FIVE

New York City, April 1919, Later That Afternoon

AFTER DR. ALLEN LEFT, CHARLES IMMEDIATELY WENT TO WORK AT his office at 96 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Charles walked the nearly five miles in his dark worsted suit, spring topcoat, fedora, and black bluchers. The journey was prolonged by the frequency with which he was compelled to stop to allow himself to be greeted by someone. He rarely passed through a street or avenue without a hat being doffed to him or a nod of approving recognition.

By the time he spotted the distinctive Gothic steeple of Trinity Church, he would be glad for the privacy of the cool, dark recesses of the narthex. He entered, breathing in the sweet smoky tang of incense. It was a familiar smell. Trinity was located directly across the street from the building in which his offices were located and, although he was not Episcopalian, he came here occasionally during the workday to think about a particularly vexing problem of law. Usually the tomblike atmosphere cheered him, reminding him of his own mortality and unimportance and putting the niggling problem into proper perspective. He turned into a pew and sat down. The cool air lay upon his neck like the palms of an alabaster saint. He closed his eyes.

Later he would cross the street and enter his building, where the guards and elevator operators would all greet him by name. They would let him off at his floor, and he would go into his son’s office and tell him of the meeting with Allen. But for now he would sit in the hushed darkness and allow Charlie to work happily unaware of the grim prediction delivered by Dr. Allen. He imagined Elizabeth tramping through the woods of Westchester, calling out the names of trees as she passed happily beneath their boughs. Of all his children, she seemed the most engaged with the natural world. Charlie was intellectual, Helen was spiritual, Catherine was social, and Elizabeth was fascinated by all things earthly: beetles and birds, shells and stones, the seasons and tides.

Elizabeth had been something of a natural phenomenon from the very start, having been born nine years after Catherine, her next oldest sibling. Both Charles and Antoinette had always quietly believed that Elizabeth was destined for some great and special purpose, and it seemed to him not just tragic but wrong that she should be prematurely taken from the world. His eyes stung with the thought of it.

Abruptly, he roused himself from the hard pew and crossed the street. He threw himself into work as if he could outpace, through his professional activity, his utter powerlessness to help his two doomed daughters. “I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work,” he often said. “Men do not break down from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.” Hughes never stopped working at the highest level. Between November 1918 and February 1921 Hughes made twenty-five arguments (including three rearguments) before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Back at home that evening, he and Antoinette would try to reach a decision as they had reached so many decisions: They would come to an answer by asking questions, and not just asking them but asking them relentlessly, until both questions and questioners were exhausted and a direction became clear.

Reason had always been his religion. He pursued law over the objections of his parents, who had hoped he would enter the ministry. And yet today he found himself wondering if such a question as Dr. Allen had posed earlier could be answered by reason. Could he honestly claim even a modicum of objectivity in such circumstances? If he could not rely on reason, what could he rely on?

Charles and Antoinette could and did and would always rely on each other.

Antoinette thought of Elizabeth’s ruddy, mud-flecked face when she had returned from the Westchester woods. The pockets of her jacket were full of stones and cones and samaras. Exuberant but trembling with exhaustion, she had gone directly to bed.

“Let’s give Dr. Allen the benefit of the doubt,” she began. “We would be keeping Elizabeth alive to wait for a cure. Is it foolish to think that it would come now? For us? When it has eluded so many for so long? And even if it does, isn’t there an inherent conflict of interest? Dr. Allen’s livelihood depends on the patient being sick enough to need his treatment.”

“But my dear, do you really believe that if a cure were to become available he would hesitate to provide it to his patients?”

“I suppose he is bound by the Hippocratic Oath, but . . . a sanitarium is no place for our Elizabeth.”

Charles thought of his father, Reverend David Charles Hughes, who had died ten years before. He was an impoverished Methodist minister of Welsh descent, who doted on his only child’s mental, physical, and spiritual development. The elder Hughes’s letters to his son at college covered the gamut, from the importance of wearing warm socks to the perils of card games. Charles wondered what his father would say about this situation. Does Christianity require that a believer submit to the will of heaven and allow nature to take its course? Was it right to subject a child to a living hell if it was the only kind of living she could do? It seemed to Charles that his father never deliberated or doubted a moment in his life.

Charles heard his father’s stentorian voice intoning Prayer changes everything. So Charles and Antoinette sank to their knees in Charles’s study and they prayed. They prayed for Elizabeth’s recovery. They gave thanks for Helen’s recovery. They prayed for more faith. They prayed for the strength to accept whatever happened. They gave thanks for the privilege of making choices. They prayed for God to direct their thinking in all things. And then they sat together, waiting and listening.

By the age of five Charles was reading the Bible and his mother was teaching him French, German, and arithmetic. His parents enrolled him in school, but after only a few weeks he was bored. On his own initiative he prepared a document entitled “The Charles E. Hughes Plan of Study,” which he presented to his parents. The plan sought to prove to his parents that he could better educate himself at home than his teachers could at school. The plan described in detail a daily schedule and curriculum, involving his rising early in the morning to complete his studies so that he could spend his afternoons playing baseball and Red Lion with the neighborhood boys. His parents agreed. By the age of eight he had read Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays, his favorites being The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

It was nearly dawn. Outside, in the early light, the delicate blush of cherry blossoms breathed a gentle mood up and down Fifth Avenue, and the riotous red and yellow of Dutch tulips proclaimed spring’s arrival from the Park Avenue window boxes. Although in many ways it represented the most difficult of all possible choices, Charles and Antoinette decided to hire a nurse and keep Elizabeth at home for as long as possible, adhering to the Allen treatment on an outpatient basis. In order to secure Elizabeth’s dedicated cooperation, they would have to tell Elizabeth about her diagnosis and, worse, the prognosis. They would also have to inform the help in the house, insisting on both their compliance and discretion. And they would have to withdraw her from school. In this, Elizabeth would follow her father’s example.

By the time Charles and Antoinette trudged the steps to the second floor the inveterate urban sparrows and pigeons and starlings had begun their morning conversation. What they didn’t know as they reached the top of the stairs was that the landing had been occupied until moments before by Elizabeth. She had overheard the entire discussion, stifling her horror with a fistful of balled-up nightgown.