The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Doctor's Red Lamp, by Various, Edited by Charles Wells Moulton

THE DOCTOR’S
RECREATION SERIES

CHARLES WELLS MOULTON
General Editor

VOLUME TWO

[ front]

The Village Doctor

Copyright, 1904,
BY
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY

The
WERNER COMPANY
Akron, O.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

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ILLUSTRATIONS.

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[1] Original by the courtesy of William Wood & Co., New York.

PREFACE

——

IN PREPARING this book of short stories concerning the doctor’s daily life, the editor has availed himself of the counsel of his staff of editorial associates, and he trusts that this volume will prove equally acceptable as the other works in The Doctor’s Recreation Series.

The stories themselves are offered without critical comment. Many of them are old favorites. Many of them are by well-known and standard authors. All relate some episode in the doctor’s life in a manner both striking and original. We believe this is the first volume of its kind ever offered to the public.

For the courtesy of copyright privileges extended we return thanks to S. S. McClure Co., The Century Co., Harper & Brothers, J. B. Lippincott Co., Little, Brown & Co., Macmillan & Co., John Brisben Walker, Joseph Kirkland, Dr. Conan Doyle, Lucy S. Furman, Ambrose Bierce, Rev. John Watson, Ruth McEnery Stuart, Margaret Sutton Briscoe, Henry Seton Merriman, and Maud Wilder Goodwin.

C. W. M.

Buffalo, March 18, 1904.

THE DOCTOR’S RED LAMP.

——

I.

THE SURGEON’S MIRACLE.

“POOR Abe Dodge.”

That’s what they called him, though he wasn’t any poorer than other folks—not so poor as some. How could he be poor, work as he did and steady as he was? Worth a whole grist of such bait as his brother, Ephe Dodge, and yet they never called Ephe poor—whatever worse name they might call him. When Ephe was off at a show in the village, Abe was following the plough, driving a straight furrow, though you wouldn’t have thought it to see the way his nose pointed. In winter, when Ephe was taking the girls to singing school or spelling bee or some other foolishness—out till after nine o’clock at night, like as not—Abe was hanging over the fire, holding a book so the light would shine, first on one page and then on the other, and he turning his head as he turned the book, and reading first with one eye and then with the other.

There, the murder’s out! Abe couldn’t read with both eyes at once. If Abe looked straight ahead he couldn’t see the furrow—nor anythin’ else, for that matter. His best friend couldn’t say but what Abe Dodge was the cross-eyedest cuss that ever was. Why, if you wanted to see Abe, you’d stand in front of him; but if you wanted Abe to see you, you’d got to stand behind him, or pretty near it. Homely? Well, if you mean downright “humbly,” that’s what he was. When one eye was in use the other was out of sight, all except the white of it. Humbly ain’t no name for it: The girls used to say he had to wake up in the night to rest his face, it was so humbly. In school you’d ought to have seen him look down at his copybook. He had to cant his head clear over and cock up his chin till it pointed out of the winder and down the road. You’d really ought to have seen him, you’d have died. Head of the class, too, right along; just as near to the head as Ephe was to the foot; and that’s sayin’ a good deal. But to see him at his desk! He looked for all the world like a week-old chicken, peekin’ at a tumble-bug! And him a grown man, too, for he stayed to school winters so long as there was anything more the teacher could teach him. You see, there wasn’t anything to draw him away; no girl wouldn’t look at him—lucky, too, seein’ the way he looked.

Well, one term there was a new teacher come—regular high-up girl, down from Chicago. As bad luck would have it, Abe wasn’t at school the first week—hadn’t got through his fall work. So she got to know all the scholars, and they was awful tickled with her—everybody always was that knowed her. The first day she come in and saw Abe at his desk, she thought he was squintin’ for fun, and she upped and laughed right out. Some of the scholars laughed too, at first; but most of ‘em, to do ‘em justice, was a leetle took back; young as they was, and cruel by nature. (Young folks is most usually always cruel—don’t seem to know no better.)

Well, right in the middle of the hush, Abe gathered up his books and upped and walked outdoors, lookin’ right ahead of him, and consequently seeing the handsome young teacher unbeknown to her.

She was the worst cut up you ever did see; but what could she do or say? Go and tell him she thought he was makin’ up a face for fun? The girls do say that come noon-spell, when she found out about it, she cried—just fairly cried. Then she tried to be awful nice to Abe’s ornery brother Ephe, and Ephe he was tickled most to death; but that didn’t do Abe any good—Ephe was jest ornery enough to take care that Abe shouldn’t get any comfort out of it. They do say she sent messages to Abe, and Ephe never delivered them, or else twisted ‘em so as to make things worse and worse. Mebbe so. mebbe not—Ephe was ornery enough for it.

‘Course the school-ma’am she was boardin’ round, and pretty soon it come time to go to ol’ man Dodge’s, and she went; but no Abe could she ever see. He kept away, and as to meals, he never set by, but took a bite off by himself when he could get a chance. (’Course his mother favored him, being he was so cussed unlucky.) Then when the folks was all to bed, he’d come in and poke up the fire and peek into his book, but first one side and then the other, same as ever.

Now what does school-ma’am do but come down one night when she thought he was a-bed and asleep, and catch him unawares. Abe knowed it was her, quick as he heard the rustle of her dress, but there wasn’t no help for it, so he just turned his head away and covered his cross-eyes with his hands, and she pitched in. What she said I don’t know, but Abe he never said a word; only told her he didn’t blame her, not a mite; he knew she couldn’t help it—no more than he could. Then she asked him to come back to school, and he answered to please excuse him. After a bit she asked him if he wouldn’t come to oblige her, and he said he calculated he was obligin’ her more by stayin’ away.

Well, come to that she didn’t know what to say or do, so, woman-like, she upped and cried; and then she said he hurt her feelings. And the upshot of it was he said he’d come, and they shook hands on it.

Well, Abe kept his word and took up schoolin’ as if nothing had happened; and such schoolin’ as there was that winter! I don’t believe any regular academy had more learnin’ and teachin’ that winter than what that district school did. Seemed as if all the scholars had turned over a new leaf. Even wild, ornery, no-account Ephe Dodge couldn’t help but get ahead some—but then he was crazy to get the school-ma’am; and she never paid no attention to him, just went with Abe. Abe was teachin’ her mathematics, seeing that was the one thing where he knowed more than she did—outside of farmin’. Folks used to say that if Ephe had Abe’s head, or Abe had Ephe’s face, the school-ma’am would have half of the Dodge farm whenever ol’ man Dodge got through with it; but neither of them did have what the other had, and so there it was, you see.

Well, you’ve heard of Squire Caton, of course; Judge Caton, they call him since he got to be Judge of the Supreme Court—and Chief Justice at that. Well, he had a farm down there not far from Fox River, and when he was there he was just a plain farmer like the rest of us, though up in Chicago he was a high-up lawyer, leader of the bar. Now it so happened that a young doctor named Brainard—Daniel Brainard—had just come to Chicago and was startin’ in, and Squire Caton was helpin’ him, gave him desk-room in his office and made him known to the folks—Kinzies, and Butterfields, and Ogdens, and Hamiltons, and Arnolds, and all of those folks—about all there was in Chicago in those days. Brainard had been to Paris—Paris, France, not Paris, Illinois, you understand—and knew all the doctorin’ there was to know then. Well, come spring, Squire Caton had Doc Brainard down to visit him, and they shot ducks and geese and prairie chickens and some wild turkeys and deer, too—game was just swarmin’ at that time. All the while Caton was doin’ what law business there was to do; and Brainard thought he ought to be doin’ some doctorin’ to keep his hand in, so he asked Caton if there wasn’t any cases he could take up—surgery cases especially he hankered after, seein’ he had more carving tools than you could shake a stick at. He asked him particularly if there wasn’t anybody he could treat for “strabismus.” The squire hadn’t heard of anybody dying of that complaint; but when the doctor explained that strabismus was French for cross-eyes, he naturally thought of poor Abe Dodge, and the young doctor was right up on his ear. He smelled the battle afar off; and ‘most before you could say Jack Robinson the squire and the doctor were on horseback and down to the Dodge farm, tool-chest and all.

