THE SYMPATHETIC QUACK
I
The next morning Mr. Prohack had a unique shock, for he was awakened by
his wife coming into the bedroom. She held a big piece of cake in her
hand. Never before had Mrs. Prohack been known to rise earlier than her
husband. Also, the hour was eight-twenty, whereas never before had Mr.
Prohack been known, on a working-day, to rise later than eight o'clock.
He realised with horror that it would be necessary for him to hurry.
Still, he did not jump up. He was not a brilliant sleeper, and he had
had a bad night, which had only begun to be good at the time when as a
rule he woke finally for the day. He did not feel very well, despite the
fine sensation of riches which rushed reassuringly into his arms the
moment consciousness returned.
"Arthur," said Mrs. Prohack, who was in her Chinese robe, "do you know
that girl hasn't been home all night. Her bed hasn't been slept in!"
"Neither has mine," answered Mr. Prohack. "What girl?"
"Sissie, of course."
"Ah! Sissie!" murmured Mr. Prohack as if he had temporarily forgotten
that such a girl existed. "Didn't I tell you last night she mightn't be
back?"
"No, you didn't! And you know very well you didn't!"
"Honestly," said Mr. Prohack (meaning "dishonestly" as most people do in
similar circumstances), "I thought I did."
"Do you suppose I should have slept one wink if I'd thought Sissie
wasn't coming _home_?"
"Yes, I do. The death of Nelson wouldn't keep you awake. And now either
I shall be late at the office, or else I shall go without my breakfast.
I think you might have wakened me."
Mrs. Prohack, munching the cake despite all her anxieties, replied in a
peculiar tone:
"What does it matter if you are late for the office?"
Mr. Prohack reflected that all women were alike in a lack of conscience
where the public welfare was concerned. He was rich: therefore he was
entitled to neglect his duty to the nation! A pleasing argument! Mr.
Prohack sat up, and Mrs. Prohack had a full view of his face for the
first time that morning.
"Arthur," she exclaimed, absolutely and in an instant forgetting both
cake and daughter. "You're ill!"
He thought how agreeable it was to have a wife who was so marvellously
absorbed in his being. There was something uncanny, something terrible,
in it.
"Oh, no I'm not," he said. "I swear I'm not. I'm very tired, but I'm not
ill. Get out of my way."
"But your face is as yellow as a cheese," protested Eve, frightened.
"It may be," said Mr. Prohack.
"You won't get up."
"I shall get up."
Eve snatched her hand-mirror from the dressing-table, and gave it to him
with a menacing gesture. He admitted to himself that the appearance of
his face was perhaps rather alarming at first sight; but really he did
not feel ill; he only felt tired.
"It's nothing. Liver." He made a move to emerge from the bed. "Exercise
is all I want."
He saw Eve's lips tremble; he saw tears hanging in her eyes; these
phenomena induced in him the sensation of having somehow committed a
solecism or a murder. He withdrew the move to emerge. She was hurt and
desperate. He at once knew himself defeated. He thought how annoying it
was to have a woman in the house who was so marvellously absorbed in his
being. She was wrong; but her unreasoning desperation triumphed over his
calm sagacity.
"Telephone for Dr. Veiga," said Mrs. Prohack to Machin, for whom she had
rung. "V-e-i-g-a. Bruton Street. He's in the book. And ask him to come
along as soon as he can to see Mr. Prohack."
Now Mr. Prohack had heard of, but never seen, Dr. Veiga. He had more
than once listened to the Portuguese name on Eve's lips, and the man had
been mentioned more than once at the club. Mr. Prohack knew that he was,
if not a foreigner, of foreign descent, and hence he did not like him.
Mr. Prohack took kindly to foreign singers and cooks, but not to foreign
doctors. Moreover he had doubts about the fellow's professional
qualifications. Therefore he strongly resented his wife's most singular
and startling order to Machin, and as soon as Machin had gone he
expressed himself:
"Anyway," he said curtly, after several exchanges, "I shall see my own
doctor, if I see any doctor at all--which is doubtful."
Eve's response was to kiss her husband--a sisterly rather than a wifely
kiss. And she said, in a sweet, noble voice:
"It's I that want Dr. Veiga's opinion about you, and I must insist on
having it. And what's more, you know I've never cared for your friend
Dr. Plott. He never seems to be interested. He scarcely listens to what
you have to say. He scarcely examines you. He just makes you think your
health is of no importance at all, and it doesn't really matter whether
you're ill or well, and that you may get better or you mayn't, and that
he'll humour you by sending you a bottle of something."
"Stuff!" said Mr. Prohack. "He's a first-rate fellow. No infernal
nonsense about _him!_ And what do _you_ know about Veiga? I should like
to be informed."
