The Last Adam (24 page)

Mr. Getchell, observing the line of children, dropped his voice. "Of course, that can be arranged, if you prefer, Mr. Parry —"

"Doc Bull ain't any doctor," continued Joel. He raised his voice, for he was more pleased than not to have even this audience. "He don't know what he's doing half the time. Never has known. Near as I can hear, the whole thing's his fault anyway."

Mr. Getchell was trying to hurry him, almost impelled to touch the filthy sleeve of the mackintosh, but Joel was in no hurry. "I see Mr. Herring and Eric Cadbury and Walter Bates up the hill this morning trying to find what he did about that camp place. Huh! He did nothing. He just gads about with that Board of Health sign in his car, too busy looking for ways to fine honest men money! Leave his real job waiting for him to do, and he don't do it. Not he! He —"

Out the door past Miss Kiernan with the iodine bottle and the head of the line of children, Doctor Bull came now, a white coat hanging open from his wide shoulders. "Hello, Joel!" he said: "Didn't hear you mention me, did I?"

Both Joel and Mr. Getchell stopped, so he came up to them. Joel, startled, but now cowed, said, "I reckon you did."

"Maybe I missed some. Want to say it again?"

"Don't mind if I do. I was just mentioning to Mr. Getchell here how it would be a good thing for this town if you lived somewhere else. You ain't no. doctor for human beings. I got to laugh every time I see that Board of Health sign. Huh!"

"Sure, that's a laugh for you," agreed George Bull. "Now, how about a laugh for me? See how you look this way!"

He put out his right hand, heedless of the bandaged thumb, and took Joel by the mackintosh collar, twitching him irresistibly about. With his left hand, he caught up the slack in the seat of the overalls. Grunting a little, and redder in the face, yet not seriously disturbed by Joel's squirms and shouts, he carried him suspended from these two points up the hall. The centre door to the play-ground he kicked open, held it against the automatic closing device with his knee, and tossed Joel out. Waiting, while Joel staggered to his feet, he roared: "I wouldn't come in again, if I were you. We're pretty busy here this morning."

Mr. Getchell, stunned by so sudden and successful a resort to the very violence which it was half his work to keep the children from attempting on each other, grew pink; as though he feared that his charges had caught him in part of his lie about real adult behaviour. They, speechless as the Principal, every face turned, most mouths open, made neither move nor sound. To greet Doctor Bull returning was only Bess Parry's solitary doleful wail.

"All right, Getchell," Doctor Bull said, clasping his bandaged right thumb a moment. "That'll settle that difficulty, I think. Take the child in to Doctor Verney with my compliments."

The heavy mahogany secretary-desk had been made by Aaron Chapin of East Windsor, in 1774. On the wall adjoining, a plain small frame enclosed Chapin's bill, and Jonathan Brooks' copy of his own stiff letter accompanying payment, but characterizing the charge as excessive. Judge Brooks had no way of knowing that in his great-great-granddaughter's day Aaron Chapin's best work would be worth some fifty times the price so unwillingly paid for it.

The closed writing flap was decorated with three concave shells, topping the solid embossed blocks of the front. Walter Bates put out a finger, fitted the tip into the delicate fluting of the nearest shell, ran it pleasurably up and down. Noticing then what he was doing, he jerked his hand away, guilty, looking to see who had observed him. No one had. Biting his moustache, he glanced quickly up and down the packed shelves of books covering the opposite wall. Uncrossing his legs, he crossed them the other way, nodding in unrequested agreement with Matthew Herring, and considered the fire a moment. Finding nothing there, he lifted his eyes to admire the rare colour lithograph of
Ivanhoe, The Connecticut Whirlwind: Property of Paul Banning, Esq.,
furiously pacing past a fading judges' stand on an age-stained track.

"You see, there's no doubt about it," Matthew Herring said. "The latrines were placed above this gully. We followed it down for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and, of course, it does empty into one of the brooks feeding the reservoir."

"Of course," said Eric Cadbury. "I'll say this. In summer I don't think it would be a brook itself. It was just when all that rain came, it simply washed right down."

"Granting that," said Matthew Herring, "the fact was that Doctor Bull never made any kind of an inspection. He said frankly that he hadn't bothered. That seems to me pretty close to criminal negligence. How would it look to the Grand Jury, Eric?"

