Scudamore Lane, sloping down riverwards from just behind the Monument,
lies at night in the shadow of two black and monstrous walls which loom
high above the glimmer of the scattered gas lamps. The footpaths are
narrow, and the causeway is paved with rounded cobblestones, so that
the endless drays roar along it like breaking waves. A few
old-fashioned houses lie scattered among the business premises, and in
one of these, half-way down on the left-hand side, Dr. Horace Selby
conducts his large practice. It is a singular street for so big a man;
but a specialist who has an European reputation can afford to live
where he likes. In his particular branch, too, patients do not always
regard seclusion as a disadvantage.
It was only ten o'clock. The dull roar of the traffic which converged
all day upon London Bridge had died away now to a mere confused murmur.
It was raining heavily, and the gas shone dimly through the streaked
and dripping glass, throwing little circles upon the glistening
cobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of the rain, the thin
swish of its fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and
gurgle down the two steep gutters and through the sewer grating. There
was only one figure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It was that
of a man, and it stood outside the door of Dr. Horace Selby.
He had just rung and was waiting for an answer. The fanlight beat full
upon the gleaming shoulders of his waterproof and upon his upturned
features. It was a wan, sensitive, clear-cut face, with some subtle,
nameless peculiarity in its expression, something of the startled horse
in the white-rimmed eye, something too of the helpless child in the
drawn cheek and the weakening of the lower lip. The man-servant knew
the stranger as a patient at a bare glance at those frightened eyes.
Such a look had been seen at that door many times before.
"Is the doctor in?"
The man hesitated.
"He has had a few friends to dinner, sir. He does not like to be
disturbed outside his usual hours, sir."
"Tell him that I MUST see him. Tell him that it is of the very first
importance. Here is my card." He fumbled with his trembling fingers
in trying to draw one from his case. "Sir Francis Norton is the name.
Tell him that Sir Francis Norton, of Deane Park, must see him without
delay."
"Yes, sir." The butler closed his fingers upon the card and the
half-sovereign which accompanied it. "Better hang your coat up here in
the hall. It is very wet. Now if you will wait here in the
consulting-room, I have no doubt that I shall be able to send the
doctor in to you."
It was a large and lofty room in which the young baronet found himself.
The carpet was so soft and thick that his feet made no sound as he
walked across it. The two gas jets were turned only half-way up, and
the dim light with the faint aromatic smell which filled the air had a
vaguely religious suggestion. He sat down in a shining leather
armchair by the smouldering fire and looked gloomily about him. Two
sides of the room were taken up with books, fat and sombre, with broad
gold lettering upon their backs. Beside him was the high,
old-fashioned mantelpiece of white marble--the top of it strewed with
cotton wadding and bandages, graduated measures, and little bottles.
There was one with a broad neck just above him containing bluestone,
and another narrower one with what looked like the ruins of a broken
pipestem and "Caustic" outside upon a red label. Thermometers,
hypodermic syringes bistouries and spatulas were scattered about both
on the mantelpiece and on the central table on either side of the
sloping desk. On the same table, to the right, stood copies of the
five books which Dr. Horace Selby had written upon the subject with
which his name is peculiarly associated, while on the left, on the top
of a red medical directory, lay a huge glass model of a human eye the
size of a turnip, which opened down the centre to expose the lens and
double chamber within.
Sir Francis Norton had never been remarkable for his powers of
observation, and yet he found himself watching these trifles with the
keenest attention. Even the corrosion of the cork of an acid bottle
caught his eye, and he wondered that the doctor did not use glass
stoppers. Tiny scratches where the light glinted off from the table,
little stains upon the leather of the desk, chemical formulae scribbled
upon the labels of the phials--nothing was too slight to arrest his
attention. And his sense of hearing was equally alert. The heavy
ticking of the solemn black clock above the mantelpiece struck quite
painfully upon his ears. Yet in spite of it, and in spite also of the
thick, old-fashioned wooden partition, he could hear voices of men
talking in the next room, and could even catch scraps of their
conversation. "Second hand was bound to take it." "Why, you drew the
last of them yourself!"
"How could I play the queen when I knew that the ace was against me?"
The phrases came in little spurts falling back into the dull murmur of
conversation. And then suddenly he heard the creaking of a door and a
step in the hall, and knew with a tingling mixture of impatience and
horror that the crisis of his life was at hand.
