As a born Montrealer, I had been startled and shocked the night of Jerome’s meeting even though I had gone to it in sympathy with its apparent aims. Now when I read the account of it in the Monday morning paper I trembled for Jerome and Catherine. This newspaper account could not possibly make a difference to the shoe clerk, the tallyman or the mob which had shouted “Here come the Cossacks!” They were outsiders. But Jerome, no matter how much an outsider he might have felt himself to be, could not be dismissed as one because he was involved in the most respected institution the city has, the medical profession which has been great here since the days of Osler. By virtue of his position at the Beamis Memorial, Jerome had been at least half-way inside the Montreal Thing whether he wanted to be or not. Had he been a born Montrealer he would have realized what he had done, but he was not a born Montrealer and I was sure that even now he did not.
The press that morning had done something it seldom does here: it had featured a local riot. This I knew to be the result of a deliberate editorial decision to declare war on Jerome personally. Not only did they make a front page story of the riot; most of page three was covered with pictures of it, and the pictures made me feel cold all over. The caption under one of them was: “Dr. Martell Gives the Clenched Fist Salute.” A lot of people at the meeting had given the clenched fist salute, and Jerome himself had given it too, but I remembered the instant when this particular picture was taken and the reason why Jerome’s fist was up and clenched was that a rioter was making for him and he was making to hit the rioter on the jaw. In another picture the stage was a confusion of policemen, students and speakers, and in the middle of that mêlée was Jerome again. This picture was even more damning than the first, for there was something absolutely sordid and undignified about it. Jerome’s eyes shone with the joy of battle, beside him the morose face of the Spanish tank officer looked sinister, and the last straw was Norah Blackwell. This picture, taken after I had left the hall, showed Norah clinging to Jerome’s arm with a face rapt and staring at his. How she had got there I could not know, but I guessed she must have listened to the speeches from the wings and come out to stand by her hero when the fighting began.
Worse still was the story on the front page. It was under the byline of a man called Irving Dublin, whom I knew to be a crypto-communist, and Dublin had worded his piece to make it appear to everyone that Jerome was not merely a humanitarian doctor with an interest in the Spanish Loyalists, but an actual member of the communist party. I realized that Dublin had done this deliberately in order still further to isolate Jerome and drive him all the way over into the arms of the communists.
I turned to the editorial page and found what I expected: a scandalized sermon asking how it was possible for a man with the educational advantages and public position of Dr. Martell to associate himself with such a disgraceful affair. And when I read all this I felt guilty and lacking, for I had known Montreal and I should have warned him of the danger he was entering. I should have listened to Jack Christopher, who also understood Montreal, and I should have recognized my own responsibility in even tacitly encouraging Jerome to behave as he did.
I had to wait a fortnight before I learned the details of the aftermath, for I was held at Waterloo on weekend duty. Every day I searched the papers, but they told me nothing. Their silence was also typical of the Montreal technique in an affair of this sort: having fired their broadside the editors let the matter sleep. They printed a few letters expressing horror at Jerome’s behavior, but none in support of him, and then they let the whole thing drop.
When I finally reached town, the first person I called was Jack Christopher, who was at home and asked me to drop around. Somehow the details of his story don’t seem to matter, but here they are.
Dr. Rodgers, returning to the city from Detroit on the Monday morning after the riot, read about it while eating his breakfast on the train. It would be presumptuous of me to guess what the old man felt, but I can’t believe that his feelings were simple. He may have felt a bitter pleasure because Jerome had finally delivered himself into his hands, but he came from an old Montreal family, he was the son of a judge, in his youth he had worked under Sir William Osler and he was a patrician by nature and training. It is impossible for me to believe that a man like Dr. Rodgers could ever have felt it necessary to prove his worth to Jerome or to anyone else in Canada. He was certainly outraged, and he may even have reproached himself for not having taken steps about Jerome long before.
But this is guess work; I never knew Dr. Rodgers and what I have is hearsay.
According to Jack Christopher, the old man did not reach the hospital until mid-morning, and by then Sir Rupert Irons, the chairman of the board, had twice called to speak to him. Rodgers knew what Irons wanted, and it was typical of him that even at this moment he ignored Irons’ request that he get in touch with him the moment he arrived. In Rodgers’ book a man like Irons, for all his wealth, was a parvenu. The old surgeon went to his office, read his correspondence, dictated a few letters and then made his customary rounds.
It was in the course of these that he discovered that on the night before the riot Jerome had operated on Mrs. Moffat. He at once consulted with Dr. Crawford, who had passed his kidney stone but was still resting in one of the hospital beds. After learning the details from Crawford, he returned to his office, read a report of the case and passed out the word that he would be pleased to see Dr. Martell at the Doctor’s earliest convenience. As Jerome was then in the operating room, the two men did not meet until nearly noon.
With his capacity for sensing the hurt in another person, Jerome immediately understood that the old surgeon had been deeply humiliated by the Moffat case. What he had done or failed to do in the first operation I don’t know, but it was obvious that he had slipped up somewhere.
