A Passage in the Life of Dr Wilks
NURSE BAILEY felt the doctor’s pulse; then she listened to his heart; finally, she held a mirror to his lips.
‘Not a breath.’
Even doctors breathe their last—said the late Dr Wilks, smiling at her from the pillow.—If your round, baby eyes had been older, my dear, and you yourself younger, upon my soul, I might have suffered a twinge of regret at not being able to kiss the glass that has mirrored your face so many hundreds of times. . . . No answer. Yes, I’m dead, it seems. How very interesting!—
He watched her podgy fingers as they returned the mirror to her vanity bag. Snap. Poor Dr Wilks. All over now.
The room was still with sunlight.
The little nurse closed the doctor’s eyes, switched on the bedside lamp, and stared through the four tall windows into bright August weather.
Rousing herself, she went her dutiful round of the thick, richly brocaded curtains. The gardener’s broom lay idle at the grassy foot of the birch tree. The ticking of the bedside clock grew louder. Then Nurse Bailey rustled to the door, and stood decorously on one side.
‘You can come in now, sir.’
Thank you, Ann.—
‘I shall telephone to Dr D’Arcy.’
Just as you like. I am very grateful for all you have done,—he added.
His plump and dapper figure surveyed the rose-red room with the eyes of the connoisseur. He smiled at the curtains drawn against the sun. He nodded at the deathbed lamp shedding its rich, secret glow. Here was life perfected! The room had scarcely altered since he called on Mrs Wilks. Here was the white-enamelled bed as he remembered it, with its gilded wicker panel at the foot. There was poetry in the very fact that the enamel had reached the colour of old wax.
Hullo!—said Dr Wilks, sitting up.
And how are we today?—smiled the visitor, placing his hands on his plump knees.
Nurse Bailey’s mirror says I’m dead. It’s Mr de Ath, I believe? —said Dr Wilks.
By all means, if you wish it so,—replied the other, though, for my own part, I prefer to call a spade a spade;—and here, by a dexterous movement, he whipped off his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, and polished them vigorously with a dark-blue, white-spotted handkerchief.—That’s my favourite joke!
But I know Nurse Bailey, poor dear. She is a trifle slovenly in regard to the exact sciences. I had better make sure about you,—added Mr de Ath, reaching for the doctor’s pulse.—Ye . . . e . . . s. Um? Open your mouth, doctor. A leedle wider. Wider. Thanks. Say ah.
Ah!—said Dr Wilks.—Ninety-nine.
M—thank you, yes. You are ready to come along with me, I really do believe.
Are you not sure?—demanded Dr Wilks.
In days gone by,—said Mr de Ath,—I was much too certain of myself. Through ghostly aeons I worked alone, with all my life in front of me; and I cannot count the number of journeys that I made to the world, only to be turned away by the flutter of an eye-lid. People—he continued, after a brief pause—have always appeared to me more living when they are dead, than when they are alive; that was my great difficulty; than, in the course of the centuries, I discovered that the livelier a person is to me, the deader he is to the doctors; but what a struggle it has been, fixing a standard for that liveliness!
You seem a little misty in my eyes,—said Dr Wilks hopefully;—a trifle blurred.
Surely, doctor,—said Mr de Ath,—you have not forgotten so soon the familiar glaze—and here he peered into the dancing eyes of Dr Wilks.—In my opinion you have indeed attained the degree of excellence!
In your opinion! Why should I be satisfied with that? Might I suggest, Mr de Ath (as one professional man to another) that we call in a second opinion?
As regards your suggestion,—smiled Mr de Ath, tweaking the lapels of his coat,—let me remind you, my dear doctor, that none but I can judge a person’s fitness for arrival into my world.
My proposition—replied Dr Wilks, with a touch of severity—related to the question as to whether I am ready to depart from mine.
That is our difficulty,—said Mr de Ath, reflectively,—and I cannot see how it may be surmounted. Neither, I feel certain, can you. I applaud your suggestion; yet, surely, Dr Wilks, you must admit that no leach on earth would willingly call in a second opinion to determine whether his patient is dead. I am positive that Dr D’Arcy—who had your case in hand, I believe—would never consent to such a course. Besides, who is to put the question to him? Not you, of a certainty, and not I: not you, for the very good reason that you would have to be alive to tell him your wish; not I, because he would have to be dead in order to hear and see me.
