CHAPTER IIIKennethcame into contact with few others than his own people during the first month after his return to Central City. The first two weeks had been spent in getting his offices arranged with the innumerable details of carpentering, plastering, painting, and disposition of the equipment he had ordered in New York during the days he had spent there on his return from France.During the early months of 1917, when through every available means propaganda was being used to whip into being America’s war spirit, one of the most powerful arguments heard was that of the beneficial effect army life would have on the men who entered the service. Newspapers and magazines were filled with it, orators in church and theatre and hall shouted it, every signboard thrust it into the faces of Americans. Alluring pictures were painted of the growth, physical and mental, that would certainly follow enlistment “to make the world safe for democracy.”To some of those who fought, such a change probably did come, but the mental outlook of most of them was changed but little. The war was too big a thing, too terrible and too searing a catastrophe, to be adequately comprehended by the farmer boys, theclerks, and the boys fresh from school who chiefly made up the fighting forces. Their lives had been too largely confined to the narrow ways to enable them to realize the immensity of the event into which they had been so suddenly plunged. Their most vivid memories were of “that damned second loot” or ofbeaucoup vin blancor, most frequently, of all-too-brief adventures with themademoiselles. With the end of the war and demobilization had come the short periods of hero-worship and then the sudden forgetfulness of those for whom they had fought. The old narrow life began again with but occasional revolts against the monotony of it all, against the blasting of the high hopes held when the war was being fought. Even these spasmodic revolts eventually petered out in vague mutterings among men like themselves who let their inward dissatisfaction dissipate in thin air.More deep-rooted was this revolt among Negro ex-service men. Many of them entered the army, not so much because they were fired with the desire to fight for an abstract thing like world democracy, but, because they were of a race oppressed, they entertained very definite beliefs that service in France would mean a more decent regime in America, when the war was over, for themselves and all others who were classed as Negroes. Many of them, consciously or subconsciously, had a spirit which might have been expressed like this: “Yes, we’ll fight for democracy in France, but when that’s over with we’re going to expect and we’re going to get some of thatsame democracy for ourselves right here in America.” It was because of this spirit and determination that they submitted to the rigid army discipline to which was often added all the contumely that race prejudice could heap upon them.Kenneth was of that class which thought of these things in a more detached, more abstract, more subconscious manner. During the days when, stationed close to the line, he treated black men brought to the base hospital with arms and legs torn away by exploding shells, with bodies torn and mangled by shrapnel, or with flesh seared by mustard gas, he had inwardly cursed the so-called civilization which not only permitted but made such carnage necessary. But when the nightmare had ended, he rapidly forgot the nausea he had felt, and plunged again into his beloved work. More easily than he would have thought possible, he forgot the months of discomfort and weariness and bloodshed. It came back to him only in fitful memories as of some particularly horrible dream.To Kenneth, when work grew wearisome or when memories would not down, there came relaxation in literature, an opiate for which he would never cease being grateful to Professor Fuller, his old teacher at Atlanta. It was “Pop”. Fuller who, with his benign and paternal manner, his adoration of the best of the world’s literature, had sown in Kenneth the seed of that same love. He read and rereadJean Christophe, finding in the adventures and particularly in the mental processes of Rolland’s hero manyof his own reactions towards life. He had read the plays of Bernard Shaw, garnering here and there a morsel of truth though much of Shaw eluded him. Theodore Dreiser’s gloominess and sex-obsession he liked though it often repelled him; he admired the man for his honesty and disliked his pessimism or what seemed to him a dolorous outlook on life. He loved the colourful romances of Hergesheimer, considering them of little enduring value but nevertheless admiring his descriptions of affluent life, enjoying it vicariously. Willa Cather’sMy Antoniahe delighted in because of its simplicity and power and beauty.The works of D. H. Lawrence, Kenneth read with conflicting emotions. Mystical, turgid, tortuous phrases, and meaning not always clear. Yet he revelled in Lawrence’s clear insight into the bends and backwaters and perplexing twistings of the stream of life. Kenneth liked best of all foreign writers Knut Hamsun. He had read many