I had just retired to rest, with my eyes almost blind with the
study of a new work on physiology by M. Brown-Sequard, when the
night bell was pulled violently.
It was winter, and I confess I grumbled as I rose and went
downstairs to open the door. Twice that week I had been aroused
long after midnight for the most trivial causes. Once, to attend
upon the son and heir of a wealthy family, who had cut his thumb
with a penknife, which, it seems, he insisted on taking to bed with
him; and once, to restore a young gentleman to consciousness, who
had been found by his horrified parent stretched insensible on the
staircase. Diachylon in the one case and ammonia in the other were
all that my patients required; and I had a faint suspicion that the
present summons was perhaps occasioned by no case more necessitous
than those I have quoted. I was too young in my profession,
however, to neglect opportunities. It is only when a physician
rises to a very large practice that he can afford to be
inconsiderate. I was on the first step of the ladder, so I humbly
opened my door.
A woman was standing ankle deep in the snow that lay upon the
stoop. I caught but a dim glimpse of her form, for the night was
cloudy; but I could hear her teeth rattling like castanets, and, as
the sharp wind blew her clothes close to her form, I could discern
from the sharpness of the outlines that she was very scantily
supplied with raiment.
“Come in, come in, my good woman,” I said hastily, for the wind
seemed to catch eagerly at the opportunity of making itself at home
in my hall, and was rapidly forcing an entrance through the half-
open door. “Come in, you can tell me all you have to communicate
inside.”
She slipped in like a ghost, and I closed the door. While I was
striking a light in my office, I could hear her teeth still
clicking out in the dark hall, till it seemed as if some skeleton
was chattering. As soon as I obtained a light I begged her to
enter the room, and, without occupying myself particularly about
her appearance, asked her abruptly what her business was.
“My father has met with a severe accident,” she said, “and requires
instant surgical aid. I entreat you to come to him immediately.”
The freshness and the melody of her voice startled me. Such voices
rarely, if ever, issue from any but beautiful forms. I looked at
her attentively, but, owing to a nondescript species of shawl in
which her head was wrapped, I could discern nothing beyond what
seemed to be a pale, thin face and large eyes. Her dress was
lamentable. An old silk, of a color now unrecognizable, clung to
her figure in those limp folds which are so eloquent of misery.
The creases where it had been folded were worn nearly through, and
the edges of the skirt had decayed into a species of irregular
fringe, which was clotted and discolored with mud. Her shoes—
which were but half concealed by this scanty garment—were
shapeless and soft with moisture. Her hands were hidden under the
ends of the shawl which covered her head and hung down over a bust,
the outlines of which, although angular, seemed to possess grace.
Poverty, when partially shrouded, seldom fails to interest: witness
the statue of the Veiled Beggar, by Monti.
“In what manner was your father hurt?” I asked, in a tone
considerably softened from the one in which I put my first
question.
“He blew himself up, sir, and is terribly wounded.”
“Ah! He is in some factory, then?”
“No, sir, he is a chemist.”
“A chemist? Why, he is a brother professional. Wait an instant,
and I will slip on my coat and go with you. Do you live far from
here?”
“In the Seventh Avenue, not more than two blocks from the end of
this street.”
“So much the better. We will be with him in a few minutes. Did
you leave anyone in attendance on him?”
“No, sir. He will allow no one but myself to enter his laboratory.
And, injured as he is, I could not induce him to quit it.”
“Indeed! He is engaged in some great research, perhaps? I have
known such cases.”
We were passing under a lamp-post, and the woman suddenly turned
and glared at me with a look of such wild terror that for an
instant I involuntarily glanced round me under the impression that
some terrible peril, unseen by me, was menacing us both.
“Don’t—don’t ask me any questions,” she said breathlessly. “He
will tell you all. But do, oh, do hasten! Good God! he may be
dead by this time!”
I made no reply, but allowed her to grasp my hand, which she did
with a bony, nervous clutch, and endeavored with some difficulty to
keep pace with the long strides—I might well call them bounds, for
they seemed the springs of a wild animal rather than the paces of a
young girl—with which she covered the ground. Not a word more was
uttered until we stopped before a shabby, old-fashioned tenement
house in the Seventh Avenue, not far above Twenty-third Street.
She pushed the door open with a convulsive pressure, and, still
retaining hold of my hand, literally dragged me upstairs to what
seemed to be a back offshoot from the main building, as high,
perhaps, as the fourth story. In a moment more I found myself in a
moderate-sized chamber, lit by a single lamp. In one corner,
stretched motionless on a wretched pallet bed, I beheld what I
supposed to be the figure of my patient.
“He is there,” said the girl; “go to him. See if he is dead—I
dare not look.”
I made my way as well as I could through the numberless dilapidated
chemical instruments with which the room was littered. A French
chafing dish supported on an iron tripod had been overturned, and
was lying across the floor, while the charcoal, still warm, was
scattered around in various directions. Crucibles, alembics, and
retorts were confusedly piled in various corners, and on a small
table I saw distributed in separate bottles a number of mineral and
metallic substances, which I recognized as antimony, mercury,
plumbago, arsenic, borax, etc. It was veritably the apartment of a
poor chemist. All the apparatus had the air of being second-hand.
There was no luster of exquisitely annealed glass and highly
polished metals, such as dazzles one in the laboratory of the
prosperous analyst. The makeshifts of poverty were everywhere
visible. The crucibles were broken, or gallipots were used instead
of crucibles. The colored tests were not in the usual transparent
vials, but were placed in ordinary black bottles. There is nothing
more melancholy than to behold science or art in distress. A
threadbare scholar, a tattered book, or a battered violin is a mute
appeal to our sympathy.
I approached the wretched pallet bed on which the victim of
chemistry was lying. He breathed heavily, and had his head turned
toward the wall. I lifted his arm gently to arouse his attention.
“How goes it, my poor friend?” I asked him. “Where are you hurt?”
In a moment, as if startled by the sound of my voice, he sprang up
in his bed, and cowered against the wall like a wild animal driven
to bay. “Who are you? I don’t know you. Who brought you here?
You are a stranger. How dare you come into my private rooms to spy
upon me?”
And as he uttered this rapidly with a frightful nervous energy, I
beheld a pale distorted face, draped with long gray hair, glaring
at me with a mingled expression of fury and terror.
“I am no spy,” I answered mildly. “I heard that you had met with
an accident, and have come to cure you. I am Dr. Luxor, and here
is my card.”
The old man took the card, and scanned it eagerly. “You are a
physician?” he inquired distrustfully.
“And surgeon also.”
“You are bound by oath not to reveal the secrets of your patients.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I am afraid that I am hurt,” he continued faintly, half sinking
back in the bed.
I seized the opportunity to make a brief examination of his body.
I found that the arms, a part of the chest, and a part of the face
were terribly scorched; but it seemed to me that there was nothing
to be apprehended but pain.
“You will not reveal anything that you may learn here?” said the
old man, feebly fixing his eyes on my face while I was applying a
soothing ointment to the burns. “You will promise me.”