CHAPTER XII
The surest test of a man’s efficiency is to leave him in a responsible post with nothing to trust to save his own skill and courage. Young doctors, like raw soldiers, are prone to panic, and your theoretical genius may bungle over the slitting of a whitlow, though he be the possessor of numberless degrees.
Mere book lore never instilled virility into a man, and Frederick Inglis, B.A., A.M., B.Sc., D.Ph., gilded to the last button with the cleverness of the schools, was an amiable fellow whose cultured and finnicking exterior covered unhappy voids of self-distrust. It had been very well for him so long as he could play with a few new drugs, look quietly clever, and leave the grimness of the responsibility to Murchison. Dr. Inglis had found private practice a pleasant pastime. He had come from the laboratories full to the brim with the latest scientific sensations, and a preconceived pity for the average sawbones in the provinces. He boasted a brilliant air so long as he was second in command. It was possible to pose behind the barrier of another man’s strength.
That same Saturday night Murchison’s highly educated assistant had been dragged out of bed at two in the morning, and taken in a bumping milk-cart to a farm some five miles north of Roxton. His youth had been flouted on the very threshold by a stern, keen-eyed woman who had expressed herself dissatisfied with the offer of a juvenile opinion. Dr. Inglis had blushed, and rallied his dignity. Dr. Murchison had intrusted the practice to him; what more could a mere farmer’s wife desire?
Above, in a big bed, Dr. Inglis discovered a fat man writhing with what appeared to be a prosaic and violent colic. A simple case, perhaps, to the lay understanding, but abdominal diagnosis may be a nightmare to a surgeon. It is like feeling for a pea through the thickness of a pillow.
Two straight-backed, hard-faced, and very awesome ladies stood at the bottom of the bed and watched Dr. Inglis with sceptical alertness. The assistant fumbled, stammered, and looked hot. The women exchanged glances. A man’s personal fitness is soon gauged in a sick-room.
“Well, doctor, what’s your opinion?”
The challenge was given with a tilt of the nose and a somewhat suggestive sniff.
“Abdominal colic, madam. The pain is often very violent.”
“Ah, eh, and what may abdominal colic be due to?”
Dr. Inglis bridled at the tone, and attempted the part of Zeus.
“Many causes, very many causes. Mr. Baxter has never had such an attack before, I presume.”
“Never.”
“Yes—how are you feeling, sir?”
“Bad, mighty bad,” came the voice from the feather pillows.
The two austere women seemed to grow taller and more aggressive.
“Do you think you understand the case, doctor?”
“Madam!”
“I wish Dr. Murchison had come himself; my husband has such faith in him.”
Dr. Inglis grew hot with noble indignation.
“Just as you please,” he said, with hauteur, yet looking awed by the tall women beside the bed. “My qualifications are as good as any man’s in Roxton.”
The conceit failed before those two hard and Calvinistic faces.
“I believe in experience, sir; no offence to you.”
“Then you wish me to send for Dr. Murchison?”
“I do.”
And the theoretical youth experienced guilty relief despite the insult to his age and dignity.
Sunday morning came with a flood of gold over Marley Down. The greens and purples were brilliant beyond belief; a blue haze covered the distant hills; woodland and pasture glimmered in the valleys. The faint chiming of the bells of Roxton stirred the air as Kate Murchison walked the garden before the cottage, looking like one who had been awake all night beside a sick-bed. Her face betrayed lines of exhaustion, a dulling of the natural freshness, streaks of shadow under the eyes. She had that half-blind expression, the expression of those whose thoughts are engrossed by sorrow; the trick of seeing without comprehending the significance of the things about her.
She turned suddenly by the gate, and stood looking over the down. The very brilliancy of the summer coloring almost hurt her tired eyes. A familiar sound drowned the Roxton chiming as she listened, and brought a sharp twinge of anxiety to her face. Rounding the pine woods the rakish outline of her husband’s car showed up over the banks of gorse between the cottage and the high-road. The machine came panting over the down, leaving a drifting trail of dust to sully the sunlight. Catherine caught her breath with impatient dread. This day of all days, when defeat was heavy on her husband! Could they not let him rest? If these selfish sick folk only knew!
Dr. Inglis’s gold-rimmed pince-nez glittered nervously over the fence. He was a spare, boyish-looking fellow, with twine-colored hair, weak eyes, and a mouth that attempted resolute precision. Catherine hated him for the moment as he lifted his hat, and opened the gate with a deprecating and colorless smile. Dr. Inglis had the air of a young man much worried, one whose self-esteem had been severely ruffled, and who had been forbidden sleep and a hearty breakfast.
