Ellen Levis: A Novel

On a dismal day in March, four years before Ellen Levis was born or dreamed of, the slight acquaintance of Stephen Lanfair and Edward Levis was quickened by an unpleasant incident into friendship. Both attended the University Medical School in Philadelphia and both were ambitious, but there the resemblance between them ended. Stephen, an underclassman, the only son of a physician, had been started early and well in his career, and was the youngest student; Levis, a Senior, had fended for himself and was almost the oldest. Stephen had an allowance which was not large, but which sufficed for all necessities and some luxuries; Levis had only that which he earned by tutoring, and by acting as substitute instructor, laboratory assistant, and editor of the Students' Quarterly. Their acquaintance began when Stephen, wishing to win a place on the editorial board of the Quarterly, and conferring with Levis, had been invited by him to become a contributor to the next issue.

On the morning of that dismal March day Stephen sat, far from Philadelphia, in the room which had been his father's office in Chestnut Ridge, a coal-mining town above Wilkes-Barre, waiting until it was time for the train which should take him back to the Medical School which he had left to attend his father in his last illness.

He looked drearily and absent-mindedly out into the thick mist which hid all but the immediate neighborhood, a dirty, unpaved street, a stretch of sidewalk made of powdery black culm, and the front of a large dim building, the "company store." He saw not only what the mist revealed, but what it hid, a continuation of the dreary street, running between a black hill and a blacker culm bank, and terminating in a towering breaker, shapeless and hideous in design. There was no color in the landscape; all was a dense black or a soft, woolly gray. The company store had once been painted red, but the red had long ago been overlaid by black.

With him sat the superintendent of the mine, Harry Kinter, a plump, friendly young man with a pendent under lip and easy manners. He slouched, cigarette in hand, in what had been Dr. Lanfair's office chair, looking with dull, kindly eyes at his companion. He was sorry for the distressed youth and was doing his best to comfort him in a practical way.

"Now I can get the old fellow from Hazelton to come up for a couple of years, Stephen. He'll be good for that long, I'm sure, and perhaps longer. But we must have your word to settle here when you're through school; otherwise we'll try to get a permanent man. The advantage to you would be a salary from the beginning, which is what most young fellows don't get. Wouldn't you like the place for the sake of your father? Perhaps the company would be willing to pay you something to help you along if they could have your promise."

Stephen glanced toward the superintendent and then away, unable to command his voice. He was tall and thin and the looseness of his clothing and the length of his hair which he refused to have trimmed by the Chestnut Ridge barber, as well as his expression of fatigue, made him look forlorn. The offer of a position indicated a willingness of the mining company to take doubtful risks, since other lives could hardly be of much importance to one who valued his own so little.

His pale cheeks and swollen eyelids indicated not only the weariness of nights spent in watching, but a copious shedding of tears and also an acute present anxiety. Alas! it might be that he would have no other place to go, that this dreary settlement would be his sole refuge, a gravelike refuge, but a refuge none the less. If, as he anticipated, disgrace awaited him at the University, he might be only too happy to return to this inaccessible spot whither it was not likely that a rumor of his misdeed would ever penetrate, or where, if it did penetrate, it would be vaguely understood and condoned. Physicians willing to bury themselves in Chestnut Ridge were not so easily found that the mining company could afford to be fastidious.

It was not that Chestnut Ridge offered no opportunities to a physician. One could not look casually out of the window at this hour without seeing opportunities, even on a morning when most of the world was hidden from view. Four out of the ten women who stood gossiping in strange tongues before the company store--Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Lithuanian--would need in a short time the attention of a physician. The children tugging at their skirts were under-nourished. It was still too early for the men of the night shift to have had their rest and be on the street, but when they appeared their faces would show the effect of the long hours spent away from the sunlight and of the liquor with which they enlivened their periods of idleness. There was no doubt that Chestnut Ridge needed a physician.

But such work would be done by Stephen only under compulsion. Here his father had wasted his life; he had been at the call of every foreigner, had spent day after day at the squalid bedsides of suffering women, waiting upon uncleanness, and had died at the age of fifty of blood poison, contracted in an emergency operation performed hastily and without gloves, to save two lives far less valuable than his own. He had apparently not regretted his course; he had accepted his fate quietly and without complaint and had been anxious only that Stephen should understand exactly about his small inheritance. Afterwards he lay low in his bed, his hands clasped across his breast, repeating the poetry he loved, a little, lean, bearded man, with eager eyes and a heartening smile, wholly unconscious of the loftiness of his own soul.

