All night Sir Charles Repton had tossed in an uneasy slumber; all night
his faithful wife Maria had sat up watching him. She dared not trust a
trained nurse; she dared not trust a single member of the household,
for he muttered as he slept strange things concerning the governance of
England, and stranger things concerning his own financial schemes.
At one moment, it was about half-past four in the morning,--much at the
time when Demaine, seventy miles away, upon the bosom of the ocean, had
woken to see the sun--his predecessor in the Wardenship of the Court
of Dowry (and still the titular holder of that office) had started
suddenly up in bed, and violently denounced a man with an Austrian name
as having cheated him by obtaining prior information upon the Budget.
He asked rapidly in his mania why Consols had gone up in the first week
of April, and would not be pacified until his wife, with the tact that
is born of affection, had assumed the rôle of the unpleasing foreigner
and had confessed all. Then and then only was he pacified and fell into
the first true sleep he had enjoyed for twenty-four hours. He slept
until eleven, and she, brave woman that she was, snatched some little
sleep at his side, but only upon the edge of sleep as it were, waking
at any moment to shield him from the consequences of his disease.
When he woke she herself made it her duty to go downstairs and fetch
him his breakfast, but though his repose had recruited his body, his
dear mind was still unhinged.
He would have it that the Royal Family when they invested in some
concern were not registered under their true names, and he began a long
wild rambling harangue about the death duties and some new story about
yet another outlandish name, and the insufficiency of the taxes for
which it was responsible. The whole thing was described in a manner so
clear and sensible as added to the horror of the contrast between his
sanity and that other dreadful mood.
By noon, still lying in his bed, he was contrasting to her wearied ear
the cost of the Tubes in London as against those in Paris, and making
jokes about “boring through the London clay.” He went on to ask why a
friend of his had drawn his salary as a Minister for some little time
after his death, and suddenly went off at a tangent upon the noble
self-sacrifice of Lord Axton in exiling himself to a tropic clime,
threatening that unfortunate peer with certain bankruptcy and possible
imprisonment unless a report upon the Bitsu Marsh were favourable. Then
for a blessed half-hour he was silent.
At the end of it he called for a pen and paper, and wrote a number of
short notes. Luckily he gave them to her to be posted; she read but a
few, and with trembling hands she burned them all, even the stamps,
though she knew how particular he had been in the old days on that
detail.
He dressed and came down. She persuaded him--oh how lovingly,--to
sit in his favourite room overlooking the Park. She forgot that it
overlooked the crowded throng, and from close upon one until late in
the afternoon this devoted angel clung to him while he poured out
meaningless denunciations of all his world, up hill and down dale,
relieved from time to time (a relief to him but not to her) by a sudden
throwing up of the window, and an address to the passers-by.
He warned more than one omnibus as it passed, of an approaching combine
between the various lines, and urged the shareholders to buy while yet
there was time. At one awful moment he had begun excitedly to point out
the figure of a Bishop upon the opposite pavement and to begin a full
biography of that hierarch, when she thought it her duty to slam down
the window and to bear the weight of his anger rather than permit the
scene.
Small knots of people gathered outside the house, but the police had
been warned and they were easily dispersed, with no necessity for
violence beyond the loss of a tooth or two on the part of the crowd.
As though her task were not enough, the house was full of the noise of
bells, message after message calling for news and for information, but
she had already given orders to the secretary to write out whatever
commonplace messages might occur to him, and he faithfully performed
his duty.
In her confusion she could see no issue but to try yet another night’s
sleep, and when he carried his hand to his head as he now and then
did, when the touch of pain stung him, she comforted herself with this
assurance, that a paroxysm of such violence could not long endure.
I say a paroxysm of such violence, though there was nothing violent in
the man’s demeanour: the horror lay in the cold contrast between the
pleasant easy tone in which the things were said and the things that
were said in that pleasant easy tone, while the violence was no more
than the violence of contrast between his absurd affirmations and the
quiet current of the national life.
The printing of one-tenth of those simple, easily delivered words might
have ruined the country. We owe it to Lady Repton--and I trust it will
never be forgotten--that no syllable of them all was printed, and that
the greater part of them were not even heard by any other ear than her
own.
She had persuaded him to an early dinner; she had even put it at the
amazing hour of half-past seven. She had ordered such food as she knew
he best loved, and the wine that soothed him most--which happened to
be a Norman champagne. She was particular to request a full service of
attendance, for her experience told her that in such surroundings he
was ever at his best.