“Good-morning. A mean thing, I’m sure, to bother Dr. Murchison, but really—”
Catherine met him, looking straight and stanch in contrast to the theorist’s faded feebleness.
“What is the matter?”
“Mr. Baxter, of Boland’s Farm, is seriously ill. An obscure case. His wife wishes—”
Catherine foreshadowed what was to come. The assistant appeared to have suffered at the hands of anxious and nagging relatives.
“Well?”
“A serious case, I’m afraid. I am sure Dr. Murchison would not wish me to assume all the responsibility. The wife, Mrs. Baxter, is rather an excitable woman—”
His apologetics would have been amusing at any other season. Catherine bit her lip and ignored the limp youth’s deprecating and sensitive distress.
“They wish to see my husband?”
“Yes; I must suggest, Mrs. Murchison—”
“I understand the matter perfectly. Dr. Murchison cannot come.”
She was bold, nay, aggressive, and the theorist looked blank behind his glasses.
“Am I to infer—?”
“Dr. Murchison is not well,” and she hesitated, groping fiercely for excuses; “he has had—I think—some kind of ptomaine poisoning. Yes, he is better now, and asleep. I cannot have him disturbed.”
“Indeed! I am excessively sorry. May I—?”
She saw the proposal quivering on his lips, and beat it back ere it was uttered.
“Thank you, no; you had better call in Dr. Hicks; he will advise you temporarily. Dr. Murchison will be able to resume work, I hope, to-morrow. If the case is very urgent—”
Dr. Inglis tugged at his gloves.
“I will send over word,” he said, dejectedly.
“Thank you; you sympathize, I am sure.”
“Of course.” And being a nice youth he showed his consideration by retreating and buttoning his coat up over his burden of incompetence.
The physical prostration of a strong man who has sinned against his body is as nothing to the bitter humiliation of his soul. Ethical defeat is the most poignant of all disasters. Like an athlete who has strained heart and lungs only to be beaten, he feels that anguish of exhaustion, that miserable sense of impotence, the conviction that his strength has been of no avail. Spiritual defeat has its more subtle agonies. In some such overwhelming of the soul the man may turn his face like Hezekiah to the wall, and refuse to be comforted because of his own shame.
To Catherine her husband’s awakening anguish had been pitiable in the extreme. He had lain like one wounded to the death, refusing to be comforted or to be assured of hope. Slowly, as she had sat by him and held his hand, he had told her everything, blurting out the confession with a sullen yet desperate self-hate. The very pathos of her trust in him, the divine quickness in her to forgive, had been as girdles of thorn about his body. What had he done to justify her love? Disgraced and humiliated her in this haven of rest her hands had made for him!
To appreciate to the full the irony of life, a man has but to be unfortunate for—perhaps—three days. It was about four in the afternoon when Catherine, sitting beside her husband’s bed, heard the unwelcome panting of the car. The man Gage had driven fast from Boland’s Farm. He had a letter from Dr. Inglis, an urgent message, so he had been told.
Catherine met him at the gate, and took the letter to her husband.
“A message, dear, from Dr. Inglis.”
He reached for it with a hand that trembled, his eyes faltering from her face. She sat down by the bed, watching him silently as he tore open the envelope and read the letter.
“Dear Murchison,—Please come over at once, if possible. Hicks has diagnosed acute internal strangulated hernia. He has been called off to a midwifery case. The relatives are getting out of hand. I think an immediate operation will be necessary. I have been to Lombard Street, and got the instruments together.“Inglis.”
“Dear Murchison,—Please come over at once, if possible. Hicks has diagnosed acute internal strangulated hernia. He has been called off to a midwifery case. The relatives are getting out of hand. I think an immediate operation will be necessary. I have been to Lombard Street, and got the instruments together.
“Inglis.”
The jerky, straggling sentences betrayed the theorist’s loss of nerve and self-control. It was evident that the gentleman with the gilded degrees was in no enviable panic.
“Well, dear?”
She bent over him, and touched his forehead.
“I shall have to go,” he said, sombrely.
“Go, but you are not fit!”
He sat up in bed, looked at her, and gave a wry and miserable smile.
“If I had not been such an infernal fool! The last time, Kate, I swear!”
