CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jonathan rode rapidly out of town on horseback to his nearest farm, which began on the outskirts of the city and which was now being managed by Dr. Thomas Harper. He rarely talked much to his former friend, not out of continuing resentment and hatred and contempt, but because he was fearful that if he showed kindness Tom would become maudlin and overwhelmed again by his own guilt, and this was something Jonathan found extremely embarrassing, to the point of anger. If a man had been a villain and an ingrate, let him then feel remorse and repentance in his heart, and not infuse them into his ordinary daily communications, particularly when talking with the object of his former malice. It was Jonathan’s firm conviction that while repentance was theoretically good it could also have a repercussion dangerous to the victim: The repentant aggressor, being human, and desiring to relieve himself of his painful state of mind, might look for more reasons to hate his victim, and end up being more malignant than before. From both sentimentality and malignance Jonathan wished himself to be delivered.

He hoped to ride about the farm and talk with Thelma Harper and her four engaging children, for he had known Thelma as a nurse at St. Hilda’s when he had been a lowly medical student and her husband an intern. He had had no status at St. Hilda’s as yet, and was snubbed by nurses and indulged by interns, but Thelma had been kind and motherly, though she was but four years older than himself. She had also—and this was more important to Jonathan than anything else—been an excellent nurse in a day when nurses were only drudges and exploited and regarded with more than a small contempt by hospitals in general.

Jonathan took the narrow riding path and rode along the river, not only because it was cooler here but because it was the shortest way to his farm. His horse did not like water, and pretended fear of it always, rolling back an eloquent eye at his rider in reproach and apprehension. “Nonsense,” said Jonathan. “Even if you are gelded you still have enough manhood in you, and stop being such a farce.” The horse bent his head in piteous resignation and pranced along at a sedate pace. “I suppose,” said Jonathan reflectively, “that as most men now seem gelded in spirit if not in actuality, I shouldn’t call your state to your mind. It’s a universal and melancholy fact. Only the boys roaring out into the territories seem to have any gumption these days, but when they have the West well settled and the cities rise up, then they’re geld themselves too. A man can’t live in the city with testes. What was it Socrates said: ‘A hamlet breeds heroes. A city breeds eunuchs.’ Vicious ones, too, for eunuchs are always shrill and iniquitous and full of murder. And never mind Charles Lamb and his ‘thither side of innocence.’”

Thelma had written him recently that Tom seemed much improved, “and able to take short rides every day.” What had the poet, William Blake, said: “Cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face.” It took a poet to be pithy and full of verity, and only the ignorant called them decadent or ladylike or other demeaning terms. They were a virile breed. Jonathan recited some of his favorite poems to himself, and looked at the river. The island was partly behind him now. A little mist was rising from the water into the heated air, and the island seemed adrift, a fairy place, and Jonathan thought of Jenny and Robert Morgan, and chuckled, but not very agreeably. He would have to corner the elusive Jenny very soon, and no more delicate approaches. Jonathan remembered what Ibsen had said: “One should never put on one’s best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.” Nor should he put on his best trousers to fight for love, either.

The river had a dreamlike quality today, its current hardly visible, hardly running, its surface like pale blue silk and as smooth. The ferries chugging from side to side were busy with holidayers, and there were boats out, with sails, and rowboats moving placidly with picnickers looking for a likely spot along the shore, and the sun was a yellow haze and the mountains on the other side of the river were gauzy shapes of green. It was what countrymen called “a pretty day.” Humid and hot, but languorous and peaceful, and voices called and laughed from the river and from the gardens that bordered the narrow road. But now the houses, and the gardens, were becoming farther and farther apart, and the country was approaching, smelling of dust and hay, and the peculiar excitation of the lovely and carnal earth.

Here and there along uncultivated stretches of land little humpy and jagged roads tumbled out to join the River Road, and as Jonathan approached one on his left a buggy came smartly hurtling toward him, and his horse, predictably, reared in pretended fright. For an instant he stood against the sun with Jonathan standing in the stirrups and raised from the saddle, then he dropped his legs at a quick touch of the crop. The buggy also came to an abrupt stop, and there was young Father McNulty’s face peering out from under the dusty top.

“Jon!” exclaimed the priest, and against all knowledge of horses he flung down the reins of his own and jumped from the buggy. “I’ve been calling you! What a Godsend you are, to appear like this!”

“For God’s sake,” said Jonathan, and alighted, and went to the buggy and caught and fastened the reins. “Your horse could bolt, you damned city man! Good thing she’s a tame mare and I’m not riding a stallion.” He stood in the hot yellow dust of the road and regarded Father McNulty with no pleasure at all.