Another attack of pain in the head seized him and passed. She sat
doggedly, and endured. This admirable wife after her day-long watch was
exhausted and heart-sick. She saw no issue anywhere. She sat by her
husband’s side, starting nervously at the least sound from below, and
listening to his impossible commentaries upon contemporary life, his
hair-raising stories of his friends, his colleagues and even of her own
religious pastors, and his bouts of self-revelations, or rather let
us hope, of diseased imaginings, when there was put into her hand an
express letter.
The superscription was peculiar; it ran:
To the Rt. Hon.
To the
The Lady C. Repton, M.V.O.
She opened it in wonderment. Its contents were far simpler than its
exterior: they ran as follows:
“MADAM,--Your husband’s case noted as per enclosed cutting. I know
what is wrong with him and I can cure him. My price is five hundred
dollars ($500.00) one hundred pounds (£100). The operation is
warranted not to take more than ten minutes of his valuable time.
“Will call upon you when you are through tea and he is quite rested,
somewheres round eight o’clock.
“Yrs. etc., SCIPIO KNICKERBOCKER”
Caught in the fold of this short note was a newspaper paragraph and a
card printed in gold letters upon imitation ivory:
DR. SCIPIO KNICKERBOCKER, M.D.
415 Tenth St.
London, Ont.
And the Savoy Hotel.
Had she been alone she would have prayed for guidance.
Eight o’clock, of all hours! And what was “Ont.”?
Drowning women catch at straws. Under no other conceivable
circumstances would Lady Repton have caught at such a wretched straw
as this. But the faculty had deserted her, she had no remedy; she saw,
she knew, everybody knew, that her husband was mad; she divined from
twenty indications and especially from the suddenness of the pain, that
the madness was some simple case of mechanical pressure. And suppose
this man really knew how to cure him? She dared not ask her husband to
put yet earlier the hour of his meal, at which he had already grumbled;
beside which, it was too late. The incomprehensible Scipio would arrive.
She was still in an agony of doubt when she accompanied her husband
(who as he went down the stairs and entered the dining-room was
chatting gaily upon the amours of a prominent member of the Opposition)
and as their lonely meal proceeded in the presence of those great
over-dressed mutes, their servants, to all her other anxieties was
added her irresolution upon the prime question, whether she should or
should not accept the desperate aid of an utterly unknown man, perhaps
an adventurer.
Just as Sir Charles had finished his soup, and with it his amusing
little story about the Baronetcy which though it had been paid for by
the son and heir (who was solvent) came out after all in the Birthday
List as a Knighthood,--just as he had finished his soup I say, he gave
a loud cry and put both hands to his head just behind the ears.
“Crickey how it hurts, William!” he remarked to the butler.
“Yes, Sir Charles,” said the butler in the tone of a hierarch at his
devotions.
“It’s gone now,” said the Baronet, with a sigh of relief, “but it
_does_ hurt when it comes! What’s the fish?” and he continued his meal.
He drank a great gulp of wine and was better.... “It’s dry,” he said
doubtfully, “it’s too dry ... but there are advantages to _that_. You
know why they make wine dry, William?”
“Yes, Sir Charles.”
“Oh! you do, do you? You’re getting too smart. You couldn’t tell me,
I’ll bet brazils!”
“No, Sir Charles.”
“Why,” said Repton with a merry wink, “it’s to save your mouth next
morning!” Then up went his hands to his head again and he groaned.
“Is your head hurting you again, darling?” said Lady Repton when she
saw the gesture repeated.
“Yes, damnably,” said Sir Charles in a loud tone. “It’s hurting just
under both ears, just where Sambo gave ... ah! that’s better ... (a
gasp) ... gave the Tomtit that nasty one in the big fight I went to see
last week--the night I telephoned home to say that I was kept at the
House,” he added by way of explanation.
The servants stood around like posts, and Lady Repton endured her agony.
“I think what I should have enjoyed most,” mused Sir Charles after this
revelation, “would have been to run across old Prout just as I came out
of that Club. Not that he knows anything about such things, but still,
it was a pretty lousy place. Besides which, the people I was with! It
would have been fun to see old Prout sit up. Shouldn’t wonder if he’d
refused to let me speak at the Parson’s Show after that; and in _that_
case,” ended Sir Charles significantly tapping his trousers pocket,
“there’d be an end to the wherewith!” He nodded genially to his wife.
