The Doctor

R >> Ralph Connor >> The Doctor


CHORUS:

"Sleep, ma baby, mammy can't let you go.
Sleep, ma baby, de angels want you sho!
De angels want you, guess I know,
But mammy hol' you, hol' you tight jes' so.

"Sleep, ma baby, close youah lil fingahs, Meah,
Loo-la, Loo-la, tight about ma fingahs heah,
De dawk come close, but baby don' you nebbeh feah,
Youah mammy'll hol' you, hol' you till de mawn appeah.

"Sleep, ma baby, why you lie so col', so col'?
Loo-la, Loo-la, do Massa want you for His fol'?
But, baby, honey, don' you know youah mammy's ol'
An' want you, want you, oh, she want you jes' to hol'."


A long silence followed the song. The girl laid her guitar down and sat
quietly looking straight before her, while Barney played the refrain
over and over. The simple pathos of the little song, its tender appeal
to the mother-chords that somehow vibrate in all human hearts, reached
the deep places in the honest hearts of her listeners and for some
moments they stood silent about her. It was with an obvious effort that
Dick released the tension by crying out, "Partners for four-hand reel."
Instantly the company resolved itself into groups of four and stood
waiting for the music.

"Strike up, Barney," cried Dick impatiently, shuffling before Iola, whom
he had chosen for his partner. But Barney, handing the violin to his
father, slipped back into the shadow where his mother and Margaret were
standing. The boy's face was pale through its swarthy tan.

"Come away," he said to his mother in a strained, unnatural voice.

"Isn't she beautiful?" cried Margaret impulsively.

"Is she? I didn't notice. But great goodness! What a voice!"

"Um, some will be thinking so, I doubt," said Mrs. Boyle grimly, with a
sharp glance at her son.

But Barney had become oblivious to her words and glances. He moved away
as in a dream to make ready for the home going of his party, for soon
the dancers would be at Sir Roger's. Nor did he waken from his dream
mood during the drive home. He could hear Dick chattering gaily to
Margaret and his mother of his College experiences, but except for an
occasional word with his father he sat in silence, gazing not upon the
fields and woods that lay in all their moonlit glory about them, but
upon that new world, vast, unreal, yet vividly present, whose horizon
lay beyond the line of vision, the world of his imagination, where he
must henceforth live and where his work must lie. For the events of the
afternoon had summoned a new self into being, a self unfamiliar, but
real and terribly insistent, demanding recognition. He could not analyse
the change that had come to him, nor could he account for it. He did not
try to. He lived again those great moments when, having been thrust by
chance into the command of these fifty mighty men, he had swung them
to victory. He remembered the ease, the perfect harmony with which his
faculties had wrought through those few minutes of fierce struggle.
Again he passed through the awful ordeal of the operation, now holding
the light, now assisting with forceps or cord or needle, now sponging
away that ghastly red flow that could not be stemmed. He wondered now at
his self-mastery. He could see again his fingers, bloody, but unshaking,
handing the old doctor a needle and silk cord. He remembered his
surprise and pity, almost contempt, for big Tom Magee lying on the
floor unable to lift his head; remembered, too, the strange absence of
anything like elation at the doctor's words, "My boy, you have the nerve
and the fingers of a surgeon, and that's what your Maker intended you to
be."

But he let his mind linger long and with thrilling joy through the
interlude in the dance. Every detail of that scene stood clearly limned
before his mind. The bare skeleton of the new harp, the crowding,
eager, tense faces of the listeners, his mother's and Margaret's in
the hindmost row, his brother standing in the centre foreground, the
upturned face of the singer with its pale romantic loveliness, all
in the mystery of the moonlight, and, soaring over all, that clear,
vibrant, yet softly passionate, glorious voice. That was the final magic
touch that rolled back the screen and set before him the new world which
must henceforth be his. He could not explain that touch. The songs were
the old simple airs worn threadbare by long use in the countryside. It
was certainly not the songs. Nor was it the singer. Curiously enough,
the girl, her personality, her character, worthy or unworthy, had only a
subordinate place in his thought. He was conscious of her presence there
as a subtle yet powerful influence, but as something detached from
the upturned face illumined in the soft moonlight and the stream of
heart-shaking song. She was to him thus far simply a vision and a voice,
to which all the psychic element in him made eager response. As he drove
into the quiet Mill yard it came upon him with a shock of pain that with
the old life he had done forever. He felt himself already detached
from it. The new self looking out upon its new world had shaken off his
boyhood as the bursting leaf shakes off the husks of spring.

