"I believe you would do it, and—that he believes it too."
She tapped him on the sleeve with the long cherry-wood stick of her white green-lined umbrella.
"Thank you. But don't get to making a habit of saying charming things, because the rôle of Bruin suits you. Your Society women-patients used to enjoy being bullied, tremendously, I remember. We're made like that." Her shrill laugh came again. "To sauter à pieds joints on people who are used to being deferred to, or made much of, is the best way to command their cordial gratitude and sincere esteem, isn't it? Don't all you successful professional men know that?"
"The days of my professional successes are past and gone," said Saxham, "and my very name must be strange in the ears of the men and women who were my patients. It is natural and reasonable that when a man falls out of the race, he should be forgotten—at least, I hold it so."
"You have a patient not very far away who lauds you to the skies." Lady Hannah indicated the slender pepper-and-salt clad figure of Julius Fraithorn with the cherry-wood umbrella-stick. "You know his father, the Bishop of H——? Such a dear little trotty old man, with the kind of rosy, withered-apple face that suggests a dear little trotty old woman, disguised in an episcopal apron and gaiters, and with funny little bits of white fur glued on here and there for whiskers and eyebrows. We met him with Mrs. Fraithorn at the Hôtel Schwert at Appenbad one June. Do you know Appenbad? Views divine: such miles of eye-flight over the Lake of Constance and the Rhine Valley. To quote Bingo, who suffered hideously from the whey-cure, every prospect pleases, and only man is bile—and woman, too, if seeing black spots in showers like smuts in a London fog, only sailing up instead of coming down, means a disturbed gastric system. I'm not sure now that the Bishop did not mention your name. Can he have done so, or am I hashing things? Do set my mind at rest?"
Saxham said with stiffness:
"It would be possible that the Bishop would remember me. I operated on him for the removal of the appendix in 18—"
"If you had taken away his Ritualistic prejudices at the same time, you would have made his wife a happy woman. Her soul yearns for incense and vestments, candles, and acolytes, and most of all for her boy. Well, she will thank you herself for him one day, Doctor." The little dry hand, glittering with magnificent rings, touched Saxham's gently. "In the meantime let a woman who hasn't got a son shake hands with you for her."
"You make too much of that affair." Saxham took the offered hand. It pressed his kindly, and the little lady went on:
"You're still a prophet in your own country, you know, though it pleases you to make yourself out a—a kind of medical Rip Van Winkle. In June last year—when I did not guess that I should ever know you—I heard a woman say: 'If Owen had been here, the child wouldn't have died.' And the woman was your sister-in-law, Mrs. David Saxham."