“There’d be a drying up of the needful! Wouldn’t there, William?” he
suddenly demanded of the gorgeous domestic, who was at that moment
pouring him out some wine.
“Yes, Sir Charles,” said the hireling in a tone of the deepest respect.
“That’s what keeps ’em going, my dear,” he said, “and here’s to you,”
he added, lifting his glass. “Are you put out about something?” he
said, with real kindness in his voice.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” said that really Christian woman, nearly
bursting into tears.
“I’m really very sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings in any way, my dear,”
said Charles Repton.
No symptom of his malady was more distressing than this unmanly
softness, it was so utterly different from his daily habit.
“I’d never dream of wounding her ladyship intentionally; would I,
William?” he asked again.
“No, Sir Charles,” said William.
“I think we’d better go upstairs, dear,” said the unfortunate lady. “Oh
dear!” she sighed as a sudden peal rang through the house, and then
subsiding, she said: “Oh it’s only a bell!”
“Her ladyship’s nervous to-night, William,” said Repton as one man
should to another.
“Yes, Sir Charles,” repeated William in a grave monotone.
A card was brought in upon a salver of enormous dimensions and of
remarkable if hideous workmanship.
Lady Repton recognised the name.
“I must go out a moment. I’ll be back in a moment, Charles.” She looked
at him with a world of anxiety and affection, and left him chatting
gaily to the servant.
Scipio Knickerbocker stood without.
Any doubts upon the matter were settled not only by his appearance but
by his first phrase which ran in a singular intonation:
“Lady _C._ Repton? I am Scipio Knickerbocker, M.D. (Phillipsville),
Ma’am,”--and he bowed. He was an exceedingly small man; he wore very
long hair beautifully parted in the middle; his jaw was so square,
deep and thrust forward as to be a positive malformation, but to
convey at the same time an impression of indomitable will, not to
say mulish obstinacy. His arms and legs were evidently too thin for
health, and the development of his chest was deplorable. He was dressed
in exceedingly good grey cloth, but his collar, oddly enough, was of
celluloid. His buttoned boots were of patent leather, his tie had been
tied once and for ever, and sewed into the shape it bore. He carried in
his left hand an ominous little black leather bag.
“Come into this room,” said Lady Repton hurriedly. She took him into
a small room next to the dining-room, and communicating with it by a
little door; she switched on the electric light and stood while she
asked him breathlessly what credentials he had.
“Ma’am,” said the physician in a metallic staccato, “I hev no
credentials. What I propose to-night will be my sole credential.”
In the silence before her reply, Sir Charles’ merry monologue,
occasionally broken by the grave assent of the butler, could be heard
in the next room.
“What do you say you can do?” she asked.
“Ma’am, let me first tell _you_ right now what the Senator’s gotten
wrawng with him. In nineteen fourteen, month of September, I could not
hev told you; but in nineteen fourteen, month of October, I could: fur
your distinguished British physicist _and_ biologist, Henry Upton, then
pro-mulgated his eppoch-making discovery. You hev hurd tell of Caryll’s
Ganglia?”
“No,” said Lady Repton nervously, and in a quavering voice, “I have
not.”
“Ma’am,” said the Imperial authority with perfect composure, “I hev
them here.”
He dived into his bag and produced a little card on which was perfectly
indicated the back of the human head, only with the skin and hair
removed; two lumps on either side of the neck of this diagram bore in
large red letters, “Caryll’s Ganglia,” and two white lines leading from
them bore in smaller type, “Caryll’s Ducts.”
This card he gravely put into her hands. She looked at it with some
disgust: it reminded her of visits to the butchers’ during the
impecuniosity of her early married life.
When, as the Son of Empire fondly imagined, his hostess had thoroughly
grasped the main lines of cerebral anatomy, he suddenly thrust his hand
into the bag again and pulled out a little pamphlet, which, as it is
carefully printed at the end of this book and as the reader will most
certainly skip it, I shall not inflict upon her in this place.
It was a reproduction, in portable form, of the great lecture delivered
in the January of that year at the Royal Institute. It set forth the
late Henry Upton’s discovery that Caryll’s Ganglia were the seat of
self-restraint and due caution in the Human Brain.
The poor woman was too bewildered to make head or tail of it, and
whether the reader give herself the pains to peruse it or no is
indifferent, for its contents in no way affect this powerful and moving
tale.