"I met him at Mrs. Cunliff's. He cured her of cancer."
"You told me Mrs. Cunliff hadn't got cancer at all."
"Well, it was Dr. Veiga who found out she hadn't, and stopped the
operation just in time. She says he saved her life, and she's quite
right. He's wonderful."
Mrs. Prohack was now sitting on the bed. She gazed at her husband's
features with acute apprehension and yet with persuasive grace.
"Oh! Arthur!" she murmured, "you are a worry to me!"
Mr. Prohack, not being an ordinary Englishman, knew himself beaten--for
the second time that morning. He dared not trifle with his wife in her
earnest, lofty mood.
"I bet you Veiga won't come," said Mr. Prohack.
"He will come," said Mrs. Prohack blandly.
"How do you know?"
"Because he told me he'd come at once if ever I asked him. He's a
perfect dear."
"Oh! I know the sort!" Mr. Prohack said sarcastically. "And you'll see
the fee he'll charge!"
"When it's a question of health money doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter when you've got the money. You'd never have dreamed
of having Veiga this time yesterday. You wouldn't even have sent for old
Plott."
Mrs. Prohack merely kissed her husband again, with a kind of ineffable
resignation. Then Machin came in with her breakfast, and said that Dr.
Veiga would be round shortly, and was told to telephone to the Treasury
that her master was ill in bed.
"And what about my breakfast?" the victim enquired with irony. "Give me
some of your egg."
"No, dearest, egg is the very last thing you should have with that
colour."
"Well, if you'd like to know, I don't want any breakfast. Couldn't eat
any."
"There you are!" Mrs. Prohack exclaimed triumphantly. "And yet you swear
you aren't ill! That just shows.... It will be quite the best thing for
you not to take anything until Dr. Veiga's been."
Mr. Prohack, helpless, examined the ceiling, and decided to go to the
office in the afternoon. He tried to be unhappy but couldn't. Eve was
too funny, too delicious, too exquisitely and ingenuously "firm," too
blissful in having him at her mercy, for him to be unhappy.... To say
nothing of the hundred thousand pounds! And he knew that Eve also was
secretly revelling in the hundred thousand pounds. Dr. Veiga was her
first bite at it.
* * * * *
II
Considering that he was well on the way to being a fashionable
physician, Dr. Veiga arrived with surprising promptitude. Mr. Prohack
wondered what hold Eve had upon him and how she had acquired it. He was
prejudiced against the fellow before he came into the bedroom, simply
because Eve, on hearing the noise of a car and a doorbell, had hurried
downstairs, and a considerable interval had elapsed between the doctor's
entrance into the house and his appearance at the bedside. Mr. Prohack
guessed easily that those two had been plotting against him. Strange how
Eve could be passionately loyal and basely deceitful simultaneously! The
two-faced creature led the doctor forward with a candid smile that
partook equally of the smile of a guardian angel and the smile of a
cherub. She was an unparalleled comedian.
Dr. Veiga was fattish and rather shabby; about sixty years of age. He
spoke perfectly correct English with a marked foreign accent. His
demeanour was bland, slightly familiar, philosophical and sympathetic.
Dr. Plott's eyes would have said: "This is my thirteenth visit this
morning, and I've eighteen more to do, and it's all very tedious. Why
_do_ you people let yourselves get ill--if it's a fact that you really
are ill? I don't think you are, but I'll see." Dr. Veiga's eyes said:
"How interesting your case is! You've had no luck this time. We must
make the best of things; but also we must face the truth. God knows I
don't want to boast, but I expect I can put you right, with the help of
your own strong commonsense."
Mr. Prohack, a connoisseur in human nature, noted the significances of
the Veiga glance, but he suspected that there might also be something
histrionic in it. Dr. Veiga examined heart, pulse, tongue. He tapped the
torso. He asked many questions. Then he took an instrument out of a
leather case which he carried, and fastened a strap round Mr. Prohack's
forearm and attached it to the instrument, and presently Mr. Prohack
could feel the strong pulsations of the blood current in his arm.
"Dear, dear!" said Dr. Veiga. "175. Blood pressure too high. Much too
high! Must get that down."
Eve looked as though the end of the world had been announced, and even
Mr. Prohack had qualms. Ten minutes earlier Mr. Prohack had been a
strong, healthy man a trifle unwell in a bedroom. He was suddenly
transformed into a patient in a nursing-home.
"A little catarrh," said Dr. Veiga.
"I've got no catarrh," said Mr. Prohack, with conviction.
"Yes, yes. Catarrh of the stomach. Probably had it for years. The
duodenum is obstructed. A little accident that easily happens."
He addressed himself as it were privately to Mrs. Prohack. "The duodenum
is no thicker than that." He indicated the pencil with which he was
already writing in a pocket-book. "We'll get it right."
