The company was very select. There were archdeacons and elderly professors who were given ample opportunity for delivering lay sermons and lectures. There was a colonial governor too, with his wife and daughter. I don’t know if Grace Carstairs was a moth or a butterfly, but she evidently attracted Gilbert. All went well until the ship’s surgeon went down with appendicitis and had to be put ashore at Palermo to be operated on in the local hospital. That left the Cantara without a doctor and Gilbert was approached by the captain, who asked him to carry on with duties which he assured him would be purely nominal. Reluctantly Gilbert agreed. He really had no option. The passengers, most of whom would have said that they had come on the cruise for reasons of health, were a remarkably healthy lot. They suffered from over-exposure to the sun, they ate too much, they could not sleep, and knew exactly the sort of drug that their doctor at home was in the habit of prescribing for them. But Gilbert had reckoned without the crew, and the fat was in the fire when he was asked to see a Lascar who showed every sign of suffering from a mild form of smallpox. For twenty-four hours Gilbert was kept busy vaccinating everybody. A party of Americans from Detroit suddenly announced that they were Christian Scientists. They had to be dealt with. A lady and her daughter from Leicester, who were ardent anti-vivisectionists and who seemed to know more about statistics than anyone on board, had also to be dealt with. Gilbert was dictator and hero, and the colonial governor was loud in his praise—until they came into quarantine, where the port authorities, after much humming and hawing, decided that a mistake had been made, and that the mild form of smallpox was really a severe form of chickenpox. To the layman it looked as if Gilbert had been guilty of gross incompetence. That was what the passengers thought, though my uncle told me later that even the great Sir William Osler had diagnosed smallpox as chickenpox in an outbreak that had occurred in a coloured ward. The only people who were cheerful were the Christian Scientists; they had been proved right, even if one of the archdeacons had a very sore arm. The ladies from Leicester, too, were pleased at what they regarded as a conclusive demonstration of their theories. Despite the efforts of the shipping company to hush it up, news of the tragicomedy of the ill-fated pleasure cruise found its way into the papers. My uncle wired to Gilbert to come down and stay with him. I was there at the time, and I think he found some consolation in pouring out his woes to me. He even showed me a letter he had received from one of the passengers suggesting that he should take up chicken farming in some district where there was a competent veterinary surgeon to give him advice.
‘Bee-keeping would have been more appropriate,’ he suggested bitterly. ‘At least I could reckon on being stung.’
But the thing that really disturbed Gilbert, that undid all the work that my uncle and I had been trying to do, was a piece of information he sent in a letter a month after he left us. Miss Carstairs, the daughter of the colonial governor, was engaged to be married to a Captain Egan of the Indian Army, a cousin of Mrs Egan of Cornbury. ‘She’s dogging my footsteps all right!’ he said. ‘I knew she would, but my career isn’t wrecked yet. I’ve got a job as demonstrator in anatomy’—he mentioned a northern university—‘I can’t kill my patients; the subjects are dead already. I ought to have known before that research was my bent. I’ve been fortunate to hit on some very comfortable rooms, and I’ve invested in a new car.’
That was the first of many letters I received from Gilbert. He was far more of an interesting letter-writer than I should have imagined; I think he forgot to whom he was writing and just used the vehicle of correspondence as a means of unburdening himself in the same way that some people keep an intimate diary. Only when you have posted a letter you can’t recall it. You can’t tear out a page and burn it; you can’t re-read what you have written a week later and think what a fool you were. You forget, in fact, what you have written.
But I kept those letters from Gilbert, and reading them over, joining them together, it did look as if something queer was happening to his mental make-up. Take his new car, for example. He evidently enjoyed driving it, in fact he said that he rather fancied himself as a driver, and then he added this curious footnote:
The worst of it is, that when once you have become a skilled motorist, the more you drive and the longer you go on driving the more likely you are, by the law of averages, to meet with an accident, not due, of course, to your skill, which all the time should be increasing, but to the increasing probability of your coming in contact with one of the limited number of fools who should never be allowed on the road.
Now the curious thing was that though Gilbert was never involved in an accident, on several occasions he was a witness of them and was called upon to give first aid.
‘It’s rotten bad luck,’ he wrote, ‘that a man can’t get away from the worries of general practice when he wants to. I don’t wish to go about prepared for emergencies, but I’ve just got to, since the emergencies seem to come my way. It isn’t only on the roads, either. The other evening I was at a cinema when the manager asked if there was any doctor present in the audience. Of course I had to go since nobody volunteered. An oldish man had collapsed. I hadn’t the faintest notion of what was the matter with him, and he had no one with him. While they were phoning for an ambulance he died. I only hope to goodness there won’t be an inquest.’
But there was an inquest. There had to be, for the man had had no regular medical attendant and very little seemed to be known about him except his name: Gann, Edward Gann. E. Gann, in short.
It was only a little thing, but the coincidence was for Gilbert disastrous. Once again he got the idea firmly fixed in his head of the reality of the curse of Mrs Egan. She wasn’t going to allow him to live quietly as a demonstrator of anatomy. He had wanted to retire from general practice, from the possibility of making any more fatal mistakes and irremediable decisions, and all the time she was arranging that a man with a broken nerve who had lost all confidence in himself should be tested again and again and be found wanting.