“Madame,” he said when she lifted her eyes from it and as he fondly
imagined had mastered its details,--“you do not perhaps see the
con-nection.”
Her face assured him that she did not.
“Neither,” he added grandiloquently, “did the world, until I perceived
that if indeed such functions attached to Caryll’s Ganglia, why
the least obstruction of their ducts would condemn the sufferer to
occasional violent pain accompanied by such inability to refrain
from expression as must ruin his career and ultimately make a wreck
of his bodily frame. Madame, cases of such obstruction I hev found
to hev occurred in the ducts. Madame, _I_ discovered by what slight
touch of the lancet the tiny _im_pediment could be instantly removed.
Madame,” he continued, “the Caryll’s ducts in Sir Charles’ head are
ob-structed, hence the recurrent pain and the lamentable attack of
VERACITITIS from which he in-dub-it-ab-ly suffers.”
“Velossy what?” gasped Lady Repton.
“_Veracititis_, Ma’am. The phrase is my own; for it is I who have
identified the relation between the ganglia and the distressing
symptoms you have observed. He stands before you, _he_ does. Madame, it
is already enshrined in the proofs of the Columbia Encyclopedia”--he
dived once more into his bag and handed her yet another paper--“as
_Veracititis Knickerbockeriensis_. In Ontario since Washington’s
Birthday, we hev hed three cases; I was called over privately a month
ago for a most distressing case, luckily suppressed--never hurd of,
Madame, outside the family. I hev operated with success. Ma’am, I can
operate with success upon your husband.”
At this moment a loud scream of pain from the next room, followed by a
gasp of relief and the expletive “Great Cæsar’s Ghost!” almost decided
Sir Charles’ faithful spouse. Another scream that proved the spasms to
be increasing in violence quite decided her. She hurriedly re-entered
the dining-room, found Sir Charles white with the severity of the
suffering, and took him gently by the hand.
“Darling,” she said, “I have a practitioner who can relieve this. He is
waiting for you.”
“Oh,” sighed Sir Charles, as the pain left him, “I’m glad to hear it,
profoundly glad. They’re all such scoundrels, Maria, ... but if he’s a
surgeon and can cut something out, I’ll trust him.”
“It won’t be as bad as that,” said Maria, tenderly helping the Baronet
out through the small door towards the inner room.
Hardly had he set his eyes on the little doctor when he burst into a
hearty laugh.
“What a ridiculous little ass, Maria!” he said at the top of his voice.
“Good lord, what a little rat!”
If proof were wanted of the truth of Scipio’s contention, his demeanour
at this painful moment was sufficient. It was plainly evident to Lady
Repton’s not insufficient dose of intellect that no man would have
stood firm who had not seen the ghastly disease in its worst forms
before.
“Well,” said Sir Charles, “so you’re going to cut me up, are you?”
“Oh! _My_ no!” said Scipio. “Lady Repton would never hev permitted
a serious operation without your full con-currence. My proposition,
Senator, is nawthing but two slight pricks in the neighbourhood of the
pain. Ye’ll hardly feel it, but it’ll change ye,” added the determined
Knickerbocker with a suspicion of a smile upon his bony jaws.
“What with?” said Sir Charles a little nervously. (“Ouch!” by way of
digression as there was a stab of pain.) “Yes, anything, s’long as you
can do it quickly.”
“It don’t take but a moment,” said Scipio. “But there’d better be some
one hold your hands. There’s no pain worth accountin’.”
“Might we re-quest the Senator to be seated?” he politely suggested to
the lady.
Sir Charles as politely commented: “I’m not a Senator, you skimpy
little fool! Good lord, Maria, where do people like that come from?”
And as he chatted thus, Scipio passed one firm hard skeleton hand over
the top of that great brain, and with the other, even as Sir Charles,
with his chin bent upon his chest, was occupied in explaining to Maria
the physical deficiencies of his medical attendant, he put the edge of
the lancet in the precise position behind the ear which his science had
discovered.
“It’s his beastly Yankee accent, if it isn’t that beastlier thing, the
Australian,” the great Imperialist was in the act of saying when the
lancet struck suddenly and was as suddenly withdrawn.
