The physician arrived at last—a small, bird-like man under a great gray periwig, with pointed features and little eyes that beamed brightly behind horn-rimmed spectacles.
In the ante-room he was met by Mr. Green, who in in a few words told him what had happened. Then the doctor entered the bedchamber alone, and deposing hat and cane, went forward to make his examination.
Mr. Caryll and Bentley stood aside to give place to him. He stooped, felt the pulse, examined the lips of the wound, estimating the locality and direction of the bullet, and his mouth made a clucking sound as of deprecation.
“Very deplorable, very deplorable!” he muttered. “So hale a man, too, despite his years. Very deplorable!” He looked up. “A Jacobite, ye say he is, sir?”
“Will he live?” inquired Mr. Caryll shortly, by way of recalling the man of medicine to the fact that politics was not the business on which he had been summoned.
The doctor pursed his lips, and looked at Mr. Caryll over the top of his spectacles. “He will live—”
“Thank God!” breathed Mr. Caryll.
“—perhaps an hour,” the doctor concluded, and never knew how near was Mr. Caryll to striking him. He turned again to his patient, producing a probe. “Very deplorable!” Mr. Caryll heard him muttering, parrot-like.
A pause ensued, and a silence broken only by occasional cluckings from the little doctor, and Mr. Caryll stood by, a prey to an anguish more poignant than he had ever known. At last there was a groan from the wounded man. Mr. Caryll started forward.
Sir Richard's eyes were open, and he was looking about him at the doctor, the valet, and, lastly, at his adopted son. He smiled faintly at the latter. Then the doctor touched Mr. Caryll's sleeve, and drew him aside.