Whatever the effect of these debaucheries upon his private repute, they did not impair his professional practice. Through that winter it steadily increased. Moreover, he was making social hay. His slightly rakehell reputation did not seriously prejudice him in the eyes of local spinsterhood. Only a few rigidly moral households such as (naturally) the Leverings’, the Van Wies’ and the Deacon Dillards’ closed their doors to him. So impartially did he distribute his attentions, however, that he gained a name for baccalaureate caution. Dinty wrote him,
Everybody wonders who whom you are going to marry and why
you dont. Dont you think my grammar is improving?
Late in the winter the coach discharged a chilled but joyous Dinty whose first social call was upon Horace.
“What fetches you back?” he inquired. “School isn’t out, surely.”
“It’s closed because so many of the girls took sick with throat fevers. One died.”
“Throat fevers, eh? That’s bad. But you’re all right, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I’m all right.”
“And how do you like your ‘detestable nunnery’ now?”
Dinty had the grace to blush. “I get along better,” she admitted. “I miss you, though, Uncle Horace. Have you missed me?”
“Why, yes, I believe I have, a little.”
“Only a little?”
“Well, quite a lot, if you insist.”
“That’s nice,” she purred. She started to climb on his knee, but for some reason thought better of it. “Who are you sparking now?” she asked.
“Nobody.”
“Then your life is blighted. Poor Uncle Horace! Are you cruel unhappy?”
“Never felt better in my life,” he asseverated.
She looked about her, admiring the splendors of the abode. “What a dicty house! You built it for Miss Agatha, didn’t you? I’m glad you’re not going to marry her. She isn’t right for you and never would be. She’s too good.”
“You told me that before.”
“Well, you know what I mean. I mean too good the way you don’t want folks to be too good when you love them. Was she jealous of Miss Sylvia Sartie?”
“Certainly not. There was no reason to be,” said Horace with dignity.
“Oo!” said Dinty, wagging a sagacious head. “I’d have been.” Horace reflected uncomfortably that this child had peculiar intuitions. “Remember what you wrote about St. Paul?”
“Never mind what I wrote.”
“You’re bound to marry somebody. I only hope it’s the right person,” said Dinty with undisguised pessimism.
“Thank you!”
“You needn’t be pernickety about it. I’m only wishing for your own good. My ma says that being a doctor is a very gentlemanly calling, but a doctor’s wife might as well be an owl. Why don’t you marry Wealthy?”
Horace laughed indulgently. “Wealthia is a very young owl.”
Dinty shook her head. “Don’t you ever know when girls grow up? She’s beautiful and she’s going to be rich. It would be greatly to your advantage.”
“Little Miss Worldly Wisdom. Now, what book is that from?”
“It isn’t from any book. It’s from my heart. Because you’re my friend and so is Wealthy. She likes you awfly. She thinks you’re well-favored and very dandy. Only thing is, she’s in love with someone else.”
“Blighted hopes,” grinned Horace. “Which is the favored boy-swain?”
“None of ’em. They’re all in love with her—except Mark Dillard and maybe Arlo Barnes,” she interpolated complacently. “But she has eyes for one alone. Guess. Three guesses. One for sight, and one for right, and one for cross-your-heart.”
“Don’t keep me on pins and needles,” besought Horace.
“Now you’re fooling. I don’t care. I’ll tell you. It’s Captain Ramsey.”
“Silverhorn!” Horace stifled a startled oath. “That unprincipled rip! How comes she to know him?”
“She doesn’t exactly know him. But she saw him on Main Street and he smiled at her so romantically! Next time he passed her, driving in the country, he blew his bugle to her. So she wrote him a letter. I helped write it. It was full of passion and sensibility.”
Horace swore, outright this time. “I’ll have a talk with young Mr. Ramsey.”
“No fair,” she expostulated. “You mustn’t. It’s a secret. If Mr. Latham ever heard, he’d try to kill him. I’d never have told you if I thought you’d be so mean.”