She caught the letter and read it through.
“Inglis is a miserable thing to lean on.”
“Don’t blame the youngster. At least he is sober.”
She winced, as though his self-condemnation hurt her, and surrendering her fortitude of a sudden, broke out into tears. Murchison looked at her helplessly, feeling like a man bound and chained by the shame of his own manhood. He felt himself unworthy to touch her, too much humiliated even to offer comfort. The very sincerity of his self-disgust drove him to action. He sprang out of bed and began to dress.
Catherine, still sobbing, went to the window and strove to overcome the shuddering weakness that had seized her. Her husband’s determination appeared to increase at the expense of her surrender. It was as though they had exchanged moods in a moment, and that the wife’s tears had given the man courage.
“Kate.”
She leaned against the window, and brushed her tears aside with her hand.
“Forgive me, dear. I was a fool, an accursed fool. Never again. Trust me.”
He touched her arm appealingly, like an awed lover who fears to offend. Catherine turned her head and looked at him, her courage shining through her tears.
“Your words hurt me. You called yourself a drunkard. No, no, you are not that. Oh, my beloved, I need you now—and you must go.”
His arms were round her in an instant.
“Wife, look up. God help me, I will conquer the curse! How can I fail, with you?”
“Never again?—swear it.”
“Never. It was a trick of the brain, a damned piece of moral vanity. And I am a man who advises others!”
She turned, and, standing before the glass, pinned on her hat and threw her dust cloak round her.
“I will come with you.”
“Where?”
“Home, to the children,” and she gave a great sob. “Mrs. Graham can look after the cottage. You will want me at home.”
“Wife, I want you always.”
CHAPTER XIII
It is the privilege of short-tempered women to wax testy under the touch of trouble, and Mrs. Baxter, her hard face querulous and unlovely, stood in the doorway of Boland’s Farm, watching the road for the flash of the doctor’s lamps. A couple of cypress-trees, dead and brown towards the house, built a deep porch above the door. Beyond the white palings of the garden the broad roof of a barn swept up against the sombre azure of the summer night; and the blackness of the byres and outhouses contrasted with the lawn that was lit by the lighted windows. To the west stood four great Lombardy poplars whose leaves made the night breeze seem restless about the house.
The austere figure of her sister joined itself to Mrs. Baxter’s under the cypresses. They talked together in undertones as they watched the road, their voices harsh and unmusical even in an attempted whisper. Mrs. Baxter and Miss Harriet Season were tall and sinewy women, narrow of face and mind, hard in eye and body, their sense of sex reduced to insignificance. The unfortunate Inglis, who sat pulling at his watch-chain beside Mr. Thomas Baxter’s bed, had found their hawk faces too keen and uncompromising for his self-esteem. They had scented out his incompetence as two old crows will scent out carrion.
“Drat the man, is he never coming!”
Mrs. Baxter smoothed her dress, and stood listening irritably, an angular and inelegant silhouette against the lamp-light.
“Just hear Tom groaning.”
“And that poor ninny sitting by the bed and trying to look wise. Ain’t that a light over the willows? I shall lose my temper if it ain’t Murchison.”
Miss Harriet tilted her head like an attentive parrot.
“I can hear the thing puffing.”
“Just keep quiet—can’t you?”
“Lor, Mary, you are peevish!”
“How can I listen with all your chattering?”
Murchison, depressed and out of heart, met these two ladies at the farm-house door. They greeted him with no relieved and hysterical profuseness. Mrs. Baxter extended a red-knuckled hand, looking like a woman ready to express a grievance.
“Glad you’ve come at last, doctor; we’ve been waiting long enough.”
They ushered Murchison into the parlor, a room that cultivated ugliness from the wool-work mantel-cover to the red and yellow rug before the door. Murchison, like most professional men, had become accustomed to the impertinent petulance of sundry middle-class patients. Unstrung and inwardly humiliated as he was that night, the austere woman’s tartness roused his impatience.
“My car broke down on the way. How is Mr. Baxter?” and he pulled off his gloves.
“Bad, sir, sorry to say. I can’t think, doctor, how you could send that young chap over here.”
“Dr. Inglis?”
“He don’t know his business; we hadn’t any faith in him from the minute he entered the door.”
“Dr. Inglis is perfectly competent to represent me when I am away from Roxton.”
“Indeed, doctor, I beg to differ.”
