Testimony Of Two Men (20 page)

“So Miss Anne Meadows, the dedicated, responsible soul who loved everybody, and wanted to ‘serve’ everybody, in the ineffable way of teachers, supported her parents and put her brothers and sisters on their feet. Nobody was grateful; no one ever thought poor Anne was entitled to a life of her own. She was only doing ‘that which was proper.’ No one even dreamed that perhaps Anne might like to marry and have her own children and retire from the damnable weariness of struggling with obdurate young things who didn’t want to learn anything in the first place. She was just Anne Meadows, a teacher, with a ‘duty.’ She never complained.

“Well, the brothers and sisters went off, after an education provided by their sister, and insofar as they were concerned, the parents were still Anne’s responsibility. She must have agreed. By this time she was fifty and I’ve noticed that the

parents of schoolteachers seem to live to be incredibly old. Then she was sixty, and the parents were still alive, hut they were pettish and complaining and senile, and Anne had to endure them after a full day’s work. Then she was sixty-five, and God apparently became aware of her—belatedly—and took her parents off her hands.

“One brother and one nephew came to their funerals. My mother and I were there—but I was the only former pupil. I’d seen Miss Meadows over the years and tried to convince her that she had a duty to herself, first of all, but the poor soul was honestly shocked. That’s another symptom of the teacher-malady. Now she is sixty-eight. Her eyesight failed; she had to retire. On the most miserable little pension you ever heard of. I did hear of it. I sent her a cashier’s check anonymously every month; otherwise she’d have starved and done scrubbing or something to make ends meet. She never hears from her family; they’ve forgotten she exists. After all, don’t schoolteachers make such ‘large salaries’? Anne was never able to save a cent. But, again, she never complained.

“That’s the saga of martyrs. If there are such creatures as saints, Anne is one; she has all the heroic, pathetic virtues, and I, for one, have no use for saints. They’re such an infernal annoyance to the rest of us. By the way, she thinks my monthly check is a tender remembrance from her brothers and sisters, and she thanks them sweetly every month.”

Robert was incredulous. “And they never tell her?”

Jonathan halted and looked at him with amusement. “Why, no. Don’t you know anything about your dear fellow-man? They probably think she is senile or that she is mocking them. So they never write to her. She thinks they don’t want to be thanked! So she knits and sews little gifts for them, and sends them off every Christmas with her love, for God’s sake!

“I can’t do anything for her. But I have an operation in mind which sets the backs up of the hacks who pretend to be very pious and believe that ‘suffering is the lot of man.’ I’ve done the operation before, but it’s tricky. You can watch tomorrow. I cut the nerves which lead to the cancerous regions. That stops the pain, anyway, and she’s in agony except when she’s under opiates. And think of this: She called me only three days ago—and all those months she’s been suffering hell. But, then, she’s been suffering hell all her life and one more torment was almost nothing to her.”

Robert shook his head “If people won’t take care of themselves and offer themselves up for martyrdom, can others be blamed if they take advantage?” But he was troubled.

The hard white ridges sprang out about Jonathan’s mouth. “Anyone who takes willful advantage of another, robs another of his substance, lives at the expense of others, and flourishes on another’s work and grows fat on it can’t be called a man. He’s a parasite and he’s done a worse harm to himself than he has to his victim. He’s become a simple structure, physically and mentally, as parasites always become simple structures, almost primitive. You’ve seen parasites under the microscope, and even with the naked eye. They lose their means of locomotion, their ability to survive away from their host. In a way the host is more guilty than -the parasite for suffering the parasite. Do you remember what St. Paul said: ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’ That was more of a warning to the host than to the parasite he makes. No one has the right to make others dependent, even in the name of sweet charity. Charity must be an emergency measure, short in duration—or you destroy a man’s very soul. The Puritans understood that; they got a man back on his feet fast and made him support himself at the first possible moment. No malingering. He worked or he starved.”

