them from him. Then he thrust a knife under the discoloured seal and
jerked it off. The lamp was rattling and shaking in Perceval's hands, so
I took it from him and held it near the key-hole, while Stanniford tried
key after key. At last one turned in the lock, the door flew open, he
took one step into the room, and then, with a horrible cry, the young
man fell senseless at our feet.
If I had not given heed to the clerk's warning, and braced myself for a
shock, I should certainly have dropped the lamp. The room, windowless
and bare, was fitted up as a photographic laboratory, with a tap and
sink at the side of it. A shelf of bottles and measures stood at one
side, and a peculiar, heavy smell, partly chemical, partly animal,
filled the air. A single table and chair were in front of us, and at
this, with his back turned towards us, a man was seated in the act of
writing. His outline and attitude were as natural as life; but as the
light fell upon him, it made my hair rise to see that the nape of his
neck was black and wrinkled, and no thicker than my wrist. Dust lay upon
him--thick, yellow dust--upon his hair, his shoulders, his shrivelled,
lemon-coloured hands. His head had fallen forward upon his breast. His
pen still rested upon a discoloured sheet of paper.
"My poor master! My poor, poor master!" cried the clerk, and the tears
were running down his cheeks.
"What!" I cried, "Mr. Stanislaus Stanniford!"
"Here he has sat for seven years. Oh, why would he do it? I begged him,
I implored him, I went on my knees to him, but he would have his way.
You see the key on the table. He had locked the door upon the inside.
And he has written something. We must take it."
"Yes, yes, take it, and for God's sake, let us get out of this," I
cried; "the air is poisonous. Come, Stanniford, come!" Taking an arm
each, we half led and half carried the terrified man back to his own
room.
"It was my father!" he cried, as he recovered his consciousness. "He is
sitting there dead in his chair. You knew it, Perceval! This was what
you meant when you warned me."
"Yes, I knew it, Mr. Stanniford. I have acted for the best all along,
but my position has been a terribly difficult one. For seven years I
have known that your father was dead in that room."
"You knew it, and never told us!"
"Don't be harsh with me, Mr. Stanniford, sir! Make allowance for a man
who has had a hard part to play."
"My head is swimming round. I cannot grasp it!" He staggered up, and
helped himself from the brandy bottle. "These letters to my mother and
to myself--were they forgeries?"
"No, sir; your father wrote them and addressed them, and left them in my
keeping to be posted. I have followed his instructions to the very
letter in all things. He was my master, and I have obeyed him."
The brandy had steadied the young man's shaken nerves. "Tell me about
it. I can stand it now," said he.
"Well, Mr. Stanniford, you know that at one time there came a period of
great trouble upon your father, and he thought that many poor people
were about to lose their savings through his fault. He was a man who was
so tender-hearted that he could not bear the thought. It worried him and
tormented him, until he determined to end his life. Oh, Mr. Stanniford,
if you knew how I have prayed him and wrestled with him over it, you
would never blame me! And he in turn prayed me as no man has ever prayed
me before. He had made up his mind, and he would do it in any case, he
said; but it rested with me whether his death should be happy and easy
or whether it should be most miserable. I read in his eyes that he meant
what he said. And at last I yielded to his prayers, and I consented to
do his will.
"What was troubling him was this. He had been told by the first doctor
in London that his wife's heart would fail at the slightest shock. He
had a horror of accelerating her end, and yet his own existence had
become unendurable to him. How could he end himself without injuring
her?
"You know now the course that he took. He wrote the letter which she
received. There was nothing in it which was not literally true. When he
spoke of seeing her again so soon, he was referring to her own
approaching death, which he had been assured could not be delayed more
than a very few months. So convinced was he of this, that he only left
two letters to be forwarded at intervals after his death. She lived five
years, and I had no letters to send.
"He left another letter with me to be sent to you, sir, upon the
occasion of the death of your mother. I posted all these in Paris to
sustain the idea of his being abroad. It was his wish that I should say
nothing, and I have said nothing. I have been a faithful servant. Seven
years after his death, he thought no doubt that the shock to the
feelings of his surviving friends Would be lessened. He was always
considerate for others."
There was a silence for some time. It was broken by young Stanniford.
