Testimony of Two Men

by Taylor Caldwell

  "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, Jon
nie. 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."

  Robert recalled Dr. Bedloe as a tall and stately middle-aged man with a pink complexion, cold blue eyes and an authoritative manner and an absolutely positive voice. Like so many of his kind he had a thick and flowing mop of white and silken hair, and he was reputed to be very wealthy from his investments in oil wells in Titusville. Jonathan said, as he and Robert left the room, "I'd call Bedloe an anus, except that would be disparaging a very hard-working and long-suffering part of the body, much abused and rarely giving any trouble except to the sedentary. I think I'll just call him a cloaca, which isn't flattering the cloaca, which always serves tome purpose, which Bedloe doesn't. Except that he does, in a way, cleanly carry away a lot of the bloody sewage his pet hacks spew up in the operating rooms. Cleanly away, with no one suspecting except a lot of us younger doctors and most of us wouldn't dare say anything. I always did. He hates my guts."

  The nurse twitched her long white skirts out into the hall after them. "Dr. Bedloe," she began, in her admonishing voice, and then she brightened. "Oh, here he is now!"

  Dr. Humphrey Bedloe was indeed bearing down on them like an eagle. "Jon!" he said. "I'm glad I caught you! It's very important"

  "Well," said Jonathan, leaning negligently against the wall, "what have I done now? You know I don't have but half a dozen patients in this penitentiary these days." Then he looked at the older man with curiosity. "What's the matter— Doctor? Having a touch of angina again?"

  Dr. Bedloe was indeed pale and appeared agitated. He nodded curtly at the nurse, who scuttled away. He bit at the end of his silken white mustache. He glanced warily at Robert. "I must speak to you alone, Jon. It's of the utmost importance."

  "Speak away," said Jonathan, not moving. "Bob here is my replacement. He'll be cleaning up after your butchers, who don't even have a sense of proportion enough to wear the straw hat of an honest butcher. Speak away."

  Dr. Bedloe's agitation increased. He gave Robert a quelling look. Only two weeks ago Robert would have obeyed that glance and would have discreetly moved off. Now he stood solidly on his big legs and did not stir. For an instant Dr. Bedloe openly and actively disliked him and there was a blue glitter of ominous threat in his eyes.

  "It's very private, Jon."

  "Nothing's private. Not to me, any longer."

  Again the older man savagely bit on his mustache. Then he said, "It's my niece, you know her, Hortense Nolan. You were at her wedding. She married the Nolan boy. Oh, damn it, Jon! I can't stand here like this and inform the whole hospital!"

  "If I remember," said Jonathan, "you did inform the whole hospital. About me. Even before I was arrested. In fact, you didn't even wait for the indictment before you had me removed from the staff. A very precipitate fella, you. Dear, paternal Humphrey."

  "My God," said Dr. Bedloe, and Robert, with interest, saw actual despair on the man's face. "Why do you bring that up now? Isn't it over with? I'm thinking of Hortense. I've thought lots of things about you, Jon. Always did. But I never thought you were malicious."

  Now Jonathan was looking intently at him. "There is something wrong, isn't there? Well, what about Hortense? Pretty girl, if I remember. Lots of red hair and big white teeth. Nineteen? Well?"

  "It's—you know, Jon. You know all about it! She was pregnant—"

  "Yes. I remember. And I recommended young Harrington to you, when you asked me to deliver her. But young, modern doctors aren't good enough for you and your family, are they? You said old Schaefer would deliver her. That's it, isn't it?"

  "Yes." Dr. Bedloe bent his head. "That's true. He did deliver her, at St. Hilda's. Five days ago. A nice baby, a boy."

  "Well?"

  "It's this, Jon—"

  "Now, don't tell me the girl has puerperal fever, for God's sake!"

  "Peritonitis."

  Jonathan lifted himself from the wall and he looked at Dr. Bedloe with open hatred and disgust. "I told you. Old Schaefer isn't fit to deliver a cow. Never washes his hands; it's a principle of his, since asepsis was introduced years ago. He doesn't believe in germs even now, does he? But he's such a benign old bastard and gives the girls such encouragement and pats their cheeks sweetly before he slaps the chloroform over their noses. Peritonitis, by God! Well, what did you expect?"

  "She's dying, Jon. She's like a daughter to me; never had any of my own. And she's dying. They telephoned me from St. Hilda's just now. She—she's been feverish since yesterday, and now today—"

  "And he infected her, the bloody old swine, with his patting dirty hands. What had he b
een doing before? An autopsy?"

  Dr. Bedloe spread out his hands. "Jon, they think she needs an immediate operation—to save her life. She—she bled a little more than ordinarily after the delivery. Thought she was out of danger. Jon, she's dying."

  Jonathan said in a loud voice, "An operation? Hysterectomy? At her age?"

  All at once Dr. Bedloe looked old and stricken and sick. "It's even worse. The—the baby died last night. A—a brain injury, birth injury, I think. Was doing so well, too, in spite of the high forceps. All at once. She's only nineteen, Jon."

  "Sweet Jesus," said Jonathan.

  Robert Morgan did not even wince. He was too horrified.

  "Jon, Louis Hedler said I should call you at once. He said if anyone can save Hortense, it is you."

  "Good old Louis," said Jonathan. He shook his head. "Look, Humphrey, I'm not going to get into this, not even for little Hortense. It's your dirty work; you're not going to smear me with it. Where's old Schaefer?"

  "He never leaves her for a moment. It's—pathetic—"

  "I bet it is. She's his goddaughter, isn't she? No, I'm not getting into this filthy mess and then letting you sing it out that it was all my fault. No, Humphrey. I'm sorry, but the mess is in your own lap."

  Dr. Bedloe grasped Jon's arm. "Please, Jon." His voice broke. "Don't think of anything else but Hortense. I promise you—"

  "Sure you will. Anything as of now. But if Hortense dies, and she probably will, then it'll be all my fault. Wasn't it your wife who spread it around that there was something mysterious about little Martha Best's death? Yes, it was. My mother told me."