"What is the duodenum?" Mr. Prohack wanted to cry out. But he was too
ashamed to ask. It was hardly conceivable that he, so wise, so prudent,
had allowed over forty years to pass in total ignorance of this
important item of his own body. He felt himself to be a bag full of
disconcerting and dangerous mysteries. Or he might have expressed it
that he had been smoking in criminal nonchalance for nearly half a
century on the top of a powder magazine. He was deeply impressed by the
rapidity and assurance of the doctor's diagnosis. It was wonderful that
the queer fellow could in a few minutes single out an obscure organ no
bigger than a pencil and say: "There is the ill." The fellow might be a
quack, but sometimes quacks were men of genius. His shame and his alarm
quickly vanished under the doctor's reassuring and bland manner. So much
so that when Dr. Veiga had written out a prescription, Mr. Prohack said
lightly:
"I suppose I can get up, though."
To which Dr. Veiga amiably replied:
"I shall leave that to you. Perhaps if I tell you you'll be lucky if
you don't have jaundice...! But I think you _will_ be lucky. I'll try to
look in again this afternoon."
These last words staggered both Mr. and Mrs. Prohack.
"I've been expecting this for years. I knew it would come." Mrs. Prohack
breathed tragically.
And even Mr. Prohack reflected aghast:
"My God! Doctor calling twice a day!"
True, "duodenum" was a terrible word.
Mrs. Prohack gazed at Dr. Veiga as at a high priest, and waited to be
vouchsafed a further message.
"Anyhow, if I find it impossible to call, I'll telephone in any case,"
said Dr. Veiga.
Some slight solace in this!
Mrs. Prohack, like an acolyte, personally attended the high priest as
far as the street, listening with acute attention to his
recommendations. When she returned she had put on a carefully bright
face. Evidently she had decided, or had been told, that cheerfulness was
essential to ward off jaundice.
"Now that's what I _call_ a doctor," said she. "To think of your friend
Plott...! I've telephoned for a messenger boy to go to the chemist's."
"You're at liberty to call the man a doctor," answered Mr. Prohack. "And
I'm at liberty to call him a fine character actor."
"I knew the moment you sat up it was jaundice," said Mrs. Prohack.
"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "I lay you five to one I don't have jaundice.
Not that you'd ever pay me if you lost."
Mrs. Prohack said:
"When I saw you were asleep at after eight o'clock this morning I knew
there must be something serious. I felt it. However, as the doctor says,
if we _take_ it seriously it will soon cease to be serious."
"He's not a bad phrase-maker," said Mr. Prohack.
In the late afternoon Dr. Veiga returned like an old and familiar
acquaintance, with his confident air of saying: "We can manage this
affair between us--I am almost sure." Mr. Prohack felt worse; and the
room, lighted by one shaded lamp, had begun to look rather like a real
sick-room. Mr. Prohack, though he mistrusted the foreign accent, the
unprofessional appearance, and the adventurous manner, was positively
glad to see his new doctor, and indeed felt that he had need of succour.
"Yes," said Dr. Veiga, after investigation. "My opinion is that you'll
escape jaundice. In four or five days you ought to be as well as you
were before the attack. I don't say _how_ well you were before."
Mr. Prohack instantly felt better.
"It will be very awkward if I can't get back to the office early next
week," said he.
"I'm sure it will," Dr. Veiga agreed. "And it might be still more
awkward if you went back to the office early next week, and then never
went any more."
"What do you mean?"
Dr. Veiga smiled understandingly at Mrs. Prohack, as though he and she
were the only grown-up persons in the room.
"Look here," he addressed the patient. "I see I shall have to charge you
a fee for telling you what you know as well as I do. The fact is I get
my living by doing that. How old are you?"
"Forty-six."
"Every year of the war counts double. So you're over fifty. A difficult
age. You can run an engine ten hours a day for fifty years. But it's
worn; it's second-hand. And if you keep on running it ten hours a day
you'll soon discover how worn it is. But you can run it five hours a day
for another twenty years with reasonable safety and efficiency. That's
what I wanted to tell you. You aren't the man you were, Mr. Prohack.
You've lost the trick of getting rid of your waste products. You say you
feel tired. Why do you feel tired? Being tired simply means being
clogged. The moment you feel tired your waste products are beginning to
pile up. Look at those finger joints! Waste products! Friction! Why
don't you sleep well? You say the more tired you are the worse you
sleep: and you seem surprised. But you're only surprised because you
haven't thought it out. Morpheus himself wouldn't sleep if his body was
a mass of friction-producing waste products from top to toe. You aren't
a body and soul, Mr. Prohack. You're an engine--I wish you'd remember
that and treat yourself like one. The moment you feel tired, stop the
engine. If you don't, it'll stop itself. It pretty nearly stopped
to-day. You need lubrication too. The best lubricant is a tumbler of hot
water four times a day. And don't take coffee, or any salt except what
your cook puts into the dishes. Don't try to be cleverer than nature.
