"Why, of course, my man. We did you a great deal of good last time, did
we not?"
"Ye-e-e-s, yes," said Matt; "you did, certainly, sir; but is it
necessary that my poor old carcass should be touched again? It ain't
for the sake of experiment now, is it, sir? I'm afraid, you know,
you'll kill me; and, just for the sake of being fair, as you've had one
turn at me, wouldn't it be better to try it on someone else--on some
other subject?" And "O, dear!" thought the old man to himself, "what a
difference between a Queen's subject and a doctor's subject!"
"Pooh, nonsense, old friend!" said the surgeon, laughing; "we'll make a
man of you again; so cheer up, or you'll be working your nerves too
much. Why, you've picked up wonderfully this last day or two."
"What's the use of picking up, sir, if you get knocking me down again,
eh, sir?"
The surgeon smiled and continued his round, and old Matt sat and
grumbled by his bedside, for he was now up, and able to walk about the
ward.
"Now let's see," muttered the old man. "I always did fancy, and it
always seems so, that the more you try to think straightforward of a
thing, the more it bothers you; so let's try and get round to it
back-way, if I can. Well, here goes. Now here's Mr Septimus Hardon--a
man--well, not clever, but what of that? I hate your clever men;
they've no room to be amiable, or time to be generous. He's a good one,
and that's sufficient. Well, he's kept, say, for sake of argument, out
of his rights by his rogue of an uncle. Now he proves his baptism and
his father's marriage, and then he wants to prove the date of his birth
to have been after the marriage. Easy enough that seems; but how to do
it when t'other party has took possession, and declares all the other
way. Doctor's books will do it, failing any other means; and as we do
fail other means, why we want the doctor's books. I tell you what it
is; I believe we have both bungled the matter from beginning to end, and
ought to have gone to a good lawyer. But there, what's the good of
talking? We had no money, and people without money always bungle
things. Now where's the doctor's books, or the doctor? Doctor's dead--
safe; but then are his books dead--cut up--burnt? That's the question.
I say no, because I'm sure I saw that entry somewhere; and here's the
nuisance. When I was situated so that it would have been almost a
blessing to be shut up here in hospital, I wasn't ill; now I want all my
energies, I'm chained by the leg. I'd give up bothering about the
thing, but I'm sure I read it somewhere, and I'm sure, too, I
recollected once where it was; and it was while I was so bad," he said,
pulling out his tattered memorandum-book, and referring to the
hieroglyphics it contained. "No," he said, after a long inspection; "I
have read a good deal, and taken some copy in my time, but I never
thought I should live to write stuff I couldn't read myself. There,
it's of no use; it'll come some day." And he closed his eyes, and
leaned his head upon his hand; for his brain seemed weary and restless
with his long and painful illness.
A morning or two after, the old man was again seated at his bedside,
trying to amuse himself with a book; but with little success, for his
eyes were weak.
"I shall let well alone," growled the old man; "and if they want to
operate, they may cut and carve someone else. I shall do for the few
years I have to live; but they might find a poor fellow a scrap of
snuff, hang 'em!"
"Here, you Number 19, into bed with you directly!"
"Why, I'm only just up," grumbled Matt, who was the said number.
"Never mind, old fellow," said the speaker; "be smart, for they will be
after you directly."
Old Matt shivered and trembled, and his lips moved as he slowly returned
to his bed, and there lay waiting. He had almost determined to be
content, and bear his burden to the grave; for, said he, "I can't live
much longer." But then he thought of the wondrous skill and care of
those in whose hands he would be, and of the rest that would afterwards
be his were his life spared.
"I won't turn coward now," he muttered, letting his eyes rest upon some
flowers in a window near his bed, and gazing at them in a strange
earnest way,--"No, I won't turn coward, not even if they kill me. But
that's hard to think of, that is. Mine has been a rough life, and I've
put up with a deal; but I never tired of it--not to say thoroughly tired
of it, though I've been very near more than once; and I should like to
keep grinding on for a long time yet. Life's sweet, somehow, when
you've got friends, and I seem to have found 'em at last. I should have
liked to have helped him out with that entry, though. Where did I see
it?"