As Dick's gay exclamation of delight at sight of the old home fell upon
his ear a deeper pain struck him, for he vaguely felt that while his
brother still held his place in the centre of the stage, that stage had
immeasurably extended and was now peopled with other figures, shadowy,
it is true, but there, and influential. His brother, who with his
mother, or, indeed, perhaps more than his mother, had absorbed his
boyish devotion, must henceforth share that devotion with others. Upon
this thought his brother's voice broke in.

"What's the matter, old chap? Is there anything wrong?"

The kindly tone stabbed like a knife.

"No, no. Nothing, Dick."

"Yes, but there is. You're not the same." At the anxious appeal in the
voice Barney stood for a moment steadily regarding his brother, for whom
he could easily give his life, with a troubled sense of change that he
could not analyse to himself, much less explain to his brother.

"I don't know, Dick--I can't tell you--I don't think I am the same." A
look of startled dismay fell swiftly down upon the frank, handsome face
turned toward him.

"Have I done anything, Barney?" said the younger boy, his dismay showing
in his tone.

"No, no, Dick, boy, it has nothing to do with you." He put his hands on
his brother's shoulders, the nearest thing to an embrace he ever allowed
himself. "It is in myself; but to you, my boy, I am the same." His
speech came now hurriedly and with difficulty: "And whatever comes to
me or to you, Dick, remember I shall never change to you--remember
that, Dick, to you I shall never change." His breath was coming in quick
gasps. The younger boy gazed at his usually so undemonstrative brother.
Suddenly he threw his arms about his neck, crying in a broken voice,
"You won't, Barney, I know you won't. If you ever do I don't want to
live."

For a single moment Barney held the boy in his arms, patting his
shoulder gently, then, pushing him back, said impatiently, "Well, I am
a blamed old fool, anyway. What in the diggins is the matter with me,
I don't know. I guess I want supper, nothing to eat since noon. But all
the same, Dick," he added in a steady, matter-of-fact tone, "we must
expect many changes from this out, but we'll stand by each other till
the world cracks."

After Dick had gone upstairs with his father, Barney and his mother
sat together talking over the doings of the day after their invariable
custom.

"He is looking thin, I am thinking," said the mother.

"Oh, he's right enough. A few days after the reaper and a few meals out
of your kitchen, mother, and he will be as fit as ever."

"That was a fine work of yours with the doctor." The indifferent tone
did not deceive her son for a moment.

"Oh, pshaw, that was nothing. At least it seemed nothing then. There
were things to be done, blood to be stopped, skin to be sewed up, and I
just did what I could." The mother nodded slightly.

"You did no more than you ought, and that great Tom Magee might be doing
something better than lying on his back on the floor like a baby."

"He couldn't help himself, mother. That's the way it struck him. But,
man, it was fine to see the doctor, so quick and so clever, and never a
slip or a stop." He paused abruptly and stood upright looking far away
for some moments. "Yes, fine! Splendid!" he continued as in a dream.
"And he said I had the fingers and the nerve for a surgeon. That's it. I
see now--mother, I'm going to be a doctor."

His mother stood and faced him. "A doctor? You?"

The sharp tone recalled her son.

"Yes, me. Why not?"

"And Richard?"

Her son understood her perfectly. His mind went back to a morning long
ago when his mother, putting his younger brother's hand in his as
they set forth to school for the first time, said, "Take care of your
brother, Bernard. I give him into your charge." That very day and many
a day after he had stood by his brother, had fought for him, had pulled
him out of scraps into which the younger lad's fiery temper and reckless
spirit were frequently plunging him, but never once had he consciously
failed in the trust imposed on him. And as Dick developed exceptional
brilliance in his school work, together they planned for him, the mother
and the older brother, the mother painfully making and saving, the
brother accepting as his part the life of plodding obscurity in order
that the younger boy might have his full chance of what school and
college could do for him. True to the best traditions of her race, the
mother had fondly dreamed of a day when she should hear from her son's
lips the word of life. With never a thought of the sacrifice she was
demanding, she had drawn into this partnership her elder son. And thus
to the mother it seemed nothing less than an act of treachery, amounting
to sacrilege, that Barney for a single moment should cherish for himself
an ambition whose realisation might imperil his brother's future. Barney
needed, therefore, no explanation of his mother's cry of dismay, almost
of horror. He was quick with his answer.

