Sir Sykes had got thus far in his speech, attempting the while to brush past the doctor, when he found himself gently but resolutely repulsed.
‘Now, Sir Sykes,’ said the little man, interposing his diminutive person between the tall baronet and the door, as some faithful dog might have done, ‘pray have patience with me. Captain Denzil is my patient. He has sustained severe injury, the precise extent of which it is impossible yet for science to determine, and I am responsible for his safety, humanly speaking—the pilot, in fact, with whom it rests to bring him into port. We have just succeeded, by the help of an opiate, in inducing sleep. It will not last long, on account of the smallness of the dose. But it is of the utmost consequence that it should not be broken; and in fact, Sir Sykes, my patient is my patient, and I must protect him even against his own father.’
These last words were uttered in consequence of a renewed attempt on the baronet’s part to force a passage, and the persuasive tone in which they were spoken contrasted oddly with the firmness of the doctor’s attitude.
‘Really, Mr Aulfus,’ said Sir Sykes, half apologetically, half in dudgeon; but the other cut him short with: ‘Excuse me, Sir Sykes. Dr Aulfus, if you please. It is perhaps the weakness of a professional purist, but I do like to be dubbed a doctor; as your noble neighbour and connection, the Earl, no doubt has a preference for the title of “My Lord.” It has cost me dear enough, sir, that handle to my name; kept me, I may safely say, out of a good four hundred a year of practice I might have had, since old women and heads of families are shy of sending for a regular physician; and that’s why such fellows as Lancetter at High Tor, and Druggett the apothecary in Pebworth High Street, rattle about the county, feeling pulses and sending out physic, when a man who has more learning in his little finger than—— You smile, sir; and indeed I was unduly warm. No selfish love of lucre, believe me, prompted my remarks, but a sincere scorn for the prejudices and gullibility, if the word be not too strong, of our Devonshire Bœotians.’
By this time the doctor had succeeded in getting Sir Sykes into a neighbouring room, the door of which stood invitingly open, and thus securing the sleeper against the chance of being rudely awakened from his slumber. The baronet too had employed a minute or two in reflections which shewed him how unseemly was the part which he had been about to play, while some dim consciousness that it was unfair to visit on Jasper the unwelcome recognition and jocular impertinence of Mr Wilkins, began to creep into his perturbed mind.
‘You forget, Dr Aulfus,’ he said mildly enough, ‘that I have as yet heard no details as to the injuries which my son has sustained. They are not, I apprehend, of a very serious or indeed dangerous character?’
‘Umph! Dislocation of right shoulder, now reduced, but attended with much pain; severe contusion on temple; some bad bruises, and complete prostration of nervous system from the stunning blow and violent concussion of spinal cord,’ dryly rejoined the doctor, summing up the facts as though he had been a judge putting the pith of some case before a jury. ‘These are all the results that I know of’—— And he paused, hesitating, so that Sir Sykes for the first time felt a genuine twinge of alarm.
‘Have you any suspicion, doctor, that there is something worse than this?’ he asked, drawing his breath more quickly.
‘I don’t know. I hope not,’ returned Dr Aulfus thoughtfully. ‘Our knowledge after all is but cramped and bounded. I remember once at sea (I was assistant-surgeon in the navy and also on board Green’s Indiamen, before I graduated in medicine) seeing a look in the face of a young sailor who had fallen from the mizzen shrouds to the deck, very like what I saw, or fancied I saw, in Captain Denzil’s face to-day. But that was a fall, compared with which even the accidents of a steeplechase are trifles,’ added the doctor more cheerfully, and with an evident wish to change the subject.
‘It is a mad sport, taken as a form of excitement,’ said Sir Sykes, his resentment beginning to turn itself towards the institution of steeplechasing; ‘worse still, when mere greed actuates the performers, brutal curiosity the spectators.’