It is a difficult situation—mused Dr Wilks.
Let us say, rather, that you are a very difficult situation—corrected Mr de Ath.—Really, Monsieur, you are being most stubborn. Bless my soul, I never had any difficulty with your own patients, Dr Wilks!
You forget, Mr de Ath, that Bailey has never worked with me in any of my cases.—
I have not forgotten it; but I hold to my opinion regarding the nurse’s mirror: you are no more substantial than an image in a glass.—He paused, patted his chubby fingers several times on the rose-coloured quilt, and continued:—Come, come! As a man of substance, I cannot see why this should be so disappointing to you, Dr Wilks! Consider what you gain! Having come so far, why throw away an opportunity to see forgotten faces, to hear remembered voices?—
The doctor, who was still in the prime of middle age—a period when the slightest readjustment of thought will send a man roaring back into his twenties, or sobbing forward into the shadows—remained silent. In desperate cases, he had never hesitated to deal with the moment, regardless of his patient’s past history and the problematical future. What did this moment hold for Dr Wilks? A vision of his wife, sweet soul, as she lay in this very bed, racked with unbearable pain; and as she was now, waiting for him in peace. Without a doubt, she, too, had argued right and left with Mr de Ath, and in her ecstasy of her relief from pain she had danced in this very room before she went to heaven. Whereupon, throwing off the bedclothes, Dr Wilks began to dance away like mad.
Leaping to the wardrobe, he took out his doctor’s hat, and clapped it rakishly on his head; then, seizing his stethoscope, plugging it into his ears, and listening to imaginary chests in mid air, Dr Wilks continued to kick away to his heart’s content.
I protest!—cried Mr de Ath.—Surely you are not going to continue to dance with your pyjamas on, Dr Wilks?—
My doctor’s modesty forbids me to dance naked, especially in front of you, sir!—
Sapristi!—exclaimed Mr de Ath, breaking into Spanish, which he had picked up in Spain,—it is certainly a danse macabre!—Whereupon he polished his eye-glasses vigorously, and put them on again as quickly as possible.—I remember when I attended the seven Maccabee brothers—upon my soul, I thought they would never stop dancing! For hours they held up the world! And Mrs Wilks, also,—he continued after a pause, dropping his voice, and watching the doctor with a tender eye,—I thought she would never cease tripping about in her Paris hat, la belle madame!—
For the life of me,—cried Dr Wilks, dropping his stethoscope on to the floor, and footing it neatly between the earpieces,—I cannot see the sense in going along with you, when this is dead enough for me! My weeks of pain are dead and buried! Look—I could cross continents! I have not even lost my breath!
You have no breath to lose,—smiled Mr de Ath.
So much the better,—said Dr Wilks; and he gathered speed, preparing to dance on for ever.
Dear me! Dear me!—exclaimed Mr de Ath—and here he rubbed his plump palms together, in order to hide his irritation—it is scarcely seemly that you and I should be fighting against each other, doctor!
Excuse me,—answered Dr Wilks,—but surely it is a doctor’s duty to fight against death?
Do you fight against birth?—cried Mr de Ath.—Upon my soul, you dote on him! Yes, you dote on him; yet why? I have
never been able to understand your excessive fondness for my opposite number. Is he not responsible for all the troubles in the world?—whereas I take them away; or at any rate, I take away a great many of them.—
Dr Wilks hung his hat in the wardrobe, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared into Mr de Ath’s spectacles.
We fear you sometimes. Even the initial of your name reminds us that you reduce all men to dust, and dust looks the same, whoever it was. Your name, in short, is immutable; and that alone gives it a great dignity. On the contrary, every time birth comes to life, we name him to our fancy. . . . It is sometimes a great pity—murmured Cuthbert Wilks—that he is never spry enough to be consulted.
Yes!—rejoiced Mr de Ath,—and then they get the law to fix it on you!
The doctor bounded to his feet, wincing at the sudden movement.
The very word!—he shouted—and here the gleam, the twinkle, the merest spark that for some time past had flecked the doctor’s eye, expanded to a glow.—Neither he nor you, my dear de Ath, can disregard the Law! A man is not dead until he is legally dead: and here I remain, body and soul, until Dr D’Arcy has signed the certificate!
