A DOCTOR
Young O’Shea made the journey from Kilbeggan to Kilgobbin Castle in total unconsciousness. The symptoms had now taken the form which doctors call concussion; and though to a first brief question he was able to reply reasonably and well, the effort seemed so exhausting that to all subsequent queries he appeared utterly indifferent; nor did he even by look acknowledge that he heard them.
Perfect and unbroken quiet was enjoined as his best, if not his only, remedy; and Kate gave up her own room for the sick man, as that most remote from all possible disturbance, and away from all the bustle of the house. The doctors consulted on his case in the fashion that a country physician of eminence condescends to consult with a small local practitioner. Dr. Rogan pronounced his opinion, prophetically declared the patient in danger, and prescribed his remedies, while Price, agreeing with everything, and even slavishly abject in his manner of concurrence, went about amongst the underlings of the household saying, ‘There’s two fractures of the frontal bone. It’s trepanned he ought to be; and when there’s an inquest on the body, I’ll declare I said so.’
Though nearly all the care of providing for the sick man’s nursing fell to Kate Kearney, she fulfilled the duty without attracting any notice whatever, or appearing to feel as if any extra demand were made upon her time or her attention; so much so, that a careless observer might have thought her far more interested in providing for the reception of the aunt than in cares for the nephew.
Dick Kearney had written to say that Miss Betty was so overwhelmed with affliction at young Gorman’s mishap that she had taken to bed, and could not be expected to be able to travel for several days. She insisted, however, on two telegrams daily to report on the boy’s case, and asked which of the great Dublin celebrities of physic should be sent down to see him.
‘They’re all alike to me,’ said Kilgobbin; ‘but if I was to choose, I think I’d say Dr. Chute.’
This was so far unlucky, since Dr. Chute had then been dead about forty years; scarcely a junior of the profession having so much as heard his name.
‘We really want no one,’ said Rogan. ‘We are doing most favourably in every respect. If one of the young ladies would sit and read to him, but not converse, it would be a service. He made the request himself this morning, and I promised to repeat it.’
A telegram, however, announced that Sir St. Xavier Brennan would arrive the same evening, and as Sir X. was physician-in-chief to the nuns of the Bleeding Heart, there could be little doubt whose orthodoxy had chosen him.
He came at nightfall—a fat, comely-looking, somewhat unctuous gentleman, with excellent teeth and snow-white hands, symmetrical and dimpled like a woman’s. He saw the patient, questioned him slightly, and divined without waiting for it what the answer should be; he was delighted with Rogan, pleased with Price, but he grew actually enthusiastic over those charming nurses, Nina and Kate.
‘With such sisters of charity to tend me, I’d consent to pass my life as an invalid,’ cried he.
Indeed, to listen to him, it would seem that, whether from the salubrity of the air, the peaceful quietude of the spot, the watchful kindness and attention of the surrounders, or a certain general air—an actual atmosphere of benevolence and contentment around—there was no pleasure of life could equal the delight of being laid up at Kilgobbin.
‘I have a message for you from my old friend Miss O’Shea,’ said he to Kate the first moment he had the opportunity of speaking with her alone. ‘It is not necessary to tell you that I neither know, nor desire to know, its import. Her words were these: “Tell my godchild to forgive me if she still has any memory for some very rude words I once spoke. Tell her that I have been sorely punished for them since, and that till I know I have her pardon, I have no courage to cross her doors.” This was my message, and I was to bring back your answer.’
‘Tell her,’ cried Kate warmly, ‘I have no place in my memory but for the kindnesses she has bestowed on me, and that I ask no better boon from Fortune than to be allowed to love her, and to be worthy of her love.’
‘I will repeat every word you have told me; and I am proud to be bearer of such a speech. May I presume, upon the casual confidence I have thus acquired, to add one word for myself; and it is as the doctor I would speak.’
‘Speak freely. What is it?’
‘It is this, then: you young ladies keep your watches in turn in the sick-room. The patient is unfit for much excitement, and as I dare not take the liberty of imposing a line of conduct on Mademoiselle Kostalergi, I have resolved to run the hazard with you! Let hers be the task of entertaining him; let her be the reader—and he loves being read to—and the talker, and the narrator of whatever goes on. To you be the part of quiet watchfulness and care, to bathe the heated brow, or the burning hand, to hold the cold cup to the parched lips, to adjust the pillow, to temper the light, and renew the air of the sick-room, but to speak seldom, if at all. Do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly; and you are wise and acute in your distribution of labour: each of us has her fitting station.’
‘I dared not have said this much to her: my doctor’s instinct told me I might be frank with you.’
‘You are safe in speaking to me,’ said she calmly.
‘Perhaps I ought to say that I give these suggestions without any concert with my patient. I have not only abstained from consulting, but—’
‘Forgive my interrupting you, Sir X. It was quite unnecessary to tell me this.’
‘You are not displeased with me, dear lady?’ said he, in his softest of accents.
‘No; but do not say anything which might make me so.’
The doctor bowed reverentially, crossed his white hands on his waistcoat, and looked like a saint ready for martyrdom.
Kate frankly held out her hand in token of perfect cordiality, and her honest smile suited the action well.
‘Tell Miss Betty that our sick charge shall not be neglected, but that we want her here herself to help us.’
‘I shall report your message word for word,’ said he, as he withdrew.
As the doctor drove back to Dublin, he went over a variety of things in his thoughts. There were serious disturbances in the provinces; those ugly outrages which forerun long winter nights, and make the last days of October dreary and sad-coloured. Disorder and lawlessness were abroad; and that want of something remedial to be done which, like the thirst in fever, is fostered and fed by partial indulgence. Then he had some puzzling cases in hospital, and one or two in private practice, which harassed him; for some had reached that critical stage where a false move would be fatal, and it was far from clear which path should be taken. Then there was that matter of Miss O’Shea herself, who, if her nephew were to die, would most likely endow that hospital in connection with the Bleeding Heart, and of which he was himself the founder; and that this fate was by no means improbable, Sir X. persuaded himself, as he counted over all the different stages of peril that stood between him and convalescence. ‘We have now the concussion, with reasonable prospect of meningitis; and there may come on erysipelas from the scalp wounds, and high fever, with all its dangers; next there may be a low typhoid state, with high nervous excitement; and through all these the passing risks of the wrong food or drink, the imprudent revelations, or the mistaken stimulants. Heigh-ho!’ said he at last, ‘we come through storm and shipwreck, forlorn-hopes, and burning villages, and we succumb to ten drops too much of a dark-brown liquor, or the improvident rashness that reads out a note to us incautiously!
‘Those young ladies thought to mystify me,’ said he aloud, after a long reverie. ‘I was not to know which of them was in love with the sick boy. I could make nothing of the Greek, I own, for, except a half-stealthy regard for myself, she confessed to nothing, and the other was nearly as inscrutable. It was only the little warmth at last that betrayed her. I hurt her pride, and as she winced, I said, “There’s the sore spot—there’s mischief there!” How the people grope their way through life who have never studied physic nor learned physiology is a puzzle to me! With all its aid and guidance I find humanity quite hard enough to understand every day I live.’
Even in his few hours’ visit—in which he remarked everything, from the dress of the man who waited at dinner, to the sherry decanter with the smashed stopper, the weak ‘Gladstone’ that did duty as claret, and the cotton lace which Nina sported as ‘point d’Alençon,’ and numberless other shifts, such as people make who like to play false money with Fortune—all these he saw, and he saw that a certain jealous rivalry existed between the two girls; but whether either of them, or both, cared for young O’Shea, he could not declare; and, strange as it may seem, his inability to determine this weighed upon him with all the sense of a defeat.