Wotherspoon again became a wealthy man, and saw many happy years afterwards; but often said that he would never again speak of forging bills, as Lorimer had declared, after he was condemned to death, that it was his having overheard his idle, but unguarded language on this subject in the inn, that had suggested to him the plot which had so nearly accomplished his destruction.
THE SURGEON'S TALES.
THE THREE LETTERS.
It is a difficult question how far doctors ought voluntarily to interfere in matters of wills. One-half of our profession advocate the moral necessity and propriety of not only putting their patients in such a state of knowledge as to their bodily condition, as to bring out by inference the prudence of arranging their temporal affairs, but of adding suggestions and recommendations to the effect of inducing them to perform this indispensable duty, before the grim tyrant's advances may render it impossible. The other half smile at their bolder and more philanthropic brethren, as fools who interfere with what lies beyond their province, and limit their statements or advice to those necessary replies which are called for by the questions of the patients themselves. Upon all such points, where the truth is sought for in partibus extremis, much has been said, and will be said; and perhaps a thousand years hence the profession and the public may be as far from any simple designative proposition of the real moral truth of the subjects, as they are at present. The fault lies in men's minds, which, seeking eternally to generalise, lose sight of the grand fact in nature—that, as in botany she defies man in his attempts at a natural classification, so, in moral states and conditions of society, she equally defies him to manufacture verbal rules for the regulation of individuals or masses under all existing circumstances. For my part, I have always avoided these verbose questions; and, though I have practised for many years, I have never experienced any difficulty in so regulating my statements and advices to dying patients, as might best suit their temporal interests of health and wealth, without losing sight of what was due to higher and more sacred feelings and prospects of a world to come. To tell some patients that they are dying would be to commit a species of homicide; to conceal from them the state of their bodies, and their approaching dissolution, may be to be accessory to worldly wrongs, to be felt for generations, and to that condemnation that is to be felt for ever; but between those extremes there ranges a wide field for the workings of prudence, an ample space for the exercise of a noble and manly virtue, and scope enough and to spare for the exhibition of all those elevated feelings of good hearts that add grace and beauty to the possessors, and are displayed for the benefit of our fellow-creatures. No man has so much in his power for the benefit of mankind as a medical practitioner; and proud am I to say, that no man, speaking generally, more seldom loses the opportunity of turning it to the proper account. These observations are called forth by a case that, some time ago, came under my observation, where the hand of a ruling Providence spurned the schemes of weak mortals, and took the regulation of a dying person's affairs out of her hands, in a manner as strange as it is dark and mysterious.
Mrs Germain, a widow lady of fortune, sent her niece, a young woman about twenty-three years of age, to request that I would visit her in my professional capacity. The case, I was told, was not an urgent one, and I might call at any time during the course of the day, as suited my arrangements and leisure. I went, accordingly, in a short time afterwards, and was introduced into a very splendid drawing-room, where I observed an elderly lady, whom I took to be Mrs Germain herself, reclining on a damask-covered couch, with the young person who had waited on me sitting on a footstool by her side. The two individuals were interesting in many respects, even at first sight. There was a singular elegance of taste displayed in the dress, though a dishabille, of the elderly one, which, co-operating with a set of features at one time undoubtedly handsome, and now noble and intellectual, bespoke the lady by birth, and one that had cultivated the art of making the body and the mind reflect on each other mutual beauty and adornment. The young one, whom I had seen before, but under the shade of a jealous veil, was one of those blondines so highly prized in French novel-writing, and seldom seen in our country in the perfection of contrast, of dark piercing eyes and light auburn tresses, so frequently seen in France. She was also very elegantly attired; and the graceful manner in which she reclined, with her left arm on the side of the couch, and her right holding a richly-gilt book, from which she had been reading to her aunt, produced an effect which an artist or a lover would not have been slow to acknowledge. On a nearer approach, I soon detected, in the composed and bland features of the elder, the delicate, yet certain, touch of the finger of some latent, lurking disease; which, by draining the blood from the lips, blanching the lower confines of the temples, and depressing the globes of the eyes, had given a melancholy premonition of serious changes about to be effected in vital parts.
Having been introduced by the niece, who rose and handed me a chair, I sat down by the side of the couch, and received an account of the symptoms which had exhibited themselves to the invalid; from which I learned that she had been ailing for several months, but that no indications of serious disease having been detected by her, she had put off her application for medical advice from day to day, in the hope of getting better. How little did she know that, during all that time, she had been unconsciously, yet progressively, travelling the dark path of death!—how little did she now know, as she lay there, arrayed in the tasteful and costly decorations of the body—her face clothed with the composure of easy indolence and the expression of noble pride, and her soft languid eye lighted up with the hope of a long course of happiness supplied from the resources of wealth—that death was busy with the secret parts of her heart! I understood her complaint at the first description of her symptoms—an aneurism or tumour in the region of the fountain of life, which would burst in an instant, and precipitate her in another moment into eternity.
Her complaint defies all the efforts of our profession, and it is, moreover, one which never can with propriety be explained to a patient, because there are few that have firmness enough to enable them to bear up under the certainty of an instantaneous dissolution, and the uncertainty of the dread moment. I therefore exercised that allowable and humane dissimulation which the searching eyes of patients, or that of friends, render necessary for their freedom and relief from fears that would often kill as certainly as the disease which generates them. This might not have been called for by any vigilance on the part of Mrs Germain to read my face; she felt no apprehension, and put no questions as to what I conceived to be the nature of her complaint. But I saw the dark eyes of the niece fixed upon my countenance with a searching intensity of look and solicitude of expression, which showed that, if she could, she would have read the most secret thoughts of my heart. There was affection deep and pure in that look, and the fear of the bursting asunder of ties more dear to her than her own existence. She continued her gaze silently, but thoughtfully; and the conversation of her aunt, which, notwithstanding her weakness, was spirited and buoyant, touching many indifferent topics lightly, and with the ease and grace of high breeding and fine cultivated fancy, struck her ear without carrying a meaning to her mind. I indulged the confidence of the patient, and witnessed, with feelings which we only can know, the delusive spirit of life flapping his golden-coloured wings round the heart whose citadel was already occupied by the demon of death. Such scenes are familiar to us; but there was something in this different from any I had yet witnessed: and I took my departure with an assumed placidity of look, while the inmost recesses of my spirit were convulsed by the laugh of the patient, and the silent-brooding and fearful-searching eye of that angelic being, whose existence seemed to be wound up in her friend.
Even in desperate cases we must prescribe; and in the evening I sent some medicines of the paregoric and hypnotic kind, with a view, simply—for I could do no more—of relieving a slight pain which occasionally, but at considerable intervals, interfered with her good spirits. I continued my visits, and often witnessed scenes similar to those I described. The patient was gradually approaching the dread issue; and still, at every meeting, that beautiful young woman watched my every look, and searched my heart with those brilliant eyes, that spoke some mysterious language, which even the deepest feelings of friendship for her benefactress would scarcely explain. The patient herself felt no solicitude—she saw no danger. It was clearly otherwise with her niece: but what surprised me was, that this devoted girl only looked her intense feelings; she never asked me if her aunt was in danger. Every glance, every movement, showed that she felt it; but the fear of having her apprehensions confirmed—such, at least, was my construction of her strange conduct—sealed up her lips, and constrained her to a solemn silence.