Well, it so happened that nobody was at home but Abe and Ephe, and it didn’t take but few words before Abe was ready to set right down, then and there, and let anybody do anything he was a mind to with his misfortunate eyes. No, he wouldn’t wait till the old folks come home; he didn’t want to ask no advice; he wasn’t afraid of pain, nor of what anybody could do to his eyes—couldn’t be made any worse than they were, whatever you did to ‘em. Take ‘em out and boil ‘em and put ‘em back if you had a mind to, only go to work. He knew he was of age and he guessed he was master of his own eyes—such as they were.

Well, there wasn’t nothing else to do but go ahead. The doctor opened up his killing tools and tried to keep Abe from seeing them; but Abe he just come right over and peeked at ‘em, handled ‘em, and called ‘em “splendid”—and so they were, barrin’ havin’ them used on your own flesh and blood and bones.

Then they got some cloths and a basin, and one thing an’ another, and set Abe right down in a chair. (No such thing as chloroform in those days, you’ll remember.) And Squire Caton was to hold an instrument that spread the eyelid wide open, while Ephe was to hold Abe’s head steady. First touch of the lancet, and first spirt of blood, and what do you think? That ornery Ephe wilted, and fell flat on the floor behind the chair!

“Squire,” said Brainard, “step around and hold his head.”

“I can hold my own head,” says Abe, as steady as you please. But Squire Caton, he straddled over Ephe and held his head between his arms, and the two handles of the eye-spreader with his hands.

It was all over in half a minute, and then Abe he leaned forward, and shook the blood off his eye-lashes, and looked straight out of that eye for the first time since he was born. And the first words he said were:

“Thank the Lord! She’s mine!”

About that time Ephe he crawled outdoors, sick as a dog; and Abe spoke up, says he:

“Now for the other eye, doctor.”

“Oh,” says the doctor, “we’d better take another day for that.”

“All right,” says Abe; “if your hands are tired of cuttin’, you can make another job of it. My face ain’t tired of bein’ cut, I can tell you.”

“Well, if you’re game, I am.”

So, if you’ll believe me, they just set to work and operated on the other eye, Abe holding his own head, as he said he would, and the squire holding the spreader. And when it was all done, the doctor was for putting a bandage on to keep things quiet till the wounds all healed up, but Abe just begged for one sight of himself, and he stood up and walked over to the clock and looked in the glass, and says he:

“So that’s the way I look, is it? Shouldn’t have known my own face—never saw it before. How long must I keep the bandage on, doctor?”

“Oh, if the eyes ain’t very sore when you wake up in the morning, you can take it off, if you’ll be careful.”

“Wake up! Do you s’pose I can sleep when such a blessing has fallen on me? I’ll lay still, but if I forget it, or you, for one minute this night, I’ll be so ashamed of myself that it’ll wake me right up!”

Then the doctor bound up his eyes and the poor boy said “Thank God!” two or three times, and they could see the tears running down his cheeks from under the cloth. Lord! It was just as pitiful as a broken-winged bird!

How about the girl? Well; it was all right for Abe—and all wrong for Ephe—all wrong for Ephe! But that’s all past and gone—past and gone. Folks come for miles and miles to see cross-eyed Abe with his eyes as straight as a loon’s leg. Doctor Brainard was a great man forever after in those parts. Everywhere else, too, by what I heard.

When the doctor and the squire come to go, Abe spoke up, blind-folded as he was, and says he:

“Doc, how much do you charge a feller for savin’ his life—making a man out of a poor wreck—doin’ what he never thought could be done but by dyin’ and goin’ to kingdom come?”

“Oh,” says Doc Brainard, says he, “that ain’t what we look at as pay practice. You didn’t call me in; I come of myself, as though it was what we call a clinic. If all goes well, and if you happen to have a barrel of apples to spare, you just send them up to Squire Caton’s house in Chicago, and I’ll call over and help eat ‘em.”

What did Abe say to that? Why, sir, he never said a word; but they do say the tears started out again, out from under the bandage and down his cheeks. But then Abe he had a five-year-old pet mare he’d raised from a colt—pretty as a picture, kind as a kitten, and fast as split lightning; and next time Doc come down Abe he just slipped out to the barn and brought the mare round and hitched her to the gate-post, and when Doc come to be going, says Abe:

“Don’t forget your nag, doctor; she’s hitched at the gate.”

Well, sir, even then Abe had the hardest kind of a time to get Doc Brainard to take that mare; and when he did ride off, leadin’ her, it wasn’t half an hour before back she came, lickety-split. Doc said she broke away from him and put for home, but I always suspected he didn’t have no use for a hoss he couldn’t sell or hire out, and couldn’t afford to keep in the village—that was what Chicago was then. But come along towards fall Abe he took her right up to town, and then the doctor’s practice had growed so much that he was pretty glad to have her; and Abe was glad to have him have her, seeing all that had come to him through havin’ eyes like other folks—that’s the school-ma’am, I mean.

How did the school-ma’am take it? Well, it was this way. After the cuttin’ Abe didn’t show up for a few days, till the inflammation got down and he’d had some practice handlin’ his eyes, so to speak. He just kept himself to himself, enjoying himself. He’d go around doin’ the chores, singin’ so you could hear him a mile. He was always great on singin’, Abe was, though ashamed to go to singin’-school with the rest. Then, when the poor boy began to feel like other folks, he went right over to where school-ma’am happened to be boardin’ round, and walked right up to her and took her by both hands, and looked her straight in the face, and said:

“Do you know me?”

Well, she kind of smiled and blushed, and then the corners of her mouth pulled down, and she pulled one hand away, and—if you believe me—that was the third time that girl cried that season, to my certain knowledge—and all for nothin’ either time!

What did she say? Why, she just said she’d have to begin all over again to get acquainted with Abe. But Ephe’s nose was out of joint, and Ephe knowed it as well as anybody, Ephe did. It was Abe’s eyes to Ephe’s nose.

Married? Oh, yes, of course; and lived on the farm as long as the old folks lived, and afterwards, too; Ephe staying right along, like the fool he always had been. That feller never did have as much sense as a last year’s bird’s nest.

Alive yet? Abe? Well, no. Might have been if it hadn’t been for Shiloh. When the war broke out Abe thought he’d ought to go, old as he was, so he went into the Sixth. Maybe you’ve seen a book written about the captain of Company K of the Sixth. It was Company K he went into—him and Ephe. And he was killed at Shiloh—just as it always seems to happen. He got killed, and his worthless brother come home. Folks thought Ephe would have liked to marry the widow, but, Lord! she never had no such an idea! Such bait as he was compared to his brother. She never chirked up, to speak of, and now she’s dead too, and Ephe he just toddles round, taking care of the children—kind of a he dry-nurse that’s about all he ever was good for, anyhow.

My name? Oh, my name’s Ephraim—Ephe they call me, for short; Ephe Dodge. Abe was my brother.

Joseph Kirkland.

II.

[c24]

THE DOCTOR’S OF HOYLAND.

