“Won’t he get over it?”
“Well, sir, I am afraid not. His state of weakness is alarming.”
The Squire turned on him with a storm, just as though he had known him for years: asking why on earth Blair’s friends (meaning himself) had not been written to, and promising a prosecution if he let him die. The doctor took it sensibly, and was cool as iced water.
“We medical men are only gifted at best with human skill, sir,” he said, looking the Squire full in the face.
“Blair is young—not much turned thirty.”
“The young die as well as the old, when it pleases Heaven to take them.”
“But it doesn’t please Heaven to take him,” retorted the Squire, worked up to the point when he was not accountable for his words. “But that you seem in earnest, young man, probably meaning no irreverence, I’d ask you how you dare bring Heaven’s name into such a case as this? Did Heaven fling him out of house and home into Jerry’s Gazette, do you suppose? Or did man? Man, sir: selfish, hard, unjust man. Don’t talk to me, Mr. Doctor, about Heaven.”
“All I wished to imply, sir, was, that Mr. Blair’s life is not in my keeping, or in that of any human hands,” said the doctor, when he had listened quietly to the end. “I will do my best to bring him round; I can do no more.”
“You must bring him round.”
“There can be no ‘must’ about it: and I doubt if he is to be brought round. Mr. Blair has not naturally a large amount of what we call stamina, and this illness has laid a very serious hold upon him. It would be something in his favour if the mind were at ease: which of course it cannot be in his circumstances.”