“Good-night,” said the doctor and got up.
The merchant turned toward him and said: “There’s nothing more for me to do here either.”
The author had picked up the letter, stuffed it unobtrusively into his coat pocket, and opened the door into the adjoining room. Slowly he walked up to the death-bed, and the others watched him looking down silently at the corpse, his hands behind his back. Then they turned away.
In the hall the merchant said to the servant: “As regards the funeral, it is possible that the will in possession of the lawyers may contain some further instructions.”
“And don’t forget,” pursued the doctor, “to telegraph to your master’s sister in London.”
“To be sure, sir,” replied the servant, as he opened the front door.
The author overtook them on the doorstep. “I can take you both with me,” said the doctor, whose carriage was waiting.
“Thank you, no,” said the merchant. “I shall walk.”
He shook hands with both of them and walked down the road towards the city, glad to feel the soft night air upon his face.
The author got into the carriage with the doctor. The birds were beginning to sing in the garden. The carriage drove past the merchant, and the three men raised their hats, ironically polite, each with an identical expression on his face. “Shall we soon see another play of yours?” the doctor asked the author in his usual voice.
The latter launched into an account of the extraordinary difficulties involved in the production of his latest drama which, he had to confess, contained the most sweeping attacks on everything generally held to be sacred. The doctor nodded and did not listen. Nor did the author, for the familiar sentences fell from his lips as though he had learned them by heart.
Both men got out at the doctor’s house, and the carriage drove away.
The doctor rang. They both stood and said nothing. As the footsteps of the porter approached, the author said, “Good-night, my dear doctor”; and he added slowly, with a twitch of his nostrils, “I shan’t mention this to my wife, you know.”
The doctor threw a sidelong glance at him and smiled his charming smile.
The door opened, they shook each other by the hand, the doctor disappeared into the passage, and the door slammed. The author went.
He felt in his breast pocket. Yes, the letter was there. His wife would find it sealed and secure among his papers. And with that strange power of imagination that was peculiarly his own, he could already hear her whispering over his grave, “Oh, how splendid of you . . . how noble!”
A Negro Doctor in the South
WALTER WHITE
HIS OFFICE completed, Kenneth began the making of those contacts he needed to secure the patients he knew were coming. In this his mother and Mamie were of invaluable assistance. Everybody knew the Harpers. It was a simple matter for Kenneth to renew acquaintances broken when he had left for school in the North. He joined local lodges of the Grand United Order of Heavenly Reapers and the Exalted Knights of Damon. The affected mysteriousness of his initiation into these fraternal orders, the secret grip, the passwords, the elaborately worded rituals, all of which the other members took so seriously, amused him, but he went through it all with an outwardly solemn demeanour. He knew it was good business to affiliate himself with these often absurd societies which played so large a part in the lives of these simple and illiterate coloured folk. Along with the strenuous emotionalism of their religion, it served as an outlet for their naturally deep feelings.
In spite of the renewal of acquaintances, the careful campaign of winning confidence in his ability as a physician, Kenneth found that the flood of patients did not come as he had hoped. The coloured people of Central City had had impressed upon them by three hundred years of slavery and that which was called freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, that no Negro doctor, however talented, was quite as good as a white one. This slave mentality, Kenneth now realized, inbred upon generation after generation of coloured folk, is the greatest handicap from which the Negro suffers, destroying as it does that confidence in his own ability which would enable him to meet without fear or apology the test of modern competition.
Kenneth’s youthful appearance, too, militated against him. Though twenty-nine years old, he looked not more than a mere twenty-four or twenty-five. “He may know his stuff and be as smart as all outdoors,” ran the usual verdict, “but I don’t want no boy treating me when I’m sick.”
Perhaps the greatest factor contributing to the coloured folks’ lack of confidence in physicians of their own race was the inefficiency of Dr. Williams, the only coloured doctor in Central City prior to Kenneth’s return. Dr. Williams belonged to the old school and moved on the theory that when he graduated some eighteen years before from a medical school in Alabama, the development of medical knowledge had stopped. He fondly pictured himself as being the most prominent personage of Central City’s Negro colony, was pompous, bulbous-eyed, and exceedingly fond of long words, especially of Latin derivation. He made it a rule of his life never to use a word of one syllable if one of two or more would serve as well. Active in fraternal order circles (he was a member of nine lodges), class-leader in Central City’s largest Methodist church, arbiter supreme of local affairs in general, he filled the role with what he imagined was unsurpassable éclat. His idea of complimenting a hostess was ostentatiously to loosen his belt along about the middle of dinner. Once he had been introduced as the “black William Jennings Bryan,” believed it thereafter, and thought it praise of a high order.
