which to reproach myself. Do you think that I would be such a fool as to
come here and tell you lies? Once for all, I have nothing to regret."
He was a pitiful, half-tragic, and half-grotesque figure as he stood
with one trouser leg rolled to his knee, and that ever-present horror
still lurking in his eyes. A burst of merriment came from the
card-players in the next room and the two looked at each other in
silence.
"Sit down!" said the doctor abruptly. "Your assurance is quite
sufficient." He stooped and ran his finger down the line of the young
man's shin, raising it at one point. "Hum! Serpiginous!" he murmured,
shaking his head; "any other symptoms?"
"My eyes have been a little weak."
"Let me see your teeth!" He glanced at them, and again made the gentle
clicking sound of sympathy and disapprobation.
"Now the eye!" He lit a lamp at the patient's elbow, and holding a small
crystal lens to concentrate the light, he threw it obliquely upon the
patient's eye. As he did so a glow of pleasure came over his large,
expressive face, a flush of such enthusiasm as the botanist feels when
he packs the rare plant into his tin knapsack, or the astronomer when
the long-sought comet first swims into the field of his telescope.
"This is very typical--very typical indeed," he murmured, turning to his
desk and jotting down a few memoranda upon a sheet of paper. "Curiously
enough I am writing a monograph upon the subject. It is singular that
you should have been able to furnish so well marked a case."
He had so forgotten the patient in his symptom that he had assumed an
almost congratulatory air towards its possessor. He reverted to human
sympathy again as his patient asked for particulars.
"My dear sir, there is no occasion for us to go into strictly
professional details together," said he soothingly. "If, for example, I
were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be the
wiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms I
may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint."
The young baronet sank back in his chair and his chin fell forward upon
his chest. The doctor sprang to a side table and poured out a half glass
of liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A little fleck of
colour came into his cheeks as he drank it down.
"Perhaps I spoke a little abruptly," said the doctor. "But you must have
known the nature of your complaint, why otherwise should you have come
to me?"
"God help me, I suspected it--but only to-day when my leg grew bad. My
father had a leg like this."
"It was from him, then?"
"No, from my grandfather. You have heard of Sir Rupert Norton, the great
Corinthian?"
The doctor was a man of wide reading with a retentive memory. The name
brought back to him instantly the remembrance of the sinister reputation
of its owner--a notorious buck of the thirties, who had gambled and
duelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery until even the vile
set with whom he consorted had shrunk away from him in horror, and left
him to a sinister old age with the barmaid wife whom in some drunken
frolic he had espoused. As he looked at the young man still leaning back
in the leather chair, there seemed for the instant to flicker up behind
him some vague presentiment of that foul old dandy with his dangling
seals, many-wreathed scarf, and dark, satyric face. What was he now? An
armful of bones in a mouldy box. But his deeds--they were living and
rotting the blood in the veins of an innocent man.
"I see that you have heard of him," said the young baronet. "He died
horribly, I have been told, but not more horribly than he had lived. My
father was his only son. He was a studious, man, fond of books and
canaries and the country. But his innocent life did not save him."
"His symptoms were cutaneous, I understand."
"He wore gloves in the house. That was the first thing I can remember.
And then it was his throat, and then his legs. He used to ask me so
often about my own health, and I thought him so fussy, for how could I
tell what the meaning of it was? He was always watching me--always with
a sidelong eye fixed upon me. Now at last I know what he was watching
for."
"Had you brothers or sisters?"
"None, thank God!"
"Well, well, it is a sad case, and very typical of many which come in my
way. You are no lonely sufferer, Sir Francis. There are many thousands
who bear the same cross as you do."
"But where's the justice of it, doctor?" cried the young man, springing
from the chair and pacing up and down the consulting-room. "If I were
heir to my grandfather's sins as well as to their results I could
understand it, but I am of my father's type; I love all that is gentle
and beautiful, music and poetry and art. The coarse and animal is
abhorrent to me. Ask any of my friends and they would tell you that. And
now that this vile, loathsome thing--Ach, I am polluted to the marrow,
soaked in abomination! And why? Haven't I a right to ask why? Did I do
it? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And look at me now,
blighted and blasted, just as life was at its sweetest! Talk about the
sins of the father! How about the sins of the Creator!" He shook his two
clenched hands in the air, the poor, impotent atom with his pinpoint of
brain caught in the whirl of the infinite.
