X.
FEELING HIS WAY.
Rue was lying on her bed, propped up by pillows into a half-sitting posture. Her breath came raspingly and painfully, and she had the dingy pallor wherewith disease is wont to write itself on the African face.
"Is it death?" she asked, hoarsely, when the doctor had finished his examination. "Because, if it is, I should be glad to know in time to send for Master Bergan,—I mean, Mr. Arling."
Doctor Remy looked down upon the blind woman with a grave,—almost a frowning, face—which she could not see.
"So you are attached to Mr. Arling," said he.
"Certainly, sir," replied Rue, simply. "He is Miss Eleanor's son, you know."
If Doctor Remy did not know, he could easily understand. He was aware that the daughter of a Southern house remains "Miss Eleanor" (or whatever the Christian name might be) to the end of her days, with the dusky home population, although, in the meantime, she may have become a great-grandmother. Moreover, various scattered shreds of rumor came to his recollection, enough to afford a tolerably accurate explanation of the blind woman's reason for desiring to see Bergan Arling at her bedside. And though the matter would seem to be no concern of his, it is certain that he gave it a moment or two of profound study, ere he answered the question which Rue had addressed to him. Indeed, it was very much Doctor Remy's habit—as it is that of selfish natures in general—to consider all events mainly with reference to their bearing upon his own interests, and to hold them important or trivial, according to the degree of favorable or adverse influence which they would be likely to exert upon his fortunes.
The doctor's reflections were short and swift. To the bystanders, there seemed to be only the natural, deliberate pause of the careful physician, before deciding upon the case presented to him. Nor was Rue's patience greatly tried, ere his answer to her question was ready for her.
"Your case is not desperate, this time," said he, "though I can see that it is painful. Your cold, being unwisely left to run its own course, has resulted in inflammation of the throat, and, partially, of the lungs. But it is not beyond present relief, nor permanent cure, I think. At least, we shall soon see."
There was no question of Doctor Remy's professional skill. In Berganton, his scientific superiority had early been recognized by the community, and tacitly conceded by his medical brethren. Yet he could hardly be said to be popular, even with his patients. There was no affection mingled with the respect accorded to his talent. It was intuitively felt, if not clearly understood and expressed, that, though he brought every resource of science to the sick-chamber, he brought nothing else. He was as cold and pitiless as his own steel probe or lance. And there are times when a deep, human sympathy, on the part of the physician, is as real a medicament to the sufferer, as any set down in the pharmacopeia; in which fact many a genial quack finds his account. It had come, therefore, to be very much the Berganton habit to reserve Doctor Remy's skill for severe accidents, for consultations, for the awful conflict of life and death over wasted forms writhing with sharp pain, or locked in moveless stupor. But the thousand pettier ills of life, which asked for tender consideration almost as imperatively as for medicine, preferred to commit themselves to the fatherly kindness of good old Doctor Harris, or the warm-hearted enthusiasm of the last medical arrival,—Doctor Gerrish, whose scientific attainments had, as yet, to be taken for granted, but whose smile was a veritable cordial.