"Dick? Oh, mother, do you think I was forgetting Dick? Of course nothing
must stop Dick. I can wait--but I am going to be a doctor."

The mother looked into her son's rugged face, so like her own in its
firm lines, and replied almost grudgingly, "Ay, I doubt you will." Then
she added hastily, as if conscious of her ungracious tone, "And what for
should you not?"

"Thank you, mother," said her son humbly, "and never fear we'll stand by
Dick."

Her eyes followed him out of the room and for some moments she stood
watching the door through which he had passed. Then, with a great sigh,
she said aloud: "Ay, it is the grand doctor he will make. He has the
nerve and the fingers whatever." Then after a pause she added: "And he
will not fail the laddie, I warrant."




V

THE NEW TEACHER


The new teacher was distinctly phenomenal from every point of view. Her
beauty was a type quite unusual where rosy-cheeked, deep-chested, sturdy
womanhood was the rule. Even the smallest child was sensible of the
fascination of her smile, which seemed to emanate from every feature of
her face, so much so that little Ruby Ross was heard to say: "And do you
know, mother, she smiles with her nose!" The almost timid appeal in her
gentle manner stirred the chivalry latent in every boy's heart. Back of
her appealing gentleness, however, there was a reserve of proud command
due to the strain in her blood of a regnant, haughty, slave-ruling race.
But in her discipline of the school she had rarely to fall back upon
sheer authority. She had a method unique, but undoubtedly effective,
based upon two fundamental principles: regard for public opinion, and
hope of reward. The daily tasks were prepared and rendered as if in
the presence of the great if somewhat vague public which at times she
individualized, as she became familiar with her pupils, in the person of
father or mother or trustee, as the case might be. And with marvellous
skill she played this string, albeit occasionally she struck a false
note.

"What would your father think, Lincoln?" she inquired reproachfully of
little Link Young. Link's father was a typical Down Easterner, by name
Jabez Young or, as he was more commonly known, "Maine Jabe," for his
fondness of his reminiscence of his native State. "What would your
father think if he saw you act so rudely?"

"Dad wouldn't care a dang."

Instantly conscious of her mistake, she hastened to recover.

"Well, Lincoln, what do you think I think?"

Link's Yankee assurance sank abashed before this direct personal appeal.
He hung his head in blushing silence.

"Do you know, Lincoln, you might come to be a right clever gentleman
if you tried hard." A new idea lodged itself under Link's red thatch of
hair and a new motive stirred in his shrewd little soul. Here was one
visibly present whose good opinion he valued. At all costs that good
opinion he must win.

The whole school was being consciously trained for exhibition purposes.
The day would surely come when before the eyes of the public they would
parade for inspection. Therefore, it behooved them to be ready.

But more important in enforcing discipline was the hope of reward. This
principle was robbed of its more sordid elements by the nature of the
reward held forth. A day of good conduct and of faithful work invariably
closed with an hour devoted to histrionic and musical exercise. To
recite before the teacher and to hear the teacher recite was worth
considerable effort. To sing with the teacher was a joy, but to hear
the teacher sing to the accompaniment of her guitar was the supreme of
bliss. It was not only an hour of pleasure to the pupils, but an hour
of training as well. She initiated them into the mysteries of deep
breathing, chest tones, phrasing, and expression, and such was their
absorbing interest in and devotion to this study, that in a few weeks
truly remarkable results were obtained. The singing lesson invariably
concluded with a plantation song from the teacher; and with her
memory-gates wide open to the sunny South of her childhood, and with all
her soul in her voice, she gave them her best, holding them breathless,
laughterful, or tear-choked, according to her mood and song.

It was by such a song that Mr. Jabez Young, driving along the road on
his way to the store, was suddenly arrested and rendered incapable of
movement till the song was done. In amazed excitement he burst forth to
old Hector Ross, the Chairman of the Trustee Board, who happened to be
in the store:

"Gol dang my cats! What hev yeh got in the school up yonder? Say! I
couldn't git my team to move past that there door!"

"What's matter, Mr. Young?"

