see how we can ever let you go!" he had said; to which Joyce had added impetuously, "Why need she ever go? She's happier here than anywhere else; aren't you, darling?"
Pyle recrossed his legs and cleared his throat to remind the chief that he was still present.
"As a matter of fact, Miss Brent is certain to be happier with us than she was at home. Since childhood, she has lived with an uncle, her father's elder brother, an irascible, penurious, not very successful old lawyer. There are no women in the family. And I have reason to suspect that her cousin, Montgomery Brent, is a bit of a rake, though she has idealized him out of all proportion; calls him 'Brother Monty,' thinks him vastly misunderstood by his father and everybody else...that kind of a girl, Pyle...espouses the cause of homeless cats, under dogs, misunderstood cousins, my flighty, wilful Joyce...and now—thank God—she has promised to join forces with me! I think she's making something of a mission of it, Pyle. I was quite willing to wait until she had finished school in June; had some serious misgivings, indeed, about that; but she dismissed the thought lightly. If I needed her, I needed her now, she said...I hope to God it works out!"
Pyle said he believed it would; moved to the edge of his chair; looked at his watch; asked if this was a secret.
Hudson stroked his jaw, his eyes averted.
"I don't object to their knowing...Let's consider it sufficient, for the present, that I'm going to Europe with my daughter." He mopped his broad forehead vigorously. "The rest of it they can learn in due time. Report to Aldrich and Carter and the others that I'm off on a vacation."
"Any special word for Mrs. Ashford, Chief?" Pyle paused with his hand on the door-knob.
Hudson thrust his hands deeply into his trouser pockets and walked to the window, staring out. "I'll tell her myself, Pyle," he answered, without turning.
* * * * *
Doctor Hudson named his isolated retreat Flintridge. It was quite remote from the beaten trail of travel. A mere acre had been tamed to serve the cottage for which his hasty sketches, before leaving, were elaborated and executed in his absence by his loyal friend, Fred Ferguson, the best architect in town.
It was an inhospitable bit of country, thereabouts. Sheer cliffs, descending abruptly to the black water (a long flight of wooden steps led to the little boat-house and adjacent wharf) had discouraged such colonization as had long since developed the western shore, two miles distant. Deformed pines clawed the rocks, sighing of their thirst in summer, shrieking of nakedness in winter.
Almost from the first, Flintridge never knew certainly, for there was no telephone, when its master would appear for a week-end. It anticipated, made forecasts, baked ineffable angel food cakes, caught vast quantities of minnows for bait, and held itself in instant readiness to welcome the big man with the ruddy face (just a shade too ruddy, any heart diagnostician could have told him), silver-white hair, grey eyes with deep crows-feet, and expressive hands eloquent of highly developed dexterity.
When and if he came, it would be on Saturday, late afternoon. Once only had he brought Joyce and Helen—strangers, passing them, presumed they were both his daughters—but that was merely temporizing with his promise to seek a retreat. And he now needed days off, if ever; for his young wife's gregarious disposition and charming hospitality had multiplied his social obligations in the city.
How easily she had adjusted herself to his moods! How proud he was of her, not quite so much for her exotic beauty, as because of her exquisiteness of personal taste and the tact with which she met the rather exacting problems of fitting neatly and quickly into his circle of mature acquaintances. It delighted him that she chose the right word, wore the right costume, intuitively knew how to manage a dinner-party without seeming concerned as to what misadventures might have occurred in the kitchen. Yes; the affair was "working out"—how often he used that phrase!—immeasurably better than he had dared hope.
Even the women liked her! They had accepted her on approval at first; but when it became evident that she had no intention of taking on airs because their grizzled spouses fluttered about her with the broad compliments privileged to fifty addressing twenty-five, they admitted she was a dear.
But, however pleasant it was for Hudson to note his wife's growing popularity, certified to by the increasing volume of their social activities, his new duties contributed little to the reinvigoration of that fatigued aorta which had worried Pyle.
