THE TWO PHYSICIANS
HE went that morning to visit the alderman, inopportune as he knew the
visit would be esteemed. But many things were inopportune—hunger, for
instance. The alderman found the visit offensively, unpatriotically
inopportune. “What! The King’s Majesty’s ascension day—!” But one
thing saved Aderhold, and that was the presence in the alderman’s
parlour of some seven or eight cronies, men and women. It would not
do—it would not do for the alderman to seem haggling and unwilling.
Aderhold quitted the house the richer by twelve shillings.
The narrow streets were crowded; everybody was out, excited and
important as though he or she had died or been crowned. The physician
strolled with the others. The morning was fine, he felt wealthy and
happy. The sunshine that stroked the projecting, timbered fronts of
houses was the sunshine of home, the soft and moist light of England.
He loved England. He wandered for an hour or two here and there in
the London of less than two hundred thousand souls. He went down to
the riverside, and sat upon a stone step, and gazed into the purple,
brooding distance.... At last he turned back, and after a time found
himself in the street of his lodging, and before the house.
It was a narrow, poor, and gloomy place, owned by people whom he
guessed to have fallen on evil days. The plainly dressed elderly woman
from whom he had hired his room had told him, indeed, as much. “Aye?”
said Aderhold. “Then, mother, I’ll feel the more at home.” He had
lodged here now ten days and he had seen only the elderly woman and her
son, a boy far gone in consumption who coughed and coughed. The woman
was a silent, rigid person, withered but erect, wearing a cap and over
her gown of dark stuff a coarse white kerchief and apron. This morning,
when she brought him his half loaf and tankard of ale, he had spoken
with casualness of the Cap and Bells. She looked at him strangely. “The
Cap and Bells!... Doubtless you heard good talk there.” Then had come
the crying about the Queen’s death. When he turned from the window the
woman was gone.
Now he entered the house. As he laid his hand upon the stair-rail the
woman stood framed in a doorway. “Tarry a little,” she said. “I wish to
tell you that this house will lodge you no longer.”
Aderhold stood still, then turned. “And why, good mother? I like my
room and the house. I have striven to be in no way troublesome.” He put
his hand in his purse and drew it forth with the alderman’s shillings
upon the palm. “You see I have money. You’ll not lose by me.”
A voice came from the room behind the woman. “Let him enter, mother. We
would see this fellow who will make no trouble for us.”
Aderhold noted a pale triumph in the woman’s strong, lined face and
in her tense, updrawn figure. “Aye, it happened to give thanks for!”
she told him. “Two things happened this morning. A King came to the
throne who, for all his mother’s scarlet and raging sins, has himself
been bred by godly men to godly ways! And my two sons came home from
overseas!”
She turned and passed through the doorway into the room from which
she had come. Aderhold, after a moment of hesitation, followed. It
was a large, dark place, very cold and bare. Here, too, was a table,
drawn toward the middle of the room, with a cloth upon it and bread
and a piece of meat. Beside it, chair and stool pushed back, stood
two men—the returned sons Aderhold was at once aware. He had seen
before men like these men—English sectaries abroad, men who stood
with the Huguenots in France, and in the Low Countries fought Spain
and the Devil with the soldiers of Orange. Estranged or banished from
home, lonely and insular, fighting upon what they esteemed the Lord’s
side, in the place where they esteemed the fight to be hottest, they
exhibited small, small love and comradeship for those in whose cause
they fought. Only, truly, in conventicles, could they seem to warm to
people of another tongue and history. Ultra-zealous, more Calvin than
Calvin, trained to harshness in a frightful war, iron, fanatic, back
now they came to England, the most admirable soldiers and the most
uncharitable men!
The two stood in their plain doublets, their great boots, their small
falling collars. They were tall and hard of aspect, the one bearded,
the other with a pale, clean-shaven, narrow, enthusiast’s face. The
home-keeping son also had risen from table. He stood beside his mother,
coughing and pressing a cloth to his lips.
The bearded man spoke. “Good-morrow, friend!”
“Good-morrow, friend,” answered Aderhold.
“You spoke that,” said the bearded man, “as though you were indeed a
friend, whereas we know you to be but a Cap and Bells friend.”
“I do not take your meaning,” said Aderhold. “I would be friends—no
man knows how I would be friends with men.”
The shaven man spoke. “Thou hypocritical prelate’s man! Why did you let
slip to my mother that the Cap and Bells was your place of revelling
and roistering and blackening God to his face? As if, before we went
to the wars, the Cap and Bells was not known for what it was—yea, and
is! for my mother saith the leopard hath not changed his spots nor the
Ethiop his skin—a bishop-loving, stained-glass praising, Prayer-Book
upholding, sacrament kneeling, bowing, chanting, genuflecting, very
pillar and nest of prelacy! drinking-place of all they who, if they
had their wicked will, would give into the hand of ruin—yea, would
pillory and stock, yea, would put to the rack if they might, yea,
would give to the flame if they were strong enough!—the Lord’s chosen
people, sole fence between this land and the fate of the cities of the
plain!”
