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| THE DOCTOR’S RECREATION SERIES |
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| CHARLES WELLS MOULTON _General Editor_ |
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| [Illustration: LOGO] |
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| VOLUME TWO |
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[Illustration: _THE VILLAGE DOCTOR_]
THE DOCTOR’S RED LAMP
A Book of Short Stories Concerning the Doctor’s Daily Life.
Selected by
CHARLES WELLS MOULTON.
[Illustration: DECORATION]
1904
The Saalfield Publishing Co.
Chicago Akron, O. New York
Copyright, 1904,
by
The Saalfield Publishing Company
The Werner Company
Akron, O.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
THE SURGEON’S MIRACLE, _Joseph Kirkland._
THE DOCTORS OF HOYLAND, _Conan Doyle._
DOCTOR SANTOS: A CHARACTER SKETCH, _Gustave Morales._
THE CURING OF KATE NEGLEY, _Lucy S. Furman._
A DOCTOR’S STORY, _E. M. Davy._
JOHN BARTINE’S WATCH: THE DOCTOR’S STORY, _Ambrose Bierce._
TWO WILLS, _Anonymous._
A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL (A GENERAL PRACTITIONER), _Ian Maclaren._
THE VARIOUS TEMPERS OF GRANDMOTHER GREGG, _Ruth McEnery Stuart._
DR. BARRÈRE, _Margaret Oliphant._
A WILL AND A WAY, _Margaret Sutton Briscoe._
DR. ARMSTRONG, _D. L. B. S._
DR. WYGRAM’S SON, _G. M. McCrie._
ON THE INDIA FRONTIER, _Henry Seton Merriman._
DOCTOR GREENFIELD, _Lady Mabel Howard._
DR. GLADMAN: A SKETCH OF COLONIAL LIFE, _Gentleman’s Magazine._
DR. WRIGHTSON’S ENEMY, _Hon. Elenor Eden._
THE COMING OF THE SHIP, _Maud Wilder Goodwin._
DR. PENNINGTON’S COUNTRY PRACTICE, _Butler Monroe._
THE DOCTOR: AN OLD VIRGINIA FOX-HUNTER, _A. G. Bradley._
THE DOCTOR’S FRONT YARD, _R. H. Sessions._
A GENTLE MANIAC, _ George Edgar Montgomery._
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
THE VILLAGE DOCTOR[1] _Frontispiece_
_From the Painting by H. Kretzschmer._
A SPOONFUL EVERY HOUR[1] 88
_From the Painting by Ph. Fleischer._
VACCINATING THE BABY[1] 174
_From the Painting by Ed. Hamman._
A VIOLENT FALL 256
_From the Painting by Adolf Echtler._
[1] Original by the courtesy of William Wood & Co., New York.
PREFACE
In preparing this book of short stories concerning the doctor’s daily
life, the editor has availed himself of the counsel of his staff
of editorial associates, and he trusts that this volume will prove
equally acceptable as the other works in THE DOCTOR’S RECREATION
SERIES.
The stories themselves are offered without critical comment. Many of
them are old favorites. Many of them are by well-known and standard
authors. All relate some episode in the doctor’s life in a manner both
striking and original. We believe this is the first volume of its kind
ever offered to the public.
For the courtesy of copyright privileges extended we return thanks to
S. S. McClure Co., The Century Co., Harper & Brothers, J. B. Lippincott
Co., Little, Brown & Co., Macmillan & Co., John Brisben Walker, Joseph
Kirkland, Dr. Conan Doyle, Lucy S. Furman, Ambrose Bierce, Rev. John
Watson, Ruth McEnery Stuart, Margaret Sutton Briscoe, Henry Seton
Merriman, and Maud Wilder Goodwin.
C. W. M.
BUFFALO, _March 18, 1904_.
THE DOCTOR’S RED LAMP.
I.
THE SURGEON’S MIRACLE.
“POOR Abe Dodge.”
That’s what they called him, though he wasn’t any poorer than other
folks--not so poor as some. How could he be poor, work as he did and
steady as he was? Worth a whole grist of such bait as his brother, Ephe
Dodge, and yet they never called Ephe poor--whatever worse name they
might call him. When Ephe was off at a show in the village, Abe was
following the plough, driving a straight furrow, though you wouldn’t
have thought it to see the way his nose pointed. In winter, when Ephe
was taking the girls to singing school or spelling bee or some other
foolishness--out till after nine o’clock at night, like as not--Abe was
hanging over the fire, holding a book so the light would shine, first
on one page and then on the other, and he turning his head as he turned
the book, and reading first with one eye and then with the other.
There, the murder’s out! Abe couldn’t read with both eyes at once. If
Abe looked straight ahead he couldn’t see the furrow--nor anythin’
else, for that matter. His best friend couldn’t say but what Abe Dodge
was the cross-eyedest cuss that ever was. Why, if you wanted to see
Abe, you’d stand in front of him; but if you wanted Abe to see you,
you’d got to stand behind him, or pretty near it. Homely? Well, if you
mean downright “humbly,” that’s what he was. When one eye was in use
the other was out of sight, all except the white of it. Humbly ain’t
no name for it: The girls used to say he had to wake up in the night
to rest his face, it was so humbly. In school you’d ought to have seen
him look down at his copybook. He had to cant his head clear over
and cock up his chin till it pointed out of the winder and down the
road. You’d really ought to have seen him, you’d have died. Head of
the class, too, right along; just as near to the head as Ephe was to
the foot; and that’s sayin’ a good deal. But to see him at his desk!
He looked for all the world like a week-old chicken, peekin’ at a
tumble-bug! And him a grown man, too, for he stayed to school winters
so long as there was anything more the teacher could teach him. You
see, there wasn’t anything to draw him away; no girl wouldn’t look at
him--lucky, too, seein’ the way he looked.
Well, one term there was a new teacher come--regular high-up girl,
down from Chicago. As bad luck would have it, Abe wasn’t at school the
first week--hadn’t got through his fall work. So she got to know all
the scholars, and they was awful tickled with her--everybody always was
that knowed her. The first day she come in and saw Abe at his desk,
she thought he was squintin’ for fun, and she upped and laughed right
out. Some of the scholars laughed too, at first; but most of ‘em, to do
‘em justice, was a leetle took back; young as they was, and cruel by
nature. (Young folks is most usually always cruel--don’t seem to know
no better.)
Well, right in the middle of the hush, Abe gathered up his books and
upped and walked outdoors, lookin’ right ahead of him, and consequently
seeing the handsome young teacher unbeknown to her.
She was the worst cut up you ever did see; but what could she do or
say? Go and tell him she thought he was makin’ up a face for fun? The
girls do say that come noon-spell, when she found out about it, she
cried--just fairly cried. Then she tried to be awful nice to Abe’s
ornery brother Ephe, and Ephe he was tickled most to death; but that
didn’t do Abe any good--Ephe was jest ornery enough to take care that
Abe shouldn’t get any comfort out of it. They do say she sent messages
to Abe, and Ephe never delivered them, or else twisted ‘em so as to
make things worse and worse. Mebbe so. mebbe not--Ephe was ornery
enough for it.
‘Course the school-ma’am she was boardin’ round, and pretty soon it
come time to go to ol’ man Dodge’s, and she went; but no Abe could she
ever see. He kept away, and as to meals, he never set by, but took a
bite off by himself when he could get a chance. (’Course his mother
favored him, being he was so cussed unlucky.) Then when the folks was
all to bed, he’d come in and poke up the fire and peek into his book,
but first one side and then the other, same as ever.
Now what does school-ma’am do but come down one night when she thought
he was a-bed and asleep, and catch him unawares. Abe knowed it was her,
quick as he heard the rustle of her dress, but there wasn’t no help for
it, so he just turned his head away and covered his cross-eyes with his
hands, and she pitched in. What she said I don’t know, but Abe he never
said a word; only told her he didn’t blame her, not a mite; he knew she
couldn’t help it--no more than he could. Then she asked him to come
back to school, and he answered to please excuse him. After a bit she
asked him if he wouldn’t come to oblige her, and he said he calculated
he was obligin’ her more by stayin’ away.
Well, come to that she didn’t know what to say or do, so, woman-like,
she upped and cried; and then she said he hurt her feelings. And the
upshot of it was he said he’d come, and they shook hands on it.
Well, Abe kept his word and took up schoolin’ as if nothing had
happened; and such schoolin’ as there was that winter! I don’t believe
any regular academy had more learnin’ and teachin’ that winter than
what that district school did. Seemed as if all the scholars had
turned over a new leaf. Even wild, ornery, no-account Ephe Dodge
couldn’t help but get ahead some--but then he was crazy to get the
school-ma’am; and she never paid no attention to him, just went
with Abe. Abe was teachin’ her mathematics, seeing that was the one
thing where he knowed more than she did--outside of farmin’. Folks
used to say that if Ephe had Abe’s head, or Abe had Ephe’s face, the
school-ma’am would have half of the Dodge farm whenever ol’ man Dodge
got through with it; but neither of them did have what the other had,
and so there it was, you see.
Well, you’ve heard of Squire Caton, of course; Judge Caton, they call
him since he got to be Judge of the Supreme Court--and Chief Justice
at that. Well, he had a farm down there not far from Fox River, and
when he was there he was just a plain farmer like the rest of us,
though up in Chicago he was a high-up lawyer, leader of the bar. Now it
so happened that a young doctor named Brainard--Daniel Brainard--had
just come to Chicago and was startin’ in, and Squire Caton was
helpin’ him, gave him desk-room in his office and made him known to
the folks--Kinzies, and Butterfields, and Ogdens, and Hamiltons, and
Arnolds, and all of those folks--about all there was in Chicago in
those days. Brainard had been to Paris--Paris, France, not Paris,
Illinois, you understand--and knew all the doctorin’ there was to know
then. Well, come spring, Squire Caton had Doc Brainard down to visit
him, and they shot ducks and geese and prairie chickens and some wild
turkeys and deer, too--game was just swarmin’ at that time. All the
while Caton was doin’ what law business there was to do; and Brainard
thought he ought to be doin’ some doctorin’ to keep his hand in, so he
asked Caton if there wasn’t any cases he could take up--surgery cases
especially he hankered after, seein’ he had more carving tools than
you could shake a stick at. He asked him particularly if there wasn’t
anybody he could treat for “strabismus.” The squire hadn’t heard of
anybody dying of that complaint; but when the doctor explained that
strabismus was French for cross-eyes, he naturally thought of poor
Abe Dodge, and the young doctor was right up on his ear. He smelled
the battle afar off; and ‘most before you could say Jack Robinson the
squire and the doctor were on horseback and down to the Dodge farm,
tool-chest and all.
Well, it so happened that nobody was at home but Abe and Ephe, and
it didn’t take but few words before Abe was ready to set right down,
then and there, and let anybody do anything he was a mind to with his
misfortunate eyes. No, he wouldn’t wait till the old folks come home;
he didn’t want to ask no advice; he wasn’t afraid of pain, nor of what
anybody could do to his eyes--couldn’t be made any worse than they
were, whatever you did to ‘em. Take ‘em out and boil ‘em and put ‘em
back if you had a mind to, only go to work. He knew he was of age and
he guessed he was master of his own eyes--such as they were.
Well, there wasn’t nothing else to do but go ahead. The doctor opened
up his killing tools and tried to keep Abe from seeing them; but Abe
he just come right over and peeked at ‘em, handled ‘em, and called ‘em
“splendid”--and so they were, barrin’ havin’ them used on your own
flesh and blood and bones.
Then they got some cloths and a basin, and one thing an’ another, and
set Abe right down in a chair. (No such thing as chloroform in those
days, you’ll remember.) And Squire Caton was to hold an instrument that
spread the eyelid wide open, while Ephe was to hold Abe’s head steady.
First touch of the lancet, and first spirt of blood, and what do you
think? That ornery Ephe wilted, and fell flat on the floor behind the
chair!
“Squire,” said Brainard, “step around and hold his head.”
“I can hold my own head,” says Abe, as steady as you please. But Squire
Caton, he straddled over Ephe and held his head between his arms, and
the two handles of the eye-spreader with his hands.
It was all over in half a minute, and then Abe he leaned forward, and
shook the blood off his eye-lashes, and looked straight out of that eye
for the first time since he was born. And the first words he said were:
“Thank the Lord! She’s mine!”
About that time Ephe he crawled outdoors, sick as a dog; and Abe spoke
up, says he:
“Now for the other eye, doctor.”
“Oh,” says the doctor, “we’d better take another day for that.”
“All right,” says Abe; “if your hands are tired of cuttin’, you can
make another job of it. My face ain’t tired of bein’ cut, I can tell
you.”
“Well, if you’re game, I am.”
So, if you’ll believe me, they just set to work and operated on the
other eye, Abe holding his own head, as he said he would, and the
squire holding the spreader. And when it was all done, the doctor was
for putting a bandage on to keep things quiet till the wounds all
healed up, but Abe just begged for one sight of himself, and he stood
up and walked over to the clock and looked in the glass, and says he:
“So that’s the way I look, is it? Shouldn’t have known my own
face--never saw it before. How long must I keep the bandage on, doctor?”
“Oh, if the eyes ain’t very sore when you wake up in the morning, you
can take it off, if you’ll be careful.”
“Wake up! Do you s’pose I can sleep when such a blessing has fallen on
me? I’ll lay still, but if I forget it, or you, for one minute this
night, I’ll be so ashamed of myself that it’ll wake me right up!”
Then the doctor bound up his eyes and the poor boy said “Thank God!”
two or three times, and they could see the tears running down his
cheeks from under the cloth. Lord! It was just as pitiful as a
broken-winged bird!
How about the girl? Well; it was all right for Abe--and all wrong for
Ephe--all wrong for Ephe! But that’s all past and gone--past and gone.
Folks come for miles and miles to see cross-eyed Abe with his eyes as
straight as a loon’s leg. Doctor Brainard was a great man forever after
in those parts. Everywhere else, too, by what I heard.
When the doctor and the squire come to go, Abe spoke up, blind-folded
as he was, and says he:
“Doc, how much do you charge a feller for savin’ his life--making a man
out of a poor wreck--doin’ what he never thought could be done but by
dyin’ and goin’ to kingdom come?”
“Oh,” says Doc Brainard, says he, “that ain’t what we look at as pay
practice. You didn’t call me in; I come of myself, as though it was
what we call a clinic. If all goes well, and if you happen to have a
barrel of apples to spare, you just send them up to Squire Caton’s
house in Chicago, and I’ll call over and help eat ‘em.”
What did Abe say to that? Why, sir, he never said a word; but they do
say the tears started out again, out from under the bandage and down
his cheeks. But then Abe he had a five-year-old pet mare he’d raised
from a colt--pretty as a picture, kind as a kitten, and fast as split
lightning; and next time Doc come down Abe he just slipped out to the
barn and brought the mare round and hitched her to the gate-post, and
when Doc come to be going, says Abe:
“Don’t forget your nag, doctor; she’s hitched at the gate.”
Well, sir, even then Abe had the hardest kind of a time to get Doc
Brainard to take that mare; and when he did ride off, leadin’ her, it
wasn’t half an hour before back she came, lickety-split. Doc said she
broke away from him and put for home, but I always suspected he didn’t
have no use for a hoss he couldn’t sell or hire out, and couldn’t
afford to keep in the village--that was what Chicago was then. But
come along towards fall Abe he took her right up to town, and then the
doctor’s practice had growed so much that he was pretty glad to have
her; and Abe was glad to have him have her, seeing all that had come to
him through havin’ eyes like other folks--that’s the school-ma’am, I
mean.
How did the school-ma’am take it? Well, it was this way. After the
cuttin’ Abe didn’t show up for a few days, till the inflammation got
down and he’d had some practice handlin’ his eyes, so to speak. He just
kept himself to himself, enjoying himself. He’d go around doin’ the
chores, singin’ so you could hear him a mile. He was always great on
singin’, Abe was, though ashamed to go to singin’-school with the rest.
Then, when the poor boy began to feel like other folks, he went right
over to where school-ma’am happened to be boardin’ round, and walked
right up to her and took her by both hands, and looked her straight in
the face, and said:
“Do you know me?”
Well, she kind of smiled and blushed, and then the corners of her
mouth pulled down, and she pulled one hand away, and--if you believe
me--that was the third time that girl cried that season, to my certain
knowledge--and all for nothin’ either time!
What did she say? Why, she just said she’d have to begin all over again
to get acquainted with Abe. But Ephe’s nose was out of joint, and Ephe
knowed it as well as anybody, Ephe did. It was Abe’s eyes to Ephe’s
nose.
Married? Oh, yes, of course; and lived on the farm as long as the old
folks lived, and afterwards, too; Ephe staying right along, like the
fool he always had been. That feller never did have as much sense as a
last year’s bird’s nest.
Alive yet? Abe? Well, no. Might have been if it hadn’t been for Shiloh.
When the war broke out Abe thought he’d ought to go, old as he was,
so he went into the Sixth. Maybe you’ve seen a book written about the
captain of Company K of the Sixth. It was Company K he went into--him
and Ephe. And he was killed at Shiloh--just as it always seems to
happen. He got killed, and his worthless brother come home. Folks
thought Ephe would have liked to marry the widow, but, Lord! she never
had no such an idea! Such bait as he was compared to his brother. She
never chirked up, to speak of, and now she’s dead too, and Ephe he just
toddles round, taking care of the children--kind of a he dry-nurse
that’s about all he ever was good for, anyhow.
My name? Oh, my name’s Ephraim--Ephe they call me, for short; Ephe
Dodge. Abe was my brother.
JOSEPH KIRKLAND.
II.
THE DOCTOR’S OF HOYLAND.
DR. JAMES RIPLEY was always looked upon as an exceedingly lucky dog
by all of the profession who knew him. His father had preceded him in
a practice in the village of Hoyland, in the north of Hampshire, and
all was ready for him on the very first day that the law allowed him
to put his name at the foot of a prescription. In a few years the old
gentleman retired and settled on the South Coast, leaving his son in
undisputed possession of the whole countryside. Save for Dr. Horton,
near Basingstoke, the young surgeon had a clear run of six miles in
every direction, and took his fifteen hundred pounds a year; though, as
is usual in country practice, the stable swallowed up most of what the
consulting-room earned.
Dr. James Ripley was two and thirty years of age, reserved, learned,
unmarried, with set, rather stern, features, and a thinning of the dark
hair upon the top of his head, which was worth quite a hundred a year
to him. He was particularly happy in his management of ladies. He had
caught the tone of bland sternness and decisive suavity which dominates
without offending. Ladies, however, were not equally happy in their
management of him. Professionally, he was always at their service.
Socially, he was a drop of quicksilver. In vain the country mammas
spread out their simple lures in front of him. Dances and picnics were
not to his taste, and he preferred during his scanty leisure to shut
himself up in his study, and to bury himself in Virchow’s Archives and
the professional journals.
Study was a passion with him, and he would have none of the rust which
often gathers round a country practitioner. It was his ambition to keep
his knowledge as fresh and bright as at the moment when he had stepped
out of the examination hall. He prided himself on being able, at a
moment’s notice, to rattle off the seven ramifications of some obscure
artery, or to give the exact percentage of any physiological compound.
After a long day’s work he would sit up half the night performing
iridectomies and extractions upon the sheep’s eyes sent in by the
village butcher, to the horror of his housekeeper, who had to remove
the _débris_ next morning. His love for his work was the one fanaticism
which found a place in his dry, precise nature.
It was the more to his credit that he should keep up to date in his
knowledge, since he had no competition to force him to exertion. In
the seven years during which he had practised in Hoyland, three rivals
had pitted themselves against him; two in the village itself, and one
in the neighboring hamlet of Lower Hoyland. Of these, one had sickened
and wasted, being, as it was said, himself the only patient whom he had
treated during his eighteen months of ruralizing. A second had bought
a fourth share of a Basingstoke practice, and had departed honorably;
while a third had vanished one September night, leaving a gutted
house and an unpaid drug bill behind him. Since then the district had
become a monopoly, and no one had dared to measure himself against the
established fame of the Hoyland doctor.
It was, then, with a feeling of some surprise and considerable
curiosity that, on driving through Lower Hoyland one morning, he
perceived that the new house at the end of the village was occupied,
and that a virgin brass plate glistened upon the swinging gate which
faced the highroad. He pulled up his fifty-guinea chestnut mare, and
took a good look at it. “Verrinder Smith, M. D.,” was printed across
it very neat, small lettering. The last man had had letters half a
foot long, with a lamp like a fire station. Dr. James Ripley noted the
difference, and deduced from it that the newcomer might possibly prove
a more formidable opponent. He was convinced of it that evening when
he came to consult the current medical directory. By it he learned
that Dr. Verrinder Smith was the holder of superb degrees, that he had
studied with distinction at Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin and Vienna; and,
finally, that he had been awarded a gold medal and the Lee Hopkins
scholarship for original research in recognition of an exhaustive
inquiry into the functions of the anterior spinal nerve roots. Dr.
Ripley passed his fingers through his thin hair in bewilderment as he
read his rival’s record. What on earth could so brilliant a man mean by
putting up his plate in a little Hampshire hamlet?
But Dr. Ripley furnished himself with an explanation to the riddle. No
doubt Dr. Verrinder Smith had simply come down there in order to pursue
some scientific research in peace and quiet. The plate was up as an
address rather than as an invitation to patients. Of course, that must
be the true explanation. In that case the presence of this brilliant
neighbor would be a splendid thing for his own studies. He had often
longed for some kindred mind, some steel on which he might strike his
flint. Chance had brought it to him, and he rejoiced exceedingly.
And this joy it was which led him to take a step which was quite at
variance with his usual habits. It is the custom for a newcomer among
medical men to call first upon the older, and the etiquette upon the
subject is strict. Dr. Ripley was pedantically exact on such points,
and yet he deliberately drove over next day and called upon Dr.
