XVIII

The Bruce McLarens were entertaining Dr. Robert Merrick at luncheon in their cosily furnished apartment. It was Sunday, and the three of them were just back from Grace Church where the appearance of the distinguished young surgeon in the minister’s pew, in company with Mrs. McLaren, had excited a genial buzz of pride and satisfaction.

Bobby Merrick’s recent spectacular contribution to the cause of brain surgery had been made much of by the press, somewhat to his own dismay; for he had the honest scientific worker’s shyness of publicity. It had been quite embarrassing to see his invention described in the argot of journalistic ballyhoo, and he was not nearly so grateful as he would have liked to be for the well-intended eulogies on the editorial pages of the dailies, and the sentimental twaddle which embellished his biography in the digests and reviews.

Of course, it really had been a corking story, well worth its two-column head on page one. The scribes had left nothing out. Young Doctor Merrick’s utter abandonment of the leisure to which he had access by virtue of his large fortune, to give himself tirelessly to the most difficult and discouraging speciality known to surgery, was played up for all that the traffic would bear. Had he not promptly barricaded himself against the fleet of feature writers who bore down upon him, the matter would unquestionably have been worse.

“You really owe something to your public!” one of them had twittered, as if she were talking to some movie-struck flapper who had won The Times’ beauty contest.

It was even recalled that Doctor Merrick’s life had been saved, some years ago, at the same hour when another eminent brain surgeon, the late Dr. Wayne Hudson, had drowned in Lake Saginack. One paper (pink) had broadly wondered if the wealthy young Merrick’s immediate decision to enter a medical school where he trained to espouse brain surgery might have been influenced, if not indeed directly caused, by that tragedy; but, lacking the details, and unable to twist them out of the unhappy hero or his associates, it had been content to toss out the hint and let the public draw its own conclusions.

Within eighteen hours after the news broke, Bobby had decided that if the liabilities of front page publicity were pitted against the assets accruing therefrom, his account with Fame was already in the red. It was obvious that a new star was better off for a low visibility. His mail was crammed with importunities from every known species of beggar; appeals from alleged philanthropies ranging all the way from foundations guaranteeing international understanding to wildcat altruistics for the relief of hectored blue-jays. He was the recipient of home-brewed poetry extolling his merits, slobbering songs hymning his praise and hopeful of publication at his expense, saccharine love letters, many of them enclosing photographs. He was besieged for luncheon talks. He became a fugitive, darting from cover to cover.

Even out at Windymere, where he sought seclusion for a weekend, shortly after the persecution set in, he was exasperated to find his grandfather proudly and⁠—for him⁠—garrulously accommodating a severely tailored young woman who required some intimate knowledge of Bobby’s boyhood to adorn a magazine story.

“Ah⁠—Robert⁠—surprised to see you!” exclaimed old Nicholas. “We were just speaking of you. This young lady⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I see,” Bobby had responded icily. “I dare say she will pardon us if we change the subject.”

“That I will not!” giggled the visitor.

Nicholas had looked very foolish and helpless over the situation until Bobby came to his relief by summoning Meggs.

“Tell Stephen to drive this lady down to the station, Meggs. She is anxious to make the 4:16.”

As for his colleagues in the profession, their gratitude and generous felicitations had been a source of much pleasure. Every day brought dignified encomiums from well-known men of his own speciality, thanking him for the unselfish manner in which he had promptly made his find available to his fellows. He had had letters from every civilized country of the world.

Now that sufficient time had elapsed for his sudden fame to jellify, Bobby had shyly crept out into the open to resume his normal schedule of activities and recreations. He had not yet become accustomed to the stares, whispers, and nudges, which singled him out in public places; but, seeing he couldn’t sneak about forever like a hunted thing, he masked his self-consciousness the best he could and took his punishment with an assumption of nonchalance. Today he had even risked going to church.