Presently he became confused and tried to remember a formula which he frequently recited at the bedsides of dying patients, sometimes in English for Protestants, but more often in Latin for Catholics who could not be reached in time by the busy head of a wide parish. It was a formula which for him explained the world, made sacrifice easy, and a solution of all life's difficulties certain.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," he said faintly and could go no further.

He had looked at his son earnestly and Stephen had prompted him, not without embarrassment. Stephen had been trained in the principles of the Christian faith and he had believed them, but they were now with him wholly a matter of rote; religion was not, he believed, a necessity of his life.

Stephen meant to be not a general practitioner like his father, but a specialist in the diseases of the eye like Professor Mayne of the Medical School, and his ambition aimed not only at such skill as Professor Mayne possessed and such fame as he had won, but also at a similar accumulation of wealth. He did not expect to attain his end without hard labor. He was a diligent student, and he was willing to devote himself night and day to his task.

His hopes of success were not unfounded, and his unusual ability was appreciated not only by himself, but by his teachers. He had won the First Year prize, and Professor Mayne had intimated to him that of all the candidates for the position of interne at the Ophthalmic Hospital he was most likely to be appointed. Such a position as that at Chestnut Ridge should be given to a man like his acquaintance, Levis, who had worked his way through school and who had endured so much hardship that a regular salary would be desirable, even with all the accompanying disadvantages. He might even describe the place to Levis and suggest that he apply for it, or he might mention his name to the superintendent as a possible employee. He pitied men like Levis with all his heart.

But he might need the Chestnut Ridge practice for himself--let him not forget that! He rose and walked up and down the room, still without answering Kinter, who seemed half asleep.

If only he had not imperiled his future by a piece of madness! Having signified his willingness to contribute to the Quarterly, and being immensely pleased and flattered by this opportunity to shine, he was visited by the sterility of mind common to youth which has a creative task set for it. When he was summoned to his father's bedside, his article was not yet begun; indeed, he had not yet selected a subject--and he had expected to make with this contribution an impression upon the whole of the Medical School and the Faculty as well!

During an unoccupied hour when the fatal termination of his father's illness was still in doubt, he had found in an old yellowed medical journal in the drawer of the office desk, an article proposing an ingenious and at the same time unfounded and actually ludicrous theory of the origin of cancer. The magazine was published in England--he did not know how it had come into his father's possession.

The theory seemed to him novel and ingenious, though possibly mistaken; he did not realize that it was ludicrous. In one of those moments of madness which are part of youth, he condensed the article, copied it, and sent it to Levis. The act was like the occasional thefts of children who take pennies in order to buy candy and who repent bitterly and are forever after honest. He was ambitious as children are hungry; the desire for fame was his strongest impulse and he could not let pass even so small an opportunity to shine.

As he sat by his father's bedside, where stupor had at last succeeded paroxysm and the end had become the matter of a day, he realized suddenly what he had done. It may have been that the principles in which he had been trained reasserted their power over him; it may have been that his father's face, which looked in its sunken condition like the face of a tortured saint, recalled him to himself; at any rate, he saw as by a lightning flash the foolishness of his act.

Having realized his mistake, he tried to remedy it. Calling from his window to a passing miner, he sent a telegram to Levis, "Do not publish my article." In a few hours he received word that the magazine had gone to press. Levis had added a sentence at which he groaned aloud, "Article all right."

If the college officials detected his plagiarism, it would mean the end of all his hopes. Professor Mayne would no longer distinguish him by his commendation and friendly attentions; he would have no chance of becoming an interne at the Ophthalmic Hospital and thus of pursuing immediately his longed-for work; he would have to accept the position at Chestnut Ridge and bid good-bye to his proud hopes.

It might be that he would have to suffer actual punishment. The prize, which was to add a hundred dollars to his income, might be taken from him and public mention might be made of his disgrace. It would not be greatly to be wondered at if the Faculty chose to assume that all his carefully wrought papers, all his well-prepared examinations, were accompanied by a similar dishonesty.

In the midst of his distress, he realized that the superintendent had waited a long time for an answer.

"I'll have to think it over, Harry. It's time for me to start now."