Verrinder Smith. Such a waiving of ceremony was, he felt, a gracious
act upon his part, and a fit prelude to the intimate relations which he
hoped to establish with his neighbor.
The house was neat and well appointed, and Dr. Ripley was shown by a
smart maid into a dapper little consulting-room. As he passed in he
noticed two or three parasols and a lady’s sunbonnet hanging in the
hall. It was a pity that his colleague should be a married man. It
would put them upon a different footing, and interfere with those long
evenings of high scientific talk which he had pictured to himself. On
the other hand, there was much in the consulting-room to please him.
Elaborate instruments, seen more often in hospitals than in the houses
of private practitioners, were scattered about. A sphygmograph stood
upon the table, and a gasometer-like engine, which was new to Dr.
Ripley, in the corner. A bookcase full of ponderous volumes in French
and German, paper-covered for the most part, and varying in tint from
the shell to the yolk of a duck’s egg, caught his wondering eyes, and
he was deeply absorbed in their titles when the door opened suddenly
behind him. Turning round he found himself facing a little woman, whose
plain, palish face was remarkable only for a pair of shrewd, humorous
eyes of a blue which had two shades too much green in it. She held a
_pince-nez_ in her left hand and the doctor’s card in her right.
“How do you do, Dr. Ripley?” said she.
“How do you do, madam?” returned the visitor. “Your husband is perhaps
out?”
“I am not married,” said she, simply.
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I meant the doctor--Dr. Verrinder Smith.”
“I am Dr. Verrinder Smith.”
Dr. Ripley was so surprised that he dropped his hat and forgot to pick
it up again.
“What!” he gasped, “the Lee Hopkins prize man! You!” He had never seen
a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in
revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that
the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet
he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his
feelings only too clearly.
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said the lady, dryly.
“You certainly have surprised me,” he answered, picking up his hat.
“You are not among our champions, then?”
“I cannot say that the movement has my approval.”
“And why?”
“I should much prefer not to discuss it.”
“But I am sure you will answer a lady’s question.”
“Ladies are in danger of losing their privileges when they usurp the
place of the other sex. They cannot claim both.”
“Why should a woman not earn her bread by her brains?”
Dr. Ripley felt irritated by the quiet manner in which the lady
cross-questioned him.
“I should much prefer not to be led into a discussion, Miss Smith.”
“Dr. Smith,” she interrupted.
“Well, Dr. Smith! But if you insist upon an answer, I must say that I
do not think medicine a imitable profession for women, and that I have
a personal objection to masculine ladies.” It was an exceedingly rude
speech, and he was ashamed of it the instant after he had made it. The
lady, however, simply raised her eye-brows and smiled.
“It seems to me that you are begging the question,” said she. “Of
course, if it makes women masculine, that would be a considerable
deterioration.”
It was a neat little counter, and Dr. Ripley, like a picked fencer,
bowed his acknowledgment. “I must go,” said he.
“I am sorry that we can not come to some more friendly conclusions,
since we are to be neighbors,” she remarked.
He bowed again, and took a step toward the door.
“It was a singular coincidence,” she continued, “that at the instant
that you called I was reading your paper on ‘Locomotor Ataxia’ in the
‘Lancet.’”
“Indeed,” said he dryly.
“I thought it was a very able monograph.”
“You are very good.”
“But the views which you attribute to Professor Pitres of Bordeaux have
been repudiated by him.”
“I have his pamphlet of 1890,” said Dr. Ripley, angrily.
“Here is his pamphlet of 1891.” She picked it from among a litter of
periodicals. “If you have time to glance your eye down this passage--”
Dr. Ripley took it from her and shot rapidly through the paragraph
which she indicated. There was no denying that it completely knocked
the bottom out of his own article. He threw it down, and with another
frigid bow he made for the door. As he took the reins from the groom,
he glanced round and saw that the lady was standing at her window, and
it seemed to him that she was laughing heartily.
All day the memory of this interview haunted him. He felt that he had
come very badly out of it. She had shown herself to be his superior
on his own pet subject. She had been courteous while he had been
rude, self-possessed when he had been angry. And then, above all,
there was her presence, her monstrous intrusion, to rankle in his
mind. A woman doctor had been an abstract thing before, repugnant,
but distant. Now she was there in actual practice, with a brass plate
up just like his own, competing for the same patients. Not that he
feared the competition, but he objected to this lowering of his ideal
of womanhood. She could not be more than thirty, and had a bright,
mobile face too. He thought of her humorous eyes, and of her strong,
well-turned chin. It revolted him the more to recall the details of her
education. A man, of course, could come through such an ordeal with
all his purity, but it was nothing short of shameless in a woman.
But it was not long before he learned that even her competition was
a thing to be feared. The novelty of her presence had brought a few
curious invalids into her consulting-rooms, and, once there, they had
been so impressed by the firmness of her manner, and by the singular
new-fashioned instruments with which she tapped and peered and sounded,
that it formed the core of their conversation for weeks afterward. And
soon there were tangible proofs of her powers upon the countryside.
Farmer Eyton, whose callous ulcer had been quietly spreading over
his shin for years back, under a gentle régime of zinc ointment, was
painted round with blistering fluid, and found, after three blasphemous
nights, that his sore was stimulated into healing. Mrs. Crowder, who
had always regarded the birthmark upon her second daughter, Eliza,
as a sign of the indignation of the Creator at a third helping of a
raspberry tart which she had partaken of during a critical period,
learned that, with the help of two galvanic needles, the mischief was
not irreparable. In a month Dr. Verrinder Smith was known, and in two
she was famous.
Occasionally Dr. Ripley met her as he drove upon his rounds. She had
started a high dog-cart, taking the reins herself, with a little tiger
behind. When they met he invariably raised his hat with punctilious
politeness, but the grim severity of his face showed how formal was
the courtesy. In fact, his dislike was rapidly deepening into absolute
detestation. “The unsexed woman” was the description of her which he
permitted himself to give to those of his patients who still remained
stanch. But, indeed, they were a rapidly decreasing body, and every
day his pride was galled by the news of some fresh defection. The lady
had somehow impressed the country folk with an almost superstitious
belief in her power, and from far and near they flocked to her
consulting-room.
But what galled him most of all was when she did something which he
had pronounced to be impracticable. For all his knowledge, he lacked
nerve as an operator, and usually sent his worst cases up to London.
The lady, however, had no weakness of the sort, and took everything
that came in her way. It was agony to him to hear that she was about to
straighten little Alec Turner’s club foot, and right at the fringe of
the rumor came a note from his mother, the rector’s wife, asking him if
he would be so good as to act as chloroformist. It would be inhumanity
to refuse, as there was no other who could take the place, but it
was gall and wormwood to his sensitive nature. Yet, in spite of his
vexation, he could not but admire the dexterity with which the thing
was done. She handled the little wax-like foot so gently, and held
the tiny tenotomy knife as an artist holds his pencil. One straight
incision, one snick of a tendon, and it was all over without a stain
on the white towel which lay beneath. He had never seen anything more
masterly, and he had the honesty to say so, though her skill increased
his dislike of her. The operation spread her fame still farther at
his expense, and self-preservation was added to his other grounds for
detesting her.
And this very detestation it was which brought matters to a curious
climax. One winter’s night, just as he was rising from his lonely
dinner, a groom came riding down from Squire Faircastle’s, the richest
man in the district, to say that his daughter had scalded her hand, and
that medical help was needed on the instant.
The coachman had ridden for the lady doctor; for it mattered nothing
to the squire who came, as long as it were speedily. Dr. Ripley rushed
from his surgery with the determination that she should not effect an
entrance into this stronghold of his if hard driving on his part could
prevent it. He did not even wait to light his lamps, but sprang into
his gig and flew off as fast as hoofs could rattle. He lived rather
nearer to the Squire’s than she did, and was convinced that he could
get there well before her.
And so he would but for that whimsical element of chance, which will
forever muddle up the affairs of this world and dumfound the prophets.
Whether it came from the want of his lights, or from his mind being
full of the thoughts of his rival, he allowed too little by half a foot
in taking the sharp turn upon the Basingstoke road. The empty trap
and the frightened horse clattered away into the darkness, while the
Squire’s groom crawled out of the ditch into which he had been shot. He
struck a match, looked down at his groaning companion, and then, after
the fashion of rough, strong men when they see what they have not seen
before, he was very sick.
The Doctor raised himself a little on his elbow in the glint of the
match. He caught a glimpse of something white and sharp bristling
through his trouser-leg, half way down the shin.
“Compound!” he groaned. “A three months’ job,” and fainted.
When he came to himself the groom was gone, for he had scudded off to
the Squire’s house for help, but a small page was holding a gig-lamp in
front of his injured leg, and a woman, with an open case of polished
instruments gleaming in the yellow light, was deftly slitting up his
trouser with a crooked pair of scissors.
“It’s all right, Doctor,” said she, soothingly. “I am so sorry about
it. You can have Dr. Horton to-morrow, but I am sure you will allow me
to help you to-night. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you by
the roadside.”
“The groom has gone for help,” groaned the sufferer.
“When it comes we can move you into the gig. A little more light, John!
So! Ah, dear, dear, we shall have laceration unless we reduce this
before we move you. Allow me to give you a whiff of chloroform, and I
have no doubt that I can secure it sufficiently to--”
Dr. Ripley never heard the end of that sentence. He tried to raise
a hand and to murmur something in protest, but a sweet smell was in
his nostrils, and a sense of rich peace and lethargy stole over his
jangled nerves. Down he sank, through clear, cool water, ever down and
down into the green shadows beneath, gently, without effort, while the
pleasant chiming of a great belfry rose and fell in his ears. Then he
rose again, up and up, and ever up, with a terrible tightness about
his temples, until at last he shot out of those green shadows and was
out in the light once more. Two bright shining golden spots gleamed
before his dazed eyes. He blinked and blinked before he could give a
name to them. They were only the two brass balls at the end posts of
his bed, and he was lying in his own little room, with a head like a
cannon-ball, and a leg like an iron bar. Turning his eyes, he saw the
calm face of Dr. Verrinder Smith looking down at him.
“Ah, at last!” said she. “I kept you under all the way home, for I knew
how painful the jolting would be. It is in good position now, with a
strong side splint. I have ordered a morphia draught for you. Shall I
tell your groom to ride for Dr. Horton in the morning?”
“I should prefer that you should continue the case,” said Dr. Ripley
feebly, and then, with a half-hysterical laugh, “You have all the rest
of the parish as patients, you know, so you may as well make the thing
complete by having me also.” It was not a very gracious speech, but
it was a look of pity and not of anger which shone in her eyes as she
turned away from his bedside.
Dr. Ripley had a brother William, who was assistant surgeon at a London
hospital, and who was down in Hampshire within a few hours of his
hearing of the accident. He raised his brows when he heard the details.
“What! You are pestered with one of those!” he cried.
“I don’t know what I should have done without her.”
“I’ve no doubt she’s an excellent nurse.”
“She knows her work as well as you or I.”
“Speak for yourself, James,” said the London man with a sniff. “But
apart from that, you know that the principle of the thing is all wrong.”
“You think there is nothing to be said on the other side?”
“Good heavens! do you?”
“Well, I don’t know. It struck me during the night that we may have
been a little narrow in our views.”
“Nonsense, James. It’s all very fine for women to win prizes in the
lecture-room, but you know as well as I do that they are no use in an
emergency. Now I warrant that this woman was all nerves when she was
setting your leg. That reminds me that I had better just take a look at
it and see that it is all right.”
“I would rather that you did not undo it,” said the patient; “I have
her assurance that it is all right.”
Brother William was deeply shocked.
“Of course, if a woman’s assurance is of more value than the opinion of
the assistant surgeon of a London hospital, there is nothing more to be
said,” he remarked.
“I should prefer that you did not touch it,” said the patient firmly,
and Dr. William went back to London that evening in a huff. The lady,
who had heard of his coming, was much surprised on learning of his
departure.
“We had a difference upon a point of professional etiquette,” said Dr.
James, and it was all the explanation he would vouchsafe.
For two long months Dr. Ripley was brought in contact with his rival
every day, and he learned many things which he had not known before.
She was a charming companion, as well as a most assiduous doctor. Her
short presence during the long weary day was like a flower in a sand
waste. What interested him was precisely what interested her, and she
could meet him at every point upon equal terms. And yet under all her
learning and her firmness ran a sweet, womanly nature, peeping out in
her talk, shining in her greenish eyes, showing itself in a thousand
subtle ways which the dullest of men could read. And he, though a bit
of a prig and a pedant, was by no means dull, and had honesty enough to
confess when he was in the wrong.
“I don’t know how to apologize to you,” he said in his shamefaced
fashion one day, when he had progressed so far as to be able to sit in
an armchair with his leg upon another one; “I feel that I have been
quite in the wrong.”
“Why, then?”
“Over this woman question. I used to think that a woman must inevitably
lose something of her charm if she took up such studies.”
“Oh, you don’t think they are necessarily unsexed, then?” she cried,
with a mischievous smile.
“Please don’t recall my idiotic expression.”
“I feel so pleased that I should have helped in changing your views. I
think that it is the most sincere compliment that I have ever had paid
me.”
“At any rate, it is the truth,” said he, and was happy all night at
the remembrance of the flush of pleasure which made her pale face look
quite comely for the instant.
For, indeed, he was already far past the stage when he would
acknowledge her as the equal of any other woman. Already he could not
disguise from himself that she had become the one woman. Her dainty
skill, her gentle touch, her sweet presence, the community of their
tastes, had all united to hopelessly upset his previous opinions. It
was a dark day for him now when his convalescence allowed him to miss a
visit, and darker still that other one which he saw approaching when
all occasion for her visits would be at an end. It came around at last,
however, and he felt that his whole life’s fortune would hang upon the
issue of that final interview. He was a direct man by nature, so he
laid his hand upon hers as it felt for his pulse, and he asked her if
she would be his wife.
“What, and unite the practices?” said she.
He started in pain and anger. “Surely you do not attribute any such
base motive to me,” he cried. “I love you as unselfishly as ever a
woman was loved.”
“No, I was wrong. It was a foolish speech,” said she, moving her chair
a little back, and tapping her stethoscope upon her knee. “Forget that
I ever said it. I am so sorry to cause you any disappointment, and I
appreciate most highly the honor which you do me, but what you ask is
quite impossible.”
With another woman he might have urged the point, but his instincts
told him that it was quite useless with this one. Her tone of voice was
conclusive. He said nothing, but leaned back in his chair a stricken
man.
“I am so sorry,” she said again. “If I had known what was passing in
your mind I should have told you earlier that I intend to devote my
life entirely to science. There are many women with a capacity for
marriage, but few with a taste for biology. I will remain true to
my own line then. I came down here while waiting for an opening in
the Paris Physiological Laboratory. I have just heard that there is
a vacancy for me there, and so you will be troubled no more by my
intrusion upon your practice. I have done you an injustice, as you
did me one. I thought you narrow and pedantic, with no good quality.
I have learned during your illness to appreciate you better, and the
recollection of our friendship will always be a very pleasant one to
me.”
And so it came about that in a very few weeks there was only one doctor
in Hoyland. But folks noticed that the one had aged many years in a few
months, that a weary sadness lurked always in the depths of his blue
eyes, and that he was less concerned than ever with the eligible young
ladies whom chance, or their careful country mammas, placed in his way.
SIR A. CONAN DOYLE.
III.
DOCTOR SANTOS: A CHARACTER SKETCH.
EVERY one in Madrid knew Doctor Santos. He was a little bit of a man,
with his beard and hair clamoring for the use of the scissors, and
his clothes for benzine and a more fashionable cut. Nevertheless, he
had a universal reputation for great wisdom, and his popularity in
the district of Chamberi, the principal scene of his work, was beyond
everything.
Possibly the peculiarities of the doctor did more than his true merit
to attract the attention of the people. Perhaps some presentiment made
every one consider him physically of not much account, but mentally a
diamond of the purest water. It was well known that in the exercise
of his profession he was a true ministering angel, and without any
pretence of being a specialist or a philanthropist. People said that
he was half crazy over the subject of disease, and followed the
development of a fever with the same interest that others listened
to or read a dramatic work, but with this exception, that it was not
always necessary to be a mere spectator, that by discreetly intervening
sometimes, he prepared cheerful and unexpected comedy, where otherwise
there would have been the deepest tragedy.
This might have been merely scientific curiosity--we will not discuss
that point--but thanks to this keen interest, if a patient were very
ill, and that happened frequently, he would remain to watch by the
bedside, and again,--and this happened yet more frequently, for Doctor
Santos devoted himself almost exclusively to poor people--there would
not be money enough to buy supper for the family or broth or medicine
for the sick one; then our doctor would pull out his purse and send for
whatever was necessary. His patients never lacked for what was needed
to restore them to health.
The doctor’s greatest pleasure, as he always declared, was to cure sick
children. It seemed impossible that a man who had no family and who,
according to all accounts, had never married, and who had been adopted
himself by a barber who took him from an orphan asylum, should be able
to feel such absolute tenderness of heart towards little ones.
A woman, whose son the doctor had restored to health, aptly expressed
the sentiments of every one: “It seems as if Doctor Santos had been a
mother himself.”
We will take it for granted that his life and good deeds are well
known, for many a scientific work can testify to the merits of Doctor
Santos; so we will not stop to give a detailed resumé or minute account
of the arduous labor of many years spent in true performance of his
profession.
I am now going to speak of an event in his life which, if it were not
absolutely true, would seem to many people to be altogether improbable.
Doctor Santos always said that the elixir of long life was a very easy
and simple thing to obtain, that it was not necessary to knock one’s
head against the wall in order that the electric spark of an idea
should spring out of the brain, and that even the most stupid could
give a solution of the problem to those who discussed it learnedly, but
that not even this elixir nor any other could be applied in every case,
that it was just as difficult to unite a head to the body from which it
had been severed as to repair the ravages of some illnesses. In eighty
cases out of a hundred, however, he was sure that the elixir would give
good results.
The strangest thing was that these were not merely affirmations, but
positive proofs, for in his practice he had tried the remedy and, not
only eighty to a hundred, but in even greater proportion, had produced
good results. He never could be made to specify the remedy, and he put
an end to all questions on the subject, by saying:
“Nothing, nothing, it is like, it is like Columbus’s egg, why prove it?”
It was long after twelve o’clock one night, when Doctor Santos entered
a miserable garret in the _Salle de Fuencarral_. The door was partly
open. A middle-aged man was stretched out on a rude cot. The rest of
the furniture consisted of some broken, rush-bottomed chairs, and a
pine table by the bedside. The sick man had no relatives in Madrid;
he had arrived from Cataluña a little more than a month before and
had fallen ill with pneumonia. He refused, absolutely, to go to the
hospital, so a charitable neighbor, who had attended to his simple
wants for some time, called in Doctor Santos. The disease had already
made inroads upon the man’s constitution. Although the pneumonia was
helped, the doctor could not cure the quick consumption which followed
and which would soon end the man’s life.
When the sick man saw the doctor enter, an expression of joy passed
over his features, as if now black death had no terror for him; for, in
the last sad moments, a warm hand would clasp his and a loving heart
would be moved to sympathy. The doctor took the sick man’s hand.
“How are you, Jaime?” he asked.
“I am dying, I feel sure of it, but I wish to ask one more favor of you
who have already done so many for me. Tell me how much longer I have
to live. I know there is nothing that will help me, and I am almost
glad that it is so, for I have suffered so much in my life. At least, I
shall cease to suffer. It is true, is it not, that over there there is
no more pain, all is quiet, dark, cold?”
Accustomed as Doctor Santos was to such scenes, he could scarcely keep
back the tears--much to his own disgust, when he looked at the poor
fellow--and he growled to himself: “A weeping doctor is a fool.” But he
answered the dying man very gently:
“What can I do for you, Jaime? To whom shall I write? Let me know just
what you wish to be done and I promise you to do it as far as I am
able, and before it slips my memory. I don’t want to frighten you, but
every one takes things differently. Judging from the state you are in,
I am not the one just now to do you the most good, and we must soon
send for one who can give you the only true consolation. After all,
although this life means a great deal to us, we ought to be glad rather
than sorry at the thought of leaving it, because we are all sure that
God is good and will pardon us, and that he loves us. For this reason
we call him Father, for if he is not better than the best on earth,
what other conception can we have of him?
“Now, I will go myself to call a priest whom I know, and in the
meantime, I will see if a neighbor will stay with you.”
“Oh, don’t go, I beg of you. I must talk to you.”
The doctor dared not say no, but he knew that the hour of death was
swiftly approaching. A moment later he left the room, saying:--
“I’ll return directly.”
He sent a neighbor for the priest, then returned as he had promised,
and sat down by the head of the bed.
Jaime asked the doctor to do him the favor to put his hand under the
mattress and take out a packet which he would find there. After the
doctor had pulled out the packet, Jaime began to speak:--
“Doctor, I ask you not to open this packet until after I am dead, and
after that, with the help of your own conscience, you will decide what
you think had best be done. I want you, if any personal advantage can
come to you from it, to use it all for yourself. I have no affection
for any one else, nor am I in debt to any one. If this were not my
last hour on earth I should say that my soul held nothing but hatred
for the evil received from those I most cherished.”
The sick man seemed fatigued and the doctor told him to rest a few
moments, but now the man began to make those motions of the hands, so
characteristic of those about to die, and to plait and unplait the bed
clothing. He did not seem to know exactly what he was saying and his
eyes wandered restlessly about the room:--
“She deceived me. How much I loved her! Her beautiful black eyes! How
pretty she was! And he my best friend! It was infamous, shameful! I
saw them! the truth is proof enough! Ah, how much blood flowed from
the wound!--he did not mind dying because he knew she loved him. And I
envied him after he was dead! Ah, how hard the punishment! How dark the
cell, how heavy the shackles! It is shameful! I am an assassin! Every
one has left me! How blue the sky is! How fresh and green the fields! I
can’t get out with these horrible irons on my wrists!”
