MR. CROWE AT GRANADA.
He that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun,
Himself is his own dungeon.
—_Milton._
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
—_Wordsworth._
One lovely autumn evening, just five years after Elsworth went to
Spain, two Englishmen were chatting over their wine in the dining-room
of the Hotel de los Siete Suelos in the grounds of the Alhambra at
Granada, under the red towers of that fairy palace of the Moors. The
elder was an exceedingly handsome man of fifty or thereabouts, of
commanding presence, a fine, open, honest, intelligent countenance, a
voice all suavity and of soothing modulation and persuasive power, he
looked every inch the sort of person he was—a fashionable West-End
physician, whose _clientèle_ was mostly composed of ladies.
Dr. Garnett Graves, lecturer on gynæcology at St. Bernard’s Hospital,
was taking his holiday in Spain this year. His companion was his
colleague at the same place—Mr. Malthus Crowe. They were taking their
long vacation trip together, and had remained a few days longer at
Granada than they had originally intended, because news had reached
them that two ladies of their acquaintance were on their way home to
England and would take Granada _en route_. It was of these ladies,
expected to arrive by the evening train from Malaga, that these
gentlemen were speaking. The talk was of money, and the prospects of
the heiress.
Mr. Crowe we know; his companion needs some introduction. He was not a
very scientific man, but withal a most successful physician. He managed
somehow to do his patients a great deal of good, yet as he did not
always know exactly why, some of his colleagues did not see the benefit
of it, though the patients certainly did not offer any objection to the
cure on this account. His colleagues did not exactly go the length of
saying that the patients ought to have refused to be cured on such
unscientific conditions; for as their contempt for the mental powers of
patients in general was immeasurable, they probably thought them
capable of any unscientific meanness. So Dr. Graves was not very
popular with the younger and ultra-scientific members of St. Bernard’s
staff, though his out-patient waiting-rooms were always crowded with
suffering human beings, whose gratitude for his kindly, and generally
efficient, help was unbounded. The students liked him and valued his
teaching—that is, the younger ones did; but when they had been long
enough at the hospital, they, too, came to see that a cure on
unscientific grounds and upon doubtful principles was no cure at all;
so they pitied his ignorance and turned elsewhere for knowledge.
Mr. Crowe would not have been out of his suitable environment in this
very city of Granada had he happened to have been born in Isabella the
Catholic’s time. Perhaps he would have made, in some respects, an
excellent Inquisitor. Certainly he would have done well for one of the
doctors who had to stand in the torture-room to say exactly how much
more pain the victim could bear. The days of the Inquisition being run
out, Mr. Crowe, as we said, would have been a square man in a round
hole if the science of physiology had not demanded an expositor.
They were talking, these two doctors, at the Alhambra Hotel, about the
only daughter and the orphan child of the great Sir Martin Lee, late
consulting physician to St. Bernard’s, who had amassed enormous wealth
by the practice of his profession, and recently dying, had left no less
a sum than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to his daughter,
beside great legacies to friends and public institutions, amongst which
St. Bernard’s came in for its share.
Known to both of the speakers of course was Mildred Lee, who, with her
aunt, was expected that night to arrive in Granada, and would then with
the two doctors continue the journey homewards.
Mr. Crowe had been a constant visitor at her father’s house, for Sir
Martin had great sympathy with his physiological tastes; and though
certainly not an original investigator himself, having a more
profitable occupation as a fashionable physician, he found it very
useful, and even necessary, to keep well ahead with all the research of
the day, and to have the reputation for the highest scientific method.
When he cured people, he always knew exactly the reason why; but he
cured the patient first, and found the reason afterwards. At least, he
always maintained that he did this, and never omitted to give the happy
patient a popular little lecture on the subject, which sent him, or
her, away not only disburdened of the ailment, but conscious of the
delightful reflection that his case was an interesting contribution to
clinical medicine and its cure the outcome of the study of practical
physiology. For a great deal of this Sir Martin Lee sucked the brains
of Mr. Crowe, who in his turn found his profit in the transaction, as
he, being a surgeon, was often recommended by his more celebrated
friend where the patient’s case was not a medical one. Dr. Graves, not
being so ardent a devotee of science, and finding no such necessity for
assuming a virtue he did not possess, had seldom visited the house in
question. A great hospital, with its large medical school, its staff of
professors, its physicians, surgeons, assistant physicians and
assistant surgeons, its nursing sisters, nurses, dressers, and
students, makes up a world in itself, of which the interests,
occupations, and pursuits seem to those engaged in it to be almost the
only ones of any consequence to them. They must feel this absorbing
interest in all that belongs to it, or they would not be fit for their
work, and could not continue it efficiently. The study of medicine
demands, perhaps, a more complete sacrifice of the whole man than any
other profession, except that of the Christian priesthood. To be a
competent doctor at all, one must feel an overwhelming interest in the
mysteries of health and disease. To be a distinguished doctor the
interest must become a lifelong passion; and this, alas! too often
closes in the mind of its possessor against the access of any other of
the enthusiasms that lay hold of men.
