|I ended the last page with “I shall write no more here.” It used to
be my pride never to have broken a promise nor changed a resolution.
Pride! What have I to do with pride?
And resolutions, forsooth! What,--are we omnipotent and omniscient,
that against all changes of circumstances, feelings, or events, we
should set up our paltry resolutions, urge them and hold to them,
in spite of reason and conviction, with a tenacity that we suppose
heroic, god-like, yet which may be merely the blind obstinacy of a
brute?
I will never make a resolution again. I will never again say to
myself, “You, Max Urquhart, in order to keep up that character for
virtue, honour, and steadfastness, which heaven only knows whether or
no you deserve, ought to do so and so; and, come what will, you
must do it.” Out upon me and my doings! Was I singled out to be the
scapegoat of the world?
It is my intention here, regularly to set down, for certain reasons,
which I may, or may not, afterwards allude to, certain events, which
have happened without any act of mine, almost without my volition,
if a man can be so led on by force of circumstances, that there
seems only one course of conduct open to him to pursue. Whither these
circumstances may lead, I am at this moment as utterly ignorant as on
the day I was born, and almost as powerless. I make no determinations,
attempt no previsions, follow no set line of conduct; doing only from
day to day, what is expected of me, and leaving all the rest to--is
it? it must be--to God.
The sole thing in which I may be said to exercise any absolute
volition, is in writing down what I mean to write here, the only
record that will exist of the veritable me--Max Urquhart,--as he might
have been known, not to people in general, but to--any one who looked
into his deepest heart, and was his friend, his beloved, his very own.
The form of Imaginary Correspondent I henceforward throw aside. I am
perfectly aware to whom and for whom I write: yet who, in all human
probability, will never read a single line.
Once, an officer in the Crimea, believing himself dying, gave me a
packet of letters to burn. He had written them, year by year, under
every change of fortune, to a friend he had, to whom he occasionally
wrote other letters, _not_ like these; which were never sent nor meant
to be sent, during his life-time--though sometimes I fancy he dreamed
of _giving_ them, and of their being read, smiling, by two together.
He was mistaken. Circumstances which happen not rarely to dreamers
like him, made it unnecessary, nay, impossible, for them to be
delivered at all. He bade me burn them--at once--in case he died. In
so doing there started out of the embers, clear and plain, _the name_.
But the fire and I told no tales; I took the poker and buried it.
Poor fellow! He did not die, and I meet him still; but we have never
referred to those burnt letters.
These letters of mine I also may one day burn. In the meantime, there
shall be no name or superscription on them--no beginning or ending,
nor, if I can avoid it, anything which could particularise the person
to whom they are written. For all others, they will take the form of a
mere statement--nothing more.
To begin. I was sitting about eleven at night, over the fire, in
my hut. I had been busy all day, and had had little rest the night
before.
It was not my intention to attend our camp concert; but I was in
a manner compelled to do so. Ill news from home reached poor young
Ansdell of ours--and his colonel sent me to break it to him. I then
had to wait about, in order to see the good colonel as he came out
from the concert-room. It was, therefore, purely by accident that I
met those friends whom I afterwards did not leave for several minutes.
The reason of this delay in their company may be told. It was a sudden
agony about the uncertainty of life--young life; fresh and hopeful as
pretty Laura Ansdell's--whom I had chanced to see riding through the
North Camp, not two weeks ago--and now she was dead. Accustomed as I
am to almost every form of mortality, I had never faced the grim fear
exactly in this shape before. It put me out of myself for a little
time.
I did not go near Granton the following day, but received from him a
message and my plaid. She--the lady to whom I had lent it--was “quite
well.” No more: how could I possibly expect any more?