DR. JAMES RIPLEY was always looked upon as an exceedingly lucky dog by all of the profession who knew him. His father had preceded him in a practice in the village of Hoyland, in the north of Hampshire, and all was ready for him on the very first day that the law allowed him to put his name at the foot of a prescription. In a few years the old gentleman retired and settled on the South Coast, leaving his son in undisputed possession of the whole countryside. Save for Dr. Horton, near Basingstoke, the young surgeon had a clear run of six miles in every direction, and took his fifteen hundred pounds a year; though, as is usual in country practice, the stable swallowed up most of what the consulting-room earned.

Dr. James Ripley was two and thirty years of age, reserved, learned, unmarried, with set, rather stern, features, and a thinning of the dark hair upon the top of his head, which was worth quite a hundred a year to him. He was particularly happy in his management of ladies. He had caught the tone of bland sternness and decisive suavity which dominates without offending. Ladies, however, were not equally happy in their management of him. Professionally, he was always at their service. Socially, he was a drop of quicksilver. In vain the country mammas spread out their simple lures in front of him. Dances and picnics were not to his taste, and he preferred during his scanty leisure to shut himself up in his study, and to bury himself in Virchow’s Archives and the professional journals.

Study was a passion with him, and he would have none of the rust which often gathers round a country practitioner. It was his ambition to keep his knowledge as fresh and bright as at the moment when he had stepped out of the examination hall. He prided himself on being able, at a moment’s notice, to rattle off the seven ramifications of some obscure artery, or to give the exact percentage of any physiological compound. After a long day’s work he would sit up half the night performing iridectomies and extractions upon the sheep’s eyes sent in by the village butcher, to the horror of his housekeeper, who had to remove the débris next morning. His love for his work was the one fanaticism which found a place in his dry, precise nature.

It was the more to his credit that he should keep up to date in his knowledge, since he had no competition to force him to exertion. In the seven years during which he had practised in Hoyland, three rivals had pitted themselves against him; two in the village itself, and one in the neighboring hamlet of Lower Hoyland. Of these, one had sickened and wasted, being, as it was said, himself the only patient whom he had treated during his eighteen months of ruralizing. A second had bought a fourth share of a Basingstoke practice, and had departed honorably; while a third had vanished one September night, leaving a gutted house and an unpaid drug bill behind him. Since then the district had become a monopoly, and no one had dared to measure himself against the established fame of the Hoyland doctor.

It was, then, with a feeling of some surprise and considerable curiosity that, on driving through Lower Hoyland one morning, he perceived that the new house at the end of the village was occupied, and that a virgin brass plate glistened upon the swinging gate which faced the highroad. He pulled up his fifty-guinea chestnut mare, and took a good look at it. “Verrinder Smith, M. D.,” was printed across it very neat, small lettering. The last man had had letters half a foot long, with a lamp like a fire station. Dr. James Ripley noted the difference, and deduced from it that the newcomer might possibly prove a more formidable opponent. He was convinced of it that evening when he came to consult the current medical directory. By it he learned that Dr. Verrinder Smith was the holder of superb degrees, that he had studied with distinction at Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin and Vienna; and, finally, that he had been awarded a gold medal and the Lee Hopkins scholarship for original research in recognition of an exhaustive inquiry into the functions of the anterior spinal nerve roots. Dr. Ripley passed his fingers through his thin hair in bewilderment as he read his rival’s record. What on earth could so brilliant a man mean by putting up his plate in a little Hampshire hamlet?

But Dr. Ripley furnished himself with an explanation to the riddle. No doubt Dr. Verrinder Smith had simply come down there in order to pursue some scientific research in peace and quiet. The plate was up as an address rather than as an invitation to patients. Of course, that must be the true explanation. In that case the presence of this brilliant neighbor would be a splendid thing for his own studies. He had often longed for some kindred mind, some steel on which he might strike his flint. Chance had brought it to him, and he rejoiced exceedingly.

And this joy it was which led him to take a step which was quite at variance with his usual habits. It is the custom for a newcomer among medical men to call first upon the older, and the etiquette upon the subject is strict. Dr. Ripley was pedantically exact on such points, and yet he deliberately drove over next day and called upon Dr. Verrinder Smith. Such a waiving of ceremony was, he felt, a gracious act upon his part, and a fit prelude to the intimate relations which he hoped to establish with his neighbor.

The house was neat and well appointed, and Dr. Ripley was shown by a smart maid into a dapper little consulting-room. As he passed in he noticed two or three parasols and a lady’s sunbonnet hanging in the hall. It was a pity that his colleague should be a married man. It would put them upon a different footing, and interfere with those long evenings of high scientific talk which he had pictured to himself. On the other hand, there was much in the consulting-room to please him. Elaborate instruments, seen more often in hospitals than in the houses of private practitioners, were scattered about. A sphygmograph stood upon the table, and a gasometer-like engine, which was new to Dr. Ripley, in the corner. A bookcase full of ponderous volumes in French and German, paper-covered for the most part, and varying in tint from the shell to the yolk of a duck’s egg, caught his wondering eyes, and he was deeply absorbed in their titles when the door opened suddenly behind him. Turning round he found himself facing a little woman, whose plain, palish face was remarkable only for a pair of shrewd, humorous eyes of a blue which had two shades too much green in it. She held a pince-nez in her left hand and the doctor’s card in her right.

“How do you do, Dr. Ripley?” said she.

“How do you do, madam?” returned the visitor. “Your husband is perhaps out?”

“I am not married,” said she, simply.

“Oh, I beg your pardon! I meant the doctor—Dr. Verrinder Smith.”

“I am Dr. Verrinder Smith.”

Dr. Ripley was so surprised that he dropped his hat and forgot to pick it up again.

“What!” he gasped, “the Lee Hopkins prize man! You!” He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only too clearly.

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said the lady, dryly.

“You certainly have surprised me,” he answered, picking up his hat.

“You are not among our champions, then?”

“I cannot say that the movement has my approval.”

“And why?”

“I should much prefer not to discuss it.”

“But I am sure you will answer a lady’s question.”

“Ladies are in danger of losing their privileges when they usurp the place of the other sex. They cannot claim both.”

“Why should a woman not earn her bread by her brains?”

Dr. Ripley felt irritated by the quiet manner in which the lady cross-questioned him.

“I should much prefer not to be led into a discussion, Miss Smith.”

“Dr. Smith,” she interrupted.

“Well, Dr. Smith! But if you insist upon an answer, I must say that I do not think medicine a imitable profession for women, and that I have a personal objection to masculine ladies.” It was an exceedingly rude speech, and he was ashamed of it the instant after he had made it. The lady, however, simply raised her eye-brows and smiled.

“It seems to me that you are begging the question,” said she. “Of course, if it makes women masculine, that would be a considerable deterioration.”

It was a neat little counter, and Dr. Ripley, like a picked fencer, bowed his acknowledgment. “I must go,” said he.

“I am sorry that we can not come to some more friendly conclusions, since we are to be neighbors,” she remarked.

He bowed again, and took a step toward the door.

“It was a singular coincidence,” she continued, “that at the instant that you called I was reading your paper on ‘Locomotor Ataxia’ in the ‘Lancet.’”

“Indeed,” said he dryly.

“I thought it was a very able monograph.”

“You are very good.”

“But the views which you attribute to Professor Pitres of Bordeaux have been repudiated by him.”

“I have his pamphlet of 1890,” said Dr. Ripley, angrily.

“Here is his pamphlet of 1891.” She picked it from among a litter of periodicals. “If you have time to glance your eye down this passage—”

Dr. Ripley took it from her and shot rapidly through the paragraph which she indicated. There was no denying that it completely knocked the bottom out of his own article. He threw it down, and with another frigid bow he made for the door. As he took the reins from the groom, he glanced round and saw that the lady was standing at her window, and it seemed to him that she was laughing heartily.