“There have been before now,” said the bearded man, “spies sent among
the Lord’s people, and always such have been received and comforted in
that same house—to wit, the Cap and Bells!”
The consumptive took the red cloth from his lips. “Mother, mother, did
I not say, when the man came, that he had a strange look?”
“Aye, Andrew,” said the mother, “he went like a man with a guilty
load and watched his shadow.—But I had you to think on, and the need
for bread, and he paid me, which, God knoweth! they do not always do.
And it came not into my head, until, before he thought, he had said
the ‘Cap and Bells,’ that he might be here to spy and wring news of
us—cozening us to tell reportable tales of the Lord’s Saints!” She
stopped, then spoke on with a high, restrained passion and triumph.
“But now—but now I think that that is what he is! But now I am not
afraid—and now he may get his deserts—seeing that the new King is
surely for us, and that my sons have come home!”
“The new King!” exclaimed the shaven man. “The new King is an old
Stuart! Lean upon that reed and it will pierce your hand! I tell that
to my brother and to you, mother, and you will not believe—”
“Time will show,” said the bearded man impatiently. “Time will show
which of us is right. But to-day my mother can turn out this bishop’s
man, neck and crop! Yea, and if he murmurs—”
He made a step forward, a big-boned, powerful man, grim of countenance.
His hand shot out toward the physician.
Aderhold gave back a step, then recovered himself. “You are mistaken,”
he said. “I am no spy and I am no bishop’s man. Like you, I have been
from England. I return poor and seeking physician’s work. Desiring
lodging, I asked at this house as I had asked at others, and as
honestly as a man may. For the Cap and Bells, I knew naught of it nor
of its frequenters. I crossed its threshold but once, and so ill did
the place suit me that I am not like to go again. I tell you the plain
truth.”
The woman and her sons regarded him fixedly. “What think you,” asked
the shaven man at last, abruptly and sternly, “of the law that maketh
it an offense for a man to worship his Creator after the dictates of
his own heart—yea, that would compel him to conform to practices which
his soul abhorreth?”
“I think,” said Aderhold, “that it is an evil law.”
“You say truth,” answered the shaven man. “Now tell me plainly. Believe
you in copes and stoles and altars and credence tables, in kneeling
at communion, in Prayer-Book and surplice and bowing when the name is
mentioned, in bishops and archbishops and pride of place before God?”
Aderhold looked at him dreamily. The fear of physical injury, which
was the weakness that most beset him, was gone by. He had at times
a strange sense of expansion, accompanied by a differentiation and
deepening of light. The experience—he knew it to be inward, and
never steadfast, very fleeting—returned to him now. The room looked
world-wide, the four interlocutors tribes and peoples. “My mind does
not dwell overmuch,” he said, “upon matters such as these. They are
little matters. The wrong is that a man should be made to say they
are necessary and great matters, and, to avoid falseness, be made to
fight dwarfs as though they were giants.—I need no priest in cope or
surplice or especial dress when all that I am lifts in contemplation
and resolve. I need not kneel when All communes with All. No slave is
my soul. Would I pray, I can pray without book, and would I not, no
book held before my face hath power to pray for me. If I bowed my head
at each thought of the mystery that surrounds us, I would not with
overmuch frequency walk erect, for I think much and constantly of that
mystery. If I bow my head without thought—an idiot may do the same. As
for prelates and they who are called ‘spiritual princes’—I have seen
not one who is not a man-chosen master of a man-built house.”
The woman spoke uncertainly. “If we have been mistaken in you, sir,—”
“What you say has truth,” said the bearded man. “But it also has a
strangeness and rings not like our truth.... If you are a Brownist,
this house will have naught to do with you!”
“I am not a Brownist,” said Aderhold wearily. The sense of space
widening off and intenser light was gone. Never yet had it stayed but
the fewest of moments, and, going, it threw life back upon itself....
But the second son, who had been standing with an abstracted and
distant look, started and spoke. “Let him alone, mother and my brother!
Whatever he be, he hath no ill-will nor guile—” He turned to the
table. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Sit down and eat with us.”
Aderhold dwelt in this house some days longer. He did not again see
the two sons; they had taken horse and ridden to visit some returned
comrade or officer in the country. The woman he saw, and sometimes
talked with, but she had ceased to be curious about him, and they
chiefly spoke of the consumptive boy. He was near death. The physician
could only give something that should make the nights pass more
swiftly, less painfully.
He himself wished to see a physician, the physician to whom, as to
Cecil, he had been recommended by a great noble of France, but whom
he had not seen since that day in Richmond, after that hour in the
Queen’s chamber. He had gone to his house to enquire—he was yet out of
London, he would be home on such a day. Aderhold went then, but could
not see him; waited two days, and was again denied; went in another
three, and was admitted. The physician was alone, in a small room, and
his manner dry and cold.