The priest came in time to administer the extreme unction. Jaime died
shortly after and the doctor returned home with the packet under his
arm. Once in his study, before going to bed, he decided to open the
bundle which Jaime had give him with so much mystery. It was an easy
task. He untied the paper and out fell what seemed to be a magazine.
There were hundreds of leaves, but each leaf was a banknote of four
thousand reals.
Daylight glimmered through the curtains. Doctor Santos had not closed
his eyes. He was the owner, the rightful owner of more than four
thousand pésétas (one hundred thousand dollars) and the donation was
absolutely legitimate. Jaime’s mind, as no one knew better than he, was
perfectly clear at the time he made the gift. What should he do with
all that money! He would be happy, all his friends would be happy, in
fact, everyone would be happy! What a library, what a laboratory, he
would have!
Hours passed, but the doctor tossed and turned restlessly on his bed,
unable to sleep for a moment. The clock struck seven. He could not stay
in bed any longer; he arose, made his accustomed hasty toilet, drank
his coffee and started off on his usual round of visits. He began with
the very sick patients, but at ten o’clock he said to himself, he would
get a friend to accompany him to the bank that he might deposit the
money. He had never kept any money in a bank. The little box in his
office had always held all he could spare, and he did not know exactly
what legal forms were necessary in order to have it placed so that he
could draw out certain sums when he wished.
His first patient lived several miles away, so he carried the precious
package with him in order not to lose time in going and coming. He
stopped at the patient’s house. The sick man was a cabinet maker who
had been trying to work with an injured hand, consequently, blood
poisoning had set in and the symptoms were such that amputation seemed
necessary. The poor man, strong as an oak, cried like a child.
“The maintenance of my wife and family lies in the skill of my five
fingers,” he said, “and now you are going to cut them off.”
But Doctor Santos, more of an optimist than ever that day, brought the
bright light of hope into the sad hearts of the afflicted family. They
might rely upon him for support and help as long as they needed it.
He then went to see a talented journalist who had not prospered since
he began to have ideas and tastes of his own instead of praising
those of other people. The journalist had lost his place because he
had published, without first consulting the director, an article
in which he said that what Marruecos most needed was some powerful
nation to civilize it, that our position in the matter was like that
of the gardener’s dog, keeping others from doing what we could not do
ourselves; that it would be better to be annexed to a rich country
than a poor one, to have a cultivated country instead of a semi-savage
one; and a hundred other barbarities besides.
As one might well imagine, the journalist had trouble with his head,
he was worn out by fatigue and had the beginning of softening of the
brain. Doctor Santos had ordered rest, a quiet, regular life, early
hours, and horseback riding.
The journalist sent out to a store for a pasteboard horse, and when the
doctor called to see him, the sick man said:--
“This is the only horse I can afford.”
Of course, he plainly showed his insanity by this act, but Doctor
Santos did not look upon it in that light. He begged the man’s pardon
for having advised him to buy what he could not afford.
A little later, he visited a widow with three children. She was young
and pretty; her husband had been a sculptor of some talent. He was
not rich, but he had earned enough to support his family decently. He
died and for the first year the wife managed to live fairly well, by
dint of great economy. The second year, the widow sold her husband’s
art treasures; the third year, she lived on the gifts of relatives and
friends, which gave out before the fourth year, and the family went
from the second floor to the garret, from wholesome food to scanty
scraps, from warm clothing to rags. Last of all came sickness.
Doctor Santos felt inspired: “If this little woman goes to the bad,
whose fault will it be? Her sewing brings in so little!” Pulling out
a banknote, he handed it to the widow, telling her to live where she
could have fresh air and sunlight, to buy nourishing food and look
after the little ones.
The doctor left that poverty-stricken place, his plain face so radiant
with happiness that it seemed almost beautiful. He thought to himself,
as he went along, that if Jaime had used some of this money for
himself and had lived properly, he would not have died of consumption.
“That devilish avarice!” he muttered. “A millionaire living and dying
like a beggar in order not to spend his money. What is the good of
money if it is not to spend?”
Suddenly two ideas flashed into his head. “Suppose this is stolen
money! What if the bills are false?”
He stopped. The package fell from his hand.
“Sir, you have dropped something,” said a poor woman who was passing.
The doctor picked up the bundle and, turning around, went home.
“Stolen or false,” he muttered grimly. “There is no other solution.”
The words and the ideas sounded in his ears, they hurt him, as if some
one had struck him on the head with a hammer.
He reached his home, told his old servant that he would see no one,
then changed his mind, sent the woman off on an errand, and shut
himself up in his office.
The doctor had in his house two banknotes of a thousand pésétas (two
hundred and fifty dollars) each.
“We will begin with the hypothesis that I can prove them false,” he
said. He took out his own banknotes and laid them on the table; took
another out of the package and placed it between the first two.
“They must have been stolen,” he said, “for all three are alike, the
same block, the same print.”
He turned them over, they were exactly alike. Well, there was nothing
to be done but to advertise and await the rightful owner, and he would
have to word the advertisement so that every Spaniard in the country
should not appear to claim the money.
He took a magnifying glass and began to make methodical observations.
First, the paper, its quality, its transparency; then the engravings;
the letters, letter by letter, the signatures. But even with the help
of the glass, which magnified the size six or eight times, he could
detect no difference between the bills.
“From whom could Jaime have stolen them? Had blood been shed on account
of those bits of paper? Had Jaime robbed the government or a bank?”
The doctor thought and thought. He studied, with the aid of a glass,
every detail, even the smallest.
“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that each one can be so perfect? They
have been stolen, undoubtedly stolen,” he said, at the end of a quarter
of an hour of close observation. Ten times, already, he had compared
the numeration, but he turned again to look at it.
“They all look alike,” he said again, but when he took away the crystal
he doubted the certainty of his own vision. He brought out a delicate
compass and measured the numbers of his old bills. He placed the
compass on the new, there was absolutely no difference.
He was not satisfied with the length alone, but he even measured the
width of the lines.
“They have been stolen,” he repeated mechanically. Then, as if
answering himself, he spoke slowly:--
“Where could he have stolen them? No, they are counterfeit, false,
false. Ah, thou Catalan rogue, who art in the infernal regions. I hope
that thou art making false notes with thy skin of Barrabas!”
“I have learned the secret,” thought the doctor. “There is no doubt of
it.”
He still looked exclusively at the numbers, the false ones looked
larger, they really were not, but as the lines were more delicate, it
made the ciphers look larger.
“Those poor people are now in prison,” said Doctor Santos sorrowfully.
“They have denounced me and the police will shortly come to arrest me,
and no one will believe they were ever given to me!”
He raised the stove cover. “No, that won’t do. The embers and ashes
will remain. They can smell the smoke and burnt paper.”
The doctor had a dove-cot: a dove just then lighted on the window
sill. A bright idea came to him. He took two tin boxes--such as are
used for cut tobacco--and stuffed them both full with bank notes,
climbed up to the dove-cot and looked through the garret window. No one
could see him. He raised some tiles and hid the boxes, then covered
them up, leaving all as it was before. Breathing heavily, his heart
thumping furiously, he descended the staircase which led to the second
floor and dropping into a chair, opened a huge volume which he held
before his face, while he tried to recover his usual composure.
If he had been surprised and arrested, the inspector would have noticed
that the book was upside down, the two old bills, with the magnifying
glass and compass, were still on the table, and that the lappels and
sleeves of his coat were covered with earth and whitewash.
After several hours had passed, the old servant had returned, and as
no one else had appeared, the doctor began to think that perhaps the
bills had not yet been changed and, by virtue of such a supposition, he
hurried to the widow’s house with the pious intention of substituting
one of his old bank notes in place of the supposed false one. The bill
had been changed; the widow and her children were having a little
party in honor of their great good luck. They were not alone, as they
generally were, but had asked several of their friends to share their
joy. They were so profuse in their expressions of gratitude that the
good old doctor did not know what to say nor how to explain his sudden
return.
“Now be sure you take a room where you can have sunlight and give the
children a dose of castor oil,” he said as he hurried away.
Doctor Santos did not recover his usual composure for a long time. He
seemed taciturn although he continued in his accustomed mode of living.
After a while, however, he became more like himself.
The cabinet maker, for whom the doctor had obtained a lucrative
position, wished to make a public manifestation of his gratitude, but
the doctor forbade him to even mention that he had received help.
Nevertheless, it was murmured continually, that Doctor Santos, on
account of his relations with persons of high rank, had given many a
one a modest pension, while he had restored others to health by giving
to them the money to procure a change of climate and a much needed rest.
Notwithstanding his friends of high rank, the doctor still lived in his
modest apartment and had moreover, dismissed his only servant. He now
took his meals at a neighboring tavern. He still kept the dove-cot,
and he had bought an expensive therapeutical apparatus and costly
instruments. He had a laboratory and a fine medical library.
He earned enough and he had innumerable friends who gave him money to
help cases of true necessity, owing to his fame of discerning where
help was really needed. Happily society is not so completely decayed
that it does not produce, with frequent spontaneity, the flower of
Christian charity.
When Doctor Santos changed his habits of living, his character also
changed. Formerly, he had been cheerful and lively, fond of an
occasional visit to the theatre, and especially fond of a good table.
But when he might have had all this he became gloomy and moody, and
reduced his personal expenses, in spite of his large earnings, to an
extent almost miserly.
The years rolled by, the doctor’s hair was snowy white, and he scarcely
spoke. As he was no longer young and paid so little attention to his
own comfort, his health began to fail. The cold was intense that winter
and Doctor Santos, in spite of himself, had to keep his bed many a day.
His medical confrères visited him, and one, in particular, earnestly
urged him to go to a warm climate.
“Must I go away, leave my work and occupations to die, not of sickness,
but of ennui?” “But,” argued his friend, “no one likes better than you
to send people off for a change of air during the winter.”
The doctor did not reply, but he remained in Madrid, passing sleepless
nights and coughing ceaselessly.
His friends, the only family he possessed, took turns, for a long time
in caring for him, but, as the days lengthened into weeks, the weeks
into months and each one gradually began to find that his own cares
absorbed his time, it was agreed upon that the best thing to do was to
have a sister of charity come and nurse the doctor.
Henceforth, his friends’ visits grew less frequent, and there were days
at a time when his door bell did not ring once.
Sor Luz, as the sister of charity was called, proved to be a perfect
substitute for all his other attendants. Although the doctor had never
cared for women’s society, he found Sor Luz such a charming companion
that he refused to receive other people, if it were possible.
Her white head-dress and the undulations of her soft gown, seemed to
him like the motions of a dove’s wings.
Doctor Santos followed her with an affectionate and grateful glance,
thus repaying the tender and solicitous care which only maternal
and Christian love could give with such absolute abnegation and
perseverance.
About the last of November, that harvest time of death, when a few
golden leaves still clung to the trees, when the mountain tops were
covered with silver and the cold, northerly wind penetrated the
crevices of doors and windows, Doctor Santos began to grow worse.
He declared in his will, dated years before, that he had no property
and that whatever was found in the house belonged, by right, to the
poor. That he wished to have a humble funeral and be buried in the
public cemetery.
In looking over his papers and effects, a tin box was found containing
forty banknotes of one thousand pésétas each.
His friends declared that he had died of avarice. Sor Luz said that
she had never known any one who had passed away with more tranquil,
resigned Christian spirit than Doctor Santos.
Nevertheless, she often spoke of some phrases of the doctor’s which
were utterly incomprehensible to her and for which she could not
account.
“When there was yet time,” he said, “I had the means to cure myself.
It would have been so easy, that if it had been any one else I should
have done so. I did not do it because I wished to preserve my own
self-respect and to have some merit when God called me to a better
life.”
--_From the Spanish of Gustavo Morales, by_
JEAN RAYMOND BIDWELL.
IV.
THE CURING OF KATE NEGLEY.
“I TOLD you once,” said Mrs. Melissa Allgood, “about the time Kate
Negley took that leading on the lodge line, and locked the doctor
out of the house one night when he was meeting with the Masons, and
hollered at him scornful-like, when he come home, to ‘get in with
his lodge-key;’ and how the doctor smashed up her fine front door
with an ax. Well, all the Station thought that might be the end of
Kate’s foolishness, and that maybe she would take her religion and
sanctification comfortable after that, same as other folks. And
everybody was glad Dr. Negley broke that door in, because it ain’t good
for Kate Negley or any other human to have their own way all the time.
“So Kate went along quiet and peaceable after that for two or three
months, and never had no new leadings to tell about in meeting, and
never did a thing to show she had heartfelt religion except to wear
her hair straight down her back, according to Paul. And ma she said to
me one day she believed Kate had come to the end of her line, and was
going to act like sensible folks the rest of her days. But I told ma
not to waste her breath in vain babblings; that I bet Kate Negley was
just setting on a new nest, and for ma to wait for the hatching.
“I hadn’t hardly spoke the words before it come. The very next Sunday,
when Brother Cheatham got through preaching and called for experiences
and testimonies, Kate she rose and said she was mightily moved to
rebuke a faithless and perverse generation, puffed up in its fleshly
mind, loving unrighteousness, and abominable in wickedness. She said
she had been wandering in the way of destruction like the rest, and
putting her faith in lies, till the last few weeks, when light begun
to dawn on her, and she commenced to search the Scriptures more. She
said she was fully persuaded now, halleluiah! and wanted all them that
desired to be wholly sanctified to enter the strait and narrow path
with her. She said the gospel she had to preach to them that morning
was the gospel of healing by prayer and faith, and not by medicines
or doctors; that though she had lain among the pots, like the rest of
them, yet now was her soul like the wings of a dove, and forever risen
above all such works of the devil as ipecac and quinine and calomel;
that only in the Great Physician did she place her trust; that as for
earthly doctors, she could only say to them, in the words of Job: ‘Ye
are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.’ She said
yea, verily, all they was good for was to ‘beguile unstable souls,
and bewitch the people with sorceries;’ and not only that, but, like
Jeremiah says, ‘They help forward the affliction.’ She said she never
meant to say anything against doctors as _men_, but as _doctors_ they
was vessels of wrath, corrupters of souls, firebrands of the devil, and
the liveliest stumble-stones in the path of righteousness. She said
for them benighted folks that put their faith in physic to listen to
Jeremiah’s point-blank words, ‘Thou hast _no_ healing medicines,’ and
again, ‘In vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be
healed.’ She said from lid to lid of the Bible there wasn’t a single
case of anybody being cured of anything by either doctors or medicine;
and that ought to be enough for the earnest Christian, without looking
any farther. But, she said, knowing their hard-heartedness, she had
studied every verse of the Scriptures before she got up to speak.
“She said when the disciples was sent out, they was told to preach
the gospel, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out devils;
and they did it. She said she’d like to know how many that called
themselves disciples nowadays so bigotty, and claimed the in-dwelling
of holiness, ever even tried to do any of them things, except talk,
let alone do them. She said it was because they were so poor-spirited
they didn’t have faith to lay hold of the promise, though there it was
in plain words: ‘Ask, and ye shall receive;’ ‘According to your faith
be it unto you;’ ‘For I will restore health to thee, saith the Lord;’
‘I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.’ She said, bless the
Lord, her spiritual eyes was open now, and the only medicines she would
ever take was prayer and faith. She said James’s prescription was good
enough for her: ‘Pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The
effectual fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much;’ and that she
wanted every soul in the Station to get to the same point. But, she
said, until they did, she wanted it known that there was one righteous
soul in Sodom, that was going to start out on the war-path against the
devil and all his doctors. She said she was going to lay hold of the
promise of James: ‘Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders
of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil;
and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise
him up.’ She said she wanted it published abroad that anybody that
took sick was welcome to her services and prayers, without money and
without price. She said for all her hearers to put on the breastplate
of faith and the armor of righteousness, and enter in at the strait and
narrow path that opened into her front door, and keep out of the broad
way that led to the doctor’s office. She said she had a big bottle of
sweet-oil, and faith to remove mountains.
“Well, all the congregation was thunderstruck at the idea of Kate
Negley setting up in opposition to her own husband, Dr. Negley being
the only doctor at the Station. Ma said that anybody could have knocked
her down with a feather; and I know it made me right weak in my knees,
though, of course, I felt like Kate was doing right to follow her
leadings, and thought she was mighty courageous. I never could have
done it myself, especially if I’d had such a good husband as Kate. I
have traveled about more than Kate, and I know that hen’s teeth ain’t
scarcer than good men; yea, like Solomon says, ‘One among a thousand
have I found.’ But of course a woman never appreciates what she has,
and Kate she always took all the doctor’s kindness and spoiling like
it was her birthright, and ding-donged at him all the time about his
not having any religion or sanctification. Now, I reckon you’ve lived
long enough to know that there are three kinds of sanctified; them
that are sanctified and know it, humble-like--such as me; them that
are sanctified and don’t know or even suspicion it; and them that are
sanctified and know it too well. And I have told ma many a time that
Dr. Negley is one of the kind that is sanctified and don’t know it,
and that Kate might pattern after the doctor in _some_ ways, to her
edification. Somehow, I’ve always felt like ten or eleven children
might have took some of the foolishness out of Kate; but, not having
any, she was just on a high horse about something or other all the time.
“The evening after Kate did that talking in church, ma saw the doctor
riding by, and she called him to the fence and asked him if he had
heard about Kate’s talk, and what he thought about it. And he said yes,
Brother Jones and them had told him about it down at the post-office,
and it had tickled him might’ly; that he thought it was very funny.
Ma told him she should think it would make him mad for Kate to get
up and talk that away about doctors and medicine. ‘Mrs. Garry,’ he
says, ‘women are women; and one of their charms is that nobody knows
what they’re going to do next. And if my wife,’ he says, ‘has a extry
allowance of charm, I certainly ought to feel thankful for it.’ He
said if Kate wanted to quarrel with her bread and butter, and talk
away his practice, he wasn’t going to raise any objections; that he
needed to take a rest anyhow, having worked too hard all his life. He
said, another thing, a woman that took as many notions as Kate couldn’t
hold on to any one of them very long, but was bound to get cured of it
before much harm was done.
“Ma she told me what he said, and that, in her opinion, Dr. Negley
could give Job lessons in patience.
“Then we commenced to have times in the Station. The first thing Kate
did was to get up one night after the doctor had gone to sleep, and
go down-stairs and across the yard to his office, and hunt up his
saddle-bags, and stamp on them, and smash every bottle in them, and
then sling them over in pa’s cornfield. Pa he found them out there in
the morning after breakfast, and took them to the doctor’s office;
and he said the doctor did some tall swearing when he saw them. But
I believe that was a slander of pa’s, because I know the way the
doctor acted afterwards. At dinner-time he went up to the house mighty
peaceful, and eat his dinner, and then he says to Kate, very cheerful
and polite: ‘I see that my saddle-bags have met with a little accident.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ he says, ‘and I don’t know
but what it’s a fine thing for my patients, some of them medicines
being powerful stale. But it’s mighty unfortunate for you, Kate,’ he
says, ‘for I will be obliged to use up all your missionary money for
the next year and a half to replenish them saddle-bags, times being so
hard,’ he says.
“You know Kate always give more money to missions than any woman
in the Station,--doctor just couldn’t deny her anything,--and she
prided herself a heap on it, righteous pride, of course. She was just
speechless with wrath at what he said, and she saw she’d have to change
her warfare and fall back on the outposts.
“So she started out and went to see the women in the Station, and
prayed with them, and strengthened their faith, and tried to make them
promise to send for her if anybody got sick, and not for the doctor,
and worked on them till they got plumb unsettled in their minds. Some
of them went to Brother Cheatham and asked him about it, and he said
it was a question everybody must decide for themselves, but there
certainly was Scripture for it, he couldn’t deny. It’s a funny thing
what poor hands some preachers are at practicing. Brother Cheatham
couldn’t get so much as a crook in his little finger but what Dr.
Negley must come, double-quick, day and night. I’ve always felt like
getting their doctoring for nothing was a big drawback to preachers’
faith.
“Kate didn’t only go about in the Station, but she would keep on the
watch, and when the doctor got a call to the country, Kate would saddle
her bay mare and follow after him, sometimes ten or fifteen miles. By
the time she would get to the sick one’s house, the doctor would be
setting by the bed, feeling the patient’s pulse, or some such; and
Kate would sail across the room, with never so much as ‘Howdy’ to the
doctor, and go down on her knees the other side of the bed, and dab a
little sweet-oil on the sick person, and pray at the top of her voice,
and exhort the patient to throw away the vile concoctions of the devil,
and swing out on the promise of James. And the doctor wouldn’t pay
no more attention to her than she did to him, but would dose out the
medicine and go on about his business, as pleasant as could be. After
he was gone, Kate would smash up all the bottles in sight, if the
folks wasn’t mighty careful; and then she would follow the doctor to
the next place, never any more noticing him or speaking to him than if
he was a fence-post. She said when the doctor was at home, he was her
husband, though unregenerate, and she was going to treat him according
to Scripture, and as polite as she knew how: but when he was out dosing
the sick, he was an angel of darkness, and not fit to be so much as
looked at by the saved and sanctified.
“Mary Alice Welden was one of the first to take up with Kate’s
notions--I’ve always believed it was because Dick Welden scoffed at
them. If Dick had been a quick man, he never would have done it,
knowing well that the only way to get Mary Alice to do like he wanted
her to was for him to come out strong on the opposite side. But it
takes a hundred years to learn some men anything; and what did Dick do
that Sunday but laugh at Kate’s notions on healing. Ever since Mary
Alice had shook the red rag at Satan by getting up and shouting in
church one time when Dick had told her point-blank she shouldn’t, she
had enjoyed a heap of liberty, and Dick he had been diminished, like
the Bible says. So when Dick laughed at Kate, Mary Alice fired right up
and told Dick Welden that never another doctor or bottle of medicine
should ever step over her door-sill, and that the next time any of her
household got sick, prayer or nothing should cure them.