timesHunger, Growth of the Soil, and other novels of the Norwegian writer. He at times was annoyed by their lack of plot, but more often he enjoyed them because they had none, reflecting that life itself is never a smoothly turned and finished work of art, its causes and effects, its tears and joys, its loves and hates neatly dovetailing one into another as writers of fiction would have it.So too did he satisfy his love for the sea in the novels of Conrad—the love so many have who are born and grow to manhood far from the sea. Kenneth loved it with an abiding and passionate love loved, yet feared it for its relentless power and savagery—a love such as a man would have for an alluring, yet tempestuous mistress of fiery and uncertain temper. In Conrad’s romances he lived by proxy the life he would have liked had not fear of the water and the circumstances of his life prevented it. Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant he read and reread, finding in the struggles ofEmma BovaryandNanaand other heroines and heroes of the French realists mental counterparts of some of the coloured men and women of his acquaintance in their struggles against the restrictions of stupid and crass and ignorant surroundings. The very dissimilarities of environment and circumstance between his own acquaintances and the characters in the novels he read, seemed to emphasize the narrowness of his own life in the South. So does a bedridden invalid read with keen delight the adventurous and rococo romances of Zane Grey or Jack London.But perhaps best of all he admired the writing of Du Bois—the fiery, burning philippics of one of his own race against the proscriptions of race prejudice. He read them with a curious sort of detachment—as being something which touched him in a more or less remote way but not as a factor in forming his own opinions as a Negro in a land where democracy often stopped dead at the colour line.It was in this that Kenneth’s attitude towards life was most clearly shown. His was the more philosophic viewpoint on the race question, that problem soclose to him. The proscriptions which he and others of his race were forced to endure were inconvenient, yet they were apparently a part of life, one of its annoyances, a thing which had always been and probably would be for all time to come. Therefore, he reasoned, why bother with it any more than one was forced to by sheer necessity? Better it was for him if he attended to his own individual problems, solved them to the best of his ability and as circumstances would permit, and left to those who chose to do it the agitation for the betterment of things in general. If he solved his problems and every other Negro did the same, he often thought, then the thing we call the race problem will be solved. Besides, he reasoned, the whole thing is too big for one man to tackle it, and if he does attack it, more than likely he will go down to defeat in the attempt. And what would be gained? …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 toKenneth’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 rôle 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 pomades 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 don’t seem to do her much good.”Kenneth remembered Mrs. Bradley well indeed. 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 cut 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 tumour nearly four years ago. Dr. Bennett gave her some medicine but it doesn’t help here any. Won’t you run down there to see her?”“I can’t, mamma, 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 as 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, which Central City always connected with its driver.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? Le’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 practise here. Come ‘round to see me some time. Right glad you’re here. I’ll be kinder glad to get somebody to help me treat these niggers for colic or when they get carved up in a crap game. Hope you ain’t got none of them No’then 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 Frenchwomen 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 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 Straightener.” 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 here 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 tomove 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.”Kenneth was jubilant at securing his first surgical case since his return to Central City, though his pleasure was tinged with doubt as to the ethics of the manner in which it had come to him. He did not let that worry him very long, however, but began his preparations for the operation.First he telephoned to Mrs. Johnson, who, before she married and settled down in Central City, had been a trained nurse at a coloured hospital at Atlanta. She hurried over at once. Neat, quiet, and efficient, she took charge immediately of preparations, sterilizing the array of shiny instruments, preparing wads of absorbent cotton, arranging bandages and catgut and hæmostatics.Kenneth left all this to Mrs. Johnson, for he knew in her hands it would