Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

“Come on; hurry! We are all waiting.”

I supposed he referred to supper, for I knew my friend had a very orderly and precise wife, who is a little deaf. One must be promptly on time in keeping appointments with such a character. The old man caught me by the arm, hurried me to a carriage, and fairly bundled me into it. He paid no attention to my questions, but jumped into the front seat and urged on the horse to full speed. The lantern swinging from the front axle went out as we bumped off into the darkness over mud holes and ruts without number. I tried to get my electric device into operation, but the plug had dropped out of place and I could not make connections. So on we plunged. Soon I found that the old man in front was nearly as deaf as I. The combination of two deaf men in the darkness rushing through what was to one of them an absolutely unknown country should have been thrilling, but the deaf man rarely experiences a thrill; he must wait for some one to tell him what it is all about. As usual, my mind worked back for some comparative incident.

I remembered two. The year before I had gone to Canada during the Winter. A farmer met me at the station after dark. It was very cold, and the body of a closed carriage which had been put on runners was filled with straw. This made a warm, comfortable nest, and the farmer got in with me, while his son sat up in front to drive. The same plug to my hearing device had dropped out, and in order to give me a light for finding it, my host struck a match. He held it too long and it burned his fingers. Then it fell into the straw and started a great blaze. No two men ever showed greater activity than we did as we plunged out of that carriage and threw in snow until the fire was extinguished. That scene came to my mind, and then followed the story by Ian Maclaren of the great surgeon who came up from London to perform an operation, and was carried off into the wilderness against his will by the local doctor.

We drove several miles, it seemed to me, and then suddenly turned into the yard of a farmhouse. I felt the carriage shudder as the wheel grazed the stone gatepost. The door opened and a long splinter of light darted out upon us. Two women hurried down the walk and helped me out of the carriage. They were strangers to me, and now I was sure that I was in the midst of an exciting adventure, not at the home of my friend. The women escorted me to the house, where I found two solemn-faced gentlemen evidently waiting for me. One of them held up a finger and beckoned me into an adjoining room, where upon a bed lay a man who glared at me with no agreeable face. By this time I had my “acousticon” in working order, and as this man evidently had something to say, I held the mouthpiece down to him and heard him shout:

“I tell you I won’t have it cut off!”

The two men who had brought me in were very much startled when the exact contents of my black case was revealed. They glanced at each other and then promptly escorted me out of the room. We went into the kitchen, and there, beside the stove, the mystery was explained. One of the men looked curiously at me and then asked:

“Are you not Dr. Newton of New York?”

I hastened to explain that I had never before heard of Dr. Newton. Then it was revealed to me that these men were country doctors, waiting to hold a consultation with the great surgeon, who had been expected to arrive on my train. The man on the bed had had serious trouble with his knee. These physicians had agreed that the limb must be removed, yet both hesitated to perform a complicated operation. Hence, the surgeon was coming to do it. The sick man’s father-in-law had gone to the station; he had been instructed to bring back a man of medium size, who said little and carried a black case of surgical instruments. I was to look for an elderly man with a gray beard. Father-in-law and I had mixed our signals.

It took me but a short time to convince these physicians that I could not fill the bill or saw off the leg. At last it developed that the actual surgeon was detained and could not come until the following day.

The man on the bed forgot his terror and laughed when I told him my story, and it gave him the fighting courage to compel his wife to telegraph the surgeon not to come at all. But those doctors acted as though I had deprived them of their prey. In my capacity as substitute surgeon I gave the patient the best advice I knew of: