The next morning the patient received the following letter:—
“My dear Sir,—I think it only due to the confidence which you have placed in me to let you know in the plainest words what is the result of my diagnosis of your condition. Your left lung is almost gone, but with care you might survive its disappearance. Unhappily, however, the cardiac complications which I suspected are such as preclude the possibility of your recovery. In brief, I consider it to be my duty to advise you to lose no time in carrying out any business arrangements that demand your personal attention. You may of course live for some weeks; but I think you would do wisely to count only on days.
“Meantime, I would suggest no material change in your diet, except the reduction of your brandy pegs to seven per diem.”
This letter was put into the hands of the unfortunate man when he returned from his early ride the next morning. Its effect was to diminish to an appreciable degree his appetite for breakfast. He sat motionless on his chair out on the verandah and stared at the letter—it was his death-warrant. After an hour he felt a difficulty in breathing. He remembered now that he had always been uneasy about his lungs—his left in particular. He put his hand over the place where he supposed his heart to lie concealed. How could he have lived so many years in the world without becoming aware of the fact that as an every-day sort of an organ—leaving the higher emotions out of the question altogether—his heart was a miserable failure? Sympathy, friendship, love, emotion,—he would not have minded if his heart were incapable of these, if it only did its business as a blood pump; but it was perfectly plain from the manner in which it throbbed beneath his hand, that it was deserving of all the reprobation the doctor had heaped upon it.
His difficulty of respiration increased, and with this difficulty he became conscious of an acute pain under his ribs. He found when he attempted to rise that he could only do so with an effort. He managed to totter into his bedroom, and when he threw himself on his bed, it was with the feeling that he should never rise from it again.
His faithful Khânsâmah more than once inquired respectfully if the Preserver of the Poor would like to have the Doctor Sahib sent for, and if the Joy of the Whole World would in the meantime drink a peg. But the Preserver of the Poor had barely strength to express the hope that the disappearance of the Doctor Sahib might be effected by a supernatural agency, and the Joy of the Whole World could only groan at the suggestion of a peg. The pain under his ribs was increasing, and he had a general nightmare feeling upon him. Toward evening he sank into a lethargy, and at this point the Khânsâmah made up his mind that the time for action had come; he went for the doctor himself, and was fortunate enough to meet him going out in his buggy to dine.
“What on earth have you been doing with yourself?” he inquired, when he had felt the pulse of the patient. “Why, you’ve no pulse to speak of, and your skin—What the mischief have you been doing since yesterday?”
“How can you expect a chap’s pulse to be anything particular when he has no heart worth speaking of?” gasped the patient.
“Who has no heart worth speaking of?”
The patient looked piteously up at him.