Doctor McLaren had preached a scholarly sermon to a large audience of good-looking people⁠—fully half of whom were under forty⁠—on a topic he hoped would be of special interest to his important guest.

Indeed, what Dr. Robert Merrick was going to think of that sermon had loomed so large in the popular young preacher’s mind, while preparing his discourse, that it was with much difficulty he had restrained himself from the use of a scientific phraseology quite beyond the ken of his customers⁠—albeit, as church audiences went, they intellectually registered A-plus; and freely admitted it. Grace Church was quite conscious of its modernity.

“Really, the most forward-looking⁠—indeed the only forward-looking church in town!”⁠—Mrs. Sealback was remembered to have said in prefacing her suggestion of Doctor McLaren as the proper person to invoke the divine blessing on that session of the Social Congress which had programmed a discussion of Birth Control.

“As to what?” President-of-the-Social-Congress Mrs. Cordelia Kunz of Grand Rapids had inquired drily, tapping her notes with a cunning little lorgnette. “Forward-looking on economic questions, social problems, political issues⁠—or merely posing as the last outpost of orthodoxy?”

Mrs. Sealback, slightly dizzied and not a little nettled, had replied that she was sure she didn’t know exactly how far or in what direction Grace Church led the way to freedom⁠—and snapped her purse several times, quite noisily, to emphasize her disclaimer of further interest in the matter⁠—unaware that the brusque gavel-swinger from up state had indeed touched a mighty live wire.

Obedient to the necessary precautions, however, Doctor McLaren had made a few last-minute substitutions for certain erudite terms he feared might overshoot his congregation; but, even with these begrudged alterations in the cause of clarity, the address was as one scientist to another, and the people who heard it were at once flattered and befuddled by its charming inexplicability. They, too, wondered what Dr. Robert Merrick thought of it, and were glowingly proud of their wise young pastor.

And they had every right to be proud. The Rev. Bruce McLaren, Ph. D., was by no means an intellectual coxcomb or a solemn blatherskite with a fondness for big words and an itch to achieve the reputation of a savant. His scholarship was sound, and the sermon that morning was a credit to it.

Deacon Chester, warmly gripping his pastor’s hand, shouted above the shrill confusion of the metal-piped postlude that he guessed it was the most profound sermon ever delivered in Grace Church! The statement was entirely correct; nor was the word “guess” used in this connection a mere colloquialism. Had Mr. Chester been a painstaking stylist⁠—he was a prosperous baker of cookies by the carload lot, and not averse to admitting that he had left school at thirteen⁠—he could not have chosen a word more meticulously adequate than “guess” to connote his own capacity to appraise the scholarship disclosed by that homily. Had a photographic plate been exposed to Mr. Chester’s knowledge of the subject which Doctor McLaren had treated, it could have been used again, quite unimpaired, for other purposes.

The warm friendship which had arisen between Doctor McLaren and Doctor Merrick dated from a raw March evening when the rangy, bronze-haired preacher had been brought into Brightwood, unconscious and breathing stertorously, with an ugly and dangerous smash in the right squamous temporal. He was muddy, bloody, and limp. It had looked black for him, that night; and the only recess Doctor Merrick had permitted himself, from the time he finished the necessary repairs at nine until the next morning at seven, were brief pacings up and down the corridor in front of his important patient’s door, tugging nervously at cigarettes, and disinterestedly accepting the sandwiches and milk brought up by a nurse at three.

Bobby Merrick had liked McLaren from the first moment; liked the length and strength of him as he lay on the operating table, subconsciously making his good fight for life; liked the shape of his broad forehead, the cut of his ears, the cleft of his chin, the hardness of his well-tennised right forearm, the texture of his hide, the elliptical curve of his thumb. All these things were significant. Had Doctor Merrick been required, he could have written a two thousand word paper on the character of Doctor McLaren before ever he had heard him speak.