Mrs. Baxter’s grieved contempt suggested that Murchison had no Christian right to rest or eat when duty called him. Had the lady been less selfish and aggressive she might have been struck by the man’s tired eyes and nervous, irritable manner. But Mrs. Baxter was one of those crude and complacent people who never consider the sensitive complexities of others.
“I will see your husband at once.”
“I hope you’re not going to operate, doctor.”
Murchison’s face betrayed his irritation as he moved towards the door.
“My dear madam, do you wish me to attend your husband, or do you not?”
The bony woman tilted her chin.
“I don’t hold with people being cut about with knives.”
Ignorance when insolent is doubly exasperating, and Murchison was in no mood for an argument.
“Mrs. Baxter, from what Dr. Hicks has said, your husband will die unless operated on immediately.”
The farmer’s wife shrugged, and pressed her lips together.
“Very well, doctor, have your own way.”
“If I am to attend your husband you must trust in my opinion.”
“Oh—of course. Do what you think proper, sir. I know we don’t signify.”
Murchison abandoned Mrs. Baxter to her prejudices, and climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where Dr. Inglis dabbled scalpels and artery forceps in surgical trays. The assistant’s thin face welcomed his superior with a worried yet grateful smile. No heroine of romance had listened more eagerly for the sound of her lover’s gallop than had Dr. Inglis for the panting of Murchison’s car.
On the bed with its white chintz valance and side curtains lay the farmer, skin ashy, eyes sunken, the typical facies of acute abdominal obstruction. A sickly stench rose from a basin full of brown vomit beside the bed. The man hiccoughed and groaned as he breathed, each spasm of the diaphragm drawing a quivering gulp of pain.
Murchison, his eyes noting each significant detail, seated himself on the edge of the bed. He had hoped that Inglis might have been mistaken, and that he should find the case less grave than Dr. Hicks had suggested. Murchison dreaded the thought of an operation, even as a tired man dreads the duty he cannot justify. He felt unequal to the nerve strain that the ordeal demanded, for his hand was not the steady hand of the master for the night. Slowly and with the uttermost care he examined the man, realizing with each sign and symptom that Hicks’s diagnosis appeared too true. There was no escaping from the gravity of the crisis. Unless relieved, Thomas Baxter would surely die.
Murchison rose with a tired sigh, and pressing his eyes for a moment with the fingers of his right hand, went to the table where Inglis had been arranging the instruments and dressings.
“You have anæsthetics?”
“Yes. Are you going to operate?”
“Yes, I must. It is our only chance.”
“And the bed, it is a regular feather pit.”
“We have to put up with these things in the country. I have performed tracheotomy with a pair of scissors and a hair-pin.”
Inglis had faith enough in his chief’s resources. True, Murchison looked fagged and out of fettle, yet the theorist little suspected how greatly the elder man dreaded what was before him. Poor Porteus Carmagee’s port had worked havoc with that delicate marvel, the brain of the scientific age. Murchison had sustained a moral shock, and he was still tremulous with humiliation and remorse. One of the most trying ordeals of surgery lay before him, with every disadvantage to test his skill. A weaker man might have temporized, or played the traitor by surrendering to nature. Murchison’s conscience was too strong to suffer him to shirk his duty.
He crossed the room to the bed, and bent over the farmer.
“Mr. Baxter, you are very ill; we must give you chloroform.”
The man’s sunken eyes looked up pathetically into Murchison’s face.
“Oh, dear Lord, doctor, anything; I can’t stand the gripe of it much longer.”
“You understand that I am going to operate on you?”
“All right, sir, do just what you think proper.”
In a few minutes the instrument table, with a powerful electric surgical-lamp, had been brought near the bed. Murchison had taken off his coat, tied on an apron, and was soaking his hands in perchloride of mercury. Inglis had the chloroform mask over the farmer’s face. The man was weak with the anguish he had suffered, and took the anæsthetic without a struggle. Soon came the twitching of the limbs and the incoherent babbling as the vapor took effect. Murchison gave a rapid glance at the instrument table to see that everything he needed was to hand. Then he bared the farmer’s body, packed it round with towels, and began to scrub and cleanse the skin.
“He’s nearly under, sir.”
“Good.”
Murchison felt Baxter’s pulse, and frowned.
“We must waste no time,” he remarked, setting back his shoulders.
“The pupil reflex has gone.”
“Keep him as lightly under as you can.”