But Father McNulty was too fervid with gratitude to care. He grasped Jonathan’s arm, and pointed up the little road. “You know the McHenrys.”

“No, I don’t, and moreover I don’t want to know them.”

“Young manager of the Hambledon Lumber Mills. From Michigan.”

“Good. Hope Prissy Witherby pays him a good salary. She was the town doxy, you know, temporarily reformed. Prettiest legs between here and New York, and as for her other qualities, what is it the advertisements say? ‘One trial will convince you.’”

“Jon.” The priest smiled. “Don’t try to shock me.” He stopped smiling. “It’s young Mrs. McHenry I’ve been visiting. Peter called me. I’m afraid the girl is going mad. I could do nothing with her at all. Matilda is the loveliest girl.”

“What’s wrong with the rites of exorcism? Out of business in this scientific twentieth century?” He moved toward his horse, and the priest grasped him again.

“Jon, I prayed to find you. I’ve been calling you. This is a terrible emergency. I want you—”

“I’m no alienist,” said Jonathan. “I’ve had no training in mental illness. Send her off to Philadelphia. I know just the man.”

“You did wonders with young Campion.”

“Oh? Matilda tried to commit suicide? Well, why did you interfere—again?”

“Please, Jon. No, she didn’t try to kill herself, but she is distracted enough to think of it. I am afraid she is losing her mind, and Peter is desperate. They have such a delightful little girl, too, Elinor. It’s a tragedy.”

“I told you I’m no alienist, for God’s sake, and besides, I don’t much believe in them. Now, I’m on my way to my farm, and if you’ll kindly let go of my sleeve I’ll be obliged.”

“You are the only one who can help her,” said the priest.

Jonathan stared at him incredulously. “You must be out of your mind, yourself!”

“I’ve always had a certain feeling about you, Jon, and you are so compassionate.”

Jonathan burst out laughing and shook his head and went to his horse.

“Priests have intuitions,” said Father McNulty. “That’s why I know about you.”

Jonathan put his foot into a stirrup and looked back with annoyance. “I’ve heard about those intuitions. They’re invariably wrong. Old Father McGuire, whom you succeeded, was all full of the damnedest intuitions about my father, and not one of them had any reality. We must have a chat about that soon. Besides, if you need a doctor, there’s my replacement, Bob Morgan, who’s so full of loving-kindness that it makes me want to puke sometimes. Call him for Matilda on Monday. He’s out riding with my lady at the present time. I hope they aren’t indulging in the pleasantest pastime of all, the only one that matters.”

“I prayed to find you,” said the priest in a voice of such urgent humility that Jonathan paused. “And then, there you were. It was God’s answer to my prayer. You can’t overlook that, Jon.”

“God and I parted company when I was seventeen,” said Jonathan, “and one of these days I’ll tell you about that, too, and make an agnostic of you.” He mounted his horse. Father McNulty caught one of the reins, and the horse stepped back, almost on him, and Jonathan, with an oath, had to apply the crop again.

“Christ!” Jonathan exclaimed. “Don’t you know anything about horses at all? You are a menace. You shouldn’t be driving that buggy for a minute.”

“I know about people,” said the priest, with pale resolution. “I know about you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Jonathan looked down at him with amused wonder. “You’re a persistent devil, aren’t you? What’s the matter with their own physician?”

“They’ve been here only two months. They came for Matilda’s health. Please, Jon. I can’t wait until Monday for Matilda, and besides I doubt young Dr. Morgan could help that poor girl. You need only to talk to her for a few minutes. Please.”

“They’re well off, I suppose?”

“Moderately so. What—”

“And servants?”

“A housekeeper, and a second maid, and a gardener. What—”

“I have the perfect cure for the lady,” said Jonathan, “and it will cost her husband—unfortunate devil—nothing. Let him discharge the servants and make the young lady roll up her sleeves and pin up her skirts and get to scrubbing, cleaning and cooking and washing and ironing, and tending the garden. Then her megrims will be gone—presto—overnight. Nothing like hard grim work to cure a sick mind.”

The priest said, “Not always, Jon. And there’s that darling little girl, Elinor. Think what this is doing to the child—and she is only nine years old.” He smiled up at Jonathan pleadingly, but also with artfulness. “She reminds me of little Martha Best.”

