Other friends came not. Lord Harrogate did indeed tap at the door, and so did four or five officers of the Lancer regiment, but contented themselves with an assurance that Jasper was in no immediate danger. And when Blanche Denzil’s tearful entreaties induced the Earl to solicit admittance to the sick-room for her at least, the surgeon went out and politely deprecated her entrance. Anything which might excite the patient should, he truly said, be as far as possible avoided. It was not exactly possible just yet to ascertain the amount of damage done; but he, the doctor, anticipated no serious consequences. And with this assurance the poor sister was compelled to be content. They say that every educated man of fifty is a fool or a physician. Jack Prodgers had seen the light some half-century since, and his worst enemies—the men whose cash he pouched at play—would not have taxed him with folly.
‘Now, doctor,’ he said quietly, ‘don’t you think the best we can do for the poor fellow is to get his left shoulder into the socket again before the muscles stiffen?’
The surgeon winced. He knew by the cursory examination he had made that no bones—unless it might be the collar-bone, an injury to which is not always promptly ascertained—were broken; but here, annoying circumstance! was a dislocation which he had left to be discovered by an outsider to the profession.
‘Bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, adjusting his spectacles, ‘so it is. We have no time to lose.’
As it was, time enough had been lost to bring about a contraction of the muscles, that rendered it necessary to call in the aid of James the waiter and Joe the boots, before the hurt shoulder could be reinstated in its normal position.
The pain of the operation roused Jasper from his stupor. He moaned several times and stirred feebly to and fro, and when the wrench was over, opened his eyes and gazed with a bewildered stare about him. Very pale and ghastly he looked, lying thus, with the blood slowly oozing from a cut on his right temple, and his hair stained and matted. They sprinkled water on his face and put brandy to his lips; but he merely groaned again, and his eyes closed.
‘That’s a very ugly knock on the temple; I hope there’s no more mischief,’ said the doctor in a whisper, but speaking more openly than medicine-men, beside a patient’s bed, often speak to the laity.
Jack Prodgers shook his head. He was a man of experience, and had in his time seen some prompt and easy recoveries, and other cases in which there was no recovery at all. It was with some remorse that he looked down at the bruised and helpless form lying on the bed. His heart had been case-hardened by the rubs of a worldly career, but there was a soft spot in it after all, and it was with sincere joy that he saw at length the sick man’s eyes open with a glance of evident recognition, while a wan smile played about his lips.
‘I say, Jack,’ said Jasper feebly, ‘we’re in a hole, old man, after all’—— Then he fainted.
‘Nothing the matter with his reason, thank goodness! It was the shock to the brain I feared the most for him,’ said the doctor, as again brandy was administered.