“So the next time her little Philury had spasms, Mary Alice sent over
for Kate; and when Dick come home for dinner, he found all the doors
locked, and looked in at a window, and there was Philury in fits on the
bed, and Kate and Mary Alice praying loud and long on both sides. Dick
was just crazy, and he ran up the street for the doctor, and they come
back and broke in the window, and there was Philury laying quiet and
peaceful and breathing regular, and Kate and Mary Alice shouting and
glorifying God for casting a devil out of Philury. That gave Kate a big
reputation, and stirred the Station to the dregs. And even the doctor
said it was only by the grace of God that Philury pulled through under
the circumstances.
“Sister Sally Barnes had been laying up for nearly a year with a misery
in her back, and the doctor had give her physic, and she had took up
all the patent medicines she could borrow or raise money to buy, but
there she laid, and expected to lay the rest of her days. Kate went
up there one day and expounded Bible to her and anointed her with that
oil, and prayed over her for about two hours, and then told her to rise
and cook dinner, that the Lord had healed her. And up Sister Sally got,
and has been up ever since. Of course everybody was excited and talking
about it. Ma asked Dr. Negley one day what he thought about it, and he
said it was a mighty fine thing for Sister Sally’s family, and that
Kate’s medicine was certainly better for _some_ folks than his.
“That healing gave Kate a big name, and folks begun to send for her
right and left. Some would send for her and the doctor both, thinking
it just as well to be on the safe side and not neglect either faith or
works. I reckon it did the sick good just to lay eyes on Kate, she was
such a fine, healthy, rosy-checked woman, and never had had a day’s
sickness to pull her down.
“Then come along the time for Sister Nickins’ shingles. For seven
years old Sister Nickins, Tommy T.’s ma, had took down regular,
every Washington’s Birthday, at ten o’clock in the morning, with the
shingles. Everybody thought a duck could as soon get along without
water as Sister Nickins without her shingles; and she never dreamt of
such a thing as not having them. They never got to the breaking-out
stage with her but once, but she was scared to death every time for
fear they would break out, and run all around her and meet, and of
course that will kill anybody dead. So she used to make her will and
give away her gray mule every year, beforehand.
“This time Kate sent Sister Nickins word not to make no will or give
away the mule; that she was going to cast them shingles into the
bottomless pit by prayer. So, at sun-up on the 22d, Kate went up to
Sister Nickins’s house, and set into praying and anointing, and by ten
o’clock she had Sister Nickins so full of grace and glory that the
devil or the shingles couldn’t get within a mile of her, and she never
felt a single pain. And of all the halleluiah times, that was one.
You could hear the shouting all over town, and nearly all the Station
went up there. I went myself, and saw Sister Nickins with my own eyes,
up and about, and full of rejoicings, and not a shingle to her name. I
thought it was wonderful. It seemed just like Bible times over again.
And Sister Nickins was so lifted up over it that she mounted her gray
mule after dinner and started out on a three months’ visitation through
the county, to spread the news abroad amongst her kin and friends.
“That was the winter I felt the inward call to preach, but never got
no outward invitations. So, while I was having that trial of patience,
I thought I might as well help Kate some, though I knew my call was to
preach, and not to heal. And I would go around a good deal with Kate,
though I never was just as rampant as she was, or as Mary Alice Welden,
and always allowed that doctors _might_ have their uses.
“One day Kate came by for me to go up with her to pray over old Mis’
Gerton’s rheumatism. So up we went, and Kate told old Mis’ Gerton what
we come for, and Mis’ Gerton said she never had no objections, that
prayer certainly couldn’t do no harm, and oil was good for the joints.
So I poured on the oil, and Kate did the praying. In about an hour Kate
jumped up and told old Mis’ Gerton to get up and walk, that the prayer
of faith had healed her. ‘No such a thing,’ old Mis’ Gerton says; ‘them
knees is worse than when you commenced.’ Kate got red in the face,
and said of course the grace was thrown away on them that wouldn’t
accept of it. Old Mis’ Gerton said she couldn’t tell no lies; that she
felt worse instead of better; that pain was pain, and rheumatism was
rheumatism, as well they knew that had it. She said she never meant no
disrespect, but that in her opinion prayer couldn’t hold a candle to
Dr. Hayhurst’s Wildcat Liniment as a pain-killer. Of course Kate was
horror-struck, and she wiped the dust of old Mis’ Gerton’s house off of
her feet when we went out.
“Then what should pa do about that time but take down with the yellow
janders. You know, and everybody knows, that pa never did have a bit of
religion. I would hate to say such a thing about an own relation, but
pa being my stepfather, and the second one at that, I feel like he’s
kind of far-removed. Well, ma would have been a mighty religious woman
if she hadn’t been unequally yoked together with unbelievers three
times. That’s enough to wear a woman’s religion to a frazzle, goodness
knows; and I have always made excuses for ma. So when pa got sick and
told ma to send for the doctor, ma, being one of those women that is
always trying to serve two masters, her husband and her religion, sent
for the doctor and Kate both. And when I got there, a few minutes
later, there set the doctor by pa’s bed, and Kate and ma back in the
kitchen, and every time Kate would start over the door-sill into pa’s
room, to pour the oil on him and pray over him, pa would set up in bed
and shake his fist at her, and swear a blue streak, and tell her not to
come another step. Ma and me we nearly went through the earth for shame
at pa; and of course he never would have done it if his liver had been
right, for I will say this for pa, he is a polite, mild-mannered man,
and slow to wrath, when he hasn’t got the janders. Then Kate would flop
down on the kitchen floor and thank the Lord she was being persecuted
for righteousness’ sake. And a good many people dropped in, hearing the
noise; and everybody was plumb scandalized at pa, and said he was a
downright infidel, and all their sympathies was roused for Kate.
“After that she had a bigger business than ever, in spite of a set-back
or two, like old Mis’ Gerton’s rheumatism, and Brother Gilly Jones’s
baby dying one night of the croup when him and Kate was praying over
it and wouldn’t send for the doctor. Kate said that it was the Lord’s
will, and the baby’s appointed time to die; and Brother Gilly Jones,
being sanctified, and having eight more children anyhow, he agreed
with Kate, and said he felt perfectly resigned; though Sister Jones,
poor thing, never has got reconciled to this day.
“Of course those things never fazed Kate, and she was just on the top
notch all the time, and going day and night. And every Sunday there
would be testimonials in church about healings, and faith begun to
take hold on both sanctified and sinner, till it actually got to the
point that folks’ religion was doubted if they sent for a doctor. And
when spring opened up, the doctor said his occupation was so near gone
that he felt justified in going on that camp-hunt he had been wanting
to make for fourteen years; so he made up a party of men--Masons and
such--and went down on Green River for two weeks’ hunting.
“Well, you ought to have seen Kate that morning the doctor left. He
wasn’t out of sight before she turned loose a-shouting over the triumph
of righteousness, and over having actually run the devil out of town;
and she held a thanks-meeting up at her house that night, and we had a
full-salvation time.
“Kate invited me to stay with her while the doctor was gone; so I
shooed my chickens down to ma’s, so’s I could have my mind free from
worldly cares, and shut up my house, and went. We had a mighty joyful,
edifying time for two days.
“The third night Kate woke me up sudden from a good sleep, about three
o’clock in the morning. ‘Melissy,’ she says, ‘get up and light the
lamp. I don’t know what on earth’s the matter with me,’ she says; ‘I
feel awful, and have got all the aches there is inside of me.’ ‘For
goodness’ sake, Kate,’ I says, rolling out of bed, ‘I reckon you are
getting the grippe.’ She groaned. ‘It’s worse than the grippe, Melissy
Allgood,’ she says; ‘I feel like I’m going to die.’ I lit the lamp and
brought it over by the bed. ‘I do believe you have got some fever,
Kate,’ I says. ‘I am eat up with it,’ she says, ‘and with aches, and
have a terrible gone feeling all over. I tell you, Melissy, I’m an
awful sick woman. Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do?’ ‘Do?’ I says,
no little surprised. ‘Why, _pray_, of course.’ ‘Well,’ she says, kind
of faint-like, ‘you’d better be about it.’
“I was a little outdone by her lukewarmness, but I got down on my
knees and went to praying. Kate kept up a consid’able groaning. In
about five minutes she says: ‘Get up from there, Melissy Allgood, and
do something for me. I’m a terrible sick woman,’ she says. ‘Gracious
sakes alive, Kate,’ I says, ‘there ain’t another thing I _can_ do but
anoint you with the oil.’ I run and brought the sweet-oil. ‘Take it
away!’ she says. ‘The smell of it makes me sick! I won’t have it!’ I
was completely dazed, and it seemed to me like the world was turning
upside down. But what can you expect of a woman that don’t know what
the feeling of pain is, and never had a sick day since she was a young
child and got through the catching age? I fell down on my knees and
went to praying again, not knowing just what to do. Kate stopped me
again. ‘Melissy Allgood,’ she says, ‘are you going to let me lay here
and _die_, and not stretch out even a finger to help me?’ she says.
‘Why, Kate,’ I says, plumb petrified, ‘you know I’m doing the very best
that can be done.’ I says: ‘You must have patience and faith, and wait
on the time of the Lord.’ ‘Oh!’ she says, fairly crying, ‘what on earth
made the doctor go off and leave me? He might have known something
would happen to me. He ought to have stayed here, where he belongs!
_He’d_ know what to do for me if _he_ was here,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t
let his own dear wife lay here and die!’
“’Kate,’ I says, ‘you are wandering, the worst kind. I’m going after
Mary Alice Welden.’ So I slipped on my shoes and dress and run down
the street to Mary Alice’s, and we hurried back as fast as we could. I
told Mary Alice that Kate was sick, and out of her mind to that extent
she was calling for the doctor. Mary Alice said she certainly must be
mighty bad off, and that we must pray with abounding faith, and be
firm. When we got back, Kate was still a-groaning and crying. Mary
Alice told her to cease her complainings and put her trust in One who
was mighty to save. Then Mary Alice snatched up the bottle of sweet-oil
that set there on the table, and started at Kate with it. ‘She won’t
have it on her,’ I says, ‘it ain’t no use to try.’ ‘She’s _got_ to have
it,’ Mary Alice says, ‘whether she wants it or not. It’s a part of
James’s directions.’ Kate begun to holler and throw out her arms when
she saw the oil coming. ‘Take it away,’ she says; ‘it makes me sick!’
‘You hold her hands,’ Mary Alice says, ‘while I pour it on her.’ So I
set down and took a good grip on Kate’s hands, and Mary Alice poured
the oil on her, and it went all over her face and head and the pillow,
she kept threshing around so lively, and hollering till her mouth was
full. Then Kate she cried and carried on, and said we were treating
her shameful, and would be sorry for it when she was dead and gone: We
never paid any attention to her, of course, but got down on both sides
of the bed and went to praying as loud and earnest as we could, so as
to drown the groaning. Then Kate said she didn’t want to be prayed for
nohow, that what she wanted was the doctor. Mary Alice told her she was
plumb out of her senses, and didn’t know what she was talking about.
And Kate said, no such a thing; that she was a mighty sick woman, but
she was in her right mind, and knew what she wanted, and that it was
the doctor. She said the doctor was the only friend she had on earth.
She said the doctor wouldn’t stand by and see her die and never lift
a hand, and she knew it. She said he would know of something to give
her that would ease them aches and pains, and let her die in peace.
But she said of course if the _doctor_ was there she wouldn’t _need_
to die--that he would save her. She set up in bed. ‘Melissy Allgood,’
she says, ‘run over and tell your pa to mount his horse and ride for
the doctor,’ she says, ‘and never stop till he finds him!’ ‘Land of
the living, Kate,’ I says, ‘you know the doctor is thirty mile and
more away, and nobody knows where he’s at by now.’ ‘Tell Mr. Garry I
say not to stop till he finds him!’ Kate says. ‘And to keep life in me
till he gets here,’ she says, ‘I want old Dr. Pegram, at Dixie, sent
for immediate. He ought to get here in three hours’ time. You tell
Tommy T. Nickins to take my mare and go for him, quick!’ she says. ‘And
Mary Alice Welden, you go down in the cellar and bring me one of those
bottles of blackberry cordial, to keep up my strength till Dr. Pegram
comes.’
“Mary Alice and me were smitten dumb right there where we was at, on
our knees. ‘Kate Negley,’ I got the voice to say, ‘are you sure them
are your right-minded wishes, and not the devil speaking through you?’
‘I tell you to do what I say, and hurry up!’ Kate says. ‘Do you reckon
I want to die?’
“Mary Alice rose and walked out with never a word; but if I ever saw
complete disgust wrote on anybody’s face, it was hers. I had to go down
and get the blackberry cordial myself, and you ought to have seen Kate
make away with it. Then I went out and started off Tommy T. and pa.
“Old Dr. Pegram was there inside of three hours, dosing out big pills
for Kate to take every half-hour, and powders every fifteen minutes;
and it looked like Kate couldn’t swallow them fast enough to suit her.
Dr. Pegram told ma and me that Kate had a mild case of the grippe, and
there wasn’t no earthly danger.
“When Dr. Negley and pa come poking in after midnight that night, wore
out and muddy, you never saw as happy a woman in your life as Kate. She
laughed and she cried, and she hugged the doctor, and she kissed him,
and she said there never was anybody like him, that he was her sweet
angel from heaven, and the dearest darling on earth, and she knew she
wouldn’t have no chance to die, now he had come and would know just
what to do for her. And I reckon the doctor was the worst-astonished
man that ever was; but he was a heap too polite and kind to let on, and
went on dosing out physic for her just as if there wasn’t anything out
of the common. And never a word did he ever say to her, either, about
having his camp-hunt broke up; and that’s the reason I _know_ he’s
sanctified, for, like I told ma, what sainted martyr could do better?
“Of course the Station was shaken to the foundations over Kate acting
that way, and there was a big time of rejoicing amongst the scoffers.
And Mary Alice Welden hasn’t spoken to Kate since, and says she never
will. But I tell Mary Alice she ought to be ashamed of herself; that
she’s too ready in her judgments, and needs to make allowance for
humans being humans, and for folks changing with circumstances.”
LUCY S. FURMAN.
V.
A DOCTOR’S STORY.
CROFT HOUSE, at the end of the village, that had stood vacant so long,
was let at last. A ladder leaned against the wall; a painter was
painting the shutters, a gardener digging in the garden.
Day by day the aspect of the place improved. Soft muslin shades
shrouded the windows, flowers bloomed where only weeds had grown; the
garden paths were laid with gravel. One night a travelling carriage was
driven rapidly through the village and in at the gate leading to Croft
House.
Whence came the vehicle? Who its occupants? No one knew, but everyone
desired to know. Nothing that took place within that dwelling
transpired outside. In passing by, one saw only that the standard roses
flourished and that the grass grew greener. What comments were made on
the mysterious and invisible inhabitants! What strange tales circulated!
I, the village doctor, concerned myself little enough about the matter.
The occupants of Croft House were no doubt human beings, and as such
must suffer some of the ills that flesh is heir to; in that case my
services would be required. I waited patiently.
A week went by; and one morning before I set off on my rounds, a
messenger arrived requesting me to call on Mr. Wilton of Croft House.
Dressing myself with more than ordinary care, I crossed the village
green. I was young, and felt important.
I was shown into the drawing-room. It was gay with summer flowers,
redolent of their perfume. On a couch lay a young girl, in appearance
almost a child. She was pale, delicate looking, and very lovely. In
front of her knelt a young man of two or three and twenty--one of the
handsomest young fellows I had ever seen. He held the hands of the
beautiful girl, and they were looking into each other’s eyes. As I
approached he rose, bowed, and welcomed me with an easy grace that won
my heart.
“I confess I expected to find the village doctor an older man,” he said
with a frank smile as he offered me his hand. “It is for my wife I
desired your attendance,” he continued, looking at her with the deepest
affection. “Una is not strong.”
Then at a sign from him, I sat down beside the couch of my interesting
patient.
“You are very young, Mrs. Wilton,” I remarked. It was certainly rather
a leading question.
“I am seventeen, doctor,” she answered simply. “We have been married
only a few months. We are strangers here, and wish to be so. Oh,
Charlie, please explain,” she asked, turning to her husband with a
faint blush. “You can do it better far than I.”
He bent over, kissed her on the forehead, then straightening himself
and looking at me, said: “In attending my wife, Dr. Gray, I must
ask you to undertake a double duty. We have decided to tell you our
secret--in part--so that while _we_ are your patients, I trust we may
look upon _you_ as our friend--one who will assist us in keeping our
secret and in living the entirely secluded life we desire to lead
here. Wilton is an assumed name. My father refused to acknowledge my
marriage with the girl I love. _Her_ father withheld his consent to his
daughter marrying into a family too proud to receive her. We would have
waited any reasonable time; but, when our parents sought to separate
us entirely, we took our lives into our own hands. We married, and
hope--in time--to be forgiven.”
They had both spoken to me with the candour of youth, of love, and of
inexperience. It takes very little sometimes to bring a doctor into
close relations with his patients. I seemed to become the friend of
this interesting young couple at once. I assured them they need not
fear being intruded upon by the villagers, and the only gentlemen’s
residences within calling distance were tenantless at that season of
the year, the owners either being up in London or travelling abroad.
As to the vicar, he was a man whose advanced age and infirmities
effectually precluded him from visiting more than was absolutely
necessary among his parishioners.
“If you go to the church--a mile from here,” said I, “he may or may not
call upon you. If you do not go, I think I may safely say he will not
consider it necessary. In that case you will probably never meet.”
Mr. and Mrs. Wilton thanked me warmly, pressing me to come to see them
frequently, which I did with ever-increasing pleasure as the beautiful
romance of these two loving hearts unfolded itself. I soon discovered
that Mr. Wilton had received a college education; I also gleaned that
“Una” was somewhat his inferior in social position, and that since
their runaway marriage they had been travelling abroad. It was no
business of mine to know more than they chose to tell. I respected
their secret, and asked no questions.
One morning--my visits had become almost daily now--I saw at once that
there was something wrong with Mrs. Wilton, and she saw also that I
perceived it.
“You need not feel my pulse, doctor; it is my heart,” she said in
answer to my looks. “You will think me foolishly weak, I know,” she
added, forcing a smile, “but I am miserable because my husband is going
to leave me.”
“Leave you! For how long?” I inquired anxiously.
She blushed, and, looking down, answered shyly, “Till this evening.
Ah, don’t laugh,” she implored; “we have never been separated for so
long since we were married. I am nervous and fanciful, I suppose,
but I scarcely slept last night for thinking of it, and when I did, a
dreadful dream kept repeating itself--
“Oh, you must not mind dreams,” I answered.
“I never did much before, but this--ah, Charlie!” she cried, as Mr.
Wilton came in booted and spurred, “I will come and see you mount.”
I saw the parting from the drawing-room window where I stood--saw her
husband place his hands on either side of the sweet face, and gaze down
into it with a look of unutterable love; saw their lips meet together
for a moment; after that he kissed her forehead and her beautiful fair
hair, then sprang into the saddle, and rode off swiftly as though he
could not trust himself to linger longer. At the gate, turning, he
waved a last farewell.
She came into the drawing-room presently.
“Doctor, excuse me. I think I will lie down,” she said, her large blue
eyes looking peculiarly plaintive, brimming as they were with tears. My
presence was not needed then. I bowed and took my leave.
But the evening of that day I was sent for to Croft House.
“He has not returned,” were the first words spoken by Mrs. Wilton, as
I entered the drawing-room. “And, oh! what a day it has been,” she
continued feverishly; “so long, so sad! I seem to have lived a cruel
lifetime in each hour.”
“But it is not late. You said Mr. Wilton would not return till
evening,” I urged.
“It has been evening a long time now. See, the sun is setting. Then it
will be night.” She shuddered.
I sat with her an hour, perhaps, trying in vain to distract her
thoughts. And I too--knowing not how or why--became uneasy. She told
me her husband had gone to D----, the nearest town, for letters he
expected to find at the post-office. I knew that I could have ridden
there and back easily in the time. Still, a thousand simple causes
might have delayed him. I begged her to take courage, suggesting she
would probably laugh to-morrow at the fears she had entertained
to-day. But she shook her head.
“I suffer too much ever to laugh at such feelings as these,” she
said in a half-whisper. “I do not wish to think it, but it is as
though I _knew_ something dreadful was--Oh, I cannot, I dare not
clothe the terrible thought in words. That would make it seem so
real--so almost certain. Dr. Gray, can this be the punishment for my
disobedience--_come so soon_?” she asked in awe-struck tones.
I could not answer her, but proposed that she should wrap a mantle
round her and come with me into the garden to watch for her husband.
She thanked me gratefully, and I carried a basket seat out for her and
placed it on the lawn.
Sitting with her hands clasped about her knees--paler, more fragile,
more childish looking than I had ever seen her--of a sudden I felt,
rather than saw, that a change had come to her. She bent forward as
though listening intently, and at the same moment a distant sound
struck on my ear--the galloping of a horse on the high road.
Was there ever before on human countenance such a beatified expression
as that which dawned and deepened on Mrs. Wilton’s as the sound
approached? It was close to us now, but the trees in the garden hid the
road from our view. Without slackening speed the horse galloped in at
the open gate.
“Oh, Charlie, Charlie! Oh, thank God!” cried the girl, in what seemed a
wild, ungovernable ecstasy of gratitude and joy. But I pulled her back
or the horse would have been upon her.
Then I saw that the animal was riderless, covered with dust and foam;
that the bridle hung loose, dragging on the gravel.
A groom who had been on the watch came out. In another moment all the
household were assembled on the lawn.
Mrs. Wilton had fallen back, as I thought fainting, in my arms. But
no, her senses had not forsaken her. She raised herself and pointed in
the direction the horse had come.