The doctor rose and placing his hands upon his shoulders he pressed him
back into his chair again.
"There, there, my dear lad," said he. "You must not excite yourself! You
are trembling all over. Your nerves cannot stand it. We must take these
great questions upon trust. What are we after all? Half evolved
creatures in a transition stage; nearer, perhaps, to the medusa on the
one side than to perfected humanity on the other. With half a complete
brain we can't expect to understand the whole of a complete fact, can
we, now? It is all very dim and dark, no doubt, but I think Pope's
famous couplet sums the whole matter up, and from my heart, after fifty
years of varied experience, I can say that----"
But the young baronet gave a cry of impatience and disgust.
"Words, words, words! You can sit comfortably there in your chair and
say them--and think them too, no doubt. You've had your life. But I've
never had mine. You've healthy blood in your veins. Mine is putrid. And
yet I am as innocent as you. What would words do for you if you were in
this chair and I in that? Ah, it's such a mockery and a make-belief.
Don't think me rude, though, doctor. I don't mean to be that. I only say
that it is impossible for you or any man to realise it. But I've a
question to ask you, doctor. It's one on which my whole life must
depend."
He writhed his fingers together in an agony of apprehension.
"Speak out, my dear sir. I have every sympathy with you."
"Do you think--do you think the poison has spent itself on me? Do you
think if I had children that they would suffer?"
"I can only give one answer to that. 'The third and fourth generation,'
says the trite old text. You may in time eliminate it from your system,
but many years must pass before you can think of marriage."
"I am to be married on Tuesday," whispered the patient.
It was Dr. Horace Selby's turn to be thrilled with horror. There were
not many situations which would yield such a sensation to his
well-seasoned nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of the
card-table broke in again upon them. "We had a double ruff if you had
returned a heart." "I was bound to clear the trumps." They were hot and
angry about it.
"How could you?" cried the doctor severely. "It was criminal."
"You forget that I have only learned how I stand to-day." He put his two
hands to his temples and pressed them convulsively. "You are a man of
the world, Doctor Selby. You have seen or heard of such things before.
Give me some advice. I'm in your hands. It is all so sudden and
horrible, and I don't think I am strong enough to bear it."
The doctor's heavy brows thickened into two straight lines and he bit
his nails in perplexity.
"The marriage must not take place."
"Then what am I to do?"
"At all costs it must not take place."
"And I must give her up?"
"There can be no question about that!"
The young man took out a pocket-book and drew from it a small
photograph, holding it out towards the doctor. The firm face softened as
he looked at it.
"It is very hard on you, no doubt. I can appreciate it more now that I
have seen that. But there is no alternative at all. You must give up all
thought of it."
"But this is madness, doctor--madness, I tell you. No, I won't raise my
voice! I forgot myself! But realise it, man! I am to be married on
Tuesday--this coming Tuesday, you know. And all the world knows it. How
can I put such a public affront upon her? It would be monstrous."
"None the less it must be done. My dear sir, there is no way out of it."
"You would have me simply write brutally and break the engagement at
this last moment without a reason? I tell you I couldn't do it."
"I had a patient once who found himself in a somewhat similar situation
some years ago," said the doctor thoughtfully. "His device was a
singular one. He deliberately committed a penal offence and so compelled
the young lady's people to withdraw their consent to the marriage."
The young baronet shook his head.
"My personal honour is as yet unstained," said he. "I have little else
left, but that at least I will preserve."
"Well, well, it's a nice dilemma and the choice lies with you."
"Have you no other suggestion?"
"You don't happen to have property in Australia?"
"None."
"But you have capital?"
"Yes."
"Then you could buy some--to-morrow morning, for example. A thousand
mining shares would do. Then you might write to say that urgent business
affairs have compelled you to start at an hour's notice to inspect your
property. That would give you six months at any rate."
