OCR Text |
Show THE STORY THUS FAR: Bpratt Her-long, Her-long, motion picture producer, met and married Ell7aheth, whose first husband, Arthur Kittredee, was reported killed in World War I. The Ilerlon.i had three children, Dick, 17, about ready to enter the service, Cherry and Brian. Arthur had not been killed, but taken to a German Ger-man hospital, badly disfigured. He did not want to live, and wanted Elizabeth to believe he was dead. When Dr. Ja-eohy Ja-eohy started treating him, Arthur was flmost helpless. He recovered, hid part f his facial disfigurement behind a beard and went to Hollywood. He soon start-cd start-cd to work for Spratt, under the name of Kcssler. Jacoby shook his head. He fumbled fum-bled for words. He said, "I watched you for many days. I fought a battle. bat-tle. I cannot say it well. Perhaps in English I cannot say It at all. You are a man, Kitt, but also you are mankind. You must live. You must want to live. You must do you understand me?" He spoke so Intensely In-tensely that he was almost fierce. "Kitt," he exclaimed, "let us try!" Though he did not realize it then, Arthur remembered later that his own resistance was gradually being worn away by the power of Jacoby's determination. As time went on, he came to recognize the enthusiasm Jacoby was feeling. He had felt it himself when there was some almost al-most Impossible job to be tackled. "If I can do this, I can do anything." He knew what it meant to roll up his sleeves, saying that. What he did not realize at the time was that this was not what Jacoby Ja-coby was saying. Jacoby was saying say-ing to himself, "If he can do. this, I can do anything." The first time he began to understand under-stand that Jacoby was not merely a cold scientist was the day when Ja- ill iaik WmM and enjoying the rewards of it. Not even Jacoby's genius could restore him the sense of knowing he could take care of himself no matter what happened, the old happy forthright-ness forthright-ness of being able to look the whole world In the face and tell it to get out of his way. Jacoby could never nev-er restore him his marriage. He could never give Elizabeth the children chil-dren she wanted, or even the security secu-rity and companionship she had had with him. Lying In a helpless huddle on his cot in the intervals of being fed and washed by strange hands, Arthur had nothing to do but look ahead into the sort of life-sentence he would be giving her If he let Jacoby communicate with her. No doubt he had been reported missing miss-ing in action. When they found him, the Red Cross would have means of notifying Elizabeth he was still alive. After the war, as soon as Jacoby had repaired him sufficiently to make it possible for him to go home, he would have to go. And then? Elizabeth would offer him everything she had. She was too loyal, and she loved him too much, to dream of doing otherwise. She would work, and use everything she could earn for his support. She would spend her life nursing him, amusing him, taking care of him, himself a broken wreck of a creature crea-ture who could give her nothing in return except a doglike gratitude. Her splendid vitality would be spent in a twilight of half-living until she was dry and withered like fruit that had been broken off the tree before it had had a chance to ripen. As he thought of it he knew more and more surely that no matter what would become of him, he could not let this happen to her. His decision was not entirely unselfish. un-selfish. Arthur was too clear-headed to Imagine it was. Not only could he not do this to Elizabeth, but he could not do it to himself. Bearing his tragedy alone would be easier than requiring her to share it. He knew, almost as if he were with her, what she would suffer at being told of his death. But that would not last forever, though at the time she would undoubtedly think it was going to. She would pick up the broken pattern of her life and set about putting it together again. Elizabeth was young, vital, alert, and there would be another man who would find her as lovable as he had found her. She would have again the sort of mating she should have. He tried instinctively to clench his fist with decision, and the pain that went like a bayonet-thrust into his shoulder, reminding him that he was not even able to make such a simple gesture, served to strengthen his resolve. re-solve. When a man dies, he told himself, with more fierceness in his mind since there could be none in his body, it is like taking a teaspoon-ful teaspoon-ful of water out of a river. The water wa-ter closes up, it is gone, and after an instant, nobody notices