"I cannot blame you, Perceval. You have spared my mother a shock, which
would certainly have broken her heart. What is that paper?"
"It is what your father was writing, sir. Shall I read it to you?"
"Do so."
"'I have taken the poison, and I feel it working in my veins. It is
strange, but not painful. When these words are read I shall, if my
wishes have been faithfully carried out, have been dead many years.
Surely no one who has lost money through me will still bear me
animosity. And you, Felix, you will forgive me this family scandal. May
God find rest for a sorely wearied spirit!'"
"Amen!" we cried, all three.
TALES OF MEDICAL LIFE
VII
A PHYSIOLOGIST'S WIFE
Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to breakfast at the usual hour.
The presentation chiming-clock which stood between the terra-cotta busts
of Claude Bernard and of John Hunter upon the dining-room mantelpiece
had rung out the half-hour and the three-quarters. Now its golden hand
was verging upon the nine, and yet there were no signs of the master of
the house.
It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the twelve years that she had
kept house for him, his younger sister had never known him a second
behind his time. She sat now in front of the high silver coffee-pot,
uncertain whether to order the gong to be resounded or to wait on in
silence. Either course might be a mistake. Her brother was not a man who
permitted mistakes.
Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle height, thin, with
peering, puckered eyes, and the rounded shoulders which mark the bookish
woman. Her face was long and spare, flecked with colour above the
cheek-bones, with a reasonable, thoughtful forehead, and a dash of
absolute obstinacy in her thin lips and prominent chin. Snow-white cuffs
and collar, with a plain dark dress, cut with almost Quaker-like
simplicity, bespoke the primness of her taste. An ebony cross hung over
her flattened chest. She sat very upright in her chair, listening with
raised eyebrows, and swinging her eye-glasses backwards and forwards
with a nervous gesture which was peculiar to her.
Suddenly she gave a sharp, satisfied jerk of the head, and began to pour
out the coffee. From outside there came the dull thudding sound of heavy
feet Upon thick carpet. The door swung open, and the Professor entered
with a quick, nervous step. He nodded to his sister, and seating himself
at the other side of the table, began to open the small pile of letters
which lay beside his plate.
Professor Ainslie Grey was at that time forty-three years of age--nearly
twelve years older than his sister. His career had been a brilliant one.
At Edinburgh, at Cambridge, and at Vienna he had laid the foundations of
his great reputation, both in physiology and in zoology.
His pamphlet, "On the Mesoblastic Origin of Excitomotor Nerve Roots,"
had won him his fellowship of the Royal Society; and his researches,
"Upon the Nature of Bathybius, with some Remarks upon Lithococci," had
been translated into at least three European languages. He had been
referred to by one of the greatest living authorities as being the very
type and embodiment of all that was best in modern science. No wonder,
then, that when the commercial city of Birchespool decided to create a
medical school, they were only too glad to confer the chair of
physiology upon Mr. Ainslie Grey. They valued him the more from the
conviction that their class was only one step in his upward journey, and
that the first vacancy would remove him to some more illustrious seat of
learning.
In person he was not unlike his sister. The same eyes, the same contour,
the same intellectual forehead. His lips, however, were firmer, and his
long, thin lower jaw was sharper and more decided. He ran his finger and
thumb down it from time to time, as he glanced over his letters.
"Those maids are very noisy," he remarked, as a clack of tongues sounded
in the distance.
"It is Sarah," said his sister; "I shall speak about it."
She had handed over his coffee-cup, and was sipping at her own, glancing
furtively through her narrowed lids at the austere face of her brother.
"The first great advance of the human race," said the Professor, "was
when, by the development of their left frontal convolutions, they
attained the power of speech. Their second advance was when they learned
to control that power. Woman has not yet attained the second stage."
He half closed his eyes as he spoke, and thrust his chin forward, but as
he ceased he had a trick of suddenly opening both eyes very wide and
staring sternly at his interlocutor.
"I am not garrulous, John," said his sister.
"No, Ada; in many respects you approach the superior or male type."
The Professor bowed over his egg with the manner of one who utters a
courtly compliment; but the lady pouted, and gave an impatient little
shrug of her shoulders.
"You were late this morning, John," she remarked, after a pause.