be well done. He telephoned to Dr. Williams to ask that he give the anæsthesia. In his excitement Kenneth neglected to put in his voice the note of asking a great and unusual favour of Dr. Williams. That eminent physician, eminent in his own eyes, cleared his throat several times before replying, while Kenneth waited at the other end of the line. He realized his absolute dependence on Dr. Williams, for he knew no white doctor would assist a Negro surgeon or even operate with a coloured assistant. There was none other in CentralCity who could give the ether to Mrs. Bradley. It made him furious that Dr. Williams should hesitate so long. At the same time, he knew he must restrain the hot and burning words that he would have used. The pompous one hinted of the pressure of his own work—work that would keep him busy all day.Into his words he injected the note of affront at being asked—he, the coloured physician of Central City—to assist a younger man. Especially on that man’s first case. Kenneth swallowed his anger and pride, and pleaded with Dr. Williams at least to come over. Finally, the older physician agreed in a condescending manner to do so.Hurrying back to his office, Kenneth found Mrs. Bradley arranged on the table ready for the operation. Examining her, he found she was in delirium, her eyes glazed, her abdomen hard and distended, and she had a temperature of 105 degrees. He hastily sterilized his hands and put on his gown and cap. As he finished his preparations, Dr. Williams in leisurely manner strolled into the room with a benevolent and patronizing “Howdy, Kenneth, my boy. I won’t be able to help you out after all. I’ve got to see some patients of my own.”He emphasized “my own,” for he had heard of the manner by which Kenneth had obtained the case of Mrs. Bradley Kenneth, pale with anger, excited over his first real case in Central City, stared at Dr. Williams in amazement at his words.“But, Dr. Williams, you can’t do that! Mrs. Bradley here is dying!”The older doctor looked around patronizingly at the circle of anxious faces. Jim Bradley, his face lined and seamed with toil, the lines deepened in distress at the agony of his wife and the imminence of losing her, gazed at him with dumb pleading in his eyes, pleading without spoken words with the look of an old, faithful dog beseeching its master. Bob looked with a malevolent glare at his pompous sleekness, as though he would like to spring upon him.Mrs. Johnson plainly showed her contempt of such callousness on the part of one who bore the title, however poorly, of physician. In Kenneth’s eyes was a commingling of eagerness and rage and bitterness and anxiety. On Emma Bradley’s face there was nothing but the pain and agony of her delirious ravings. Dr. Williams seemed to enjoy thoroughly his little moment of triumph. He delayed speaking in order that it might be prolonged as much as possible. The silence was broken by Jim Bradley.“Doc, won’t you please he’p?” he pleaded. “She’s all I got!”Kenneth could remain silent no longer. He longed to punch that fat face and erase from it the supercilious smirk that adorned it.“Dr. Williams,” he began with cold hatred in his voice, “either you are going to give this anæsthesia or else I’m going to go into every church in Central City and tell exactly what you’ve done here today.”Dr. Williams turned angrily on Kenneth.“Young man, I don’t allow anybody to talk to melike that-least of all, a young whippersnapper just out of school …” he shouted.By this time Kenneth’s patience was at an end. He seized the lapels of the other doctor’s coat in one hand and thrust his clenched fist under the nose of the now thoroughly alarmed Dr. Williams.“Are you going to help—or aren’t you?” he demanded.The situation was becoming too uncomfortable for the older man. He could stand Kenneth’s opposition but not the ridicule which would inevitably follow the spreading of the news that he had been beaten up and made ridiculous by Kenneth. He swallowed—a look of indecision passed over his face as he visibly wondered if Kenneth really dared hit him—followed by a look of fear as Kenneth drew back his fist as though to strike. Discretion seemed the better course to pursue he could wait until a later and more propitious date for his revenge—he agreed to help. A look of relief came over Jim Bradley’s face. A grin covered Bob’s as he saw his brother showing at last some signs of fighting spirit. Without further words Kenneth prepared to operate. …The patient under the ether, Kenneth with sure, deft strokes made an incision and rapidly removed the appendix. Ten—twelve—fifteen minutes, and the work was done. He found Mrs. Bradley’s peritoneum badly inflamed, the appendix swollen and about to burst. A few hours’ delay and it would have been too late. …The next morning Mrs. Bradley’s temperature hadgone down to normal. Two weeks later she was sufficiently recovered to be removed to her home. Three weeks later she was on her feet again. Then Kenneth for the first time in his life had no fault to find with the vigour with which Mrs. Bradley could use her tongue. Glorying as only such a woman can in her temporary fame at