All day the memory of this interview haunted him. He felt that he had come very badly out of it. She had shown herself to be his superior on his own pet subject. She had been courteous while he had been rude, self-possessed when he had been angry. And then, above all, there was her presence, her monstrous intrusion, to rankle in his mind. A woman doctor had been an abstract thing before, repugnant, but distant. Now she was there in actual practice, with a brass plate up just like his own, competing for the same patients. Not that he feared the competition, but he objected to this lowering of his ideal of womanhood. She could not be more than thirty, and had a bright, mobile face too. He thought of her humorous eyes, and of her strong, well-turned chin. It revolted him the more to recall the details of her education. A man, of course, could come through such an ordeal with all his purity, but it was nothing short of shameless in a woman.

But it was not long before he learned that even her competition was a thing to be feared. The novelty of her presence had brought a few curious invalids into her consulting-rooms, and, once there, they had been so impressed by the firmness of her manner, and by the singular new-fashioned instruments with which she tapped and peered and sounded, that it formed the core of their conversation for weeks afterward. And soon there were tangible proofs of her powers upon the countryside. Farmer Eyton, whose callous ulcer had been quietly spreading over his shin for years back, under a gentle régime of zinc ointment, was painted round with blistering fluid, and found, after three blasphemous nights, that his sore was stimulated into healing. Mrs. Crowder, who had always regarded the birthmark upon her second daughter, Eliza, as a sign of the indignation of the Creator at a third helping of a raspberry tart which she had partaken of during a critical period, learned that, with the help of two galvanic needles, the mischief was not irreparable. In a month Dr. Verrinder Smith was known, and in two she was famous.

Occasionally Dr. Ripley met her as he drove upon his rounds. She had started a high dog-cart, taking the reins herself, with a little tiger behind. When they met he invariably raised his hat with punctilious politeness, but the grim severity of his face showed how formal was the courtesy. In fact, his dislike was rapidly deepening into absolute detestation. “The unsexed woman” was the description of her which he permitted himself to give to those of his patients who still remained stanch. But, indeed, they were a rapidly decreasing body, and every day his pride was galled by the news of some fresh defection. The lady had somehow impressed the country folk with an almost superstitious belief in her power, and from far and near they flocked to her consulting-room.

But what galled him most of all was when she did something which he had pronounced to be impracticable. For all his knowledge, he lacked nerve as an operator, and usually sent his worst cases up to London. The lady, however, had no weakness of the sort, and took everything that came in her way. It was agony to him to hear that she was about to straighten little Alec Turner’s club foot, and right at the fringe of the rumor came a note from his mother, the rector’s wife, asking him if he would be so good as to act as chloroformist. It would be inhumanity to refuse, as there was no other who could take the place, but it was gall and wormwood to his sensitive nature. Yet, in spite of his vexation, he could not but admire the dexterity with which the thing was done. She handled the little wax-like foot so gently, and held the tiny tenotomy knife as an artist holds his pencil. One straight incision, one snick of a tendon, and it was all over without a stain on the white towel which lay beneath. He had never seen anything more masterly, and he had the honesty to say so, though her skill increased his dislike of her. The operation spread her fame still farther at his expense, and self-preservation was added to his other grounds for detesting her.

And this very detestation it was which brought matters to a curious climax. One winter’s night, just as he was rising from his lonely dinner, a groom came riding down from Squire Faircastle’s, the richest man in the district, to say that his daughter had scalded her hand, and that medical help was needed on the instant.

The coachman had ridden for the lady doctor; for it mattered nothing to the squire who came, as long as it were speedily. Dr. Ripley rushed from his surgery with the determination that she should not effect an entrance into this stronghold of his if hard driving on his part could prevent it. He did not even wait to light his lamps, but sprang into his gig and flew off as fast as hoofs could rattle. He lived rather nearer to the Squire’s than she did, and was convinced that he could get there well before her.

And so he would but for that whimsical element of chance, which will forever muddle up the affairs of this world and dumfound the prophets. Whether it came from the want of his lights, or from his mind being full of the thoughts of his rival, he allowed too little by half a foot in taking the sharp turn upon the Basingstoke road. The empty trap and the frightened horse clattered away into the darkness, while the Squire’s groom crawled out of the ditch into which he had been shot. He struck a match, looked down at his groaning companion, and then, after the fashion of rough, strong men when they see what they have not seen before, he was very sick.

The Doctor raised himself a little on his elbow in the glint of the match. He caught a glimpse of something white and sharp bristling through his trouser-leg, half way down the shin.

“Compound!” he groaned. “A three months’ job,” and fainted.

When he came to himself the groom was gone, for he had scudded off to the Squire’s house for help, but a small page was holding a gig-lamp in front of his injured leg, and a woman, with an open case of polished instruments gleaming in the yellow light, was deftly slitting up his trouser with a crooked pair of scissors.

“It’s all right, Doctor,” said she, soothingly. “I am so sorry about it. You can have Dr. Horton to-morrow, but I am sure you will allow me to help you to-night. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you by the roadside.”

“The groom has gone for help,” groaned the sufferer.

“When it comes we can move you into the gig. A little more light, John! So! Ah, dear, dear, we shall have laceration unless we reduce this before we move you. Allow me to give you a whiff of chloroform, and I have no doubt that I can secure it sufficiently to—”

Dr. Ripley never heard the end of that sentence. He tried to raise a hand and to murmur something in protest, but a sweet smell was in his nostrils, and a sense of rich peace and lethargy stole over his jangled nerves. Down he sank, through clear, cool water, ever down and down into the green shadows beneath, gently, without effort, while the pleasant chiming of a great belfry rose and fell in his ears. Then he rose again, up and up, and ever up, with a terrible tightness about his temples, until at last he shot out of those green shadows and was out in the light once more. Two bright shining golden spots gleamed before his dazed eyes. He blinked and blinked before he could give a name to them. They were only the two brass balls at the end posts of his bed, and he was lying in his own little room, with a head like a cannon-ball, and a leg like an iron bar. Turning his eyes, he saw the calm face of Dr. Verrinder Smith looking down at him.

“Ah, at last!” said she. “I kept you under all the way home, for I knew how painful the jolting would be. It is in good position now, with a strong side splint. I have ordered a morphia draught for you. Shall I tell your groom to ride for Dr. Horton in the morning?”

“I should prefer that you should continue the case,” said Dr. Ripley feebly, and then, with a half-hysterical laugh, “You have all the rest of the parish as patients, you know, so you may as well make the thing complete by having me also.” It was not a very gracious speech, but it was a look of pity and not of anger which shone in her eyes as she turned away from his bedside.

Dr. Ripley had a brother William, who was assistant surgeon at a London hospital, and who was down in Hampshire within a few hours of his hearing of the accident. He raised his brows when he heard the details.

“What! You are pestered with one of those!” he cried.

“I don’t know what I should have done without her.”

“I’ve no doubt she’s an excellent nurse.”

“She knows her work as well as you or I.”

“Speak for yourself, James,” said the London man with a sniff. “But apart from that, you know that the principle of the thing is all wrong.”

“You think there is nothing to be said on the other side?”

“Good heavens! do you?”

“Well, I don’t know. It struck me during the night that we may have been a little narrow in our views.”

“Nonsense, James. It’s all very fine for women to win prizes in the lecture-room, but you know as well as I do that they are no use in an emergency. Now I warrant that this woman was all nerves when she was setting your leg. That reminds me that I had better just take a look at it and see that it is all right.”

“I would rather that you did not undo it,” said the patient; “I have her assurance that it is all right.”

Brother William was deeply shocked.

“Of course, if a woman’s assurance is of more value than the opinion of the assistant surgeon of a London hospital, there is nothing more to be said,” he remarked.