There was the glimmer of a knife, and a long streaking of the skin with red. Murchison worked rapidly, spreading the lips of the wound with the fingers of his left hand while he plied the knife. The patient’s stertorous breathing seemed to fill the room. Murchison swabbed the wound briskly, and worked on with grim and quiet patience.
Soon half a dozen artery forceps were dangling about the wound. Murchison was bending over the farmer, insinuating his hand into the abdominal cavity. Inglis glanced at him with a worried air.
“Can you feel anything, sir?”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t like the pulse.”
“We must risk it; watch the breathing.”
Murchison’s forehead had become full of lines. His face was the face of a man whose intelligence is strained to the utmost pitch of sensitiveness. The ordeal of touch, the education of four finger-tips, stood between failure and success.
Inglis shot a questioning glance at his chief’s face.
“Found anything?”
“No. I must enlarge the wound.”
The knife went to work again, with swabs and artery forceps to choke the blood flow. Murchison was sweating as though he had run half a mile under a July sun. There was an impatient twitching of the muscles of his face. He breathed fast and deeply, like a man whose staying power is being taxed.
“Confound the man’s fat!”
Inglis smiled feebly but sympathetically.
“Not an easy case.”
“Wait. No, I thought I had something. Look after the pulse.”
The strain was beginning to tell on Murchison after the overthrow of the previous night. He looked jaded, pale, and impatient. The reek of the anæsthetic made the blood buzz in his temples. At such a time a surgeon needs superhuman nerve, that iron patience that is never flustered.
Minutes passed, and the skilled fingers were still baffled. Murchison straightened his back with a kind of groan.
“Wipe my forehead,” he said, curtly.
Inglis leaned forward, and wiped the sweat away with a napkin.
“Thanks,” and he went to work again, yet with a hand that trembled. That supreme self-control had deserted him for the moment. He seemed feverish and spasmodic, out of temper with the difficulties of the case.
“The devil take it! Ah—at last.”
He drew a relieved breath, his eyes brightening, his face clearing a little. The deft fingers had succeeded, and swabs and sponges were soon at work. Sweat dropped from his forehead into the wound, but Murchison did not heed it in his strained intentness.
“Pass me some sponges. Thanks. Count for me.”
More minutes passed before Murchison lifted his head with a great sigh of relief.
“Thank God, that’s over.”
“Shall I stop the chloroform?”
“No, keep it on a little longer. How many sponges were there? Six? One, two, three, four, five, and the last. Now for the ligatures,” and he handled the threads with quivering fingers.
Inglis was feeling the man’s pulse.
“He won’t stand much more, Murchison.”
“All right, you can stop.”
Scarcely had the concentration of his mind force relaxed for him than Murchison felt dizzy in the head, and saw a luminous fog before his eyes. Sweat ran from him; the room seemed saturated with the reek of chloroform. The reaction rushed on him with a feeling of nausea and a great sense of faintness at the heart. Bandage in hand, he swayed back, collapsed into a chair, and bent his head down between his knees.
A decanter of brandy stood on the dressing-table. Inglis, not a little scared, darted for it, and poured out a heavy dose into a tumbler.
“What’s up, Murchison? Here, drink this down. Baxter’s all right for the moment.”
Murchison lifted a gray face from between his hands to the light.
“Thanks, Inglis, I feel done up. Don’t bother about me. I shall be right again in a moment.”
He put the brandy aside, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Inglis was completing the bandaging of the wound that Murchison had left unfinished. The farmer was breathing heavily, a streak of foam blubbering at his blue and swollen lips.
“You had better turn home, sir, I can manage now.”
Murchison rose wearily and went to wash his hands.
“You must be fagged, Inglis,” he retorted.
“Not a bit of it,” and the theorist displayed more courage now that the responsibility was on other shoulders.
“You might stay for an hour or two. I left word in Roxton for Nurse Sprange to come out. You must put up with the old ladies’ tongues.”
The assistant frowned slightly as he recollected Mrs. Baxter and her sister.
“You will see them, Murchison, before you go?”
“Yes, of course.”
The two shallow-chested women were waiting for news in the hideous parlor. Even Mrs. Baxter’s stupidity could not ignore the look of distress on Murchison’s face. By the time the doctors had taken, she guessed that an operation had been performed, and by Murchison’s manner that it had not proved successful.
“Well, doctor, bad news, I suppose?”
Mrs. Baxter was more ready to quarrel than to weep.