“Then you must tell her not to have anything further to do with him,” warned Horace.
For several days he did not set eyes on his child-friend. Then, at the butcher’s he met Mrs. Jerrold who purposely failed to see him, having regarded him as practically nonexistent since the destruction of her panaceas. She was talking with Mrs. Van Wie.
“Oh, yes, thank you, Mrs. Van Wie. The child is doing nicely. Dr. Murchison assures us that there is no cause for worry. We are fortunate in having a physician with his wide experience and learning.” This with a contemptuous glance over her shoulder at Horace, who was pretending to be absorbed in a pickled loin. “We shall have her up in a day or two.”
Horace made for the Eagle where, as he had hoped, he met Squire Jerrold, emergent upon the world after his morning’s dram.
“Good morning to you, Amlie,” said the fine gentleman genially.
“Good morning, Squire. How is Dinty?”
“Hearty, hearty,” answered the Squire absently. “That is to say, a touch of sore throat. Natural at this season, eh? She will do well in bed, Murchison tells me.”
“Sore throat?” repeated Horace uneasily. “Fever?”
“Murchison supposes a mildly typhous condition of the body. Nothing alarming.” (Horace swore under his breath.) “He administered the tar-water treatment, bled and purged her, and reduced the swelling of the throat glands with a poultice of hops and vinegar. Mumpish. Nothing more, he assures me.”
Horace said, “It was not mumps that killed her schoolmate at the Aurora Academy.”
Mr. Jerrold started. “Kill—I know nothing of this. You think there might be danger?”
“Not having seen her professionally I am in no position to render an opinion.”
“I wish you might. Murchison is all very well, I dare warrant, but sometimes I think him old-fashioned in his notions. What is your view of Murchison?”
“Since he has the case in his hands,” said Horace, as in ethics bound, “I have no doubt it will be competently treated.”
The other’s eyes squinted. “You don’t believe what you’re saying. Murchison is returning this afternoon. If she is not improved, he will bleed her again.”
“Doubtless,” muttered Horace bitterly. He knew the accepted technic with the lancet. Too often he had heard veterans of the old school quote with approval the Sedgwickian dictum, “In the case of a child under fifteen, bleed until the patient faints.”
Poor Dinty would have her veins tapped again. Then, for a wager, there would be calomel and castor oil, followed with emetic doses of squills and syrup of onions. Anything to “weaken the fever,” ignoring the fact that the bodily vigor would be weakened proportionately and perilously.
There was nothing that he could do about it. The two men parted with sober visages.
No further tidings came that day. Horace was at his breakfast next morning when light, quick footsteps in the hallway, followed by a nervous rat-a-tat-tat on the door, interrupted his meal. He dropped a knifeful of beeksteak pie and hurried out. Wealthia Latham stood there, her velvety eyes hazed, the color gone from the rich darkness of her skin.
“Oh, Dr. Amlie! Come! Come, quick!”
“What is it?”
“Dinty.”
He said, through a constricted throat, “It is not my case. I cannot interfere.”
Wealthia sobbed once, a rending sound. “She’s dying.”
Horace consigned the code of medical ethics to hell.
“Is Squire Jerrold
at home?”
“No. He went downtown before she started to choke.”
“Find him. Hurry. Bring him back home. I’ll be there.”
He caught up his saddlebox and made speed to the Jerrold mansion. No one answered his violent tattoo on the brass knocker. He ran around to the porch door.
From within he could hear Dinty retching, bleating, pleading, “I want my Dr. Amlie. I want my Dr. Amlie.”
Then the soothing tones of Aunt Minnie, the nurse, “There, my lambie! That’s better. That fetches it up. Try again.”
The door was bolted. Horace shook it, then hammered upon it imperiously. This was no time for considerations of dignity.
“Let me in! Let me in!”
Mrs. Jerrold’s vain, pretty face, contorted with rage, confronted him.