escape from death by so narrow a margin, she went up and down the streets of the town telling how Kenneth had saved her life. With each telling of the story it took on more embellishments until eventually the simple operation ranked in importance in her mind with the first sewing-up of the human heart.Kenneth found his practice growing. His days were filled with his work. One man viewed his growing practice with bitterness. It was Dr. Williams, resentful of the small figure he had cut in the episode in Kenneth’s office, which had become known all over Central City. Of a petty and vindictive nature, he bided his time until he could force atonement from the upstart who had so presumptuously insulted and belittled him, the Beau Brummel, the leading physician, the prominent coloured citizen. But Kenneth, if he knew of the hatred in the man’s heart, was supremely oblivious of it.The morning after his operation on Mrs. Bradley, he added another to the list of those who did not wish him well. He had taken the bottle of alcohol containing Mrs. Bradley’s appendix to Dr. Bennett to show that worthy that he had been right, after all, in his diagnosis. He found him seated in his office,Dr. Bennett, with little apparent interest, glanced at the bottle.“Humph!” he ejaculated, aiming at the cuspidor and letting fly a thin stream of tobacco juice which accurately met its mark. “You never can tell what’s wrong with a nigger anyhow. They ain’t got nacheral diseases like white folks. A hoss doctor can treat ’em better’n one that treats humans. I always said that a nigger’s more animal than human. …”Kenneth had been eager to discuss the case of Mrs. Bradley with his fellow practitioner. He had not even been asked to sit down by Dr. Bennett. He realized for the first time that in spite of the superiority of his medical training to that of Dr. Bennett’s, the latter did not recognize him as a qualified physician, but only as a “nigger doctor.” Making some excuse, he left the house. Dr. Bennett turned back to the local paper he had been reading when Kenneth entered, took a fresh chew of tobacco from the plug in his hip pocket, grunted, and remarked: “A damned nigger telling me I don’t know medicine!”
Kennethcame into contact with few others than his own people during the first month after his return to Central City. The first two weeks had been spent in getting his offices arranged with the innumerable details of carpentering, plastering, painting, and disposition of the equipment he had ordered in New York during the days he had spent there on his return from France.
During the early months of 1917, when through every available means propaganda was being used to whip into being America’s war spirit, one of the most powerful arguments heard was that of the beneficial effect army life would have on the men who entered the service. Newspapers and magazines were filled with it, orators in church and theatre and hall shouted it, every signboard thrust it into the faces of Americans. Alluring pictures were painted of the growth, physical and mental, that would certainly follow enlistment “to make the world safe for democracy.”
To some of those who fought, such a change probably did come, but the mental outlook of most of them was changed but little. The war was too big a thing, too terrible and too searing a catastrophe, to be adequately comprehended by the farmer boys, theclerks, and the boys fresh from school who chiefly made up the fighting forces. Their lives had been too largely confined to the narrow ways to enable them to realize the immensity of the event into which they had been so suddenly plunged. Their most vivid memories were of “that damned second loot” or ofbeaucoup vin blancor, most frequently, of all-too-brief adventures with themademoiselles. With the end of the war and demobilization had come the short periods of hero-worship and then the sudden forgetfulness of those for whom they had fought. The old narrow life began again with but occasional revolts against the monotony of it all, against the blasting of the high hopes held when the war was being fought. Even these spasmodic revolts eventually petered out in vague mutterings among men like themselves who let their inward dissatisfaction dissipate in thin air.
More deep-rooted was this revolt among Negro ex-service men. Many of them entered the army, not so much because they were fired with the desire to fight for an abstract thing like world democracy, but, because they were of a race oppressed, they entertained very definite beliefs that service in France would mean a more decent regime in America, when the war was over, for themselves and all others who were classed as Negroes. Many of them, consciously or subconsciously, had a spirit which might have been expressed like this: “Yes, we’ll fight for democracy in France, but when that’s over with we’re going to expect and we’re going to get some of thatsame democracy for ourselves right here in America.” It was because of this spirit and determination that they submitted to the rigid army discipline to which was often added all the contumely that race prejudice could heap upon them.
