NO CHANGE.
When Grace recovered consciousness, she looked around the room and her
eyes rested with an expression of mute appeal on Dr. Girvan, who stood
near.
“All is going on well,” he answered. With a murmured thanksgiving she
laid her head back against the sofa pillows, when her glance chanced to
fall on Mr. Hanlon.
“You do not think all is well?” she said.
“I have not seen the patient,” he replied. “He is, of course, solely in
Dr. Girvan’s hands until the physicians for whom you have sent arrive.”
“You have sent for further advice, Miss Grace?” remarked Dr. Girvan
inquiringly. “Could you not trust me?”
“I can trust you,” she answered; “but he is my father. I must go to him
now,” and without asking another question she went.
“This is your doing,” said Dr. Girvan to Mr. Hanlon as the door of the
sick chamber closed behind her.
“Don’t let us quarrel, Doctor,” replied the younger man sadly, and not
without a certain dignity. “Before very long, I am afraid you will find
something is _your_ doing, which you will regret till the last hour of
your life.”
“Do you think, Sir, I do not understand my business?”
“I think you have misunderstood this case. Mr. Moffat is as good as a
dead man, and you have killed him.”
After delivering himself of which pleasant utterance, Mr. Hanlon walked
out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the night.
He did not go home; not a thought of deserting Grace Moffat in her
extremity occurred to this man, who if he was foolish was chivalrous. He
passed through the still unlighted apartments, and made his way on to
the terrace. There he paced up and down, inhaling the fragrance of the
flowers and shrubs; listening to the wind rustling among the trees, and
the murmur of the sea washing in upon the shore; thinking of the man
stricken so suddenly; thinking of the woman so grand in her sorrow, so
quiet in her grief, and of something else also which if now told would
reveal whatever plot this poor story holds.
There are times when the mind seems a mere mirror, when it can only
receive the impression of that immediately presented before it. In all
times of sudden and agonized trouble, I think this is the case. When a
fearful accident occurs, it is to the latest telegram we all
instinctively direct our eyes, whether the accident concerns us
personally or not; and in like manner when some calamity comes to pass,
which involves us and those dear to us, we dwell on the result, never
troubling ourselves to inquire into details, until we have recovered
from the effect of the first swift and stunning blow.
It was thus with Grace Moffat at all events. She did not know, she did
not ask to know, how the seizure occurred. She had never been with
sickness, was utterly ignorant of the fact that a woman ought to know
almost as much of illness as a doctor.
Afterwards she understood that when the butler, supposing his master had
long left the dining-room, entered that apartment he found Mr. Moffat
lying face downwards on the floor; that he, having despatched
“Jamesey”—an odd boy who loafed about the kitchen and had no settled
position or employment, unless it might be to bear the blame of all
faults committed, and perform all work left undone by every one else—for
the doctor, the lad rushing down the road was encountered by two
retainers of the house of Moffat, who, hearing the news, started off,
one with Jamesey to Dr. Girvan, the other by himself to Mr. Hanlon.
There were factions at Bayview, as in every other establishment in
Ireland; some of the servants inclining to old ways and people including
Dr. Girvan, and others leaning to the new school of which in Kingslough
Mr. Hanlon was the exponent.
There were those in the town who could not have died happily had the
young surgeon tried to cure them; there were others who would scarcely
have accepted life at the hands of Dr. Girvan: and thus it came to pass
that both men were sent for, and both arrived within a few minutes of
each other.
Then commenced the disagreement terminated by Grace.
“I am no better than a coward,” thought Mr. Hanlon, as he walked up and
down through the night. “Why did I ever leave the matter for him to
decide? When he is gone she will continually be reproaching herself. I
ought to have insisted on sending for Murney at once; I ought to have
kept that doting idiot off his prey by force if necessary.”
At that moment a hand was laid on his arm. It belonged to Grace, who had
come so softly along the terrace that he failed to hear her footsteps.
“Mr. Hanlon,” she began.
“Yes, Miss Moffat?”