By this time my uncle was beginning to get alarmed. He made a hurried visit to the north, where he saw Gilbert and had a long talk with his chief. It ended by Gilbert being given leave of absence for six months. He went up to town and saw a psychologist who allowed himself to become a rubbish-tip for Gilbert’s outpourings, and proceeded to examine the contents of his mental dustbins with a muck-rake. The man’s aim, I believe, was to get Gilbert to face reality. It must have been as difficult as to get a sheep to look a tiger squarely in the eyes. To Gilbert Mrs Egan and her curse were too horribly real. He preferred to run away, leaving the psychologist to deal with the litter of memories he had so carefully unpacked.
But where was he to flee to? He chose at last a little cottage in Sussex. The bare ridge of the down rose steeply at the back of the garden. He felt the protection of the hills, and yet in twenty minutes after a stiff climb he could stand on top of the windy world and see for thirty miles.
He had arranged to buy the cottage when Witchling Down—why hadn’t he been warned by the name?—began to be used by a gliding club. It seemed that its situation in the matter of air-currents and take-off was one of the best on the south coast. The dilapidated farm which used to supply Gilbert with eggs and milk was taken over as a club-house. The members were pleased to find that there was a retired doctor living so near. Gliding, of course, was the best sport in the world, but it wasn’t everybody’s game, and if an accident did happen there was this doctor fellow actually on the spot to patch you up.
Gilbert soon got to know what sort of weather was best for gliding. He looked forward to gales, to blinding rain, to the soft and kindly sea mists that blotted out the landscape; he hated the gentle breezes and the sun that caused those currents of air on which men climbed on wings into the sky. Those were the days that he chose to go in his car to Lewes or to take long walks, but he usually chose the car, because when he walked the gliders seemed to hover over him, to follow him, to swoop down on him.
It was whe
n he was in Lewes that the club’s first fatal accident occurred. People said later that it was a pity that Dr Lennox was not at home, because it had been over two hours before they had been able to get a doctor, and it looked as if the man’s life might have been saved had skilled attention been at once available. It was bad luck, but nothing more. They tried to make an arrangement with Gilbert to become doctor to the club and be on duty when gliding was taking place. Gilbert had to tell them that he was sorry, but that he was leaving the district almost at once.
Neither my uncle nor I heard from Gilbert in the next twelve months, though we found out that he had definitely resigned from his teaching post for reasons of health. Then I got a long and rambling letter from him. There was no address and the postmark, he said, had no connection with the place where he was living, which he wanted to keep a secret to himself. He said that he had requested that his name should be taken off the medical register, because he no longer had any wish either to practise or to be known as a doctor. ‘It hasn’t,’ he went on, ‘brought any peace to my mind. I have forgotten a lot of what I knew, but I still know more than the ordinary individual, and I see no way of ridding myself of the responsibility of knowledge. If I went abroad or to the colonies, unless I kept to the towns, I should constantly find myself faced with situations where I ought to help, issues perhaps of life and death which I just cannot face. It would be Witchling Down over again. And where am I to live in England? Perhaps, you say, some country town where there is a good doctor. But what happens when the good doctor is out and the butcher’s cleaver slips and cuts an artery? That has happened to me. A larger town, you say then. But more things are likely to happen in a larger town. Think of all the motor traffic. I hate to drive a car nowadays. I don’t even like going on a train journey if the train is a corridor one; I see the guard walking down the corridor and looking into every compartment in turn. I hear him saying: ‘Does any of you gentlemen happen to be a doctor?’ Though I am no longer on the register and can’t sign death certificates, I am still a doctor of medicine. If they couldn’t find any one else, I should be bound to go. If I could only get myself to believe the things they believe in I would join a religious community. I could be quite happy in prison; indeed I tried to join the army as a ranker, but they told me my heart was dicky. I don’t mind being shot. I shouldn’t mind so much trying to shoot people if war broke out. I should be almost certain to miss them, and they would live as a result of my failure. Now as a result of my failure they die when I am trying to help them.’
Enclosed in the same envelope was a second letter, written on the following day. In it he gave the address of a firm of London solicitors who would forward my letter to him.
‘I want you,’ he wrote, ‘to find out if Mrs Egan is still living in Cornbury, and if she is in the habit of leaving home from time to time. I don’t expect you know where she goes, but if you could find that out, too, I should be immensely obliged. I want to check dates and happenings. Is she well? And do you by any chance know if she is interested in spiritualism?’
Some of his questions, with my uncle’s help, I was able to answer. Mrs Egan was still in Cornbury, though she was often away visiting friends. Once or twice he had met her, but she had never spoken to him of Gilbert. Then my uncle had a brilliant brain-wave. The British Medical Association was meeting that year in Canada. He suggested that he and Gilbert should go together. They would travel with any number of doctors, and under no conceivable circumstances could his professional help be required.
But the letter Gilbert wrote back, the last that we ever received from him, regretfully turned the proposal down. He had resigned his membership of the association some time ago—that was a minor matter as he could still have travelled with the party—but his heart was weak and rest and quiet were essential.