Kenneth was of that class which thought of these things in a more detached, more abstract, more subconscious manner. During the days when, stationed close to the line, he treated black men brought to the base hospital with arms and legs torn away by exploding shells, with bodies torn and mangled by shrapnel, or with flesh seared by mustard gas, he had inwardly cursed the so-called civilization which not only permitted but made such carnage necessary. But when the nightmare had ended, he rapidly forgot the nausea he had felt, and plunged again into his beloved work. More easily than he would have thought possible, he forgot the months of discomfort and weariness and bloodshed. It came back to him only in fitful memories as of some particularly horrible dream.
To Kenneth, when work grew wearisome or when memories would not down, there came relaxation in literature, an opiate for which he would never cease being grateful to Professor Fuller, his old teacher at Atlanta. It was “Pop”. Fuller who, with his benign and paternal manner, his adoration of the best of the world’s literature, had sown in Kenneth the seed of that same love. He read and rereadJean Christophe, finding in the adventures and particularly in the mental processes of Rolland’s hero manyof his own reactions towards life. He had read the plays of Bernard Shaw, garnering here and there a morsel of truth though much of Shaw eluded him. Theodore Dreiser’s gloominess and sex-obsession he liked though it often repelled him; he admired the man for his honesty and disliked his pessimism or what seemed to him a dolorous outlook on life. He loved the colourful romances of Hergesheimer, considering them of little enduring value but nevertheless admiring his descriptions of affluent life, enjoying it vicariously. Willa Cather’sMy Antoniahe delighted in because of its simplicity and power and beauty.
The works of D. H. Lawrence, Kenneth read with conflicting emotions. Mystical, turgid, tortuous phrases, and meaning not always clear. Yet he revelled in Lawrence’s clear insight into the bends and backwaters and perplexing twistings of the stream of life. Kenneth liked best of all foreign writers Knut Hamsun. He had read many timesHunger, Growth of the Soil, and other novels of the Norwegian writer. He at times was annoyed by their lack of plot, but more often he enjoyed them because they had none, reflecting that life itself is never a smoothly turned and finished work of art, its causes and effects, its tears and joys, its loves and hates neatly dovetailing one into another as writers of fiction would have it.
So too did he satisfy his love for the sea in the novels of Conrad—the love so many have who are born and grow to manhood far from the sea. Kenneth loved it with an abiding and passionate love loved, yet feared it for its relentless power and savagery—a love such as a man would have for an alluring, yet tempestuous mistress of fiery and uncertain temper. In Conrad’s romances he lived by proxy the life he would have liked had not fear of the water and the circumstances of his life prevented it. Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant he read and reread, finding in the struggles ofEmma BovaryandNanaand other heroines and heroes of the French realists mental counterparts of some of the coloured men and women of his acquaintance in their struggles against the restrictions of stupid and crass and ignorant surroundings. The very dissimilarities of environment and circumstance between his own acquaintances and the characters in the novels he read, seemed to emphasize the narrowness of his own life in the South. So does a bedridden invalid read with keen delight the adventurous and rococo romances of Zane Grey or Jack London.
But perhaps best of all he admired the writing of Du Bois—the fiery, burning philippics of one of his own race against the proscriptions of race prejudice. He read them with a curious sort of detachment—as being something which touched him in a more or less remote way but not as a factor in forming his own opinions as a Negro in a land where democracy often stopped dead at the colour line.
It was in this that Kenneth’s attitude towards life was most clearly shown. His was the more philosophic viewpoint on the race question, that problem soclose to him. The proscriptions which he and others of his race were forced to endure were inconvenient, yet they were apparently a part of life, one of its annoyances, a thing which had always been and probably would be for all time to come. Therefore, he reasoned, why bother with it any more than one was forced to by sheer necessity? Better it was for him if he attended to his own individual problems, solved them to the best of his ability and as circumstances would permit, and left to those who chose to do it the agitation for the betterment of things in general. If he solved his problems and every other Negro did the same, he often thought, then the thing we call the race problem will be solved. Besides, he reasoned, the whole thing is too big for one man to tackle it, and if he does attack it, more than likely he will go down to defeat in the attempt. And what would be gained? …
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 toKenneth’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 rôle 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 pomades 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 don’t seem to do her much good.”