“That’s a lie, and I hope you confess it,” said Jonathan. He sighed. He looked at his watch. “All right, considering that I’d have to ride you down if I don’t. I’ll look at the delicate, pampered lady for exactly five minutes, and that’s all.”

With more expertness than Jonathan would have believed, the priest turned his buggy around on the narrow side road, and rode off in a spume of yellow dust and Jonathan followed. The road climbed, and then at the top where it leveled there was an old farmhouse, restored, mellow and warm in its nest of trees and sun, with ancient lawns about it and a white picket fence and a pretty bed of flowers near the door. Cicadas shrilled in the burning heat, but otherwise there was no sound and no sight of any human being. The place seemed deserted. As the leaves moved the sun struck on small latticed windows and on dark old wood, and laced the stone path with dancing shadows. Jonathan remembered that this was “the old Barrow Place,” once a farm, and sold long ago.

“Tie up your horse to that tree,” said Jonathan. “It’s a good thing she’s an intelligent elderly mare, or you’d not have a horse by now. She’s patient with fools, I can see.” His voice echoed from the lonely land. The priest opened the broad and weathered door and they stepped into a cool and dusky hall with a bare and polished floor and a few good prints on the paneled walls and one Spanish table, dark and impressive with a mirror over it. There was a scent in the air of potpourri and wax. Jonathan looked about him with approval. There was nothing vulgar or modern here, and everything expressed dignity and breeding and the self-restraint of the truly mannered person. His glance into rooms off the hall showed him the same calm and solid elegance and paucity of elaborate decoration, and the distinction of the old furniture, a mixture of early Victorian and Spanish. Whoever the McHenrys were, they were not cheap in any meaning of the word.

At the end of the hall was a noble staircase of very dark wood, as polished and bare as the floors, and now there were hurrying footsteps coming down them and a young man appeared, very handsome, very Spanish in appearance—the Iberian complexion and features but the rugged tall breadth of the Irish—and dressed only in trousers and a white shirt without a collar. His thick black hair was rumpled and when he saw the two intruders he hastily tried to smooth it down with fine hands. Jonathan approved of him at once, and shook hands with sincere appreciation when he was introduced to Peter McHenry. “God answered my prayer, you see, Peter,” said the priest. Jonathan winked at Peter but Peter nodded his head with total acceptance.

“Where is Matilda?” asked Father McNulty.

“I persuaded her to lie down. Elinor is resting, too.” The young man turned to Jonathan. “We came from Detroit because of Matilda’s health, you see, to a quieter place near the mountains, and not so bad a winter. So kind of you to come, Doctor. Matilda hasn’t been very well since Elinor was two years old—that’s seven years ago. We had a doctor in Detroit, but he was baffled.”

“I probably will be, too,” said Jonathan. “You have some very good doctors in Detroit. What seems to be wrong with your wife?”

The young man was so anxious and disturbed that he did not invite his guests into one of the rooms off the long hall. He stared at Jonathan. “The doctors can’t find out. That’s what’s so frustrating. It isn’t physical, they say, yet she has high blood pressure, at her age! She’s only twenty-eight, for God’s sake! She’s a very equable person, Matilda, and well-controlled, and quiet, and amusing when she wants to be. She can’t sleep, and she seems disturbed most of the time.”

“Hysterical, too, I suppose.”

“Hysterical? Matilda?” Peter McHenry gave a short laugh. “She never was! Never. Not even when she’s most depressed.”

“Depressed, eh? And what is her chief complaint?”

Peter hesitated. “I don’t think she has any. Matilda never complains about anything. She is homesick, I know, and misses her family—wonderful people, better than mine, I’m just a Mick—but she never mentions it. She is used to the city, but loves it here in the country. But sometimes she looks at me, sort of distracted, you know. Empty. Frightened. As if there was something she couldn’t deal with, and didn’t rightly know what it was, anyway.”

Probably bored, thought Jonathan. He felt sorry for Peter McHenry and felt dislike for his wife. Mick or not, he was possibly too good for her. He looked up to meet Peter’s black and shining eyes, so like his own, with the whites a brilliant gleam in the duskiness of the hall. A good and intelligent man, and his wife? A pampered, whining fool. “I’d like to see Mrs. McHenry,” he said. “Though I must tell you I am no alienist—never had any patience with their magical abracadabra anyway, and their Viennese incantations, and their high priest, Freud. Certainly there is such a thing as—well—let us call it mental disturbances for the moment—but I’ve discovered that almost invariably they have a physical basis. To put it more crudely, a man, though of previous sound reputation, can go berserk if aroused, and almost anyone can kill under enough provocation. You see, I’m a pragmatist.”