it any more. When Jacoby came in again, Arthur Ar-thur told him what he had decided to do. He had to speak slowly, repeating re-peating often and waiting until Jacoby's Ja-coby's intelligence had limped through to comprehension. The effort ef-fort to make Jacoby understand took his attention away from the bleak import of what he was saying. "I will make you a promise, Jacoby, Ja-coby, if you will do one thing for me. Do it, and come back and tell me you have done it." "I understand you. Go ahead." "When I was brought in here, you found the metal tag of identification? And other things, maybe? Take those to the International Red Cross. Tell them your stretcher-bearers brought in an American who died of his wounds. You do not know his name. But you took these objects from his body. You will sign a death certificate, or whatever you have to sign. The American army will take care of the rest. If you will do this, and bring me some sort of proof that you have done it, I promise you that I will let you do whatever you please to me. But if you will not do it, I swear to you that I'll make you do it because I'll end my life as soon as I have a usable hand to do it with." Deliberately, further to relieve his attention, he fixed his eyes on Jacoby's Ja-coby's eyes, tender as the eyes of a mother; on Jacoby's strong, wise, gentle face; and while he repeated his sentences he noticed again what a thin face it was, the skin showing the waxiness of malnutrition, and guessed as he had guessed before that this man was denying himsell part of his own rations to provide more nourishment for the men he was trying to save. At last he said slowly and carefully, "You understand under-stand me? You will do what I ask, Jacoby?" Jacoby used one of the preciou: night hours when he should hav been asleep to rig up a sort of shell across Arthur's cot and set the dictionary dic-tionary up on it. "My English i: so faulty, Kitt, and I have no tim to improve it. Why do you not learr to talk to me?" He read the first words aloud tc him, slowly, so Arthur could begin to learn their pronunciation. Whilt he was taking a hasty meal of tur nips and potatoes Jacoby drew rough sketches of various objects ii the room, writing their names besidi them, and set the sheet up for Arthui to study during the day. (TO BE CONTINUED) CHAPTER XII What was left of Arthur quivered with rago. "You brute," he said, "you damned brute." He continued with epithets worse than that. He had never been addicted to profanity profan-ity and was surprised to find such lungunge coming so readily to his lips. But the words were there and he used them, and continued using them every time he saw the doctor. Later he asked Jacoby if he had understood anything of what he had been saying then. Jacoby smiled with the grim humor Arthur had learned to recognize. "Not the vocabulary. vo-cabulary. But I did not need the vocabulary to understand what you were saying to me, and Just then I did not blame you." But at that time Jacoby paid no attention to the protests. He simply left Arthur there to contemplate his ahattered body and go wild with the prospect of being forced to live in it. There was nothing else Jacoby could do. He was working eighteen hours a day, on a pittance of food that in pre-war Germany would not have been thought enough for an Idle man. Besides, since he knew so little lit-tle English and Arthur knew no German Ger-man at all, he had to let Arthur go on believing what he believed. There was no way then for Jacoby Ja-coby to explain that four years of this war had almost annihilated his faith in the human soul. There was no way for him to say that he too was on the edge of despair, searching search-ing desperately for some reason to believe that men could be saved from the evil they had wrought. Then came the four years he had Just lived through. The physical wrecks brought to him had been dreadful enough, but they were not the worst. Arthur had been brought to him when he had begun to feel himself giving in to a brutal cynicism. When he examined Arthur, he suddenly felt that here was a man who could prove the ultimate test, not of a human hu-man body to recover, but of human courage to overcome disaster. When this American realized what had been done to him his mind would be black with hate and horror, even if it had never been before. At first he had wondered if he had the right to prolong such a life as this. But after several of those examinations under which Arthur had screamed and cursed at him, Jacoby had convinced himself that with tebor and patience he could guarantee that his patient would not be