Each Man's Son

by Hugh Maclennan

  The hospital was dark and silent as he walked through it. In Mrs. Morton’s room the nurse in charge was timing the pains and Mrs. Morton was half asleep as she waited for the next one. Ainslie looked at the nurse’s chart, made a mental estimate and went away again. In the ward he discovered that the Newfoundland boy had vomited twice on coming out of the anesthetic, but now was resting. After glancing at the charts of several patients on whom he had operated earlier in the week, Ainslie retraced his steps. On his way he saw that Mrs. Morton’s husband was with her and he did not go in.

  Dr. MacKenzie was still in the common room, hunched over the table reading. Ainslie took off his shoes, hung up his jacket and stretched out in the chair he had left, flexing and unflexing his toes.

  MacKenzie closed his book and pushed it aside. “It’s nearly midnight,” he said. “Why don’t you go to sleep? Weir’s on duty, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t feel like sleeping.” Ainslie stretched. “If I’d remembered to bring my Homer I might have got through a hundred lines.”

  MacKenzie turned away from the table and looked into the empty hearth, and as the minutes passed and he made no further move Ainslie had the unmistakable impression that the old man was gathering his forces.

  “Margaret’s right,” MacKenzie said finally. “Your tension’s not caused by your work. It’s rather a new thing they’re calling hypertension.” He smiled. “But then, you’re rather a new type of man.”

  Ainslie ignored the last comment. He said sharply, “Margaret? What’s she been seeing you about?”

  “Friendship, you might say. After all, I was the first person in this world to make her acquaintance.” MacKenzie’s voice became the persuasive voice of a doctor confronted by a recalcitrant patient. “Dan, you’re the best man we ever had here.” The old man spoke gently. “But for the past three years you’ve been getting so irritable there’s no knowing what to do with you. What’s causing it? Don’t tell me it’s your work, because it isn’t.”

  Ainslie crossed and uncrossed his legs. He saw the old man’s kindly smile and he knew it was prompted by a deep understanding, but he felt himself rigidly on the defensive.

  “Whenever a man courts unnecessary work–and believe me, you’ve been doing it–it’s not natural,” MacKenzie went on. “You don’t really want to read Homer tonight. Why do you flog yourself into doing things like that?”

  “Benjamin Jowett could read Greek as easily as he could read English.”

  “Could he also remove an appendix?” The blue eyes were studying Ainslie closely. “You’re forty-two years old, and you’re going into a pretty hard time of life. A man in middle age is like a ship on fire at sea with a gale driving her.”

  Ainslie looked away from the searching eyes. “You were talking about Margaret,” he said.

  MacKenzie cleared his throat. “Don’t be proud with me, Dan. The last thing I want to do is intrude, but you mean a good deal to me and so does Margaret.” He swung his long legs up until his heels once more rested on the mantel. “Let me talk and maybe it will help all of us. It does sometimes.” He paused and Ainslie said nothing, so he went on. “As a man gets older his life narrows down to two things–his work and his family. In your case there’s no family–there’s just Margaret. You are trying to substitute work for–for what you lack between you. But no man can deliberately exclude his wife from the center of his life and hope to escape the hounds.”

  Ainslie flushed a slow deep red. “So!” he said. His face was that of a man caught naked in his dreams.

  “She’s a lovely woman, Dan, and a sensible one, too. Even if she can’t read Latin and Greek.”

  After that Ainslie found himself confronted by the old man’s silence. It was not a judging silence; it was warm and kind. If he could let himself go he would sink into it and be absorbed by it, but something within him fought it fiercely, as though to yield to peace would be to yield to destruction.

  Finally MacKenzie said, “It would be easier for Margaret if she had had children.”

  Ainslie’s mouth became a straight line.

  “Never mind, Dan. I’m sorry I said that. Why you didn’t want to have children when you were first married is your own business. Margaret says you want them now very much. Only now it’s too late.”

  Ainslie’s anger exploded. “God damn her!” he said in a harsh whisper. “Why did she have to go to you, of all people?”