I was, as I say, sitting over my hut-fire, with the strangest medley
in my mind--rosy Laura Ansdell--now galloping across the moor--now
lying still and colourless in her coffin; and another face, about
the same age, though I suppose it would not be considered nearly as
pretty, with the scarlet hood drawn over it; pallid with cold, yet
with such a soft light in the eyes, such a trembling sweetness about
the mouth! She must be a very happy-minded creature. I hardly ever
saw her, or was with her any length of time, that she did not look the
picture of content and repose. She always puts me in mind of Dallas's
pet song, when we were boys--“Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane."=
```"She's modest as ony, and blithe as she's bonnie,
````And guileless simplicity marks her its ain,
```And far be the villain, divested o' feelin',
````Wha'd blight in its bud the sweet Flower o' Dunblane."=
I say amen to that.
It was--to return, for the third time, to simple narrative--somewhere
about eleven o'clock, when a man on horseback stopped at my hut-door.
I thought it might be a summons to the Ansdells, but it was not. It
was the groom from Rockmount, bringing me a letter.
Her letter--her little letter! I ought to burn it--but, as yet, I
cannot--and where it is kept, it will be quite safe. For reasons, I
shall copy it here.
“Dear Sir,--
“My father has met with a severe accident. Dr. Black is from home, and
there is no other doctor in the neighbourhood upon whom we can depend.
Will you pardon the liberty I am taking, and come to us at once?
“Yours truly,
“Theodora Johnston.”
There it lies, brief and plain; a firm heart guided the shaking hand.
Few things show character in a woman more than her handwriting: this,
when steady, must be remarkably neat, delicate, and clear. I did well
to put it by--I may never get another line.
In speaking to Jack, I learnt that his master and one of the young
ladies had been out to dinner--that master had insisted on driving
home himself, probably from Jack's incompetence, but he was sober
enough now, poor lad!--that, coming through the fir-wood, one of the
wheels got fixed in a deep rut, and the phaeton was overturned.
I asked, was any one hurt--besides Mr. Johnston?
“Miss Johnston was, a little.”
“Which Miss Johnston?”
“Miss Penelope, sir.”
“No one else?”
“No, sir.”
I had evidence enough of all this before, but just then, at that
instant, it went out of my mind in a sudden oppression of fear. The
facts of the case gained, I called Jack in to the fire, and went into
my bed-room to settle with myself what was best to be done.
Indecision, as to the matter of going or not going, was of course
impossible; but it was a sudden and startling position to be placed
in. True, I could avoid it by pleading hospital business, and sending
the assistant surgeon of our regiment, who is an exceedingly clever
young man--but not a young man whom women would like in a sick house,
in the midst of great distress or danger. And in that distress and
danger, she had called upon _me_, trusted _me_.
I determined to go. The cost, whatever it might be, would be purely
personal, and in that brief minute I counted it all. I state this,
because I wish to make clear that no secondary motive, dream, or
desire, prompted me to act as I have done.
On questioning Jack more closely, I found that Mr. Johnston had
fallen, they believed, on a stone; that he had been picked up
senseless, and had never spoken since.
This indicated at once on what a thread of chance the case hung.
_The case_--simply that and no more; as to treat it at all, I must so
consider it. I have saved lives, by God's blessing--this, then, must
be regarded merely as one other life to be saved, if, through His
mercy, it were granted me to do it.
I unlocked my desk, and put her letter in the secret drawer; wrote a
line to our assistant-surgeon, with hospital orders, in case I should
be absent part of the next day; took out any instruments I might want;
then, with a glance round my room, and an involuntary wondering as to
how and when I might return to it, I mounted Jack's horse and rode
off to Rockmount. The whole had not occupied fifteen minutes, for I
remember looking at my watch, which stood at a quarter-past eleven.
Hard-riding makes thinking impossible; and, indeed, my whole mind was
bent upon not missing my road in the darkness. A _detour_ of a mile
or two, one lost half-hour, might, humanly speaking, have cost the old
man's life; for, in similar cases, it is generally a question of time.