Neither the Church nor the Bar demands so much of its disciples as does
Medicine. They allow far more scope for the pursuit of letters than the
healing art. We expect a clergyman or a barrister to be a literary man.
We are surprised if the doctor, by stealing some hours from his daily
avocations, attains even moderate eminence in the path of literature.
“A quarter of a million!” exclaimed Mr. Crowe, as he carved another
slice of melon.
“Rather more than less,” said Dr. Graves.
“What will she do with it?”
“Ah! that is just what all the world is wondering!”
“She’ll be a fine catch for somebody!”
“I doubt it. She is not likely to be caught with any of the ordinary
baits with which men fish for heiresses. She has a fine brain and ideas
of her own which she will be likely to carry out, I fancy, before she
is much older—expensive ideas, too, that may melt her fortune like
snow before the sun.”
“Oh! but she is not extravagant?”
“No, because she has never yet discovered anything worth spending money
upon. Ideas, notions, crazes, run away with a good deal more money than
can be spent in Bond Street or the Palais Royal, you know.”
“But she does not want to convert the dwellers on the Congo to Paris
fashions and Society journalism?”
“No; but you will find, unless somebody marries her, that she will
spend the money on some mad humanitarian scheme quite as ridiculous.”
It was a little remarkable, perhaps, that these gentlemen, who owed
their position to the great medical charity which absorbed their daily
interests, should object to money being devoted to philanthropic
purposes. Probably they had left their benevolent feelings in London
when they donned their unprofessional travelling suits, and started for
a two-months’ Iberian trip, and put themselves under the influences of
history, poetry and romance. It would have taken a great deal of either
to have warmed or softened the heart of Mr. Crowe; but Dr. Graves fell
speedily under their domination, and became almost a devotee in some of
the more magnificent of the historic cathedrals of the peninsula.
On this night, seated at the table, and discussing the wealth and
position of his accomplished young friend, the thought crossed Mr.
Crowe’s mind, “Were I but free, I should not despair of winning Mildred
Lee and her wealth!”
These are dangerous thoughts to enter any man’s mind who has a
troublesome wife, especially when that man has no other consideration
than for himself alone. He wandered out of the Alhambra grounds and
strolled along the road, over the hill, past the massive old red towers
which had seen so many tragedies and had heard so often the din of
battle for their mastery. He was not romantic, but had read deeply
in Spanish history, and knew something of the world which had once
been enclosed by those mouldering walls and fortresses. The soothing
melody of falling waters and the whispering of the many streams
which descend through the richly-wooded slopes to fall into the Genil,
down to Granada, make a night under the shadow of the Alhambra a
never-to-be-forgotten pleasure, like no other for kindling poetical
thoughts and romantic ideas. But not poetry nor romance stirred, this
autumn night, the breast of Mr. Crowe. The greed of gold, the thought
of all he could achieve if he had the tenth of this woman’s wealth, was
moving within him, and he went out to meditate on the matter. Past the
gardens of the Generalife, up the hill, through vineyards and fields of
prickly pear, by the cactus hedges and the clumps of aloes, under the
soft shade of olive groves, on towards the Sierra Nevada, which lifts
its sunny peaks to heaven like thrones of pearl above the Alhambra
hill, till he found the road stopped by the cemetery wall. Seeking the
entrance, he found himself for the first time within a Spanish place of
burial. How unlike the quiet solemnity of an English churchyard! The
ground was rough and untended; a few aloes were scattered here and
there, but with no attempt at orderly arrangement. And where were the
graves? In place of the sacred six feet of earth, planted with flowers
and marked by beautiful sculpture, inscribed with the touching
memorials of the dead, he saw innumerable cells, built in the thickness
of the massive walls which surrounded the place, each cell hermetically
sealed with a marble tablet, on which were recorded the name and titles
of the departed whose remains it inclosed, together with some verses,
or quotations from the Missal, in memory of the lost ones. An
unpleasant, business-like way of economising space, far too suggestive
of lockers in a store, and giving one a sense of insecurity against
violation when the space occupied by the corpse should be required for
a fresh tenant. As Mr. Crowe was an advocate of cremation, and
considered land which would grow potatoes far too valuable to waste on
dead people, his susceptibilities were exercised merely by the
novelty of the arrangements, and not in any way by a sense of their
impropriety. Any way, he considered them good enough for Spaniards, who
were far too conservative to have any claim on an advanced thinker like
himself.
Running his eye over the long rows of marble tablets which served to
seal the openings of the cells which held the coffins, he was struck by
the fact that two departed wives of doctors of medicine were
amongst those deposited in the west wall. Nothing extraordinary in
this—nothing to excite the least remark for most observers; but in Mr.
Crowe’s present condition it set him wondering how much longer it would
be ere he would be relieved of the now almost intolerable burden of a
sick wife. Who stood a better chance with Mildred Lee than he, the old
friend of the heiress’s father, himself her tutor? Admired by her for
his science he knew he was—why not admired for himself, perhaps, if
only free? He had never really loved his wife; he had married her for
her fortune, and had been disappointed in its amount. He was not
capable of loving anything but wealth and fame. He ardently longed to
make some discovery which should bring him prominently before the
medical world. To upset the theory of the last German or Frenchman
whose work made any noise in the literature of the day, and to
establish on the ruins of his reputation a better and more consistent
one of his own: this was worth his days and nights of anxious thought,
and his toilsome and patient investigation.