"Yes, Ada; I slept badly. Some little cerebral congestion, no doubt due
to over-stimulation of the centres of thought. I have been a little
disturbed in my mind."
His sister stared across at him in astonishment. The Professor's mental
processes had hitherto been as regular as his habits. Twelve years'
continual intercourse had taught her that he lived in a serene and
rarefied atmosphere of scientific calm, high above the petty emotions
which affect humbler minds.
"You are surprised, Ada," he remarked. "Well, I cannot wonder at it. I
should have been surprised myself if I had been told that I was so
sensitive to vascular influences. For, after all, all disturbances are
vascular if you probe them deep enough. I am thinking of getting
married."
"Not Mrs. O'James?" cried Ada Grey, laying down her egg-spoon.
"My dear, you have the feminine quality of receptivity very remarkably
developed. Mrs. O'James is the lady in question."
"But you know so little of her. The Esdailes themselves know so little.
She is really only an acquaintance, although she is staying at The
Lindens. Would it not be wise to speak to Mrs. Esdaile first, John?"
"I do not think, Ada, that Mrs. Esdaile is at all likely to say anything
which would materially affect my course of action. I have given the
matter due consideration. The scientific mind is slow at arriving at
conclusions, but having once formed them, it is not prone to change.
Matrimony is the natural condition of the human race. I have, as you
know, been so engaged in academical and other work, that I have had no
time to devote to merely personal questions. It is different now, and I
see no valid reason why I should forego this opportunity of seeking a
suitable helpmate."
"And you are engaged?"
"Hardly that, Ada. I ventured yesterday to indicate to the lady that I
was prepared to submit to the common lot of humanity. I shall wait upon
her after my morning lecture, and learn how far my proposals meet with
her acquiescence. But you frown, Ada!"
His sister started, and made an effort to conceal her expression of
annoyance. She even stammered out some few words of congratulation, but
a vacant look had come into her brother's eyes, and he was evidently not
listening to her.
"I am sure, John," she said, "that I wish you the happiness which you
deserve. If I hesitated at all, it is because I know how much is at
stake, and because the thing is so sudden, so unexpected." Her thin
white hand stole up to the black cross upon her bosom. "These are
moments when we need guidance, John. If I could persuade you to turn to
spiritual----"
The Professor waved the suggestion away with a deprecating hand.
"It is useless to reopen that question," he said. "We cannot argue upon
it. You assume more than I can grant. I am forced to dispute your
premises. We have no common basis."
His sister sighed.
"You have no faith," she said.
"I have faith in those great evolutionary forces which are leading the
human race to some unknown but elevated goal."
"You believe in nothing."
"On the contrary, my dear Ada, I believe in the differentiation of
protoplasm."
She shook her head sadly. It was the one subject upon which she ventured
to dispute her brother's infallibility.
"This is rather beside the question," remarked the Professor, folding up
his napkin. "If I am not mistaken, there is some possibility of another
matrimonial event occurring in the family. Eh, Ada? What!"
His small eyes glittered with sly facetiousness as he shot a twinkle at
his sister. She sat very stiff, and traced patterns upon the cloth with
the sugar-tongs.
"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien----" said the Professor sonorously.
"Don't, John, don't!" cried Miss Ainslie Grey.
"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien," continued her brother inexorably, "is a man
who has already made his mark upon the science of the day. He is my
first and my most distinguished pupil. I assure you, Ada, that his
'Remarks upon the Bile-Pigments, with special reference to Urobilin,' is
likely to live as a classic. It is not too much to say that he has
revolutionised our views about Urobilin."
He paused, but his sister sat silent, with bent head and flushed cheeks.
The little ebony cross rose and fell with her hurried breathings.
"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien has, as you know, the offer of the
physiological chair at Melbourne. He has been in Australia five years,
and has a brilliant future before him. To-day he leaves us for
Edinburgh, and in two months' time he goes out to take over his new
duties. You know his feeling towards you. It rests with you as to
whether he goes out alone. Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine any
higher mission for a woman of culture than to go through life in the
company of a man who is capable of such a research as that which Dr.
James M'Murdo O'Brien has brought to a successful conclusion."
"He has not spoken to me," murmured the lady.