And now for the conclusion of my story. On August the 25th of the following year a saloon car containing four people was travelling along an unfrequented road in Lincolnshire. The road was perfectly straight; the car, driven by a woman, was proceeding at a normal pace, when something apparently went wrong with the steering, and, crashing into a pile of road metal, it overturned into a ditch. The driver was killed, two others of the passengers were seriously injured, and it was only with great difficulty that the fourth, a young man, managed to extricate himself from the wreckage. He it was who later told my uncle what had happened. There was no one in sight, but at a little distance away was a house to which he hurried for help. He knocked at the door without making any one hear. Then, going round to the back, he found the kitchen door open and entered the house. He was met in the hall by a tall man in a dressing-gown, whom he described as looking very ill.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but there has been a ghastly accident. Can you tell me where the nearest doctor is living?’
The face of the occupier of the house became suddenly pale. He swayed, tried to steady himself, and then collapsed on to the floor.
The nearest doctor was not living but dead.
It was only at the inquest that Gilbert’s identity was revealed, for he had been living under a different name. The woman driving the car was Mrs Egan.
Do you wonder at my belief in spells and curses and witches? Belief, perhaps, is too strong a word. Fear of witches is really what I mean, a stupid unreasoning fear that omits to take into account the psychology of the unconscious, that makes it impossible to weigh evidence calmly and unemotionally.
The long arm of coincidence? Yes, I know that explains a lot.
But what if the long arm of coincidence were really the long arm, the outstretched hand, the clutching fingers, of Mrs Egan?
ACCOUNT RENDERED
‘MEDICAL ETHICS,’ said my uncle, ‘is a very curious subject. If my plate were four times its present size, or if the lettering were in scarlet instead of black, my conduct might be judged unethical. I remember once a distinguished surgeon getting hot and bothered over what he called the ethical principle involved if qualified chiropodists were permitted to treat bunions. Any condition, he maintained, involving any structure below the level of the true skin was outside their province. It was a deep, not a superficial question, and a question of principle.’
He took down the tobacco jar from the mantelpiece and, though it was eight o’clock in the evening, filled his first pipe of the day.
‘Here’s a case in point,’ he went on. ‘A man came to me this morning with a request, a very queer request. He seemed rather surprised that I did not immediately accede to it in view of the fee he offered. He wanted me to give him an anaesthetic the day after tomorrow at twelve o’clock at night.’
‘They chose a most inconvenient hour for the operation,’ I said.
‘But there wasn’t to be an operation. That was the curious thing. All he wanted was to be fully anaesthetised between 11.45 and 12.15. As soon as I had recovered from my natural astonishment I put as tactfully as I could some of the difficulties which my caller had overlooked. I reminded him that I knew nothing whatever about him. For all I knew he might be contemplating suicide. At 11.30 he might swallow a dangerous drug and then when he expired half an hour later I should have been responsible for a death under an anaesthetic.
‘Mr Tolson (I’m not guilty of unethical conduct in telling you his name because you, too, may be concerned in the matter) rather naturally took offence at this idea. He explained to me that he could produce unimpeachable references to his character, that his health was excellent, and that he was perfectly prepared to submit to a rigorous medical examination. The reason for his request, which, he now admitted, might appear strange, was that he was engaged upon a piece of research, partly mathematical, partly psychological, into what might be called the relation of space-time and the unconscious.
‘He went off the deep end and I soon gave up all attempts to follow him. The gist of the matter was that he wished to verify certain scientific conclusions he had come to by recording his impressions before and after being anaesthetised. That
put rather a different light on things. I am not prepared to give an anaesthetic to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who thinks that all he has got to do is to stop me and buy one. On the other hand, there is no reason why I should not co-operate in a piece of research. Tolson evidently saw that I was hesitating and produced from his pocket a telegram. He told me that he had previously arranged with the honorary anaesthetist to the County Hospital at Wilchester to do the job on the day and hour mentioned, but only that morning a wire had come to say that he was ill. He showed it to me. I have met Dr Hancock once or twice. He is a shrewd man and I told myself that if he was satisfied with Tolson’s bona fides there was no reason why I should not be. The matter finally ended like this. I told Tolson that I would give him a definite answer tomorrow. If I then decided to do his job of work, I should give him a thorough overhaul and I should bring my niece, a trained nurse, along with me. I explained to him that the after-effects of an anaesthetic are sometimes unpleasant, but I really wanted to have you there to safeguard my interests as much as his. He hummed and hawed a bit but finally agreed, and there the matter rests. That is our little problem in medical ethics. What are we going to do about it?’
I think my uncle had already made up his mind, but he is an old bachelor who likes to have the support of his womenfolk.
‘I should certainly anaesthetise Mr Tolson,’ I said.
***
All this happened many years ago. I was young and inexperienced. It is hardly to be wondered at that I gave the wrong answer. I see now that my uncle would have been probably better advised to have nothing to do with Mr Tolson, but his sense of curiosity was very strongly developed—that was partly what made him so good a doctor—and he liked his own way—that was partly what had kept him a bachelor.
The Double Eye Page 30