Peter had listened seriously. “And now,” said Jonathan, looking at his watch ruefully, “let’s go to Mrs. McHenry. Incidentally, I’d like to see her alone after you’ve introduced me to her.”

They climbed the broad staircase in silence, came upon a long hall with six doors leading from it. Peter opened one and said with the false brightness of acute anxiety, “Darling, Father McNulty has brought his friend, Dr. Ferrier, to see you.”

The blinds had been pulled against the sun, and the big square room was partly dark, and Jonathan saw here, again, the elegant mixture of Victorian and Spanish furniture. A thin young woman in a flowing white dress was lying on a chaise longue, and she lifted her head quickly from a posture of utter exhaustion. Peter raised a shade and the green light outside struck her face, and Jonathan saw that Matilda McHenry vividly resembled his own mother, in her youth. There were the same clear hazel eyes and fine features and the cloud of soft dark hair and the sensitive mouth and the look of pure candor, and the same restraint in dress. She held out her thin hand to Jonathan, and when she smiled it was his mother’s smile, charming and a little reserved.

“These two shouldn’t have bothered you, Doctor,” she said, and smiled lovingly at her husband and the priest. “There’s really nothing wrong with me except tiredness, and why I should be tired I don’t know. It’s gone on for years.”

“I don’t have my bag with me,” said Jonathan, “so there can’t be much of a physical examination.” He glanced at the other two men. “I’d like to be alone with Mrs. McHenry, please.” When they had gone he drew a chair close to the young woman and looked at her attentively. Too pale. The clear dark skin had no color at all, nor her lips. Anemic? He bent forward and gently turned down her eyes to examine the mucous membranes. No, not anemia. He felt her pulse. It was entirely too fast and erratic, as if she had been running for a considerable time. He repeated, “I don’t have my stethoscope, so I’ll have to use the old method of listening with my ear.” She nodded, and he pressed his ear and cheek against her soft small breast and listened closely. The heart sounds were the sounds of a heart under stress, or hysteria.

He asked the young woman some quick questions. She had little appetite. She could sleep very little, and only that fitfully. She tired at everything. “I was never weary before, until Elinor was about two, Doctor. And then—well, I began not to be able to manage things.” She tried to laugh. “Things just seemed to slip through my hands, and those acts you do mechanically—I had to guide them consciously, the way you do when something is new to you, and you aren’t certain how to do it. It’s very hard to explain. I was always so competent, when I was a girl. Tennis. Croquet. Golf. Swimming. Quite the tomboy, my father used to say. I was never sick. And here I am now, a burden to Peter and Elinor, and I keep bursting out crying at nothing, and don’t know why I am crying.”

She had a wonderful low voice, soft and clear, but now it trembled even while she tried to smile in self-deprecation. Beset, thought Jonathan. Now, what in hell is besetting her?

He said, “Does anything about your husband worry you?”

“Only that I’ve become a burden to him.” Tears came to her eyes and she was ashamed of her emotion and averted her head.

“And your little girl?”

She turned her head back quickly to him and her face suddenly glowed. “Oh, Elinor! She’s a darling, though a little too sensitive. I can understand that; I’m that way, too. She’s very reserved, even more than I was as a child. But so self-sufficient, and so grown-up! I worried about there not being any children here, but Elinor doesn’t mind at all. She goes to a little private school just inside of Hambledon—the St. Agatha School. Do you know it, Doctor?”

“Yes. I know it well.” I ought to, he thought. I gave two thousand dollars when it was established. “A very fine school. Elinor has friends there, I suppose?”

“Well, no. I don’t think so. She never mentions them. Things that are important to other children aren’t of importance to Elinor. She attends dancing school, and neither likes nor dislikes it. But she prefers to play by herself. A little old lady, I often tell Peter.”

Jonathan did not speak. He continued to look at her attentively.

“When Elinor was about two, I thought to myself: Oh, here’s a very strange little miss, indeed! She began to resent the usual kisses and hugs mothers give their children. She even wriggled away from Peter, though I think she prefers him. He tries to play with her, too, and sometimes she obliges him.” Matilda laughed feebly. “But only to oblige him! And then she goes off by herself.”

A thought came to Jonathan, a most unpleasant thought. “And Elinor’s teachers?”

The mother hesitated. “Well, they all say Elinor is very advanced for her age. An excellent scholar. But the past year or so—she seems to have slipped back a little. Much less interest in books. The teachers don’t know about the slipping, for we’ve been here just two months. But I’ve observed it myself, though Peter hasn’t. Perhaps it is just my imagination.” Her young face was tight with suddenly desperate strain.