So morbid had he become that he looked upon all mankind from a
pathological point of view, and it was seldom that he could not detect
abnormal processes at work in those with whom he came in contact. His
work absorbed him; and when he desired to hold converse with any one,
it was on those topics connected with it alone. Possessed of a small
patrimony, worth to him some £250 a year, he was compelled to add to
his income by taking pupils to “coach” for the higher professional
examinations. In this work he was very successful, for he was a
painstaking and impressive teacher. He was withal a skilful surgeon,
and had made many wonderful cures. He had rooms in a well-known street
of doctors, but was consulted with extreme infrequency. His appointment
as surgeon to St. Bernard’s did him little good in a pecuniary sense,
for no patient liked him; and no man or maid-servant whose health had
been restored under his care ever took the least pains to get master or
mistress to call him to any case of sickness. Nobody ever thanked him
for a cure; nobody ever gave him credit for curing him. A great many
poor hospital patients gave him the credit for anything that went wrong
with them while under his treatment; but their blame or their praise
was equally a matter of indifference to him, who occupied himself only,
as he said, with Man in general, especially man in the future, to the
utter disregard of the man particular and the man present.
How often man with the big M has robbed and murdered the body and soul
of the individual of the race! Was he happy? He had no idea of the
meaning of the word; enough for him that complete mental occupation
stifled and subdued the rising thoughts ever struggling in his heart to
torment him.
* * * * *
He turned to leave the cemetery. The sun was sinking behind the distant
mountains that bounded the western Vega. Amid scenes not to be
surpassed for grandeur and beauty on this planet of ours, his thoughts
were selfish and mean, and untinged by one ray of the romance or poetry
which the surroundings should have imparted to the least cultured mind.
He, the distinguished man of science, whose name was known in every
physiological laboratory of Europe, beheld all this glory unthrilled by
emotion, and scarcely troubled to think, except of the purely physical
causes of what he knew were to others sources of the profoundest and
most entrancing sentiment. It can be killed—the love of goodness! It
can be stifled, suppressed, and destroyed—the heart’s throb of delight
at loveliness and grandeur which awakens the emotions of even the
untutored savage! And it can be stifled, suppressed, and killed by no
surer method than that of coldly formulating, analysing, and
materializing, till the sentiments of wonder and worship are dissipated
into their elements. To-day, as he turned to leave the cemetery, he
thought of his visit, when a boy, to a little churchyard on Bantry Bay,
where straying once on a walking tour, he shed tears of joy at first
beholding such a wealth of loveliness as met his eyes when they took in
the glorious vision.
“I was a little fool then,” he thought.
Behind him was the pearl-crowned range of Nevada; around him were the
richest tropical forms of flowers and fruit; below, the towers of the
Alhambra, whose every stone was moss-grown with legend and cemented
with story. Still below, the grand old city, fragrant with the odour of
knightly deeds; and far beyond, stretching into illimitable distance,
the lovely Vega, dying away into the vapoury west, behind whose
mountain cincture was sinking the sun in a glorious wealth of colour
and a momentarily varying richness of shade unimaginable to those who
have not watched it set from that same spot where he stood. And he
thought but of the spectrum, of Frauenhofer’s lines, of refraction and
the absorption of light. His curse was on him, and fructifying. To lose
the sense of feeling another’s pain is, in its culmination, to lose the
sense of ever feeling pleasure one’s self. As the poet says,—
“Put pain from out the world, what room were left
For thanks to God, for love to man?”
Nature, ever striving to reduce the mountain to the level of the plain
by its disintegrating and destructive processes, does but bring earth
to earth; while man, repressing his holiest and most exalted emotions
to the level of mere physiological processes, reduces spirit to earth.
Mr. Crowe had perfectly succeeded. He went to his hotel. The
nightingales in Wellington’s elms were singing—not for him; the
streams were answering the constant whisper of the leaves—to him it
was nothing but gravitation. The fire-flies danced and the moon shed
her silver light over all this beauty. Bah! it was easily done in a
laboratory! The whole universe was but an expansion of that. To bed,
therefore, to rest, and to dream of something grander than scenery,
poetry, or romance—money whereby to win a wider, a more enduring, and
a more brilliant fame!
Mr. Crowe flattered himself that were he free to ask Mildred to become
his wife, he would stand a good chance of being accepted. His long and
close connection with her father, his acquaintance, not to say intimate
friendship, with herself, the many opportunities time had afforded him
of winning her esteem, his growing fame, the respect the world was
beginning to show for his achievements in science,—all led him to hope
that, were he but disencumbered, he might win the heiress.
Yet, at the rate his wife was sinking, she might last for many months.
What was the good of her life to her? Would it not be merciful to
terminate such an existence? When it became misery to live, why
continue to do so?
Of course he maintained the right we all had to commit suicide. Might
not such a man as himself, who had pushed many a poor wretch into
Charon’s boat, scientifically hasten her removal?