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Page 16
James drove all the morning with Doctor Gordon about the New Jersey
country. It was a moist, damp day, such as sometimes comes even in
winter. It was a dog day with an atmosphere slightly cooler than that of
midsummer. Overcoats were oppressive, the horses steamed. The roads were
deep with red mud, which clogged the wheels and made the hoofs of the
horses heavy. "It's a damned soil," said Doctor Gordon. This morning
after appearing somewhat saturnine at breakfast, he was again in his
unnatural, rollicking mood. He hailed everybody whom he met. He joked
with the patients and their relatives in the farmhouses, approached
through cart-tracks of mire, and fluttered about by chickens, quacking
geese, and dead leaves. Now and then, stately ranks of turkeys charged
in line of battle upon the muddy buggy, and the team, being used to it,
stood their ground, and snorted contemptuously. The country people were
either saturnine with an odd shyness, which had something almost hostile
in it, or they were effusively hospitable, forcing apple-jack upon the
two doctors. James was much struck by the curious unconcern shown by the
relatives of the patients, and even by the patients themselves. In only
one case, and that of a child suffering from a bad case of measles, was
much interest evinced. The majority of the patients were the very old
and middle-aged, and they discussed, and heard discussed, their symptoms
with much the same attitude as they might have discussed the mechanism
of a wooden doll. If any emotion was shown it was that of a singular
inverted pride. "I had a terrible night, doctor," said one old woman,
and a smirk of self-conceit was over her ancient face. "Yes, mother
_did_ have an awful night," said her married daughter with a triumphant
expression. Even the children clustering about the doctor looked
unconsciously proud because their old grandmother had had an awful
night. The call of the two doctors at the house was positively
hilarious. Quantities of old apple-jack were forced upon them. The old
woman in the adjoining bedroom, although she was evidently suffering,
kept calling out a feeble joke in her cackling old voice.
"Those people seem positively elated because that old soul is sick,"
said James when he and the doctor were again in the buggy.
"They are," said Doctor Gordon, "even the old woman herself, who knows
well enough that she has not long to live. Did you ever think that the
desire of distinction was one of the most, perhaps the most, intense
purely spiritual emotion of the human soul? Look at the way these people
live here, grubbing away at the soil like ants. The most of them have in
their lives just three ways of attracting notice, the momentary
consideration of their kind: birth, marriage, sickness and death. With
the first they are hardly actively concerned, even with the second many
have nothing to do. There are more women than men as usual, and although
the women want to marry, all the men do not. There remains only sickness
and death for a stand-by, so to speak. If one of them is really sick and
dies, the people are aroused to take notice. The sick person and the
corpse have a certain state and dignity which they have never attained
before. Why, bless you, man, I have one patient, a middle-aged woman,
who has been laid up for years with rheumatism, and she is fairly
vainglorious, and so is her mother. She brags of her invalid daughter.
If she had been merely an old maid on her hands, she would have been
ashamed of her, and the woman herself would have been sour and
discontented. But she has fairly married rheumatism. It has been to her
as a husband and children. I tell you, young man, one has to have his
little footstool of elevation among his fellows, even if it is a mighty
queer one, or he loses his self-respect, and self-respect is the best
jewel we have."
They were now out in the road again, the team plodding heavily through
the red shale. "It's a damned soil," said the doctor for the second
time. He looked down at the young man beside him, and James again felt
that resentful sense of youth and inexperience. "I don't know how you've
been brought up," said the elder man. "I don't want to infuse heretic
notions into your innocent mind."
James straightened himself. He tried to give the other man a knowing
look. "I have been about a good deal," he said. "You need not be afraid
of corrupting _me_."
Doctor Gordon laughed. "Well, I shall not try," he said. "At least, I
shall not mean to corrupt you. I am a pessimist, but you are so young
that you ought not to be influenced by that. Lord, only think what may
be before you. You don't know. I am so far along that I know as far as I
am concerned. I did not know but you had been brought up to think that
whatever the Lord made was good, and that in saying that this red, gluey
New Jersey soil was darned bad, I was swearing the worst way. I don't
want to have millstones and that sort of thing about my neck. I was
quite up in the Scriptures at one time."
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