THE THREE DOCTORS
I have dwelt at this length upon the medical direction given by men of such eminence, not only to show, as it is my duty to do, the filial regard of Cosmo, but also to furnish an ample explanation of his conduct at Avonmore during the illness; for, had not the confirmed opinion of these high authorities assured him that his father’s indisposition was but temporary, he would never have pursued the course which some severe critics have blamed, but which I can only praise. As it was, he felt himself justified in calling a certain number of chosen guests daily under his roof, and in undertaking, to some extent, the management of his father’s affairs; he was confident, moreover, that Mr Burden, on his approaching recovery, would absolve him of all indiscretion, and commend him even for his most speculative decisions.
It was announced with pardonable exaggeration (but only in the daily papers whose pages we hardly recall in our hurried modern life) that Mr Burden, though still in feeble health, was able to direct his affairs from the sick room; and Cosmo did not hesitate, with a commercial courage which the future justified, to use his father’s name in several important expressions of opinion. He wrote also to the Press, above his own signature, twice within the space of a week, strongly supporting an attitude of the Directors which had been unduly criticised, and emphasising, with a fine indignation, the treachery of the unpatriotic crew who used his father’s name at a moment when the great merchant was unable to attend the meetings of the Board. Indeed, it may truly be said that, at this moment when Mr Burden’s body was most removed from the affairs of the M’Korio, his spirit was omnipresent in a way it had never been until that moment; his credit and position, which were of such incalculable advantage to that Imperial venture, were never so strongly before the public as at the moment when Cosmo, for his own wise ends, was speaking in the old man’s name.
The splendid hospitality which the house at Norwood displayed at this moment was of importance equally critical. Not that the parties were large, but that this distant villa, which hitherto had seen few visitors, and those of but a humdrum sort, now received men upon whose capital or judgment, the principal affairs of our time are conducted. In a few days the public rumours of Mr Burden’s dissensions utterly died away, and the old man’s solid career became in the general estimation the pivot of the whole M’Korian scheme. So true is it that Providence does with us more than we mean! For Mr Burden, passing the days upstairs between sleeping and waking, glad that his son should be seeing something of companionship during this difficult period of his illness, would never have had the tenacity or the judgment to use his own influence as well as it was used by Cosmo for him.
The strong constitution which Mr Burden had inherited, and which he had carefully preserved, stood him in good stead during the course of his little illness. Ten days after he had taken to his bed, that is, upon August 23rd, he felt himself again; he could eat heartily, he read with a clear judgment, and he might, had he not wisely deferred to the opinion of the faculty, have left the house and gone about his business.
His doctors, however, with the double object of permanently curing their patient and of advancing the science they adorned, determined to defer his return to business.
With his physique, and under these conditions of increasing strength, the analysis of his malady became more and more difficult. His medical advisers determined therefore to prescribe a potion, whose virtue it was so to lower the action of the heart and to befog the brain, as to bring its recipient to a state the pathology of which is common knowledge throughout the profession. Thus artificially reduced to a condition which would indeed be morbid, but the familiarity of which would permit them to agree upon its nature, they could proceed from the known to the unknown, they could build up a definite basis, they could cure thoroughly, and they, the great scientists hoped, at the same time, to observe what organ it was that had failed their patient, and had yet eluded their consummate powers of observation.
A drug was therefore administered to him by the nurse, and he was told, as invalids must ever be, that it was but a harmless tonic. She advised him, if he felt inclined for sleep in the afternoon, to take a full rest: and, having thus carried out her instructions to the letter, the excellent woman went out for a few hours’ well-earned recreation, and left her sufferer to repose.
But when he had drunk his medicine, Mr Burden felt an odd fancy for the sun. The window of his great bedroom looked north, and he could see the summer light upon the trees beyond; for the doctors had left him at eleven, and it was noon. He ordered a servant, therefore, to take his deck-chair down into the conservatory, upon the southern side of the house: a greenhouse opening out of the drawing-room, of which indeed it formed a part, being separated from it only by a curtained archway supported upon columns in the Corinthian manner. Just round the corner of this arch, lying with a book in his hand which he would not read, and covered with a light rug, he felt a drowsiness not wholly pleasing come upon him, and fell into a curiously hard and uneasy slumber.