He straightened his back and beamed down on Herman Medfield from behind
the spectacles.
"All right--am I?" asked Medfield.
"You'll be all right--in three or four days," responded Dr. Carmon, with
his round, successful diagnosis smile.
"You won't have to operate?" Medfield's face lighted.
"Operate--? Oh--! Yes--I shall operate." The doctor spoke absently. It
was the tone of one to whom it could never occur not to operate. "I
shall operate. It's fine!"
"Better than you thought?" asked Medfield hopefully.
The doctor's absent-minded gaze broke. He smiled. "Worse! Much worse
than I thought. You could not live three months--as you are."
Herman Medfield sat up.
Dr. Carmon surveyed him proudly. "And in three months you'll be a new
man--made over--top to toe!"
"When do you operate?" asked Medfield a little dryly.
"Um--this is Wednesday? Yes--about Friday, then." He got up. "There is
something I want you to do meantime." He rang for the nurse and called
for a roll of bandage.
When she brought it, he asked her to send Aunt Jane to Suite A.
"Do you know where she is?" he asked.
"In the Children's Ward, I think," said Miss Canfield.
"Very well. Ask her to come. I want her to have special charge of this
brace for me."
He turned back to the window. "Now, if I may have you here. I want to
take measurements, please."
The man stood straight as a tailor's dummy while the surgeon's hands
flitted over and around him. The tall figure outlined against the
window had a singular grace and charm; and the short, square one moving
jerkily around it, taking measurements and jotting down figures had an
added absurdity from the contrast.... Now, Dr. Carmon was on his hands
and knees on the floor; and now, stretching tiptoe to pass a
tape-measure over the tall, thin shoulders of the aristocratic figure.
It was thus that Aunt Jane saw the two men as she opened the door. She
stood for a moment in the doorway. Then she closed the door and came in.
But between the opening of the door and the closing it, she had seen for
the first time Dr. Carmon as he really was--a homely and grotesque and
brusque little man. It added, perhaps, a touch of severity to the
expression of the round face and its crisp cap strings.
He looked up quickly from his thumb that marked a place on the
tape-measure, and glanced from one to the other.
"You know Mr. Medfield?" he said.
"I met Mr. Medfield when he came--yesterday," said Aunt Jane safely.
"Yes, we have become acquainted," rejoined Herman Medfield, with a
little polite gesture of the hand.
Aunt Jane's face was non-committal.
Dr. Carmon turned to it. "I want a brace made--for temporary use. Here
are the measurements. Be sure to give it plenty of room here--and here."
He drew a few lines and jotted down the figures and handed the paper to
her.
She received it in silence.
The millionaire stood at his ease, smiling at her. He did not look like
a man condemned to die in three months. His eye was keen and there was a
little line of firmness under the smile of his lips.
"I want to see my lawyer," he said. "I will go to my office in the
morning. There are things to arrange."
Dr. Carmon paused abruptly. "I thought you attended to all that before
you came." His tone was brusque. "I told you----"
"I did not understand," said the millionaire quietly. "I did not think
you knew." He looked at him.
"Well--of course--if you have to--" Dr. Carmon's gaze was reluctant and
his brow puckered itself.... Standing beside the millionaire and
looking up at him with the puckered forehead, he may have seemed an
awkward and fussy and ineffectual little man.
"He can't go!" It was Aunt Jane's voice, prompt and decisive--and the
two men turned and looked at her.
"He can't go," she repeated calmly. "He's got to have this on." She
motioned to the paper she held in her hand. "He's got to have it on
right away and go to bed."
"But--" said Herman Medfield.
"You can't go to bed and go to an office, too," replied Aunt Jane
firmly.
The millionaire looked at her. His glance travelled to Dr. Carmon's
face. There was the merest hint of a twinkle behind the round
professional glasses, and Herman Medfield regarded it.
"Do I understand that this is _your_ order?" he asked politely.
"It's better for you--not--to wait," admitted Dr. Carmon slowly.
"You mean I'm taking chances?"
"Yes."
The millionaire's glance fell. "Very well. I shall do as you say, of
course." He moved a little away and sat down.
Aunt Jane's glance followed him--the look in it changed subtly.
Something that had been in it up in the Children's Ward came back.
"You can have your lawyer here," she said almost kindly. "We've got
plenty of pens and paper and ink. And you can tell him all you want to
without going to any office, I guess. Now I'll go get this made for you;
and you be ready to have it on when I come back."
She opened the door and went out.
The two men looked at each other like two boys--and smiled. Both boys
had had mothers. Herman Medfield's mother had worn a cap, an
aristocratic affair of ribbons and lace that had little relation to the
clear-starched whiteness of Aunt Jane's muslin strings; Dr. Carmon's
mother had never known what it was to cover her smooth-parted hair under
a cap--she had been a hard-working woman and far removed from Mrs.
Oliver Medfield's way of life. But the two men, as they watched Aunt
Jane disappear, had a sudden common sense of motherly protection and
wisdom; and they smiled across to each other in almost shamefaced
understanding.
"It really _is_ better not to wait--" said the doctor, half
apologetically: "It _might_ be all right. But we're taking chances
enough as it is--without that."
The professional look had come back to his face. He was looking absently
before him at something unseen.