He had liked his patient, next day, for the inherent poise he exhibited when, rousing for the first time to a vague consciousness of his surroundings, he had taken in the situation at a glance, and, apparently considering it as all in the day’s work, had dropped off to sleep, at the nurse’s suggestion, without bothering to ask questions. Bobby had liked him even more, a few days later, for his quite superior capacity to take his punishment⁠—and there was a lot of it⁠—without flinching or grousing. And, finally, he had liked Doctor McLaren’s state of mind when, a week after the accident, he had spoken calmly and without rancour of the drunken insolvent who had run him down in a safety zone.

“He probably feels bad enough about it,” remarked McLaren, in his deep bass, mellowed by an ancestral Scotch burr. “Anyway, I’m not going to press the matter, or make myself wretched by mulling it over.”

“That’s amazingly good sense!” Merrick had commented, privately resolving to see more of this man when he was up and had his boots on. He had never known a preacher before. His rather nebulous opinion of the clergy had been collected from cartoons, the quips and jibes of paragraphers, and satirical sideswipes at the profession roughly projected from the stage and screen. He had lately thumbed, scowlingly, a nasty novel vilifying men of this vocation. He was not conscious of an active dislike for them, but shared what seemed to be the unchurched public’s general belief that preachers were⁠—to put the matter laconically⁠—a bunch of saps.

Every day, the young surgeon found himself more and more pleasantly attracted by his patient, enjoyed his droll comments, offered in moments when drollery came high, admired the adroitness with which he parried the friendly raillery of doctors and nurses⁠—chaff invited by his own whimsical humour. Almost everybody in the organization at Brightwood was in to see him, at one time or another, during his convalescence; and it was quite unanimously held that he was a good sport.

And no less cordially interested had been the Brightwood household in the brown-eyed, deep-dimpled Mrs. McLaren who had appeared, anguished but admirably controlled, a half hour after her husband’s arrival. They had telephoned her that Doctor McLaren was seriously injured, suggesting that she come at once. When she came, there was no hysteria⁠ ⁠… Would Doctor McLaren recover? They couldn’t say. It was too soon to tell. He was very, very badly hurt⁠ ⁠… She took the blow standing, and they rejoiced in her pluck. She was invited to stay the night, and they were at pains to give her every scrap of available information about her husband⁠—both good and bad.

From the first, Mrs. McLaren was adopted at Brightwood on unusual terms. When Doctor Merrick told her, at noon, that her husband was putting up a very encouraging resistance, and had at least an even break in the decision, she did not stage a scene. There was a momentary tight closing of her eyes, a quick breath of relief, and a misty smile; but no theatricals. She had herself well in hand. Bobby liked her for that. He was glad to have her about. Sometimes, when her husband was asleep, she would read to other convalescents. On several occasions she offered first aid to hysterical next-of-kins, who waited while operations of interest to them were in progress. One day, upon invitation of Doctor Pyle, she went into the operating-room to see “some interesting surgery”⁠—from which entertainment she hastily excused herself, however, when a diminutive saw began making noises that played the deuce with her digestion.

The McLarens were, by popular suffrage at Brightwood, “all to the good.”

One afternoon, the Reverend Bruce said to Doctor Merrick, as the latter sat by his invalid chair, visiting⁠—not very professionally, but with a hope of hearing a few more Scotch stories: “Beloved, I’ll soon be out of here, and I’m just a bit anxious about my bill. My income is small, and my present balance at the bank, if there is one, would amuse you. Of course, I know what the hospital charges are, and I can manage to pay them. But I have been afraid to ask about your fee, thinking perhaps the shock wouldn’t be good for me. Speaking of the Scotch⁠—what are you going to charge me?”

“Well⁠—I’ll make you a proposition, dominie. You have given me a chance to patch your head. I’ll give you a chance to do something for my soul. And we’ll call it square. I’ll take it out in trade. How’s that?”

“It’s mighty generous,” rumbled McLaren, in a tone at least three added lines below the bass clef. “I’ll expect you to come in and attend my church, soon as I am in the running again.”