"Ah, there are signs which are more subtle than speech," said her
brother, wagging his head. "You are pale. Your vasomotor system is
excited. Your arterioles have contracted. Let me entreat you to compose
yourself. I think I hear the carriage. I fancy that you may have a
visitor this morning, Ada. You will excuse me now."
With a quick glance at the clock he strode off into the hall, and within
a few minutes he was rattling in his quiet, well-appointed brougham
through the brick-lined streets of Birchespool.
His lecture over, Professor Ainslie Grey paid a visit to his laboratory,
where he adjusted several scientific instruments, made a note as to the
progress of three separate infusions of bacteria, cut half a dozen
sections with a microtome, and finally resolved the difficulties of
seven different gentlemen, who were pursuing researches in as many
separate lines of inquiry. Having thus conscientiously and methodically
completed the routine of his duties, he returned to his carriage and
ordered the coachman to drive him to The Lindens. His face as he drove
was cold and impassive, but he drew his fingers from time to time down
his prominent chin with a jerky, twitchy movement.
The Lindens was an old-fashioned, ivy-clad house which had once been in
the country, but was now caught in the long, red-brick feelers of the
growing city. It still stood back from the road in the privacy of its
own grounds. A winding path, lined with laurel bushes, led to the arched
and porticoed entrance. To the right was a lawn, and at the far side,
under the shadow of a hawthorn, a lady sat in a garden-chair with a book
in her hands. At the click of the gate she started, and the Professor,
catching sight of her, turned away from the door, and strode in her
direction.
"What! won't you go in and see Mrs. Esdaile?" she asked, sweeping out
from under the shadow of the hawthorn.
She was a small woman, strongly feminine, from the rich coils of her
light-coloured hair to the dainty garden slipper which peeped from under
her cream-tinted dress. One tiny well-gloved hand was outstretched in
greeting, while the other pressed a thick, green-covered volume against
her side. Her decision and quick, tactful manner bespoke the mature
woman of the world; but her upraised face had preserved a girlish and
even infantile expression of innocence in its large, fearless grey eyes,
and sensitive, humorous mouth. Mrs. O'James was a widow, and she was
two-and-thirty years of age; but neither fact could have been deduced
from her appearance.
"You will surely go in and see Mrs. Esdaile," she repeated, glancing up
at him with eyes which had in them something between a challenge and a
caress.
"I did not come to see Mrs. Esdaile," he answered, with no relaxation of
his cold and grave manner; "I came to see you."
"I am sure I should be highly honoured," she said, with just the
slightest little touch of brogue in her accent. "What are the students
to do without their Professor?"
"I have already completed my academic duties. Take my arm, and we shall
walk in the sunshine. Surely we cannot wonder that Eastern people should
have made a deity of the sun. It is the great beneficent force of
Nature--man's ally against cold, sterility, and all that is abhorrent to
him. What were you reading?"
"Hale's _Matter and Life_."
The Professor raised his thick eyebrows.
"Hale!" he said, and then again in a kind of whisper, "Hale!"
"You differ from him?" she asked.
"It is not I who differ from him. I am only a monad--a thing of no
moment. The whole tendency of the highest plane of modern thought
differs from him. He defends the indefensible. He is an excellent
observer, but a feeble reasoner. I should not recommend you to found
your conclusions upon 'Hale.'"
"I must read _Nature's Chronicle_ to counteract his pernicious
influence," said Mrs. O'James, with a soft, cooing laugh.
_Nature's Chronicle_ was one of the many books in which Professor
Ainslie Grey had enforced the negative doctrines of scientific
agnosticism.
"It is a faulty work," said he; "I cannot recommend it. I would rather
refer you to the standard writings of some of my older and more eloquent
colleagues."
There was a pause in their talk as they paced up and down on the green,
velvet-like lawn in the genial sunshine.
"Have you thought at all," he asked at last, "of the matter upon which I
spoke to you last night?"
She said nothing, but walked by his side with her eyes averted and her
face aslant.
"I would not hurry you unduly," he continued. "I know that it is a
matter which can scarcely be decided off-hand. In my own case, it cost
me some thought before I ventured to make the suggestion. I am not an
emotional man, but I am conscious in your presence of the great
evolutionary instinct which makes either sex the complement of the
other."
"You believe in love, then?" she asked, with a twinkling, upward glance.
"I am forced to."
