Read Online Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara - Free Book Online Page B

as a coward. Two or three times in their married life the doctor had said to his wife: If George English had been anything but a coward he would have gone to the directors like a man and said, Gentlemen, I have been using the bank s funds for my own uses. I am willing to work hard and make it up. And I know the directors would have admired that stand, and they would have given him a chance to make good. But ... And his wife would sympathize with him and try to comfort him, although she knew that her father, for one, would have tried to send George English to jail. As it was, he opposed her marriage to Billy English. Her father had said: He may be all right. I don t know. But his education was paid for out of stolen money. That s enough for me. But how was Billy to know that? she argued. He knows it now, said her father. Yes, he knew it, she went on, and he was anxious to start private practice so he could make good every penny. And he had. Within ten years of his graduation Billy English had paid off the money his father had taken from the bank. It had been a struggle, in a way; what with young Julian s arrival in the world. Still, Julian had not been deprived of anything, thanks to her own income. Despite the dark, bitter cloud that hung over Dr. English s college days, Julian, who wanted to go to Yale, was sent to Lafayette. And, probably out of spite, Julian did not accept the invitation to join Phi Delta Theta, his father s fraternity, but had joined Delta Kappa Epsilon. By that time his father had given up hope that Julian would study medicine. He had pointed out to Julian that when I die, you ll have this practice that I ve been years building up. I don t understand it. Plenty of boys in this town would give their right arm for just this chance. Poor Dr. English, people would say; starting out that way, with that handicap, and then his only son not taking advantage of that wonderful opportunity. No wonder the doctor was such a stern-looking man. He d had his troubles. He represented the best things in the community. He was a member of the County Medical Society, the Medical Club of Philadelphia, the Gibbsville Chamber of Commerce, the Gibbsville Community Chest (director), the Children s Home Association (life subscriber), the Y.M.C.A. (director), Lantenengo County Historical Society, the Gibbsville Club (board of governors), the Lantenengo Country Club (board of governors), the Gibbsville Assembly (membership committee), the Union League of Philadelphia, the Ancient and Arabic Order-Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the Scottish Rite Masons (32�), and the Liberty (formerly Germania) Hook & Ladder Company Number 1 (honorary). He also was a director of the Gibbsville National Bank & Trust Company, the Gibbsville Building & Loan Company, the Gibbsville-Cadillac Motor Car Company, the Lantenengo Lumber Company, and the Gibbsville Tap & Reamer Company. Episcopalian. Republican. Hobbies: golf, trapshooting. All that in addition to his work at the hospital and his private practice. Of course he didn t do nearly the private practice he used to. He was more or less giving that up and specializing on surgery. He left the little stuff to the younger men that were just starting out childbirth and tonsils and ordinary sickness. If there was one thing he loved, outside of his wife and son, it was surgery. He had been doing surgery for years, in the days when the ambulances from the mines were high black wagons, open at the rear, drawn by two black mules. It was almost a day s drive from some of the mines to the hospital, in the mule-drawn-ambulance days. Sometimes the patient or patients would bleed to death on the way, in spite of the best of care on the part of the first aid crews. Sometimes a simple fracture would be joggled into a gangrenous condition by the time the ambulance got off the terrible roads. But when that occurred Dr. English would amputate. Even when it didn t look like gangrene Dr. English would amputate. He wanted to