“Oh⁠—do I have to go to your church for this treatment?”

“Well⁠—I came to your hospital, didn’t I, for mine?”

“You win!” said Bobby submissively. “I’ll be there!”

Pursuant to his promise, he had gone to Grace Church on that fine May morning, after having telephoned the McLarens he was coming, and having accepted their invitation to return with them to their apartment, afterwards, for luncheon. Betty McLaren had quite enjoyed the sensation of presenting him to many of their friends. She had been very proud of Bruce’s performance in the pulpit. She was having a good day⁠ ⁠… Would Doctor Merrick have two lumps or three; cream or lemon; and wasn’t he surprised to see so many young people in the congregation?⁠ ⁠… Doctor Merrick would have one lump; neither cream nor lemon; and was it anything to be surprised at that young people went to church?

“Oh⁠—quite!” replied Doctor McLaren, helping his guest to a portion of a delicious omelette. “That’s our one great satisfaction! You see⁠—the students and the young business and professional people have outgrown the old traditions and are eager for an⁠—shall I say an intellectual approach to religion. We have been trying to give it to them.”

“I noticed that,” said Bobby. “Your sermon was very scholarly; and they liked it, I am sure.”

“Well, doctor⁠—if you don’t mind being helpfully candid with me, exactly how did it strike you⁠—as a scientist?”

“Oh, I’m not much of a scientist. A surgeon doesn’t have to be a scientist⁠—just a good mechanic.”

Betty McLaren protested with a laugh.

“Come now, Doctor Merrick! The very idea! You⁠—not a scientist? We know better than that!”

“At all events, you have the scientific outlook⁠—the scientific approach,” insisted Doctor McLaren. “Perhaps you noticed at what pains I was to avoid the old stock phrases of theology.”

“I fear I wouldn’t recognize them as such,” confessed Bobby. “But⁠—what’s the matter with the old terminology?”

“Obsolete! Misleading! We’ll have to evolve a new vocabulary for religion, to make it rank with other subjects of interest. We’ve got to phrase it in modern terms; don’t you think so?” Doctor McLaren was eager for his guest’s approval.

“Perhaps,” agreed Bobby tentatively. “I don’t know. Whether people could learn any more about religion by changing its names for things of concern to it, I’m not sure. It just occurs to me⁠—casting about at random for a parallel case⁠—that the word ‘electricity’ means ‘amber.’ All that the ancients knew about electricity was that a chunk of amber, when rubbed with silk, would pick up a feather. Now that it has been developed until it will pick up a locomotive, electricity still means amber. They never went to the bother to change the name of it. Maybe they thought there was at least a pleasant sentiment in retaining the name. More likely, they never thought about it, at all. Too busy trying to make it work, I suppose.”

“Humph! That’s a new idea. Then you think it doesn’t make much difference about the phraseology of religion?”

“It wouldn’t⁠—to me,” replied Bobby, hoping he had not too ardently objected to a pet theory of his host.

“Well⁠—there seems to be a demand for a more adequate interpretation of theology. We are trying to be a little less dogmatic in our assertions and a little more honest. For instance⁠—I think it’s ever so much better to say frankly that God is an hypothesis than to attempt to offer proofs which fail to stand up under their own ponderosity.”

Bobby was tardy with a rejoinder, and both McLarens silently quizzed him out of the tails of their eyes. Surely he ought at least to believe in the Deity as an hypothesis!⁠ ⁠… He observed that they waited.

“I’m afraid I don’t accept that,” he said at length, rather shyly.

“Oh⁠—Doctor Merrick!” reproved Betty disappointedly. “You don’t mean to say that you do not believe in God, at all!”

“I mean that I do not think of God as an hypothesis.”

“But⁠—my dear fellow,” exclaimed McLaren, “we really have no hard and fast proofs, you know!”

“Haven’t you?” asked Bobby quietly. “I have.”

