The first trivial sound that broke the spell, was the sound of a match
struck in the next room.
He rose, and groped his way to the door. Teresa had ventured upstairs,
and had kindled a light. Some momentary doubt of him kept the nurse
silent when he looked at her. He stammered, and stared about him
confusedly, when he spoke.
“Where--where--?” He seemed to have lost his hold on his thoughts--he
gave it up, and tried again. “I want to be alone,” he said; recovering,
for the moment, some power of expressing himself.
Teresa’s first fear of him vanished. She took him by the hand like a
child, and led him downstairs to his rooms. He stood silently watching
her, while she lit the candles.
“When Carmina sleeps now,” he asked, “does it last long?”
“Often for hours together,” the nurse answered.
He said no more; he seemed to have forgotten that there was another
person in the room.
She found courage in her pity for him. “Try to pray,” she said, and left
him.
He fell on his knees; but still the words failed him. He tried to quiet
his mind by holy thoughts. No! The dumb agony in him was powerless to
find relief. Only the shadows of thoughts crossed his mind; his eyes
ached with a burning heat. He began to be afraid of himself. The active
habits of the life that he had left, drove him out, with the instincts
of an animal, into space and air. Neither knowing nor caring in what
direction he turned his steps, he walked on at the top of his speed. On
and on, till the crowded houses began to grow more rare--till there were
gaps of open ground, on either side of him--till the moon rose behind
a plantation of trees, and bathed in its melancholy light a lonely high
road. He followed the road till he was tired of it, and turned aside
into a winding lane. The lights and shadows, alternating with each
other, soothed and pleased him. He had got the relief in exercise that
had been denied him while he was in repose. He could think again; he
could feel the resolution stirring in him to save that dear one, or
to die with her. Now at last, he was man enough to face the terrible
necessity that confronted him, and fight the battle of Art and Love
against Death. He stopped, and looked round; eager to return, and be
ready for her waking. In that solitary place, there was no hope of
finding a person to direct him. He turned, to go back to the high road.
At that same moment, he became conscious of the odour of tobacco wafted
towards him on the calm night air. Some one was smoking in the lane.
He retraced his steps, until he reached a gate--with a barren field
behind it. There was the man, whose tobacco smoke he had smelt, leaning
on the gate, with his pipe in his mouth.
The moonlight fell full on Ovid’s face, as he approached to ask his way.
The man suddenly stood up--stared at him--and said, “Hullo! is it you or
your ghost?”
His face was in shadow, but his voice answered for him. The man was
Benjulia.
“Have you come to see me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Won’t you shake hands?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
Ovid waited to answer until he had steadied his temper.
“I have seen Carmina,” he said.
Benjulia went on with his smoking. “An interesting case, isn’t it?” he
remarked.
“You were called into consultation by Mr. Null,” Ovid continued; “and
you approved of his ignorant treatment--you, who knew better.”
“I should think I did!” Benjulia rejoined.
“You deliberately encouraged an incompetent man; you let that poor girl
go on from bad to worse--for some vile end of your own.”
Benjulia good-naturedly corrected him. “No, no. For an excellent
end--for knowledge.”
“If I fail to remedy the mischief, which is your doing, and yours
alone--”
Benjulia took his pipe out of his mouth. “How do you mean to cure her?”
he eagerly interposed. “Have you got a new idea?”
“If I fail,” Ovid repeated, “her death lies at your door. You merciless
villain--as certainly as that moon is now shining over us, your life
shall answer for hers.”
Astonishment--immeasurable astonishment--sealed Benjulia’s lips. He
looked down the lane when Ovid left him, completely stupefied. The one
imaginable way of accounting for such language as he had heard--spoken
by a competent member of his own profession!--presented the old familiar
alternative. “Drunk or mad?” he wondered while he lit his pipe again.
Walking back to the house, his old distrust of Ovid troubled him once
more. He decided to call at Teresa’s lodgings in a day or two, and
ascertain from the landlady (and the chemist) how Carmina was being
cured.
Returning to the high road, Ovid was passed by a tradesman, driving his
cart towards London. The man civilly offered to take him as far as the
nearest outlying cabstand.
Neither the landlady nor Teresa had gone to their beds when he returned.
Their account of Carmina, during his absence, contained nothing to alarm
him. He bade them goodnight--eager to be left alone in his room.
In the house and out of the house, there was now the perfect silence
that helps a man to think. His mind was clear; his memory answered, when
he called on it to review that part of his own medical practice which
might help him, by experience, in his present need. But he shrank--with
Carmina’s life in his hands--from trusting wholly to himself. A higher
authority than his was waiting to be consulted. He took from his
portmanteau the manuscript presented to him by the poor wretch, whose
last hours he had soothed in the garret at Montreal.
The work opened with a declaration which gave it a special value, in
Ovid’s estimation.
“If this imperfect record of experience is ever read by other eyes than
mine, I wish to make one plain statement at the outset. The information
which is presented in these pages is wholly derived from the results of
bedside practice; pursued under miserable obstacles and interruptions,
and spread over a period of many years. Whatever faults and failings
I may have been guilty of as a man, I am innocent, in my professional
capacity, of ever having perpetrated the useless and detestable
cruelties which go by the name of Vivisection. Without entering into
any of the disputes on either side, which this practice has provoked,
I declare my conviction that no asserted usefulness in the end, can
justify deliberate cruelty in the means. The man who seriously maintains
that any pursuit in which he can engage is independent of moral
restraint, is a man in a state of revolt against God. I refuse to hear
him in his own defense, on that ground.”
Ovid turned next to the section of the work which was entitled “Brain
Disease.” The writer introduced his observations in these prefatory
words:
“A celebrated physiologist, plainly avowing the ignorance of doctors in
the matter of the brain and its diseases, and alluding to appearances
presented by post-mortem examination, concludes his confession thus: ‘We
cannot even be sure whether many of the changes discovered are the
cause or the result of the disease, or whether the two are the conjoint
results of a common cause.’
“So this man writes, after experience in Vivisection.
“Let my different experience be heard next. Not knowing into what hands
this manuscript may fall, or what unexpected opportunities of usefulness
it may encounter after my death, I purposely abstain from using
technical language in the statement which I have now to make.
“In medical investigations, as in all other forms of human inquiry, the
result in view is not infrequently obtained by indirect and unexpected
means. What I have to say here on the subject of brain disease, was
first suggested by experience of two cases, which seemed in the last
degree unlikely to help me. They were both cases of young women;
each one having been hysterically affected by a serious moral shock;
terminating, after a longer or shorter interval, in simulated paralysis.
One of these cases I treated successfully. While I was still in
attendance on the other, (pursuing the same course of treatment which
events had already proved to be right), a fatal accident terminated my
patient’s life, and rendered a post-mortem examination necessary. From
those starting points, I arrived--by devious ways which I am now to
relate--at deductions and discoveries that threw a new light on the
nature and treatment of brain disease.”
Hour by hour, Ovid studied the pages that followed, until his mind and
the mind of the writer were one. He then returned to certain preliminary
allusions to the medical treatment of the two girls--inexpressibly
precious to him, in Carmina’s present interests. The dawn of day found
him prepared at all points, and only waiting until the lapse of the next
few hours placed the means of action in his hands.
But there was one anxiety still to be relieved, before he lay down to
rest.
He took off his shoes, and stole upstairs to Carmina’s door. The
faithful Teresa was astir, earnestly persuading her to take some
nourishment. The little that he could hear of her voice, as she
answered, made his heart ache--it was so faint and so low. Still she
could speak; and still there was the old saying to remember, which has
comforted so many and deceived so many: While there’s life, there’s
hope.