Being a delayed letter from Dr. John Rogers to his friend and patient,
Benis Hamilton Spence.
DEAR Idiot: I knew you would get it--and you got it. Perhaps after this
you will learn to treat your sciatic nerve with proper respect. But
there is a worse complaint than sciatica. It lasts longer. Certain
symptoms of it are indicated in the things which your letter leaves
unsaid. Beans, old thing, you alarm me.
Now here is a sporting offer. If you'll drop it and come home at once
I'll promise never to tell Aunt Caroline. Come the moment you can put
foot to the ground. And, until then, I recommend strict seclusion and
no nursing. Nursing might well be fatal. Stick to Li Ho. He is your
only chance.
Your Aunt Caroline sends her love. (I told her I was writing you
directions for further treatment). She feels the deprivation of your
letters keenly. She can't see why the writing of a nice, chatty letter
to one's only living Aunt should prove an undue drain upon nervous
energy. Life has taught her not to expect consideration from relatives,
but it does seem hard that her only sister's boy should treat her as if
she were the scarlet fever. To allow himself to be ordered away from
home for a rest cure was certainly less than courteous. To anyone not
understanding the situation it would almost imply that his home was not
restful. And after all the trouble she had taken even to the extent of
strained relations with those Macfarland people who own a rooster. If
the slight had been aimed entirely at herself she could have taken it
silently, but when it included the three or four charming girls whom
she had asked to visit (one at a time) for the purpose of providing
pleasant company, she felt obliged to protest. Although protest, she
knew, was useless. All this, however, she could have borne. The thing
that she could scarcely forgive was the slight offered to his native
town by a departure three days before the set date, thereby turning his
"going away" tea into a "gone away"--an action considered by all
(invited) Bainbridge as a personal insult.
Pause here for breath.
To continue. Your Aunt Caroline does not believe in rest cures anyway.
She thinks poultices are much more effective. It stands to reason that
if a thing is in, it ought to come out. Rest cures are just laziness.
But, thank goodness, she never expected anything from the Spence family
but laziness. And she had told her sister so before she married into
it....
Allow an hour here for ancestral history with appropriate comment and
another hour for a brief review of your own conduct from youth up and
we come within measurable distance of a few words by me. I took up the
point of the four or five nice girls who had been invited to visit. I
put the whole thing down to shock and pointed out that patience is
required. A return to physical normality, I said, would doubtless bring
with it a reviving interest in the sex. It was indeed very fortunate, I
told her, that you were, at present, indifferent. Any question of
selecting a life partner in your present nervous state would be most
dangerous. Your power of judgment, I pointed out, was temporarily
jarred and out of gear. You might marry anybody. The only safe, the
only humane way, was to give you time to recover yourself.
"Power of judgment!" said Aunt Caroline. "Do you mean to tell me that
my sister's son is in danger of becoming an idiot?"
I said not exactly an idiot. Yet your strong disinclination toward
marriage could certainly be traced to a shocked condition of the
nerves. Certain fixed ideas--
"Fixed ideas!" said your Aunt. She has a particularly annoying habit of
repeating one's words. "Benis has always had fixed ideas--though when
he was young," she added with satisfaction, "I knew how to unfix them.
If this absurd rest cure can do anything to cure chronic stubbornness,
I've nothing to say. Why, even his father was easier to manage."
"Benis," I said, "considers himself very like his father."
"Does he?" retorted your dear Aunt with withering scorn. "He is just as
much like his father as a lemon is like a lobster."
This ended our conversation. But the effect of it is still with me.
Last night I dreamed of lemons and today I prescribed lobster for a man
with acute dyspepsia. I tell you what, you old shirker, it's up to you
to come home and bear your own Aunt. I'm through. Bones.
P.S. The office nurse has been changed since you left. I have now Miss
Watkins, returned from overseas. I think you knew her--name of Mary?
Very good looking--almost her only fault.
P.P.S. What you say about your pleasant old gentle-man with the
umbrella sounds very much like masked epilepsy. Ought to be under
treatment. I should say dangerous.
S.O.S. Aunt Caroline has just 'phoned to know whether all
letter-writing is barred or if not, wouldn't it be helpful if you were
to drop a line to a few of your young-friends? For herself she expects
nothing, but she does think, etc., etc., etc.!
Come back! B.