“He lies there, there!” she cried, and pushing me from her, ran forward
towards the gate. I bade the servants bring lanterns and follow me. To
Mrs. Wilton, who was out in the road by this time, I said all I could
say to dissuade her from going with me; but my words fell on deaf ears.
Feeling it was useless--in one sense cruel--to persist, I compelled
her to take my arm. Endowed for the time, by excitement, with almost
superhuman strength, she seemed to drag me forward rather than to lean
on me. After proceeding about a mile, we came to a bit of level road
which for some distance in front showed clear and distinct in the
moonlight. Here, I felt certain, we had lost all trace of the horse’s
shoe marks, which hitherto had been every now and again perceptible in
the dusty highway.
“There is a shorter cut--if he knew of it,” I said, and stopped.
“Then if there is he would come by it--he would be sure to find out and
come by it,” she cried.
And I led her back a little distance to a gate at the entrance of a
wood, where sure enough were traces sufficient to show we were again on
the right track. Servants with lanterns had overtaken us by this time;
so, calling out at intervals and listening in vain for a response, we
entered the dark wood. Through it was an almost unfrequented bridle
path, considered somewhat unsafe by day but particularly so at night;
the gnarled roots of trees forming a raised network upon the ground. It
was with considerable difficulty we made our way. Mrs. Wilton stumbled
many times, would have fallen but for my support. At last she loosed my
arm and ran forward, signing me not to follow her. In another moment
the wood resounded with a wild and piercing cry. She had seen what
the rest of us had failed to see, and when I came up to her she was
kneeling beside her husband, her arms clasped about his neck, her face
close pressed to his. One agonized look she gave me as I bent over
them: “My dream!” she said. I understood.
There was an ugly wound on the back of poor Charlie Wilton’s head; the
body was still warm, but the heart had ceased to beat. Though Mrs.
Wilton did not speak again, she never completely lost her senses, but
her mind seemed stunned. We put some hurdles together and carried him
back thus to Croft House.
An inquest was held, every particular of which was minutely reported
in the county newspaper, to appear in condensed form in most of the
journals of the day. But no friends of the dead man ever came forward,
nor was it satisfactorily proved whether his death had been the result
of violence or of an accidental fall from his horse in the dangerous
pathway through the wood.
The post-office officials at D---- perfectly remembered the deceased
calling for letters on the day in question, giving the name of Wilton;
but there were none for him. In the bank was lodged to his credit some
five or six thousand pounds.
I took upon myself the arrangements for the funeral as of everything
else. Mrs. Wilton’s mind had not sufficiently recovered from the shock
it had received on that terrible night to understand or care for what
went on around her. Only once--when I urged writing to her friends--did
she even momentarily rouse herself to answer me. “My father will never
forgive me,” she said. “I acted in defiance of his commands. No, I
cannot write to him.” Then she added: “He has married again,” which
perhaps in part explained.
A month later a baby was born--a boy whom she called Charlie--and when
she spoke the name, tears sprang to her eyes for the first time. It was
not until I saw those tears that I had the slightest hope of her mind
rallying from the shock; but then I knew that the living child would
save her. She looked upon him as having been sent direct from heaven
to solace her for her loss. She regarded him as an emanation from the
departed spirit of her husband. There was certainly something uncommon
about the child. He was pretty, but not engaging. He never cried; but
it may also be said, he never smiled. He did not suffer, but there was
about him none of the joyousness of childhood. It seemed as though the
thunder-cloud that had burst over the mother’s head had left its shadow
on the child.
Between two and three years after Mr. Wilton’s death a change seemed
likely to occur in my own prospects. A rich relation--a physician of
high standing--wrote urging me to come to London immediately, on a
matter, so he said, of the greatest importance to myself. There was
nothing to prevent my complying with his request. The village was in a
healthy state; my outside practice might be made to spare me. I wrote
stating I would be with him on the following day.
I went to Croft House to say good-bye. It was summer. Mrs. Wilton was
sitting out on the lawn with Charlie on a rug close at her feet. She
made room for me beside her, and we talked together for a short time of
her affairs and of the child. It was not until I had risen to go that I
broached the subject of my departure. She looked surprised, alarmed.
“But, Charlie,” she said; “if he should be ill?”
“I would not go if he were ill. I will return at once if he should need
me,” I answered earnestly. “But is he not the picture of health? Why,
he seems exempt from every childish trouble.”
I told her my relative’s address, knowing she only cared to have it
in case she needed me for her boy; then I lifted the child in my arms
and kissed him. “Good-bye, little man!” I said cheerfully. He was a
splendid little fellow, of whom his mother might well be proud; he
resembled his father, too, and was growing more like him every day.
I was about to set the child down, but something--some feeling I
cannot define--impelled me to hold him closer; to look into his
face--his eyes--more scrutinizingly than I had ever done. And so
looking, I shuddered at the thought that then assailed me. Great
powers! Could fate be so cruel? Had heaven no pity for this poor mother
who, so young, had already surely borne enough of sorrow? I put the boy
down quickly and turned away.
Perhaps--perhaps after all I may have been mistaken!
I reached London, and Dr. B---- ‘s residence that evening, and my
worthy relative quickly explained the object of his summons. He wished
me to undertake, with his supervision, a case requiring the utmost care
and consideration; one which rendered it necessary that a medical man
should reside for a time beneath the same roof as his patient, and be
with him night and day.
This patient was Lord Welbury, a self-made man so far as his immense
wealth was concerned; but he came of an ancient and honourable race.
I accepted the munificent conditions offered, and within a couple of
hours of my arrival in town was driven to Lord Welbury’s house in
Belgravia, and entered upon the duties of my post.
For some days and nights my responsibilities absorbed all my attention.
The life of a sick man hung on a thread, my medical capacity was taxed
to its utmost; I knew not, nor cared I, for the time being, what went
on outside that chamber.
The crisis passed, my patient began rapidly to recover. The first
day that he was able to sit up in his room he asked me a startling
question. He said: “Doctor, am I sane?”
“Your mind has never been affected,” I answered unhesitatingly. “Your
lordship is as sane as I am.”
“Good. Therefore a will made by me now could not be invalid?”
“Most certainly not on the ground of incompetency.”
“Then my will must be made to-morrow or next day at latest. This
illness has warned me to delay no longer. My niece’s child will be my
heir.”
His words set me musing and turning over in my mind how this could be.
“Your lordship is childless, then?” The remark slipped from me almost
unawares; but they were fateful words, as the result proved. “I beg
your pardon,” I added, seeing surprise and some annoyance written on
his face.
“Not at all,” he answered courteously. “I supposed you were acquainted
with my family affairs, for they are no secret. I _have_ a son, though
no communication has passed between us for nearly four years. He set me
and my wishes at defiance by marrying beneath him, consequently will
inherit little more than an empty title. I mean to leave my fortune to
my niece’s child. The boy was committed to my care when his parents
went to India, two years ago. He is a fine little fellow, and it shows
how close in attendance you have been on me if you did not even know he
was in the house--”
“Was your son’s name Charles--that of the girl he married Una?” I
asked, scarcely heeding his last words. My heart was beating faster
than it should, my voice in my earnestness less steady than it ought to
be.
“Yes. But why these questions?”
I knew he was well enough now to hear the truth, therefore I answered:
“Because it is my belief your lordship’s son is dead. I will relate to
you a sad story; when I have finished you will be able to judge whether
or not you are concerned in it.” Then I told, as briefly as I could,
the Croft House tragedy; and as I did so, read in the ever-increasing
interest with which he listened to my tale that my suspicions were
correct.
That the man I had to deal with was of a proud, egotistical,
unsympathetic nature I was well aware; that the death of his only son
would not vitally affect him I had rightly guessed; but I was scarcely
prepared for the interest he displayed on learning of the existence of
his grandchild. The better nature of the man seemed touched. I spoke of
little Charles’s beauty, his likeness to his father, even hinted at a
resemblance to Lord Welbury himself. With the feverish impatience of an
invalid he demanded that the boy should be sent for at once.
“He cannot come without his mother. The two lives are bound together as
one.”
“Then write to the mother and bid her bring him,” was the imperious
reply. And the speaker turned his face away as though to intimate no
more was to be said. The affair was settled.
On quitting the room I encountered a nurse leading a smiling, rosy
little urchin, clad in velvet and rich lace.
“Speak prettily to the kind doctor, Georgie,” said the nurse. “This is
the little heir, sir,” she whispered to me.
Three days later Mrs. Wilton--I must still call her so--and her
son arrived. I met them at the station and took them in one of his
lordship’s carriages to the house. The boy, exhausted apparently by the
journey, was asleep when he entered it; he was still sleeping when his
mother carried him across the threshold of Lord Welbury’s door.
His lordship’s reception of her was not ungracious. Could he fail to
feel touched at sight of this gentle, beautiful young creature, who had
loved his son so well! But it was evident he resented the fact that
his grandson, whom he had specially desired to welcome, could not be
prevailed upon to notice him, or enticed to leave his mother’s arms.
“Excuse him. He is so tired,” pleaded the young mother, reading the
disappointment on her father-in-law’s face.
“Well, well. Off to bed with him, then. Bring him to me bright and
smiling in the morning.”
Bright and smiling! Somehow the words struck me--even haunted me--they
were so totally inapplicable to Charlie. I tried to remember if I had
ever seen a smile upon that grave baby-face, but tried in vain.
When I entered Lord Welbury’s room next day--my presence there at
nights was now dispensed with--the old man, in dressing-gown and
slippers, was reclining in an easy chair. In front of him stood Mrs.
Wilton, with Charlie clinging to her long black draperies.
“Come here, Gray,” exclaimed his lordship, irritably. “I cannot get my
grandson to notice me. What is to be done?”
“Charlie is shy. He has been used to no one but me,” murmured the
mother, raising her eyes with an appealing look in them to mine.
“Madam, I fear you are spoiling him,” said Lord Welbury sharply. “The
other child took to me at once, but this--”
“Send for the other, sir,” I suggested, and presently “the little
heir,” with whom I had previously made acquaintance, was brought in by
his nurse. The latter sat down in a far corner with some knitting. The
child--as apparently he had been accustomed to do--ran to the old man
and scrambled at his knee. “I love ‘ou, I love ‘ou,” he cried.
Lord Welbury’s face was radiant.
“Now, Charlie, my man,” said he, as the other child after his
affectionate greeting scampered off to play beside his nurse.
Charlie was placed on his grandfather’s knee.
“Say ‘I love you,’” whispered Mrs. Wilton, as she tried to clasp her
own child’s arms about Lord Welbury’s neck.
“Say I love ‘ou,” echoed the boy mechanically; then dropped his head
and lay quite placidly as though he slept.
“Ha, ha, the young rascal! He’s making himself at home at last,”
observed Lord Welbury, well pleased. “And now that I come to see him
more closely, he’s not unlike what his father was at the same age, only
quieter. Do you know he almost strikes me as being a little dull. Have
you found him so, madam?”
“I have been too sad a companion for him, sir. I know--I feel it now,”
sighed the poor mother, her eyes wandering from her own boy to follow
the antics of the other, who astride a stick, was careering merrily
about the room.
“That can be soon remedied,” said Lord Welbury, putting Charlie off his
knee; “let the two youngsters romp together. I warrant they’ll make
friends if let alone.”
And in order to try the experiment, we three sat apart and kept up some
desultory talk. This lasted but a short time, however. It was broken in
upon by a startled cry from the younger boy, Georgie, who, apparently
terror stricken, rushed across the room.
“Naughty boy, naughty boy! Send him away. He’s making faces at me,”
cried the spoilt child in an outburst of passion, pointing with
outstretched finger at his little companion.
The nurse dropped her knitting, and rose instantly. “I have seen it
from the first,” she said, calmly confronting us. “The child is half an
idiot, my lord.”
All eyes were turned at poor Charlie, who stood among some broken toys,
his features distorted into the ghastly semblance of a smile.
Mrs. Wilton, running to her boy, shielded him with her arms. “My
darling, my darling! Has God no pity?” she cried, and bore him from
the room. She had prayed day and night--this unhappy mother--to see
either a smile on her baby’s lips or a tear in his eye, and hitherto
her prayer had been denied. It was granted now. The poor dulled senses
of the child, roused into something like activity by the antics of his
little lively playfellow, had caused the lips to smile. But what a
smile!
Lord Welbury turned pale. A look of disgust, not unmixed with anger,
settled on his face.
“There is no doubt the boy is imbecile,” he said, as I was about to
follow Mrs. Wilton from the room. “Dr. Gray, were you aware of this
when you allowed him to be brought here?”
“I was not aware of it,” I replied readily. For the sad foreboding
that first assailed me on the lawn at Croft House had received no
confirmation hitherto. “But even if the case is as we fear,” I added
earnestly, “it may be curable.”
“Excuse me, doctor,” he interrupted. “No man who has seen that child as
we have seen him can have the slightest doubt but that he is an idiot
for life.”
“On the contrary, my lord, we must regard the matter from another
point. Remember the shadow that rested on his mother before his birth.
Where there is no hereditary taint--”
“What then? On the mere chance of the child being curable, do you
suppose I am going to leave my money to him? No!” he cried excitedly.
“My own life is too precarious for me to delay longer the settling of
my affairs. My niece’s child is still my heir. I regard the other as
_non est_. For heaven’s sake don’t let me have my feelings harrowed by
the sight of that poor idiot any more. The mother shall have a handsome
annuity. I pity her.”
And that day Lord Welbury made his will, leaving his immense fortune as
he had said.
Once more I returned to my country practice; Mrs. Wilton and Charlie to
Croft House.
Never was grief grander in its simplicity, or more nobly borne than
that of Mrs. Wilton. She still prayed--prayed with the faith which we
are told will move mountains. Her eyes, when not raised to heaven, were
bent on her child, ever seeking for the dawning of that intelligence
which she believed must come in answer to her prayers. She tried to
teach him his childish lessons; she read, she talked to him; even
chanted in a low, sad voice the nursery rhymes that happy mothers sing.
At last, one day, exercising over herself a supreme control, she told
her son the story of his father’s death, told it in simple, child-like
language, but with a pathos that might have moved a heart of stone.
The boy was standing at her knee, she holding his unresponsive hand.
But, as she proceeded with her narration, he pressed gradually closer
to her side. With a thrill of rapture she looked at the drooped
eyelids, hoping, praying to see a tear glisten on the dark curled
lashes. Trembling, she reached the climax of her sad tale, and bending
over him:
“Charlie,” she whispered, “Charlie, he was _dead_! you understand?”
Alas, she knew then, even ere she had done speaking that the boy was
incapable of understanding her. His eyes were closed. He slept!
And he seemed for ever thus. Whether the beautiful but expressionless
eyes were open or closed his mental faculties were in that dulled
dormant state, it might be said they slept.
“He is like that little statue of Jesus now,” she once said to me,
pointing to a marble figure of Christ, “but some day God will awaken
his soul. Ah, doctor, shall I live to see that day?”
I scarcely thought she could, but did not tell her so.
From the day on which she related the story of her husband’s death, she
herself drooped visibly.
But grief kills very slowly. Five years passed by. Lord Welbury was
dead. His wealth--with the exception of the annuity to his son’s
widow--was left to his niece’s child; his title now by right became his
grandson’s.
The boy grew fast; he was eight years old, but his mind still
slumbered. He knew the sound of his mother’s voice, would come to the
side of her couch when called; would lie for hours folded in her arms,
whispering back her loving words, repeating her gentle admonitions
like an echo. The words apparently conveyed no meaning, but they
touched some hidden chord.
Weaker and weaker grew Mrs. Wilton.
On one of my daily visits the sick nurse, who was in constant
attendance now, whispered to me that the end was near. I was startled,
shocked, to perceive _how_ near!
“Doctor, dear friend,” she gasped very faintly, as I pressed her poor
transparent hand; but her whole attention was riveted on her son; she
was gazing at him with eyes out of which the light of earth was fading
fast. It was evident she desired to say something, but it was some time
before the words would come. At last, gathering strength, she said in
a low, penetrating voice that scarcely faltered: “I am going to leave
you, Charlie. _Here_ I could not help you, but when in heaven I see
our dear Lord face to face--when on my knees before the great white
throne--”
For an instant an expression of rapture irradiated her features; the
next, with a slight sigh she sank back upon the pillow.
I touched Charlie on the shoulder. He dropped upon his knees and,
unprompted, joined his trembling hands in prayer. His gaze was directed
upward. His countenance assumed a look of intensity I had never seen on
it before. Quite suddenly he rose, and flinging himself sobbing across
the bed, “Oh, mother, mother! Do not leave me all alone,” he cried.
“See! Your son is saved!” I whispered, bending over Mrs. Wilton. But I
was speaking to the dead.
And yet, even as I looked upon the still white face, the lips seemed
parting into a smile of the most holy, calm, ineffable content. Could
it be as she herself had said? Was she already kneeling before the
great white throne--had God listened to her prayer at last?
A few more words and this “o’er true tale” is ended.
From the moment of his mother’s death, the mists that had obscured poor
Charlie’s mind dispersed.
I took him to live with me, and watched his young intelligence grow day
by day to healthy vigour. Not even a shadowy semblance of a cloud rests
now upon his mind. He has succeeded to his grandfather’s wealth as well
as to the title, for “the niece’s child” is dead.
The present Lord Welbury ranks amongst England’s noblest sons--he is
one of the greatest philanthropists of the day.
E. M. DAVY.
VI.
JOHN BARTINE’S WATCH: THE DOCTOR’S STORY.
“THE exact time? Good heavens! my friend, why do you insist? One would
think--but what does it matter; it is easily bed-time--isn’t that near
enough? But, here, if you must set your watch, take mine and see for
yourself.”
With that, he detached his watch--a tremendously heavy, old-fashioned
one--from the chain and handed it to me, then turned away and, walking
across the room to a shelf of books, began an examination of their
backs. His agitation and evident distress surprised me; they appeared
altogether reasonless. Having set my watch by his, I stepped over to
where he stood and said, “Thank you.”
As he took his watch and re-attached it to the guard, I observed that
his hands were unsteady. A slight pallor had come into his face. With
a tact, upon which I greatly prided myself, I sauntered carelessly to
the sideboard and took some brandy and water, then, begging his pardon
for my thoughtlessness, asked him to have some and went back to my seat
by the fire, leaving him to help himself, as was our custom. He did
so, and presently joined me at the hearth, as tranquil as if nothing
unusual had happened.
This odd little incident occurred in my apartment, where John Bartine
was passing an evening. We had dined together at the club, had come
home in a hack and, in short, everything had been done in the most
prosaic way; and why John Bartine should break in upon the natural and
established order of things to make himself spectacular with a display
of emotion, apparently for his own entertainment, I could nowise
understand.
The more I thought of it, while his brilliant conversational gifts were
commending themselves to my inattention, the more curious I grew and,
of course, had no difficulty in persuading myself that my curiosity
was friendly solicitude. That is the disguise that curiosity commonly
assumes to evade resentment. So I ruined one of the finest sentences of
his monologue by cutting it short without ceremony.
“John Bartine,” I said, “you must try to forgive me, if I am wrong; but
with the light that I have at present I cannot concede your right to go
all to pieces when asked the time o’night. I cannot admit that it is
proper to experience a mysterious reluctance to look your own watch in
the face, and to cherish in my presence, without explanation, painful
emotions which are denied to me and which are none of my business.”
To this ridiculous speech, Bartine made no immediate reply, but sat
looking gravely into the fire. Fearing that I had offended, I was about
to apologize and beg him to think no more about the matter, when,
looking me calmly in the eyes, he said:
“My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does not at all disguise
the hidden impudence of your demand; but happily I had already decided
to tell you what you wish to know, and no manifestation of your
unworthiness to hear it shall alter my decision. Be good enough to
persuade me to have a fresh cigar and you shall hear all that I can
tell you about the matter.
“This watch,” he said, “had been in my family for three generations
before it fell to me. Its original owner, for whom it was made, was
my great-grandfather, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a wealthy planter of
Colonial Virginia and as stanch a Tory as every lay awake nights
contriving new kinds of maledictions for the head of Mr. Washington,
and new methods of aiding and abetting good King George. One day this
worthy gentleman had the deep misfortune to perform for his cause a
service of capital importance which was not recognized by those who
suffered its disadvantages as legitimate. It does not matter what it
was; but among its minor consequences was my excellent ancestor’s
arrest one night in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington’s
rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his weeping family and was
then marched away into the darkness, which swallowed him up forever.
“Not the slenderest clew to his fate was ever found. After the war the
most diligent inquiry and the offer of large rewards failed to turn up
any of his captors or any fact concerning him. He had disappeared, and
that was all.”
Something in John Bartine’s manner that was not in his words--I hardly
knew what it was, or how it manifested itself--prompted me to ask:
“What is your view of the matter, Bartine--of the justice of it?”
“My view of it,” he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down
upon the table as if he had been in a public-house dicing with
blackguards--”my view of it is that it was a characteristically
dastardly assassination by that d----d traitor, Washington, and his
ragamuffin rebels!”
For some minutes nothing was said; Bartine was recovering his temper,
and I waited. Then I said:
“Was that all?”
“No--there was something else. A few weeks after my great-grandfather’s
arrest his watch was found lying on the porch at the front door of his
dwelling. It was wrapped in a sheet of letter-paper bearing the name of
Elizabeth Bartine, his only daughter, my grandmother. I am wearing that
watch.”
Bartine paused. His usually restless black eyes were staring fixedly
into the grate, a point of red light in each, reflected from the
glowing coals. He seemed to have forgotten my existence.
A sudden threshing of the branches of a tree outside one of the
windows, and almost at the same instant a rattle of rain against the
glass, recalled him to a sense of his surroundings. A storm had risen,
heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady
splash of the water on the pavement was distinctly audible. I hardly
know why I relate that incident; it seemed somehow to have a certain
significance and relevancy which I am enabled now to discern. It at
least added an element of seriousness, almost solemnity. Bartine
resumed:
“I have a singular feeling towards this watch--a kind of affection
for it; I like to have it about me; though partly from its weight,
and partly for a reason that I shall now explain, I seldom carry it.