“Does the child seem contented?”

“Yes. At least, she is healthy, though a little thin, and has never been ill, not even the children’s diseases. Contented? I never thought of it before, but I don’t think so!” She sat up suddenly and stared at Jonathan with increasing bafflement and misery. “It’s not just what she does and says. She seems—dissatisfied. She sits for hours, it seems, sometimes, and just doesn’t move a finger.”

“Does she seem lonely?”

“Oh, never. I told you: So self-sufficient, even when she was just a baby.”

The unpleasant thought was growing in Jonathan’s mind. He said, “And she never speaks of her schoolmates or teachers?”

“Well, sometimes.” A little uneasiness came to the lovely voice. “It’s not that she whines or complains. Elinor isn’t a talker, Doctor. But I’ve thought, once or twice, that she was unjust to—others. She accuses—no, accuses is too definite and harsh a word—she speaks of the other children and her teachers as if they didn’t like her, and she gives me the impression that Sister Mary Frances, her mathematics teacher, is persecuting her. Of course that’s absurd. Children do get strange ideas. Strange, strange,” repeated Matilda, to herself, hardly audible. “Always such a strange child. Just a week ago she told me that ‘Daddy was watching her and thinking unkind things about her.’ Why, Peter adores the child and indulges her all the time!”

“And your husband doesn’t think the girl is strange, too?”

“No, not at all.” Her voice became emphatic. “I mentioned it once, but Peter said she’s just like his grandmother, quiet, retiring, thoughtful. I think he even admires it.”

“And you don’t?”

Mrs. McHenry looked at him with wide tight eyes for a moment, as if the question had alarmed her. Then she shook her head. “I suppose I don’t understand Elinor. I have the feeling, and that is silly, that she doesn’t love us at all. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Jonathan reached for the thin wrist. The pulse was bounding furiously, and the pretty breast was rising and falling rapidly. She looked at him with desperate pleading, and he looked away in pity. He laid the hand down gently and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to see your little girl, Mrs. McHenry.”

She brightened again. “Oh, would you? How kind! So few people like children, do they, though everyone is now affirming, madly, over and over, that they ‘love children.’ They don’t really. It’s just a modern pose, and very tiresome. But you’ll love Elinor, Doctor. Most adults do.”

“Probably because she doesn’t annoy them with loud ways or loud chatterings,” said Jonathan, smiling.

“Elinor was never like that. We didn’t use any strictness with her. It wasn’t necessary. She’s most obedient.” She paused. “And I—is there something seriously wrong with me, Doctor?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Jonathan stood up and stared at the glittering green leaves at the window. “I think it is just your emotions. Very common. So far as I can see you’re a perfectly healthy young woman, but that was just a cursory examination. Suppose we leave it at that for a little while. In the meantime I’ll see your daughter. No, just rest there.”

“How really kind of you, Doctor. Sometimes I think Elinor is worried about me. She’d never say so. She should have had her nap by this time. She naps on Saturday afternoons because we take her into town later for a little recreation.” She smiled at him winningly. “Please tell Elinor that Mother is perfectly well, won’t you?”

Jonathan went out into the hall where the priest and Peter McHenry were waiting for him. He closed the door and said quietly, “I couldn’t give your wife a thorough examination, Mr. McHenry, for obvious reasons. But there seems no physical complaint at all, either on what examination I did and her own words. She’s under stress of some kind, and I don’t think she even knows that. But, what are the words that the alienists are using so lavishly these days? Yes. ‘Feelings of inadequacy. And guilt.’ No, they don’t mean much to me, either.”

Peter’s quick Irish temper came boiling to the surface at once. “Matilda? Inadequate? Guilty? Guilty! Of what is she guilty, for God’s sake?”

Jonathan held up a calming palm. “You misunderstood. Those are psychiatric words, and pretty nonsensical, in my opinion. They don’t really explain. But it is quite true that very often people take on a job too big for them, and they aren’t up to some of the demands of their circumstances and environment or work, or they feel inferior to a brother or a sister, or to anyone for that matter, and so they are ‘inadequate.’ I think that’s the general explanation. The funny thing is that in nine cases out of ten they really are inadequate, and nothing else, and no mystery about it. They just need advice to lower their sights and think more highly of themselves, that’s all, or get an easier job, or spruce up, or buy a hat more often and sometimes—it is as simple as that—win a few dollars at a horse race. We all feel inadequate very often. It’s only when it gets chronic that it is disturbing to one’s emotions and can get out of hand and make you pretty damned miserable.”

