The only one who didn’t respond was the girl herself.
“I’ve seen it a hundred times,” Parwine said with a shake of his head. “Once a girl is ruined, her life is over. Even if you can conceal the truth of her unfortunate state from those around her, the girl is worth nothing. Her life will follow one of two paths. If she acquires no moral sense, she will continue on in her sluttish ways, a burden of humiliation on all who know her. One of the moral diseases will shortly find her, and she will perish in ignominy.”
“No.” Her father’s hand fell on the girl’s shoulder. “No,” he repeated, this time with greater certainty. “That’s not going to happen to my little girl.”
“Then accept the other path your daughter could tread. If there is any hint of goodness in her, her shame will consume her. She will never be loved; she will go into a decline. Likely she will die early and thus expiate her sin. There is nothing to be done at this juncture except to recognize the truth. Your daughter is already dead. It is only a matter of time until the condition manifests itself.” Parwine gave the man a nod. “I can only treat the symptoms of this disease,” he intoned. “There’s nothing to be done about the cause—moral decay.”
The father pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed angrily at his eyes. The only dry-eyed one among them was the girl. She stared across the room almost defiantly.
God damn that superstition. Jonas damned himself, too, for agreeing to keep silent as a condition of these visits. He hadn’t chosen to become a doctor so that he could foretell the death of children. He’d been seduced by the stories—the stories of John Snow saving hundreds of lives by careful observation, of men who noticed the world around them and cared and thought, men who set aside irrationality in favor of cures supported by statistical research.
Parwine gathered up his things and motioned for Jonas to follow.
I have seen no scientific study that suggests that life is foreshortened by moral decay, he imagined himself saying to her father as he crossed the room to the exit.
Or maybe this: Don’t take the prussic acid. Whatever you do, don’t take the prussic acid.
Perhaps he might whisper a single phrase: Don’t believe a word he said.
But he’d given the man his word. Besides—he told himself—he knew his place. He was scarcely twenty-one, hadn’t even had his first lecture in medicine. He was not at the point where he should be publicly contradicting a man more than three times his age. Besides, what did he know? A little book learning was all he had. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Parwine’s experience meant he did know better.
All that was rubbish, and he knew it. As he left, her eyes fell on him. He didn’t even know the girl’s name, but his guilt made him see accusation in her gaze. You could help me.
Superstition, that—nobody could read thoughts from a single glance. It was his own conscience that he saw reflected in her eyes. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t speak because he was young. He didn’t speak because he doubted his memory of the pharmacopeia. And most thorny of all, Jonas kept his silence because Parwine had offered him his practice once he graduated.
It was the last reason he remembered in the weeks that followed when he queried one of the instructing physicians about the recommended dosage for prussic acid. Almost nothing, the man told him. And for pregnant women? Never.
For years afterward, Jonas dreamed of her eyes—those harsh, cold, accusing depths. He could have helped her.
When he finally graduated, he swore the oath of Hippocrates on Apollo the healer. But it was her face he saw when he spoke, her eyes that bored into his when he promised to do no harm.
Five years later
THE MOST UNREASONABLE NOTION JONAS EVER HAD—the nonsensical fixed point of his adult life—started from an excess of rationality. And yet at the time when it happened, everything he did made perfect sense.
He first heard the name “Lydia Charingford” on a brilliant summer day nearly five years after he’d made the rounds with Parwine. He discovered it, not because he recognized her, but because he didn’t. He liked the look of her, so he asked his friend who she was after service one Sunday.
“Would you like an introduction?” Toford asked, a knowing look in his eye.
“It depends,” he responded. “I’m trying to decide whether I favor round numbers or complete information.”
Toford frowned. “For God’s sake, Grantham, use English. What the devil do you mean by that?”