Kenneth remembered Mrs. Bradley well indeed. 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 cut 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 tumour nearly four years ago. Dr. Bennett gave her some medicine but it doesn’t help here any. Won’t you run down there to see her?”
“I can’t, mamma, 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 as 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, which Central City always connected with its driver.
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? Le’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 practise here. Come ‘round to see me some time. Right glad you’re here. I’ll be kinder glad to get somebody to help me treat these niggers for colic or when they get carved up in a crap game. Hope you ain’t got none of them No’then 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 Frenchwomen 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 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 Straightener.” 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 here 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 tomove 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.”
Kenneth was jubilant at securing his first surgical case since his return to Central City, though his pleasure was tinged with doubt as to the ethics of the manner in which it had come to him. He did not let that worry him very long, however, but began his preparations for the operation.
First he telephoned to Mrs. Johnson, who, before she married and settled down in Central City, had been a trained nurse at a coloured hospital at Atlanta. She hurried over at once. Neat, quiet, and efficient, she took charge immediately of preparations, sterilizing the array of shiny instruments, preparing wads of absorbent cotton, arranging bandages and catgut and hæmostatics.
Kenneth left all this to Mrs. Johnson, for he knew in her hands it would be well done. He telephoned to Dr. Williams to ask that he give the anæsthesia. In his excitement Kenneth neglected to put in his voice the note of asking a great and unusual favour of Dr. Williams. That eminent physician, eminent in his own eyes, cleared his throat several times before replying, while Kenneth waited at the other end of the line. He realized his absolute dependence on Dr. Williams, for he knew no white doctor would assist a Negro surgeon or even operate with a coloured assistant. There was none other in CentralCity who could give the ether to Mrs. Bradley. It made him furious that Dr. Williams should hesitate so long. At the same time, he knew he must restrain the hot and burning words that he would have used. The pompous one hinted of the pressure of his own work—work that would keep him busy all day.
Into his words he injected the note of affront at being asked—he, the coloured physician of Central City—to assist a younger man. Especially on that man’s first case. Kenneth swallowed his anger and pride, and pleaded with Dr. Williams at least to come over. Finally, the older physician agreed in a condescending manner to do so.
Hurrying back to his office, Kenneth found Mrs. Bradley arranged on the table ready for the operation. Examining her, he found she was in delirium, her eyes glazed, her abdomen hard and distended, and she had a temperature of 105 degrees. He hastily sterilized his hands and put on his gown and cap. As he finished his preparations, Dr. Williams in leisurely manner strolled into the room with a benevolent and patronizing “Howdy, Kenneth, my boy. I won’t be able to help you out after all. I’ve got to see some patients of my own.”
He emphasized “my own,” for he had heard of the manner by which Kenneth had obtained the case of Mrs. Bradley Kenneth, pale with anger, excited over his first real case in Central City, stared at Dr. Williams in amazement at his words.
“But, Dr. Williams, you can’t do that! Mrs. Bradley here is dying!”
The older doctor looked around patronizingly at the circle of anxious faces. Jim Bradley, his face lined and seamed with toil, the lines deepened in distress at the agony of his wife and the imminence of losing her, gazed at him with dumb pleading in his eyes, pleading without spoken words with the look of an old, faithful dog beseeching its master. Bob looked with a malevolent glare at his pompous sleekness, as though he would like to spring upon him.
Mrs. Johnson plainly showed her contempt of such callousness on the part of one who bore the title, however poorly, of physician. In Kenneth’s eyes was a commingling of eagerness and rage and bitterness and anxiety. On Emma Bradley’s face there was nothing but the pain and agony of her delirious ravings. Dr. Williams seemed to enjoy thoroughly his little moment of triumph. He delayed speaking in order that it might be prolonged as much as possible. The silence was broken by Jim Bradley.