The reason is this: Every evening when I have it with me I feel an
unaccountable desire to open it and consult it, even if I can think
of no reason for wishing to know the time. But if I yield to it,
the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a mysterious
apprehension--a sense of imminent calamity. And this is the more
unsupportable the nearer it is to eleven o’clock--by this watch, no
matter what the actual hour may be. After the hands have registered
eleven the desire to look is gone; I am entirely indifferent. But then
I can consult the thing as often as I like, with no more emotion than
you feel in looking at your own.
“Naturally, I have trained myself not to look at that watch in the
evening before eleven; nothing could induce me. Your insistence this
evening upset me a trifle. I felt very much as I suppose an opium-eater
might feel if his yearning for his special and particular kind of hell
were re-enforced by opportunity and advice.
“Now, that is my story, and I have told it in the interest of your
trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me
wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thoughtfulness to ask me
the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience of being
knocked down.”
His humour did not amuse me. I could see that in relating his
hallucination he was again somewhat disturbed. His concluding smile was
positively ghastly, and his eyes had resumed something more than their
old restlessness; they shifted hither and thither about the room with
apparent aimlessness, and I fancied had taken on a wild expression,
such as is sometimes observed in cases of dementia. Perhaps this was my
own imagination; but at any rate I was now persuaded that my friend was
afflicted with a most singular monomania.
Without, I trust, any abatement of my affectionate solicitude for him
as a friend, I began to regard him as a patient rich in possibilities
of profitable study. Why not? Had he not described his delusion in the
interest of science? Ah, poor fellow, he was doing more for science
than he knew; not only his story but himself was in evidence. I should
cure him if I could, of course, but first I should make a little
experiment in psychology--nay, the experiment itself might be a step in
his restoration.
“That is very frank and friendly of you, Bartine,” I said cordially,
“and I’m rather proud of your confidence. It is all very odd,
certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch?”
He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to
me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and
curiously engraved. After examining the dial and observing that it
was nearly twelve o’clock, I opened it at the back and was interested
to observe an inner case of ivory, upon which was painted a miniature
portrait in that exquisite and delicate manner which was in vogue
during the eighteenth century.
“Why, bless my soul!” I exclaimed, experiencing the keenest artistic
delight--”how under the sun did you get that done? I thought miniature
painting on ivory was a lost art.”
“That,” he replied, gravely smiling, “is not I; it is my excellent
great-grandfather, the late Bramwell Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of
Virginia. He was younger then than later--about my age, in fact. It is
said to resemble me; do you think so?”
“Resemble you? I should say so! Barring the costume, which I supposed
you to have assumed out of compliment to the art--or for vraisemblance,
so to say--and the no mustache, that face is yours in every feature,
line and expression.”
No more was said at that time. Bartine took a book from the table and
began reading.
I heard outside the incessant plash of the rain in the street. There
was occasional hurried footfalls on the sidewalks; and once a slower,
heavier tread seemed to cease at my door--a policeman, I thought,
seeking shelter in the doorway. The boughs of the trees tapped
significantly on the window-panes, as if asking for admittance. I
remember it all through these years and years of a wiser, graver life.
Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old-fashioned watch key from the
chain and quickly turned back the hands of the watch a full hour; then,
closing the case, I handed Bartine his property, and saw him replace it.
“I think you said,” I began, with assumed carelessness, “that after
eleven the sight of the dial no longer affects you. As it is now nearly
twelve”--looking at my own timepiece--”perhaps, if you don’t resent my
pursuit of proof, you will look at it now.”
He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch again, opened it, and
instantly sprang to his feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the
mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their blackness strikingly
intensified by the absolute pallor of his face, were fixed upon the
watch, which he clutched in both hands.
For some time he remained in that attitude without uttering another
sound; then, in a voice that I should not have recognized as his, he
said:
“D----n you! it is two minutes to eleven.”
I was not unprepared for some such outbreak, and without rising
replied, calmly enough:
“I beg your pardon; I must have misread your watch in setting my own by
it.”
He shut the case with a sharp snap and put the watch in his pocket. He
looked at me and made an attempt to smile; but his lower lip quivered
and he seemed unable to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking
and he thrust them clenched into his coat pockets.
The courageous spirit was manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward
body. The effort was too great. He began to sway from side to side, as
from vertigo; and before I could spring from my chair to support him
his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward and fell upon his
face--dead!
The post-mortem examination disclosed nothing; every organ was normal
and sound. But when the body had been prepared for burial a faint, dark
circle, as if made by contusion, was seen to have developed about the
neck; at least, I was so assured by several persons who said they saw
it; but of my own knowledge I cannot say if that was true.
Nor can I affirm my knowledge of the limitations of the principle of
heredity. I do not know that in the spiritual, as in the temporal,
world natural laws have no post-facto validity. Surely, if I were to
guess at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should guess that he
was hanged at eleven o’clock in the evening, and that he had been
allowed several hours in which to prepare for the change.
As to John Bartine, my friend, my patient for five minutes, and--Heaven
forgive me!--my victim for eternity, there is no more to say. He is
buried, and his watch with him; I saw to that. May God rest his soul
in Paradise and the soul of his unfortunate Virginian ancestor, if,
indeed, they are two souls.
AMBROSE BIERCE.
VII.
TWO WILLS.
DR. BROWN had returned home late from a visit to one of his patients.
It was a serious case--doubly so for Brown--for not only had his
notoriously sure diagnosis failed him in this case, but the patient
was one of a family with which he had been on an intimate footing for
years, and consequently his personal interest was awakened. The doctor
saw no hope whatever for the sick woman. Since early morning he had
hourly expected her death. Weary and dispirited, after a light and
hasty supper, he sat down at his writing-table, and once more passed in
review the whole course of his patient’s illness. Every circumstance
was recalled.
“Unaccountable! perfectly unaccountable!” he murmured over and over
again, and, with each repetition, he shook his grey head.
“Doctor!” Brown started up in alarm. He had not dreamed that anyone
beside himself was in the room. As he looked up, he saw a lady standing
by the door, dressed in a peculiar nightrobe with only a light shawl
thrown over it.
“My God! What is that?”
It was indeed the subject of his thoughts. Amazed beyond expression,
Brown sprang from his armchair and hastened toward the intruder. “My
dear Madam! Mrs. Morley, in heaven’s name, why are you here?”
“Never mind, doctor. Sit down and write what I tell you.”
Brown mechanically obeyed the command. There was something in the look
and bearing of his visitor which forbade contradiction. Strangely
thrilled, Brown took up his pen and wrote at her dictation the
following words: “I hereby direct that, in case of my death, my body
be opened, and the cause of my illness and final demise be officially
and authoritatively stated by a competent physician. I am convinced
that I am poisoned, and that by my own husband, and only through such
a statement as the aforesaid will it be put out of his power to get
possession of the property coming to my only child, his step-daughter.
My will relating to this property is in the hands of my lawyer, Mr.
Batt, in London. Mr. Batt is, as I have unfortunately only lately
discovered, a man open to bribery, and my husband counts upon this
characteristic for the attainment of his object: that is to say, he
hopes to induce this lawyer, by pure falsification, to make the will
read in his favor. I believe he has already succeeded in doing this,
for, when, yesterday, I desired to see a lawyer of this town, in order
to have him take down my last wishes, my husband put every obstacle
in the way of his coming. I have put a sealed copy of my will in the
double bottom of the little box which stands always upon the table at
my bedside. The ostensible contents of the box are my daughter’s first
cap and a lock of my father’s hair.”
Dr. Brown had driven his pen as if under the domination of a higher
power. He was not conscious of having once lifted it from the paper to
the inkstand, and yet there stood the written characters, black and
clear, upon the white paper, and reminded him that he was not alone;
furthermore, that the head and heart whose wish and request these
characters had recorded, belonged to an existence which held his own
being, thought, and will in its power.
He made an heroic effort to regain the mastery of himself, and with a
powerful shake, as if to free himself from the grasp of this strange
will, he arose. “Madam, I--”
“Yes, but, doctor, the master sent me to tell you to come right away.
Mrs. Morley has been lying for two hours like dead, and the master
thinks it must be nearly over with her.”
Brown staggered back in amazement, and stared so vacantly at the
waiting coachman that the man was struck dumb.
“Jan? Where did you come from? Mrs. Morley is not yet----”
“Dead? No, doctor, not yet, but the master says she can’t last much
longer.”
“Very well. You see to the horses, and I’ll come right away.”
Dr. Brown put his hands to his head. He had need to convince himself by
some such means of his own mortal existence. Then he seized his hat and
coat and hurried after the coachman.
Drawing his coat tightly about him, he leaned back in the corner of
the carriage and racked his brain over the strange occurrence, but
to no purpose. The doctor was a hard-headed, practical man, and if
any one had related to him the events of the past day, he would have
laughed him to scorn; but, earnestly as he tried to do so now, it was
impossible for him to conjure up a smile. The carriage stopped and Mr.
Morley was at the door to receive him.
“I am glad you have come, doctor. I was afraid you would be too late.
As the clock struck twelve, there was absolutely no breath nor pulse,
and not until half-an-hour ago did she seem to come back a little to
life. She has just asked for you.”
These words were spoken outside the sick-room door. The doctor laid
aside his coat and went in, followed by Mr. Morley. The physician felt
something like horror at being in the near presence of this man, who
since half-an-hour ago had figured in his mind as the murderer of his
wife; and here in the sick-room while looking upon the dying woman, in
whose features he again saw plainly his recent guest, even here, did he
feel again that compelling force which had put the pen in his hand at
home.
The sick woman seemed to have been anxiously awaiting his coming, for
her great, earnest eyes fastened themselves upon him, as he entered the
room, and as he bent over her, he heard distinctly the low whispered
words: “Doctor, my child!” and in the same low whisper Dr. Brown
replied: “I will see that your will is executed.”
Then he raised his head and encountered a look from those eyes which
spoke a world of gratitude; and this was the last conscious look which
lighted them, for as Mr. Morley now softly approached, she looked
wanderingly at him, and then her eyelids closed, and her muscles
relaxed, and with a gentle sigh her heart ceased to beat.
“All is over,” said the doctor, as he stepped back to give place to the
mourning husband, who threw himself down beside his wife.
When he arose and turned toward the doctor, a tear glittered on
his lashes. His voice was hoarse and tremulous when he thanked the
physician for all the pains which he had taken during the long illness
of his wife, concluding with, “I shall never forget it!”
Dr. Brown only shook his head. He was thinking of the dead woman’s
will, and answered evasively: “I could not have helped your wife much,
since I never discovered the real cause of her illness.”
“No self-reproaches, doctor! You did what you could, and whether this
disease can be exactly diagnosed seems to me, from what I know of it,
altogether doubtful.”
“Every disease,” replied the doctor, “must finally disclose its cause
to the patient and thorough investigator; but in this case there were
so many accompanying phenomena that it was quite impossible to discover
the exact cause of the predominant disorder, at least in the living
body.”
The doctor, as he said this, looked sharply at his companion, over
whose countenance a slight cloud seemed to pass; yet there was scarcely
any discernible change in his voice as he replied: “No, no, doctor, we
won’t do that! The beloved body was sufficiently tormented in life; in
death at least it shall be at rest!”
“Yes, but it was the wish of the dead; and isn’t there any direction as
to that in the will?”
“No!--yet perhaps--I don’t know. Anyway the will is to be read
t-omorrow, and should any such direction be found there--well, I
suppose I shall have to carry it out. I will send immediately an
announcement of the death to our attorney, Mr. Batt of London. You will
be present at the opening of the will, will you not?”
“Most certainly!”
The doctor during this conversation had again approached the bed of
death. He carefully scrutinized the surroundings and, as if in an
absent-minded manner, picked up a little box from the table which stood
beside the bed and carelessly pushed back the cover. At sight of the
contents he could hardly restrain an exclamation; for there, exactly as
had been described to him, were a baby’s cap, yellow with time, and a
lock of hair, tied with a ribbon.
“Probably some of your wife’s keepsakes?” he remarked, turning
inquiringly to Morley.
“Yes, and as such they must be given into the hands of her daughter.”
“Will you allow me the pleasure of sending them to her by my sister who
is going to Switzerland to-morrow?”
“I suppose it would be more proper that she should receive them at my
hands; and yet, as I shall have to remain here for some time yet, and
a journey home in her delicate state of health would be hard for the
child, I shall be very much obliged to you if you will send them to
her. Give her my blessing with them, and tell her that from this time
forth I shall be more a father to her than ever.”
Dr. Brown thrust the little box deep into his breast-pocket, and took
his leave with the assurance that he would faithfully execute Mr.
Morley’s commission.
Once at home under the light of the lamp, he was not long in searching
for the further contents of the box, and he was filled with both
horror and astonishment as his search brought to light, from beneath a
cunningly-contrived double floor, the will as it had been described to
him--a clear, correct copy. After this discovery, the doctor awaited
with feverish anxiety the hour for the announced opening of the will.
At last it arrived, and Brown had to acknowledge to himself that its
contents agreed exactly with the copy in his hands until it came to the
names of the heirs. Here appeared clearly and plainly, “my daughter,
Mara Dix;” and there, just as plainly, “my husband, John Morley.” No
directions with regard to an inquest or autopsy appeared therein.
“I demand proof of the genuineness of that will!” rang loud and clear
through the room. No one could imagine from whom the words proceeded.
The will had been drawn up and carefully preserved by a prominent
attorney in London, and the family involved was one of the first in
the country; and now came this demand, which, as everybody knew, was
an unmitigated insult. Who had brought it forward? The chairman looked
all about the room. There he stood--Dr. Brown! He had again, quite
unconsciously, come under the spell of that mysterious power, and in
obedience to its behest had called out those words; now that they
were spoken, he would not recall them. Standing upright, the doctor
repeated: “I demand an examination of the will!” As he spoke, he had
the comfortable feeling of having kept a promise.
“By what authority?” asked the attorney.
“As the guardian of the deceased’s daughter.”
“Have you anything to offer in support of this request?”
“Yes, a copy of the original will.”
“Will?”
“And this has reference to an entirely different party.”
“Allow me to look at the document.”
Dr. Brown handed over the copy. A committee retired with it to another
room. On their return the chairman announced that in accordance with
Dr. Brown’s request, a preliminary examination of the will having been
made, the judge had decided to enter a complaint against Attorney Batt
of London for having falsified the will, and at the same time to place
the property of the heiress-at-law under legal protection.
“Dr. Brown, have you anything further to say in the matter?”
“I beg you will order an autopsy.”
“On what grounds?”
“It was the wish of the deceased.”
“Is that your only reason?”
“No, but because I have a strong suspicion that the deceased came to
her death through slow and protracted poisoning.”
All present were filled with horror.
Again the court withdrew, and again the decision was a fulfilment of
the doctor’s request; and when the verdict at the ensuing inquest was
brought in, it was expressed in one word: Poison!
VII.
A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL.
A GENERAL PRACTITIONER.
DRUMTOCHTY was accustomed to break every law of health, except
wholesome food and fresh air, and yet had reduced the Psalmist’s
farthest limit to an average life-rate. Our men made no difference in
their clothes for summer or winter, Drumsheugh and one or two of the
larger farmers condescending to a topcoat on Sabbath, as a penalty of
their position, and without regard to temperature. They wore their
blacks at a funeral, refusing to cover them with anything, out of
respect to the deceased, and standing longest in the kirkyard when the
north wind was blowing across a hundred miles of snow. If the rain
was pouring at the Junction, then Drumtochty stood two minutes longer
through sheer native dourness till each man had a cascade from the
tail of his coat, and hazarded the suggestion, hal-fway to Kildrummie,
that it had been “a bit scrowie;” a “scrowie” being as far short of a
“shoor” as a “shoor” fell below “weet.”
This sustained defiance of the elements provoked occasional judgments
in the shape of a “hoast” (cough), and the head of the house was then
exhorted by his women folk to “change his feet” if he happened to
walk through a burn on his way home, and was pestered generally with
sanitary precautions. It is right to add that the gudeman treated such
advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable for the effeminacy
of towns, but not seriously intended for Drumtochty. Sandy Stewart
“napped” stones on the road in his shirt sleeves, wet or fair, summer
and winter, till he was persuaded to retire from active duty at
eighty-five, and he spent ten years more in regretting his hastiness
and criticising his successor. The ordinary course of life, with fine
air and contented minds, was to do a full share of work till seventy,
and then to look after “orra” (odd) jobs well into the eighties,
and to “slip awa” within sight of ninety. Persons above ninety were
understood to be acquitting themselves with credit, and assumed airs
of authority, brushing aside the opinions of seventy as immature, and
confirming their conclusions with illustrations drawn from the end of
last century.
[Illustration: _A SPOONFUL EVERY HOUR_]
When Hillocks’ brother so far forgot himself as to “slip awa” at sixty,
that worthy man was scandalized, and offered laboured explanations at
the “beerial.”
“It’s an awfu’ business ony wy ye look at it, an’ a sair trial tae us
a’. A’ never heard tell o’ sic a thing in oor family afore, an’ it’s no
easy accoontin’ for’t.
“The gudewife was sayin’ he wes never the same sin’ a weet nicht he
lost himsel on the muir and slept below a bush; but that’s neither here
nor there. A’m thinkin’ he sappit his constitution thae twa years he
wes grieve (steward) aboot England. That wes thirty years syne, but
ye’re never the same aifter thae foreign climates.”
Drumtochty listened patiently to Hillocks’ apologia, but was not
satisfied.
“It’s clean havers aboot the muir. Losh keep’s (Lord, keep us), we’ve
a’ sleepit oot and never been a hair the waur.
“A’ admit that England micht hae dune the job; it’s no cannie
stravagin’ (strolling) yon wy frae place tae place, but Drums never
complained tae me as if he hed been nippit in the Sooth.”
The parish had, in fact, lost confidence in Drums after his wayward
experiment with a potato-digging machine, which turned out a lamentable
failure, and his premature departure confirmed our vague impression of
his character.
“He’s awa noo,” Drumsheugh summed up, after opinion had time to form;
“an’ there were waur fouk than Drums, but there’s nae doot he wes a wee
flichty.”
When illness had the audacity to attack a Drumtochty man, it was
described as a “whup,” and was treated by the men with a fine
negligence. Hillocks was sitting in the post office one afternoon when
I looked in for my letters, and the right side of his face was blazing
red. His subject of discourse was the prospects of the turnip “breer,”
but he casually explained that he was waiting for medical advice.
“The gudewife is keepin’ up a ding-dong frae mornin’ till nicht aboot
ma face, and a’m fair deaved (deafened), so a’m watchin’ for MacLure
tae get a bottle as he comes wast (west); yon’s him noo.”
The doctor made his diagnosis from horseback on sight, and stated the
result with that admirable clearness which endeared him to Drumtochty.
“Confoond ye, Hillocks, what are ye ploiterin’ aboot here for in the
weet wi’ a face like a boiled beet? Div ye no ken that ye’ve a titch
o’ the rose (erysipelas), and ocht tae be in the hoose? Gae hame wi’
ye afore a’ leave the bit, and send a haflin (half-grown; a child)
for some medicine. Ye donnerd idiot, are ye ettlin (intending) tae
follow Drums afore yir time?” And the medical attendant of Drumtochty
continued his invective till Hillocks started, and still pursued his
retreating figure with medical directions of a simple and practical
character.
“A’m watchin’, an’ peety ye if ye pit aff time. Keep yir bed the
mornin’, and dinna show yir face in the fields till a’ see ye. A’ll gie
ye a cry on Monday--sic an auld fule--but there’s no ane o’ them tae
mind anither in the hale pairish.”
Hillocks’ wife informed the kirkyaird that the doctor “gied the
gudeman an awfu’ clearin’,” and that Hillocks “wes keepin’ the hoose,”
which meant that the patient had tea breakfast, and at that time was
wandering about the farm buildings in an easy undress with his head in
a plaid.
It was impossible for a doctor to earn even the most modest competence
from a people of such scandalous health, and so MacLure had annexed
neighbouring parishes. His house--little more than a cottage--stood on
the roadside among the pines towards the head of our Glen, and from
this base of operations he dominated the wild glen that broke the wall
of the Grampians above Drumtochty--where the snowdrifts were twelve
feet deep in winter, and the only way of passage at times was the
channel of the river--and the moorland district westwards till he came
to the Dunleith sphere of influence, where there were four doctors and
a hydropathic. Drumtochty in its length, which was eight miles, and
its breadth, which was four, lay in his hand; besides a glen behind,
unknown to the world, which in the night time he visited at the risk of
life, for the way thereto was across the big moor with its peat holes
and treacherous bogs. And he held the land eastwards towards Muirtown
so far as Geordie. The Drumtochty post travelled every day, and could
carry word that the doctor was wanted. He did his best for the need of
every man, woman, and child in this wild, straggling district, year in,
year out, in the snow and in the heat, in the dark and in the light,
without rest, and without holiday for forty years.
One horse could not do the work of this man, but we liked best to see
him on his old white mare, who died the week after her master, and
the passing of the two did our hearts good. It was not that he rode
beautifully, for he broke every canon of art, flying with his arms,
stooping till he seemed to be speaking into Jess’s ears, and rising in
the saddle beyond all necessity. But he could ride faster, stay longer
in the saddle, and had a firmer grip with his knees, than any one I
ever met, and it was all for mercy’s sake. When the reapers in harvest
time saw a figure whirling past in a cloud of dust, or the family at
the foot of Glen Urtach, gathered round the fire on a winter’s night,
heard the rattle of a horse’s hoofs on the road, or the shepherds, out
after the sheep, traced a black speck moving across the snow to the
upper glen, they knew it was the doctor, and, without being conscious
of it, wished him God speed.