“The operation has been perfectly satisfactory.”
“Indeed!”
“Your husband is still in very grave danger, but I see no reason why he should not recover.”
Murchison picked his gloves out of his hat. An expressive glance passed between Mrs. Baxter and her sister.
“You’re not going, doctor?”
“Yes, Dr. Inglis remains in charge. One of the Roxton nurses will be here any moment.”
The farmer’s wife betrayed her indignation.
“What, that ninny! He ain’t fit to doctor a cat. I tell you, Dr. Murchison, I don’t want him in my house.” The man’s eyes flashed in his tired face. The woman’s impertinence was insufferable.
“Really, madam, Dr. Inglis is perfectly competent to be left in charge. I shall see your husband early to-morrow.”
Mrs. Baxter sniffed.
“Well, I call it an insult!”
“Call it what you will, my dear woman, but I need rest—like other people, and I must go.”
And go he did, leaving two sour and quarrelsome faces at the farm-house door.
At Lombard Street, Catherine was waiting for her husband after putting Gwen and Jack to bed. She rose anxiously at the sound of the car, and met Murchison in the hall. His face shocked her even in the shaded lamplight. He looked like a man who had come through some great travail.
“James, dear—how—”
“I’m through with it, thank God!”
“Safely?”
“Yes.”
“Well done—well done. I know how you have suffered.”
CHAPTER XIV
Murchison slept the sleep of the just that night, to wake to the golden stillness of a July day. With the return of consciousness came a feeling of profound relief as he remembered the ordeal of the preceding evening. Catherine had risen while he was yet asleep, and was standing before the pier-glass combing her lambent hair. Murchison’s eyes had opened to all the familiar beauty of the room, the delicate touches of color, the books and pictures, the sunlight shining upon the curtains with their simple stencilling of scarlet tulips. He lay still awhile, watching his wife, and the tremulous glimmer of the golden threads tossed from the sweeping comb. Catherine had been spared the lot of many of the married, that casual kindness, that familiar monotony that smothers all romance. Love is often blessed when gleaning the fields of sorrow, and the pathos of life is an inspiration towards poetry. Those who suffer most are the children of the spirit. Life never loses its mystery for the idealist, while yourépicierhas no stronger joy than the purchasing of a red-wheeled gig or the building of some abominable and inflamed-face villa.
Murchison rose, kissed his wife, and dressed to the sound of his children laughing and romping in the nursery. There was something invigorating to him in their noisy prattle, a breath of the east wind, a glimpse of the sea. On the landing he met Miss Gwen running to him with open arms. Murchison seized on the child, and kissed her, as though God had given him a pledge of honor. The clean home-life seemed very sweet to him that morning. He felt strong and sure again, ready to retrieve the unhappiness of yesterday.
The day’s first rebuff met him at the breakfast-table when a rough cart stopped outside the house, and the maid brought him a dirty note from Boland’s Farm, with “Immediate” scrawled across the corner of the envelope. Instinct warned Murchison that it contained bad news, and Catherine saw the clouding of her husband’s face as he read the letter.
“Mr. Baxter is worse, dear?”
“Yes,” and he passed her the note; “it is the species of case that breeds bad feeling.”
Catherine flushed angrily as she read the letter. It came from Mrs. Baxter, and was the impertinent production of a vulgar and half-educated mind.
“What an insufferable person. And this is gratitude! Shall you go, dear?”
“I must. They refuse to see Inglis.”
Catherine’s eyes glistened as she returned the letter.
“Professional men have much to bear,” she said.
“Chiefly the criticism of ignorant people.”
“And the ingratitude!”
Murchison smiled.
“I have found the good to outweigh the bad,” he said; “but these cases sadden one.”
The hours had passed stormily at Boland’s Farm. There had been a brisk battle between Mrs. Baxter and the nurse, before the latter lady had spent sixty minutes under the farm-house roof, a battle that had originated in the simple brewing of a basin of beef-tea. The nurse and the housewife advocated different methods, and the trivial variation had been sufficient to set the women quarrelling. Dr. Inglis had intervened in the middle of the discussion, only to divert Mrs. Baxter’s anger to himself. She had assured the theorist bluntly that they needed him no further, and had requested him to inform Dr. Murchison that the Baxters, of Boland’s Farm, were not to be insulted by being served by an assistant. Despite the energy of his wife’s tongue, Thomas Baxter’s condition had grown markedly worse. The nurse and the two shrews had watched by him through the night, their pitiable peevishness unmoved by the sick man’s peril.
