“I dare say you may think me tediously moral,” he said, “but I can’t help thinking of what I see every day. For some years I’ve been trying to do something for the poor people about here, and especially for the operatives over at Friezeton. If you had any idea of the things I’ve seen— But, after all, you would n’t understand if I were to tell you.”
“I know,” I returned, “that you have devoted yourself to the most generous work among those poor wretches.”
“I beg your pardon,” responded he, stiffening at once, “but we will, if you please, waive compliments.”
“But,” I persisted, “Lord Eldon and others have more than once expressed their wonder that you, with talents and acquirements so unusual, should bury yourself—”
“I was not speaking of myself,” he interrupted, somewhat impatiently, “but of my poor patients. If you knew what they suffer uncomplainingly, it might make you a little more content.”
We were both silent for a little time. I looked across the chamber at the strong figure of the Russian, as he stood by the fire, and wondered what his past had been. I knew that he was a mystery to all the neighborhood where he had lived for the better part of a dozen years. He was evidently a gentleman, and he seemed to be wealthy. I had myself found him to be of unusual culture and refinement, and he had unobtrusively won recognition as a physician of marked skill and attainments. The wonder was why he should be living in England as an exile, and why he so persistently resisted all efforts to draw him from his retirement. He devoted himself to philanthropic work in a perfectly quiet fashion, declining to be enrolled as part of any organized charity. He was more and more, however, coming to be appreciated as a skillful physician, and to be called in for consultation. He impressed me on the whole as a man who had a past, and I could not but wonder what that past had been.
“I dare say you are right,” I answered, somewhat absently, “but has it never occurred to you that it is easy to make the mistake of judging the suffering of others by our own standards instead of by their real feelings? It seems to be assumed nowadays that all men are born with the same sensibilities, yet nothing could be farther from the truth.”
Dr. Polnitzski did not reply for a moment. He seemed this evening to be unusually restless. He walked about the room, getting up as soon as he sat down, and made impulsive movements which apparently betrayed some inward disturbance.