Eric Cadbury smiled. "You can't tell," he admitted. "I haven't been a Grand Juror very long, after all; but as near as I can see, you can always fix up an indictment if you're willing to swap. You can usually find something the others want, and just hold out on it until they agree to scratch your back. I'd be willing to try if you help me make a summary."

Mr. Banning, sitting with his hands clasped, had not spoken at all. Now he shook his head. "I think that any court would and should throw the indictment out," he said. "The errors in judgment statute would take care of Doctor Bull. Unless his duty regarding the inspection of the reservoir is defined exactly—say, he is to make four inspections a year, and you can show that he only made three—you haven't any case. You can legislate duty, but not supererogation. It all goes to pieces as soon as he says that in his judgment the reservoir didn't need inspecting."

"Well, you know more about law than I do," Eric Cadbury said. "It depends some on the judge you get.

Old Cochrane, now —"

"Exactly. Get Judge Cochrane, and the Supreme Court will automatically reverse him. Not two in ten of his rulings are allowed. It would be really funny, if it weren't so scandalous."

"We'll try, anyway," Matthew Herring said patiently. "You're a little too finicky, Herbert. In abating a nuisance, the point is, to abate it. If we can indict him, I think we ought to—even if the court throws it out, or the higher court reverses it. He'd have something to worry about at any rate."

"I'm all against it," Mr. Banning said. "The people —some of them—who ought to be indicted are sitting right here in this room. Doctor Bull's negligence may be inexcusable, but it's our negligence that's criminal. I don't think anyone here has had much doubt about Doctor Bull's indifference—and, very probably, incompetence—for the last twenty years. I can't see anything but the grossest injustice, after letting it slide so long, in now trying to engineer matters to have his medical licence revoked. He's an old man, now—"

"Well, who said anything about his licence?" demanded Eric Cadbury. "Haven't we a right to protect ourselves and our children? Mr. Banning, your own daughter is lying sick upstairs. Now, what about it?"

"I haven't forgotten Virginia," Mr. Banning said. "Perhaps, if it would help her, I'd have more taste for vengeance—I think that's the word, Matthew. As for the other matter, Eric; you ought to realize that if Doctor Bull is indicted and convicted, he won't be allowed to practise medicine either here or anywhere else. That's what Matthew is planning on, I think."

"It is. Exactly." Matthew Herring nodded. "The sentiment doesn't seem to be very popular to-day; but what a man sows, let him reap! I don't think I'm vengeful, Herbert. It's impersonal. I think that I may be allowed to say that. You and Walter here might have personal reasons, but I haven't. I've watched for years now a general let-down under the guise of mercy, and not casting the first stone. It's a mistake. It's doing to others what you hope they will do to you if at any time you decide to take advantage of the situation. That can go on until there are no duties, no standards, no responsibilities left. I think that we were better off when a man was expected to do right, and people were shocked if he didn't. To-day, a man seems to be expected to do wrong; and it's considered rather ingenuous to be shocked."

"Well, I don't know about all that," Eric Cadbury said, "but it sounds good. It seems to me the case is whether Doc Bull ought to be allowed to get away with taking his salary and not doing his job. I don't know who expects what, but unless you're a Tammany Democrat in New York City, I guess you more or less expect to be out of a job if they catch you not doing it in any big way."

"I think you'll find the ayes have it, Herbert," Matthew Herring said. "Now, as you say, there's a good chance that we can't successfully indict. The other course seems to me to lie this way. What can we do about persuading the County Health Officer to remove him?"

Eric Cadbury, his eyes puckered up shrewdly, said: "Hold on. That's the wrong end of the stick. If you want to get at him, you'd better get at the eighteen hundred a year the School Committee pays him to be Medical Examiner."

"We'll get at that," Matthew Herring said. "It so happens that he has a certain support on the School Committee. I don't plan to treat with it, because it would simply boil down to some sort of political deal with the Democrats. As long as Mr. Harris controls the Democratic policies, any decent or honest relationship is obviously impossible. I want to get at it another way."

"Go on, Matthew," said Mr. Banning. "I'm not consistent enough to object now. For some reason, I don't mind cutting half a man's throat. It's just cutting the whole thing that stops me."

"What you want, Herbert," Matthew Herring said, "is not to get blood on your hands, I'm afraid. I mean, because you don't like blood, not because you intend to fool anybody. Now, Doctor Lefferts has always tacitly supported Doctor Bull, and he will support him to the last ditch. It's just a professional matter-. Making common cause against the laymen. What we have to look for is the last ditch and continue the discussion there."