At seven o’clock Nurse Sprange had favored Mrs. Baxter with her opinion.
“Worse, of course!” the housewife had exclaimed; “what can any Christian creature expect after the way they hacked the poor soul about?”
The nurse had ruffled up in defence of the profession.
“You had better send at once for Dr. Murchison.”
“I should think we had. The lad can drive over in the milk-cart. Murchison did the thing; he’d better mend it, if he can.”
Murchison drove through the July fields where the corn was rustling for the harvest. The cottage gardens were full of flowers, sweet-pease a-flutter in the sun, the borders packed with scent and color. On the river’s bank the willows drooped lazily, and the meadows had been shorn of their fragrant hay. To the south the pine woods of Marley Down touched the azure of the sky.
His welcome at Boland’s Farm was neither cordial nor inspiring. Murchison had expected sour faces, and sour and sinister they were. Mrs. Baxter was a cynic by choice, one of those women who count their change carefully to the last farthing as though forever expecting to be cheated. Her manner towards Murchison was abrupt and aggressive. She bore herself towards him with a threatening dourness, as though she held him responsible for her husband’s critical condition.
“I am sorry to hear Mr. Baxter is no better.”
The lady looked supremely sapient, as though the brilliance of her genius had foreshadowed the event.
“I think I told you, doctor, that I don’t hold with all this operating.”
“I am sorry that we disagree.”
“Perhaps you will step up-stairs, doctor, and just see Mr. Baxter for yourself.”
Madam’s presence was not enthralling, and Murchison escaped from her with relief. The ugly parlor, with its texts and its piety, seemed part and parcel of the world to which farmer Baxter’s wife belonged. But sick men cannot be responsible for their wives, and Murchison knew that Tom Baxter was more sinned against than sinning.
Nurse Sprange was sitting by the patient’s bed, looking limp and tired, as though her patience had been torn to tatters by Mrs. Baxter’s restless temper. She rose as Murchison entered, and drew back the curtains to let more light into the room. Murchison nodded to her, and took the chair that she had left. The farmer was lying very still and straight, his eyes half closed, his breathing shallow, as though any expansion of the chest gave him acute pain.
“Well, Baxter, how do you feel?”
The man turned his head feebly.
“Ay, doctor, not mighty grand.”
“Any pain now?”
“Pain, sir, plenty; not like the gripe, but just as if I had a lot of weed-killer sluicing about inside of me.”
“Ah! Any tenderness?”
The farmer winced under Murchison’s hand.
“Bless you, doctor, it be damned sore!”
“Where?”
“All over. What d’you think of me, sir? I guess I’m pretty bad.”
The man’s eyes were searching Murchison’s face. He had been a fat and hearty liver, a full-blooded man who had loved life, where his wife was not, and was loath to leave it. There was something pathetic in his almost bovine dread, as though like one of his own oxen he had an instinct of the end. Murchison pitied him. He had seen many such men die, some like frightened animals, others sullen and sturdy against their doom.
“You must keep up your pluck, Baxter,” he said.
“I know, sir, but—”
“My dear fellow, you are very bad, it is no use shirking it. I hope yet to see you recover.”
“All right, doctor, you’ve done your best,” and he turned his face away with a groan of despair.
Murchison took the nurse out with him to the head of the stairs, and questioned her as to any symptoms she had observed during the night. Her evidence only tended to strengthen the gloomy prognosis he had already made. Nothing remained for him but to consider Mrs. Baxter’s unsensitive soul.
The lady did not weep. On the contrary, she displayed gathering resentment, the prejudice of an inferior nature, and gave Murchison the benefit of her free opinion.
“I may as well tell you, doctor, that I’m not satisfied. If my Tom had had proper attention from the first—”
“Well?”
“You wouldn’t have had to use that there knife. And it’s my opinion, sir, that you’ve done more harm than good.”
Murchison’s patience was being severely tested.
“I don’t think you are quite yourself, Mrs. Baxter,” he remarked.
“Not myself, indeed!”
“I cannot hold you responsible for what you are saying.”
The suggestion of any hysterical weakness on her part offended the lady more than her husband’s probable decease.
“Look here, doctor, I’m no fool, and I tell you you’ve done your business badly.”
“My dear woman, this is absolutely unwarranted.”
