When, therefore, Dr. Stanforth had heard all the symptoms exhibited by Mrs. Crowe on the morning of her decease, he was not the least surprised; he had his theory ready for any emergency.
“Ah, my dear Crowe, this is just what I always expected would happen to your poor wife. In cases of cirrhosis like hers, find the proportion of deaths, with just such symptoms as you describe, to be one in 238-1/3.”
Dr. Stanforth prided himself in his arithmetic, in which he was always very exact. He usually went in for decimals, but to-day was satisfied with vulgar fractions. He always had a similar case to illustrate the one under notice, and was equally precise in his way of mentioning it. “I had just such another case in the year 1861. It was Easter Monday, and I remember it was snowing hard. I was called to a draper’s in St. John’s Wood. You know the shop opposite the church? Just such a case as this. The poor heart-broken husband, just like yourself, was beside himself with grief, and reproached himself for having given his wife, poor thing, some macaroni he had just got from Naples. She was seized precisely as Mrs. Crowe, and died within two hours after eating it. He would have it there were cholera germs in the macaroni. The cholera was raging in Naples just then. You remember. Don’t you remember? Ah, I do! I lost my beautiful cousin, Lady Arethusa Standoph, who was seized with it while staying at Castellamare close by. One in every 625-1/4 visitors to Naples died that year of cholera, of all nationalities that is to say; of English only one in every 889-1/2.”
Dr. Stanforth was a princely, not to say kingly, liar. When he did a thing, he did it royally, and he lied without niggardliness and with the precision of an actuary. Perhaps this peculiar trait in Dr. Stanforth’s character had recommended him to Mr. Crowe’s favour. Be this as it may, the latter was well pleased to hear that mushrooms could have had no possible connection with his wife’s death. He was willing to waive his superior physiological attainments in favour of his colleague’s statistics. So far from pressing his opinion with his usual persistence, he bowed in acquiescence, and thereby flattered Dr. Stanforth immensely. Of course it would have been most unpleasant to have had an inquest, and this admirable certificate saved all that annoyance. Both the insurance companies paid the money, and Mr. Crowe seemed disposed to bear his bereavement with exemplary resignation. He went on with his work much as before, solacing himself, however, with frequent visits to Aunt Janet and Mildred. Both ladies felt it their duty to be as kind and sympathetic as possible, and he was urged to visit them as often as he conveniently could. They got up nice little dinner parties for him; and as Mildred, in her kind, consoling way, did her best to solace the widower in his affliction, he began to hope he was daily growing in her favour. He did his best to throw cold water on her hospital scheme, as he foresaw such a project would be most prejudicial to his order, and would set an example that would be surely followed by other faddists, much to the injury of scientific medicine; but he had to be guarded in his treatment of this subject, because he saw the new object was deeply set in the hearts of both ladies. When he found it was hopeless to try and hinder it, and that it was an accomplished fact, he set to work to turn the scheme to his own advantage. But to little purpose. There was no chance for him at Nightingale House. His peculiarities and principles were too well known to be disguised, and nobody believed he was capable of conversion.
But gradually it came to be noticed that everybody was fighting shy of Mr. Crowe. The most unpleasant rumours about the cause of his wife’s death were in the air. Nobody spoke out, nobody seemed to know anything precisely; but all at once Mr. Crowe was blown upon.
That nobody spoke was perhaps too much to say, for Mr. Crowe had one open and bitter enemy on the staff of St. Bernard’s. Mr. Ringrose, the surgeon, had been quarrelling with him for years in a gentlemanly and polite sort of way. Each had presented the other to the council as having done something unprofessional. Crowe accused Ringrose of having killed a man through operating on him when drunk; and Ringrose, who was a popular man, had branded Crowe as an atheist who was damaging the reputation of the school by seducing the young men from the Christian faith by his blasphemous remarks and ridicule of Scripture. Mr. Ringrose did not scruple to say that, if anybody wanted to get rid of his wife, he could not do better than learn physiology. And so what with speaking out, and what with shrugging his shoulders and hinting the darkest things possible, he managed to imbue everybody in the place with dire suspicions about Mr. Crowe. Soon everybody got hold somehow of the whole circumstances connected with the death of the lady; and though there was not enough known to make a legal investigation desirable or possible, there was abundant reason for shunning Mr. Crowe’s society. The students soon caught the infection, and all sorts of graffiti were blazing openly on the walls of the college; toadstools surmounted by a death’s head and cross-bones; legends such as—
“Crow’s-foot, a poisonous plant of the order Ranunculacæ;” under which a wag added—
“But not half so deadly as Crowe’s hand, order Physiologacæ.”
One day Mr. Ringrose accidentally found that he had seated himself at a table in the refreshment department at the Army and Navy Stores facing Mr. Crowe, who was lunching off a dish of curried fowl, and surrounded by various little purchases which encumbered the chair next his own.
The men nodded coldly, but did not speak to each other. Mr. Ringrose, impelled by the demon of mischief, demanded of the waiter to come and attend to him.