Barrie, J M - Tillyloss Scandal

by Tillyloss Scandal

  Up to the very last he was in an agony lest the captain should disappoint him. " Don't tell anybody he is coming," he advised us, " for of course there is no saying what may turnup." Nevertheless the captain came, and we sent the dog-cart to the station to meet him and Peter- kin. On all previous occasions one of us had gone to the station with the cart ; but Peterkin wrote asking us not to do so this time. " Eawlins hates any fuss," he said.

  THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 179

  Somewhat to our relief, we found the captain more modest than it would have been reason- able to expect. " This is Kawlins," was Peter- kin's simple introduction ; but it could not have been done with more pride had the guest been Mr. W. G. Grace himself. One thing I liked in Rawlins from the first : his considera- tion for others. When Peterkin's mother and sister embraced that boy on the doorstep, Rawlins pretended not to see. Peterkin frowned, how- ever, at this show of affection, and with a red face looked at the captain to see how he took it. With much good taste, Peterkin said nothing about this " fuss " on the door-step, and I concluded that he would let it slide. It has so far been a characteristic of that boy that he can let anything which is disagreeable escape his memory. This time, however, as I sub- sequently learned, he had only bottled up his wrath to pour it out upon his sister. Finding her alone in the course of the day, he opened his mind by remarking that this was a nice sort of thing she had done, making a fool of him before another fellow. Asked boldly for Grizel can be freezing on occasion not only to her own brother, but to other people's brothers

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  what he meant, Peterkin inquired hotly if she was going to pretend that she had not kissed him in Rawlins' presence. Grizel replied that if Rawlins thought anything of that he was a nasty boy ; at which Peterkin echoed " boy " with a grim laugh, and said he only hoped she would see the captain come day when the ground suited his style of bowling. Grizel replied contemptuously that the time would come when both Peterkin and his disagreeable friend would be glad to be kissed ; upon which her brother flung out of the room, warmly protesting that she had no right to bring such charges against fellows.

  Though Grizel was thus a little prejudiced against the captain, he had not been a day in the house when we began to feel the honor that his visit conferred on us. He was modest almost to the verge of shyness ; but it was the modesty that is worn by a man who knows he can afford it. While Peterkin was there Eawlins had no need to boast, for Peterkin did the boasting for him. When, however, the captain exerted himself to talk, Peterkin was contented to retire into the shade and gaze at him. He would look at all of us from his seat

  THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 181

  in the background, and note how Rawlins was striking us. Peterkin's face as he gazed upon that of the captain went far beyond the rapt- ure of a lover singing to his mistress's eye- brow. He fetched and carried for him, antici- pated his wants as if Rawlins were an invalid, and bore his rebukes meekly. When Rawlins thought that Peterkin was speaking too much, he had merely to tell him to shut up, when P eterkin instantly collapsed. We noticed one great change in Peterkin. Formerly, when he came home for the holidays he had strongly objected to making what he called drawing- room calls, but all that was changed. Now he went from house to house showing the captain off. " This is Rawlins," remained his favorite form of introduction. He is a boy who can never feel comfortable in a drawing-room, and so the visits were generally of short duration. They had to go because they were due in another house in a quarter of an hour, or he had promised to let Jemmy Clinker (who is our local cobbler and a great cricketer) see Rawlins. When a lady engaged the captain in conversation, Peterkin did not scruple to sign to her not to bother him too much; and

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  if they were asked to call again, Peterkin said he couldn't promise. There was a remarkable thing the captain could do to a walking stick, which Peterkin wanted him to do everywhere. It consisted in lying flat on the floor, and then raising yourself in an extraordinary way by means of the stick. I believe it is a very difficult feat, and the only time I saw our guest prevailed upon to perform it he looked rather apoplectic. Sometimes he would not do it, apparently because he was not certain whether it was a dignified proceeding. He found it very hard, nevertheless, to resist the temptation, and it was the glory of Peterkin to see him yield to it. From certain noises heard in Peterkin's bedroom it is believed that he is practicing the feat himself.

  Peterkin, you must be told, is an affectionate boy, and almost demonstrative to his relatives if no one is looking. He was consequently very anxious to know what the captain thought of us all, and brought us our testimonials as proudly as if they were medals awarded for saving life at sea. It is pleasant to me to know that I am the kind of governor Rawlins would have liked himself, had he required one.

  THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 183

  Peterkin's mother, however, is the captain's favorite. She pretended to take the young man's preference as a joke when her son in- formed her of it, but in reality I am sure she felt greatly relieved. If Rawlins had objected to us, it would have put Peterkin in a very awkward position. As for Grizel, the captain thinks her a very nice little girl, but " for choice," he says (according to Peterkin), "give him a bigger woman/' Grizel was greatly annoyed when he told her this, which much surprised him, for he thought it quite as much as she had any right to expect. On the whole we were perhaps rather glad when Rawl- ins left, for it was somewhat trying to live up to him. Peterkin's mother, too, has discovered that her boy has become round-shouldered. It is believed that this is the result of a habit he acquired when in Rawlins' company of leaning forward to catch what people were saying about the captain.