It is said, our profession is that, which, of all others, most
inclines a man to materialism. I never found it so. The first time I
ever was brought close to death---- but that train of thought must
be stopped. Since, death and I have walked so long together, that the
mere vital principle, common to all breathing creatures, “the life of
a beast which goeth downwards,” as the Bible has it, I never think
of confounding with “the soul of a man which goeth upwards.” Quite
distinct from the life, dwelling in blood or breath, or at that “vital
point” which has been lately discovered, showing that in a spot
the size of a pin's head, resides the principle of mortality--quite
distinct, I say, from this something which perishes or vanishes so
mysteriously from the dead friends we bury, the corpses we anatomize,
seems to me the spirit, the ghost; which being able to conceive of
and aspire to, must necessarily return to, the one Holy Ghost, the
one Eternal Spirit, Himself once manifest in flesh, this very flesh of
ours.
And it seemed on that strange, wild night, just such another winter's
night as I remember, years and years ago,--as if this distinction
between the life and the soul, grew clearer to me than ever before;
as if, pardoning all that had happened to its mortal part, a ghost,
which, were such visitations allowed, though I do not believe
they are, might be supposed often to visit me--followed my ghost,
harmlessly,--nay, pitifully, I=
````"Being a tiling immortal as itself,"=
the whole way between the camp and Rockmount.
I dismounted under the ivy-bush which overhangs the garden-gate,
which gate had been left open, so I was able to go, at once, up to the
hall-door, where the fan-light flickered on the white stone-floor; the
old man's stick was in the corner, and the young ladies' hats hung up
on the branching stag's horns.
For the moment, I half-believed myself dreaming; and that I should
wake as I have often done, after half an hour's rest, with the salt
morning breeze blowing on me, in the outside gallery of Scutari
Hospital,--start up, take my lamp, and go round my wards.
But minutes were precious. I rang the bell; and, almost immediately, a
figure slid down the staircase, and opened the door. I might not have
thought it flesh and blood, but for the touch of its little cold hand.
“Ah! it is you, at last; I was sure you would come.”
“Certainly.”
Perhaps she thought me cold, “professional,” as if she had looked for
a friend, and found only the doctor. Perhaps,--nay, it must be so, she
never thought of me at all, except as “the doctor.”
“Where is your father?”
“Upstairs; we carried him at once to his room. Will you come?”
So I followed--I seemed to have nothing to do but to follow that light
figure, with the voice so low, the manner so quiet,--quieter than I ever
expected to see hers, or any woman's, under such an emergency. I? what
did I ever know of women? What did I deserve to know, except that a
woman bore me? It is an odd fancy, but I have never thought so much
about my mother as within the last few months. And sometimes, turning
over the sole relics I have of hers, a ribbon or two, and a curl of
hair, and calling to mind the few things Dallas remembered about her, I
have imagined my mother, in her youth, must have been something like
this young girl.
She entered the bed-room first.
“You may come in now. You will not startle him; I think he knows
nobody.”
I sat down beside my patient. He lay, just as he had been brought
in from the road, with a blanket and counterpane thrown over him,
breathing heavily, but quite unconscious.
“The light, please. Can you hold it for me? Is your hand steady?” And
I held it a moment to judge. That weakness cost me too much; I took
care not to risk it again.
When I finished my examination, and looked up, Miss Theodora was still
standing by me. Her eyes only asked the question--which, thank God, I
could answer as I did.
“Yes--it is a more hopeful case than I expected.”
At this shadow of hope--for it was only a shadow--the deadly quiet
in which she had kept herself was stirred. She began to tremble
exceedingly. I took the candle from her, and gave her a chair.
“Never mind me. It is only for a minute,” she said. One or two deep,
hard sighs came, and then she recovered herself. “Now, what is to be
done?”
I told her I would do all that was necessary, if she would bring me
various things I mentioned.
“Can I help you? There is no one else. Penelope has hurt her foot, and
cannot move, and the servants are mere girls. Shall I stay? If there
is to be an operation, I am not afraid.”
For I had, unguardedly, taken out of my pocket the case of instruments
which, after all, would not be needed. I told her so, adding that I
had rather she left me alone with my patient.