Don't think the clock is standing still. It isn't. If you treat yourself
as well as you treat your watch, you'll bury me. If you don't, I shall
bury you. All that I've told you I know by heart, because I'm saying it
to men of your age every day of my life."
Mr. Prohack felt like a reprimanded schoolboy. He feared the wrath to
come.
"Don't you think my husband ought to take a long holiday?" Eve put in.
"Well, _of course_ he ought," said Dr. Veiga, opening both mouth and
eyes in protest against such a silly question.
"Six months?"
"At least."
"Where ought he to go?"
"Doesn't matter. Portugal, the Riviera, Switzerland. But it's not the
season yet for any of these places. If he wants to keep on pleasant
terms with nature he'll get out his car and motor about his own country
for a month or two. After that he might go to the Continent. But of
course he won't. I know these official gentlemen. If you ask them to
disturb their routine they'll die first. They really would sooner die.
Very natural of course. Routine is their drug."
"My husband will take six months holiday," said Eve quietly. "I suppose
you could give the proper certificate? You see in these Government
departments...."
"I'll give you the certificate to-morrow."
Mr. Prohack was pretending to be asleep, or at least to be too fatigued
and indifferent to take notice of this remarkable conversation. But as
soon as Dr. Veiga had blandly departed under the escort of Eve, he
slipped out of bed and cautiously padded to the landing where there was
a bookcase.
"Duodenum. Duodenum. Must be something to do with twelve." Then he found
a dictionary and brought it back into the bedroom and consulted it. "So
it's twelve inches long, is it?" he murmured. He had just time to plunge
into bed and pitch the dictionary under the bed before his wife
returned.
* * * * *
III
She was bending over him.
"Darling!"
He opened his deceiving eyes. Her face was within a foot of his.
"How do you feel now?"
"I feel," said he, "that this is the darnedest swindle that ever was.
If I hadn't come into a fortune I should have been back at the office
the day after to-morrow. In about eight hours, with the help of that
Portuguese mountebank, you've changed me from a sane normal man into a
blooming valetudinarian who must run all over the earth in search of
health. I've got to 'winter' somewhere, have I? You'll see. It's
absolutely incredible. It's more like Maskelyne and Cook's than anything
I ever came across." He yawned. He knew that it was the disturbed
duodenum that caused him to yawn, and that also gave him a dry mouth and
a peculiar taste therein.
"Yes, darling," Eve smiled above him the smile of her impenetrable
angelicism. "Yes, darling. You're better."
The worst was that she had beaten him on the primary point. He had
asserted that he was not ill. She had asserted that he was. She had been
right; he wrong. He could not deny, even to himself, that he was ill.
Not gravely, only somewhat. But supposing that he was gravely ill!
Supposing that old Plott would agree with all that Veiga had said! It
was conceivable. Misgivings shot through him.
And Eve had him at her sweet mercy. He was helpless. She was easily the
stronger. He perceived then, what many a husband dies without having
perceived, that his wife had a genuine individual existence and volition
of her own, that she was more than his complement, his companion, the
mother of his children.
She lowered her head further and gave him a long, fresh, damp kiss. They
were very intimate, with an intimacy that her enigmatic quality could
not impair. He was annoyed, aggrieved, rebellious, but extremely happy
in a weak sort of way. He hated and loved her, he despised and adored
her, he reprehended and admired her--all at once. What specially
satisfied him was that he had her to himself. The always-impinging
children were not there. He liked this novel solitude of two.
"Darling, where is Charlie staying in Glasgow?"
"Why?"
"I want to write to him."
"Post's gone, my poor child."
"Then I shall telegraph."
"What about?"
"Never mind."
"I shan't tell you the address unless you promise to show me the
telegram. I intend to be master in my own house even if I am dying."
Thus he saw the telegram, which ran: "Father ill in bed what is the
best motor car to buy. Love. Mother." The telegram astounded Mr.
Prohack.
"Have you taken leave of your senses?" he cried. Then he laughed. What
else was there to do? What else but the philosopher's laugh was adequate
to the occasion?
While Eve with her own unrivalled hand was preparing the bedroom for the
night, Machin came in with a telegram. Without being asked to do so Eve
showed it to the sufferer: "Tell him to buck up. Eagle six cylinder.
Everything fine here. Charles."
"I think he might have sent his love," said Eve.
Mr. Prohack no longer attempted to fight against the situation, which
was like a net winding itself round him.