  A POWERFUL DRUG.

  (NO HOUSEHOLD SHOULD BE WITHOUT IT.)

  ALL respectable chemists, Montgomery as- sures me, keep the cio-root. That is the name of the drug, and Montgomery is the man who ought to write its testimonials. This is a testi- monial to the efficacy of the cio-root, and I write it the more willingly because, until the case of Montgomery cropped up, I had no faith in patent medicines. Seeing, however, is, they say, believing ; and I have seen what the cio- root did for Montgomery. I can well believe now that it can do anything, from removing grease-spots to making your child cry out in the night.

  Montgomery, who was married years ago, is subject to headaches, and formerly his only way of treating them was to lie in bed and read a light novel. By the time the novel was

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  finished, so, as a rule, was the headache. This treatment rather interfered with his work, how- ever, and he tried various medicines which were guaranteed to cure rapidly. None of them had the least result, until one day, some two months ago, good fortune made him run against an old friend in Chambers Street. Montgomery, having a headache, mentioned it, and his friend asked him if he had tried the cio-root. The name even was unfamiliar to Montgomery, but his friend spoke so enthusias- tically of it that the headache man took a note of it. He was told that it had never been known to fail, and the particular merit of it was that it drove the headache away in five minutes. The proper dose to take was half an inch of the root, which was to be sucked and eventually swallowed. Montgomery tried several chemists in vain, for they had not heard of it, but at last he got it on George IY. Bridge. He had so often carried home in triumph a "certain cure," which was subse- quently flung out of the window in disgust, that his wife shook her head at the cio-root, and advised him not to be too hopeful. How- ever, the cio-root surpassed the fondest expec-

  A POWERFUL DliUG. 187

  tations. It completely cured Montgomery in less than the five minutes. Several times he tried it, and always with the same triumphant result. Having at last got a drug to make an idol of, it is not perhaps to be wondered at that Mont- gomery was full of gratitude. He kept a three- pound tin of the cio-root on his library-table, and the moment he felt a headache coming on he said, " Excuse me for one moment," and bit off half an inch of cio-root.


  The headaches never had a chance. It was therefore natural, though none the less annoy- ing, that his one topic of conversation should become the properties of this remarkable drug. You would drop in on him, glowing over the prospect of a delightful two hours' wrangle over the crofter question, but he pushed the subject away with a wave of his hand, and begged to introduce to our notice the cio-root. Sitting there smoking, his somewhat dull countenance would suddenly light up as his eyes came to rest on the three-pound tin. He was always advising us to try the cio-root, and when we said we did not have a headache he got sulky. The first thing he asked us when we met was whether we had a headache, and often he clipped

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  off an inch or two of the cio-root and gave it us in a piece of paper, so that the headache might not take us unawares. I helieve he rather en- joyed waking with a headache, for he knew that it would not have a chance. If his wife had been a jealous woman, she would not have liked the way he talked of the cio-root.

  Some of us did try the drug, either to please him or because we were really curious about it. Whatever the reason, none of us, I think, were prejudiced. We tested it on its merits, and came unanimously to the conclusion that they were negative. The cio-root did us no harm. The taste was what one may imagine to be the taste of the root of any rotten tree dipped in tar, which was subsequently allowed to dry. As we were all of one mind on the subject, we insisted with Montgomery that the cio-root was a fraud. Frequently we had such altercations with him on the subject that we parted in sneers, and ultimately we said that it would be best not to goad him too far ; so we arranged merely to chaff him about his faith in the root, and never went farther than insisting, in a pleasant way, that he was cured, not by the cio-root, but by his believing in it. Montgomery rejected this

  A POWERFUL DRUG. 189

  theory with indignation, but we stuck to it and never doubted it. Events, nevertheless, will show you that Montgomery was right and that we were wrong.

  The triumph of cio-root came as recently as yesterday. Montgomery, his wife, and myself had arranged to go into Glasgow for the day. I called for them in the forenoon and had to wait, as Montgomery had gone along to the office to see if there were any letters. He arrived soon after me, saying that he had a headache, but saying it in a cheery way, for he knew that the root was in the next room. He disappeared into the library to nibble half an inch of the cio-root, and shortly afterwards we set off. The headache had been dispelled as usual. In the train he and I had another argument about the one great drug, and he ridiculed my notion about its being faith that drove his headache away. I may hurry over the next two hours, up to the time when we wandered into Buchanan Street. There Montgomery met a friend, to whom he introduced me. The gentleman was in a hurry, so we only spoke for a moment, but after he had left us he turned back.

  " Montgomery," he said, " do you remember

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  that day I met you in Chambers Street, Edin- burgh ? "

  " I have good reason for remembering the occasion/' said Montgomery, meaning to begin the story of his wonderful cure ; but his friend, who had to catch a 'bus, cut him short.

  " I told you at that time," he said, " about a new drug called the cio-root, which had a great reputation for curing headaches."