  “Why not say–God damn me?”

  Ainslie fought to keep the tears out of his eyes. He swallowed and then he looked up at the old man. “Dr. Dougald,” he said, “you examined her, of course. That operation five years ago was a medical necessity. If you had been here then I would have sent her to you and your decision would have been the same as mine. But that happened to be the winter you spent in Barbados.” He had gained control of himself and his voice fell back to normal. “I didn’t believe there was any point in confirming my judgment by asking the advice of Collie McCuen or Ronnie Sutherland. You’ll say it was my pride, I suppose. Anyhow, I performed the operation myself, and if Margaret told you I did it because I wanted to sterilize her, I say to you it was a deliberate lie.”

  It was the turn of the old man to flush. His huge, steady hand reached out and closed over Ainslie’s fretful one.

  “Oh, Dan,” he said. “This is too bad! This comes from deep underneath and it’s too bad. It’s my fault, not Margaret’s. The poor girl loves you more than she does herself.”

  Ainslie withdrew his hand. “How could she say things like that to you? How could she? It’s the…” By an effort of will he controlled himself and became silent. His eyes looked like those of a wounded animal, but the lines about his mouth were tight.

  “I tell you this is my fault, not hers,” the old man repeated. “Words are the real trouble-makers. I never was any good at using them.”

  “It seems to me you presented the case very well. After all these years Margaret went to you to find out if her husband is the kind of man who would deliberately mutilate his wife.” It was a moment before his pride would let the question come out. “Well, what did you tell her?”

  “I told her the same thing you’d tell any patient under the circumstances. At this date, and with the evidence available, it was impossible for me to say whether the operation performed five years ago could have been avoided or not.” He raised his hand against Ainslie’s expression. “I also told her,” his voice deepened and he measured his words, “that I could assure her absolutely–not as a physician but as a man–that the operation had been necessary to save her life because you had said it was.”

  There was no sound and no movement in the room. Ainslie sat quite still. Finally he said quietly, “And what did she say to that?”

  “She said, ‘Thank you, Dr. Dougald, I knew that was so.’”

  “And she did know, too.” Then Ainslie added, softly and with precision, “But in spite of knowing, she still had to go to you! She still had to make sure!”

  “Dan,” MacKenzie said quietly, “not everyone in the world is a Highland Scot. To most other people, life is more important than these niceties about loyalty. To Margaret this was a question of life. I know–and she knows too–that Collie McCuen’s opinion is medically worthless compared to yours, but I still think she was entitled to have it. Your hope of children disappeared forever in that operation. And yet you probably never told her how disappointed that fact made you. Dan, boy, can’t you imagine some of the questions a defeated woman can ask herself in the nights?”

  Ainslie’s eyes burned in a face which had become pale. “Did it never cross her mind that there are some questions people don’t ask? Why did she wait all this time–why did she nurse her feelings–and then go to you?”

  “Why don’t you ask her that question yourself? At any rate, if she ever did have any doubts, she has none now. She has accepted things, and you must accept them, too.”

  Ainslie said between barely opened lips, “People trust each other, or they
don’t.”

  MacKenzie glanced at him sharply, then his expression changed to that of the commanding officer and his voice thundered, “That’s enough, Dan! I was clumsy–I was worse than that, I was stupid. But I won’t permit your pigheaded pride to make this a cause of grievance against a fine woman. You love Margaret and she loves you. You both have your faults and so have we all, and you’re not alone in that. But you are alone in life with each other, and if you seek for grievances, you’ll find it only too easy to discover them. If we were all perfect, Dan, there would be no need of love in this world.”

