Testimony Of Two Men (58 page)

“No, no. Go on. About Jenny.”

“There’s nothing to ‘go on’ about, Jon.” He was remembering the first time he had seen Jenny, on the island, and he also remembered Jonathan’s derisive attitude toward her and his sneering, enigmatic remarks. Above all, he was thinking with anger of the ugly stories his mother had been sedulously relating to him on every opportunity concerning the girl. He had repudiated them with indignation, but the memory of his mother’s significant and malicious smiles, and her head-nod-dings, stung him. He could hardly punch his mother, but he would have liked to punch Jonathan now. He said, “I was only trying to be pleasant, and trying to thank you for a pleasant day and pleasant company.” Then he was angry as seldom he was angry. “Does it offend you that I find Miss Jenny pretty and attractive?”

“Why the hell should it offend me?”

Robert laid down the file very carefully. He stared down
at
it. He said, in
a
very precise voice, “I find Miss Jenny very pretty and attractive. I hope she will let me visit her on that island. I hope she won’t find me too repulsive and that she will let me take her, soon, to a concert or a play. You do have concerts and plays in this town, don’t you, or have I flattered it?”

“No flattery. We have
a
decent little orchestra, which calls itself The Symphonic. Or is it the Philharmonic? We don’t entirely subsidize it but almost.” Jonathan had begun to smile but a trifle disagreeably. “The members of the German Brass Band you heard yesterday are members of it, and then there are some college boys from Scranton who are quite ‘gifted,’ as the ladies say. Sometimes the music is recognizable. I’ve heard them do a Chopin nocturne that didn’t entirely defeat them, though Brahms can make them hysterical. They do have courage. And if they are a little heavy on the brasses and the cymbals and the drums—that makes a hearty sound, good for the corpuscles. They’re best on Sousa, though, and I defy any orchestra, even yours in Philadelphia, to get more out of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ than our boys do. As for plays, we have stock companies condescending to visit us in the summer from New York, with only a third-rate cast, and Chautauqua casts its tents on our fertile grounds in the summer, too. And once the divine Sarah passed through here and paused for a single performance. Even New York can’t beat all this, not to mention Ringling Brothers or Barnum and
Bailey in the spring. That’s really
a
fragrant occasion.”

In spite of his anger Robert was laughing. “I see this is a
very cultured town and not barbarous. I’ll enjoy taking Miss Jenny to some of these extravagant events.”

“I hear—what is that delightfully coy expression, so loved by the ladies?—‘her heart belongs to another.’”

Robert looked at him with quick and open dismay. “Who?”

That’s what I’d like to know, thought Jonathan. “Who knows? It’s only a rumor. However, that is a very unapproachable as well as an irreproachable young lady. Somewhat like a porcupine. By the way, do you know how porcupines mate?”

Jonathan was about to give an indecent explanation when the telephone rang. Robert looked “at Jonathan, but Jonathan nodded at it, and Robert took it up. “Dr. Morgan speaking,” he said, with young gravity. His thick reddish eyebrows frowned. “Yes, Dr. Morgan. I am Dr. Ferrier’s replacement, you know. Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Kitchener! I didn’t recognize your voice. You wish to speak to Dr. Ferrier? Indeed, sir,” and he held out the receiver to Jonathan. Jonathan put his hand over it. He said, “A doctor shouldn’t call any layman ‘sir’ unless he is an elder and prosperous clergyman, a very rich and older patient, or a celebrated mountebank, or a President of the Republic of the United States of America.” He said, into the receiver, “Yes, Al, no one ill at home, I hope?”

“No, no, Jon, thank God,” said Mr. Kitchener’s warm and
friendly voice. “It’s a matter of a
friend of mine, a very dear and valued friend, Dr. Elmo Burrows. You may have heard of him, though I don’t think you’ve met him. A very brilliant scholar, and one of the heads of the English Department at New York University. Very distinguished; has written several fine textbooks on Chaucer and some minor poets of the Middle Ages. Very distinguished, received
a
number of awards and citations—”

“From other scholars, I presume,” said Jonathan.

