A doctor’s life is not lightly to be envied. Like a traveller in a
half-barbarous country, he must be prepared for all emergencies,
trusting to his own mother-wit and the resourcefulness of his manhood.
He may be challenged from cock-crow until midnight to do battle with
every physical ill that affects humanity on earth, and to act as arbiter
between life and death. The common functions of existence are hardly
granted him; he is a species of supramundane creature to whom sleep and
food are scarcely considered vital. However critical the strain, he must
never slacken, never show temper when pestered by the old women of the
sick-room, never lose the suggestion of sympathy. People will run to
catch him “at his dinner-hour,” poor wretch, and drag him from bed to
discover that some fat old gentleman has eaten too much crab. Of all men
he must appear the most infallible, the most assured and resolute of
philosophers. He walks on the edge of a precipice, for the glory of a
thousand triumphs may be swallowed up in the blunder of a day.
The responsibilities of such a life are heavy, and may be said to
increase with the sensitiveness of the practitioner’s conscience. The
man of heart and of ideals will give out more of the vital essence than
the mere intellectual who works like a marvellous machine. Yet, flow of
soul is necessary to true success in the higher spheres of the healing
art. There is a vast difference between the mere chemist who mixes
tinctures in a bottle, and the psychologist whose personality suggests
the cure that he wishes to complete.
James Murchison was a practitioner of the higher type, a man who
wrestled Jacob-like with problems, and took his responsibilities to
heart. He was no clever automaton, no perfunctory juggler with the woes
and sufferings of his fellows. Life touched him at every turn, and there
was none of the cynical adroitness of the mere materialist about
Murchison. He worked both with his heart and with his head, a man whose
mingled strength and humility made him beloved by those who knew him
best.
The winter’s work had been unusually heavy, and the burden of it had not
lightened with the spring. Murchison enjoyed the grappling of
difficulties, that keen tautness of the intellect that vibrates to
necessity. Strong as he was, the strain of the winter’s work had told on
him, and his wife, ever watchful, had seen that he was spending himself
too fast. Interminable night work, the rush of the crowded hours, and
hurried meals, grind down the toughest constitution. Murchison was not a
man to confess easily to exhaustion, possessing the true tenacity of the
Saxon, the spirit that will not realize the nearness of defeat. It was
only by constant pleading that Catherine persuaded him to consider the
wisdom of hiring help. Sleeplessness, the worker’s warning, had troubled
her husband as the spring drew on.
One Wednesday evening in May, Murchison came home dead tired and faint
for want of food. The day had been rough and stormy, a keen wind
whirling the rain in gray sheets across the country, beating the bloom
from the apple-trees, and laying Miss Gwen’s proud tulips in red ruin
along the borders. Murchison’s visiting-list would have appalled a man
of frailer energy and resolution. The climbing of interminable stairs,
the feeling of pulses, and all the accurate minutes of the craft, the
interviewing of anxious relatives, slave work in the slums! A premature
maternity case had complicated the routine. Murchison looked white and
almost hunted when he sat down at last to dinner.
Catherine dismissed the maid and waited on him in person.
“Thanks, dear, this is very sweet of you.”
She bent over him and kissed him on the forehead.
“You look tired to death.”
“Not quite that, dear; I have been rushed off my legs and the flesh is
human.”
“Crocker will send a suitable man down in a day or two. He can take the
club work off your hands. You have finished for to-night?”
He lay back in his chair, the lines of strain smoothed from his face a
little, the driven look less evident in his eyes.
“Only a consultation or two, I hope. I shall get to bed early. Ah,
coffee, that is good!”
Catherine played and sang to him in the drawing-room after dinner, with
the lamp turned low and a brave fire burning on the hearth. Murchison
had run up-stairs to kiss his children, and was lying full length on the
sofa when the “detestable bell” broke in upon a slumber song. The
inevitable message marred the relaxation of the man’s mind and body, and
the tired slave of sick humanity found himself doomed to a night’s
watching.
“What is it, dear?”
He had read the note that the maid had brought him.
“No peace for the wicked!” and he almost groaned; “a maternity case.
Confound the woman, she might have left me a night’s rest!”
His wife looked anxious, worried for him in her heart.
“How absolutely hateful! Can’t Hicks act for you to-night?”
