THE HAND THAT FAILED
FOUR men were seated about a round table, with dessert and wine upon it, in the dining-room of a luxuriously furnished house in a fashionable street in the West End of London—a street which is the Eldorado of the struggling professional man, the Tom Tiddler’s ground of successful members of the faculties of surgery and medicine. The aroma of Turkish coffee and choice Havanas was warm and fragrant upon the air, and the Bishop consented to a second Benedictine. His left-hand neighbor was a dry-faced, courteous gentleman, a King’s Counsel, famous by reason of several causes célèbres. The third man at table was merely a hard-working, small-earning practitioner of medicine and surgery, settled in a populous suburb of the high-lying North. Coming to the host, with whom the Highgate Doctor had walked the hospitals in his student days, one may describe him as a world-famous Consulting Specialist and operator; one of the kings of the scalpel, the bistoury, and the curette; a man of medals, orders, and scientific titles innumerable. Forty-three years of age, shortly about to be married (to a widowed niece of the Bishop), and in excellent spirits—a thought too excellent, perhaps....
“Wants rest, decidedly. Pupils of the eyes unnaturally dilated, circulation not what it ought to be. Overdone.... Changed color when the servant dropped a fork just now.... He had better take care!� said the Highgate Doctor to himself. He had to deal with many cases of nervous breakdown up Highgate way, where there are so many compositors and clerks and journalists. But the Bishop and the King’s Counsel had never seen the Distinguished Surgeon look more fit, and so they told him.
“What makes it more remarkable, in my poor opinion�—the Bishop, employing his favorite phrase, emptied his liqueur-glass and folded his plump, white hands—“being that our distinguished friend here�—he waved the fattest and whitest of his thumbs toward his host—“seldom, if ever, takes a holiday.�
“When,� said the Distinguished Surgeon, playing with a gold fruit-knife belonging to a set which had formed part of the First Napoleon camp-equipment at Leipsic, “when a professional man’s brain is absolutely clear, his nerves infallibly steady; when his digestion, sleep, appetite are unimpaired by any amount of physical and mental labor; when his hand is the ready, unerring, unflinching servant of his will at all times and all seasons, what need has that man of rest and relaxation?� The strong, supple, finely-modeled hand went on playing with the historical fruit-knife, as its owner added: “Work is my play! For change of air, give me change of experience; for change of scene, new cases, or fresh developments of familiar ones. The excitement of the gaming table, or any other form of excitement, would be a poor exchange for the sensations of the operator, the skilled, experienced, unerring operator, who calculates to the fraction of an inch the depth of the incision his scalpel makes in the body of the anæsthetized patient extended on the glass-table before him. Life or Death are his to give, and the trembling of the balance one way or the other is to be guided and controlled by his unerring eye, his unerring brain, and his skilled, infallible hand. He holds the balances of Fate—he guides and controls Destiny, and knows his power and glories in it. He is a supreme artist—not in clay or marble, gold or silver, pigments or enamels—but in living flesh and blood!�
The Bishop shifted in his chair uneasily, and turned a little pale about the gills. The removal of the episcopal appendix some months previously had preserved to the Church of England one of its principal corner-stones; and the neat, red seam underneath the Bishop’s apron on the right side, on the spot that would have been covered by the vest-pocket of an ordinary layman, twitched and tingled. And the King’s Counsel, who had once undergone a minor operation for throat-trouble, hurriedly gulped down a mouthful of port. The Highgate Doctor alone answered, fixing his steel-rimmed pince-nez securely on his nose, and tilting his chin so as to get the host’s face well into focus: “He is a supreme artist, as you say, and he delights in his work. But supposing him to delight too much? Supposing him to have arrived at such a pass that he cannot live without the excitement of it!—that he indulges in the exercise of his beneficent profession as a cocaine-drinker or hashish-eater, or morphinomaniac, indulges in the drug that destroys him, morally and physically—how long will he retain in their perfection the faculties which have made him what he is?�
“As long as he chooses!� said the Distinguished Surgeon, putting down the gold fruit-knife, and rising with the easy air of the well-bred host. “He is no longer a mere man, but a highly-geared and ingeniously-planned machine, in all that concerns the peculiar physical functions brought to bear upon the exercise of his profession. To lie idle, for such a machine, means rust and ruin; to work unceasingly is to increase facility and gain in power, and, provided it be carefully looked after—and I assure you my nuts and bearings receive the necessary amount of attention!—the machine of which I speak may go on practically for ever!� And he ushered his guests through the folding doors into his luxurious consulting-room.
“Unless there happened,� put in the King’s Counsel, “to be a screw loose?�
“My dear fellow,� said the Distinguished Surgeon, with a smile, “my screws are never neglected, I have assured you. The machine won’t come to grief that way!�
“It might come to grief in another way,� said the Highgate Doctor in a queer voice. “The Inventor might stop it Himself, just to prove to His handiwork that it was a machine—and something more!�
At this remark, plopped into the middle of the calm duck-pond of sociality, the Bishop looked pained, as might an elderly spinster of severe morals at an allusion savoring of impropriety. The King’s Counsel, feeling for the Bishop, turned the conversation; but the Distinguished Surgeon and the Highgate Doctor were at it again, hammer and tongs, in a minute.