The two forks in use by the McLaren family were simultaneously put down upon their plates.

“Er⁠—how do you mean⁠—proofs?” queried his host.

Bobby wished then that he had smilingly deferred to the minister’s theory. He had no relish for controversy. And this was no place for it, had he been no end a debater. Moreover, he knew he was not in a position to explain what he had called his proofs. Lamely he admitted that what he had considered sufficient evidence for the existence of God might satisfy no one but himself. He privately hoped the conversation might soon find safer going.

“You’re probably arguing from ‘design,’ ” McLaren suggested bookishly.

“Oh⁠—probably,” said Bobby, with a gesture of dismissal.

“The whole business of institutionalized religion,” resumed McLaren, didactically, “demands reappraisal! It appals me to contemplate what must be the future of the Church when all the people who are now fifty and up are in their graves! This oncoming generation, now in its adolescence, is not in the least way concerned about organized religion. Religious enough, instinctively, I dare say; but out of sorts with the sects; weary of their bad-mannered yammering at one another over matters in which one man’s guess is as good as another’s, and no outcome promised either in faith or conduct, no matter whose guess is right!”

“Is it that bad?” commented Bobby. “I hadn’t known the churches were losing ground. There seems to be such a lot of them.”

“Yes⁠—too many!” grumbled McLaren. “Too many⁠—of the wrong kind!⁠ ⁠… Take so important a matter, now, as the nature and mission of Christianity’s author, himself. A Christ who can help us to a clearer perception of God needs to be a personality confronted with problems similar to ours, and solving them with knowledge and power to which we also have access⁠—else he offers us no example, at all.

“But here we have a majority of the churches trying to elicit interest in him because he was supernaturally born, which I wasn’t; because he turned water into wine, which I can’t; because he paid his taxes with money found in a fish’s mouth, which⁠—for all my Scotch ingenuity⁠—I can’t do; because he silenced the storm with a word and a gesture, whereas I must bail the boat; because he called back from the grave his friend who had been dead four days, while I must content myself with planting a rosebush and calling it a closed incident! What we want is a Christ whose service to us, in leading us toward God, is not predicated upon our dissimilarities, but upon our likenesses!

“In our church, we’re trying to offer a Christ who is not a mere prestidigitator⁠—a magician who feeds an acre of people from a boy’s lunch-basket⁠—but a great prophet and an understanding friend! Don’t you think a man can accept that, and still be a sound scientist?”

Bobby accepted a light from his hostess’s hand, and slowly nodded.

“I know very little about the conflict between the traditional estimate of Christ and the more recent theory. Viewing it superficially, I should say that neither system would appeal very strongly to this age. Isn’t the modern school just substituting a new metaphysic for the old one? Our generation is doing all its thinking in terms of power, energy, dynamics⁠—the kind you read about, not in a book, but on a meter! Why not concede the reality of supernormal assistance, to be had under fixed conditions, and encourage people to go after it?”

“That sounds a little as if you believed in prayer, Doctor Merrick,” said Betty wistfully.

“You mean⁠—getting down on your knees to wish you had something?”

“Oh, it’s more than that!⁠ ⁠… Asking God to give it to you!”

“Well, that depends on your credit.”

“Agreed!” nodded McLaren.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Betty.

“Why, he means that unless one has been living up to one’s best ideals, it’s useless to ask for God’s approval and assistance. That’s obvious.”

“No,” said Bobby. “That is not what I meant. If you’re interested, I’ll tell you a story.”

For the next two hours⁠—they had moved to the library on Bobby’s hint that they had let themselves in for an extended tale⁠—the McLarens sat scarcely daring to trust their own hearing.

Eager to give them all the steps of his spiritual progress, in their exact sequence, he had begun back in Randolph’s studio. Carefully picking his way with a care to the avoidance of any act of his own, performed in pursuance to the Galilean theory of availing prayer, he laid the facts before them in a dispassionate recital.