On uttering these words, he planted himself a trifle breathlessly in the middle of the room.
Tcha! A mere formality, senhor!—exclaimed Mr de Ath with the utmost irritation; whereupon he began to pace the floor.—Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, you are all the same to me! Am I not the final word of the Law of Nature? When have the bushmen kept registers of their dead? Did I not make life itself intrinsically reasonable from that moment when I called on Mr Abel?
—It is a far cry from Abel to Wilks!—retorted the latter.—A lot has happened in the interval!—
—Nothing has happened, as far as I am concerned. I never deal with the living. You are all the same dead man.
—Speak up,—said Dr Wilks.
—What do I care,—continued Mr de Ath,—whether the population dies off within reach of its doctors and lawyers, or in desert places? Donnerwetter!—he added, breaking into German, which he had picked up in Whitehall—I get you all in the end!—
—Very well, then. You can wait for D’Arcy’s signature, while I continue dancing!—Here the doctor jerked and stumbled at a sudden grip of pain.
Mr de Ath, who had put his hand to his ear in order to hear the better, hesitated, and proceeded:—There have been occasions when I have wanted to release a man from unbearable agony before his time was up, doctor—yes, there have been multitudes; but in that capacity I am powerless. I can pull no one into my world; but must wait for life itself to send him when it thinks he ought to go. Was not this the mercy that it showed to Mrs Wilks?—
—Louder,—called Dr Wilks, making an effort to dance.
—I can influence a man to this extent,—continued Mr de Ath, raising his voice:—I can make myself seductive to him—
—You are far from seducing me!—cried Dr Wilks, recoiling.
—What did you say?—asked Mr de Ath, putting his hand again to his ear.—Why are you being so stubborn, my friend? Why go back to your pain?—
I can hardly hear you—ah, nor see you!—exclaimed Dr Wilks, in alarm. And drawing nearer, he stared at Mr de Ath.
I wish you’d speak a little louder, shouted de Ath from afar.
Fear seized the doctor then; fear, and inspiration, while the sweat of agony dripped from his body.—It is a doctor’s duty to save life, not to save death,—he burst out, digging his knuckles into his belly;—but to save the life of death—that is another matter!—
He washed his hands beneath the running tap, and prepared a syringe, in a panic. He sterilised the tube, he measured out the drops with infinite care . . . and when he turned at last from the cupboard of drugs, he held a lethal weapon, poised and ready. Nurse Bailey would have done otherwise. She would have given him a vital injection to pull him through the rapidly approaching crisis, something to keep him fully alive, in agony, if only for a few days longer. Here he looked across the room, and saw no more than a misty presence, a thickening of the air where de Ath had stood. The clock was thumping in the silence; then, baring his own firm, quivering thigh, the doctor pinched the flesh, and slowly pushed the needle into it.
To banish pain is a doctor’s duty; it eases for good the patient’s mind; in addition, it brings great happiness to the doctor; and after all, there was only himself to think of—no other—only himself, only Cuthbert Wilks.
The syringe had scarcely fallen to the ground when Wilks was aware of the slowing of his heart and of the passing of pain. He danced a little, stepping warily amongst the splinters of glass.
I remember—said Mr de Ath, returning his handkerchief to his pocket—calling on Mr Shakespeare. A most modern man! Of course, I was wearing other clothes than these. I remember his first words as we flew away. ‘A swanlike end,’ he whispered, holding my hand, peering down at the clouds. ‘A swan-like end, fading in music.’ A quotation, let me remind you—from himself. Whom else was there to quote from, all those years ago?—
But Cuthbert Wilks was not listening. ‘What fools we mortals were!’ he decided, gazing triumphantly at Mr de Ath, who was even now achieving the full solidity of Death. ‘Take me!’ he cried, in exultation. ‘I succumb! I succumb! Receive thou! Receive thou! Receive thou!’ Then, holding both his sides, as though in laughter, and looking upwards, he thrust himself forward.
‘Recipe! . . . Recipe!’