Mr. Kitchener laughed. “Well, yes. Like all other professions, scholars give each other awards. Who else would? Elmo’s a very modest man. He took a
sabbatical a few months ago and moved to a pretty little house here which he had inherited from his wife, along with a pretty little amount of money. He’s writing a novel about Chaucer.”

“Now, that’s a subject which should set the whole country afire,” said Jonathan. “I can see our burly tycoons and our farmers and our mill workers buying such a book in the millions.”

“Well, he’s no Booth Tarkington or Frances Hodgson Burnett, that’s for sure,” said Albert Kitchener, chuckling. “And not even a Jack London or
a
Joseph Conrad or
a
Mark Twain. I’ve known him for years. Elmo. His daughter is keeping house for him, a very devoted girl, devoted to him, and goes with him everywhere. She’s his secretary, too, and researcher. A bright girl, Maude’s age. They’re very close friends, the girls. Her name’s Elvira, old-fashioned name; it was my mother’s, too. She’s good for Maude, and even though I’m Maude’s father, I must admit my child can be a little vague sometimes. Elvira’s giving her an interest.”

Jonathan yawned and rolled his eyes. “Very edifying,” he said. “Elvira’s sick, I suppose? Anemic, probably?”

“No, no, Jon, please let me explain. It’s Elmo. Everything was fine until two weeks ago. Then he had a stroke.”

“What hospital is he in?”

“That’s the point. He isn’t in any hospital.”

“Just
a
little stroke, eh? Who’s his doctor?”

“That’s the point again. He hasn’t any doctor in Hambledon.”

Jonathan sat up in his chair. “No hospital, no doctor, and the man had a stroke two weeks ago? Who the hell said he’d had a stroke?”

“Elvira. Now wait, Jon, and that wasn’t a very nice word to use over the telephone, and Central might be listening in, and you can’t be too careful about offending those nice girls, can you? Elvira told me, just this morning. She’s begun to worry about him—”

“Dear Elvira,” said Jonathan. “And who told Elvira?”

“Nobody. But she’s a very intellectual girl, Jon, one of these ‘new women.’ She took up nursing for a year or two, not really to go into it, but just for any emergencies. She’s seen a lot of people with strokes. Anyway, I went right over to their house—237 Rose Hill Road, not far from the cemetery, you know the street, very pretty and exclusive—you got that number?—this morning, and there was Elmo, lying absolutely still in bed and quiet, as if he was already dead. He’d had the stroke two weeks ago, and took to bed and has been there ever since, and five days ago he couldn’t speak, though Elvira says he understands every word she says.” Mr. Kitchener cleared his throat. “He can use the commode Elvira bought for him, and which he has beside the bed, but that’s about all. He can drink a little milk with porridge, and broth, or a little vegetable soup and cocoa, but nothing else. For two weeks. And he doesn’t even want to do that.
I
tell you, Jon, I’m very worried about Elmo.”

“And so you should be. Apparently two cerebral accidents in two weeks. Why didn’t that stupid girl call a doctor two weeks ago, for God’s sake?”

“Well, I told you. She’s had nursing experience, and she nursed her mother before she died, and she told me she knows exactly what to do about these things. But now she’s a little worried because Elmo isn’t speaking anymore. I told her about you, and she consents to let you come right out and see what you can do. As a favor for me,” added Mr. Kitchener cunningly.

“You know, Al, that I’m leaving this town soon, and Dr. Morgan is my replacement. He is taking over all my old patients—those I have left—and any new ones, too. So, I’ll send him along at once.”

“Jon,” said Mr. Kitchener, “Dr. Morgan’s a nice young boy, but he’s just a boy, and we like him very much. But this is his first practice, isn’t it? News gets around. I wouldn’t have anyone for Elmo but you, Jon, he’s too valuable a person and scholar, and we don’t have enough of his kind in America.”

Jonathan sighed with exasperation. “All right. I’ll send an ambulance from St. Hilda’s for him at once, and I’ll meet him there in an hour, after he’s signed in.”

Mr. Kitchener said, “And that’s another point, Jon. Elvira won’t let him go to a hospital. She says she’s seen ‘too much.’ A very determined and resolute girl. She says that when she even mentioned it to her father, she knew that he was as against it as herself. She’s willing to have a nurse or two here, if you insist, but that’s all.”

