"Good morning, Mrs. Landsborough," I said, with immense dignity; "I am
sorry that I must retire from the case. It is impossible for me to go
on if you disregard my instructions in that manner. No doubt Dr.
Campbell----"
The good woman lifted up her hands in amazement and appeal. Even Jeems
turned on his bed in quick alarm.
"'Deed, Dr. Ma Whurr!" she cried, "it wasna Dr. Cawmell ava. We wadna
think on sic a thing----"
"Your faither's son will never gang oot o' a MacLandsborough's hoose in
anger, surely?" said Jeems, making the final Galloway appeal to the clan
spirit.
This was conjuring with a name I could not disavow, and strongly against
my first intentions I continued to attend the case. Jeems got rapidly
better, and my bottle diminished steadily day by day. But whether it
went down Jeems's throat or mended the health of the back of the grate,
it was better, perhaps, that I did not inquire too closely. On my way
home I considered my own prescription, and recalled the ingredients
which by taste and smell I discovered in the intruding bottle.
"I am not sure but what--well, it might have been better. I wonder who
the man is?" This was as much as I could be brought to admit in those
days, even to myself. The doctor, who in the first years of his
practice does not think more of the sacredness of his diagnosis than of
his married wife and all his family unto cousins six times removed, is
not fit to be trusted--not so much as with the administering of one
Beecham's pill.
Yet I own the matter troubled me. I had a rival who--no, he did not
understand more of the case than myself. But all the same, I wanted to
find him out--in the interests of the Medical Register.
But the riddle was resolved one day about a week afterwards in a rather
remarkable manner. I was proceeding up the long main street of the
Clachan, looking for a house in which Dr. Campbell (with whom of late I
had grown strangely intimate) had told me that he would be found at a
certain hour.
As I went I noticed, what I had never seen before, a little house, white
and clean without, the creepers clambering all over it. This agreed, so
far, with the doctor's description. I turned aside and went up two or
three carefully reddened steps. A brass knocker blinked in the evening
sunshine. I lifted it and knocked.
"Is the doctor in?" I said to a tall gaunt woman who opened the door an
inch or two. As it was I could only see a lenticular section of her
person, so that in describing her I draw upon later impressions. She
hesitated a second or two, and then, rather grudgingly as I thought,
opened the door.
"Come in," she said.
With no more greeting than that she ushered me into a small room crowded
with books and apparatus. The table held a curious microscope,
evidently home-made in most of its fittings. Pieces of mechanism, the
purpose of which I could not even guess, were strewn about the floor.
Castings were gripped angle-wise in vices, and at the end of an ordinary
carpenter's bench stood a small blacksmith's furnace, with bellows and
anvil all complete. In the recess, half hidden by a screen, I could
catch a glimpse of a lathe. There was no carpet on the floor.
The door opened and a small spare man stood before me, the deprecation
of an offending dog in his beautiful brown eyes. He did not speak or
offer to shake hands, but only stood shyly looking up at me. It was
some time before I could find words. Nance often tells me that I need a
push behind to enable me to take the lead in any conversation--except
with herself, that is, and then I never get a chance.
"I beg your pardon, doctor," said I, "I was seeking my friend Campbell.
I did not know you had settled amongst us, or I should have been to call
on you before this."
I held out my hand cordially, for the man appealed to me somehow. But
he did not seem to notice it.
"No, not 'doctor,'" he said, speaking in a quick agitated way.
"Mister--Roger is my name."
"I beg your pardon, I am sure," I stammered; "in that case I do not know
how to excuse my intrusion. I asked for the doctor, meaning Dr.
Campbell, and your servant----"
"My mother, sir!"
There was pride as well as challenge in the brown eyes now, and I found
myself liking the young man better than ever.
"I beg your pardon--Mrs. Roger showed me in by mistake, I fear."
"It was no mistake--I am sometimes called so in this place, though not
by my own will; I have no right to the title!"
"Well," I said, as I looked round the room. "won't you shake hands with
me? You don't know what a pleasure it is to meet a man of science, as
it is evident you are, here in these forlorn uplands!"
"Will you pardon me a moment till I inform you exactly of my status?" he
said, "and when you clearly understand, if you still wish to shake my
hand--well, with all my heart."
He stood silent a moment, and then, suddenly recollecting himself, "Will
you not sit down?" he said. "Pray forgive my discourtesy."
I sat down, displacing as I did so a box of tools which had been planted
on the green rep of the easy-chair cover.
"You may well be astonished that I wish to speak to you, Dr. McQuhirr,"
he said, beginning restlessly to pace the room, mechanically avoiding
the various obstacles on the floor as he did so; "but I have long wished
to put myself right with a member of the profession, and now that chance
has thrown us together, I feel that I must speak----"
"But there is Dr. Campbell--surely it cannot be that two men of such
kindred tastes, in a small place like this, should not know each other!"
He flushed painfully, and turning to a stand near the window, played
with the flywheel of a small model, turning it back and forward with his
finger.
"Dr. Campbell is the victim of a most unfortunate prejudice," he
murmured softly, and for a space said no more. It was so still in the
room that through the quiet I could hear the tall eight-day clock
ticking half-way up the stairs.
He resumed his narrative and his pacing to and fro at the same moment.
"I am," he went on, "at heart of your profession. I have attended all
the classes and earned the encomiums of my professors in the hospitals.
I stood fairly well in the earlier written examinations, but at my first
oral I broke down completely--a kind of aphasia came over me. My brain
reeled, a dreadful shuddering took hold of my soul, and I fell into a
dead faint. For months they feared for my reason, and though ultimately
I recovered and completed my course of study, I was never able to sit
down at an examination-table again. After my father's death my mother
settled here, and gradually it has come about that in any emergency I
have been asked to visit and prescribe for a patient. I believe the poor
people call me 'doctor' among themselves, but I have never either
countenanced the title, or on any occasion failed to rebuke the user.
Neither have I ever accepted fee or reward, whether for advice or
medicine!"