“I want you to tell me the truth,” she said. “Never mind medical
etiquette. Forget you are a doctor, that I am _his_ daughter; speak to
me as you might to a stranger. What do you think of him?”
“I think he is in the hands of God,” answered Mr. Hanlon. The demagogues
of those days had one advantage over the demagogues of this; they did
acknowledge a power higher than themselves, and were occasionally awed
by the remembrance of its existence.
“But what can man do?” she asked, her sweet voice shrill with the
anguish of her soul.
“We shall know when the other doctors come.”
She understood he had no hope; and she stood for a moment silent,
listening all unconsciously to the sobbing of the sea, to the sighing of
the night wind through the trees, to the voices of silence that keep
whispering and ever muttering through the darkness.
Already the lonely, awful journey seemed begun; over the waters
something blacker than night hovered. The mighty angel with the slow
wings brooded over the place. The scent of the flowers appeared to her
heavy and sickly, the slight breeze as it touched her cheek failed to
refresh her.
“Let us go in,” she said, “the darkness frightens me,” and she drew him
into the drawing-room.
“Come upstairs,” she pleaded. “See if something cannot be done. Come and
look at him. Forget you are a doctor; think of yourself only as a
friend. Don’t stand upon your dignity. Help me, I am so lonely. He is
all I have in the world.”
“Miss Moffat, if by dying this night I could save your father, I would
do it. These are not idle words. There is no one who would miss me much
after the first. Some one would take up my work where I laid it down and
finish it.”
And there he suddenly stopped, and she instinctively withdrew her hand;
and then with the impulse of a higher and nobler womanhood, which raised
Grace on a loftier pedestal than women of her age generally occupy, she
laid it again on his arm and said,—
“Do not talk in that way; I cannot bear to hear such words from you.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you have your life to live,” she answered simply, “and it is
not good to begin a long journey with a weary heart.”
A prophetic sentence, one which both recalled when the crisis of his
existence arrived.
Side by side they ascended the staircase, and stepped lightly along the
corridor, and entered the room where Mr. Moffat lay.
Already Dr. Girvan’s confidence in the correctness of his diagnosis was
shaken. There was something in the look of the man who lay there, still
insensible, which he had never seen in the face of one who came back
from the borders of the Valley of the Shadow. According to his
anticipations, the patient should already have been exhibiting some sign
of recovery, some token, however slight, of returning animation; but
there was no change as yet, none, unless it might be that the colour was
of a more leaden pallor, that the hand he touched lay more like that of
a dead man, that it became difficult to hear the breath, that in a word
no symptom he had calculated upon showed itself, that on the contrary
all the symptoms were unlike those he had mentally predicted must
appear.
Now, as Dr. Girvan himself would have said, he had not lived his life
for nothing; old-fashioned he could fairly be called, bigoted he might
be; ignorant of the latest discoveries, behind the age in many things he
undoubtedly was, but by no means a fool in his profession. He did not
know what was the matter with Mr. Moffat, but he was almost certain now
that he had mistaken his ailment, and if so—
“What do you think of him?” he whispered to Mr. Hanlon, after another
doubtful look at his patient.
Mr. Hanlon shook his head.
“Can you think of anything?” A clammy perspiration was standing on his
forehead and his hands were shaking with nervous dread as he asked the
question.
“The others may. As things are I should be afraid to try.”
“Don’t be afraid, man. If there is anything can be done let us try it. I
will take the blame if blame there be. Only don’t let us see him die
before our eyes without lifting a hand to save him.”
“What are you talking about?” Grace asked at this juncture, crossing to
where they stood.
“We are consulting, Miss Moffat,” answered Mr. Hanlon; then turning to
Dr. Girvan, he said, “I should try a stimulant.”
“A stimulant in apoplexy!” exclaimed the older man in an accent of
horror.
“It is not apoplexy, and if it were, in this case, I should try it
still.”
“I do not know what to say I am sure,” remarked Dr. Girvan. But Mr.
Hanlon cut short the discussion by himself going for what he wanted, and
administering it to their patient.