He was one of those who say on every possible occasion: “I am kept so terribly busy I never have a minute to myself.” Like nine out of ten who say it, Dr. Williams always repeated this stock phrase of those who flatter themselves in this fashion—so necessary to those of small minds who would be thought great—not because it was true, but to enhance his pre-eminence in the eyes of his hearers—and in his own eyes as well.
He always wore coats which resembled morning coats, known in local parlance as “Jim-swingers.” He kept his hair straightened, wore it brushed straight back from his forehead like highly polished steel wires, and, with promades and hair oils liberally applied, it glistened like the patent leather shoes which adorned his ample feet.
His stout form filled the Ford in which he made his professional calls, and it was a sight worth seeing as he majestically rolled through the streets of the town bowing graciously and calling out loud greetings to the acquaintances he espied by the way. Always his bows to white people were twice as low and obsequious as to those of darker skin. Until Kenneth returned, Dr. Williams had had his own way in Central City. Through his fraternal and church connections and lack of competition, he had made a little money, much of it through his position as medical examiner for the lodges to which he belonged. As long as he treated minor ailments—cuts, colic, childbirths, and the like—he had little trouble. But when more serious maladies attacked them, the coloured population sent for the old white physician, Dr. Bennett, instead of for Dr. Williams.
The great amount of time at his disposal irritated Kenneth. He was like a spirited horse, champing at the bit, eager to be off. The patronizing air of his people nettled him—caused him to reflect somewhat bitterly that “a prophet is not without honour save in his own country.” And when one has not the gift of prophecy to foretell, or of clairvoyance to see, what the future holds in the way of success, one is not likely to develop a philosophic calm which enables him to await the coming of long-desired results.
He was seated one day in his office reading when his mother entered. Closing his book, he asked the reason for her frown.
“You remember Mrs. Bradley—Mrs. Emma Bradley down on Ashley Street—don’t you, Kenneth?” Without waiting for a reply, Mrs. Harper went on: “Well, she’s mighty sick. Jim Bradley has had Dr. Bennett in to see what’s the matter with her but he doesn’t seem to do her much good.”
Kenneth remembered Mrs. Bradley well ind
eed. The most talkative woman in Central City. It was she who had come to his mother with a long face and dolorous manner when he as a youngster had misbehaved in church. He had learned instinctively to connect Mrs. Bradley’s visits with excursions to the little back room accompanied by his mother and a switch from the peach-tree in the back yard—a sort of natural cause and effect. Visions of those days rose in his mind and he imagined he could feel the sting of those switches on his legs now.
“What seems to be the trouble with her?” he asked.
“It’s some sort of stomach-trouble—she’s got an awful pain in her side. She says it can’t be her appendix because she had that removed up to Atlanta when she was operated on there for a tumor nearly four years ago. Dr. Bennett gave her some medicine but it doesn’t help her any. Won’t you run down there to see her?”
“I can’t mama, until I am called in professionally. Dr. Bennett won’t like it. It isn’t ethical. Besides, didn’t Mrs. Bradley say when I came back that she didn’t want any coloured doctor fooling with her?”
“Yes she did, but you mustn’t mind that. Just run in to see her on a social call.”
Kenneth rose and instinctively took up his bag. Remembering, he put it down, put on his hat, kissed his mother, and walked down to Mrs. Bradley’s. Outside the gate stood Dr. Bennett’s mud-splashed buggy, sagging on one side through years of service in carrying its owner’s great bulk. Between the shafts stood the old bay horse, its head hung dejectedly as though asleep.
Entering the gate held by one hinge, Kenneth made his way to the little three-room unpainted house which served as home for the Bradleys and their six children. On knocking, the door was opened by Dr. Bennett, who apparently was just leaving. He stood there, his hat on, stained by many storms, its black felt turning a greenish brown through years of service and countless rides through the red dust of the roads leading out of Central City. Dr. Bennett himself was large and flabby. His clothes hung on him in haphazard fashion and looked as though they had never been subjected to the indignity of a tailor’s iron. A Sherlock Holmes, or even one less gifted, could read on his vest with little difficulty those things which its wearer had eaten for many meals past. Dr. Bennett’s face was red through exposure to many suns, and covered with the bristle of a three days’ growth of beard. Small eyes set close together, they belied a bluff good humour which Dr. Bennett could easily assume when there was occasion for it. The corners of the mouth were stained a deep brown where tobacco juice had run down the folds of the flesh.
Behind him stood Jim Bradley with worried face, his ashy black skin showing the effects of remaining all night by the bedside of his wife.
Dr. Bennett looked at Kenneth inquiringly.
“Don’t you remember me, Dr. Bennett? I’m Kenneth Harper.”