  When Ainslie made no reply, his voice dropped and he measured his words. “I’m an old man and things have been easy for me. I haven’t your ability and never did have it, but nobody has ever accused me of being unobservant. So listen to me, Dan–ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when a man and a woman hurt each other, they don’t know why they do it. They don’t know what it is that impels them to wound each other. They don’t realize it’s the flaw within themselves. Each of us has a flaw, and when two people love each other, each seems to expect the other to cure his flaw.” MacKenzie paused, and added in a quieter voice, “As long as you’ve been married to Margaret, you’ve resented her because she hasn’t been able to wash away your sense of sin.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  The old man smiled at his own thoughts. “Dan, you haven’t forgotten a single word you’ve ever heard from the pulpit or from your own Presbyterian father. You may think you’ve rejected religion with your mind, but your personality has no more rejected it than dyed cloth rejects its original color.” MacKenzie’s voice became sonorous with irony as he tried to remember Calvin: “Man, having through Adam’s fall lost communion with God, abideth evermore under His wrath and curse except such as He hath, out of His infinite loving-kindness and tender mercy, elected to eternal life through Jesus Christ–I’m a Christian, Dan, but Calvin wasn’t one and neither was your father. It may sound ridiculous to say, in cold words, that you feel guilty merely because you are alive, but that’s what you were taught to believe until you grew up. I’ve met New Englanders whose families had stopped going to church in their grandfathers’ day, but every man jack of them felt guilty notwithstanding.”

  Before MacKenzie had finished speaking, Ainslie left his chair and crossed to the window. With his fingers on the ledge, he leaned out and found himself staring into total darkness. His sin? All the quiet reasonableness of the old man’s sentences had withered away under the power of that word. His burden of guilt? Did MacKenzie, in spite of what he had said earlier, still believe that he had committed the appalling sin of sterilizing Margaret deliberately? No, that was ridiculous. He and MacKenzie were both medical men and as medical men they understood each other perfectly. Of course the old man knew him guiltless of such a crime. So MacKenzie must have meant something else. But why must he, Daniel Ainslie, forever feel guilty before he could reason away any cause for guilt? What MacKenzie had meant had been no more than what he had said in plain words. MacKenzie had told him that although he might be an intellectual agnostic, he was an emotional child in thrall to his brbarous Presbyterian past. As he thought this, he felt guilty again. But why? Was there no end to the circle of Original Sin? Could a man never grow up and be free? It was deeper than theory and more personal. There was Margaret–he felt guilty before her, guilty in his soul. Why again? Merely because, when he had married her, he had been so swayed by sexual desire? As he thought this he saw her anew, as he had seen her the first time, that wonderful, white, firm body so eager for pleasure with him, himself desperate for the joy in her, yet at the same time half afraid and half ashamed. Why again? What was wrong with desire except that within himself it was overpowering and he feared it? Why did he fear it, since she had always been able to satisfy it? Because he had been taught to fear it. Because it led hellwards. But he was a physician, a learned man of forty-two years, and he no longer believed in hell and damnation. No, but he did believe, and believed because it was true, that he had permitted the fables of his childhood to destroy much of Margaret’s happiness. So the circle was complete again. Any way he regarded himself, he was guilty, and there was no way out.

  He stared into the dark and longed for the sight of something distinct. He wanted to see something, anything. A row of hills against the sky or the furry lines of a tree cool in the night, a forest into which a man could disappear and lose himself. He wanted to go off and lose himself in the forest and find there a woman with Margaret’s body and the eyes–good God, the eyes of that girl Mollie MacNeil–who would hold his head and tell him that for all his worthlessness she loved him and for all his confusion she understood him. He sniffed like a dog and smelled salt in the air. Then he turned and spoke casually.

  “This confounded climate! We were set for a spell of good weather and now you can practically smell Newfoundland.” As he crossed to his chair, he added, “I suppose I ought to call an orderly and tell him to unhitch the mare and stable her for the night. I’m becoming forgetful and incompetent. I’d completely forgotten the poor beast was still out there.”