Before and behind his saddle were strapped the instruments and
medicines the doctor might want, for he never knew what was before
him. There were no specialists in Drumtochty, so this man had to do
everything as best he could, and as quickly. He was chest doctor and
doctor for every other organ as well; he was accoucheur and surgeon; he
was oculist and aurist; he was dentist and chloroformist, besides being
chemist and druggist. It was often told how he was far up Glen Urtach
when the feeders of the threshing mill caught young Burnbrae, and how
he only stopped to change horses at his house, and galloped all the way
to Burnbrae, and flung himself off his horse and amputated the arm, and
saved the lad’s life.
“You wud hae thocht that every meenut was an hour,” said Jamie Soutar,
who had been at the threshing, “an’ a’ll never forget the puir lad
lying as white as deith on the floor o’ the loft, wi’ his head on a
sheaf, an’ Burnbrae haudin’ the bandage ticht an’ prayin’ a’ the while,
and the wither greetin’ in the corner.
“’Will he never come?’ she cries, ‘an’ a’ heard the soond o’ the
horse’s feet on the road a mile awa in the frosty air.
“’The Lord be praised!’ said Burnbrae, and a’ slippit doon the ladder
as the doctor came skelpin’ intae the close, the foam fleein’ frae his
horse’s mooth.
“’Whar is he?’ wes a’ that passed his lips, an’ in five meenuts he hed
him on the feedin’ board, and wes at his wark--sic wark, neeburs--but
he did it weel. An’ ae thing a’ thocht rael thoctfu’ o’ him: he first
sent aff the laddie’s mither tae get a bed ready.
“’Noo that’s feenished, and his constitution ’ll dae the rest,’ and he
carried the lad doon the ladder in his airms like a bairn, and laid him
in his bed, and waits aside him till he wes sleepin’, and then says he:
Burnbrae, yir a gey lad never tae say ‘Collie, will ye lick?’ for a’
hevna tasted meat for saxteen hoors.”
“It was michty tae see him come intae the yaird that day, neeburs; the
verra look o’ him wes victory.”
Jamie’s cynicism slipped off in the enthusiasm of this reminiscence,
and he expressed the feeling of Drumtochty. No one sent for MacLure
save in great straits, and the sight of him put courage in sinking
hearts. But this was not by the grace of his appearance, or the
advantage of a good bedside manner. A tall, gaunt, loosely made man,
without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body, his face burned a
dark brick colour by constant exposure to the weather, red hair and
beard turning grey, honest blue eyes that looked you ever in the face,
huge hands with wrist bones like the shank of a ham, and a voice that
hurled his salutations across two fields, he suggested the moor rather
than the drawing-room. But what a clever hand it was in an operation,
as delicate as a woman’s; and what a kindly voice it was in the humble
room where the shepherd’s wife was weeping by her man’s bedside. He was
“ill pitten thegither” to begin with, but many of his physical defects
were the penalties of his work, and endeared him to the Glen. That
ugly scar that cut into his right eyebrow and gave him such a sinister
expression, was got one night Jess slipped on the ice and laid him
insensible eight miles from home. His limp marked the big snowstorm in
the fifties, when his horse missed the road in Glen Urtach, and they
rolled together in a drift. MacLure escaped with a broken leg and the
fracture of three ribs, but he never walked like other men again. He
could not swing himself into the saddle without making two attempts
and holding Jess’s mane. Neither can you “warstle” through the peat
bogs and snow drifts for forty winters without a touch of rheumatism.
But they were honorable scars, and for such risks of life men get the
Victoria Cross in other fields. MacLure got nothing but the secret
affection of the Glen, which knew that none had ever done one-tenth as
much for it as this ungainly, twisted, battered figure, and I have seen
a Drumtochty face soften at the sight of MacLure limping to his horse.
Mr. Hopps earned the ill-will of the Glen forever by criticising the
doctor’s dress, but indeed it would have filled any townsman with
amazement. Black he wore once a year, on Sacrament Sunday, and, if
possible, at a funeral; topcoat or waterproof never. His jacket and
waistcoat were rough homespun of Glen Urtach wool, which threw off the
wet like a duck’s back, and below he was clad in shepherd’s tartan
trousers, which disappeared into unpolished riding boots. His shirt
was grey flannel, and he was uncertain about a collar, but certain as
to a tie, which he never had, his beard doing instead, and his hat
was soft felt of four colors and seven different shapes. His point of
distinction in dress was the trousers, and they were the subject of
unending speculation.
“Some threep (declare) that he’s worn thae eedentical pair the last
twenty year, an’ a’ mind masel (myself) his gettin’ a tear ahint, when
he was crossin’ oor palin’, and the mend’s still veesible.
“Ithers declare ‘at he’s got a wab o’claith, and hes a new pair made in
Muirtown aince in the twa year maybe, and keeps them in the garden till
the new look wears aff.
“For ma ain pairt,” Soutar used to declare, “a’ canna mak up my mind,
but there’s ae thing sure, the Glen wud not like tae see him withoot
them: it wud be a shock tae confidence. There’s no muckle o’ the check
left, but ye can aye tell it, and when ye see thae breeks comin’ in ye
ken that if human pooer can save yir bairn’s life it ‘ill be dune.”
The confidence of the Glen--and tributary states--was unbounded, and
rested partly on long experience of the doctor’s resources, and partly
on his hereditary connection.
“His father was here afore him,” Mrs. Macfadyen used to explain;
“atween them they’ve hed the countyside for weel on tae a century; if
MacLure disna understand oor constitution, wha dis, a’ wud like tae
ask?”
For Drumtochty had its own constitution and a special throat disease,
as became a parish which was quite self-contained between the woods and
the hills, and not dependent on the lowlands either for its diseases or
its doctors.
“He’s a skilly man, Doctor MacLure,” continued my friend Mrs.
Macfadyen, whose judgment on sermons or anything else was seldom at
fault; “an’ a kindhearted, though o’ coorse he hes his faults like us
a’, an’ he disna tribble the Kirk often.
“He aye can tell what’s wrang wi’ a body, an’ maistly he can put ye
richt, an’ there’s nae new-fangled wys wi’ him: a blister for the
ootside an’ Epsom salts for the inside dis his wark, an’ they say
there’s no an herb on the hills he disna ken.
“If we’re tae dee, we’re tae dee; an’ if we’re tae live, we’re tae
live,” concluded Elspeth, with sound Calvinistic logic; “but a’ll say
this for the doctor, that whether yir tae live or dee, he can aye keep
up a shairp meisture on the skin.
“But he’s no verra ceevil gin ye bring him when there’s naethin’
wrang,” and Mrs. Macfadyen’s face reflected another of Mr. Hopps’
misadventures of which Hillocks held the copyright.
“Hopps’ laddie ate grosarts (gooseberries) till they hed to sit up a’
nicht wi’ him, and naethin’ wud do but they maun hae the doctor, an’ he
writes ‘immediately’ on a slip o’ paper.
“Weel, MacLure had been awa a’ nicht wi’ a shepherd’s wife Dunleith wy,
and he comes here withoot drawin’ bridle, mud up tae the een.
“’What’s a dae here, Hillocks?’ he cries; ‘it’s no an accident, is’t?’
and when he got aff his horse he cud hardly stand wi’ stiffness and
tire.
“’It’s nane o’ us, doctor; it’s Hopps’ laddie; he’s been eatin’ ower
mony berries.’
“’If he didna turn on me like a tiger.
“’Div ye mean tae say--’
“’Weesht, weesht,’ an’ I tried tae quiet him, for Hopps wes comin’ oot.
“’Well, doctor,’ begins he, as brisk as a magpie, ‘you’re here at last;
there’s no hurry with you Scotch-men. My boy has been sick all night,
and I’ve never had one wink of sleep. You might have come a little
quicker, that’s all I’ve got to say.’
“’We’ve mair tae dae in Drumtochty than attend tae every bairn that hes
a sair stomach,’ and a’ saw MacLure was roosed.
“’I’m astonished to hear you speak. Our doctor at home always says to
Mrs. ‘Opps, ‘Look on me as a family friend, Mrs. ‘Opps, and send for me
though it be only a headache.’”
“’He’d be mair sparin’ o’ his offers if he hed four an’ twenty mile tae
look aifter. There’s naething wrang wi’ yir laddie but greed. Gie him a
gude dose o’ castor oil and stop his meat for a day, an’ he ‘ill be a’
richt the morn.’
“’He’ll not take castor oil, doctor. We have given up those barbarous
medicines.’
“’Whatna kind o’ medicines hae ye noo in the Sooth?’
“’Well, you see, Dr. MacLure, we’re homœopathists, and I’ve my
little chest here,’ and oot Hopps comes wi’ his boxy.
“’Let’s see ‘t,’ an’ MacLure sits doon and taks oot the bit bottles,
and he reads the names wi’ a lauch every time.
“’Belladonna; did ye ever hear the like? Aconite; it cowes a’. Nux
Vomica. What next? Weel, ma mannie,’ he says tae Hopps, ‘it’s a fine
ploy, and ye ‘ill better gang on wi’ the Nux till it’s dune, and gie
him ony ither o’ the sweeties he fancies.
“’Noo, Hillocks, a’ maun be aff tae see Drumsheugh’s grieve (steward),
for he’s doon wi’ the fever, an’ it’s tae be a teuch fecht (hard
fight). A’ hinna time tae wait for dinner; gie me some cheese an’ cake
in ma haund, and Jess ‘ill tak a pail o’ meal an’ water.
“’Fee; a’m no wantin’ yir fees, man; wi’ a’ that boxy ye dinna need a
doctor; na, na, gie yir siller tae some puir body, Maister Hopps,’ an’
he was doon the road as hard as he cud lick.”
His fees were pretty much what the folk chose to give him, and he
collected them once a year at Kildrummie fair.
“Weel, doctor, what am a’ awin’ ye for the wife and bairn? Ye ‘ill need
three notes for that nicht ye stayed in the hoose an’ a’ the veesits.”
“Havers,” MacLure would answer, “prices are low, a’m hearing; gie’s
thirty shillings.”
“No, a’ll no, or the wife ‘ill tak ma ears off,” and it was settled for
two pounds.
Lord Kilspindie gave him a free house and fields, and one way or other,
Drumsheugh told me, the doctor might get in about one hundred and fifty
pounds a year, out of which he had to pay his old housekeeper’s wages
and a boy’s, and keep two horses, besides the cost of instruments and
books, which he bought through a friend in Edinburgh with much judgment.
There was only one man who ever complained of the doctor’s charges, and
that was the new farmer of Milton, who was so good that he was above
both churches, and held a meeting in his barn. (It was Milton the Glen
supposed at first to be a Mormon, but I can’t go into that now.) He
offered MacLure a pound less than he asked, and two tracts, whereupon
MacLure expressed his opinion of Milton, both from a theological and
social standpoint, with such vigour and frankness that an attentive
audience of Drumtochty men could hardly contain themselves.
Jamie Soutar was selling his pig at the time, and missed the meeting,
but he hastened to condole with Milton, who was complaining everywhere
of the doctor’s language.
“Ye did richt tae resist him; it ‘ill maybe roose the Glen tae mak a
stand; he fair hauds them in bondage.
“Thirty shillings for twal veesits, and him no mair then seeven mile
awa, an’ a’m telt there werena mair than four at nicht.
“Ye ‘ill hae the sympathy o’ the Glen, for a’ body kens yir as free wi’
yir siller as yir tracts.
“Wes’t ‘Beware o’ gude warks’ ye offered him? Man, ye chose it weel,
for he’s been colleckin’ sae mony thae forty years, a’m feared for him.
“A’ve often thocht oor doctor’s little better than the Gude Samaritan,
an’ the Pharisees didna think muckle o’ his chance aither in this warld
or that which is tae come.”
IAN MACLAREN.
VIII
THE VARIOUS TEMPERS OF GRANDMOTHER GREGG.
WHEN the doctor drove by the Gregg farm about dusk, and saw old Deacon
Gregg perched cross-legged upon his own gate-post, he knew that
something was wrong within, and he could not resist the temptation to
drive up and speak to the old man.
It was common talk in the neighborhood that when Grandmother Gregg made
things too warm for him in-doors, the good man, her spouse, was wont to
stroll out to the front gate and to take this exalted seat.
Indeed, it was said by a certain Mrs. Frequent, a neighbor of prying
proclivities and ungentle speech, that the deacon’s wife sent him there
as a punishment for misdemeanors. Furthermore, this same Mrs. Frequent
did even go so far as to watch for the deacon, and when she would see
him laboriously rise and resignedly poise himself upon the narrow area,
she would remark:
“Well, I see Grandma Gregg has got the old man punished again. Wonder
what he’s been up to now?”
Her constant repetition of the unkind charge finally gained for it such
credence that the diminutive figure upon the gate-post became an object
of mingled sympathy and mirth in the popular regard.
The old doctor was the friend of a lifetime, and he was sincerely
attached to the deacon, and when he turned his horse’s head toward the
gate this evening, he felt his heart go out in sympathy to the old man
in durance vile upon his lonely perch.
But he had barely started to the gate when he heard a voice which he
recognized as the deacon’s, whereupon he would have hurried away had
not his horse committed him to his first impulse by unequivocally
facing the gate.
“I know three’s a crowd,” he called out cheerily as he presently drew
rein, “but I ain’t a-goin’ to stay; I jest--Why, where’s grandma?” be
added abruptly, seeing the old man alone. “I’m shore I heard--”
“You jest heerd me a-talkin’ to myself, doctor--or not to myself,
exactly, neither--that is to say, when you come up I was addressin’ my
remarks to this here pill.”
“Bill? I don’t see no bill.” The doctor drew his buggy nearer. He was a
little deaf.
“No, I said this pill, doctor. I’m a-holdin’ of it here in the pa’m o’
my hand, a-studyin’ over it.”
“What’s she a-dosin’ you for now, Enoch?”
The doctor always called the deacon by his first name when he
approached him in sympathy. He did not know it. Neither did the deacon,
but he felt the sympathy, and it unlocked the portals of his heart.
“Well”--the old man’s voice softened--”she thinks I stand in need of
‘em, of co’se. The fact is, that yaller-spotted steer run agin her
clo’es-line twice-t to-day, drug the whole week’s washin’ onto the
ground, an’ then tromped on it. She’s inside a-renchin’ an’ a-starchin’
of ‘em over now. An’ right on top o’ that, I come in lookin’ sort o’
puny an’ peaked, an’ I happened to choke on a muskitty jest ez I come
in, an’ she declared she wasn’t a-goin’ to have a consumpted man sick
on her hands an’ a clo’es-destroyin’ steer at the same time. An’ with
that she up an’ wiped her hands on her apron, an’ went an’ selected
this here pill out of a bottle of assorted sizes, an’ instructed me to
take it. They never was a thing done mo’ delib’rate an’ kind--never on
earth. But of co’se you an’ she know how it plegs me to take physic.
You could mould out ice-cream in little pill shapes an’ it would gag
me, even ef ‘twas vanilly-flavored. An’ so, when I received it, why,
I jest come out here to meditate. You can see it from where you set,
doctor. It’s a purty sizeable one, and I’m mighty suspicious of it.”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Yas, I can see it, Enoch--of co’se.”
“Could you jedge of it, doctor? That is, of its capabilities, I mean?”
“Why, no, of co’se not--not less’n I’d taste it, an’ you can do that
ez well ez I can. If it’s quinine, it’ll be bitter; an’ ef it’s soggy
an’--”
“Don’t explain no mo’, doctor. I can’t stand it. I s’pose it’s jest ez
foolish to investigate the inwardness of a pill a person is bound to
take ez it would be to try to lif’ the veil of the future in any other
way. When I’m obligated to swaller one of ‘em, I jest take a swig o’
good spring water and repeat a po’tion of Scripture and commit myself
unto the Lord. I always seem foreordained to choke to death, but I
notice thet ef I recover from the first spell o’ suffocation, I always
come through. But I ain’t never took one yet thet I didn’t in a manner
prepare to die.”
“Then I wouldn’t take it, Enoch. Don’t do it.” The doctor cleared his
throat again, but this time he had no trouble to keep the corners of
his mouth down. His sympathy robbed him for the time of the humor in
the situation. “No, I wouldn’t do it; d--doggone ef I would.”
The deacon looked into the palm of his hand and sighed. “Oh, yas, I
reckon I better take it,” he said, mildly. “Ef I don’t stand in need
of it now, maybe the good Lord ‘ll sto’e it up in my system, some way,
‘g’inst a future attackt.”
“Well”--the doctor reached for his whip--”well, I wouldn’t do
it--_steer or no steer_!”
“Oh, yas, I reckon you would, doctor, ef you had a wife ez worrited
over a wash-tub ez what mine is. An’ I had a extry shirt in wash this
week too. One little pill ain’t much when you take in how she’s been
tantalized.”
The doctor laughed outright.
“Tell you what to do, Enoch. Fling it away and don’t let on. She don’t
question you, does she?”
“No, she ain’t never to say questioned me, but--Well, I tried that
once-t. Sampled a bitter white capsule she give me, put it down for
quinine, an’ flung it away. Then I chirped up an’ said I felt a heap
better--and that wasn’t no lie--which I suppose was on account o’
the relief to my mind, which it always did seem to me capsules was
jest constructed to lodge in a person’s air-passages. Well, I taken
notice that she’d look at me keen now an’ agin, an’ then glance at
the clock, an’ treckly I see her fill the gou’d dipper an’ go to her
medicine-cabinet, an’ then she come to me an’ she says, says she, ‘Open
yore mouth!’ An’ of co’se I opened it. You see that first capsule,
ez well ez the one she had jest adminstered, was mostly morphine,
which she had give me to ward off a ‘tackt o’ the neuraligy she see
approachin’, and here I had been tryin’ to live up to the requi’ements
of quinine, an’ wrastlin’ severe with a sleepy spell, which, ef I’d
only knew it, would o’ saved me. Of co’se, after the second dose-t, I
jest let nature take its co’se, an’ treckly I commenced to doze off,
an’ seemed like I was a feather bed an’ wife had hung me on the fence
to sun, an’ I remember how she seemed to be a-whuppin’ of me, but it
didn’t hurt. That was on account of it bein’ goose-pickin’ time, an’
she was werrited with windy weather, an’ she tryin’ to fill the feather
beds. No, I won’t never try to deceive her again. It never has seemed
to me that she could have the same respect for me after ketchin’ me
at it, though she ‘ain’t never referred to it but once-t, an’ that
was the time I was elected deacon, an’ even then she didn’t do it
outspoke. She seemed mighty tender over it, an’ didn’t no mo’n remind
me thet a officer in a Christian church ought to examine hisself mighty
conscientious an’ be sure he was free of deceit, which, seemed to me,
showed a heap o’ consideration. She ‘ain’t got a deceitful bone in her
body, doctor.”
“Why, bless her old soul, Enoch, you know thet I think the world an’
all o’ Grandma Gregg! She’s the salt o’ the earth--an’ rock salt at
that. She’s saved too many o’ my patients by her good nursin’, in spite
o’ my poor doctorin’, for me not to appreciate her. But that don’t
reconcile me to the way she doses you for her worries.”
“It took me a long time to see that myself, doctor. But I’ve reasoned
it out this a-way: I s’pose when she feels her temper a-risin’ she’s
‘feered thet she might be so took with her troubles thet she’d neglect
my health, an’ so she wards off any attackt thet might be comin’ on.
I taken notice that time her strawberry preserves all soured on her
hands, an’ she painted my face with iodine, a man did die o’ the
erysipelas down here at Battle Creek, an’ likely as not she’d heerd
of it. Sir? No, I didn’t mention it at the time for fear she’d think
best to lay on another coat, an’ I felt sort o’ disfiggured with
it. Wife ain’t a scoldin’ woman, I’m thankful for that. An’ some o’
the peppermints an’ things she keeps to dole out to me when she’s
fretted with little things--maybe her yeast’ll refuse to rise, or a
thunder-storm’ll kill a settin’ of eggs--why, they’re so disguised thet
_’cep’n thet I know they’re medicine--_”
“Well, Kitty, I reckon we better be a-goin’.” The doctor tapped his
horse. “Be shore to give my love to Grandma, Enoch. An’ ef you’re bound
to take that pill--of co’se I can’t no mo’n speculate about it at this
distance, but I’d advise you to keep clear o’ sours an’ acids for a day
or so. Don’t think, because your teeth are all adjustable, thet none o’
yore other functions ain’t open to salvation. _Good_-night, Enoch.”
“Oh, she always looks after that, doctor. She’s mighty attentive, come
to withholdin’ harmful temptations. Good-by, doctor. It’s did me good
to open my mind to you a little.
“Yas,” he added, looking steadily into his palm as the buggy rolled
away--”yas, it’s did me good to talk to him; but I ain’t no more
reconciled to you, you barefaced, high-foreheaded, little rolly-poly,
you. Funny how a pill thet ain’t got a feature on earth can look me
out o’ countenance the way it can, and frustrate my speech. Talk about
whited sepulchures, an’ ravenin’ wolves! I don’t know how come I to let
on thet I was feeling’ puny to-night, nohow. I might’ve knew--with all
them clo’es cedaubled over; though I can’t, ez the doctor says, see how
me a-takin’ a pill is goin’ to help matters; but of co’se I wouldn’t
let on to him, an’ he a bachelor.”
He stopped talking and felt his wrist.
“Maybe my pulse is obstropulous, an’ ought to be sedated down. Reckon
I’ll haf to kill that steer--or sell him--one, though I swo’e I
wouldn’t. But of co’se I swo’e that in a temper, an’ temp’rate vows
ain’t never made ‘cep’in’ to be repented of.”
Several times during the last few minutes, while the deacon spoke,
there had come to him across the garden from the kitchen the
unmistakable odor of fried chicken.
