XI
BODY OR SOUL
Lynn set out on his errand of mercy very early the next morning. The eternal freshness of dawn seemed still to be lingering amid the cool shadows of the wooded hillsides. The woods and fields alike were still bubbling with matin song. Heavy drops of dew still hung on the blue-eyed grass, sparkling in the sunlight like happy tears.
The doctor, however, was ready and waiting. The day's work began with the sunrise in Oldfield, and no one in all the region round had more to do between the rising and the setting of the sun, or indeed between its setting and rising again, than John Alexander always had. Ah, those village doctors of the old time! It is known in a way to all who think, how large a part they must have had in the making of these far-off corners of our great country, and yet the greater part can never be known. A doctor's memory is the greatest catholic confessional of humanity—and forever sacred. It is only the trivial, the whimsical outer edges of the deep experiences of these old-time country doctors that history may ever touch. Being human, they growled aloud sometimes over these trifles, as the doctor was growling when Lynn Gordon found him on that May morning.
A patient, a sufferer from chills and fever, which were still the scourge of the Ohio lowlands, had come to him on the day before for quinine. The doctor had given it to him in solution, the only form in which it was then known to country practitioners. Quinine was a costly medicine in those days, under the heavy tax which was removed long afterwards through the most earnest and even impassioned efforts of a Kentucky statesman, who, in a memorable speech, eloquently implored Congress to keep, if it would, its tax on silks and laces and precious stones but—for humanity's sake—to allow his constituency to have all the free quinine that they wanted.
"I gave this chap a big bottle of quinine," the doctor said. "He paid a stiff price for it, too, and I saw him put it in his saddle-bags with great care. Nevertheless, he managed somehow to crack the bottle, and, when only a part of the way home he found that it was leaking. He couldn't think of losing the quinine,—it had cost too much,—and he saved it by drinking that whole bottleful at a gulp. Well, he certainly had the benefit of it, none of it was wasted; but I feel a little tired from being up most of the night and having had pretty brisk work to keep him alive. What fools these mortals be;" the doctor yawned, as he struck his pipe musingly on the porch railing, thus ranging his thoughts while clearing his pipe of ashes. "And here's this other hard job, that's quite as unnecessary, on hand for to-day, and no more to be shirked or put off than the other was. Well, come along," he said, reluctantly laying down his pipe, the sole luxury that he allowed himself. "We may as well be going; ''twere well it were done quickly,'" he quoted again, for this rugged country doctor knew his Shakespeare as a man may know a book when he reads only one.
They went down the porch steps, talking of indifferent matters, pausing a moment at the gate, long enough for Lynn to speak a few words in return for the greeting which the doctor's wife gave him from the window. The Watson house was near by,—only a few paces down the big road,—and they were almost immediately standing before its open door. There the doctor halted with the look of one who musters his forces after having set his thoughts in order. He drew himself up and threw back his shoulders as if settling to a firm purpose with a new determination, and he finally buttoned his coat. That poor old shabby coat! Ah! that dear old coat! So eloquent in its faded shabbiness of the many fierce storms and the many merciless suns which had beaten upon his tireless ministrations to suffering humanity! And the buttoning of the doctor's old coat was always as the girding of a warrior's armor for battle.
The young man standing beside him on the steps gave him a careless side glance. He did not understand the meaning of what he saw, and he merely smiled at its apparent absurdity. A moment later he followed the doctor into the house, all unafraid, as youth often enters upon the most appalling of the mysteries of living.
It was Anne who met them and gave them an impassive good-morning, and silently led them into the room in which her husband was sitting. The sick man, propped up in his usual seat by the window, looked round when they came in, and murmured some indistinct greeting. But his miserable, restless eyes went back almost at once to their ceaseless quest of the deserted big road, stretching dully toward the dim, distant horizon.
"How are you to-day, Tom?" asked the doctor, perfunctorily, and then he continued without waiting for a reply to his inquiry, "We are not going to let you mope like this, old boy. I've been trying to think of something to help you—to fill the time. It's after a man gets out of bed that the worst tug comes—while he is still tied to the house and yet not actually ill. We mustn't let him mope, must we, Anne?" he said.