"Yes. Lucile made some experiments. She discovered that there wasn't a great deal to be done."

"Well, the strength of Doctor Leffert's position lies in the fact that a complaint or so carries no weight. You can shrug it off. You imply that everyone is perfectly satisfied—except a few cranks nothing can satisfy. The medical profession understands that. It's been suffering from a few cranks for centuries. But I think if you could show that everyone was dissatisfied, Doctor Lefferts wouldn't lose a minute in throwing Doctor Bull overboard. Now, Walter —"

Mr. Bates jerked his finger away from the scalloped shell. "I'm listening," he said quickly.

"What would you think of calling a town meeting, say next Saturday—that's the fourteenth. I want to have several resolutions presented for adoption—to the general effect that Doctor Bull has been grossly negligent and incompetent, and is unfit to hold his office. If we could get two or three hundred signatures, and send the resolutions along with a petition signed by all the town officers, to Doctor Lefferts, I think Lefferts would remove him."

"I don't doubt he would," Eric Cadbury admitted, "but how about the School Committee?"

"That's a matter for the Board of Education. The District Superintendent would be within his rights, and I know him well enough to be able to say he would exercise his rights, in objecting to the employment of any unfit person in connection with the Connecticut public schools. A man dismissed from a medical office for carelessness and incompetence would certainly come in the class of unfit persons. What the School Committee agreed on or didn't agree on wouldn't matter. Doctor Bull would simply be removed from the field of discussion."

"Say, that's pretty neat!" Eric Cadbury said. "Any objections, Herbert?"

"I have one."

Walter Bates said uneasily, "Yes, but don't you think maybe we ought to wait until later? I mean —"

"You mean," said Mr. Banning, "that Doctor Bull is the only doctor in town. Probably he is better than none, so let's be sure we have someone else before we annoy him too greatly. I'm not very happy about this, Matthew."

"The State Health Department would step in if necessary," Matthew Herring said. "There's no reason to worry about that. As a matter of fact, I've spoken to Doctor Verney about the chance of getting some physician who could come in to help, at least temporarily; and he gave me the name of a Doctor Moses in Torrington. I didn't explain the situation to him, but it seems that there'd be no difficulty. I don't mean to imply that any of this is going to make anyone very happy, Herbert. I'd suggest that you sacrifice your happiness in the common cause."

"You score," admitted Mr. Banning, smiling briefly. "You aren't planning to go all the way home for luncheon, are you? Better stay here. I'm expecting Doctor Verney. He's been busy helping Doctor Bull with the inoculations."

"Well, we'll be going," Eric Cadbury said. "I'm sure you're with us, Mr. Banning."

"I can't be anywhere else, it seems. Yes, of course. You have my support for what it's worth. How's Geraldine to-day, Walter?"

"She's pretty sick, I'm afraid." He hesitated. "I know what you mean," he said unexpectedly. "I mean, if it would do any good. It seems kind of late somehow. That's what takes the heart out of you when you start going for somebody. Well—still, something ought to be done, I suppose. I mean, that's why I think Matthew and Eric are probably right —" He faltered again.

"Well," he added, turning his hat around, "good-bye, then —"

All Saturday morning it had been getting clearer and clearer that Joe was too sick to be left alone. When he awakened, which was quite early, he seemed so much better, with hardly any fever, that May almost persuaded herself that what Joe had was, after all, a cold and nothing more. Perhaps giving him breakfast was a mistake, for twenty minutes after he had eaten what he could, he threw it all up. Instead of then feeling better, he became, not gradually, but suddenly delirious, spoke vaguely of the heat, made clear and insistently voiced but fantastic references to what appeared to be some sort of game of cards.

To see a person thus swiftly and hectically let go the real world and, obviously very sick, take up some passionate and incoherent business in a realm abutting on insanity, would disquiet anyone. May, appalled, could guess that this was no cold. With a cold, Joe, bad-tempered and ill, spent most of his time complaining. As long as he could protest, had the heart and energy to kick against his state, there would be, she realized now, nothing much wrong with him. Confronting him here was, or appeared to be, an emergency in which he was not the captious, easy winner. Drowning men do not complain of the great anguish caused by salt water flooding the bronchi.