"Well, that would be possible--yes, certainly it would be possible. But
think of her position--the house full of wedding presents--guests coming
from a distance. It is awful. And you say there is no alternative."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, then, I might write it now, and start to-morrow--eh? Perhaps you
would let me use your desk. Thank you! I am so sorry to keep you from
your guests so long. But I won't be a moment now." He wrote an abrupt
note of a few lines. Then, with a sudden impulse, he tore it to shreds
and flung it into the fireplace. "No, I can't sit down and tell her a
lie, doctor," said he rising. "We must find some other way out of this.
I will think it over, and let you know my decision. You must allow me to
double your fee as I have taken such an unconscionable time. Now,
good-bye, and thank you a thousand times for your sympathy and advice."
"Why, dear me, you haven't even got your prescription yet. This is the
mixture, and I should recommend one of these powders every morning and
the chemist will put all directions upon the ointment box. You are
placed in a cruel situation, but I trust that these may be but passing
clouds. When may I hope to hear from you again?"
"To-morrow morning."
"Very good. How the rain is splashing in the street. You have your
waterproof there. You will need it. Good-bye, then, until to-morrow."
He opened the door. A gust of cold, damp air swept into the hall. And
yet the doctor stood for a minute or more watching the lonely figure
which passed slowly through the yellow splotches of the gas-lamps and
into the broad bars of darkness between. It was but his own shadow which
trailed up the wall as he passed the lights, and yet it looked to the
doctor's eye as though some huge and sombre figure walked by a
mannikin's side, and led him silently up the lonely street.
Doctor Horace Selby heard again of his patient next morning and rather
earlier than he had expected. A paragraph in the _Daily News_ caused him
to push away his breakfast untasted, and turned him sick and faint while
he read it. "A Deplorable Accident" it was headed, and it ran in this
way:--
"A fatal accident of a peculiarly painful character is reported
from King William Street. About eleven o'clock last night a
young man was observed, while endeavouring to get out of the
way of a hansom, to slip and fall under the wheels of a heavy
two-horse dray. On being picked up, his injuries were found to
be of a most shocking character, and he expired while being
conveyed to the hospital. An examination of his pocket-book and
card-case shows beyond any question that the deceased is none
other than Sir Francis Norton of Deane Park, who has only
within the last year come into the baronetcy. The accident is
made the more deplorable as the deceased, who was only just of
age, was on the eve of being married to a young lady belonging
to one of the oldest families in the south. With his wealth and
his talents the ball of fortune was at his feet, and his many
friends will be deeply grieved to know that his promising
career has been cut short in so sudden and tragic a fashion."
XI
THE CURSE OF EVE
Robert Johnson was an essentially commonplace man, with no feature to
distinguish him from a million others. He was pale of face, ordinary in
looks, neutral in opinions, thirty years of age, and a married man. By
trade he was a gentleman's outfitter in the New North Road, and the
competition of business squeezed out of him the little character that
was left. In his hope of conciliating customers he had become cringing
and pliable, until working ever in the same routine from day to day he
seemed to have sunk into a soulless machine rather than a man. No great
question had ever stirred him. At the end of this smug century,
self-contained in his own narrow circle, it seemed impossible that any
of the mighty, primitive passions of mankind could ever reach him. Yet
birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when
one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of
the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilisation
and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.
Johnson's wife was a quiet little woman, with brown hair and gentle
ways. His affection for her was the one positive trait in his character.
Together they would lay out the shop window every Monday morning, the
spotless shirts in their green cardboard boxes below, the neckties above
hung in rows over the brass rails, the cheap studs glistening from the
white cards at either side, while in the background were the rows of
cloth caps and the bank of boxes in which the more valuable hats were
screened from the sunlight. She kept the books and sent out the bills.
