Markham awoke late for the simple reason that it had been nearly morning
when he went to bed. He awoke lying flat upon his back, and looked up
dreamily at the pattern on the ceiling It was unfamiliar and that set
his mind at work, and gradually he recognized where he was and why he
was there. He reasoned idly that it must be as late as ten o'clock in
the forenoon, and knew that by reaching out his arm he could open the
shutter of the hotel window, admitting the sunlight and affording a view
over the park and the blue lake, but he was laggard about it. There was
a pleasure in debating the matter with himself. He could hear bells, the
whistling of steamers and locomotives, the rumble of carriages and the
murmur which comes from many distant voices. He recognized that another
day in a great city was fairly on, and that the thousands were in motion
while he lay listless.
He forgot the sounds and thought about himself. He acknowledged, though
with a certain lenience of judgment, the absurdity of being where he
was. He should have shown more resolve, he admitted, at 2 A.M., and have
gone to his lodgings, a mile or so away. But he had been doing good work
the night before; that, at least, should, he felt, be counted to his
credit. Payne had come on from Washington with a duty of moment to
perform, and had called upon Markham to assist him. Years had passed
since they had worked together and it was a pleasure to renew the
combination. How well they understood each other's methods, and how
easily confident they felt united! They had been dilatory with what they
had to accomplish, so self-conscious of their force were they, and had
justified themselves gracefully in the event. They had strolled forth
after their labor, the last dispatch sent, had smoked and become
reminiscent, and had been soaked by a summer rain. They had been boys
again. Of the two, Markham had been the more buoyant and more reckless.
He had been a sick man, though still upon his legs and among his
fellows, when Payne had found him. Things had been going wrong with
Markham. His equation with Her had been disturbed.
It had been a test, there was no doubt of that, especially of the woman,
the relations between Markham and her who had come to be more to him
than he had ever before known or imagined one human being could be to
another. She loved him; she had confessed that in a sweet, womanly way,
but there was an obstacle between them. Before she could become his,
there was something for him to accomplish; something hard, perplexing,
and difficult in every way. He had not been idle. He had laid the
foundations for his structure of happiness, but foundations do not
reveal themselves as do upper stories, and she could not see the careful
stonework. The domes and minarets of the castle for which she may have
longed were not in sight. He alone knew what had been his work, but she
was hardly satisfied. And, then, suddenly, because of a disturbing
fancy, founded on a fact which was yet not a fact in its relations, she
had become another being. One thing, meaning much, she had done, which
took from the man his strength. It was as if his heart had been drained
of its blood. He was not himself. He groped mentally. Was there no
faithful love in woman; no love like his, which could not help itself
and was without alternative? Were women less than men, and was
calculation or instability a possibility with the sweetest and the
noblest of them? No boy was this; he had known very many women very
well, but he was helpless as a babe in the new world he had found when
he met this one who had become so much. She had changed him mentally and
morally, and even physically, for he had been a careless liver, and she
had turned him from his drifting into a better course. She had made him,
and now, had he been a weaker man, she would have unmade him. And he had
become ill because of it, and almost desperate. Then came the evidence
that she was a woman, as good women are dreamed of, after all; and they
understood, and had come close together to hope again. It gave him life
once more. There was, and would be, the memory of the lapse, but scars
do not cripple. He was himself again. He was thinking of it all, as he
lay late in bed this summer morning. He was a sluggard, he said to
himself. He must go forth and do things--for Her. He raised his arm to
throw open the shutter.
Ah! The arm would not rise! At least the man could not extend it far
enough to open the shutter. There was a twinge of pain and a strange
stiffness of the elbow. The other arm was raised--nothing the matter
with that. The man tried to move his legs. The left responded, but the
right was as useless as the arm. There was a pain, too, across the loins
as Markham sought to turn himself in bed. He was astonished. There had
been no pain until he moved. "What's the matter with me?" he muttered.
"I'm crippled; but how, and why?"
There was quietude for a few moments and then more deliberate effort.