Peter was listening with bewilderment. “But that doesn’t describe Matilda.”

“No. Well. Sometimes there’s a subtler feeling of inadequacy, which the sufferer doesn’t recognize at all. As for the guilt feelings I mentioned, darling favorites of the alienists: Don’t we all feel guilty at times? Sometimes we have damned good reason to feel that way! We can overcome it by doing recompense one way or another—or we can hate the person we injured more than ever and persuade ourselves that the reason we ruined him or treated him unjustly was that he really deserved it, after all. There’s many a way of washing your hands, including the one Pilate used.

“But there’s a subtler kind of guilt which sensitive and intelligent and gentle people often suffer, without knowing they are suffering it. They do their very best, with love and kindness and fervor—and it isn’t successful, with a person or a situation. So, being conscientious people, they feel it is their fault and it devastates them. Now, what’s the matter?”

For Peter’s face had darkened with anger. “I don’t understand a word of this gibberish, sir! I appreciate everything Matilda does, even when she gives me a smile or touches me! She is the whole world to me, far more than Elinor is, or anything else. She hasn’t any reason to feel I don’t love her and appreciate her! What gave you that damned idea?”

“Why, nothing at all.” Jonathan smiled easily. “I was merely being didactic, like the alienist boys. Well, there’s nothing really physically wrong with your wife. But she is under stress. I’d like to find out what it is. I’d like to talk to your child. Children are far more perceptive than adults,” said Jonathan, still operating under his pet delusion.

“Very well,” said Peter, inflamed and belligerent. He marched down the hall and knocked at the door and called his daughter. The door opened at once to show a thin but almost beautiful little girl with her parents’ thick dark hair, her father’s Spanish face and features, her mother’s air of elegance, and her meticulous dress. “Yes, Daddy?” she said.

Her frock was of lace and lawn, covering her slender knees and flaring out, and her hair was tied with a huge blue ribbon and she wore blue socks and little white shoes. Jonathan thought, A little love—and tried to suppress his ominous conjecture. He went to the door of the child’s bedroom and she looked up at him with her large moist eyes, in their masses of long dark lashes, and at once he was chilled. He had seen that look before, that “strange,” eerie look, in hospitals, but never before in a child. He felt cold even in the warmth of the hall, and he held out his hand.

“I’m Dr. Ferrier, Elinor,” he said, “and I’ve just seen your mother who isn’t well, and she told me about you, and I said I’d like to meet you. I hope you are liking to meet me, too.” He felt sick, and his love for children made him even sicker.

She curtsied, and said with the utmost gravity, “Poor Mummy. She is sick, isn’t she? I knew it all the time. That’s why she’s so cross and sometimes mean and says terrible things to me.”

“Elinor!” Peter was stunned. “You know that isn’t true!”

She gave him a sly and sliding look and said, “Oh, but Daddy, not when you’re here.”

Peter turned to Jonathan, in agitation. “The child imagines it!”

Yes, thought Jonathan, I know that, my friend. He said, “I’d still like to talk alone with Elinor, please.”

“Not if she’s going to—to lie like that!” Peter was now furious. “Elinor, you never lied to anyone before. What’s wrong with you today?”

“It’s very hot, isn’t it?” said the child in her dainty voice, and touched her forehead.

“You know Mummy never even slapped you in her life,” went on Peter.

“I think I’d like some lemonade, Daddy.”

“Elinor! Answer me! Did Mummy ever once spank you or scold you?”

“I think I’ll go downstairs,” said Elinor.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” shouted Peter.

“Should I change my dress before we go to town, Daddy, or will this do?”

Peter was about to explode but Jonathan took him by the arm and led him down the hall, seething. “Now, wait,” said Jonathan. “Have you ever noticed the child talking like that before—not seeming to answer direct questions no matter how often you ask them?”

The seething subsided. Peter’s flashing eyes narrowed, and he breathed heavily. He tried to control himself. Then he said, “Yes, I did. Several times. She’s been getting worse lately. But kids are like that. I used to try to get out of punishment or scolding, myself, by avoiding a direct answer. And Elinor—”

“Listen to me,” said Jonathan. “And think before you answer. Does Elinor only evade and avoid when she is afraid she’s done something wrong and might be punished?”