“I should prefer that you did not touch it,” said the patient firmly, and Dr. William went back to London that evening in a huff. The lady, who had heard of his coming, was much surprised on learning of his departure.

“We had a difference upon a point of professional etiquette,” said Dr. James, and it was all the explanation he would vouchsafe.

For two long months Dr. Ripley was brought in contact with his rival every day, and he learned many things which he had not known before. She was a charming companion, as well as a most assiduous doctor. Her short presence during the long weary day was like a flower in a sand waste. What interested him was precisely what interested her, and she could meet him at every point upon equal terms. And yet under all her learning and her firmness ran a sweet, womanly nature, peeping out in her talk, shining in her greenish eyes, showing itself in a thousand subtle ways which the dullest of men could read. And he, though a bit of a prig and a pedant, was by no means dull, and had honesty enough to confess when he was in the wrong.

“I don’t know how to apologize to you,” he said in his shamefaced fashion one day, when he had progressed so far as to be able to sit in an armchair with his leg upon another one; “I feel that I have been quite in the wrong.”

“Why, then?”

“Over this woman question. I used to think that a woman must inevitably lose something of her charm if she took up such studies.”

“Oh, you don’t think they are necessarily unsexed, then?” she cried, with a mischievous smile.

“Please don’t recall my idiotic expression.”

“I feel so pleased that I should have helped in changing your views. I think that it is the most sincere compliment that I have ever had paid me.”

“At any rate, it is the truth,” said he, and was happy all night at the remembrance of the flush of pleasure which made her pale face look quite comely for the instant.

For, indeed, he was already far past the stage when he would acknowledge her as the equal of any other woman. Already he could not disguise from himself that she had become the one woman. Her dainty skill, her gentle touch, her sweet presence, the community of their tastes, had all united to hopelessly upset his previous opinions. It was a dark day for him now when his convalescence allowed him to miss a visit, and darker still that other one which he saw approaching when all occasion for her visits would be at an end. It came around at last, however, and he felt that his whole life’s fortune would hang upon the issue of that final interview. He was a direct man by nature, so he laid his hand upon hers as it felt for his pulse, and he asked her if she would be his wife.

“What, and unite the practices?” said she.

He started in pain and anger. “Surely you do not attribute any such base motive to me,” he cried. “I love you as unselfishly as ever a woman was loved.”

“No, I was wrong. It was a foolish speech,” said she, moving her chair a little back, and tapping her stethoscope upon her knee. “Forget that I ever said it. I am so sorry to cause you any disappointment, and I appreciate most highly the honor which you do me, but what you ask is quite impossible.”

With another woman he might have urged the point, but his instincts told him that it was quite useless with this one. Her tone of voice was conclusive. He said nothing, but leaned back in his chair a stricken man.

“I am so sorry,” she said again. “If I had known what was passing in your mind I should have told you earlier that I intend to devote my life entirely to science. There are many women with a capacity for marriage, but few with a taste for biology. I will remain true to my own line then. I came down here while waiting for an opening in the Paris Physiological Laboratory. I have just heard that there is a vacancy for me there, and so you will be troubled no more by my intrusion upon your practice. I have done you an injustice, as you did me one. I thought you narrow and pedantic, with no good quality. I have learned during your illness to appreciate you better, and the recollection of our friendship will always be a very pleasant one to me.”

And so it came about that in a very few weeks there was only one doctor in Hoyland. But folks noticed that the one had aged many years in a few months, that a weary sadness lurked always in the depths of his blue eyes, and that he was less concerned than ever with the eligible young ladies whom chance, or their careful country mammas, placed in his way.

Sir A. Conan Doyle.

III.

[c29]

DOCTOR SANTOS: A CHARACTER SKETCH.

EVERY one in Madrid knew Doctor Santos. He was a little bit of a man, with his beard and hair clamoring for the use of the scissors, and his clothes for benzine and a more fashionable cut. Nevertheless, he had a universal reputation for great wisdom, and his popularity in the district of Chamberi, the principal scene of his work, was beyond everything.

Possibly the peculiarities of the doctor did more than his true merit to attract the attention of the people. Perhaps some presentiment made every one consider him physically of not much account, but mentally a diamond of the purest water. It was well known that in the exercise of his profession he was a true ministering angel, and without any pretence of being a specialist or a philanthropist. People said that he was half crazy over the subject of disease, and followed the development of a fever with the same interest that others listened to or read a dramatic work, but with this exception, that it was not always necessary to be a mere spectator, that by discreetly intervening sometimes, he prepared cheerful and unexpected comedy, where otherwise there would have been the deepest tragedy.

This might have been merely scientific curiosity—we will not discuss that point—but thanks to this keen interest, if a patient were very ill, and that happened frequently, he would remain to watch by the bedside, and again,—and this happened yet more frequently, for Doctor Santos devoted himself almost exclusively to poor people—there would not be money enough to buy supper for the family or broth or medicine for the sick one; then our doctor would pull out his purse and send for whatever was necessary. His patients never lacked for what was needed to restore them to health.

The doctor’s greatest pleasure, as he always declared, was to cure sick children. It seemed impossible that a man who had no family and who, according to all accounts, had never married, and who had been adopted himself by a barber who took him from an orphan asylum, should be able to feel such absolute tenderness of heart towards little ones.

A woman, whose son the doctor had restored to health, aptly expressed the sentiments of every one: “It seems as if Doctor Santos had been a mother himself.”

We will take it for granted that his life and good deeds are well known, for many a scientific work can testify to the merits of Doctor Santos; so we will not stop to give a detailed resumé or minute account of the arduous labor of many years spent in true performance of his profession.

I am now going to speak of an event in his life which, if it were not absolutely true, would seem to many people to be altogether improbable.

Doctor Santos always said that the elixir of long life was a very easy and simple thing to obtain, that it was not necessary to knock one’s head against the wall in order that the electric spark of an idea should spring out of the brain, and that even the most stupid could give a solution of the problem to those who discussed it learnedly, but that not even this elixir nor any other could be applied in every case, that it was just as difficult to unite a head to the body from which it had been severed as to repair the ravages of some illnesses. In eighty cases out of a hundred, however, he was sure that the elixir would give good results.

The strangest thing was that these were not merely affirmations, but positive proofs, for in his practice he had tried the remedy and, not only eighty to a hundred, but in even greater proportion, had produced good results. He never could be made to specify the remedy, and he put an end to all questions on the subject, by saying:

“Nothing, nothing, it is like, it is like Columbus’s egg, why prove it?”

It was long after twelve o’clock one night, when Doctor Santos entered a miserable garret in the Salle de Fuencarral. The door was partly open. A middle-aged man was stretched out on a rude cot. The rest of the furniture consisted of some broken, rush-bottomed chairs, and a pine table by the bedside. The sick man had no relatives in Madrid; he had arrived from Cataluña a little more than a month before and had fallen ill with pneumonia. He refused, absolutely, to go to the hospital, so a charitable neighbor, who had attended to his simple wants for some time, called in Doctor Santos. The disease had already made inroads upon the man’s constitution. Although the pneumonia was helped, the doctor could not cure the quick consumption which followed and which would soon end the man’s life.

When the sick man saw the doctor enter, an expression of joy passed over his features, as if now black death had no terror for him; for, in the last sad moments, a warm hand would clasp his and a loving heart would be moved to sympathy. The doctor took the sick man’s hand.

“How are you, Jaime?” he asked.

“I am dying, I feel sure of it, but I wish to ask one more favor of you who have already done so many for me. Tell me how much longer I have to live. I know there is nothing that will help me, and I am almost glad that it is so, for I have suffered so much in my life. At least, I shall cease to suffer. It is true, is it not, that over there there is no more pain, all is quiet, dark, cold?”