"Why, dang it all! I'll report to the Reeve. Fust thing yeh know
there'll be a string-a-teams from here to the next concession blockin'
that there road in front of the school!"

"Why, what's the matter with the school, Mr. Young?" inquired old
Hector, in anxious surprise.

"Why, ain't ye heard her? Say! down in Maine I paid a dollar one 'time
to hear a big singer, forgit her name, but she was 'lowed to be the
dangdest singer in all them parts. But, Gol dang my cats to cinders! she
ain't any more like that there teacher of yours than my old Tom cat's
like the angel that leads the choir in Abram's bosom!"

"That is very interesting, Mr. Young. And I suppose you won't mind
paying a little extra school rate now," said Hector, with a shrewd
twinkle in his eye.

"Extra school rate! I tell yeh what, I'll charge up my lost time to the
trustees! But danged if I wouldn't give a day's pay to hear that song
again!"

In application of this principle of reward for merit, the teacher
introduced a subordinate principle which proved effective when all else
failed. The school was made corporately and jointly responsible for the
individual. The offence of one was the offence of all, the merit of
one the merit of all. Thus every pupil was associated with her in the
business of securing good lessons and exemplary conduct. As the day went
on each misdemeanour was gravely, and in full view of the school, marked
down upon the blackboard. The merits obtained by any pupil were in like
manner recorded. The day closing with an adverse balance knew no hour
of song. Woe to the boy who, dead to all other motives of good conduct,
persisted in robbing the school of its hour of delight. In the case of
Ab Maddock, big, impudent, and pachydermous, it took Dugald Robertson,
the minister's son, just half an hour's hard fighting to extract
a promise of good behaviour. Dugald was in the main a thoughtful,
peaceable boy, the most advanced pupil in the entrance class, and a
great mathematician. At first he was inclined to despise the teacher,
setting little store by her beautiful face and fascinating smile, for
on the very first day he discovered her woful mathematical inadequacy.
Arithmetic was her despair. With algebraic formulae and Euclid's
propositions her fine memory saved her. But with quick intuition she
threw herself frankly upon the boy's generosity, and in the evenings
together they, with Margaret's assistance, wrestled with the
bewildering intricacies of arithmetical problems. Her open confession
of helplessness, and her heroic attempts to overcome her defects, made
irresistible appeal to the chivalrous heart of the little Highland
gentleman. Thenceforth he was her champion for all that was in him.

But the teacher's weakness in mathematics was atoned for, if atonement
there be for such a weakness, by the ample strength of her endowments in
those branches of learning in which imagination and artistic sensibility
play any large part. And a far larger part, and far more important,
do these Divine gifts play than many wise educationists conceive. The
lessons in history, in geography, and in reading ceased to be mere
memory tasks and became instinct with life. The whole school would stay
its ordinary work to listen while the teacher told tales of the brave
days of old to the history class, or transformed the geography lessons
into excursions among people of strange tongues dwelling in far lands.
But it was in the reading lessons that her artistic talents had full
play. The mere pronouncing and spelling of words were but incidents
in the way of expression of thought and emotion. After a whole week of
drilling which she would give to a single lesson, she would arrest
the class with the question, "What is the author seeing?" and with the
further question, "How does he try to show it to us?" Reading, to her,
consisted in the ability to see what the author saw and the art of
telling it, and to set forth with grace that thing in the author's
words.

In the writing class her chief anxiety was to avoid blots. Every blot
might become an occasion of humiliation to teacher and pupils alike.
"Oh, this will never do! They must not see this!" she would cry, rubbing
out with infinite care and pains the blot, and rubbing in the horror
of such a defilement being paraded before the eyes of the vague but
terrible "they."

Thus the pathway trodden in the school routine was, perchance, neither
wide nor far extended, but it was thoroughly well trodden. As a
consequence, when the day for the closing exercises came around both
teacher and pupils had become so thoroughly familiar with the path and
so accustomed to the vision of the onlooking public that they faced the
ordeal without dread, prepared to give forth whatever of knowledge or
accomplishment they might possess.