  He sat down and looked at the ceiling. MacKenzie was silent on the other side of the hearth. Ainslie became aware that his whole body from the neck down through the diaphragm felt sore, aching and lacerated. His doctor’s intelligence awoke, and as it began to function the curse of his ancestors seemed farther away. Why did a man like himself have no migraine headaches and no stomach ulcers? Why, instead, did he have frequent spasms in the muscles of his back which he knew were caused by nervous tension? Could it be possible that all emotional processes reacted physiologically in one of these three different ways with various individuals? Could emotional stress reflect itself physiologically in the brain tissues of one individual, in the stomach lining of another, in the back muscles of a third, so that a hypertense patient might have one of these ailments at some time of his life, but never two or all three of them? His mind began to race, then stopped short. It was a theory, no more. It was a theory that could not possibly be proved until more was known of neurology than was known today. Suddenly Ainslie wished himself away from here, in Boston working with Cushing. Cushing was already moving into mysteries.

  But when he finally spoke to MacKenzie, Ainslie revealed none of these thoughts. “I hear that Miss MacKay has been offered a post in the Montreal General. If she leaves, we’ll not have another nurse in Broughton capable of running this place at night.”

  MacKenzie gave a quiet laugh. “Don’t be silly, Dan. You believe that no more than I do. You can always find someone to run a hospital.”

  Ainslie took his pipe from his pocket and filled it. By the time it was burning, his nerves were quieter. The beast no longer growled and he was able to look up and meet MacKenzie’s eyes and talk naturally.

  “Dr. Dougald,” he said, “I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself. There was no sense in my saying those things I did about Margaret, because I love her very much. Surely you know that.”

  “Of course I do. So does she.”

  “It’s simply that–well, Margaret had an easy time of it when she was young. It’s the truth her family was lazy and easygoing. She has no notion of the pressure our people live under. There’s something cold about those New England Loyalists. Something–I don’t know myself what it is.”

  “I do, Dan.” MacKenzie smiled. “They don’t see ghosts. And after all, can you name any type in history more ridiculous than a Scotch Presbyterian? If you can’t laugh at him, you’ll be tempted to murder him.”

  Ainslie bridled. “What do you call yourself?”

  “A Scotch Presbyterian.” MacKenzie was still laughing, but he checked himself. “Our people were poets once, before the damned Lowlanders got to us with their religion. The old Celts knew as well as Christ did that only the sinner can become the saint because only the sinner can understand the need and the allness of love. Then the Lowlanders with their Calvinism made us ashamed of living. The wa
y it’s made you ashamed.”

  MacKenzie leaned back in his chair and studied his own feet on the mantel. His huge body lay in the shape of a half-opened jackknife as he tapped the edges of his soles together. Ainslie continued to stare into the hearth.

  “It’s time for you to leave us, Dan,” the old man said. “You’ve been saving money for years against that trip to London and Vienna. Use it and go now.”

  When Ainslie gave no indication of having heard him, MacKenzie rubbed the bowl of his pipe against the side of his nose, then slowly filled it again, pressing the tobacco with his huge thumb. “I’ve often wondered how you managed to stay here so long.”

  “This is where I belong,” Ainslie muttered. “Why should I take what I can from the island and then go off with it?”

  “You have no duty that holds you here. The work isn’t easy, but it doesn’t require a medical genius to perform it. Other men who are less able and high-strung can manage it. Your work belongs to a bigger world.”

  Ainslie went on puffing in silence. Much of the tension had drained out of him, leaving him exhausted.

  “For a man with your imagination Broughton was never the place, Dan. I’m convinced that God Himself can never lick the mines. It’s a kind of blasphemy, I know–fighting clans going into the blackness of the earth to dig coal. But you can’t solve the problem. At least not here.” MacKenzie waited a few moments in the silence, then he went on. “Why don’t you go down to Boston and work with Cushing? Or go to the Old Country if you’re not happy in the States?”

  “There’s more to Cape Breton than the mines,” Ainslie said at last. “You know that, Dr. Dougald. They’re only a–a corruption.”

  “Yes, there’s more here in Cape Breton than that. And each year the best of the island emigrates. We’re a dispersed people doomed to fight for lost causes.”

  Ainslie wanted nothing now but sleep. The hospital was a silent organism in a silent town. Cold foggy air from the sea began to move softly through the darkness to engulf the island so secretly that not even a leaf rustled to its progress.