"The chief's in better fettle—think?" said Jennings.
"Temporarily," conceded Pyle. "But you don't mend an aneurism with late dinners, three a week. I'm afraid he'll crash, one of these days."
Not infrequently some visiting colleague—for Brightwood now not only attracted patients from afar but had become a mecca for the ambitious in the field of brain surgery—would be driven out into the country to rusticate for a day or two. They seemed singularly alike, these brain-tinkers from otherwhere; moody, abstracted men, in their late forties and early fifties, most of them; seldom smiling, ungifted with small talk, not unusually inclined to be somewhat gruff. Hudson preferred to hold conferences with them at the lake, for their conversation would be tiresomely technical. And anyhow, men who trafficked daily with Death could not be expected to enliven a house party.
A devoted pair of middle-aged twins served as caretakers at Flintridge. What time Perry Ruggles, of the stiff knee, hairy throat, and Airedale disposition, was not tinkering the boat engine with greasy wrenches or trolling in and out of season for bass, he was teaching little patches of apathetic soil to take a maternal interest in iris and petunias. On Saturdays about five o'clock, he would put on his other coat and limp down to the gate that admitted from the narrow ridge road; and, having opened it, would flick little stones off the driveway with his good foot.
Martha, his buxom sister, wrought ingenious quilts, concealed from the taciturn Perry the vandalisms of an impertinent, bottle-fed fawn; was silly over a pair of tame pheasants whose capacity for requiting her affection was as feeble as her need was great; scratched her plump arms gathering early berries in anticipation of some high moment when her pie would be approved with a slow wink, of which the learned guest, profoundly discoursing of surgical mysteries to his celebrated host, would be entirely unaware.
On Saturdays, about four-thirty, having again made sure she had laid out the doctor's pyjamas on the bed, and turning the vase of roses on his chiffonier a little more to the advantage of the tallest, Martha would take her stand before the window in the sun-parlour, her knuckles pressed hard against her pretty teeth, devoutly praying for a swirl of yellow dust and a flash of glittering nickel at the bend of the ridge road, visible through an open lane of dwarf spruce.
At the sound of gravel crunching under heavy tires, she would dash to the door and fling it open, always hoping—and hating herself for it—that the doctor had come alone or, if not alone, accompanied by another man. She had been uneasy, abashed, and awkward in the presence of young Mrs. Hudson, whose beauty had stirred remembrance of a certain pre-Christmas shopping excursion when she was nine...There had been a French doll, so beautiful it had made Martha's little throat ache with longing. Her wistful eyes had gushed sudden tears, and she had put out a hand, tentatively.
"No, dear," her mother had cautioned. "You may look at her, but you mustn't touch."
* * * * *
On the broad mantel in the "gun room" (there had been a bit of chaffing about the "gun room," seeing there was only one gun in it among all the miscellaneous instruments of sport—golf clubs, fishing tackle, and the like) an impressive row of silver cups testified that Wayne Hudson was no less expert at play than with the more important implements of surgery.
It was a frequent remark of his intimates that Hudson possessed an almost uncanny capacity for projecting the sensitiveness of his cognitive fingers to the very tips of whatever tools he chose to manipulate. There were nerves in his niblick, in his casting-rod, in his scalpel.
"A lucky devil!" bystanders used to remark when he had successfully made a long putt up-grade on a sporty green.
"An uncommonly good guesser!" his confrères agreed occasionally, when some quite daring prognosis—probably defining the exact location of a brain tumour on such cryptic evidence as the arc of an eyebrow, the twitch of a lip, the posture of a hand in repose, or the interjection of an unbecoming phrase into casual conversation—was verified.
Among the trophies on the mantel—whose inscriptions always amazed a visiting colleague, marvelling at his distinguished host's diversity of proficiencies—there was a tarnished triple-handled aquatic prize won by Doctor Hudson when, in the early days of his internship, he had taken a First in a mile swim.
"Still swim?"
"Regularly."