“You’re quite right, monkey,” said Sir Charles in a weaker voice, “it’s
only a prick, and I think”--his voice still sinking,--“that it’s only
due to your great position in the medical world that I should express
my heartfelt thanks for your courteous services. It is men like you,
sir, who mean to suffering humanity....” Sir Charles suddenly stopped.
His voice grew a little louder. “Did you say he was a Yankee or an
Australian, Maria? Australians have the Cockney ‘a’; a filthy thing it
is, too!”
The skeleton hand was poised again upon Sir Charles’ head; he felt
his chin pressed down upon his chest; there was another sharp little
stroke, this time behind his left ear, and with a deep sigh he seemed
to sink into himself.
Scipio quietly touched the delicate point of his instrument with
antiseptic wool, put it back into its case and watched his patient with
a professional eye.
The man was dazed. He gripped his wife’s hand until he almost caused
her pain, and they could hear him mutter disconnected words:
“The highest possible appreciation.... My public position alone ...
sufficient reward ... in its way a link between ... provinces ... our
great Empire ... daughter ... daughter ... daughter....” Then almost
inaudibly “... nations.”
For perhaps five minutes the Great Statesman was silent, and his
breathing was so regular that he might have been asleep.
“Will he go to sleep, doctor?” whispered Lady Repton.
Scipio Knickerbocker shook his head. “He’ll be less rattled every
minute, Ma’am,” was his pronouncement, and once again he proved his
science by the justice of his prognostication.
Sir Charles stood up, a little groggy, leant one hand on the back of a
chair, took a deep breath, stood up more strongly, and said at last in
a voice still weak but quite clear:--
“Thank you sir. How can I thank you? I seem to remember”--he passed his
hand over his forehead--“I seem to remember some one telling me that
you were born,--though I assure you it is impossible for us in England
to distinguish it,--in one of our Britains Overseas. Sir, an action
such as that which you have just done--a good deed if I may call it
so,” he went on more loudly, seizing Scipio’s right hand between both
of his, “is a cement of Empire! I will never forget it, never! Will you
excuse me a moment sir, while I speak to Lady Repton?”
With his best and most winning smile Sir Charles asked this question of
Scipio, who for the tenth or eleventh time that evening, bowed with a
kink in the fourteenth vertebra.
He drew his wife into the hall.
“I suppose he wants payment on the spot, doesn’t he, Maria? These
specialists usually do.”
“Yes dear,” said Lady Repton, her old awe returning with his changed
mood. “Yes dear, I’m afraid he does ... he ... in fact, I’m afraid I
promised it him.”
“How much?” said Sir Charles sternly.
“Well dear, it doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll pay.”
“But it does matter. It matters a great deal, Maria. It all comes out
of _my_ pocket in the long run. How much did he stipulate for?”
“A hundred pounds,” said Lady Repton.
“Oh come,” said Sir Charles, greatly relieved. “A hundred! That’s a
good lot. How often will he come for that?”
“He won’t want to come again, dear,” said Lady Repton.
“What!” said Sir Charles, “a hundred pounds for that?”
“My dear--if you knew the difference!” said Lady Repton.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said impatiently, “the pain’s gone. It can’t be
helped, and of course ninety’s a broken sum. He’d have taken fifty,
Maria. I ought to have seen to this myself,” he added.
And so, the matter settled, he returned.
“You’ll allow me to leave you one moment with her ladyship,” he said in
his most winning manner. Then suddenly, “_Good_-night,” and with a warm
grasp of the hand Sir Charles left them.
Lady Repton was moved beyond words. She put into the young man’s hand a
packet of notes which she had carefully prepared. “It is nothing,” she
said, “it is nothing for what you have done, but oh, doctor, will it
last?”
“It’ll last for ever--at least,” he corrected himself hurriedly,
“they’ve all lasted so fur, and it’s more’n a year since I did the
first. It isn’t the _kind_ er thing that comes on again. ’Tain’t a
growth.” He was almost going to say what it was, when he remembered
that he held the monopoly. Then, lest he should stay too long in
that house where he was, after all, but a paid instrument, he very
courteously bade her good-night, and as he went home, carrying
his little bag, Scipio reflected that he liked Maria, Lady Repton,
better than he did her husband. But he remembered that operations for
Veracititis were, of their nature, causes for grievous disillusion.
He put the matter from his mind and took a cab back to his hotel and to
bed.
Thus was Sir Charles Repton cured of Veracititis, late upon Wednesday
night, the 3rd of June, 1915, and he slept his old sleep.