helpless. help-less. Arthur would have something to work with. If he could be made to use what he had, and with it regain re-gain any wisdom or generosity in spite of what he had lost, Jacoby promised himself that he would take it as meaning that humanity could do the same. As he worked with him, as he saw Arthur's fury and despair, Arthur became to him a symbol of the world's wreckage. If this shattered American could come back, there was hope. The damage of the war was done to the world as it was done to Arthur, but if Arthur Ar-thur could be made to go on, could be made to want to go on, there was a reason for living. By this time Jacoby was not sure that there was. But he was going to find out. Arthur still hated him. He had ceased to doubt that Jacoby meant exactly what he said: Jacoby was not going to let him die, but was going to restore as much as he could of what had been lost. That there was so much he could not restore made no difference to his eagerness. Much of the work was necessarily experimental. "But it's the sort of experiment he looks for," Arthur told himself bitterly. "It's not often he finds a patient who simply can't be any worse off, no matter how many mistakes he makes. When he gets one like that he gives him the works. One man is better than a thousand guinea pigs. I can see the reasoning. Only I never thought of its happening to me." When he did have a chance to talk to Arthur again, Jacoby's difficulty with the language was so great that he could tell him very little. But after many attempts he managed to say, "When you were begging me to let you alone, I was trying to make sure you would keep your right arm. Believe me, Kitt, if you had lost both arms, or if there had been blindness with all the rest, I should have done what you asked me." Arthur said angrily, "Why don't you do it now?" Jacoby gave him a look of real surprise. "Do you still want me to?" "Yes. I do not want to be a subject sub-ject for vivisection." "Kitt, do you still think that is what I am doing to you?" "You know it is." "Kitt, if you will tell me spell it slowly the name of the woman " coby came to his bedside with a slip of paper and a pencil. "Kitt, if you will tell me spell it slowly the name of the woman you kept talking to when you were delirious de-lirious ?" Arthur groaned. His impulse was to grip Jacoby's hand, but he could not do this. He could only say, "In God's name, Jacoby, be merciful! If you've made up your mind to do this to me I can't stop you. But don't do it to her." , Without looking at Arthur, Jacoby said, "I thought it might be possible to get her a message. Through the Red Cross." Arthur did not answer. After a pause Jacoby asked, "You do not want to tell me who she is?" Arthur said, "She is my wife." Jacoby turned his head toward the bed then, involuntarily. He knew no words to speak and even if he had been using his own language there could have been nothing to say so eloquent as the pity he could not keep out of his eyes. He crumpled the slip of paper in his fist. There was a silence. At length Jacoby said, "Very well." He turned and went away. But in the depth of his own despair de-spair Arthur felt a stir of astonished warmth. "The man is a human being. be-ing. There are some things even he can't take without a shudder." After that, slowly but unmistakably, unmistak-ably, he began to discover that Jacoby Ja-coby wanted to be his friend. He began, dimly at first, through those days and nights of desolation, to grasp what Jacoby had meant when he said, "You are a man, but also you are mankind." It was a hard realization, and at first he was doubtful doubt-ful that it had any meaning. "He can make me stay alive," Arthur said to himself wearily. "But can he make me find any reason for doing do-ing it? Can anybody? I don't believe be-lieve it" Jacoby came back to his bedside often. He never again mentioned the woman Arthur had called for in his delirium. But there was more work on the arm, more on the jaw; the rest had to wait on the patient's strength and the doctor's opportunities. opportuni-ties. Arthur still had very little hope." Now that he understood Jacoby's Ja-coby's purpose, he tried to sympathize sympa-thize with it, but he found this hard to do. For after all, even after years of labor and pain, even with the highest success, what was the utmost Jacoby Jaco-by could give him? Power to use his right arm; power to sit up and write a letter; possibly, after a long time, power to hobble from place to place with a crutch. Power to look on hopelessly while healthy men and women went ahead with their healthy affairs, doing useful work |