I obeyed promptly. Jamie gleefully rubbed his hands.
"It takes you, Doctor, to make Marcia mind."
"I 'm a man of years, Boy," the Doctor retorted, thereby reducing Jamie to silence.
We sat expectant; but evidently the Doctor was in no hurry to open up his subject. After a few minutes of deep thought, he spoke slowly, almost as if to himself:
"I'm wondering where to begin, what to take hold of first. The ordering of life is beyond all science—we 've found that out, we so-called 'men of science'. The truth is, I believe I have a 'conscience fund' in the bank and on my mind. I know I am speaking blindly, and perhaps reasoning blindly, and it's because I want you to see things for me more clearly than I do, and through a different medium, that I am going to tell you, as concisely as I can—and without mentioning names—of an experience I had more than a quarter of a century ago. I 've had several of the kind since, they are common in our profession—but the result of this special experience is unique." He paused, continuing to look steadfastly into the fire.
In the silence we heard the sweep of the wind through the woods, now and then the scraping swish of a pine branch brushing the roof beneath it.
"I recall that it was in December. I was twenty-nine, and had just got a foothold on the first round of the professional ladder. Near midnight I was called to go down into one of the slum districts—I don't intend to mention names—of New York. There in a basement, I found a woman who had just been rescued from suicide."
He paused, still keeping his gaze fixed intently on the fire. And I?
At the first words a faint sickness came upon me. Was I to hear this again?—here, remote from the environment from which I had so recently fled? Could it be possible that I was to hear again that account of my mother's death? I struggled for control. They must not know, they should not see that struggle. Intent on keeping every feature passive, hoping that in the firelight whatever my face might have shown would pass unnoticed, I waited for the Doctor's next word.
"It seems unprofessional, perhaps, to enter into any detail, but we are far away from that environment now—and in time, too, for it was over a quarter of a century ago. She was very young, nineteen perhaps, and about to become a mother. I remained with her till morning. I knew she would never come through her trial alive. I went again in the evening and stayed with her till her child was born and—to the end which came an hour afterwards. During all those twenty-four hours she spoke but twice. She gave me no name, although I asked her; no name of friends even—God knows if she had any, or why was she there?