“But, we never punish her! She hasn’t any fear of us, for God’s sake! Why should she?” But Jonathan waited and Peter was forced to think. Then he said with reluctance, “Yes, she’s gotten that maddening habit recently. I tried to get her out of it, but she only makes an equally senseless remark, avoiding the subject. I think she is really a little tease—most children are.”

But not this one, thought Jonathan. He glanced down the hall to see Father McNulty talking affectionately to Elinor. Looking at Father McNulty, Jonathan actively hated him. What a hell of a situation that busybody had dragged him into, on a fine summer day!

“All right,” said Peter, with unfriendly sullenness, “you can talk to Elinor, alone.”

Jonathan saw a way out. “Now, listen, my friend. I didn’t want to come here to your house. I was dragooned here, by Mrs. O’Grady down there, the town helper. He practically kidnaped me. Say the word and I’ll go off quietly, and you can call another doctor. I’d prefer that, anyway.”

Peter was astute. He looked at Jonathan acutely. “Why?” he asked.

“I’d rather someone else examined your daughter, someone more capable than I.”

“My daughter? But it was my wife you came to see! It is my wife who is ill!”

“No,” said Jonathan. “It is your child, I’m sorry to say. You need a more competent man. Your wife is suffering from deadly anxiety and inadequacy, most of which she isn’t conscious of, but it’s deep in her mind and is torturing her. She knows something is wrong, but what it is she doesn’t know. I’m not the kind of doctor you need at all—for your child. So, shall we say goodbye?”

“You haven’t even examined Elinor, but you can make a snap judgment like that!” The poor father was beside himself. He clenched his fist and bent toward Jonathan.

“Do you want me to talk to her a little—alone?”

“All right, all right!” shouted Peter, waving a big muscular arm at his distant child. “And you’ll come out with a smile on the other side of your face!”

“I hope so,” said Jonathan. He went back to the girl’s room and took her hand and said to her with the special voice he used for children, “Elinor, will you spare me a few minutes of your time, dear?”

“I’m very thirsty,” she said.

“Yes, I know. It will take only a minute or two.” He led her into her pretty bedroom and closed the door behind him. The child went at once to a buffet and sat down with her hands neatly folded in her lap and her slender ankles crossed. She looked at Jonathan but without normal curiosity, and he stood and looked down at her blank face and eerie eyes. He stood for several minutes and the eyes did not blink nor did the quiet static expression change on the small face.

“Who hurts you and talks cruelly about you, Elinor?” he asked.

The expression remained the same, and the awful eyes, but the child had heard something that had put her in touch with her own fearful reality. “Everybody,” she said. “I don’t like to go to school, because the Sisters and the other children whisper about me, and point at me, and talk about me. Sometimes I want to hit them.” For the first time the eyes did move and blink, and there was a sudden peculiar and lusting glare in them.

“And it makes you afraid?”

“No. I’m not afraid, Doctor. Sometimes I don’t think I’m really there—”

“Like a dream?”

“Or everybody’s dead.”

“Does that make you feel bad?”

“Do you have any little girls, Doctor? Like me?”

“Elinor, I’m asking you about school and your friends.”

“I’d like to go back to Detroit, and see Grandma.”

Jonathan saw that he could not break through that wall of glass, and he had suspected it. He tried again, however. “What do you like to play?” he asked.

Again, she touched her reality. Her Spanish eyes glowed at once. “They don’t know I’m a princess!” she said. “A real princess. I’m adopted. They stole me from my parents, and I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!” She struck the buffet on which she sat with a passion direful in one so young.

Jonathan knew that children liked to make up fancies to amuse them, but this child was not fancifying. She believed what she said. He bent down and kissed that small and dreadfully distorted face, and patted the thin shoulder. “Just stay here quietly, dear,” he said. But she had lapsed again into her eerie staring and did not see him go.

He rejoined the two men. Peter looked at him with hatred and umbrage, but Father McNulty was alarmed by Jonathan’s expression, and took his arm. “Let’s go downstairs and sit down,” said Jonathan, and left them and went down the stairs and they followed. He found what looked like a sitting room and stood there, and again hated the fact that he was a doctor. How do you tell a loving father that his adored only child is probably hopelessly psychotic?

The others came in, and Father McNulty sat down but Peter stood in the middle of the room, blackly derisive. “What did you find wrong with Elinor, Doctor? I heard, in town, even before I knew you, that you have a way of finding mysterious things wrong with people, and you tell them so, and they die of fright. Did you tell Elinor something like that? If you did,” and he knotted his big fists.