Accustomed as Doctor Santos was to such scenes, he could scarcely keep back the tears—much to his own disgust, when he looked at the poor fellow—and he growled to himself: “A weeping doctor is a fool.” But he answered the dying man very gently:

“What can I do for you, Jaime? To whom shall I write? Let me know just what you wish to be done and I promise you to do it as far as I am able, and before it slips my memory. I don’t want to frighten you, but every one takes things differently. Judging from the state you are in, I am not the one just now to do you the most good, and we must soon send for one who can give you the only true consolation. After all, although this life means a great deal to us, we ought to be glad rather than sorry at the thought of leaving it, because we are all sure that God is good and will pardon us, and that he loves us. For this reason we call him Father, for if he is not better than the best on earth, what other conception can we have of him?

“Now, I will go myself to call a priest whom I know, and in the meantime, I will see if a neighbor will stay with you.”

“Oh, don’t go, I beg of you. I must talk to you.”

The doctor dared not say no, but he knew that the hour of death was swiftly approaching. A moment later he left the room, saying:—

“I’ll return directly.”

He sent a neighbor for the priest, then returned as he had promised, and sat down by the head of the bed.

Jaime asked the doctor to do him the favor to put his hand under the mattress and take out a packet which he would find there. After the doctor had pulled out the packet, Jaime began to speak:—

“Doctor, I ask you not to open this packet until after I am dead, and after that, with the help of your own conscience, you will decide what you think had best be done. I want you, if any personal advantage can come to you from it, to use it all for yourself. I have no affection for any one else, nor am I in debt to any one. If this were not my last hour on earth I should say that my soul held nothing but hatred for the evil received from those I most cherished.”

The sick man seemed fatigued and the doctor told him to rest a few moments, but now the man began to make those motions of the hands, so characteristic of those about to die, and to plait and unplait the bed clothing. He did not seem to know exactly what he was saying and his eyes wandered restlessly about the room:—

“She deceived me. How much I loved her! Her beautiful black eyes! How pretty she was! And he my best friend! It was infamous, shameful! I saw them! the truth is proof enough! Ah, how much blood flowed from the wound!—he did not mind dying because he knew she loved him. And I envied him after he was dead! Ah, how hard the punishment! How dark the cell, how heavy the shackles! It is shameful! I am an assassin! Every one has left me! How blue the sky is! How fresh and green the fields! I can’t get out with these horrible irons on my wrists!”

The priest came in time to administer the extreme unction. Jaime died shortly after and the doctor returned home with the packet under his arm. Once in his study, before going to bed, he decided to open the bundle which Jaime had give him with so much mystery. It was an easy task. He untied the paper and out fell what seemed to be a magazine. There were hundreds of leaves, but each leaf was a banknote of four thousand reals.

Daylight glimmered through the curtains. Doctor Santos had not closed his eyes. He was the owner, the rightful owner of more than four thousand pésétas (one hundred thousand dollars) and the donation was absolutely legitimate. Jaime’s mind, as no one knew better than he, was perfectly clear at the time he made the gift. What should he do with all that money! He would be happy, all his friends would be happy, in fact, everyone would be happy! What a library, what a laboratory, he would have!

Hours passed, but the doctor tossed and turned restlessly on his bed, unable to sleep for a moment. The clock struck seven. He could not stay in bed any longer; he arose, made his accustomed hasty toilet, drank his coffee and started off on his usual round of visits. He began with the very sick patients, but at ten o’clock he said to himself, he would get a friend to accompany him to the bank that he might deposit the money. He had never kept any money in a bank. The little box in his office had always held all he could spare, and he did not know exactly what legal forms were necessary in order to have it placed so that he could draw out certain sums when he wished.

His first patient lived several miles away, so he carried the precious package with him in order not to lose time in going and coming. He stopped at the patient’s house. The sick man was a cabinet maker who had been trying to work with an injured hand, consequently, blood poisoning had set in and the symptoms were such that amputation seemed necessary. The poor man, strong as an oak, cried like a child.

“The maintenance of my wife and family lies in the skill of my five fingers,” he said, “and now you are going to cut them off.”

But Doctor Santos, more of an optimist than ever that day, brought the bright light of hope into the sad hearts of the afflicted family. They might rely upon him for support and help as long as they needed it.

He then went to see a talented journalist who had not prospered since he began to have ideas and tastes of his own instead of praising those of other people. The journalist had lost his place because he had published, without first consulting the director, an article in which he said that what Marruecos most needed was some powerful nation to civilize it, that our position in the matter was like that of the gardener’s dog, keeping others from doing what we could not do ourselves; that it would be better to be annexed to a rich country than a poor one, to have a cultivated country instead of a semi-savage one; and a hundred other barbarities besides.

As one might well imagine, the journalist had trouble with his head, he was worn out by fatigue and had the beginning of softening of the brain. Doctor Santos had ordered rest, a quiet, regular life, early hours, and horseback riding.

The journalist sent out to a store for a pasteboard horse, and when the doctor called to see him, the sick man said:—

“This is the only horse I can afford.”

Of course, he plainly showed his insanity by this act, but Doctor Santos did not look upon it in that light. He begged the man’s pardon for having advised him to buy what he could not afford.

A little later, he visited a widow with three children. She was young and pretty; her husband had been a sculptor of some talent. He was not rich, but he had earned enough to support his family decently. He died and for the first year the wife managed to live fairly well, by dint of great economy. The second year, the widow sold her husband’s art treasures; the third year, she lived on the gifts of relatives and friends, which gave out before the fourth year, and the family went from the second floor to the garret, from wholesome food to scanty scraps, from warm clothing to rags. Last of all came sickness.

Doctor Santos felt inspired: “If this little woman goes to the bad, whose fault will it be? Her sewing brings in so little!” Pulling out a banknote, he handed it to the widow, telling her to live where she could have fresh air and sunlight, to buy nourishing food and look after the little ones.

The doctor left that poverty-stricken place, his plain face so radiant with happiness that it seemed almost beautiful. He thought to himself, as he went along, that if Jaime had used some of this money for himself and had lived properly, he would not have died of consumption. “That devilish avarice!” he muttered. “A millionaire living and dying like a beggar in order not to spend his money. What is the good of money if it is not to spend?”

Suddenly two ideas flashed into his head. “Suppose this is stolen money! What if the bills are false?”

He stopped. The package fell from his hand.

“Sir, you have dropped something,” said a poor woman who was passing. The doctor picked up the bundle and, turning around, went home.

“Stolen or false,” he muttered grimly. “There is no other solution.”

The words and the ideas sounded in his ears, they hurt him, as if some one had struck him on the head with a hammer.

He reached his home, told his old servant that he would see no one, then changed his mind, sent the woman off on an errand, and shut himself up in his office.

The doctor had in his house two banknotes of a thousand pésétas (two hundred and fifty dollars) each.

“We will begin with the hypothesis that I can prove them false,” he said. He took out his own banknotes and laid them on the table; took another out of the package and placed it between the first two.

“They must have been stolen,” he said, “for all three are alike, the same block, the same print.”

He turned them over, they were exactly alike. Well, there was nothing to be done but to advertise and await the rightful owner, and he would have to word the advertisement so that every Spaniard in the country should not appear to claim the money.

He took a magnifying glass and began to make methodical observations. First, the paper, its quality, its transparency; then the engravings; the letters, letter by letter, the signatures. But even with the help of the glass, which magnified the size six or eight times, he could detect no difference between the bills.

“From whom could Jaime have stolen them? Had blood been shed on account of those bits of paper? Had Jaime robbed the government or a bank?”