“Very well. You will take care of him? You will not hurt him--poor
papa!”
Not very likely. If he and I could have changed places,--he assuming
my strength and life, I lying on that bed, with death before me, under
such a look as his child left him with,--I think I should at that
moment have done it.
When I had laid the old man comfortably in his bed, I sat with his
wrist under my fingers, counting, beat by beat, the slow pulse, which
was one of my slender hopes for his recovery. As the hand dropped over
my knee, powerless, almost, as a dead hand, it recalled, I know not
how or why, the helpless drop of _that_, the first dead hand I ever
saw. Happily the fancy lasted only a moment; in seasons like this,
when I am deeply occupied in the practice of my profession, all
such phantasms are laid. And the present case was urgent enough to
concentrate all my thoughts and faculties.
I had just made up my mind concerning it, when a gentle knock came to
the door, and on my answering, she walked in; glided rather, for she
had taken off her silk gown, and put on something soft and dark,
which did not rustle. In her face, white as it was, there was a quiet
preparedness, more touching than any wildness of grief--a quality
which few women possess, but which heaven never seems to give except
to women, compelling us men, as it were, to our knees, in recognition
of something diviner than anything we have, or are, or were ever meant
to be. I mention this, lest it might be thought of me, as is often
thought of doctors, that I did not feel.
She asked me no questions, but stood silently beside me, with her eyes
fixed on her father. His just opened, as they had done several times
before, wandered vacantly over the bed-curtains, and closed again,
with a moan.
She looked at me, frightened--the poor child.
I explained to her that this moaning was no additional cause of alarm,
rather the contrary; that her father might lie in his present state
for hours--days.
“And can you do nothing for him?”
If I could--at any cost which mortal man could pay!
Motioning her to the furthest corner of the room, I there, as is my
habit, when the friends of the patient seem capable of listening and
comprehending, gave her my opinion about the course of treatment I
intended to adopt, and my reasons for the same. In this case, of all
others, I wished not to leave the relatives in the dark, lest they
might afterwards blame me for doing nothing; when, in truth, to do
nothing was the only chance. I told her my belief that it would be
safest to maintain perfect silence and repose, and leave benignant
Nature to work in her own mysterious way--Nature, whom the longer one
lives, the more one trusts in as the only true physician.
“Therefore,” I said, “will you understand that however little I do, I
am acting as I believe to be best? Will you trust me?”
She looked up searchingly, and then said, “Yes.” After a few moments
she asked me how long I could stay? if I were obliged to return to the
camp immediately?
I told her “No; I did not intend to return till morning.”
“Ah, that is well! Shall I order a room to be prepared for you?”
“Thank you, but I prefer sitting up.”
“You are very kind. You will be a great comfort.”
I, “a great comfort!” I--“kind.”
My thoughts must needs return into their right channel. I believe the
next thing she said was something about my going to see “Penelope:” at
least I found myself with my hand on the door, all but touching hers,
as she was showing me how to open it.
“There: the second room to the left. Shall I go with you? No! I will
stay here then, till you return.”
So, after she had closed the door, I remained alone in the dim passage
for a few moments. It was well. No man can be his own master at all
times.
Miss Johnston was a good deal more hurt than she had confessed. As she
lay on the bed, still in her gay dress, with artificial flowers in her
hair--her face, pallid and drawn with pain, looked almost like that
of an old woman. She seemed annoyed at my coming--she dislikes me, I
know: but anxiety about her father, and her own suffering, kept her
aversion within bounds. She listened to my medical report from the
next room, and submitted to my orders concerning herself, until she
learnt that at least a week's confinement, to rest her foot, would be
necessary. Then she rebelled.
“That is impossible. I must be up and about. There is nobody to do
anything but me.”
“Your sister?”
“Lisabel is married. Oh, you meant Dora?--We never expect any useful
thing from Dora.”
This speech did not surprise me. It merely confirmed a good deal which
I had already noticed in this family. Also, it might in degree be
true. I think, so far from being blind to them, I see clearer than
most people every fault she has.