After a short while a little tremor could be observed, and a slight
decrease in the ghastly whiteness of the sick man’s face.
“That has done him good,” said Dr. Girvan in a tone of relief. “What
should you think of trying a little more?”
“If you like,” answered Mr. Hanlon; then added, “Now we will let him
rest till Murney and Connelley come.”
And they sat down; Dr. Girvan close beside the bed, Mr. Hanlon beside
one of the windows looking towards the east, where the first streaks of
dawn were already appearing.
Grace came to him as he sat there. “What do you think of my father now?”
she asked, and he saw that her large eyes were heavy with the weight of
unshed tears.
“I can only repeat that he is in the hands of God,” answered Mr. Hanlon,
rising and offering her his seat. “Man could tell you no more than that,
till some change occur for better or for worse.”
She took his chair, and drawing another to the window, Mr. Hanlon seated
himself near her, and whilst both their eyes involuntarily sought the
east, their thoughts wandered silently and sadly on their separate ways.
“They are here!” Grace at length exclaimed. Her strained ear had been
the first to catch the sound of wheels. That beauty the mare was not
back before the horse with the “power of outcome in him;” but ere
another half-hour, Dr. Connelley, who had ridden Mr. Moffat’s latest
purchase, leaving Jerry to follow with his own hack, was also in the
house.
“You had better go down to him,” said Mr. Hanlon to Dr. Girvan; he did
not wish to influence Dr. Murney’s opinion by any statement of his own;
and as the old man left the room, he added, speaking to Grace,—
“I think you had better not stay here. I will come to you presently.”
“And tell me exactly what they say?”
He hesitated for a moment, then answered, “Yes, Miss Moffat, I promise.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Murney was ascending the staircase. In Kilcurragh, a
large and important town, he held high rank in his profession. Had his
lot been cast in Dublin, he might have come to more honour; but he had
been a very successful man, and made money enough to enable him to keep
pace with the times, to visit London and Paris and “rub,” as he said
“the provincial rust off his mind,” and to enable him to entertain men
great in science, surgery, and medicine, who from time to time crossed
the Channel, and took Kilcurragh _en route_ from Dublin to Donegal and
the Giant’s Causeway.
Dr. Girvan and he had often before met in consultation, and Mr. Hanlon
also was not quite a stranger to him. His opinions at all events were
not; but whilst he detested them, he was obliged to confess the young
man had brains, and might have done well would he only have stuck to
physic and left politics alone.
Mr. Moffat was known to him as a matter of course; and whilst he walked
along the corridor rubbing his hands, for the night breeze and the sea
air had conjointly proved chilly, he kept up a series of running
sentences, “Sad, sad, very sad; dear, dear, and a man no older than
myself; a man who took care of himself also; temperate in his habits,
careful in his diet, really these sudden attacks seem to set all our
rules at nought. Had I been asked to name the last person I knew likely
to be attacked by apoplectic seizure, I should have named my valued
friend Moffat.”
From which it will be seen that Dr. Girvan had not summoned up
sufficient courage to disabuse the mind of his colleague of the
impression conveyed to it by Mick.
The wretched man still hoped against hope that he had not been mistaken,
and he mentally prayed, as, probably, he had never prayed before for
anything, that Dr. Murney would confirm his first opinion. If he did,
Dr. Girvan, in his extremity, felt as if he himself could die happily
the next moment.
Dr. Murney entered the room silently, shook hands with Mr. Hanlon,
walked over to the bed, looked at Mr. Moffat, felt his pulse; then,
stepping across the apartment, he took a candle from a little table on
which lights had been placed, and returning to the bedside, leant over
the patient and studied his appearance attentively.
With a gloomy face Mr. Hanlon watched these proceedings, holding his
breath in a very agony of suspense; Dr. Girvan watched them too.
“Here!” said the new-comer at length, thrusting the candle towards Mr.
Hanlon, who took it as indicated; then Dr. Murney bared the sick man’s
breast, and laid his ear against his heart.