No one but she knew the joys and sorrows which crept into his small
life. She had shared his exultation when the gentleman who was going to
India had bought ten dozen shirts and an incredible number of collars,
and she had been stricken as he when, after the goods had gone, the bill
was returned from the hotel address with the intimation that no such
person had lodged there. For five years they had worked, building up the
business, thrown together all the more closely because their marriage
had been a childless one. Now, however, there were signs that a change
was at hand, and that speedily. She was unable to come downstairs, and
her mother, Mrs. Peyton, came over from Camberwell to nurse her and to
welcome her grandchild.
Little qualms of anxiety came over Johnson as his wife's time
approached. However, after all, it was a natural process. Other men's
wives went through it unharmed, and why should not his? He was himself
one of a family of fourteen, and yet his mother was alive and hearty. It
was quite the exception for anything to go wrong. And yet in spite of
his reasonings the remembrance of his wife's condition was always like a
sombre background to all his other thoughts.
Doctor Miles of Bridport Place, the best man in the neighbourhood, was
retained five months in advance, and, as time stole on, many little
packets of absurdly small white garments with frill work and ribbons
began to arrive among the big consignments of male necessities. And then
one evening, as Johnson was ticketing the scarves in the shop, he heard
a bustle upstairs, and Mrs. Peyton came running down to say that Lucy
was bad and that she thought the doctor ought to be there without delay.
It was not Robert Johnson's nature to hurry. He was prim and staid and
liked to do things in an orderly fashion. It was a quarter of a mile
from the corner of the New North Road where his shop stood to the
doctor's house in Bridport Place. There were no cabs in sight, so he set
off upon foot, leaving the lad to mind the shop. At Bridport Place he
was told that the doctor had just gone to Harman Street to attend a man
in a fit. Johnson started off for Harman Street, losing a little of his
primness as he became more anxious. Two full cabs but no empty ones
passed him on the way. At Harman Street he learned that the doctor had
gone on to a case of measles, fortunately he had left the address--69
Dunstan Road, at the other side of the Regent's Canal. Johnson's
primness had vanished now as he thought of the women waiting at home,
and he began to run as hard as he could down the Kingsland Road. Some
way along he sprang into a cab which stood by the curb and drove to
Dunstan Road. The doctor had just left, and Robert Johnson felt inclined
to sit down upon the steps in despair.
Fortunately he had not sent the cab away, and he was soon back at
Bridport Place. Doctor Miles had not returned yet, but they were
expecting him every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on his
knees, in a high, dim-lit room, the air of which was charged with a
faint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive, and the books
in the shelves were sombre, and a squat black clock ticked mournfully on
the mantelpiece. It told him that it was half-past seven, and that he
had been gone an hour and a quarter. Whatever would the women think of
him! Every time that a distant door slammed he sprang from his chair in
a quiver of eagerness. His ears strained to catch the deep notes of the
doctor's voice. And then, suddenly, with a gush of joy he heard a quick
step outside, and the sharp click of the key in the lock. In an instant
he was out in the hall, before the doctor's foot was over the threshold.
"If you please, doctor, I've come for you," he cried; "the wife was
taken bad at six o'clock."
He hardly knew what he expected the doctor to do. Something very
energetic, certainly--to seize some drugs, perhaps, and rush excitedly
with him through the gaslit streets. Instead of that Doctor Miles threw
his umbrella into the rack, jerked off his hat with a somewhat peevish
gesture, and pushed Johnson back into the room.
"Let's see! You _did_ engage me, didn't you?" he asked in no very
cordial voice.
"Oh yes, doctor, last November. Johnson, the outfitter, you know, in the
New North Road."
"Yes, yes. It's a bit overdue," said the doctor, glancing at a list of
names in a note-book with a very shiny cover. "Well, how is she?"
"I don't----"
"Ah, of course, it's your first. You'll know more about it next time."
"Mrs. Peyton said it was time you were there, sir."
"My dear sir, there can be no very pressing hurry in a first case. We
shall have an all-night affair, I fancy. You can't get an engine to go
without coals, Mr. Johnson, and I have had nothing but a light lunch."
"We could have something cooked for you--something hot and a cup of
tea."
"Thank you, but I fancy my dinner is actually on the table. I can do no
good in the earlier stages. Go home and say that I am coming, and I will
be round immediately afterwards."