"And yet you can deny the soul?"
"How far these questions are psychic and how far material is still _sub
judice_," said the Professor, with an air of toleration. "Protoplasm may
prove to be the physical basis of love as well as of life."
"How inflexible you are!" she exclaimed; "you would draw love down to
the level of physics."
"Or draw physics up to the level of love."
"Come, that is much better," she cried, with her sympathetic laugh.
"That is really very pretty, and puts science in quite a delightful
light."
Her eyes sparkled, and she tossed her chin with a pretty, wilful air of
a woman who is mistress of the situation.
"I have reason to believe," said the Professor, "that my position here
will prove to be only a stepping-stone to some wider scene of scientific
activity. Yet, even here, my chair brings me in some fifteen hundred
pounds a year, which is supplemented by a few hundreds from my books. I
should therefore be in a position to provide you with those comforts to
which you are accustomed. So much for my pecuniary position. As to my
constitution, it has always been sound. I have never suffered from any
illness in my life, save fleeting attacks of cephalalgia, the result of
too prolonged a stimulation of the centres of cerebration. My father and
mother had no sign of any morbid diathesis, but I will not conceal from
you that my grandfather was afflicted with podagra."
Mrs. O'James looked startled.
"Is that very serious?" she asked.
"It is gout," said the Professor.
"Oh, is that all? It sounded much worse than that."
"It is a grave taint, but I trust that I shall not be a victim to
atavism. I have laid these facts before you because they are factors
which cannot be overlooked in forming your decision. May I ask now
whether you see your way to accepting my proposal?"
He paused in his walk, and looked earnestly and expectantly down at her.
A struggle was evidently going on in her mind. Her eyes were cast down,
her little slipper tapped the lawn, and her fingers played nervously
with her chatelain. Suddenly, with a sharp, quick gesture which had in
it something of _abandon_ and recklessness, she held out her hand to her
companion.
"I accept," she said.
They were standing under the shadow of the hawthorn. He stooped gravely
down, and kissed her glove-covered fingers.
"I trust that _you_ may never have cause to regret your decision," he
said.
"I trust that _you_ never may," she cried, with a heaving breast.
There were tears in her eyes, and her lips twitched with some strong
emotion.
"Come into the sunshine again," said he. "It is the great restorative.
Your nerves are shaken. Some little congestion of the medulla and pons.
It is always instructive to reduce psychic or emotional conditions to
their physical equivalents. You feel that your anchor is still firm in a
bottom of ascertained fact."
"But it is so dreadfully unromantic," said Mrs. O'James, with her old
twinkle.
"Romance is the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where science
throws her calm, clear light there is happily no room for romance."
"But is not love romance?" she asked.
"Not at all. Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been
brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of the
great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws the atom
of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric
acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically similar to that
which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear to be the primary
forces. This is attraction."
"And here is repulsion," said Mrs. O'James, as a stout, florid lady came
sweeping across the lawn in their direction. "So glad you have come out,
Mrs. Esdaile! Here is Professor Grey."
"How do you do, Professor?" said the lady, with some little pomposity of
manner. "You were very wise to stay out here on so lovely a day. Is it
not heavenly?"
"It is certainly very fine weather," the Professor answered.
"Listen to the wind sighing in the trees!" cried Mrs. Esdaile, holding
up one finger. "It is Nature's lullaby. Could you not imagine it,
Professor Grey, to be the whisperings of angels?"
"The idea had not occurred to me, madam."
"Ah, Professor, I have always the same complaint against you. A want of
_rapport_ with the deeper meanings of Nature. Shall I say a want of
imagination? You do not feel an emotional thrill at the singing of that
thrush?"
"I confess that I am not conscious of one, Mrs. Esdaile."
"Or at the delicate tint of that background of leaves? See the rich
greens!"
"Chlorophyll," murmured the Professor.
"Science is so hopelessly prosaic. It dissects and labels, and loses
sight of the great things in its attention to the little ones. You have
a poor opinion of woman's intellect, Professor Grey. I think that I have
heard you say so."
"It is a question of avoirdupois," said the Professor, closing his eyes
and shrugging his shoulders. "The female cerebrum averages two ounces
less in weight than the male. No doubt there are exceptions. Nature is
always elastic."