The old man paused thoughtfully, and kept passing his hand across his
dew-wet forehead; but the memory was still defective, and he sighed
wearily: "Why didn't I begin sooner, or make him begin? Ah, that's it--
that's it! why don't we begin hundreds of things sooner, and not leave
them till it's too late!"
The old man paused again, and his lean, bony fingers clutched and clawed
restlessly to get at the flowers. But his old train of thought now
seemed to have returned, for he continued: "Don't often see anything
about hospital operations, but I have had copy about them--`Death from
the Administration of Chloroform.' What an ugly word that first is, and
what a shiver it seems to give one when we think of it in connection
with ourselves, though it seems so little when it has to do with anyone
else! Wonder whether any of the old 'stab or piece hands would get hold
of it to set, and feel sorry for the battered old stamp they used to
laugh at, and whether it would get into the papers if I was to--"
The old man stopped once more, and wiped the dew from his wet forehead.
"Well, well," he said half-aloud, "what is to be will be. God help me
well through it all, for I'm a miserable coward; and if it's to be the
end of old Matt, why, I don't think I've been so very bad, and--there,
hang it!" he whined, "they might have left me a pinch of snuff. Here, I
say, though," he cried, rousing up, "this won't do. I'm on the wrong
folio, and shall have to re-set."
"I wonder whether it's hard to die?" he muttered, after another pause.
"Don't seem as if it was, for they look almost as if they were asleep,
and wanting to be woke up again. One must go sometime or another; but
it would have been happier like to have had hold of someone's hand, and
seen two or three faces round one's bed, faces of people sorry I was
going--going. There, there," he gasped, "I can't stand it. They
sha'n't touch me. It's like running headlong into one's grave. They
sha'n't touch me, for I must live and find out about the doctor, for
that poor helpless fellow in the Rents; or he'll never do it himself.
They sha'n't touch me, for I am nearly clear now, and I can grub on as I
am; while, if my chronics kill me in time, why they do, and there's an
end of it. They sha'n't--"
"Now, Number 19," said a voice, and to his dismay poor old Matt saw a
couple of porters enter the ward with a stretcher.
The old man moaned and closed his eyes, muttering the whole while as he
resigned himself, meekly as a child and without a word of opposition, to
the men, who tenderly lifted him upon their portable couch, and then
bore him along the whitewashed passages, whose walls seemed so familiar
to him, and struck him as being so particularly white and clean--white
as were ceiling and floor. He only saw one cobweb, and that was out of
reach in a far corner; and in his nervous state this greatly attracted
his attention, so that he could fancy the large spider grinned at him as
if he were a larger kind of fly in the trammels of a net. He felt that
he should have liked for the men to set down the stretcher and remove
that cobweb, but he stifled the desire to speak. Then he noticed how
strangely the hair of his foremost bearer grew, and this, too, troubled
him: there were no short hairs on the poll, and for some distance up the
back of his neck was a barren land. Then he fell to studying the man's
coat-buttons, the depth of his collar, and how easily he tramped along
with the handles of the portable couch, whose motion was so easy with
the light, regular, springy pace of the man; while the dread of what was
impending seemed quite to have passed away, and he began, now the peril
was so near, to think of himself as though he were someone else in whom
he took an interest; and then came a very important question:
How would they bring him back?
Would he be lighter with the loss of blood, and would he be gradually
stiffening, and growing colder and colder, till the icy temperature of
death pervaded him through and through? And then, too, what would they
do with him? He had no relations--no one to come and claim his body.
And even this thought seemed to trouble him but little, for he smiled
grimly, muttering to himself:
"Cause of science, sir, cause of science; and besides, it won't matter
then."