“No, dear, I promised my services.”
“Will it take long?”
“A first case—all night, probably.”
He got up wearily, threw the letter into the fire, and going to his
study took up his obstetric bag and examined it to see that he had all
he needed. Catherine was waiting for him with his coat and scarf,
wishing for the moment that the Deity had arranged otherwise for the
bringing of children into the world.
“Shall you walk?” she asked.
“Yes, it is only Carter Street. Go to bed, dear, don’t wait up.”
She kissed him, and let her head rest for a moment on his shoulder.
“I wish I could do the work for you, dear.”
He laughed, a tired laugh, looking dearly at her, and went out into the
dark.
A vague restlessness took possession of Catherine that night, when she
was left alone in the silent house. She had sent the servants to bed,
and drawing a chair before the fire, tried to forget herself in the
pages of romance. Color and passion had no glamour for her in print,
however. It was as though some silent watcher stood behind her chair,
and willed her to brood on thoughts that troubled her heart.
She put the book aside at last, and sat staring at the fire, listening
to the wind that moaned and sobbed about the house. The curtains swayed
before the windows, and she could hear the elm-trees in the garden
groaning as though weary of the day’s unrest. There was something in the
nature of the night that gave a sombre setting to her thoughts. She
remembered her husband’s tired and jaded face, and her very loneliness
enhanced her melancholy.
The Dutch clock in the hall struck eleven, the antique whir of wheels
sounding strange in the sleeping house. Catherine stirred the fire
together, rose and put out the lamp. She lit her candle in the hall,
leaving a light burning there, and climbed the stairs slowly to her
room. Instinct led her to cross the landing and enter the nursery where
her children slept.
The two little beds stood one in either corner beside the fireplace,
each headed by some favorite picture, and covered with red quilts edged
with white. Gwen was sleeping with a doll beside her, her hair tied up
with a blue ribbon. The boy had a box of soldiers on the bed, and one
fist cuddled a brass cannon.
Catherine stood and looked at them with a mother’s tenderness in her
eyes. They spelled life to her—these little ones, flesh of her flesh,
bone of her bone. They were her husband’s children, and they seemed to
bring into her heart that night a deep rush of tenderness towards the
man who had given her motherhood. All the joy and sorrow that they had
shared together stole up like the odor of a sacrifice.
“When the strength’s out of a man, the devil’s in.”
She remembered those words he had spoken, and shuddered. Was it
prophetic, this voice that came to her out of the deeps of her own
heart? Tenderly, wistfully, she bent over each sleeping child, and stole
a kiss from the land of dreams. Betty Steel’s speech recurred to her as
she passed to her own room, feeling lonely because the arms she yearned
for would not hold her close that night.
Catherine went to bed, but she did not sleep. Her brain seemed clear as
a starlit sky, the thoughts floating through it like frail clouds over
the moon. She heard the wind wailing, the rain splashing against the
windows, the slow voice of the hall clock measuring out the hours. Some
unseen power seemed to keep her wakeful and afraid, restless in her
loneliness, listening for the sound of her husband’s return.
The clock struck five before she heard the jar of a closing door.
Footsteps crossed the hall, and she heard some one moving in the room
below. For some minutes she sat listening in bed, waiting to hear her
husband’s step upon the stairs. Her heart beat strangely when he did not
come; the room felt cold to her as she shivered and listened.
A sudden, vague dread seized her. She slipped out of bed, lit the candle
with trembling hands, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, went out
on to the landing. The lamp was still burning in the hall, and the door
of the dining-room stood ajar. Shading the candle behind her hand, she
went silently down the stairs into the hall. The only sound she heard
was the clink of a glass.
“James, husband!”
Catherine stood on the threshold, her hair loose about her, the candle
quivering in her hand. For the moment there was an agony of reproach
upon her face. Then she had swayed forward, snatched something from the
table, and broke it upon the floor.
“My God, Kate, forgive me!”
He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his arms upon the
table. Catherine bent over him, her hands resting on his shoulders.
“Oh, my beloved, I had dreaded this.”
He groaned.
“Miserable beast that I am!”
“No, no, you are tired, you are not yourself. Come with me, come with
me, lie in my arms—and rest.”
He turned and buried his face in the warmth of her bosom.
“Thank God you were awake,” he said.