“I do not simply believe I shall not fail, my dear fellow! I know I shall not! As for——� (the Distinguished Surgeon, sitting smoking in his Louis Quinze consulting-chair, mentioned a certain operation in abdominal surgery, delicate, difficult, and dangerous in the extreme) “I have performed it hundreds of times, successfully, within the last twelvemonth, leaving minor operations—scores of them�—he waved the scores aside with a movement of the supple hand—“entirely out of the question! At the Hospital to-day� (mentioning the name of a great public institution) “I operated in seven cases, bringing up the number to one thousand and one. The last was the most interesting case I have met with for some time, presenting complications rendering the use of the knife both difficult and risky, but——�
The sharp whirring tingle of the telephone bell punctuated the Distinguished Surgeon’s sentence: “But she’ll pull through; I guarantee it! We’ll have the bandages off in three weeks. She’ll be walking about before the month’s out like the others!�
“Under Providence let us hope so!� said the Bishop, encircled by a halo of fragrant cigar smoke. “Thank you, yes, I will take a whisky-and-soda. Without presumption, let us hope so, remembering, trusting in—arah—the—arah—the Divine assurance.�
“You may take the assurance from me, my lord!� said the Distinguished Surgeon. He got up and went to the fireplace (carved by Adam), and leaned one elbow lightly on the mantelshelf—an easy attitude, but instinct with pride and power. “As I have said, Case One Thousand and One is a difficult case. I could name surgeons of repute who would have hesitated to operate; but, given the requisite skill and the necessary care, failure, I hold, is out of the question. I have never failed yet—I do not intend to fail. It’s impossible!�
The second shrill, imperative summons of the telephone bell ended the Distinguished Surgeon’s sentence.
“Tch! They’re ringing ye up on the telephone from somewhere,� said the Highgate Doctor.
“Find out what they want, Donald, there’s a good fellow,� said the Distinguished Surgeon, buttonholed by the Bishop, whose urbane benevolence had creased into smiles tinctured with roguishness, as he related a clerical after-dinner story.
And the Highgate Doctor rang back, and unhooked the receiver and cried: “Halloa?� and listened to the thin ghost of a voice that droned and tickled at his ear, and turned toward the Distinguished Surgeon a face that had suddenly been bleached of all color.
“Well, who is it?� the Distinguished Surgeon asked.
“It’s the House Surgeon at the Hospital. Perhaps ye would speak to him yourself?� the Highgate Doctor said thickly; and the Distinguished Surgeon, released by the chuckling Bishop, strolled over and took the Highgate Doctor’s place at the receiver.
“Halloa! Yes, it’s Sir Arthur Blank!� he called, and the ghostly voice came back.... “One of the abdominal sections in the Mrs. Solomon Davis Ward ... Number Seven ... Mrs. Reed ... Hæmorrhage.... Imminent danger ... collapse.... Come at once!�
The Distinguished Surgeon glanced round, with eyes that were sunk in pits quite newly dug. The Bishop, still in his anecdotage, was buttonholing the King’s Counsel. Plainly they had not overheard. And as the Distinguished Surgeon took out his handkerchief and wiped the cold damps from a face that had gone gray and shiny, he knew relief. He avoided looking point-blank at the Highgate Doctor as he made his courteous excuses to his guests. “An urgent case—suddenly called away for an hour. My dear Lord, my dear Entwhistle, my dear Donald, entertain yourselves for that space of time, and don’t deprive me of a pleasant end to this delightful evening!�
But the Bishop, recently wedded for the third time, took leave, accepting his host’s offer of dropping him at his hotel, and the pair got into fur coats and a snug ante-brougham and drove away together. Soon after, somebody from the Chancery Buildings came with an urgent summons for the King’s Counsel, and he melted away with regrets, and the Highgate Doctor sat in the luxurious consulting-room, and started at every stoppage of swift wheels in the streets.
The silent servants came and looked to the fire, the Pompadour clock upon the mantel chimed eleven! And then, looking up out of a brown study, the Highgate Doctor saw his host returned, and started at his worn and haggard aspect. As the demure servant relieved him of his coat and hat, and vanished, the Distinguished Surgeon dropped into an easy-chair and sat shading his face with the right hand, whose steadiness he had so vaunted. And that infallible, unerring hand shook as if with palsy.
The Highgate Doctor could bear no more....
“O man,� he said—in moments of excitement his accent savored of from north of the Tweed—“dinna sit glowering and shaking there! I ken weel what has happened! Your pride has got the killing thrust; she is in her death-pangs at this minute I’m talking, and you stand face to face wi’ One you have denied! Am I richt or no?�
The Distinguished Surgeon moved the shaking hand and said, not in the calm level tone the Highgate Doctor knew, but one jerky and uneven:
“You are right! You shall know the truth, though it places my reputation at your mercy....�
“Forget your reputation a meenute,� said the Highgate Doctor. “As to Case One Thousand and One ... is the woman dead?�
“No ...� said the other—“no, I reached the Hospital in time ... we called up the chart-nurse and the Matron, had her taken up to the theater and——�
“Found that ye had bungled—for once in your life!� said the Highgate Doctor. “And weel for you, if not for your patient, that it is so. The ligature had slipped, I take it, being insecurely tied?�
The Distinguished Surgeon looked him steadily between the eyes and answered:
“The ligature was not tied at all! A grosser instance of neglect I never met with.� He got up and leaned against the mantelshelf, folding his arms. “I said so pretty plainly, and I have made a minute on the Hospital register to that effect. I shall also draw the attention of the Committee to the matter without delay!�
The Highgate Doctor blew his nose violently. His eyeglasses were misty.
“Ye have censured yourself? Ye will report yourself? O man! I kenned ye were a great one, but ye have never been so great—in my eyes—as ye are this night!�
“Thank you!� said the Distinguished Surgeon, as the two men gripped hands. “And—Donald, old fellow—I am going to take a holiday!�
“Where is the whisky-and-soda?� said the Highgate Doctor gleefully.