Dr. Horace Selby was a large, portly man with an imposing presence.
His nose and chin were bold and pronounced, yet his features were
puffy, a combination which would blend more freely with the wig and
cravat of the early Georges than with the close-cropped hair and black
frock-coat of the end of the nineteenth century. He was clean shaven,
for his mouth was too good to cover--large, flexible, and sensitive,
with a kindly human softening at either corner which with his brown
sympathetic eyes had drawn out many a shame-struck sinner's secret.
Two masterful little bushy side-whiskers bristled out from under his
ears spindling away upwards to merge in the thick curves of his
brindled hair. To his patients there was something reassuring in the
mere bulk and dignity of the man. A high and easy bearing in medicine
as in war bears with it a hint of victories in the past, and a promise
of others to come. Dr. Horace Selby's face was a consolation, and so
too were the large, white, soothing hands, one of which he held out to
his visitor.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting. It is a conflict of duties, you
perceive--a host's to his guests and an adviser's to his patient. But
now I am entirely at your disposal, Sir Francis. But dear me, you are
very cold."
"Yes, I am cold."
"And you are trembling all over. Tut, tut, this will never do! This
miserable night has chilled you. Perhaps some little stimulant----"
"No, thank you. I would really rather not. And it is not the night
which has chilled me. I am frightened, doctor."
The doctor half-turned in his chair, and he patted the arch of the
young man's knee, as he might the neck of a restless horse.
"What then?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the pale face with
the startled eyes.
Twice the young man parted his lips. Then he stooped with a sudden
gesture, and turning up the right leg of his trousers he pulled down
his sock and thrust forward his shin. The doctor made a clicking noise
with his tongue as he glanced at it.
"Both legs?"
"No, only one."
"Suddenly?"
"This morning."
"Hum."
The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb down the line
of his chin. "Can you account for it?" he asked briskly.
"No."
A trace of sternness came into the large brown eyes.
"I need not point out to you that unless the most absolute
frankness----"
The patient sprang from his chair. "So help me God!" he cried, "I have
nothing in my life with which to reproach myself. Do you think that I
would be such a fool as to come here and tell you lies. Once for all,
I have nothing to regret." He was a pitiful, half-tragic and
half-grotesque figure, as he stood with one trouser leg rolled to the
knee, and that ever present horror still lurking in his eyes. A burst
of merriment came from the card-players in the next room, and the two
looked at each other in silence.
"Sit down," said the doctor abruptly, "your assurance is quite
sufficient." He stooped and ran his finger down the line of the young
man's shin, raising it at one point. "Hum, serpiginous," he murmured,
shaking his head. "Any other symptoms?"
"My eyes have been a little weak."
"Let me see your teeth." He glanced at them, and again made the
gentle, clicking sound of sympathy and disapprobation.
"Now your eye." He lit a lamp at the patient's elbow, and holding a
small crystal lens to concentrate the light, he threw it obliquely upon
the patient's eye. As he did so a glow of pleasure came over his large
expressive face, a flush of such enthusiasm as the botanist feels when
he packs the rare plant into his tin knapsack, or the astronomer when
the long-sought comet first swims into the field of his telescope.
"This is very typical--very typical indeed," he murmured, turning to
his desk and jotting down a few memoranda upon a sheet of paper.
"Curiously enough, I am writing a monograph upon the subject. It is
singular that you should have been able to furnish so well-marked a
case." He had so forgotten the patient in his symptom, that he had
assumed an almost congratulatory air towards its possessor. He
reverted to human sympathy again, as his patient asked for particulars.
"My dear sir, there is no occasion for us to go into strictly
professional details together," said he soothingly. "If, for example,
I were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be
the wiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad
terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint."
The young baronet sank back in his chair, and his chin fell forwards
upon his chest. The doctor sprang to a side-table and poured out half
a glass of liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A
little fleck of colour came into his cheeks as he drank it down.
"Perhaps I spoke a little abruptly," said the doctor, "but you must
have known the nature of your complaint. Why, otherwise, should you
have come to me?"
"God help me, I suspected it; but only today when my leg grew bad. My
father had a leg like this."
"It was from him, then----?"
"No, from my grandfather. You have heard of Sir Rupert Norton, the
great Corinthian?"