“Shut up,” said Jonathan. “I will tell you brutally and frankly. Your wife isn’t sick. But her heart is under unbearable stress, and it will probably give way in a year or so, and she will die or be an invalid the rest of her short life. The stress comes from your child. She told me that even when Elinor was only two she felt the child was ‘strange.’ Did she never tell you that, too?”

Peter had turned a ghastly yellowish color. “Matilda? Something wrong with Matilda’s heart?”

“Didn’t you hear me at all?”

The man breathed noisily and he blinked. He finally said, “Yes, I heard you. Yes, Matilda told me that Elinor was ‘strange,’ even when she was a baby. I laughed at her. The kid is bright beyond her years, but she has a lot of reserve and maturity and imagination—”

“Such as telling you wild stories of who she really is, or something?”

Peter’s face relaxed in a fond smile. “Well, you know kids. I told my own parents I was Davy Crockett one time, and was going West.”

“But you didn’t really believe it?”

“Of course not. But it was an exciting story.”

“The trouble is,” said Jonathan, “that your child really believes her stories. And there is the difference between—”

Peter seemed to swell with both horror and rage. “Are you trying to tell me that my little girl is—is—crazy?”

Father McNulty stood up and went to stand beside Peter and he gazed with dread and grief at Jonathan.

“The term,” said Jonathan, “is dementia praecox, paranoid type. They’ve coined a new word for it out in Vienna. Schizophrenia. Split personality.”

Peter was numb with his increasing rage and shock, and his eyes bulged as he looked at Jonathan.

“Your wife will die,” said Jonathan, “unless she is relieved of this burden, though she doesn’t know it is a burden, and unconsciously blames herself for not being able to reach her child with normal love and attention. That is the guilt feelings we have been talking about. Whenever I see a man or a woman, with no physical complaints, but under such terrible stress—normal nice people, good people—then I stop looking at them. I look for the actual person who is creating that disturbance, and unlike Freud I don’t blame every damned thing on a mother or on an ‘afflicted childhood.’

“You can’t reach a person suffering from schizophrenia in the regular way. In fact, a normal person can’t reach him at all. But your wife is trying, God, how she is trying! And it’s no use at all. The child needs specialized attention. I know a private sanitarium in Philadelphia—”

“Why, you’re insane,” Peter whispered, with horror now of Jonathan himself. “You’re out of your mind. A child! Psychotic!”

“Your child is already deteriorating mentally,” said Jonathan, with a detached cold air. “Her mother mentioned it. Do you want her to have no chance at all of a cure? A very small chance, but still a chance?”

“You’re out of your mind,” said Peter, still in that whisper. Then he shouted madly, “Get out of my house at once!”

Jonathan stood up. He put on his riding gloves. He said, “I told you I am no alienist. I may be wrong entirely, though I’m afraid I’m not. But I’ve seen a number of these cases, in mental hospitals, in sanitariums, and I could recognize it though other forms of—insanity—would escape me entirely.”

He looked with bitterness at Father McNulty. “You’d better stay a while and talk to these parents—if you can. And the next time you think God has answered your prayers, kindly ask Him to suggest somebody else. Is that clear?”

“Jonathan,” said the priest.

But Jonathan turned and left the house, and he was feeling very sick and shaken, and wild with anger against the priest and against his own foolishness in being decoyed by him. He got on his horse and looked for the last time on the stricken house. Yes, it was stricken. A ghastly darkness lived there, and it was seeping into the spirits of two normal good people, and they would not believe it existed. Well, it was a damned awful thing to accept. But it had to be accepted. If not, tragedy and disaster would result, and they’d find it out soon enough, God knew.

Houses, he reflected, as he rode away, are mysterious sounding boards and reflectors. If evil lived in them, it revealed itself in the very postures of furniture, in the very drape of curtains, in the very air of the rooms, but if good lived there the rooms appeared lighted, the furniture inviting, the draperies beautiful and bright, no matter how humble it all was in reality. The house had been “good” to him until he had stepped into Elinor’s room. It was the child’s presence which had given the house its look of isolation from the beginning.

He could not relieve himself of his feeling of despondency and dread. He had always harbored a whimsical thought which was partly acknowledged superstition and partly fancy: That the mad are in some manner evil, no matter their pathos. It was stupid, he acknowledged, himself, but he had seen madness and evil hand in hand many times, and rarely one without the other. Exorcism, he thought, was perhaps a badly misunderstood thing, and he laughed aloud at himself. But perhaps the alienists were really exorcisers, themselves, even if they did not consciously know it!