  " Yes," said Montgomery ; " I always wanted to thank you "

  His friend, however, broke in again

  " I have been troubled in my mind since then," he said, " because I was told afterwards that I had made a mistake about the proper dose. If you try the cio-root, don't take half an inch, as I recommended, but a quarter of an inch. Don't forget. It is of vital import-

  ance."

  Then he jumped into his 'bus, but I called after him, " What would be the effect of half an inch ? "

  " Certain death," he shouted back, and was gone. I turned to look at Montgomery and his wife. She let her umbrella fall and he had turned white. " Of course there is noth-

  A POWERFUL DRUG. 191

  ing to be alarmed about," I said, in a reassur- ing way. " Montgomery has taken half an inch scores of times; you say it always cured you?"

  " Yes, yes," Montgomery answered ; but his voice sounded hollow.

  Up to this point the snow had kept off, but now it began to fall in a soaking drizzle. If you are superstitious you can take this as an omen. For the rest of the day, certainly, we had a miserable time of it. I had to do all the talking, and while I laughed and jested, I noticed that Mrs. Montgomery was looking anxiously from time to time at her husband. She was afraid to ask him if he felt unwell, and he kept up, not wanting to alarm her. But he walked like a man who knew that he had come to his last page. At my suggestion we went to St. Enoch's Station Hotel to have dinner. I had dinner, Mrs. Montgomery pre- tended to have dinner, but Montgomery him- self did not even make the pretence. He sat with his elbows on the table and his face buried in his hands. At last he said with a groan that he was feeling very ill. He looked so doleful that his wife began to cry.

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  Montgomery admitted that he blamed the cio-root for his sufferings. He had taken an overdose of it, he said, tragically, and must abide the consequences. I could have shaken him, for reasoning was quite flung away on him. Of course, I repeated what I had said previously about an overdose having done him no harm before, but he only shook his head sadly. I said that his behavior now proved my conten- tion that he only believed in the cio-root because he was told that it had wonderful properties; otherwise he would have laughed at what his friend had just told him. Undoubt- edly, I said, his sufferings to-day were purely imaginary. Montgomery did not have suffi- cient spirits to argue with me, but he murmured in a die-away voice that he had felt strange symptoms ever since we set out from Edin- burgh. Now, this was as absurd as anything in Euclid, for he had been boasting of the wonderful cure the drug had effected again, most of the way between Edinburgh and Glasgow. He insisted that he had a splitting headache, and that he was very sick. In the end, as his wife was now in a frenzy, I sent out for a doctor. The doctor came, said " Yes "

  A POWERFUL DRUG. 193

  and " Quite 'so " to himself, and pronounced Montgomery feverish. That he was feverish by this time, I do not question. He had worked himself into a fever. There was some talk of putting him to bed in the hotel, but he insisted on going home. Though he did not put it so plainly, he gave us to understand that he wanted to die in his own bed.

  Never was there a more miserable trio than we in a railway carriage. We got a compart- ment to ourselves, for, though several passen- gers opened the door to come in, they shrank back as soon as they saw Montgomery's ghastly face. He lay in a corner of the carriage, with his head done up in flannel, procured at the hotel. He had the rugs and my great-coat over his legs, but he shivered despite them, and when he spoke at all, except to say that he was feeling worse every minute, it was to talk of men cut off in their prime and widows left destitute. At Mrs. Montgomery's wish I tel- egraphed, from a station at which the train stopped, to the family doctor in Edinburgh, asking him to meet us at the house. He did so ; indeed, he was on the steps to help

  Montgomery up them. We took an arm of 13

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  the invalid apiece, and dragged him into the library.

  It was a fortunate thing that we went into the library, for the first thing Montgomery saw on the table was the half -inch of cio-root which he thought had killed him. He had forgotten to take it.

  In ten minutes he was all right. Just as we were sitting down to supper, we heard a cat squalling outside. Montgomery flung a three- pound tin of the cio-root at it.

  EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR.

  STATISTICS showing the number of persons who yearly meet their death in our great cities by the fall of telegraph wires are published from time to time. As our cities grow, and the need of telegraphic communication is more generally felt, this danger will become even more conspicuous. Persons who value their lives
are earnestly advised not to walk under telegraph wires.

  Is it generally realized that every day at least one fatal accident occurs in our streets ? So many of these take place at crossings that we would strongly urge the public never to venture across a busy street until all the vehi- cles have passed.

  We find prevalent among our readers an impression that country life is comparatively

  196 EVEEY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR.

  safe. This mistake has cost Great Britain many lives. The country is so full of hidden dangers that one may be said to risk his health every time he ventures into it.

  We feel it our duty to remind holiday-makers that when in the country in the open air, they should never sit down. Many a man, aye, and woman too, has been done to death by neglect- ing this simple precaution. The recklessness of the public, indeed, in such matters is incom- prehensible. The day is hot, they see an in- viting grassy bank, and down they sit. Need we repeat that despite the sun (which is ever treacherous) they should continue walking at a smart pace? Yes, bitter experience has taught us that we must repeat such warnings.