A sort of horror filled Robert Johnson as he gazed at this man who could
think about his dinner at such a moment. He had not imagination enough
to realise that the experience which seemed so appallingly important to
him, was the merest everyday matter of business to the medical man who
could not have lived for a year had he not, amid the rush of work,
remembered what was due to his own health. To Johnson he seemed little
better than a monster. His thoughts were bitter as he sped back to his
shop.
"You've taken your time," said his mother-in-law reproachfully, looking
down the stairs as he entered.
"I couldn't help it!" he gasped. "Is it over?"
"Over! She's got to be worse, poor dear, before she can be better.
Where's Doctor Miles?"
"He's coming after he's had dinner."
The old woman was about to make some reply, when, from the half-opened
door behind, a high, whinnying voice cried out for her. She ran back and
closed the door, while Johnson, sick at heart, turned into the shop.
There he sent the lad home and busied himself frantically in putting up
shutters and turning out boxes. When all was closed and finished he
seated himself in the parlour behind the shop. But he could not sit
still. He rose incessantly to walk a few paces and then fall back into a
chair once more. Suddenly the clatter of china fell upon his ear, and he
saw the maid pass the door with a cup on a tray and a smoking teapot.
"Who is that for, Jane?" he asked.
"For the mistress, Mr. Johnson. She says she would fancy it."
There was immeasurable consolation to him in that homely cup of tea. It
wasn't so very bad after all if his wife could think of such things. So
lighthearted was he that he asked for a cup also. He had just finished
it when the doctor arrived, with a small black-leather bag in his hand.
"Well, how is she?" he asked genially.
"Oh, she's very much better," said Johnson, with enthusiasm.
"Dear me, that's bad!" said the doctor. "Perhaps it will do if I look in
on my morning round?"
"No, no," cried Johnson, clutching at his thick frieze overcoat. "We are
so glad that you have come. And, doctor, please come down soon and let
me know what you think about it."
The doctor passed upstairs, his firm, heavy steps resounding through the
house. Johnson could hear his boots creaking as he walked about the
floor above him, and the sound was a consolation to him. It was crisp
and decided, the tread of a man who had plenty of self-confidence.
Presently, still straining his ears to catch what was going on, he heard
the scraping of a chair as it was drawn along the floor, and a moment
later he heard the door fly open, and some one came rushing downstairs.
Johnson sprang up with his hair bristling, thinking that some dreadful
thing had occurred, but it was only his mother-in-law, incoherent with
excitement and searching for scissors and some tape. She vanished again
and Jane passed up the stairs with a pile of newly-aired linen. Then,
after an interval of silence, Johnson heard the heavy, creaking tread
and the doctor came down into the parlour.
"That's better," said he, pausing with his hand upon the door. "You look
pale, Mr. Johnson."
"Oh no, sir, not at all," he answered deprecatingly, mopping his brow
with his handkerchief.
"There is no immediate cause for alarm," said Doctor Miles. "The case is
not all that we could wish it. Still we will hope for the best."
"Is there danger, sir?" gasped Johnson.
"Well, there is always danger, of course. It is not altogether a
favourable case, but still it might be much worse. I have given her a
draught. I saw as I passed that they have been doing a little building
opposite to you. It's an improving quarter. The rents go higher and
higher. You have a lease of your own little place, eh?"
"Yes, sir, yes!" cried Johnson, whose ears were straining for every
sound from above, and who felt none the less that it was very soothing
that the doctor should be able to chat so easily at such a time. "That's
to say no, sir, I am a yearly tenant."
"Ah, I should get a lease if I were you. There's Marshall, the
watchmaker, down the street, I attended his wife twice and saw him
through the typhoid when they took up the drains in Prince Street. I
assure you his landlord sprung his rent nearly forty a year and he had
to pay or clear out."
"Did his wife get through it, doctor?"
"Oh yes, she did very well. Hullo! Hullo!"
He slanted his ear to the ceiling with a questioning face, and then
darted swiftly from the room.