“Bless my soul, so it is. How’re you, Ken? Let’s see—it’s been nigh on to eight years since you went NO’th, ain’t it? Heard you was back in town. Hear you goin’ to practice here. Come ‘round to see me some time. Right glad you’re here. I’ll be kinder glad to get somebody t’ help me treat these niggers for colic or when they get carved up in a crap game. Hope you ain’t got none of the NO’th’n ideas ’bout social equality while you was up there. Jus’ do like your daddy did, and you’ll get along all right down here. These niggers who went over to France and ran around with them French-women been causin’ a lot of trouble ‘round here, kickin’ up a rumpus, and talkin’ ‘bout votin’ and ridin’ in the same car with white folks. But don’t you let them get you mixed up in it, ‘cause there’ll be trouble sho’s you born if they don’t shut up and git to work. Jus’ do like your daddy did, and you’ll do a lot to keep the white folks’ friendship.”
Dr. Bennett poured forth all this gratuitous advice between asthmatic wheezes without waiting for Kenneth to reply. He then turned to Jim Bradley with a parting word of advice.
“Jim, keep that hot iron on Emma’s stomach and give her those pills every hour. ’Tain’t nothin’ but the belly-ache. She’ll be all right in an hour or two.”
Turning without another word, he half ambled, half shuffled out to his buggy, pulled himself up into it with more puffing and wheezing, and drove away.
Jim Bradley took Kenneth’s arm and led him back on to the little porch, closing the door behind him.
“I’m pow’ful glad t’ see you, Ken. My, but you done growed sence you went up NO’th! Befo’ you go in dar, I want t’ tell you somethin’. Emma’s been right po’ly fuh two days. Her stomach’s swelled up right sma’t and she’s been hollering all night. Dis mawning she don’t seem jus’ right in de haid. I tol’ her I was gwine to ast you to come to see her, but she said she didn’t want no young nigger doctah botherin’ with her. But don’t you min’ her. I wants you to tell me what to do.” Kenneth smiled.
“I’ll do what I can for her, Jim. But what about Dr. Bennett?”
“Dat’s a’ right. He give her some med’cine but it ain’t done her no good. She’s too good a woman fuh me to lose her, even if she do talk a li’l too much. You make out like you jus’ drap in to pass the time O’ day with her.”
Kenneth entered the dark and ill-smelling room. Opposite the door a fire smouldered in the fire-place, giving fitful spurts of flame that illumined the room and then died down again. There was no grate, the pieces of wood resting on crude andirons, blackened by the smoke of many fires. Over the mantel there hung a cheap charcoal reproduction of Jim and Emma in their wedding-clothes, made by some local “artist” from an old photograph. One or two nondescript chairs worn shiny through years of use stood before the fire. In one corner stood a dresser on which were various bottles of medicine and of “Madame Walker’s Hair Grower.” On the floor a rug, worn through in spots and patched with fragments of other rugs all apparently of different colours, covered the space in front of the bed. The rest of the floor was bare and showed evidences of a recent vigorous scrubbing. The one window was closed tightly and covered over with a cracked shade, long since divorced from its roller, tacked to the upper ledge of the window.
On the bed Mrs. Bradley was rolling and tossing in great pain. Her eyes opened slightly when Kenneth approached the bed and closed again immediately as a new spasm of pain passed through her body. She moaned piteously and held her hands on her side, pressing down hard one hand over the other.
At a sign from Jim, Kenneth started to take her pulse.
“Go way from her and leave me ’lone! Oh, Lawdy, why is I suff’rin’ this way I jus’ wish I was daid! Oh—oh—oh!”
This last as she writhed in agony. Kenneth drew back the covers, examined Mrs. Bradley’s abdomen, took her pulse. Every sign pointed to an attack of acute appendicitis. He informed Jim of his diagnosis.
“But, Doc, it ain’t dat trouble, ‘cause Emma says dat was taken out a long time ago.”
“I can’t help what she says. She’s got appendicitis. You go get Dr. Bennett and tell him your wife has got to be operated on right away or she is going to die. Get a move on you now! If it was my case, I would operate within an hour. Stop by my house and tell Bob to bring me an ice bag as quick as he can.”
Jim hurried away to catch Dr. Bennett. Kenneth meanwhile did what he could to relieve Mrs. Bradley’s suffering. In a few minutes Bob came with the ice bag. Then Jim returned with his face even more doleful than it had been when Kenneth had told him how sick his wife was.
“Doc Bennett says he don’t care what you do. He got kinder mad when I told him you said it was ’pendicitis, and tol’ me dat if I couldn’t take his word, he wouldn’t have anything mo’ to do with Emma. He seemed kinder mad ‘cause you said it was mo’ than a stomach-ache. Said he wa’n’t goin’ to let no young nigger doctor tell him his bus’ness. So, Doc, you’ll have t’ do what you thinks bes’.”
“All right, I’ll do it. First thing, I’m going to move your wife over to my office. We can put her up in the spare room. Bob will drive her over in the car. Get something around her and you’d better come on over with her
. I’ll get Dr. Williams to help me.”
A Treasury of Doctor Stories Page 28