The doctor thought and thought. He studied, with the aid of a glass, every detail, even the smallest.

“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that each one can be so perfect? They have been stolen, undoubtedly stolen,” he said, at the end of a quarter of an hour of close observation. Ten times, already, he had compared the numeration, but he turned again to look at it.

“They all look alike,” he said again, but when he took away the crystal he doubted the certainty of his own vision. He brought out a delicate compass and measured the numbers of his old bills. He placed the compass on the new, there was absolutely no difference.

He was not satisfied with the length alone, but he even measured the width of the lines.

“They have been stolen,” he repeated mechanically. Then, as if answering himself, he spoke slowly:—

“Where could he have stolen them? No, they are counterfeit, false, false. Ah, thou Catalan rogue, who art in the infernal regions. I hope that thou art making false notes with thy skin of Barrabas!”

“I have learned the secret,” thought the doctor. “There is no doubt of it.”

He still looked exclusively at the numbers, the false ones looked larger, they really were not, but as the lines were more delicate, it made the ciphers look larger.

“Those poor people are now in prison,” said Doctor Santos sorrowfully. “They have denounced me and the police will shortly come to arrest me, and no one will believe they were ever given to me!”

He raised the stove cover. “No, that won’t do. The embers and ashes will remain. They can smell the smoke and burnt paper.”

The doctor had a dove-cot: a dove just then lighted on the window sill. A bright idea came to him. He took two tin boxes—such as are used for cut tobacco—and stuffed them both full with bank notes, climbed up to the dove-cot and looked through the garret window. No one could see him. He raised some tiles and hid the boxes, then covered them up, leaving all as it was before. Breathing heavily, his heart thumping furiously, he descended the staircase which led to the second floor and dropping into a chair, opened a huge volume which he held before his face, while he tried to recover his usual composure.

If he had been surprised and arrested, the inspector would have noticed that the book was upside down, the two old bills, with the magnifying glass and compass, were still on the table, and that the lappels and sleeves of his coat were covered with earth and whitewash.

After several hours had passed, the old servant had returned, and as no one else had appeared, the doctor began to think that perhaps the bills had not yet been changed and, by virtue of such a supposition, he hurried to the widow’s house with the pious intention of substituting one of his old bank notes in place of the supposed false one. The bill had been changed; the widow and her children were having a little party in honor of their great good luck. They were not alone, as they generally were, but had asked several of their friends to share their joy. They were so profuse in their expressions of gratitude that the good old doctor did not know what to say nor how to explain his sudden return.

“Now be sure you take a room where you can have sunlight and give the children a dose of castor oil,” he said as he hurried away.

Doctor Santos did not recover his usual composure for a long time. He seemed taciturn although he continued in his accustomed mode of living. After a while, however, he became more like himself.

The cabinet maker, for whom the doctor had obtained a lucrative position, wished to make a public manifestation of his gratitude, but the doctor forbade him to even mention that he had received help. Nevertheless, it was murmured continually, that Doctor Santos, on account of his relations with persons of high rank, had given many a one a modest pension, while he had restored others to health by giving to them the money to procure a change of climate and a much needed rest.

Notwithstanding his friends of high rank, the doctor still lived in his modest apartment and had moreover, dismissed his only servant. He now took his meals at a neighboring tavern. He still kept the dove-cot, and he had bought an expensive therapeutical apparatus and costly instruments. He had a laboratory and a fine medical library.

He earned enough and he had innumerable friends who gave him money to help cases of true necessity, owing to his fame of discerning where help was really needed. Happily society is not so completely decayed that it does not produce, with frequent spontaneity, the flower of Christian charity.

When Doctor Santos changed his habits of living, his character also changed. Formerly, he had been cheerful and lively, fond of an occasional visit to the theatre, and especially fond of a good table. But when he might have had all this he became gloomy and moody, and reduced his personal expenses, in spite of his large earnings, to an extent almost miserly.

The years rolled by, the doctor’s hair was snowy white, and he scarcely spoke. As he was no longer young and paid so little attention to his own comfort, his health began to fail. The cold was intense that winter and Doctor Santos, in spite of himself, had to keep his bed many a day.

His medical confrères visited him, and one, in particular, earnestly urged him to go to a warm climate.

“Must I go away, leave my work and occupations to die, not of sickness, but of ennui?” “But,” argued his friend, “no one likes better than you to send people off for a change of air during the winter.”

The doctor did not reply, but he remained in Madrid, passing sleepless nights and coughing ceaselessly.

His friends, the only family he possessed, took turns, for a long time in caring for him, but, as the days lengthened into weeks, the weeks into months and each one gradually began to find that his own cares absorbed his time, it was agreed upon that the best thing to do was to have a sister of charity come and nurse the doctor.

Henceforth, his friends’ visits grew less frequent, and there were days at a time when his door bell did not ring once.

Sor Luz, as the sister of charity was called, proved to be a perfect substitute for all his other attendants. Although the doctor had never cared for women’s society, he found Sor Luz such a charming companion that he refused to receive other people, if it were possible.

Her white head-dress and the undulations of her soft gown, seemed to him like the motions of a dove’s wings.

Doctor Santos followed her with an affectionate and grateful glance, thus repaying the tender and solicitous care which only maternal and Christian love could give with such absolute abnegation and perseverance.

About the last of November, that harvest time of death, when a few golden leaves still clung to the trees, when the mountain tops were covered with silver and the cold, northerly wind penetrated the crevices of doors and windows, Doctor Santos began to grow worse.

He declared in his will, dated years before, that he had no property and that whatever was found in the house belonged, by right, to the poor. That he wished to have a humble funeral and be buried in the public cemetery.

In looking over his papers and effects, a tin box was found containing forty banknotes of one thousand pésétas each.

His friends declared that he had died of avarice. Sor Luz said that she had never known any one who had passed away with more tranquil, resigned Christian spirit than Doctor Santos.

Nevertheless, she often spoke of some phrases of the doctor’s which were utterly incomprehensible to her and for which she could not account.

“When there was yet time,” he said, “I had the means to cure myself. It would have been so easy, that if it had been any one else I should have done so. I did not do it because I wished to preserve my own self-respect and to have some merit when God called me to a better life.”

—From the Spanish of Gustavo Morales, by

Jean Raymond Bidwell.

IV.

[c42]

THE CURING OF KATE NEGLEY.

“I TOLD you once,” said Mrs. Melissa Allgood, “about the time Kate Negley took that leading on the lodge line, and locked the doctor out of the house one night when he was meeting with the Masons, and hollered at him scornful-like, when he come home, to ‘get in with his lodge-key;’ and how the doctor smashed up her fine front door with an ax. Well, all the Station thought that might be the end of Kate’s foolishness, and that maybe she would take her religion and sanctification comfortable after that, same as other folks. And everybody was glad Dr. Negley broke that door in, because it ain’t good for Kate Negley or any other human to have their own way all the time.

“So Kate went along quiet and peaceable after that for two or three months, and never had no new leadings to tell about in meeting, and never did a thing to show she had heartfelt religion except to wear her hair straight down her back, according to Paul. And ma she said to me one day she believed Kate had come to the end of her line, and was going to act like sensible folks the rest of her days. But I told ma not to waste her breath in vain babblings; that I bet Kate Negley was just setting on a new nest, and for ma to wait for the hatching.

