He took a house recently vacated by a well-known physician in a street frequented by doctors near Regent Street, and soon had plenty of patients, mostly former patients of Dr. Hildyard’s, who already knew him by repute. Before five years were over he had made some remarkable cures, had contributed some original and, in certain cases, startling papers on obscure nervous diseases to the leading medical journals, and was elected to appointments in four metropolitan hospitals.
Then he was consulted by royalty, and his private practice doubled itself. Ten years passed away, fifteen—it was now nineteen years since the awful day of Lilia’s death—and Dr. Hugh Paull was not only known throughout the English-speaking world, but his works were translated into French, German, and Italian, and his name was honoured by the medical profession in all countries.
His private life might be summed up in one word—Ralph.
Ralph was the name he had allotted to the puny pale babe who had been the unconscious instrument of his salvation from self-murder.
Ralph had been the name of an invalid uncle, his father’s younger brother, of whom he had pleasant childish recollections—a gentle, white-faced young man stretched on a couch in a pretty garden, who had seemed to know exactly what little boys liked, and to let them have it. So when he stood, one of the little group of black-garmented persons at the old stone font in the Pinewood church, and Mr. Mervyn said, “Name this child,” he remembered his uncle and said “Ralph.”
The delicate babe with the thoughtful blue eyes grew slowly and painfully from babyhood into childhood, from childhood into youth. At first Hugh felt the responsibility of being father and mother in one to the fragile boy—a heavy care. The child was always in his mind, an anxiety that never left him.
One day he had gone to a well-known educationist almost in despair. After detailing his experiments in nursery training, which up to then seemed a failure, he said, “What am I to do?”
“Leave the child alone, like I left mine,” said the authority. “Get him a good nurse, and don’t interfere with her without necessity. When you have done with the nurse, get him a good governess; then send him to school.”
To Hugh, who had hitherto acted as a head-gardener devoted to one sickly plant, the advice seemed rough. But he plucked up courage, and acted upon it.
The boy grew up without many complications; but he was a strange, silent lad. His two characteristics were an unappeasable love of study and a concentrated, but undemonstrative, devotion to his father.