Neither contradicting nor arguing, I repeated to Miss Johnston the
imperative necessity for her attending to my' orders: adding that I
had known more than one case of a person being made a cripple for life
by neglecting such an injury as hers.
“A cripple for life!” She started--her color came and went--her
eye wandered to the chair beside her, on which was her little
writing-case; I conclude that in the intervals of her pain she had
been trying to send these ill news, or to apply for help to some one.
“You will be lame for life,” I repeated, “unless you take care.”
“Shall I now?”
“No--with reasonable caution I trust you will do well.”
“That is enough. Do not trouble yourself any more about me. Pray go
back to my father.”.
She turned from me and closed her eyes. There was nothing more to be
done with Miss Penelope. Calling a servant who stood by, I gave my
last orders concerning her, and departed. A strange person--this elder
sister. What differences of character exist in families!
There was no change in my other patient. As I stood looking at him,
his daughter glided round to my side. We exchanged a glance only--she
seemed quite to understand that talking was inadmissible. Then she
stood by me, silently gazing.
“You are sure there is no change?”
“None.”
“Lisa--ought she not to know? I never sent a telegraph message; will
you tell me how to do it?”
Her quiet assumption of duty--her thoughtful methodical arrangements;
surely the sister was wrong,--that is, as I knew well, any great
necessity would soon prove her to be wrong--about Miss Theodora.
I said there was no need to telegraph until morning, when, as I rode
back to the camp, I would do it myself.
“Thank you.”
No objection or apology; only that soft “thank you”--taking all things
calmly and naturally, as a man would like to see a woman take the gift
of his life, if necessary. No, not life; that is owed--but any or all
of its few pleasures would be cheerfully laid down for such another
“thank you.”
While I was considering what should be done for the night, there came
a rustling and chattering outside in the passage. Miss Johnston had
sent a servant to sit up with her father. She came--knocking at the
door-handle, rattling the candlestick, and tramping across the floor
like a regiment of soldiers--so that my patient moaned, and put up his
hand to his head.
I said--sharply enough, no doubt--that I must have quiet. A loud
voice, a door slammed to, even a heavy step across the floor, and I
would not answer for the consequences. If Mr. Johnston were meant
to recover, there must be no one in his room but the doctor and the
nurse.
“I understand--Susan, come away.”
There was a brief conference outside; then Miss Theodora re-entered
alone, bolted the door, and was again at my side.
“Will that do?”
“Yes.”
The clock struck two while we were standing there. I stole a glance at
her white, composed face.
“Can you sit up?--do you think?”
“Certainly.”
Without more ado--for I was just then too much occupied with a passing
change in my patient--the matter was decided. When I next looked for
her, she had slipped round the foot of the bed, and taken her place
behind the curtain on the other side. There we both sat, hour after
hour, in total silence.
I tell everything, you see, just as minutely as I remember it--and
shall remember--long after every circumstance, trivial or great, has
faded out of every memory except mine. If these letters are ever read
by other than myself, words and incidents long forgotten may revive:
that when I die, as in the course of nature I shall do, long before
younger persons, it may be seen that it is not youth alone which can
receive impressions vividly and retain them strongly.
I could not see her--I could only see the face on the pillow, where a
dim light fell; just enough to shew me the slightest change, did any
come. But, closely as I watched, none did come. Not even a twitch or
quiver broke that blank expression of repose which was neither life
nor death.
I thought several times that it would settle into death before
morning. And then?
Where was all my boasted skill, my belief in my own powers of saving
life. Why, sitting here, trusted and looked up to, depended upon as
the sole human stay--my countenance examined, as I felt it was, even
as if it were the index and arbiter of fate--I--watching as I never
watched before by any sick bed, this breath which trembled in the
balance, felt myself as ignorant and useless as a child. Nay, I was
“as a dead man before Thee,” O Thou humbler of pride!