“I hadn’t hardly spoke the words before it come. The very next Sunday, when Brother Cheatham got through preaching and called for experiences and testimonies, Kate she rose and said she was mightily moved to rebuke a faithless and perverse generation, puffed up in its fleshly mind, loving unrighteousness, and abominable in wickedness. She said she had been wandering in the way of destruction like the rest, and putting her faith in lies, till the last few weeks, when light begun to dawn on her, and she commenced to search the Scriptures more. She said she was fully persuaded now, halleluiah! and wanted all them that desired to be wholly sanctified to enter the strait and narrow path with her. She said the gospel she had to preach to them that morning was the gospel of healing by prayer and faith, and not by medicines or doctors; that though she had lain among the pots, like the rest of them, yet now was her soul like the wings of a dove, and forever risen above all such works of the devil as ipecac and quinine and calomel; that only in the Great Physician did she place her trust; that as for earthly doctors, she could only say to them, in the words of Job: ‘Ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.’ She said yea, verily, all they was good for was to ‘beguile unstable souls, and bewitch the people with sorceries;’ and not only that, but, like Jeremiah says, ‘They help forward the affliction.’ She said she never meant to say anything against doctors as men, but as doctors they was vessels of wrath, corrupters of souls, firebrands of the devil, and the liveliest stumble-stones in the path of righteousness. She said for them benighted folks that put their faith in physic to listen to Jeremiah’s point-blank words, ‘Thou hast no healing medicines,’ and again, ‘In vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be healed.’ She said from lid to lid of the Bible there wasn’t a single case of anybody being cured of anything by either doctors or medicine; and that ought to be enough for the earnest Christian, without looking any farther. But, she said, knowing their hard-heartedness, she had studied every verse of the Scriptures before she got up to speak.

“She said when the disciples was sent out, they was told to preach the gospel, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out devils; and they did it. She said she’d like to know how many that called themselves disciples nowadays so bigotty, and claimed the in-dwelling of holiness, ever even tried to do any of them things, except talk, let alone do them. She said it was because they were so poor-spirited they didn’t have faith to lay hold of the promise, though there it was in plain words: ‘Ask, and ye shall receive;’ ‘According to your faith be it unto you;’ ‘For I will restore health to thee, saith the Lord;’ ‘I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.’ She said, bless the Lord, her spiritual eyes was open now, and the only medicines she would ever take was prayer and faith. She said James’s prescription was good enough for her: ‘Pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much;’ and that she wanted every soul in the Station to get to the same point. But, she said, until they did, she wanted it known that there was one righteous soul in Sodom, that was going to start out on the war-path against the devil and all his doctors. She said she was going to lay hold of the promise of James: ‘Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.’ She said she wanted it published abroad that anybody that took sick was welcome to her services and prayers, without money and without price. She said for all her hearers to put on the breastplate of faith and the armor of righteousness, and enter in at the strait and narrow path that opened into her front door, and keep out of the broad way that led to the doctor’s office. She said she had a big bottle of sweet-oil, and faith to remove mountains.

“Well, all the congregation was thunderstruck at the idea of Kate Negley setting up in opposition to her own husband, Dr. Negley being the only doctor at the Station. Ma said that anybody could have knocked her down with a feather; and I know it made me right weak in my knees, though, of course, I felt like Kate was doing right to follow her leadings, and thought she was mighty courageous. I never could have done it myself, especially if I’d had such a good husband as Kate. I have traveled about more than Kate, and I know that hen’s teeth ain’t scarcer than good men; yea, like Solomon says, ‘One among a thousand have I found.’ But of course a woman never appreciates what she has, and Kate she always took all the doctor’s kindness and spoiling like it was her birthright, and ding-donged at him all the time about his not having any religion or sanctification. Now, I reckon you’ve lived long enough to know that there are three kinds of sanctified; them that are sanctified and know it, humble-like—such as me; them that are sanctified and don’t know or even suspicion it; and them that are sanctified and know it too well. And I have told ma many a time that Dr. Negley is one of the kind that is sanctified and don’t know it, and that Kate might pattern after the doctor in some ways, to her edification. Somehow, I’ve always felt like ten or eleven children might have took some of the foolishness out of Kate; but, not having any, she was just on a high horse about something or other all the time.

“The evening after Kate did that talking in church, ma saw the doctor riding by, and she called him to the fence and asked him if he had heard about Kate’s talk, and what he thought about it. And he said yes, Brother Jones and them had told him about it down at the post-office, and it had tickled him might’ly; that he thought it was very funny. Ma told him she should think it would make him mad for Kate to get up and talk that away about doctors and medicine. ‘Mrs. Garry,’ he says, ‘women are women; and one of their charms is that nobody knows what they’re going to do next. And if my wife,’ he says, ‘has a extry allowance of charm, I certainly ought to feel thankful for it.’ He said if Kate wanted to quarrel with her bread and butter, and talk away his practice, he wasn’t going to raise any objections; that he needed to take a rest anyhow, having worked too hard all his life. He said, another thing, a woman that took as many notions as Kate couldn’t hold on to any one of them very long, but was bound to get cured of it before much harm was done.

“Ma she told me what he said, and that, in her opinion, Dr. Negley could give Job lessons in patience.

“Then we commenced to have times in the Station. The first thing Kate did was to get up one night after the doctor had gone to sleep, and go down-stairs and across the yard to his office, and hunt up his saddle-bags, and stamp on them, and smash every bottle in them, and then sling them over in pa’s cornfield. Pa he found them out there in the morning after breakfast, and took them to the doctor’s office; and he said the doctor did some tall swearing when he saw them. But I believe that was a slander of pa’s, because I know the way the doctor acted afterwards. At dinner-time he went up to the house mighty peaceful, and eat his dinner, and then he says to Kate, very cheerful and polite: ‘I see that my saddle-bags have met with a little accident. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ he says, ‘and I don’t know but what it’s a fine thing for my patients, some of them medicines being powerful stale. But it’s mighty unfortunate for you, Kate,’ he says, ‘for I will be obliged to use up all your missionary money for the next year and a half to replenish them saddle-bags, times being so hard,’ he says.

“You know Kate always give more money to missions than any woman in the Station,—doctor just couldn’t deny her anything,—and she prided herself a heap on it, righteous pride, of course. She was just speechless with wrath at what he said, and she saw she’d have to change her warfare and fall back on the outposts.

“So she started out and went to see the women in the Station, and prayed with them, and strengthened their faith, and tried to make them promise to send for her if anybody got sick, and not for the doctor, and worked on them till they got plumb unsettled in their minds. Some of them went to Brother Cheatham and asked him about it, and he said it was a question everybody must decide for themselves, but there certainly was Scripture for it, he couldn’t deny. It’s a funny thing what poor hands some preachers are at practicing. Brother Cheatham couldn’t get so much as a crook in his little finger but what Dr. Negley must come, double-quick, day and night. I’ve always felt like getting their doctoring for nothing was a big drawback to preachers’ faith.

“Kate didn’t only go about in the Station, but she would keep on the watch, and when the doctor got a call to the country, Kate would saddle her bay mare and follow after him, sometimes ten or fifteen miles. By the time she would get to the sick one’s house, the doctor would be setting by the bed, feeling the patient’s pulse, or some such; and Kate would sail across the room, with never so much as ‘Howdy’ to the doctor, and go down on her knees the other side of the bed, and dab a little sweet-oil on the sick person, and pray at the top of her voice, and exhort the patient to throw away the vile concoctions of the devil, and swing out on the promise of James. And the doctor wouldn’t pay no more attention to her than she did to him, but would dose out the medicine and go on about his business, as pleasant as could be. After he was gone, Kate would smash up all the bottles in sight, if the folks wasn’t mighty careful; and then she would follow the doctor to the next place, never any more noticing him or speaking to him than if he was a fence-post. She said when the doctor was at home, he was her husband, though unregenerate, and she was going to treat him according to Scripture, and as polite as she knew how: but when he was out dosing the sick, he was an angel of darkness, and not fit to be so much as looked at by the saved and sanctified.