He had foreseen that there would be a good supper to-night, and that
the tiny globule within his palm would constitute for him a prohibition
concerning it.
Grandmother Gregg was one of those worthy if difficult women who never
let anything interfere with her duty as she saw it magnified by the
lenses of pain or temper. It usually pleased her injured mood to make
waffles on wash-day, and the hen-house owed many renovations, with
a reckless upsetting of nests and roosts, to one of her “splittin’
headaches.” She would always wash her hair in view of impending
company, although she averred that to wet her scalp never failed to
bring on the “neuraligy.” And her “neuraligy” in turn meant medicine
for the deacon.
It was probably the doctor’s timely advice, augmented, possibly, by the
potencies of the frying-pan, with a strong underlying sympathy with the
worrying woman within--it was, no doubt, all these powers combined
that suddenly surprised the hitherto complying husband into such
unprecedented conduct that any one knowing him in his old character,
and seeing him now, would have thought that he had lost his mind.
With a swift and brave fling he threw the pill far into the night.
Then, in an access of energy born of internal panic, he slid nimbly
from his perch and started in a steady jog-trot into the road, wiping
away the tears as he went, and stammering between sobs as he stumbled
over the ruts:
“No, I won’t--yas, I will, too--doggone shame, and she frettin’ her
life out--of co’se I sell ‘im for anything he’ll fetch--an’ I’ll be a
better man, yas, yas I will--but I won’t swaller another one o’ them
blame--not ef I die for it.”
This report, taken in long-hand by an amused listener by the roadside,
is no doubt incomplete in its ejaculatory form, but it has at least
the value of accuracy, so far as it goes, which may be had only from a
verbatim transcript.
It was perhaps three-quarters of an hour later when Enoch entered the
kitchen, wiping his face, nervous, weary, embarrassed. Supper was on
the table. The blue-bordered dish, heaped with side-bones and second
joints done to a turn, was moved to a side station, while in its
accustomed place before Enoch’s plate there sat an ominous bowl of
gruel. The old man did not look at the table, but he saw it all. He
would have realized it with his eyes shut. Domestic history, as well as
that of greater principalities and powers, often repeats itself.
Enoch’s fingers trembled as he came near his wife, and standing with
his back to the table, he began to untie a broad flat parcel that he
had brought in under his arm. She paused in one of her trips between
the table and stove, and regarded him askance.
“Reckon I’ll haf to light the lantern befo’ I set down to eat, wife,”
he said, by way of introduction. “Isrul ‘ll be along d’rec’ly to rope
that steer. I’ve done sold him.” The good woman laid her dish upon the
table and returned to the stove.
“Wish you’d ‘a’ sold ‘im day befo’ yesterday. I’d ‘a’ had a heap less
pain in my shoulder-blade.” She sniffed as she said it; and then she
added, “That gruel ought to be e’t warm.”
By this time the parcel was open. There was a brief display of colored
zephyrs and gleaming cardboard. Then Enoch began rewrapping them.
“Reckon you can look these over in the mornin’, wife. They’re jest a
few new cross-stitch Bible texts, an’ I knowed you liked Scripture
motters. Where’ll I lay ‘em, wife, while I go out an’ tend to lightin’
that lantern? I told Isrul I’d set it in the stable door so’s as he
could git that steer out o’ the way immejate.”
The proposal to lay the mottoes aside was a master-stroke.
The aggrieved wife had already begun to wipe her hands on her apron.
Still, she would not seem too easily appeased.
“I do hope you ain’t gone an’ turned that whole steer into perforated
paper, Enoch, even ef ’tis Bible-texted over.”
Thus she guarded her dignity. But even as she spoke she took the parcel
from his hands. This was encouragement enough. It presaged a thawing
out. And after Enoch had gone out to light the lantern, it would have
amused a sympathetic observer to watch her gradual melting as she
looked over the mottoes:
“A VIRTUOUS WIFE IS FAR ABOVE RUBIES.”
“A PRUDENT WIFE IS FROM THE LORD.”
“BETTER A DINNER OF HERBS WHERE LOVE IS--”
She read them over and over. Then she laid them aside and looked at
Enoch’s plate. Then she looked at the chicken-dish, and then at the
bowl of gruel which she had carefully set on the back of the stove to
keep warm.
“Don’t know ez it would hurt ‘im any ef I’d thicken that gruel up into
mush. He’s took sech a distaste to soft foods sense he’s got that new
set.”
She rose as she spoke, poured the gruel back into the pot, sifted and
mixed a spoonful of meal and stirred it in. This done, she hesitated,
glanced at the pile of mottoes, and reflected. Then with a sudden
resolve she seized the milk-pitcher, filled a cup from it, poured the
milk into the little pot of mush, hastily whipped up two eggs with some
sugar, added the mixture to the pot, returned the whole to the yellow
bowl, and set it in the oven to brown.
And just then Enoch came in, and approached the water-shelf.
“Don’t keer how you polish it, a brass lantern an’ coal ile is like
murder on a man’s hands. It will out.”
He was thinking of the gruel, and putting off the evil hour. It
had been his intention to boldly announce that he hadn’t taken his
medicine, that he never would again unless he needed it, and, moreover,
that he was going to eat his supper to-night, and always, as long as
God should spare him, etc., etc., etc.
But he had no sooner found himself in the presence of long-confessed
superior powers than he knew he would never do any of these things.
His wife was thinking of the gruel too when she encouraged delay by
remarking that he would better rest up a bit before eating.
“And I reckon you better soak yo’ hands good. Take a pinch o’ that bran
out o’ the safe to ‘em,” she said, “and ef that don’t do, the Floridy
water is in on my bureau.”
When finally Enoch presented himself, ready for his fate, she was able
to set the mush pudding, done to a fine brown, before him, and her tone
was really tender as she said:
“This ain’t very hearty ef you’re hungry; but you can eat it all.
There ain’t no interference in it with anything you’ve took.”
The pudding was one of Enoch’s favorite dishes, but as he broke its
brown surface with his spoon he felt like a hypocrite. He took one long
breath, and then he said:
“By-the-way, wife, this reminds me, I reckon you’ll haf to fetch me
another o’ them pills. I dropped that one out in the grass--that is, ef
you think I still stand in need of it. I feel consider’ble better’n I
did when I come in this evenin’.”
The good woman eyed him suspiciously a minute. Then her eyes fell upon
the words “ABOVE RUBIES” lying upon the table. Reaching over, she
lifted the pudding-bowl aside, took the dish of fried chicken from its
sub-station, and set it before her lord.
“Better save that pudd’n’ for dessert, honey, an’ help yo’self to some
o’ that chicken, an’ take a potater an’ a roll, and eat a couple o’
them spring onions--they’re the first we’ve had. Sense you’re a-feelin’
better, maybe it’s jest ez well thet you mislaid that pill.”
The wind blows sometimes from the east in Simkinsville, as elsewhere,
and there are still occasional days when the deacon betakes himself to
the front gate and sits like a nineteenth-century Simon Stilites on his
pillar, contemplating the open palm of his own hand, while he enriches
Mrs. Frequent’s _répertoire_ of gossip by a picturesque item.
But the reverse of the picture has much of joy in it; for, in spite of
her various tempers, Grandmother Gregg is a warm-hearted soul--and she
loves her man. And he loves her.
Listen to him to-night, for instance, as, having finished his supper,
he remarks:
“An’ I’m a-goin’ to see to it, from this on, thet you ain’t fretted
with things ez you’ve been, ef I can help it, wife. Sometimes, the way
I act, I seem like ez ef I forgit you’re all I’ve got--on earth.”
“Of co’se I realize that, Enoch,” she replies. “We’re each one all
the other’s got--an’ that’s why I don’t spare no pains to keep you in
health.”
--RUTH MCENERY STUART.
IX
DR. BARRÈRE.
CHAPTER I.
DR. BARRÈRE was a young man who was beginning to make his way. In the
medical profession, as in most others, this is not a very easy thing
to do, and no doubt he had made some mistakes. He had given offence in
his first practice to the principal person in the little town where he
had set up his surgery by explaining that certain symptoms which his
patient believed to mean heart disease were due solely to indigestion;
and he still more deeply offended that gentleman’s wife by telling
her that her children were over-fed. These are follies which a more
experienced medical man would never commit; but this one was young and
fresh from those studies in which, more than in any other profession,
things have to be called by their right names. In his next attempt
he had nearly got into more serious trouble still, by his devotion
to an interesting and difficult case, in which, unfortunately, the
patient was a woman. From this he came out clear, with no stain on
his character, as magistrates say. But for a doctor, as often for
a woman, it is enough that evil has been said. The slander, though
without proof, has more or less a sting, and is recollected when all
the circumstances--the disproval, the clearing-up, even the facts of
the case have been forgotten. He was, therefore, not without experience
when he came to settle in the great town of Poolborough, which might
be supposed large enough and busy enough to take no note of those
village lies and tempests in a teapot. And this proved to be the case.
He was young, he was clever, he was _au courant_ of all the medical
discoveries, knew everything that had been discovered by other men, and
was not without little discoveries and inventions of his own. He was
still young, a few years over thirty, at the age which combines the
advantages of youth and of maturity, strong in mind and in body, loving
work, and fearing nothing. If his previous encounters with the foolish
side of humanity had diminished in some degree his faith in it, and
opened his eyes to the risks which those who think no evil are apt to
run in their first conflict with the stupidities and base ideas of men,
he had yet not suffered enough to make him bitter, or more than wary
in his dealings with the narrow and uncomprehending. He no longer felt
sure of being understood, or that a true estimate of his intentions and
motives was certain; but he did not go to the opposite extreme as some
do, and take it for granted that his patients and their surroundings
were incapable of doing him justice. He was sobered, but not
embittered. He was wise enough neither to show too much interest, nor
to betray too great an indifference. He listened seriously to the tale
of symptoms which were nothing to anybody but their narrator, and he
restrained his excitement when a matter of real importance, something
delicate and critical, came under his view. Thus it was proved that he
had learned his lesson. But he did not despise his fellow creatures
in general, or think all alike guilty of affectation and self-regard,
which showed that he had not learned that lesson with extravagance. He
was kind, but not too kind. He was clever, but not so clever as to get
the alarming character of an experimentalist--in short, he was in every
way doing well and promising well. When the untoward accident occurred
which cut short his career in Poolborough where he was universally well
thought of and looked upon as a rising man.
It may be well before going further to indicate certain particulars in
his antecedents which throw light upon Dr. Barrère’s character and
idiosyncrasies. He was of French origin, as may be perceived by his
name. The name was not so distinctly French as held by his father and
grandfather, who ignored the nationality, and wrote it phonetically
Barraire. In their days, perhaps, a French origin was not an advantage.
But in the days when Arnold Barrère was at college this prejudice
had disappeared, and he was himself delighted to resort to the old
orthography, and liked his friends to remember the accent which it
pleased him to employ. Perhaps the keen logical tendency of his mind
and disposition to carry everything out to its legitimate conclusion
with a severity which the English love of compromise and accident
prevents, were more important signs of his origin than even the accent
over the e. Dr. Barrère for his part did not like to elude the right
and logical ending either of an accent or a disease. It annoyed him
even that his patient should recover in an irregular way. He liked the
symptoms to follow each other in proper sequence; and the end which
was foreseen and evident was that which he preferred to have occur,
even when the avoidance of it, and deliverance of the sufferer were due
to his own powers. Like his nation, or rather like the nation of his
forefathers, he was disposed to carry out everything to its logical
end. His outward man, like his mind, bore evidence of his parentage.
He was about the middle height, of a light and spare figure, with
a thickly-growing but short and carefully cropped black beard, his
complexion rather dark but very clear, his voice somewhat high-pitched
for an Englishman, with an animated manner, and a certain sympathetic
action of head and hand when he talked, scarcely enough to be called
gesticulation, yet more than usually accompanies English speech. He
seemed, in short, to have missed the influence of the two generations
of English mothers and manners which might have been supposed to subdue
all peculiarities of race, and to have stepped back to the immediate
succession of that Arnold Barrère who was the first to bring the name
to this island. These individual features gave a certain piquancy, many
people thought, to the really quite English breeding of the doctor, who
had never so much as crossed the Channel, and knew little more French
than was consistent with a just placing of the accents, especially upon
the letter e.
It would be unnecessary to enter into full detail of how he formed
acquaintance with the Surtees, and came to the degree of intimacy which
soon developed into other thoughts. It is a proper thing enough in a
story, though not very true to real life, to describe a young doctor
as falling in love, by a sick bed, with the angel-daughter who is the
best nurse and ministrant that a sick parent can have. Members of the
medical profession are not more prone than other men to mingle their
affections with the requirements of their profession, and probably
a devoted nurse is no more the ideal of a young doctor than a good
model is that of a painter. As a matter of fact, however, it was while
attending Mrs. Surtees through a not very dangerous or interesting
illness that Dr. Barrère made the acquaintance of Agnes. He might just
as well have met her in the society which he frequented sparingly,
for there was no particular difference in her sphere and his, but
there were reasons why Miss Surtees went out little, less than most
young women of her age. Her family was one of those which had ranked
amongst the best in Poolborough in the time of their wealth, and no
one could say still that their place was not with “the best people”
of the town. But with a mercantile community more than any other
(though also more or less in every other) wealth is necessary for the
retaining of that position. Women who go afoot cannot keep up with
those who have carriages and horses at their command, neither can a
girl in whose house no dances, no dinners, no entertainments, are ever
given, associate long on easy terms with those who are in the full tide
of everything, going everywhere, and exchanging hospitalities after
the lavish fashion of wealthy commercial society. And this was not
the only reason that kept Agnes Surtees out of the world. There was
one more urgent which was told, and one which no one named but every
one understood. The first was the delicate health of her mother. Dr.
Barrère was aware that there was not very much in this. He knew that
had she been able to drive about as did the ladies who were so sorry
for her, and clothe herself in furs and velvet, and take change of air
whenever she felt disposed, there would have been little the matter
with Mrs. Surtees. But he was too sensible to breathe a word on this
subject. He held his tongue at first from discretion, and afterwards
because he had found out for himself why it was that Mrs. Surtees’
delicate health was kept before the public of Poolborough. It took him
some time to make this discovery; but partly from hints of others, and
partly from his own perceptions, he found it out at last.
It was that these two ladies were involved in the life of a third
member of their household--a son and brother whom the “best people” in
Poolborough had ceased to invite, and whose name when it was mentioned
was accompanied with shakings of the head and looks of disapproval.
Dr. Barrère did not ever see Jim Surtees until he had been acquainted
with his mother and sister for nearly a year--not that he was absent,
but only that his haunts and associates were not theirs. He was a young
man who had never done well. He had been far more highly educated than
was usual with the young men of Poolborough; instead of being sent into
the counting-house in his youth he had been sent to Cambridge, which
was all his father’s pride and folly, the critics said, exempting Mrs.
Surtees from blame in a manner most unusual. It was supposed that she
had disapproved. She had come of a Poolborough family, in business from
father to son, and knew what was necessary; but Surtees was from the
country, from a poor race of county people, and was disposed to think
business beneath him, or at least consider it as a mere stepping-stone
to wealth. When he died so much less well off than was expected,
leaving his family but poorly provided for, then was the moment when
Jim Surtees might have proved what was in him, and stepped into the
breach, replaced his mother and sister in their position, and restored
the credit of his father’s name. In that case all the old friends would
have rallied around him; they would have backed him up with their
credit, and given him every advantage. At such moments and in such
emergencies mercantile men are at their best. No one would have refused
the young man a helping hand--they would have hoisted him upon their
shoulders into his father’s place; they would have helped him largely,
generously, manfully. Alas! Jim Surtees did then and there show what
was in him. He had neither energy nor spirit nor ambition, nor any care
for his father’s name or his mother’s comfort. He said at once that
he knew nothing about business. What could he do? It was entirely out
of his way. He scarcely knew what it was his father dealt in. Cotton?
Yes--but what did he know about cotton, or bookkeeping, or anything?
The young man was interviewed by all who knew him; he was sent for by
the greatest merchants in Poolborough. What he ought to do was set
before him by everybody who had any right to speak, and by a great many
who had none. But nothing moved him. He knew nothing about business--he
would do nothing in it. Why should he try what he could not do? And
with these replies he baffled all the anxious counsellors who were
so eager to convince him to the contrary. Then there were situations
suggested, even provided, for him; but these were all subject to the
same objections. Finally it came about that Jim Surtees did nothing. He
had not been long enough at Cambridge to take his degree. He was modest
about his own capacities even when pupils were suggested to him. He
did not know enough to teach, he declared, till his modesty drove the
anxious advisers distracted. What was to be done? Jim Surtees eluded
every expedient to make him do anything. At last he dropped altogether,
and the best people in Poolborough were conscious of his existence no
more.
These were the circumstances of the Surtees family when Dr. Barrère
made their acquaintance. He thought for some time that the two ladies
lived alone, and that their withdrawal from society was somewhat
absurd, based as it was on that delusion about Mrs. Surtees’ health;
but a little further information made him change his mind. He changed
his mind about several things, modifying his first impressions as time
went on. He had thought the mother one of those imaginary invalids
who enjoy that gentle level of ill-health which does not involve much
suffering, and which furnishes a pretty and interesting _rôle_ for many
unoccupied women; and he had thought her daughter an angelic creature,
whose faith in her mother’s migraines was such that she cheerfully
and sweetly gave up the pleasures of her youth in order to minister
to them. But as Dr. Barrère changed from a doctor into a friend; as
he began to ask admittance at times when he was not called for, and
when, last seal of a growing intimacy, he began to venture to knock
at the door in the evening after dinner--a privilege which he pleaded
for as belonging to the habits of his French ancestry (of which he
knew so little)--his eyes were speedily opened to many things which a
morning visitor would never have divined. The first time he did so,
he perceived to his astonishment Agnes on the landing, half concealed
by the turn of the staircase, eagerly looking down to see who it was;
and her mother, though so little able to move about, was at the door
of the little drawing-room, looking flushed and wretched, far more ill
than when he had been called in to prescribe for her. For whom was it
that they were looking? It could not be for himself, whom nobody had
expected, whom they received with a tremulous kindness, half relieved,
half reluctant. After a few such visits he began to see that the minds
of these poor ladies were divided between pleasure in his society and
fear to have him there. If he stayed a little longer than usual he saw
that they became anxious, the mother breathless, with a desire to have
him go away; and that even Agnes would accompany him down stairs with
an eager alacrity as if she could not be comfortable till she had seen
him out of the house. And yet they were always kind, liked him to come,
looked for him, even would say a word which showed that they had noted
his absence if for a week or so he did not appear; although while he
was there they were ever watchful, starting at every sound, hurrying
him away if he stayed beyond his time. The sight of a tall figure
lurching along the street, of some one fumbling with a latch-key,
of which he was sometimes conscious as he went away, was scarcely
necessary at last to make him aware what it was that occasioned this
anxiety. Mrs. Surtees saw love dawning in the Doctor’s eyes. She would
not shut out from her patient girl the chances of a happier lot; but
what if the doctor should meet Jim! See him coming home sodden and
stupid, or noisy and gay. As Dr. Barrère became intimate they had
spoken to him of Jim. He was studying hard, he was writing, he was
always busy, he was not fond of society. There were so many reasons why
he should never appear. And by and by the doctor, with a great ache
of pity, had learned all these excuses by heart, and penetrated their
secret, and misconstrued their actions and habits no more.
Finally the doctor made the acquaintance of Jim, and to his great
surprise not only liked him, but understood why the mother and sister
were not always miserable, how life varied with them from day to day,
and how even Mrs. Surtees was often cheerful, though never unwatchful,
never at ease. Dr. Barrère thought with justice that nothing could be
more miserable, more inexcusable, than the life the young man was
leading. In theory fate should have put into every honest hand a whip
to scourge such a good-for-nothing. And sometimes the doctor felt a
righteous wrath, a desire to scourge till the blood came: but it was
not so much out of moral indignation as out of an exasperated liking,
an intolerable pity. What might happen in the house in those awful
moments when all was silent, and everybody at rest save the mother
and sister watching for Jim’s return at night, neither the doctor nor
any one knew. But at other moments Dr. Barrère found it impossible
to resist, any more than the women did, the charm of a nature which
had not lost its distinction even in the haunts where he had lost
everything else. He even tried to attract and draw to himself the
prodigal, entertaining visions on the subject and fancying how, if
there were a man closely connected with the family, himself to wit,
Arnold Barrère, and not merely women who wept and reproached and
condoned and wept again, but never made a determined stand, nor struck
a decisive blow, there might still be hope for Jim. It could not be
said that this told as a motive in the fervour with which he offered
himself to Agnes Surtees. The doctor was in love warmly and honestly,
and as he made his declaration thought, as a lover ought, of nothing
but Agnes. Yet when she hesitated and faltered, and after a moment
broke the long silence and spoke to him openly of her brother, there
was the warmth of a personal desire in the eagerness with which he met
her confessions half way. “Jim is no drawback,” he said eagerly--”to
me none. I can help you with Jim. If you will have me there shall be
no question of depriving him of any love or care. He shall have me in
addition to help him to better things.” “Oh,” Agnes had cried, giving
him both her hands in the fervour of love and trust, “God bless you,
Arnold, for speaking of better things for Jim.” And it was on this
holy ground that their contract was made. Henceforward there were no
concealments from him.
Dr. Barrère was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. There
was no reason why his marriage should be delayed. He wanted to have
his wife--a possession almost indispensable, he assured Mrs. Surtees,
with a smile, to a medical man; and the mother, anxious to see one
child’s fate assured, and still more anxious, catching with feverish
hope at the help so hopefully offered for the other, had no inclination
to put obstacles in the way. The marriage day was settled, and all
the preparations thereto begun, when the sudden horror which still
envelopes the name of Surtees in Poolborough arose in a moment, and the
following incidents occurred to Dr. Barrère.