“God damn it, I’m not going to take care of a man with two recent strokes outside of a hospital!” shouted Jonathan. “He needs extensive and constant and professional care, not the tender hands of Elvira! Get him ready for the ambulance.”

“Now, Jon, don’t get on your high horse. I’m right here in the house with Elmo and Elvira, and I’ve been trying to persuade her to take her father to St. Hilda’s, but she’s adamant. Jon, Elmo will die right here if he hasn’t any medical care, and since I’ve told Elvira all about you she won’t permit another doctor to come into the house. I had a hard enough time as it was to get her to consent to you. She doesn’t trust doctors.”

“The more I see of women,” said Jonathan with wrath, “the more I think the Almighty should have made men bisexual, like snails. But that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?”

“I hope Central didn’t understand that,” said Mr. Kitchener, but he chuckled.

Jonathan hung the telephone receiver up and said to Robert, “Come along. No office hours until two. You might as well get to know the women called Doctor’s Little Helpers. Or, perhaps it would be better to call them Doctor’s Nemesis. They can undo more good work by an expert physician than an officious nurse can accomplish.”

“You forget,” said Robert, picking up his straw hat. “I have a Managing Mama.”

On the way to the house of Elmo Burrows, Jonathan gave Robert much advice concerning women, hardly any of which could be found in standard textbooks on the subject. Robert found some of it risible and some of it lascivious.

“The age of chivalry,” said Jonathan, “pretended to deify women and regard them as too precious for ordinary congress, but that was to keep them ‘pure’ when the boys were off murdering Saracens or searching for the Holy Grail— which is a pretty poetic way of saying they were looking for rich real estate. Eventually, however, when woods colts began turning up the boys invented the chastity belt. After that women weren’t deified any longer, until the late lamented Victoria, who managed to change the Merry Men of England into industrial tycoons or mill slaves, and brought a gloom on the country which almost reached the heights of Cromwell’s reign. Or depths. The Regency girls, with their thin muslin dresses—and nothing underneath—used to wet down those gowns with water to achieve something which wouldn’t now be permitted on our most raucous stages in the New York Bowery, or on Whore Row in Hambledon, or in an other city where the ladies of joy are untrammeled. Victoria decided she didn’t have the physique for such general exposure, so she led the movement to petticoats, bustles, mantles, iron corsets, chastity, and deification of women. A dreary regime, though, as Disraeli said, one needs only to put a roof on En- gland to make it one whorehouse. However, the hypocrisy persists that women have no ginger in their souls and no blood in their veins, and that good women don’t like romps in the hay. We do them an injustice. Women don’t want deification. They don’t, really, even want the franchise or equal rights. They’re just discontented—and they have a right to be —at being deified and considered above the grossnesses of copulation. Give a red-blooded woman a red-blooded man— in short supply in this new century—and the hell, shell say, with the vote or a pedestal or standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her mate, and braving the future together, hand-in-hand.”

“Naturally, you speak from experience,” said Robert. “The suffragettes should lynch you as a menace.”

“I don’t like men jeering at them when the poor dears parade,” said Jonathan. “They should just invite them home for a little intensive instruction, in a horizontal position. Is your Mama an advocate of Votes for Women?”

“In the context you’ve just used, I refuse to answer. I’m a respectful son,” said Robert.

“I really have hopes for you,” said Jonathan. “If you ever marry, and I hope you won’t, treat her gently but firmly, and never tell her anything. And give her detailed instructions in sex, repeatedly. Shell love you forever. I made a mistake with my wife. I thought she had something to give me besides her pure white body. She never forgave me for that, and I don’t blame her.”

“You denigrate half of the human race,” said Robert laughing.

“Don’t you fret. They denigrate us, too, with a lot more imagination. Have you ever overheard the ladies discussing their husbands? It’s an education every boy should have before he marries. Fortunately, though, he’ll never get it. If he did, he’d never marry. It was, and is, the primitive men who invented the awful taboos about women, and they knew what they were about, though doubtless the ladies objected. Modern man has lost his fear of women and that’s a calamity. For him. There’s nothing like a few deadly taboos for making bedtime the most exhilarating time of the day.”