***
When Nurse Bailey came back into the room, she hid herself behind one of the heavy, brocaded curtains, and stared through the open window into bright August weather. Nothing moved in the garden below; but beyond the far hedge a flock of birds was flying, and she could trace the shadow mounting the field to the skyline more precisely than she could follow the flock itself, which, to her eyes at that moment, appeared nebulous against the blue. The more remote it flew, the more it melted into the sunlight; and presently it merged into the sound of the doctor’s car turning the bends.
Comforted by the plump and dapper figure of Dr d’Arcy that now took possession of her mind, the little nurse came back into the room and settled herself as primly as possible in the bedside chair. Glancing down at the quiet face on the pillow, she was glad that the lidded eyes would never know that she was crying, making her face hideous.
‘How splendid,’ she thought, dazed with a kind of female ecstasy, ‘how splendid a partner I have been! How well we have worked this out together, Dr D’Arcy, you and I!’ And for the hundredth time she went over his words that had given her the hint of what she should do.
‘If the touch of the finger-tips on the wrist is not sufficiently delicate, and the ear not sensitive enough to catch the beating of the heart, there is always your little mirror, my dear, when human senses fail.’
Of course, he hadn’t put it in exactly those words. But was there not a hint to her, conveyed in the not quite remembered words that he had actually used? She heard his car, at this very moment, swerving off from the village; soon there would come the crunch of the wheels in the drive, the ring of the bell, the creak of the baize-covered door from the kitchen, the barking of the dog in the hall.
There was something else that Dr D’Arcy had said, and she linked it up with the other.
‘You’d let a patient die, I really do believe, when perhaps a shot of something underneath the skin, at the proper moment—but there,’ he had added, snatching off his glasses in his dear, familiar way, polishing them vigorously with his beautiful, white-spotted handkerchief, and quizzing her with his bright blue eyes, ‘it all depends on what your mirror says!’
She heard the barking of the dog.
It all depends on what the mirror says. . . . ‘I had better save our consciences, my dear,’ she whispered, smiling.
Taking her mirror out of her vanity-bag, Nurse Bailey wetted a corner of her apron with her ugly little mouth, and wiped off the waxy preparation—the stuff that she was in the habit of rubbing on the surface of the glass, t
o keep it from clouding.
The Strange Disappearance of Monsieur Charbo
IN that tiny place, we could have heard the gentlest of voices. And the stranger’s voice was not gentle. It boomed. It boomed with the note of big dinner-gongs.
Imagine it! At Bourdaloue’s, in the Rue Balbec—that wonderful voice! I turned round sharply in my chair, and looked at him. I said to myself: ‘Mon Dieu, what will become of us all?’ He was big, he was fat, he was like a Périgord pig, he was like a shipped goose; his great beard was as black as a fried mushroom; and his lips were as thick and as pink as a couple of Alsace sausages.
At Bourdaloue’s, in the Rue Balbec! It was enough to make an angel weep; and I am not an angel. But I assure you that this small establishment was never very far from Paradise. Let me tell you the dishes that they served there. The sole Bourdaloue, the entrecôte Bercy, the poularde Wladimir, the bécasse à la fine champagne, the crêpes Suzette. For the spring, perhaps, a gratin de crevettes roses et de morilles. It would be a sacrilege not to mention the delectable wines: the Vouvray, the Château Yquem, the Château-Haut-Peyraguey, the Musigny ‘des Amoureux’—above all, the Chambertin, with the sunset in its heart. Look at those red clouds, over the river. It is marvellously silent here, in your river-tavern; before the coming of the bearded man, it used to be the echo of silence in the Rue Balbec!
Yet he has had his uses, yes? For the story that I am about to tell you is of this man. I have spoken of his appearance. Now I shall speak of his disappearance.
His disappearance. . . .
Aïe, aïe! what are you laughing at? One moment. You yourself have put an idea into my head. Whenever I look at a man, I know very well that some years earlier he was quite another person. Is it not a fact, that every five, or ten, or twenty years—myself, I do not know the time, to be sure—each man has a new length of hair on his head, and a whole new surface of skin on his body? We have only to look at our hands—at our faces in a looking-glass—then at some old, faded photograph taken in babyhood, to know that this is true. Pouf!—we are gone! We have disappeared! We are quite another person!
Written With My Left Hand Page 16