On still, with a light swinging motion and an easy tread, the porters
bore their load, and in the minute or two the removal occupied old Matt
thought of the last time he had made that journey, and his sensations
then: how that he had looked upon it all as a dream, and felt that he
should soon wake up to find himself in bed. But the old man's musings
ceased as he was borne into the theatre, save for an instant when the
thought flashed across his mind, Suppose he died without seeing the
entry? and this troubled him for a few moments; but directly after he
was gazing up with anxious eye at the tier upon tier of benches, some
crowded, some nearly empty, and looking from face to face; but there
seemed not one that sympathised with him, as, after a glance when he was
first borne in, a quiet light, chatty conversation was carried on in an
undertone. Then there was almost perfect silence, and the old man felt
himself to be the centre upon which every eye was fixed. His heart told
him now that in the low-murmured buzz of conversation that rose,
students who had again and again stood at his bedside were discussing
his case, and that if the operation were unsuccessful or unskilfully
performed, they would merely say that the patient did not rally, and
then go home or to their studies, regardless of the little gap left in
the ranks of life; while Septimus Hardon would probably never succeed in
his endeavours to recover his lost position.
Then he half-smiled as he thought of the importance with which he rated
himself, and looked eagerly round. Close by he could see the earnest,
study-lined faces of several older men, many of them grey-haired and
thoughtful-eyed--men of eminence in their profession, but strongly
imbued with the belief of the man of wisdom, that we are ever but
learners. Then he looked straight above, even at the skylight, where he
could see that the sun illumined the thick ground-glass; and now once
more, in a quiet musing vein, he set to wondering how it would be after
the operation.
Plenty of faces round, but mostly cool, calm, and matter-of-fact. Here
were the hospital dressers and assistants, standing by the table--a
curious-looking table in the centre of an open space; and a hasty glance
showed him sponges, and water, and cloths, and lint, and mahogany cases,
that at another time, if some other sufferer were to have been operated
upon, would have caused him to shudder. But all that was past now, and
he merely looked earnestly round till his gaze rested upon a stout
grey-haired, keen-eyed man, whose black clothes and white neck-tie were
spotless, and who now advanced to the table with a quiet business-like
aspect, as he bowed somewhat stiffly to the assembled surgeons and
students, and then spoke a few cheering words to the patient as he felt
his pulse.
"I hope he won't turn nervous over it," thought Matt. "Be serious to a
man in his position, with so many looking on.--Can't I have the
chloroform?" he then whispered to a dresser by his side.
"Yes, of course: here he is with it," said the man; and for the second
time in his life Matt gazed curiously at a polished mahogany box which
was being brought forward.
"I say," whispered Matt earnestly to the man at his side, "if anyone
comes afterwards--afterwards, you know, and asks for me, you'll say,
`Medicine and attendance,'--there, don't laugh--it's particular--you'll
say, `Medicine and attendance;' and that old Matt tried to think it out
to the last. You'll do that for me?" he whispered earnestly.
The man repeated the words over, and smiled as he made the required
promise.
"Tell him not to give me too much," said Matt, now with the first
display of anxiety, as he glanced at the inhaling apparatus.
The time since old Matt had been brought into the theatre might be
reckoned by moments; and now, in the midst of a profound stillness, the
grey-haired man calmly raised his eyebrows, turned up his sleeves, and
then walked a step or two from the patient, now inhaling the wondrous
vapour of that simple-looking limpid fluid, whose first effect was to
cause him to push away the apparatus and struggle feebly with those who
administered it. But there was a strong hand upon his pulse and a pair
of stern eyes watching him, and, as the mouthpiece was kept firmly
against his face, old Matt gave one or two more inspirations and became
insensible. Then every eye was fixed upon the calm, business-like man,
whose nerves seemed of kindred material to the blades he drew from their
delicate purple-velvet resting-places and quietly inspected for an
instant, his eyes flashing brightly as their grey-hued blades--knives
whose keen edges were formed of the finest-tempered metal that human
skill and ingenuity could produce.