A fortunate rainy day, making the hauling of hay or the cutting of fall
wheat equally impossible, filled the school with the parents and friends
of the children. The minister and the trustees were dutifully present.
Of the mill people Dick and his mother appeared, Dick because his mother
insisted that a student should show interest in the school, his mother
because Dick refused to go a step without her. Barney came later, not
because of his interest in the school, but chiefly, he declared to
himself, conscious of the need of a reason, because there was nothing
much else to do. The presence of "Maine" Jabe might be taken as the high
water mark of the interest aroused throughout the section in the new
teacher and her methods.

The closing exercises were, with a single exception, a brilliantly
flawless exhibition. That exception appeared in the Euclid of the
entrance class. The mathematics were introduced early in the day. The
arithmetic, which dealt chiefly with problems of barter and sale of the
various products of the farm, was lightly and deftly passed over. The
algebra class was equally successful. In the Euclid class it seemed as
if the hitherto unbroken success would come to an unhappy end in the
bewilderment and confusion of Phoebe Ross, from whom the minister had
asked a demonstration of the pons asinorum. But the blame for poor
Phoebe's bewilderment clearly lay with the minister himself, for in
placing the figure upon the board with the letters designating the
isosceles triangle he made the fatal blunder of setting the letter B at
the right hand side of the base instead of at its proper place at the
left, as in the book. The result was that the unhappy Phoebe, ignoring
the figure upon the board and depending entirely upon her memory,
soon plunged both the minister and herself into confusion hopeless and
complete. But the quick eye of the teacher had detected the difficulty,
and, going to the board, she erased the unfamiliar figure, saying, as
she did so, in her gentle appealing voice, "Wait, Phoebe. You are quite
confused, I know. We shall wipe the board clean and begin all over." She
placed the figure upon the board with the designating letters arranged
as in the book. "Now, take your time," she said with deliberate
emphasis. "Let A, B, C be an isosceles triangle." And thus, with her
feet set firmly upon the familiar path, little Phoebe slipped through
that desperate maze of angles and triangles with an ease, speed, and
dexterity that elicited the wonder and admiration of all present, the
minister, good man, included. Upon Barney, however, who understood
perfectly what had happened, the incident left a decidedly unpleasant
impression. Indeed, the superficiality of the mathematical exercises
as a whole awakened within him a feeling of pain which he could not
explain.

When the reading classes were under review the school passed from
the atmosphere of the superficial to that of the real. Never had such
reading been heard in that or in any other common school. The familiar
sing-song monotony of the reading lesson was gone and in its place a
real and vivid picturing of the scenes described or enacted. It was all
simple, natural, and effective.

The exercises attained an easy climax with the recitations and singing
which closed the day. Here the artistic gifts of the teacher had full
scope. There was an absence of all nervous dread in the performers. By
some marvellous power she caught hold and absorbed their attention so
that for her chiefly, if not entirely, they recited or sang. In the
singing, which terminated the proceedings, the triumph of the day
was complete. A single hymn, two or three kindergarten action songs,
hitherto unheard in that community, a rollicking negro chorus; and, at
the last, "for the children and the mothers," the teacher said, one soft
lullaby in which for the first time the teacher's voice was heard, the
low, vibrant tones filling the room with music such as in all their
lives they had never listened to. It was a fine sense of artistic values
that cut out the speeches and dismissed the school in the ordinary way.
The full tide of their enthusiasm broke upon her as minister, trustees,
parents, and all crowded about her, offering congratulations. Her air
of shy grace with just a touch of nonchalant reserve served in no small
degree to heighten the whole effect of the day.

The mill people walked home with the minister and Margaret.

"Isn't she a wonder?" cried Dick. "What has she done to those little
blocks? Why, they don't seem the same children!"

"Yes, yes," replied the minister, "it is quite surprising, indeed."

"In their mathematics, though, there was some thin skating there for a
while," continued Dick.

"Yes, yes, the little lassie became confused. But she recovered herself
cleverly."

"Yes, indeed," said Dick, with a slight laugh. "That was a clever bit of
work on the part of the teacher."

"Oh, shut up, Dick!" said Barney sharply.

"Oh, well," replied Dick, "no one expects mathematics from a girl,
anyway."

"Do you hear the conceit of him?" said his mother indignantly, "and
Margaret there can show all of you the way."

"Yes, that's true, mother, but Margaret is a wonder, too. But whatever
you say, the reciting and singing were good. Even little Link Young was
quite dramatic. They say that 'Maine' Jabe for the first time in his
life is quite reckless in regard to the school rates."