The doctor was a man of wide reading with a retentive, memory. The
name brought back instantly to him the remembrance of the sinister
reputation of its owner--a notorious buck of the thirties--who had
gambled and duelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery, until
even the vile set with whom he consorted had shrunk away from him in
horror, and left him to a sinister old age with the barmaid wife whom
he had married in some drunken frolic. As he looked at the young man
still leaning back in the leather chair, there seemed for the instant
to flicker up behind him some vague presentiment of that foul old dandy
with his dangling seals, many-wreathed scarf, and dark satyric face.
What was he now? An armful of bones in a mouldy box. But his deeds--
they were living and rotting the blood in the veins of an innocent man.
"I see that you have heard of him," said the young baronet. "He died
horribly, I have been told; but not more horribly than he had lived.
My father was his only son. He was a studious man, fond of books and
canaries and the country; but his innocent life did not save him."
"His symptoms were cutaneous, I understand."
"He wore gloves in the house. That was the first thing I can remember.
And then it was his throat. And then his legs. He used to ask me so
often about my own health, and I thought him so fussy, for how could I
tell what the meaning of it was. He was always watching me--always
with a sidelong eye fixed upon me. Now, at last, I know what he was
watching for."
"Had you brothers or sisters?"
"None, thank God."
"Well, well, it is a sad case, and very typical of many which come in
my way. You are no lonely sufferer, Sir Francis. There are many
thousands who bear the same cross as you do."
"But where is the justice of it, doctor?" cried the young man,
springing from his chair and pacing up and down the consulting-room.
"If I were heir to my grandfather's sins as well as to their results, I
could understand it, but I am of my father's type. I love all that is
gentle and beautiful--music and poetry and art. The coarse and animal
is abhorrent to me. Ask any of my friends and they would tell you
that. And now that this vile, loathsome thing--ach, I am polluted to
the marrow, soaked in abomination! And why? Haven't I a right to ask
why? Did I do it? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And
look at me now, blighted and blasted, just as life was at its sweetest.
Talk about the sins of the father--how about the sins of the Creator?"
He shook his two clinched hands in the air--the poor impotent atom with
his pin-point of brain caught in the whirl of the infinite.
The doctor rose and placing his hands upon his shoulders he pressed him
back into his chair once more. "There, there, my dear lad," said he;
"you must not excite yourself. You are trembling all over. Your
nerves cannot stand it. We must take these great questions upon trust.
What are we, after all? Half-evolved creatures in a transition stage,
nearer perhaps to the Medusa on the one side than to perfected humanity
on the other. With half a complete brain we can't expect to understand
the whole of a complete fact, can we, now? It is all very dim and
dark, no doubt; but I think that Pope's famous couplet sums up the
whole matter, and from my heart, after fifty years of varied
experience, I can say----"
But the young baronet gave a cry of impatience and disgust. "Words,
words, words! You can sit comfortably there in your chair and say
them--and think them too, no doubt. You've had your life, but I've
never had mine. You've healthy blood in your veins; mine is putrid.
And yet I am as innocent as you. What would words do for you if you
were in this chair and I in that? Ah, it's such a mockery and a
make-believe! Don't think me rude, though, doctor. I don't mean to be
that. I only say that it is impossible for you or any other man to
realise it. But I've a question to ask you, doctor. It's one on which
my whole life must depend." He writhed his fingers together in an
agony of apprehension.
"Speak out, my dear sir. I have every sympathy with you."
"Do you think--do you think the poison has spent itself on me? Do you
think that if I had children they would suffer?"
"I can only give one answer to that. 'The third and fourth
generation,' says the trite old text. You may in time eliminate it
from your system, but many years must pass before you can think of
marriage."
"I am to be married on Tuesday," whispered the patient.
It was the doctor's turn to be thrilled with horror. There were not
many situations which would yield such a sensation to his seasoned
nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of the card-table broke in
upon them again. "We had a double ruff if you had returned a heart."
"I was bound to clear the trumps." They were hot and angry about it.
"How could you?" cried the doctor severely. "It was criminal."
"You forget that I have only learned how I stand to-day." He put his
two hands to his temples and pressed them convulsively. "You are a man
of the world, Dr. Selby. You have seen or heard of such things before.
Give me some advice. I'm in your hands. It is all very sudden and
horrible, and I don't think I am strong enough to bear it."