“What brings you here? Get out of my house! Go away.”
With a single swing of his muscular shoulder he battered loose the bolt. Dinty stretched out weak arms.
“Oh, Uncle Horace! I’m awfly sick.” Then again the racking struggle for breath.
“Lie back,” said he gently. He bent over to examine her.
A frantic grip on his shoulders pulled him away. “You shan’t touch her,” shrilled the mother.
He took her by the arms and, though she snapped at him like a mad thing, thrust her outside the door and wedged it with a chair. For a moment she battered at it. Then they could hear her yelling to the hired man in the garden.
“Fetch Dr. Murchison. Fetch Dr. Murchison.”
The nurse whispered to Horace, “It’s the rattles, Doctor. God help the poor mite! Two of mine went that way.”
Anyone should have known it from the first for the dreaded croup, thought Horace bitterly, scanning the suffused and fever-swollen little face. Carefully he depressed the tongue. The appearance of the throat was dreadful. Already the terrible, pale membrane was forming.
He dipped into the saddlebox for a vial.
“Get me a feather,” he bade the nurse. “A long one.”
A duster stood in the corner. From it she plucked a slender partridge plume. Horace dipped the end, held the girl’s mouth open, and delicately brushed the swollen channel through which the difficult breath came and went. He had the satisfaction of seeing part of the pallid scum dissolve. Dinty retched feebly. More of the membrane came up, and he cleared it away. Momentarily she breathed easier. But sad experience told him that the fiber would re-form time and again until the waning strength could no longer expel it. Silently he cursed the treatment which had already sapped the vitality of that sturdy body.
Now she was quieter. And now there were heavy steps outside and the bumble of a pedantic utterance giving forth something about the necessity of cleansing the system from its evil humors. Cleansing, indeed! Dearly as Horace would have liked to bar out his colleague, his professional conscience forbade. Already he had trespassed further than any medical board would condone. He stepped over and opened the door.
Dr. Gail Murchison stalked in, followed by Mrs. Jerrold. Ignoring the presence of another practitioner, the senior stepped to the bedside and laid a hand on the burning forehead.
“The fever increases,” he pronounced judicially.
“Is—is she in danger?” stammered Dorcas Jerrold.
“What says the learned Dr. Hosack?” replied Dr. Murchison oracularly and answered himself, “That fevers are the greatest of all outlets to human life.” The mother shuddered. “The case we have before us, Mistress Jerrold, is anomalous. Anomalous,” he repeated. Any form of illness which he found complicated or unpromising, he catalogued as anomalous, thereby exculpating himself in advance for a possibly unfavorable outcome. “Did you offer a remark, sir?” he said sharply to Horace.
“No,” said Horace who had merely grunted.
“If she is worse,” said the mother with a malignant glance at Horace, “I lay it to him. Nobody knows what he has done to her.”
“Have you presumed to interpose in my case, sir?” grated Murchison.
Horace recognized his right to put the query. He answered, “The child was choking. I cleared the throat with nitrate of silver.”
“A dangerous procedure,” said the other solemnly. “I hold you responsible.”
The swollen eyes opened. “Don’t let them vomit me again. Please don’t let them, Uncle Horace,” begged Dinty and was racked once more.
“Quiet, my dear.” Horace caught the groping hands. His touch soothed her. She sank back.
“Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”
“I won’t. I’ll be right here.” But he wondered how long he could maintain his ambiguous position.
Dr. Murchison appeared to be about to say something, but closed his jaws with a snap as he opened his lancet case. It was too much for Horace’s good resolutions.
“What are you going to do?”
“That, sir, is not for you to inquire.” He selected a blade with care, thumb-testing its edge.
“Do you intend to bleed her again?”
The other condescended to reply, “If you were a practitioner of experience, sir, you would have observed that the fever mounts. It must be checked.”
“By God, you shan’t!” said Horace.
The thump of hooves sounded on the lawn.