Jerome, with the quick kindness which was the other side of his quick pugnacity, made the first move.
“Please don’t concern yourself about this case,” he said. “It’s a thing that could have happened to anybody. I’ve had a thing like that happen to me once.”
This remark, Jack told me, was the most unfortunate he could have made under the circumstances to an older and more experienced man.
The old doctor looked at the younger one, hated him, and said: “Since this case has been taken out of my hands, we will please not discuss it any further.”
“But it’s not been taken out of your hands.” Jerome gave his gentlest and most sincere smile. “I just filled in because there was an emergency.”
“We will not discuss it.”
Then Dr. Rodgers picked up the morning paper, jogged it across the desk to Jerome and examined the younger man’s face.
“Yes,” Jerome said, “I’ve read it, too.”
Rodgers continued to regard him, and Jerome, sensing implacable hostility, flared out.
“What I do outside the hospital is my own business, Dr. Rodgers. I don’t happen to believe that the medical profession is a priesthood. That meeting was concerned with the most important subject in the world today. Look what happened in Germany. The men of science, the professors, the medical men – they were all so correctly professional they did nothing at all. They left what resistance there was to a handful of workers and unemployed. And now look what’s happened to them.”
The old man raised his eyebrows. “This is not Germany, this is Montreal. We have no Nazis here.”
“No?”
“The name of this hospital, according to my count, appears five times in this morning’s paper. I’m afraid that what you do in your spare time has a great deal of connection with this hospital.”
“It wasn’t us who started the riot.” Suddenly Jerome began talking like a schoolboy. “It was a crowd of students duped by that fascist priest. It was a perfectly orderly meeting till they came in and started fighting.”
After a moment’s appraising silence, the old man put his finger down on the account of Jerome’s speech.
“Did
you actually say the things reported here?”
“I can’t remember every word I said, but what’s the matter with what’s reported here? If you’d take your blinders off, you’d see it’s true.”
“You say it was an orderly meeting when you admit you made these statements? These are generalizations of the wildest kind. These are seditious accusations. These are statements no man of science should ever make anywhere. I shouldn’t be surprised if they bring you within range of the courts.”
Jerome looked at him and said: “Do you think you can stop fascism by closing your eyes and pretending it’s not there?”
The old man looked back at him: “We will not argue, please. There have been quite enough generalizations. We will confine ourselves to some facts.” His finger came down on one of the pictures. “Is it a fact that this young woman has been a nurse in this hospital?”
“Yes, she’s Mrs. Blackwell.”
“May I ask what she was doing in the middle of all this?”
“Isn’t that her business?”
The old man leaned back in his chair and surveyed Jerome. “What’s come over you? You have often been rude and aggressive, but I put that down to your temperament and possibly to your background. You were a promising surgeon, and that was enough for me.” A pause. “I have great respect for your wife and I have known her family for years.” Another pause. “I am an old fashioned man, as you have been heard to point out more than once in the corridors of this establishment, even to some of the housemen. I don’t believe in washing dirty linen in public. I am even prepared to close my eyes to behavior I deplore so long as it does not expose the parties concerned to vulgar gossip. But” – again his finger came down on the photograph – “you have not only displayed your dirty linen in public, you have actually flaunted it in front of a newspaper camera.” He stared at Jerome with his ascetic face, and Jerome flushed. “This particular sample of dirty linen, Dr. Martell, will no longer be associated with this hospital.”
Jerome jumped to his feet: “Take that back, Dr. Rodgers.” The old man regarded him calmly and said: “No, I will not take it back. It was a considered statement. I will be even more explicit. I will inform you that Mrs. Blackwell has been discharged from the nursing staff of this hospital. She will probably find it very difficult to attach herself to the staff of any other.”
“It’s not her fault. You’re unjust to her. She needs the job to live. She got mixed up in this riot the same way I did. What has she done wrong?”
The old man looked at Jerome and said: “I have received word that Sir Rupert Irons wishes me to get in touch with him immediately. I can guess what he wishes to talk about and what he will demand. So far I have not got in touch with him.” A pause. “I am an old-fashioned man, Dr. Martell, as I have already mentioned. It is contrary to my principles that any hospital, school or university should have its policies and actions dictated by business men in any matter which lies outside a business man’s competence.” Another pause. “I dislike you, Doctor Martell, and for a reason which has not occurred to you. People like you place men of responsibility in an intolerable position. I have protected you for two years – not for your sake but for the sake of the principle. But you continue to make it intolerable for me. Moreover, you do this wilfully. You do it because you enjoy making trouble.” “That’s absurd!” said Jerome. “Is it? Please examine the situation more closely. If I discharge you from the staff, I will be vilifled by you and by all your communist friends. You will say I am part of the capitalist conspiracy. You will say – and you will be right – that your work here has been satisfactory, and you will add that your private life is your own. But this propaganda” – again the finger tapped the newspaper – “aims at the destruction of the entire social order. Do you deny it?”