“I beg to differ, sir, and—”
Murchison prevented the imminent insult.
“If you care to place the case in other hands, by all means do so.”
“I shall send for Dr. Steel.”
“As you please.”
“And don’t you be afraid of getting your money.”
“That is a secondary consideration.”
“Oh, I guess not, operations don’t cost twopence-halfpenny. I’ll send for Steel at once.”
Murchison took his hat and gloves.
“Then, Mrs. Baxter, I had better wish you good-morning?”
And being too much of a philosopher to accuse the lady of ingratitude, he left her in possession of her prejudices.
It had been the season of garden-fêtes at Roxton, when the gracious gowns of the mesdames and demoiselles glorified the sleek lawns and herb-scented gardens of the old town. Gay colors and piquant hats were in July flower, save for the few sober weeds who put forth no gaudy corolla to attract the winged messengers of love. Mrs. Betty had paraded the terraces and yew walks in dove-colored silk, in crimson, and in lilac. Her successive sunshades were as so many royal flowers that came as by magic from the house of glass. She was an æsthetic spirit, and loved beauty, particularly when the picture was painted upon the surface of her own pier-glass.
Yet, delectable as she was with her pale and sinuous glamour, Mrs. Betty had many rebuffs to remember within the sound of St. Antonia’s bells. Dull, domesticated ladies in a country town do not embrace with enthusiasm a young and fascinating woman who has a habit of drawing the men about her. Mrs. Betty was regarded as a dangerous person, a species of Circe who looked sidelong into the faces of respectable married men, and possessed a mother-wit and a vivacity that made her seem like sparkling wine beside the “domestic ditch-water” she abhorred.
Catherine Murchison succeeded with her sister-women where Betty Steel failed utterly. There was a frankness, an absolute lack of the guile of the Cleopatra, about her that set jealous matrons at their ease. She was so notoriously devoted to her own husband and her home that the respectable flock welcomed her with pleasant bleatings. It was this very popularity of hers that impressed itself on the social pageantries of Roxton. The quick-eyed Betty saw her rival receive the smiles of the feminine community, while she herself was favored with polite distrust. Catherine Murchison was considered orthodox, and to be orthodox is the first proof of gentility among genteel people. Mrs. Steel might be stigmatized as something of a social heretic. And women, being the most outrageous Tories in their heart of hearts, dreaded the fascinating and glib-tongued Socialist who would perhaps reform the marriage laws into free love.
Hence, through all the galaxy of the Roxton garden-parties, Parker Steel’s wife had accumulated many incidental grievances against her rival. Women are sensitive beings, so sensitive that their feelings may be diffused into a smart gown or a Paris hat. The old battle-fire burned in Mrs. Betty’s Circassian eyes. She was amassing her grievances, slowly, surely, and with that curious secretiveness that has often characterized the feminine heart.
“Thomas Baxter, of Boland’s Farm, is dead.”
Parker Steel whisked his serviette over his knees, and looked with a peculiar glint of the eye at his wife in her orange-silk tea-gown.
“Dead, no!”
“Dead as Marley.”
“But they only turned Murchison out yesterday.”
“Exactly. And the dear wife is in the most militant of tempers, the Puritanical old fraud.”
Betty Steel’s olive skin had flushed. She was breathing deeply, and her glance had a significant and inspired glitter.
“Parker.”
“Well?”
“What else?”
The spruce physician showed his teeth.
“You expect more?”
“Yes, you are teasing me, keeping back some delicate morsel. Has Murchison blundered?”
“The wish seems mother to the thought.”
“Perhaps.”
“Mrs. Baxter has demanded a post-mortem examination. I am to perform it.”
His wife’s lips parted, and closed again into a hard line. She looked wickedly handsome in her yellow gown.
“I shall take Brimley, of Cossington, with me.”
“Good. You must have a second opinion, and Brimley does not love the six-footer. What do you think, Parker?—tell me frankly.”
The doctor wiped his mustache, took up his sherry glass and sipped the wine.
“Can’t say—yet,” he answered.
“But supposing—”
“Well, what am I to suppose?”
“That Murchison blundered badly.”
Dr. Steel meditated an instant.
“Professional etiquette”—he began.
Mrs. Betty’s eyes flashed.
“Professional nonsense! If—Parker, you must not lose a possible chance.”
Her husband regarded her with amused interest.
“You would strike your little Italian stiletto into Murchison’s reputation,” he said.