A breathless silence ensued, and the gay thoughtless aspect was gone
from the young faces crowding the benches. Here and there an assumed
cynical smile could be seen, but the effects of a strange clutching at
the heart, a curious vibration of the nerves, was visible in the pallor
of cheeks and fevered aspect of the onlookers of the upper seats. Two
young men right at the back surreptitiously drank from small flasks, and
when wiping their lips paused, too, to pass their handkerchiefs over
their damp foreheads, before thrusting them in their moist palms as the
great surgeon--one who had climbed by slow degrees to his present
eminence in the profession, and upon whose knowledge and skill now
depended the life of a fellow-creature--gave his quick, sharp orders,
and changed the position of one or two assistants at the
operating-table, pointing, like a general preparing for battle, with the
keen blade he held in his hand. Short, quick orders as he grasped the
flashing steel and made ready for the fight--for the _combat a
l'outrance_, with the grim, slow-crawling, dragon disease--a fight where
skill and genius took the place of physical force and daring.
A painful silence, and then, while every eye was fixed upon his
movements, the great surgeon gave a hasty glance round to see that all
was in readiness for the time when moments were more than grains of
gold, and would add their weight in one scale of the balance--life or
death; but all seemed there, ready hands and the many appliances for
checking the rapid flow of life's stream, and then, with almost an air
of nonchalance, he stretched out his arms to secure freedom of action.
Not a whisper, not a movement, the spectators of the scene with craning
necks, immovable as groups of statuary, as they gazed from their tiers
of benches in this modern amphitheatre down upon the gladiatorial combat
taking place, even as of old the Roman citizens may have watched some
fight for life or death.
A keen bright flash of the blade in the softened light, and the surgeon
thoughtfully describing an imaginary curve in the air with the point
just above the insensible patient; then, with a satisfied nod, he leaned
forward. There was once more a bright flash of the knife, followed by a
bold, firmly-directed cut, deep and long, but clear of vital parts in
the wondrous organisation. Then came the spouting gush from many a
vessel as the old man's life-blood rushed from its maze; busy fingers at
work, here upon arteries to stay their waste, there applying sponge; one
blade changed for another, more manipulation, and orders performed after
being given in a calm impressive whisper; a few more busy moments, and
the throbbing flow of life arrested; rapidly-moving fingers with
sponges, silk, strapping, towels; and the great surgeon softly wiping
his hands, cool, calm, and unruffled.
"Very little loss, Mr Grant," to the next general in command.
"Extremely little," with a bow and a smile; "most successful operation."
"Well, well, I think so," said the great man, unbending somewhat as he
arranged his cuffs and brushed off an imaginary speck of dust. He then
felt the patient's pulse for a few moments, nodded with a satisfied air,
said a few words to the chief of his staff, bowed once more, and by the
time the hospital-dressers had finished their task and the patient was
lifted back upon his portable conch, the operator was in the brougham
waiting in the street.
Then came once more the murmuring buzz of voices, the reaction and the
pallor tried to be laughed down, the porters, and then in a few minutes
old Matt was once more in his bed and comfortably arranged before he
recovered consciousness.
The house-surgeon and an assistant were beside his bed as he opened his
eyes and stared vacantly about, trying to recall what had taken place.
"How sick and faint--what a nasty dream!" he muttered; "but I don't
know, sir,--been as well if it had been true."
"What would?" said the surgeon, smiling.
"Why, I dreamed, sir, that--why, so it was--so it was, then," muttered
the old man fervently; "thank God, thank God!"
A calm heavy sleep soon fell upon Matt, but he was not free from trouble
then. There was the entry continually worrying him; now he knew he had
seen it, now he felt that it was only a dream, or a dream within a
dream. At last, though, a change came over the scene, and all was
prosperity; he had entered into partnership with Septimus Hardon, and
purchased the copyright of the Times, whose columns they regularly
filled every day with a complete exposure of Doctor Hardon.
But the dream was not founded upon fact, for Septimus Hardon, with hope
in his breast, had been to the entrance of the hospital, thinking that
now Matt was so much better he would perhaps be ready with some
information. But the visitor had been told of the operation, and the
old man's present critical state, while being advised not to see him at
that visit; and receiving a promise that a message should be sent in the
event of a change for the worse, Septimus Hardon slowly, and sadly
disheartened, returned to his law-copying.