With his unaffected leg and arm, the victim of physical circumstances he
could not explain worked himself around as if upon a pivot until the
preponderance of his weight was outside the bed. Then, with vast
caution, he tilted himself upward gently until he found himself sitting
upon the bed's edge, his feet just touching the floor, and the crippled
member refusing to bear weight. Markham bore down upon the right foot.
It was stiff and seemed as if it would break before it bent, while the
pain was exquisite, but the man could not stay where he was. He got down
upon the floor and crawled toward his clothing. He contrived, somehow,
to dress himself, but the task accomplished, his face was pallid and he
was wet with perspiration. He tilted himself to his feet and creeping
along by the wall, reached the elevator and so finally the office floor.
There was a tinkle of glasses in the hotel saloon, and through the open
door came the fragrance of mint and pineapple. There was a white-clad,
wax-mustached man behind the bar in there, who, as Markham knew, could
make a morning cocktail "to raise the dead," and not to raise them stark
and rigid, like the bodies in Dora's "Judgment Day," but flexile and
full of life. "Jack could mix me something that would help," he thought,
and turned instinctively, but checked himself. More than a year had
passed since he had tasted a morning cocktail. There had been a promise
in the way. He looked down at his knee and foot. "Let them twist," he
said, and then called for a cab.
He did not like to do it; it was a confession of weakness, but in his
own apartments again, and in bed as the only restful place, Markham sent
for a doctor. The doctor came, not the ponderous old practitioner of the
conventional type called for by a knowing man, but one of the better
modern type, educated, a man of the world, canny with Scotch blood, but
progressive and with the experimental tendency progressive men exhibit.
Markham told what manner of cup had been put to his lips. "What's the
matter with me!" he demanded.
"Muscular rheumatism."
"And what are you going to do about it?"
"Oh, I'll follow the custom of the profession and make you a
prescription."
"And about the effect?"
"Possibly it will help you."
"Just at a casual estimate, how long am I to be crippled?"
"That depends."
"Depends on what?"
The doctor laughed. "There's a difference in rheumatism--and in men. If
you don't mind, I'll reserve my answer for a day or two."
Markham growled. The doctor went away after writing upon a bit of paper
these hieroglyphics:
[Handwriting: illegible prescription]
The prescription came, a powder of about the color of a pulverized
Rameses II, and with what Markham thought might be very nearly the
flavor of that defunct but estimable monarch. Night came also at length,
and with it came an experience, new even to this man who had been
knocked about somewhat, and who thought he knew his world. A man with a
pain and isolation can make a great study of the former, and Markham had
certainly all facilities in such uncanny direction. The day passed
drearily, but without much suffering to the man in the bed. He could
read, holding his book in his left hand, and he read far into the night.
Then he was formally introduced--he couldn't help it--to Our Lady of
Rheumatism. He was destined to become as well acquainted with her as was
Antony with Cleopatra, or Pericles with Aspasia. Not extended, but
violent, was to be the flirtation between these two.
Markham was tired and inclined to sleep, despite the obstacle
intervening with each movement. Exhaustion forces a man to sleep
sometimes when the pain which racks him is such that sleep would, under
other circumstances, be impossible. When sleeping, come dreams of
whatever object is nearest the heart, but the dreams are ever fantastic
and distorted. There may be pleasant phases to the imagined
happenings--this must be when the pain has for the moment ceased--but
the dream is usually most perplexing, and its culmination most
grotesque. At first Markham could not sleep at all. He was experiencing
new sensations. From the affected leg and arm the nerves telegraphed to
the brain certain interesting information. It was to the effect that a
little pot was boiling on--or under--one leg and one arm. It was in the
hollow underneath the knee, and that opposite the elbow joint that the
boiling was--hardly a boil at first. The pain was not a twinge, it was
not an ache, it was just a faintly simmering, vaguely hurting thing,
enough to keep a man awake. Move but a trifle and the simmer became a
boil. So the man lay still and suffered, not intensely, but
irritatingly. And at last, despite the simmering, he slept.
