The Doctor’s Discovery
In due time the letter written in the willow tree reached the city of Hong-Kong, and was carried to the big English hotel, overlooking the loveliest of Chinese harbors. But it was not delivered to Doctor Huntingdon. It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there, awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina’s first letter to him and the one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And under that was the one which Barbara called the “rainbow letter,” and then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful colored photograph of the Towncrier and his lass. Also there were several bundles of official-looking documents and many American newspapers.
Nothing had been forwarded to him for two months, because he had left instructions to hold his mail until further notice. The first part of that time he was moving constantly from one out-of-the-way place to another where postal delivery was slow and uncertain. The last part of that time he was lying ill in the grip of the very disease which he had gone out to study and to conquer.
He was glad then to be traveling in the wake of the friendly old Englishman and his party. Through their interpreter, arrangements were made to have him carried to one of the tents of a primitive sort of a hospital, kept by some native missionaries. The Englishman’s young assistant went with him. He was a quiet fellow whom Mr. Bowles had jokingly dubbed David the silent, because it was so hard to make him talk. But Doctor Huntingdon, a reserved, silent man himself, had been attracted to him by that very trait.
During the months they had been thrown together so much, Dave had taken great interest in the Doctor’s reports of the experiments he was making in treating the disease. When the Doctor was told that Mr. Bowles had gone back to the coast, having found what he wanted and made his notes for his next book, and consequently Dave was free to stay and nurse him, he gave a sigh of relief.
Dave stopped his thanks almost gruffly.
“There’s more than one reason for my staying,” he said. “I’ve been sick among strangers in a strange country, myself, and I know how it feels. Besides, I’m interested in seeing if this new treatment of yours works out on a white man as well as it did on these natives. I’ll be doing as much in the way of scientific research, keeping a chart on you, as if I were taking notes for Mr. Bowles.”
That was a long speech for Dave, the longest that he made during the Doctor’s illness. But in the days which followed, one might well have wondered if there was not a greater reason than those he offered for such devoted attendance. He was always within call, always so quick to notice a want that usually a wish was gratified before it could be expressed. His was a devotion too constant to be prompted merely by sympathy for a fellow-country-man or interest in medical experiments.
Once, when the Doctor was convalescing, he opened his eyes to find his silent attendant sitting beside him reading, and studied him for some time, unobserved.
“Dave,” he said, after watching him a while--“it’s the queerest thing-- lately every time I look at you I’m reminded of home. You must resemble someone I used to know back there, but for the life of me I can’t recall who.”