The doctor's heavy brows thickened into two straight lines, and he bit
his nails in perplexity.
"The marriage must not take place."
"Then what am I to do?"
"At all costs it must not take place."
"And I must give her up?"
"There can be no question about that."
The young man took out a pocketbook and drew from it a small
photograph, holding it out towards the doctor. The firm face softened
as he looked at it.
"It is very hard on you, no doubt. I can appreciate it more now that I
have seen that. But there is no alternative at all. You must give up
all thought of it."
"But this is madness, doctor--madness, I tell you. No, I won't raise
my voice. I forgot myself. But realise it, man. I am to be married
on Tuesday. This coming Tuesday, you understand. And all the world
knows it. How can I put such a public affront upon her. It would be
monstrous."
"None the less it must be done. My dear lad, there is no way out of
it."
"You would have me simply write brutally and break the engagement at
the last moment without a reason. I tell you I couldn't do it."
"I had a patient once who found himself in a somewhat similar situation
some years ago," said the doctor thoughtfully. "His device was a
singular one. He deliberately committed a penal offence, and so
compelled the young lady's people to withdraw their consent to the
marriage."
The young baronet shook his head. "My personal honour is as yet
unstained," said he. "I have little else left, but that, at least, I
will preserve."
"Well, well, it is a nice dilemma, and the choice lies with you."
"Have you no other suggestion?"
"You don't happen to have property in Australia?"
"None."
"But you have capital?"
"Yes."
"Then you could buy some. To-morrow morning would do. A thousand
mining shares would be enough. Then you might write to say that urgent
business affairs have compelled you to start at an hour's notice to
inspect your property. That would give you six months, at any rate."
"Well, that would be possible. Yes, certainly, it would be possible.
But think of her position. The house full of wedding presents--guests
coming from a distance. It is awful. And you say that there is no
alternative."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, then, I might write it now, and start to-morrow--eh? Perhaps
you would let me use your desk. Thank you. I am so sorry to keep you
from your guests so long. But I won't be a moment now."
He wrote an abrupt note of a few lines. Then with a sudden impulse he
tore it to shreds and flung it into the fireplace.
"No, I can't sit down and tell her a lie, doctor," he said rising. "We
must find some other way out of this. I will think it over and let you
know my decision. You must allow me to double your fee as I have taken
such an unconscionable time. Now good-bye, and thank you a thousand
times for your sympathy and advice."
"Why, dear me, you haven't even got your prescription yet. This is the
mixture, and I should recommend one of these powders every morning, and
the chemist will put all directions upon the ointment box. You are
placed in a cruel situation, but I trust that these may be but passing
clouds. When may I hope to hear from you again?"
"To-morrow morning."
"Very good. How the rain is splashing in the street! You have your
waterproof there. You will need it. Good-bye, then, until to-morrow."
He opened the door. A gust of cold, damp air swept into the hall. And
yet the doctor stood for a minute or more watching the lonely figure
which passed slowly through the yellow splotches of the gas lamps, and
into the broad bars of darkness between. It was but his own shadow
which trailed up the wall as he passed the lights, and yet it looked to
the doctor's eye as though some huge and sombre figure walked by a
manikin's side and led him silently up the lonely street.
Dr. Horace Selby heard again of his patient next morning, and rather
earlier than he had expected. A paragraph in the Daily News caused him
to push away his breakfast untasted, and turned him sick and faint
while he read it. "A Deplorable Accident," it was headed, and it ran
in this way:
"A fatal accident of a peculiarly painful character is reported from
King William Street. About eleven o'clock last night a young man was
observed while endeavouring to get out of the way of a hansom to slip
and fall under the wheels of a heavy, two-horse dray. On being picked
up his injuries were found to be of the most shocking character, and he
expired while being conveyed to the hospital. An examination of his
pocketbook and cardcase shows beyond any question that the deceased is
none other than Sir Francis Norton, of Deane Park, who has only within
the last year come into the baronetcy. The accident is made the more
deplorable as the deceased, who was only just of age, was on the eve of
being married to a young lady belonging to one of the oldest families
in the South. With his wealth and his talents the ball of fortune was
at his feet, and his many friends will be deeply grieved to know that
his promising career has been cut short in so sudden and tragic a
fashion."