"What dreams may come!" Markham slept, and, sleeping, he was with his
love again, or at least trying to be. And what a season of it he had! It
appeared late evening to him--it might be nine o'clock--but there was
moonlight, while close to the ground was a white fog. He knew that She
was waiting on a street only a block away from him, but he must pass
through a park, a square rather densely wooded, with an iron fence about
it and gates at the center on each side. From one gate to another a path
led straight across through the thick shrubbery. In the queer
combination of moon and fog all seemed uncanny, but he was going to meet
Her and nothing mattered. He entered the little park jauntily, and went
a few yards up the graveled walk between the trees and bushes, when
there arose before him a startling figure. It was that of a man, or
rather monster, with a huge chest, but narrow loins and oddly spindle
legs, and with a white, dead face malignant of expression. The monster
barred the passage and gestured menacingly, but uttered not a word.
Markham did not care much. He was simply on his way to meet Her, and as
for monsters and _outre_ things in general, what did they amount to! He
was going to meet Her! He advanced a little and studied the creature. "I
can lick him," he soliloquized. "He's a whale about the chest but he's
weak about the small of the back, and his legs are nothing, and I'll
break him in two--him! I've got to meet Her!"
He plunged ahead, and suddenly the monster drifted aside into the bushes
and out of sight. Markham went on to the gate opening upon the opposite
street. He emerged upon the sidewalk and looked about for the woman he
loved. She was not there. A most matter-of-fact looking man came along,
and Markham asked him who or what it was that barred the passage in the
park. "That?" said the wayfarer, "Oh, he's nothing! He's only The
Mechanical Arbor Man!"
The explanation was enough for Markham. Any explanation is enough for
any one in a dream. He went down the sidewalk fully satisfied with what
was said, and intent only upon his errand. He must find his love. Maybe
she had walked along to the next block. A group of bicyclists were
careering by as he crossed the street. One of them passed so close that
he ran over Markham's foot. Talk of sudden agony! It came then. The man
awoke. It was three o'clock in the morning, and his rheumatism had
developed suddenly into an agony. He said he would be practical. Surely,
medical science, if it could not do away with a disease all at once,
could alleviate extraordinary pain. Why should a man suffer needlessly?
He sent for the doctor, and there was another brush of words between
them. A degree of fun as well, for the doctor was not enduring anything,
and was making a study of the case, and Markham was, between the
ebullitions of agony, amused to an extent with his own strange physical
condition. It seemed like prestidigitation to him. Here is what the
doctor gave for his relief:
[Handwriting: illegible prescription]
The dose was taken as directed, and the man, suffering, set his teeth
and awaited results. They did not come. The dose was repeated,
duplicated and triplicated recklessly, but without result. The pain had
grown to such proportions that the nerves had become hysterical, and
would be stilled by no physician's potion. They were beyond all reason.
This is but a simple, brief account of a man and a woman and some
rheumatism. It has no plot, and is but the record of events. The
immediate sequence just at this stage of happenings was an analysis by
Markham of what it was he was enduring--that is, an attempt at analysis.
He was, necessarily, not at his best in a discriminating way. The
account may aid the doctors, though. Those of them who have not had
rheumatism must labor under disadvantages in a diagnosis.
There are certain great holes in great rocks by the sea into which the
water enters through submarine channels and creeps up and up, increasing
its bubbling and its seething, as the flood fills the natural well until
when the top is reached there is a boiling caldron. This is flood tide.
So it seemed to him, came the pain to Markham. There would be no
suffering, and then would come the faint perception that something
unpleasant was about to happen in a certain locality, it might be almost
anywhere, for the rheumatism was no longer confining itself to the
right leg and the right arm, but rioted through all the man's limbs and
about his back and shoulders. It went about like a vulture after food,
alighting where it found prey to suit its fancy.
There would be the bubble and trickle beneath the knee and in the calf
of the leg, and then would come the increase of turbulence as the flood
rose, and then the boiling and the torture culminating throughout a long
hour and a half. Then the new murmur somewhere else and the same event.