He finished as he had begun. He could hardly expect them to believe it, he said. He hadn’t believed it; had been disgusted by it; intellectually offended by it; in violent revolt against it; but⁠—well, there it was!

“How utterly trivial,” said McLaren humbly, “my whole programme of preaching seems in the face of such astounding possibilities! Why⁠—we’ve been trying to teach religion without⁠—without knowing what it’s about!”

“Oh, I shouldn’t go so far as to think that!” consoled Bobby. “You’ve inspired people to take stock of themselves. They can’t help being better for every serious thought you’ve given them about life and duty. That’s ethics. And ethics is decidedly important. This thing I’ve been talking about is not in the field of ethics. It belongs rather to science. We have been at great pains to construct devices and machinery to be energized by steam and electricity and sunshine; but haven’t realized how human personality can be made just as receptive to the power of our Major Personality.”

“I feel, today,” said McLaren, “as if I’d been doing nothing⁠—exactly nothing!”

“By no means! You have been doing some highly necessary work in clearing away the old superstitions; the old irrelevancies. That’s not labour lost, you may be sure! Only⁠—as I listened, this morning, I couldn’t help wishing that this new interpretation of religion which you are so splendidly equipped to offer might go further and show how soundly scientific religion is. You counselled us, today, to accept the evolutionary hypothesis. You said⁠—if I recall correctly⁠—that we could explain everything we have and are by that theory⁠ ⁠… Now⁠—I don’t agree with you. Perhaps our bodies derive from some pre-human type of life. Perhaps all romantic literature is but an elaboration of the animal’s urge to reproduce itself. Perhaps our brains are but refinements of elementary nerve ganglia that used to respond, automatically, to the necessity for food and shelter⁠ ⁠… It hasn’t been proved. You were ever so much more sure of it, in your pulpit, than my biology professor was, in his classroom⁠ ⁠… But⁠—assuming a physical evolution, biology has no explanation to offer for human personality. You ask old man Harper how he accounts for aspiration, penitence, inquisitiveness about our origin, concern about our future⁠—and he’ll say, ‘I’m not a theologian, sir! I’m a biologist!’ ”

“And I suppose you’re hinting,” smiled McLaren, “that my chief business is to account for aspiration, penitence, and man’s passion to be a time-binder⁠—and if anybody inquires what I think about evolution, I’d better reply, ‘I’m not a biologist, sir! I’m not a theologian!’ ”

“Something like that,” agreed Bobby.

“I wonder if we modernists,” said McLaren, after a considerable pause, “are not somewhat in the predicament of Moses, who had enough audacity to lead the slaves out of their bondage, but lacked the ingenuity to take them on into a country that would support them. We’ve emancipated them; but⁠—they’re still wandering about in the jungle, dissatisfied, hungry, making occasional excursions into paganism and experimenting with all manner of eccentric cults, longing for the spiritual equivalent of their repudiated superstitions⁠—sometimes even wishing they were back in the old harness!”

“It’s worth while to have fetched them out of that,” said Bobby. “It ought to be equally interesting to lead them on. They mustn’t go back! But they will⁠—if they’re not pointed to something more attractive than the jungle you say they’re in.”

As he left the house at four, McLaren followed him out to his big coupé parked at the kerb.

“Merrick,” he said rather timidly, “would it be asking too much of you to come to my church again next Sunday? I’m going to have something a little more constructive to offer⁠—and I’d like your reaction.”

“I would gladly, but I shall be on the briny deep. Sailing Saturday to France, en route to Vienna to see a colleague. I’ll be happy to come when I return.”

He stepped on the starter and the powerful engine hummed.

McLaren gripped his hand.

“Merrick⁠—just a minute!⁠ ⁠… We modernists have been trying to show how religion is not at odds with science. What we’ve got to do now is to show how religion is a science! Isn’t that what you mean?”

“Exactly! Nothing less or else than that! You have it! More power to you! See you in September!”