“Of course I deny it. Do you think –”
The old man waved his hand: “Medicine and science are sacred to me. They should be to you. No medical man or man of science ought to touch this – this vulgar filth.”
Jerome sat in silence and after a while he said: “I will not vilify you if you demand my resignation. Instead I offer you my resignation. I’m sorry, for I was happy here. I think I did good work. I’m grateful for many things you’ve done for me. I never wanted to be your enemy, but you live in another world from mine, and I think mine is the real one.”
The old man sat still, then shrugged: “We might have been friends. But as we are not friends, I will not shake hands with you now. I deplore your character and your behavior and your principles – or lack of them. As a surgeon you might have had a great career, but you will never have one now. I accept your resignation and I will inform the board it was given by you freely without my asking for it. You have ruined yourself.”
That was the story told me by Jack Christopher, and when he ended I asked: “Has he really ruined himself?”
“He certainly has in Montreal. He’ll never get another hospital appointment here after this. He’s a surgeon, and a surgeon without a hospital – he’s ruined himself all over the country.”
“What will he do?”
“I can only guess, and I don’t like what I’m guessing.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Do I have to spell it out? Where else can be go but to the people who’ve captured him? That damned girl! I could poison her, for she’s poisoned him.”
“Jack,” I said, “I don’t think that girl has anything important to do with it. He’d have been mixed up in this anyway.”
He said wearily: “I suppose you’re right. But that’s not what people will say. And he did let himself get mixed up with her. I don’t think anything like that happened before, but it might have. There’s a lot of animal in him.”
“There’s a lot of animal in any normal man, isn’t there?”
Jack said bitterly: “All right, to hell with Norah Blackwell. But this thing that people like you are feeling is like a disease. Jerome’s sick with it. What’s the matter with you all?” He stopped. “Have you seen Catherine?”
“Not for over a fortnight.”
“Neither have I. I hadn’t the courage. Do you know where Jerome is?”
“I was going to ask you that.”
“I don’t know where he is. Catherine went up north to the lake with Sally. She’s there now.”
“I’ll go up tomorrow and see her.”
“You’d better borrow my car, then. I have to run down to New York for the weekend and I won’t be needing it.”
CHAPTER III
April had turned into May and the world was bright and clear: cool air and warm sun, a powder of buds on the hardwoods, fields skunk-cabbage green against the heavy viridian of spruce and fir, the muscles and bones of the land visible as an athlete’s under the light dust of its first verdure. All the waters were cold, and crossing the bridge at Sainte-Rose I saw the wash of the river coming around the northern curve of Montreal Island with eddies as smooth as the backs of enormous jellyfish. It was almost hot under the mid-morning sun and yet the air was cool, only the striking of the sun hot, and further north when I crossed a freshet the white water from the hills had a breath like snow. I drove up into the Laurentians and after a while turned off into a valley, then up over a hairpin bend into a trail embraced by firs and maples until I descended in a pair of brown ruts to the cottage. When I got out of the car there was a sough in the firs and I wished I had been here at dawn when the birds sang. Little waves danced on the lake, ferns had sprung in fiddleheads, trilliums were white stars under the trees and the daffodils Catherine had planted five years ago swayed in the breeze like golden dancers. Looking down the bluff to the shore I saw the red flank of Jerome’s beached canoe.
Catherine was alone on the porch in a deck chair staring into the distance.
“George!” she said, and without rising she took my hand and indicated the empty chair beside her.
I sat down and for a long while neither of us tried to talk. Then she said: “I’ve b
een losing myself in this. Look and look. I’m going to start painting in a week or two. I’m going to learn how.”
“How do you feel?”
“If I could paint, I feel as if it would never matter how I felt about anything. Jerome is so fond of saying that you must belong to something larger than yourself. So look at all this in front of us. Look at it, George.”
Silence, and after a while I murmured the line about one generation passing away, another coming and the earth remaining.
“I don’t know about all these big things. Only about the little human specks passing through what I’m looking at now. I never knew before that the earth has bones.”
“How are you?” I asked again. “I’m fine, I think. I lifted too many things yesterday and got too tired, but the Stephensons from down the lake drove Sally and me up and helped us unpack. They were so kind. Jerome used to like them, but they’re conservatives, so now of course he doesn’t like them. He’s still in town. I think he’s coming out this afternoon. You know he’s resigned from the hospital, I suppose?”
“Jack told me about it last night.”
“Poor Jack, he’s so upset by all this. He’s so perfectly organized, and he’s going to be such a good doctor, but he’ll never be a Jerome. He just can’t spend himself the way Jerome does. He doesn’t know how.”
There was another long silence and again it was I who broke it. “Will you be leaving Montreal now?”
“ I won’t be leaving. No, Sally and I will stay in the same old place.”
Watch that Ends the Night Page 31