Even in a finger or a toe definitely would the thing at times occur, the
pain being, if possible, more intense in such event, because, seemingly,
more contracted.
Pains may be said to have colors; in fact, this can be recognized even
by the less imaginative. A burn, a cut, you have a scarlet pain. A slap
might produce a pink pain, something less intense. But the pain of
rheumatism is of another sort; there is no glitter to it. It is always
blue, light at first, and gradually deepening until it becomes the very
blue-blackness of all misery. This is the muscular stage; when it
reaches the inflammatory there is a new sensation, something almost
grinding. This latter feature Markham had to learn, for when morning
broke, a single toe and all of one hand were swollen and unbendable. He
was becoming an expert on sensations. He had formed his own idea of the
Spanish Inquisition. It had never invented anything worth while, after
all!
At 11 A.M. all pain suddenly ceased--even Our Lady of Rheumatism tires
temporarily of caressing--and the exhausted man slept. What a sleep it
was--glorious, but not dreamless. He was wandering through the halls of
the greatest fair the world has ever seen, and he had a purse! The
exhibitors were selling things, and what marvels he bought for Her!
There were Russian sables fit for her slender shoulders, and he took
them. Robes of the silver fox as soft as eider-down, and a cloak of
royal ermine; he secured them, too. She was fond of rubies, and he
purchased the most glorious of them all. For himself he bought but a
single thing, a picture of a woman with a neck like hers. And then,
wandering about seeking more gifts, he came to where they were melting a
silver statue of an actress and stepped into a pan of the molten metal!
He awoke then. Our Lady was caressing him again.
The doctor came and heard the story, and to say that Markham exhibited a
great command of language in the telling, would be to do him but mild
justice. The doctor, accustomed to his kind changed into wild animals by
pain, only laughed. And then that Hagenback of his profession wrote upon
a piece of paper this:
[Handwriting: illegible prescription]
There is no definiteness to this account. There is no relevance between
time and occurrences, save in a vague, general way. A month would cover
all the tale, but there are lapses. Markham suffered steadily, but not
so patiently as would have done another man. The doctor visited him
regularly, and they had difficulties such as will occur between men
learning to understand each other pretty well, and so risking all
debate. Two other prescriptions the doctor made, and these were all, not
counting repetitions at the druggists. These two prescriptions, one,
another ineffectual sedative, so great was the man's suffering, and the
other but a segment of the medical program looking toward a cure, may be
dropped into the matter casually.
So the man sick with what makes strong men yield, struggled and
suffered, until there came to him one day a man of color. Black as the
conventional ace of spades was this man, and most impudent of
expression, but he bore a note from Her. She had known him formerly but
as a serving man in a boarding-house, but he had told to another
servant, in her hearing, of how he had been engaged for years in a
Turkish bath, and how he had cured a certain great man of rheumatism.
She had remembered it, and had summoned this person of deep color that
she might send him to the man she loved. There are a number of men in
the world who can imagine what this messenger was to Markham under such
circumstances! What to any healthy and healthful man is evidence of
thinking about and for him from the one woman!
He questioned the visitor. He learned that he was at present a
professional prize-fighter, most of the time out of an engagement. His
appearance tended to establish his veracity in this particular instance.
He looked like a thug and looked like a person out of employment for a
long time.
What could he do? was demanded of the messenger. Well, he could "cure de
rheumatism, shuah." How would he do it? He would "take de gemman to a
Turkish bath and rub him and put some stuff on him."
Of course Markham was going to try the remedy. He would have tried a
prescription of sleeping all night on wet grass under a upas tree, if
such a remedy for rheumatism had come from Her. But he was fair about
it all. He sent for the doctor. It was on this occasion that occurred
their first controversy.
The doctor did not object to the Turkish bath nor the manipulation by
the prize-fighter. "Be careful," he said, "when you come out--don't get
a chill--and it may help you. What he rubs you with won't hurt you, and
the rubbing is good in itself."
[Handwriting: illegible prescription]
"But why haven't your prescriptions made me well?" demanded Markham.
