Part 79

“Too innocent,” retorted the Health Master. “And more than innocent; ignorant.”

“But Bartley Starr!” said Mr. Clyde. “Who would have supposed him such a scoundrel? And with his bringing-up, too!”

“The explanation lies in his bringing-up.”

“Nonsense! Henry Starr is as upright a man and as good a father as you can find in Worthington.”

“The former, perhaps. Not the latter, certainly. He is a worshiper of the False Veiled Goddess, I suspect. Hence Bartley’s tragedy.”

“Do you blame Bartley’s viciousness upon his father?” demanded Mrs. Clyde.

“In part, at least. I happen to know a good deal about this case. Bartley got his sex-education or miseducation from chance talk at school. He took that to college with him, and there, unguided, fell into vicious ways. I don’t suppose his father ever had a frank talk with him in his life. And I judge that little Mrs. Starr’s mother never had one with her, either. Look at the result!”

“But boys find out about such things some way,” said Mr. Clyde uneasily.

“Some way? What way? And from whom? How much has Manny found out?”

“I don’t know,” said Manny’s father.

“Why don’t you know?” persisted the Health Master relentlessly. “You are his father, and, what is more, his friend.”

“Why must Manny know?” cried Mrs. Clyde. “Surely my son isn’t going to wallow in that sort of foulness.”

“Pray God he is not!” said Grandma Sharpless, turning her old, shrewd, kind face, the eyes bright and soft with feeling, toward her daughter. “But, oh, my dear, my dear, the bitterest lesson we mothers have to learn is that our children are of the common flesh and blood of humanity.”

“Manny is clean-minded and high-spirited,” said Strong. “But not all of his companions are. Not a month ago I heard one of the older boys in his class assuring some of his fellows, in the terms of the most damnable lie that ever helped to corrupt youth, ‘Why, it ain’t any worse than an ordinary cold.’”

“That was a stock phrase of the young toughs when I was a boy,” said Mr. Clyde. “So it still persists, does it?”

“Any worse than an ordinary cold?” repeated Mrs. Clyde, looking puzzled. “What did he mean?”

“Gonorrhoea,” said Dr. Strong.

Mrs. Clyde winced back and half-rose from her chair.

“Are you going?” asked the Health Master rather ‘grimly. “Must I be mealy-mouthed on this subject? Here I am, trying to tell you something of the most deadly import, and am I to choose perfumed words and pick rose-tinted phrases?”

“Speak out, Strong,” said the head of the house. “I’ve been rather expecting this.”

“First, then: you need not worry about Manny. I talked to him, long ago.”

“But he’s only a boy, still,” said Mrs. Sharpless involuntarily.

“He enters college this fall. And I’ve made sure that he won’t take with him the ‘no worse than a cold’ superstition about a disease which has wrecked the lives of thousands of Bartley Starrs.”

“But I thought that Starr’s was the—the other and worse form,” said Mr. Clyde.

“Plain talk,” adjured the Health Master. “You thought it was syphilis?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought syphilis worse than gonorrhoea?”

“Surely!”