Robert smiled, forgetting his resentment. “You should have been a teacher or one of these new sociologists.” Jonathan lifted himself away from the wall on which he had been leaning. He seemed exceptionally tired and his eyes were bloodshot. “I have a feeling about this damned century,” he said. “Something not very clean.” They walked a few more steps and Jonathan stopped before a door and pointed to a neatly lettered sign on it. He chuckled, and by the glare of the naked overhead electric light Robert read:

Please Knock and Wait for Permission to Enter.

“Miss Meadows wrote that herself, and I think it’s wonderful.” Jonathan laughed. “All her life was surrounded by people^—her parasitic family—and the thousands of kids she taught and interfering relatives urging her to ‘do her duty,’ in short, not to bother them. Her life was made up of bells and beds, blackboards and blackguards, pounding feet and pounding voices, dust, chalk, dishes, clatter, clatter, clatter. Now, at last, she has a chance to be alone. Not even the nurses dare come in without the preliminary knock and permission. Alone. That’s a marvelous thing—being alone. We don’t fully appreciate it. And I have the funniest damned feeling that we’re coming into an era where no one will let you alone or have respect for your privacy. All in the name of ‘social feeling’ as that idiot Horace Mann called it.”

He knocked on the door and after a moment a woman’s voice said a little forbiddingly, “Who is it?”

“Jon Ferrier, Miss Anne.”

“Oh, come in, come in!” They went in to a large, whitewashed room sparkling with sunlight, and Robert saw the small round figure sitting up in the bed, smoothing back astonishingly black thick hair about a plump and very ashen face. He had expected to see some mortal wreck of a poor aged woman, but Miss Meadows looked quite well, and her round features beamed, and only her color suggested desperate illness. As he walked closer to her he saw that her large brown eyes, however, were clouded and glazed with the opiates she had been given, and she suddenly yawned, then smiled, and held out her small fat hand to Jonathan.

Jonathan held her hand between both of his and said, “Miss Anne, this is the Dr. Morgan I’ve told you about, my replacement.”

She nodded at Robert courteously and scrutinized him with the quick intelligence and awareness of a teacher being introduced to a new pupil of whom she must form a concise opinion. “What a nice red-gold boy,” she said, and gave him her other hand. It was hot and tremulous. “I don’t imagine you ever caused anyone any trouble in your life, did you, Doctor?”

“Come to think of it, I didn’t,” said Robert. “Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me.”

She laughed and it was a pleasant, understanding sound. “Now Jonnie, here, was the worst little boy I ever had. Always in disputations with everything. Always certain of everything. A fierce little boy. Born, I always said to his mother, with an outrageous sense of right and wrong and never willing to compromise.” She yawned again. The soft muscles of her full face contracted with a spasm of agony, but she still smiled. She had the born teacher’s perfect control of herself, even in unbearable pain. “I adored him,” she said, “and I thrashed him twice as much as I ever thrashed any of my other children. He was perfectly horrible to his little brother, too. Harald.”

She looked at Jonathan tenderly, and the clouded eyes brightened with mischief and affection. “Jonnie, I know that you’re paying for this room. I interrogated one of the nurses, and the poor girl, she’s a student, was forced to tell me.

Never mind, Jonnie. You know I’d never accept anything for free—ever. So, I asked my lawyer to come to me yesterday, and he did, and I left Papa’s old house to you, and the few dollars I have in the bank. Please don’t say anything. The house isn’t worth more than two thousand; so old and decrepit, you know, but the land is getting valuable. Give it to one of your charities, if you want to. I just want to be sure you have it—and nobody else.” Her voice weakened.

“Well,” said Jonathan. He said, “How about your family?”

She smiled curiously. “Jonnie, I’m an old woman and sometimes old women get revelations. Or maybe they’re inquisitive. I know you’re the one who has been sending me that mysterious monthly cashier’s check. Please don’t deny it.”

Her voice, her eyes, her hair and her manner were that of a young girl, and Robert recalled that most of the teachers he had known had had this odd youthfulness into very old age. Was it because they had associated with children so much, or was it an innate quality of the spirit?

She was still holding Jonathan’s hand, and now she bent her head and touched her cheek to it, like a mother. “Such a lovely boy,” she said. “Jonnie, you must never leave here; you mustn’t let them drive you away. You’ll never get over it if you do. Don’t make me think I was wrong about you. You always had such courage.”