Crying to myself thus--Job's cry--I thought of another Hebrew, who
sought “not unto the Lord, but unto the physicians;” and died. It came
into my mind, May there not be, even in these days, such a thing as
“seeking the Lord?”
I believe there is: I _know_ there is.
The candle went out. I had sat with my eyes shut, and had not noticed
it, till I heard her steal across the room, trying to get a light.
Afraid to trust my own heavy step--hers seemed as soft as snow--I
contrived to pull the window-blind aside, so that a pale white streak
fell across the hearth where she was kneeling--the cheerless hearth,
for I had not dared to risk the noise of keeping up a fire.
She looked up, and shivered.
“Is that light morning?”
“Yes. Are you cold?”
“A little.”
“It is always cold at day-break. Go and get a shawl.”
She took no notice, but put the candle in its place and came over to
me.
“How do you think he is?”
“No worse.”
A sigh, patient, but hopeless. I took an opportunity of examining her
closely, to judge how long her self-control was likely to last; or
whether, after this great shock and weary night-watch, her physical
strength would fail. So looking, I noticed a few blood-drops trickling
over her forehead, oozing from under her hair:--
“What is this?”
“Oh, nothing. I struck myself as we were lifting papa from the
carriage. I thought it had ceased bleeding.”
“Let me look at it a moment. There--I shall not hurt you.”
“Oh, no. I am not afraid.”
I cut the hair from round the place, and plastered it up. It hardly
took a minute; was the smallest of surgical operations; yet she
trembled. I saw her strength was beginning to yield; and she might
need it all.
“Now, you must go and lie down for an hour.”
She shook her head.
“You must.”
There might have been something harsh in the words--I did not quite
know what I was saying--for she looked surprised.
“I mean you ought; which is enough argument with a girl like you. If
you do not rest, you will never be able to keep up for another twelve
hours, during which your father may need you. He does not need you
now.”
“And you?”
“I had much rather be alone.” Which was most true.
So she left me; but, ten minutes after, I heard again the light step
at the door.
“I have brought you this” (some biscuits and a glass of milk) “I know
you never take wine.”
Wine! O Heaven, no! Would that, years ago, the first drop had burnt
my lips--been as gall to my tongue--proved to me not drink, but
poison--as the poor old man now lying there once wished it might
have happened to any son of his. Well might my father, my young happy
father, who married my mother, and, loving and loved, spent with her
the brief years of their youth--well, indeed, might my father have
wished it for me!
So there I sat, after the food she brought me had been swallowed
down somehow--for it would have hurt her to come back and find it
untouched. Thus watching, hope lessened by degrees, sank into mere
conjectures as to the manner in which the watch would end. Possibly,
in this state of half-consciousness, the breath would quietly pass
away, without struggle or pain; which would be easiest for them all.
I laid my plans, in that case, either to be of any use to the family
if I could, by remaining until the Trehernes arrived, or to leave
immediately all was over. Circumstances, and their apparent wish, must
be my only guide. Afterwards there would be no difficulty; the less
they saw of any one who had been associated with such a painful time,
the better. Better for all of them.
The clock below struck--what hour I did not count, but it felt like
morning. It was,--must be--I must make it morning.
I went to the window to refresh my eyes with the soft white dawn,
which, as I opened the blind, stole into the room, making the candle
buRN yellow and dim. The night was over and gone. Across the moorland,
and up on the far hills, it was already morning.
A thought struck me, suggesting one more chance. Extinguishing the
candle, I drew aside all the curtains, so as to throw the daylight in
a full stream across the foot of the bed; and by the side of it--with
the patient's hand between mine, and my eyes fixed steadily on his
face--I sat down.
His eyes opened, not in the old blank way, but with an expression in
them that I never expected to see again. They turned instinctively
to the light; then, with a slow, a wandering, but perfectly rational,
look towards me, feebly, the old man smiled.
That minute was worth dying for; or rather, having lived for, all
these twenty years.
The rest which I have to tell must be told another time.