“Exactly,” I laughed, “they are both of them too—— and you can leave it at that.”
We fell back on our meditations, and I thought what a peaceful drowsy scene it would have made if only the men at work on the roof had been gardeners indeed, and Margaret and I the remnant of some pleasant social gathering. Gardeners pruning an ivy tree for next year’s more vigorous growth—hope for the future and life! Plain clothes policemen searching for a piece of poisoned glass—murder and death! The cathedral chimes rang out again and roused us both. It was six o’clock. We had sat in the garden for nearly an hour. We got up and went back to the house, she to go to Ethel, and I to find The Tundish.
He was in the dispensary—the coolest spot in the house—his feet on the desk in front of him and his chair tilted back to a dangerous angle. He was scowling at a manuscript in which he was deeply engrossed.
Now, I had anticipated his pleasant, “Hello! Jeffcock,” but I was met with a frown and a curtly spoken “Well?” It was the first time I had seen him either bothered or abrupt. The heat of the past few days, which had prostrated the rest of us and made us irritable and touchy, had not been sufficient to sap his energy or sour his sweet temper. I remembered that, in addition to facing the appalling position in which he found himself here at Dalehouse, he had had to rush away directly after breakfast to some other scene of illness and distress. He had hurried back through the sweltering heat to meet the aspersions of Allport and the angry attack of Kenneth. Throughout the fevered day he had been calm, kindly and unruffled. A “rock” as Ethel had whispered, for all of us to lean on.
I was surprised, therefore, to find him frowning and sharp-spoken, and he either saw my surprise or else he read my thoughts, for he closed the book with a bang, took his feet off the desk, and stood up saying, “Sorry, Jeffcock old man, but I’ve got an incipient hump.”
“In my opinion, you’ve been through enough to turn you into a veritable dromedary, so far as humps are concerned,” I answered.
“Oh! that—you mean my strong position as favorite for the gallowsstakes? No, my dear Jeffcock, to be perfectly truthful, that bothers me not at all. Death is a friend we shall all have to shake by the hand. It’s this depressing little record of unwholesome happenings and disease that nearly gave me a fit of the blues.”
I looked at the book with interest.
“It’s Hanson’s case-book,” he answered my unspoken question. “Such books should be burned. Burned and then the ashes scattered at sea, for half the world’s unhappiness springs from the disorders that we doctors write up so secretly in our case-books and keep hidden away under lock and key.” He flicked the pages between finger and thumb with a look of sad disgust as he spoke.
“Ugh!” he said, as he replaced the book in a drawer in the desk, which he pushed home with an angry bang.