“Doc, won’t you please he’p?” he pleaded. “She’s all I got!”
Kenneth could remain silent no longer. He longed to punch that fat face and erase from it the supercilious smirk that adorned it.
“Dr. Williams,” he began with cold hatred in his voice, “either you are going to give this anæsthesia or else I’m going to go into every church in Central City and tell exactly what you’ve done here today.”
Dr. Williams turned angrily on Kenneth.
“Young man, I don’t allow anybody to talk to melike that-least of all, a young whippersnapper just out of school …” he shouted.
By this time Kenneth’s patience was at an end. He seized the lapels of the other doctor’s coat in one hand and thrust his clenched fist under the nose of the now thoroughly alarmed Dr. Williams.
“Are you going to help—or aren’t you?” he demanded.
The situation was becoming too uncomfortable for the older man. He could stand Kenneth’s opposition but not the ridicule which would inevitably follow the spreading of the news that he had been beaten up and made ridiculous by Kenneth. He swallowed—a look of indecision passed over his face as he visibly wondered if Kenneth really dared hit him—followed by a look of fear as Kenneth drew back his fist as though to strike. Discretion seemed the better course to pursue he could wait until a later and more propitious date for his revenge—he agreed to help. A look of relief came over Jim Bradley’s face. A grin covered Bob’s as he saw his brother showing at last some signs of fighting spirit. Without further words Kenneth prepared to operate. …
The patient under the ether, Kenneth with sure, deft strokes made an incision and rapidly removed the appendix. Ten—twelve—fifteen minutes, and the work was done. He found Mrs. Bradley’s peritoneum badly inflamed, the appendix swollen and about to burst. A few hours’ delay and it would have been too late. …
The next morning Mrs. Bradley’s temperature hadgone down to normal. Two weeks later she was sufficiently recovered to be removed to her home. Three weeks later she was on her feet again. Then Kenneth for the first time in his life had no fault to find with the vigour with which Mrs. Bradley could use her tongue. Glorying as only such a woman can in her temporary fame at escape from death by so narrow a margin, she went up and down the streets of the town telling how Kenneth had saved her life. With each telling of the story it took on more embellishments until eventually the simple operation ranked in importance in her mind with the first sewing-up of the human heart.
Kenneth found his practice growing. His days were filled with his work. One man viewed his growing practice with bitterness. It was Dr. Williams, resentful of the small figure he had cut in the episode in Kenneth’s office, which had become known all over Central City. Of a petty and vindictive nature, he bided his time until he could force atonement from the upstart who had so presumptuously insulted and belittled him, the Beau Brummel, the leading physician, the prominent coloured citizen. But Kenneth, if he knew of the hatred in the man’s heart, was supremely oblivious of it.
The morning after his operation on Mrs. Bradley, he added another to the list of those who did not wish him well. He had taken the bottle of alcohol containing Mrs. Bradley’s appendix to Dr. Bennett to show that worthy that he had been right, after all, in his diagnosis. He found him seated in his office,Dr. Bennett, with little apparent interest, glanced at the bottle.
“Humph!” he ejaculated, aiming at the cuspidor and letting fly a thin stream of tobacco juice which accurately met its mark. “You never can tell what’s wrong with a nigger anyhow. They ain’t got nacheral diseases like white folks. A hoss doctor can treat ’em better’n one that treats humans. I always said that a nigger’s more animal than human. …”
Kenneth had been eager to discuss the case of Mrs. Bradley with his fellow practitioner. He had not even been asked to sit down by Dr. Bennett. He realized for the first time that in spite of the superiority of his medical training to that of Dr. Bennett’s, the latter did not recognize him as a qualified physician, but only as a “nigger doctor.” Making some excuse, he left the house. Dr. Bennett turned back to the local paper he had been reading when Kenneth entered, took a fresh chew of tobacco from the plug in his hip pocket, grunted, and remarked: “A damned nigger telling me I don’t know medicine!”