After that he carefully, tenderly almost, replaced the bedclothes, and
stood silent for a moment, waiting, apparently, for the others to speak;
but neither of them uttering a syllable, he said,—“This is not
apoplexy.”
“Lord forgive me,” murmured Dr. Girvan; and he sat down on the nearest
chair, covering his face with his hands.
“What can be done now?” asked Mr. Hanlon, his voice hoarse with emotion
he was trying do master.
“Nothing,” replied Dr. Murney, and he walked to the window and looked
out, and came back again to where Dr. Girvan sat.
“Don’t take on so,” he said, speaking kindly to the old man, and laying
a compassionate hand on his shoulder. “If a mistake has been made,
better men than any of us have made mistakes before now. I am sure you
and Mr. Hanlon have acted in this matter to the very best of your
judgment.”
Mr. Hanlon never opened his lips; Kingslough had not appreciated him,
and Dr. Girvan, from the first, was his enemy, but he could not remember
that now. In this hour of bitter humiliation, of maddening remorse, he
felt he should have been less than human to add to the old man’s
self-reproach by recalling how persistently he had refused to listen to
his remonstrances, how obstinately he had insisted on taking his own
course.
No; if there were blame to be borne, they might bear it together. All
the explanations on earth could not undo the past, could not mend the
future.
But Dr. Girvan, whilst touched by his generosity; was labouring under an
agony of repentance which refused to keep silence.
“Why don’t you speak?” he said, lifting his haggard face and looking at
Mr. Hanlon. “Why don’t you tell him how the thing was?”
“I have nothing to tell,” answered Mr. Hanlon. “If, as Dr. Murney says,
a mistake was made, it is too late to undo it now. I know I did my best
in the case, and I am sure you did yours. I don’t think there is
anything more to be said in the matter.”
“Doctor, it was me.” No form of expression, let it have been more
grammatically accurate than the speaker ever conceived, could have gone
so straight home to the hearts of his listeners as that containing those
four words,—“Doctor, it was me.” “If the man dies the blame lies at my
door. He”—pointing to Mr. Hanlon—“told me how it would be, and I took no
heed; I hadn’t a doubt in my own mind. I believed I was doing right, and
I did wrong, and now I wish I was lying there in his stead. I do,” and
he broke down and cried like a child.
“I think you said Connelley had been sent for also?” remarked Dr. Murney
after standing silent for a moment.
“Yes, I sent for him in case you should not be at home,” answered Mr.
Hanlon. “He will be here directly, I should think.”
“I am glad he is likely to come,” said the other; “he may be able to
make some suggestion. Meanwhile, Dr. Girvan and I will go downstairs and
have a little talk together.” And taking the old man’s arm he led him
towards the door.
Then Dr. Girvan turned,—
“Mind,” he almost sobbed, “I am to tell this to her myself; I don’t want
anybody to speak about it but me. Ah, Grace, little I thought the hour I
helped to bring you into the world, that I would one day help to break
your heart.”
“She need never know,” exclaimed Mr. Hanlon eagerly.
“Know! sure you told her yourself. Didn’t you say, standing where you
are now, you wouldn’t see a man bled to death?”
“I did, and more shame for me to have spoken such words before his
daughter; but we can surely soften it to her, she need not be told
exactly how the case stands.”
“She shall be told the truth; maybe then she’ll forgive me some time,
though I can never forgive myself.”
“Well, you needn’t tell her now at any rate,” interrupted Doctor Murney;
“come with me. There’s many a mistake of this sort made that is never
found out either by doctors themselves or the friends of those they have
been attending.”
“A pleasant confession,” thought Mr. Hanlon as he once again seated
himself by the window and resumed his watch for dawn.
Slowly the streaks of light became broader, day gently pushed aside the
curtains of night from the sea, darkness lifted itself gradually, the
clouds became suffused with crimson, then the sun appeared above the
horizon, and once again the ever-recurring miracle of a new day had been
wrought upon the earth.
END OF VOL. II.
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO., LITTLE QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.