The story begins on August 16th, 1604, the very day on which the learned Speculum made its first appearance, bound and complete, on the table of Matthew Makepeace. The doctor’s chamber was on an upper floor of the staircase at the western end of the chapel nave, and it overlooked what was then called Fair Yard, a plot of ground since annexed to the Master’s garden. August 16th happened to be the last of the three days of Garlick Fair, the ancient fair which, since the days of King Stephen, had been associated with the Church of Saint Radegund, and took place under the chapel walls.
Matthew Makepeace was alone. It was Long Vacation, and his sole pupil, Marmaduke Dacre, who shared his chamber, had been allowed a day’s outing. Heavy books of divinity lined the walls of the chamber, which had little of comfort about it and no elegance. The doctor’s high bed, with curtains of faded say, the pupil’s truckle-bed, a hanging cupboard for clothes, a rough deal stand on which was set an ewer and basin of coarse earthenware, a chair, two stools and a large oaken table in the middle of the room—these were the doctor’s principal household effects. There was but one window, of bottle-green glass, and its lattice was open to admit the air and sunlight of the August afternoon.
On the table lay the doctor’s new book, brave in its stamped leather and gilded label: but it was unopened. It was the outcome of five and twenty years of incessant study, and the single offspring of Matthew’s lucubration. And now that it was brought to birth he was in a mood to stifle it. It had been begun in the white heat of the controversies with Rome and Spain, and it lingered in parturition until the fire had burnt low, and the readers who should have applauded it were in their graves. Its author was not very sure that its contentions were true, and he was very sure that they were addressed to deaf ears. Had he gone out into the world he might have learnt what the world was interested in—what battles remained to fight, what causes were already finished. But Matthew’s world consisted of books, and his books were out of date. Of recent political developments, of the growth of scientific knowledge, of the blossoming of a native literature he had no more knowledge than a child. The work which had been begun with enthusiasm had been completed in mechanical drudgery, and too late he was conscious of the fact.
How well he recollected the enthusiasms of 1579! How ardent his friends were that his immense learning should signalise itself in the great national strife with the powers of darkness! If he could only live his life again with the old enthusiasm and the added knowledge of a life that should combine learning and action! The boy, Dacre, blessed with genius, wealth, high birth and noble aspirations—how wide the horizon that opened before him! For Matthew Makepeace it rested only to be forgotten before he died.
It was a strange bird of passage that had dropped the seed from which Matthew’s book grew. Alessandro Galiani was a medical doctor of Padua University when he came to Cambridge, and for a few months resided in Jesus College. Why he came nobody precisely knew; but he claimed to be a Protestant refugee, and he was certainly profoundly learned in many languages, as well as in medicine. He brought letters of introduction from the Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, and it was surmised that he was an agent of the Government, engaged to report on the University. But his talk and conduct were so equivocal that the suspicion presently arose that his Protestantism was simulated, and that he was a papal spy. The sentiments to which he gave expression were certainly Macchiavellian in the highest degree—intolerable to English ears. Wherefore his sojourn at Cambridge ended abruptly after a few months, and he passed away into the same mysterious spaces from which he had come. He was a man of extraordinary powers of observation and suggestion, and from a chance hint that he once let fall Makepeace got the idea of writing his book. It was Galiani who directed his attention to the Jewish and Arabic authors whom he consulted. But how little of the force and insight of the Italian entered into the completed book, Makepeace knew only too well.
So the book lay on the table and Matthew had no heart to open it. Through the window came sounds of merriment from the Fair Yard without. Regularly as August came round Makepeace had heard those sounds for forty years past, but until to-day he had regarded them only as a troublesome distraction, and closed his casement against them. To-day a profound lassitude made him draw his stool from the table, where lay the slighted volume, to the open window. His attention was especially drawn by a strident voice which came from near his chamber. Looking out on the Fair Yard he saw a platform of a few planks, mounted on casks, immediately beneath his window. On it a vagabond charlatan was loudly advertising to a group of gaping rustics the merits of a wonderful heal-all.
“Come buy, my masters, come buy,” he cried. “Buy the infallible salve of the famous doctor Pinchbeck, the ointment that heals the ague, the rheum, the palsy, the serpigo. Let him that goes on one leg but buy, and with thrice laying on he shall go on two. Let him that goes with crutches buy, and he shall dance home in a coranto. One groat only for the learned doctor’s ointment that shall quit you of the cramp, the gout, the quotidian and the tertian. An it rid you not in two days come again and Pinchbeck shall restore you fourfold.”
From time to time an ague-ridden swain mounted the platform, haggled with the quack, reluctantly parted with his groat and departed, dubious of his purchase. On the whole, Dr. Pinchbeck seemed to be doing a fair trade, when, late in the afternoon, an old man, bent double with rheumatism, raised a loud expostulation. He affirmed that he had purchased a box of the ointment on the first day of the fair, and had applied it thrice without the promised result.
He demanded the fourfold restitution of his money, and the mountebank stoutly resisted the claim. Angry cries arose from the bystanders, and it might have gone ill with the empiric, had not a diversion been effected by one of the crowd. This was a tall middle-aged man of somewhat dark complexion and foreign appearance, whose dress distinguished him as a gentleman and possibly a practiser of medicine. He stepped on the platform, spoke a few words to the ointment-vendor, and then, beckoning the old man to him, made him sit on a stool. He gazed fixedly for a few moments in the patient’s eyes, made some mysterious motions of the hands before his face, whispered in his ear, and then, with a few more passes of his hands, bade him stand. The old fellow stood erect without effort; then, at the stranger’s bidding, walked a few easy steps, and with a pleased and puzzled look descended to join his friends in the crowd. Loud applause greeted the wonderful cure, and patients crowded to receive the stranger’s ministrations. The same operations in each case were attended with the same result. Never had there been seen such a wonder at the fair.
Most of all it wrought wonder in Matthew Makepeace. This unknown individual—was he possessed of those miraculous gifts of healing which Makepeace in 400 quarto pages had proved to be extinct? He would accost him and, if possible, learn from his lips whether what he had seen were the operation of nature or of the magic art. Descending in the majesty of his doctor’s robes he mingled in the crowd, and mildly laid his hand on the stranger’s arm. “Pardon, learned sir,” said he, “the curiosity of a scholar—alas! too ignorant of books and all unskilled in the manual acts of healing. I would fain question with you of these same cures that by chance I have witnessed from my chamber.” The stranger was engaged in giving parting words of counsel to some of his patients. He turned at the touch of the doctor’s hand, surveyed him up and down for a moment, and said, “Anon, Master Makepeace, anon: I will be with you presently.”