“Now, Miss Anne,” said Jonathan. “You aren’t my teacher any longer. I’m a big boy now. How did you sleep last night?”

“Very well; better than for many months.”

“You should have come to me sooner.”

She smiled at him with beautiful candor. “Well, Jonnie, I knew that you treated so many people without charging them. I knew you wouldn’t charge me. So, I kept away from you. Yes, I know I could have gone to other doctors—but they would have charged me, and I couldn’t afford it. What was a poor woman to do?”

Jonathan sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her with gravity. “Miss Anne, you know I’m going to operate on you tomorrow, and that will relieve you of the greater part of your pain. But you know it isn’t going to make much difference in the long run, don’t you?”

“Yes. I know, Jonnie. I’m glad you don’t try to fool me. You know, I never did have much time to think about God, but now I do. It’s very interesting. In a way it’s the most ex- citing thing that ever happened to me, speculating about God and where I’m going. When my eyes aren’t too tired, I study that Bible I brought with me. ‘Surely man lives again.’ That’s quite comforting. I just hope,” she said with her merry smile, “that they don’t assign me to teaching again, not for a very long time. I just hope that they’ll let me live in a small wooden house with roses, in the midst of a deep forest, and listen to the birds sing. All alone.”

Jonathan said nothing. He just stroked her feverish hand. “You don’t believe it, do you, sweetheart?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t. But I may be wrong. I hope, for your sake, that I am.”

She sighed and then quirked her eyebrows questioningly at Robert. “I hope you’re a more pious boy than Jonnie is, Dr. Morgan.” Then she returned to Jonathan. Her face changed. “Don’t leave me, Jonnie, Jonnie, don’t leave me!” There was a sudden terror in her voice.

“I won’t, I won’t. You know I won’t.” He hesitated. “I know you aren’t a Catholic. But would you like a friend of mine to come to see you, just to chat, a Father McNulty? He won’t preach at you or sound off periods at you. But he could tell you things that might interest you; after all, it’s his specialty.”

“Yes, sweetheart, I’d like that very much.” The terror had left her voice. “Thank you, Jonnie. And we’ll plot together how to keep you where you’re needed so much.”

A nurse came in with a hypodermic of morphine, but it was Jonathan who swabbed Miss Meadows’ arm with alcohol and who inserted the needle. She kept her eye on him, the thoughtful eyes of a teacher. “Now I’ll sleep,” she said. “And I did want to think.”

Robert had seen hundreds of patients during his internship, but he had never before seen such absolute courage and fortitude. He knew that her suffering must be terrible. Yet her concern was for Jonathan. As the nurse settled her on her pillows and smoothed her sheet and blanket she said, “You mustn’t go away, dearest, you mustn’t. It would kill you forever. It never does to run; you just stand up and face them, even if your back is against the wall. That’s what you did when you were a little boy—I want to remember you like that. Jonnie?”

“I’m not a coward,” he said. In a moment she was serenely asleep, but now the full furrows of her torment were deep on her forehead and about her mouth. The nurse said, “Oh, Dr.

Ferrier. The Chief-of-Staff, Dr. Bedloe, is particularly anxious to see you. He said it was most important.”

“The hell with him,” said Jonathan. He looked down at the sleeping woman. “I wish she’d drop away, like that, and never wake up again. This thing can disintegrate the most courageous patient; I don’t want to see her at the last, as shell be.”

Robert said, out of his youth and ignorance, “I don’t think she’ll disintegrate.”

“She will, she will,” said Jonathan. “She’s not the only one who’s keeping me in this town. I can’t go until she does. And you can’t tell with this disease; she may live a week or six months more.” He looked bitterly at Robert. “I know it’s our duty to keep them alive. I just wonder why, that’s all.”

The nurse gave him a prim hard look, then said again, “Dr. Bedloe is particularly anxious to see you, Doctor.”

“So you said. And I said, the hell with him.” He took Robert’s arm. “I can’t do you any damage now. You’ve been accepted on the staff. And Bedloe’s going to be your particular misery. One of the old diploma-mill hacks with not a tenth of the sense Dr. Bogus had.”