“Praises be!” exclaimed Nurse Minnie. “Here’s the Squire’s self.”
For a moment Horace thought that his colleague was going to use the keen steel upon him, so furious were the eyes that glared into his.
“Ss-ss-sso!” hissed Murchison. “You cozen my patient’s father into calling you upon my case and without due notification. A patient-snatcher! You shall hear of this from the censors, sir.”
Horace knew that the threat was well founded. At the moment it mattered less than nothing to him. His whole thought was for that small, huddled figure on the bed.
Squire Jerrold hurried in. His wife ran to him, caught at his hands, pushed her crimson face up to his.
“Turn this young upstart out,” she shrilled. “He has forced himself in here without warrant, and shut me from our child’s bedside.”
“Look at your daughter, sir,” said Horace quietly.
The Squire passed to the bedside. Dinty did not know him. She was babbling. When he turned, it was not to Dr. Murchison but to Horace Amlie. There was terror in his eyes.
“Is she going to …?” He could get no further.
Horace pointed to the lancet, still in his rival’s fingers. “If she is bled again, she won’t live an hour.”
“And I tell you,” blustered the other physician, “that unless blood is let the fever will burn her out before nighttime.”
Mrs. Jerrold beat her hands together. “Will you listen to a young nincompoop like him against the experience and science of our own physician?” she cried.
“I will listen to both,” said Squire Jerrold.
Dr. Murchison did not lack for cunning. He shifted his ground.
“If this is a consultation,” said he smoothly, “I shall be happy to consider my young colleague’s views before proceeding.”
But Horace was not heeding. His anxious ears had caught a sound which meant another crisis approaching. Again he inserted the acid-tipped feather. But now the orifice was smaller, the effort to dislodge the choking barrier greater. There was audible to his practiced hearing the beginning of that moist clacking which gave the disease its vulgar name of rattles. When the paroxysm had abated, he rejoined the two men.
Dr. Murchison said weightily, “I recommend a sinapism for the soles of the feet.”
(Great God! thought Horace. Not that it mattered; the mustard plaster could do no harm or good, and Dinty was beyond feeling its sting.)
“As the next step we should perhaps exhibit pyroligneous acid,” continued the elder.
“Pyro—what for?” demanded Horace.
“To allay mortification of the tonsils.”
Horace closed his eyes and prayed for patience. Dr. Murchison bumbled on.
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“There is also polygola seneka to be considered. I have found it useful in similar cases of exasperated mumps.”
The patience which Horace had besought was not vouchsafed him. “Do you still diagnose this as mumps?” he asked balefully.
“Do you differ from my opinion, sir?”
“Here is too much talk,” broke in the father. “Doctors wrangle and my daughter lies dangerously ill. What are her chances?”
Dr. Murchison cleared his throat. “I consider her in a soperose state.”
Horace said bluntly, “She is near to death.”
The nurse lifted a pinched face, calling to Horace, “There’s another attack comin’ on, sir.”
He returned to the bedside. Mrs. Jessup was bowed above the pillow, shutting out the free air for which the lungs were panting in agony. He set her aside, went to the window which someone had closed, and threw it open.
The small face below him was darkening. The terrible problem now was simply to keep the breath passing through. No longer would the feather serve. Horace reached for his forceps and began gently to loosen and draw the encroaching film. Someone behind him closed the window. Without looking he drove his elbow backward, shattering a pane. Now he took the next step, the insertion of a steel distender to hold open the channel for the desperate breath.
Slowly the paroxysm subsided; the flush of fever succeeded to the leaden hue of asphyxiation. It would come again, that dire struggle, and again and again until … He must not think of that. Concentrate on what slender hope remained, and be ready for the last desperate, necessary measure. He bathed the hot face with cooling vinegar and water, rubbed the parched and cracking lips with a soothing amalgam of honey, beeswax, and sweet oil, and was rewarded with what he fondly believed to be a flicker of consciousness.
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