At the Bedside of the Doctor.
For the first time since he had come into the world Dr Lefevre was that
night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant-physician took
him home to Savile Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a
while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him
in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that
there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution;
that he was only exhausted--though exhausted very much; and that all he
needed was rest, sleep, nourishment,--sleep above all.
Lefevre slept the night through like a child, and awoke refreshed,
though still very weak. He was bewildered with his condition for a
moment or two, till he recalled the moving and exhausting experiences of
the day before, and then he was suffused with a glow of
elation,--elation which was not all satisfaction in the successful
performance of a new experiment, nor in a good deed well done. His
friend came to see him early, to anticipate the risk of his rising. He
insisted that he should keep his bed, for that day at least, if not for
a second and a third day. He reported that the patient was doing well;
that she had asked with particularity, and had been informed with equal
particularity, concerning the method of her recovery, upon which she was
much bemused, and asked to see her physician.
"It is a pity she was told," said Lefevre; "it is not usual to tell a
patient such a thing, and I meant it to be kept secret, at least till it
was better established." But for all his protest he was again suffused
with that new sense of inward joy.
Alone, and lying idle in bed, it was but natural--it was almost
inevitable--that the doctor's thoughts should begin to run upon the
strange events and suspicions of the past two days; and their current
setting strongly in one channel, made him long to be resolved whether or
no the Man of the Crowd, the author of yesterday's outrage, the "M.
Dolaro" of whom the detective had gone in search, and who, if captured,
would be certainly overwhelmed with contumely, if not with
punishment,--whether or not that strange creature was Julius's father,
or any relation at all of Julius. He was not clear how he could well put
the matter to Julius, since he so evidently shrank from discourse upon
it, yet he thought some kind of certainty might be arrived at from an
interview with him. On the chance of his having returned to his
chambers, he called for pen and paper and wrote a note, asking him to
look in, as he would be resting all day. "Try to come," he urged; "I
have something important to speak about."
This he sent by the trusty hand of his man in black; and by mid-day
Julius was announced. He came in confident, and bright as sunshine
(Lefevre thought he had never seen him looking more serene); but
suddenly the sunshine was beclouded, and Julius ceased to be himself,
and became a restless, timorous kind of creature, like a bird put in a
cage under the eye of his captor.
"What?" he cried when he entered, with an eloquent gesture. "Lazying in
bed on such a day as this? What does this mean?" But when he observed
the pallor and weakness of Lefevre's appearance, he paused abruptly,
refrained from the hand stretched out to greet him, and exclaimed in a
tone of something like terror, "Good heavens! Are you ill?" A paleness,
a shudder, and a dizziness passed upon him as if he sickened. "May I,"
he said, "open the window?"
"Certainly, Julius," said Lefevre, in surprise and alarm. "Do you feel
ill?"
"No--no," said Julius from the window, where he stood letting the air
play upon his face, and speaking as if he had to put considerable
restraint upon himself. "I--I am unfortunately, miserably constituted: I
cannot help it. I cannot bear the sight of illness, or lowness of health
even. It appals me; it--it horrifies me with a quite instinctive horror;
it deadens me."
Lefevre, whose abundant sympathy and vitality went out instinctively to
succour and bless the weak and the ill, was inexpressibly shocked and
offended by this confession of what to his sense appeared selfish
cowardice and inhumanity. He had again and again heard it said, and he
had with pleasure assented to the opinion, that Julius was a rare,
finely-strung being, with such pure and glowing health that he shrank
from contact with, or from the sight of, pain or ill-health, and even
from their discussion; but now that the singularity of Julius's
organization impinged upon his own experience, now that he saw Julius
shrink from himself, he was shocked and offended. Julius, on his part,
was pitiably moved. He kept away from the bed; he fidgeted to and fro,
looking at this thing and that, without a sparkle of interest in his
eye, yet all with his own peculiar grace.
"You wanted to speak to me," he said. "Do you mind saying what you have
to say and letting me go?"
"I reckoned upon your staying to lunch," said Lefevre.
"I can't!--I can't!... Very sorry, my dear Lefevre, but I really can't!
Forgive what seems my rudeness. It distresses me that at such a time as
this my sensations are so acute. But I cannot help it!--I cannot!"
"You have been in the country,--have you not?" said Lefevre, beginning
with a resolve to get at something.
"I have just come back," said Julius. "My man told me you had called."
"Yes. My mother wrote in a state of great anxiety about you, and asked
me to go and look at you. She said that she and my sister had seen a
good deal of you lately; that you began to look unwell, and then ceased
to appear, and she was afraid you might be ill."