If Aderhold still nursed a hope it was a faint and failing one. Before
that day in Richmond the hope had been strong. This physician was a
skilled man and knew skill when he saw it—the great Frenchman had
written with a guarded enthusiasm, but yet with enthusiasm of what
Gilbert Aderhold might do—the London physician had let drop a hint
that he himself had thought at times of an assistant—if not that, he
could certainly speak a word in season in another quarter. Aderhold had
hoped—after Richmond he had hoped less strongly. Now he found that
hope was failing. What had happened? What always happened?
The physician continued standing. The room opened upon a garden, and
outside the lattice window there showed a tender mist of budding tree
and shrub. “You were so good,” said Aderhold, “as to bid me come to you
upon your return.”
“I wished,” said the physician, “to give all weight and recognition
to the commendation of the Duke of —--.” A grey cat came and rubbed
against his ankle. He stooped and lifting the creature to the table
beside him stood stroking it. “The commendation of great noblemen is
at times like their largesse. It often falls—through, of course, no
fault of theirs—before the stranger and the unworthy.”
“If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not strange to that
nobleman, nor, I think, unloved by him. He has been my good patron,
almost, I might dare to say, my friend.”
“Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to Court ears, with other
French news, that the Duke is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend of
my own has lately returned from Paris where he had long resided. He is
a man of the world, with a great interest in life and a knowledge of
what is talked about, small things as well as great. He told me”—the
physician paused—“of _you_!”
“Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?”
“He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of what grows up
in the narrow strip between religious wars and factions, between
Leaguer and Huguenot—to wit, something that is neither Catholic nor
Protestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the Huguenot would flay!
He told me of your case and your trial and imprisonment, and how none
would help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this one nobleman
whose child, it seems, you had healed, and even he could only help by
helping you forth from France.” The physician continued to draw his
hand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman for considering
that an atheist might prosper here in England, and for deceivingly
writing to me only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! I
might,” said the physician, “have become involved in what discovery and
disfavour you may bring upon yourself in this realm!”
“I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction and authority and
restraint are within.”
The other shrugged. “Oh, your fine distinctions!” He went to the window
and set it wider so that the whole green garden and white and rosy
branches of bloom seemed to come into the room. “I am not,” he said,
with his back to the lattice, “myself a theologian. By nature I am a
‘live and let live’ man. Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abraham
each may have had his own knowledge of heaven and hell! I will not
quarrel with knowledge for being various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant,
Master Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must not inculpate
others—no, you must not let the edge of your mantle of heresy touch
another! It were base ingratitude, for instance, were you—”
“I have been careful,” said Aderhold, “to mention your name to no
one. I have led since seeing you a retired and soundless life. I am a
stranger in this city and none knows my life, nor feels an interest in
it.”
The physician’s countenance showed relief. “I did not know of what
folly you might not have been capable!” He stroked the cat, moved a
few paces about the room and returned. “I regret that I can give you
no aid. Indeed, I must tell you plainly that I owe it to my family
and my patients and my place—which is no slight one—in the esteem of
this city, to refuse all association with a man who at any hour may
fall under suspicion and prosecution.” He paused. “I may say to you
once, and this once only, that I find your case a hard one. I certainly
advise you not to be stiff-necked, but living in the world to conform
to the world. Philosophize, if you choose, but inwardly, inwardly, man!”
He spoke quite amiably, even genially. It was apparent that Aderhold
had taken his dismissal, that he was not going to beg or be
distressful. He considered through the open casement the height of the
sun. He could give the unfortunate man a minute or two longer. “Let us
speak a moment,” he said, “of our art. London is thronged with doctors.
I tell you truly that there is scant room for another, even were the
circumstances not as they are, and you were as like others as you are
unlike. However still a tongue you may keep,—and I think you may
betray yourself oftener than you think,—you will eventually be found
out.” He lifted his finger impressively. “Now the temper of the time
is religious and growing ever more so. The Italian and antique spirit
that I remember is going—is almost gone. We are all theologians and
damn the whole world outside of our particular ark. People of the old
faith, people of the established faith, people of the Presbytery—each
of the three detests and will persecute the remaining two. Right and
left suffer from the middle, which is in power, as the middle—and
the remaining other—would suffer were the right or left in power.
War, secret or open, war, war! and they only unite to plague a witch
or to run to earth and burn for heresy one like you who belongs not
to right nor left nor middle. The tolerant, humane, philosophic heart
dissents—but few, my friend, are tolerant and humane, too few, too
few! All this being so, I do not advise you to remain in London—no, I
should not, were you Galen himself!”
Aderhold stood gazing at the garden without. There were thorn hedges
everywhere—across all paths. “I do not know,” he said, “where I should
go—”
“My advice,” said his fellow physician, “would be to travel to some
smaller town that hath never received a whisper from France. And
now”—he rose—“and now I must bid you good-bye, for an important
personage expects me at this hour.”