The doctor was placid. "Because we don't know enough about rheumatism
yet," he answered.
"Well, what excuse has your profession? You've been fooling about for
thousands of years and don't know yet the real cause of a common
ailment. What is rheumatism, anyhow?"
The doctor was conservative in his expression.
"It's a microbe," blurted out Markham. "I tell you it's a microbe! They
are holding congresses and town meetings and pink teas all over me!
There's a Browning Society meeting in my left knee just now, and that's
what makes the agony. How could there be such a skipping about from one
place to another, neither place diseased in itself, if there were not an
active, living agency at work? Tell me that!"
The doctor admitted that microbes might cause the trouble. But he had a
word or two to say about this individual case. There had been but a
little over three weeks of the agony. The case was a particularly bad
one, and he didn't mind admitting that the patient was particularly
intractable and doubting. Optimism had much to do with a recovery in
most cases of illness, and optimism was here lacking. But he would wager
a box of cigars that the patient was on his feet again within two weeks.
The wager was taken with great promptness, and then the patient was
loaded into a cab and sent off with the black prize-fighter.
What happened in that Turkish bath will never be told with all its
proper lurid coloring. The prize-fighter stopped at a drug store and
bought a mixture of cocoanut oil and alcohol. Markham took a bath in the
usual way, and then was taken by the demon controlling him into the
apartment for soaping and all cleansing and manipulation. Here occurred
the tragedy. One leg had become stiffened, and the prize-fighter
suddenly jumped upon it and broke it down, and Markham rolled off the
marble slab, almost fainting from the pain. Then he recovered and tried
to fight, but could do nothing, being a weak cripple, and was literally
beaten into limberness. Then, using awful language, but helpless, he was
carried to the cooling room and there rubbed with the alcohol and oil.
He was taken to the cab more dead than alive. That night he had a little
rest, and dreamed of Her, and how she had sent him a black angel with
white wings. The next day he went with the prize-fighter again, but
informed him that when well he should kill him. For three days this
continued. The fourth day the prize-fighter got drunk and was arrested,
and was sent to jail for thirty days. Meanwhile Markham had continued
the physician's prescriptions faithfully. A week later he was
practically well.
The man, walking again, went to Her. He said, "You have been my
salvation, as usual."
"I don't know," she answered, thoughtfully. "I do know this, though,
dear, that with you away from me and ill, I realized somehow more fully
what you are to me. I wanted to do things. I have read often about a
mother and a child. I think I had something of that feeling. I know now
about us; we must never misunderstand again. I don't think the colored
man helped you much, and I understand he is a most disreputable person."
He looked into her eyes, but uttered only a sentence of two words,
"Little Mother."
Markham visited the doctor, proud on his way of the swing of his legs
again. "It was a pretty swift cure," he said, "and I suppose you ought
to have some of the credit for it."
[Handwriting: illegible prescription]
The doctor advanced the proposition that he ought to have, with nature,
not some, but all of the credit.
"There's a difference in patients," he remarked, "and when you began to
improve you 'hustled.' But my treatment, those prescriptions, offset the
poison--call it microbes, if you wish--in your blood and gave your
physique and constitution and general health a chance. The darky does
not figure."
There was a good-natured debate, Markham being now reasonable, but no
conclusion. What did cure Markham? Was it the physician's treatment, the
course with the prize-fighter, or the effect upon Markham's mind of the
fact that the latter was all from Her? Will some one say?
A week or two after his complete recovery, Markham asked the doctor what
course to follow to avoid a possible recurrence at any time of what he
had endured. The physician was very much in earnest in his answer. "Be
careful of what you eat and drink," he said, "and careful of yourself in
a general way aside from that. Do not take risks of colds. Be, in short,
a man of sense regarding your physical welfare."
"But I'm going into the woods of Northern Michigan on a shooting and
fishing trip," was the answer, "and we've got to sleep on the ground,
and to a certainty, we'll fall into some creek or lake on an average of
once a day; and, old man, we've room for another in the party."
"I'll come!" said the doctor.
But what cured Markham?