Dr. Eldrige recalled what his father had said about the mental condition of this woman. Could he probe her inner life and ferret out the cause of her trouble? Under the circumstances would it be right for him to do so, if he could? With these questions in mind he engaged her in easy conventional conversation, and without a suspicion of the fact on her part, he studied her face and watched her movements with quiet intensity. He desired to do all that he could for his patient's physical welfare; and the heart and mind have so great an influence over the body, that just how far a physician has a right to seek and search becomes a finely balanced question. He resolved to give her an opportunity to be frank with him if she cared to do so, but if there was anything she desired to conceal he would not intrude upon her secrecy.
"The cause of your trouble, Mrs. Thorpe, may be beyond the reach of doctors' skill. There are many ills that a physician is able to alleviate, but there may be inducing causes that no physician is able to discover."
She waited some moments before she spoke, and the doctor's eyes were upon her expectantly.
"The fate of the whole human race lies with you physicians," she said. "There is scarcely one on this earth who is every whit whole. And those for whom you cannot prescribe--?" She stopped short, and her eyes flashed abruptly into his.
The doctor saw that she had missed the import of his words, and he believed that she attributed to them a meaning that could not fail to distress her, and he hastened to correct his mistake.
"I did not mean to intimate that your trouble is beyond a physician's reach, Mrs. Thorpe," he said. "Yours is what my father calls a 'case of nerves.'"
She put out her hands as though to entreat him to desist. Always in her intercourse with the old doctor she had felt a reticence that made it impossible for her to talk with him, except on strictly professional topics; but there was something in this man's face, a plain, clear-cut face it was, and in his manner, kind and sympathetic, that inspired her confidence.
"I know," she said, "that mine is a nervous trouble, but must we admit that there is pain in this world for which there is no remedy? Maladies for which there is no physician? Must we admit the situation to be true, and stand helpless before it, that certain forms of suffering, deadly in their nature, have been laid upon humanity, for which no antidote has been given? It cannot be--this cannot be true, else what is the inference?"
"You have misunderstood my meaning, Mrs. Thorpe. You should have heard me out. I beg of you not to believe that I consider your trouble one for which there is no remedy. I meant only to call your attention to the fact that a great variety of causes may be responsible for nervous troubles. We look, naturally, for a physical cause, for a physical ailment; yet it is a mistake to believe that this must always be the case. It sometimes happens that the mind is largely responsible for the physical condition."
She waited again before she spoke. Her hands lay idly in her lap, but the doctor noticed that she was not in a state of relaxation, but that there was a restrained energy in attitude and manner.