This was put forth as an invitation to Julius to expound not only his
own situation, but also his relations with Lady and Miss Lefevre, but
Julius took no heed of it. He merely said, "No; I was not ill. I only
wanted a little change to refresh me,"--and walked back to the window to
lave himself in the air.
"Well," continued Lefevre, "since I called to see you, I have had an
adventure or two. You never look at a newspaper except for the weather,
and so it is probable you do not know that I had brought to me yesterday
afternoon another strange case like that of the young officer a month
ago,--a similar case, but worse."
"Worse?" exclaimed Julius, dropping into the chair by the window, and
glancing, as a less preoccupied observer than the doctor would have
remarked, with a wistful desire at the door.
"Much worse--though, I believe, from the same hand," said Lefevre. "A
lady this time,--titularly and really a lady,--Lady Mary Fane, the
daughter of Lord Rivercourt."
"Oh, good heavens!" exclaimed Julius, and there were manifest so keen a
note of apprehension in his voice and so deep a shade of apprehension on
his face, that Lefevre could not but note them and confirm himself in
his suspicion of the intimate bond of connection between him and the
author of the outrage. He pitied Julius's distress, and hurried through
the rest of his revelation, careless of the result he had sought.
"It may prove," said he, "a far more serious affair than the other. Lord
Rivercourt is not the man to sit quietly under an outrage like that."
Julius astonished him by demanding, "What is the outrage? Has the lady
given an account of it? What does she accuse the man of?"
"She has not spoken yet,--to me, at least," said Lefevre; "and I don't
know what the outrage can be called, but I am sure Lord Rivercourt--and
he is a man of immense influence--will move heaven and earth to give it
a legal name, and to get it punishment. There is a detective on the
man's track now."
"Oh!" said Julius. "Well, it will be time enough to discuss the
punishment when the man is caught. Now, if that is all your news," he
added hurriedly, "I think--" He took up his hat, and was as if going
to the door.
"It is not quite all," said the doctor, and Julius went back to the
window, with his hat in his hand.
"I wonder," he broke out, "if we shall ever be simple enough and
intelligent enough to perceive that real wickedness--the breaking of any
of the laws of Nature, I mean (or, if you prefer to say so, the laws of
God)--is best punished by being left to itself? Outraged nature exacts a
severe retribution! But you were going to say--?"
"The night before last," continued Lefevre, determined to be brief and
succinct, "I was walking in the Strand, and I could not help observing a
man who fulfilled completely the description given of the author of this
case and my former one."
"Well?"
"That is not all. When I caught sight of his face I was completely
amazed; for--I must tell you--it looked for all the world like you grown
old, or, as I said to myself at the time, like a death-mask of you."
"You--you saw that?" exclaimed Julius, leaning against the window with a
sudden look of terror which Lefevre was ashamed to have seen: it was
like catching a glimpse of Julius's poor naked soul. "And you
thought--?" continued Julius.
"You shall hear. Dr Rippon--you remember the old doctor?--had a sight of
a man in the Strand the night before, who, he believes, was his old
friend Courtney that he thought dead, and who, I believe, was the man I
saw."
Lefevre stopped. There was a pause, in which Julius put his head out of
the window, as if he had a mind to be gone that way. Then he turned with
a marked control upon himself.
"Really, Lefevre," said he, "this is the queerest stuff I've heard for a
long time! This is hallucination with a vengeance! I don't like to apply
such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come
about. An excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something,
has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a
friend of his youth. Very well. The excellent old gentleman tells you of
that, and it impresses you. _You_ walk on the same pavement the next
evening--I won't emphasise the fact of its being after dinner, though I
daresay it was--"
"It was."
"--_You_ have a glimpse of a man who looks--well, something like me;
and you instantly conclude, 'Ah! the Courtney person--the friend of Dr
Rippon's youth!--and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!' Next
day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its
author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you
saw, _argal_, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! Is your
conclusion clear upon the evidence? Is it inevitable? Is it necessary?
Is it not forced?"
"Well," began Lefevre.
"It is bad detective business," broke in Julius, "though it may be good
friendship. You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you
wished to give me warning of it. But--_que diable vas-tu faire dans
cette galère?_ You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am
in trouble--and who knows? who knows? 'Man is born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upward'--I may ask of you both your friendship and your
skill. One thing I ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now,
thus miserably moved, to any one! Now I must go. Good-bye." And before
Lefevre could find another word, Julius had opened the door and was
gone.
"If it moves him like that," said the doctor to himself, through his
bewilderment, "there must be something worse in it--God forgive me for
thinking so!--than I have ever imagined."