The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [139]
The greater good.
For some moments, I looked across at the policeman’s stricken face, then finally said, “No, Borst. You’ve let him die for nothing. You see, I don’t know whom you should have arrested instead of Farnshaw. I never did.”
December 21, 1888
PERHAPS IT WAS THE SNOW, heavy and silent, coating the trees in the garden, transforming the branches into spectral fingers reaching for the sky. She stopped dressing, her new Paris gown laid out on her bed, the iridescent folds softly reflecting the light from the chandelier. She picked up the slim volume at her bedside, moved to the bay window, and read aloud just above a whisper,
One only passion unrevealed
With maiden pride the maid concealed,
Yet not less purely felt the flame;—
O, need I tell that passion’s name?
Like the Lady of the Lake, all her life, she too had been waiting, waiting for that flame. The very beauty of the world outside her window, the expectation of the holiday fete tonight, the glow of the candles on the table, the elegance of the silver, the silken taste of the wine, and, most of all, the thrill of a
chance encounter, all bespoke the imminent realization of her desires. She had been to countless dinners, parties, and teas, of course. But tonight would be different.
She read the poem once more, took one last look out the window at the falling snow, then rose to ring for her maid to finish dressing. Never had the world seemed so rich with promise.
EPILOGUE
Seattle, Washington, July 3, 1933
The greater good. The one or the many. Should the life of one man be sacrificed to save thousands? Forty years later, will anyone care that an obscure young physician named George Farnshaw bled to death on a prison floor so that William Stewart Halsted might continue his brilliant work and in large measure invent modern surgery? Is one man’s murder the price that the human race must pay in order to progress?
Moral philosophers, I am certain, could wax eloquently on this issue, but moral philosophers rarely speak from their own experience. For all but a handful, George Farnshaw vanished into history within weeks of his death, but I was among that handful.
On the occasion of my seventieth birthday, as I reflect on the astounding changes that have accrued to mankind, I can only note that George Farnshaw should have been witness to those changes, should have grown and aged and marveled as I did at the progress in all forms of human endeavor, some exhilarating, some terrifying.
The world of 1933 bears almost no resemblance to that of 1889. It might have been four centuries rather than four decades since Rebecca Lachtmann, George Turk, and George Farnshaw died, for indeed centuries of tradition have been thrown over.
As a result of the Great War, monarchy ended in much of Europe: thus, Czar Nicholas of Russia was supplanted by the Bolshevik Lenin and now Stalin; King Victor Emmanuel of Italy by the Fascist, Mussolini; and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany by a series of leaders, the most recent being a demagogue named Adolf Hitler. Change, yes, but it remains to be seen whether the new governments will be an improvement over the old.
In our own nation, women—including my own wife, daughters, and granddaughters—vote. Americans may again drink alcohol, after a tumultuous decade of prohibition. Our new president, Franklin Roosevelt, survived polio but, more astoundingly millions of Americans can listen to his voice as he speaks although they might be thousands of miles away. Radio, this new miracle of communication that sends electrical impulses through the