A Treasury of Doctor Stories

by Fabricant, Noah D. ; Werner, Heinz;

  Nor the next day either. By the time he reached home, he was conscious of feeling very ill: he had lancinating pains in his limbs, a chill down his spine, an outrageous temperature. To set out again on a round of visits was impossible. He had to tumble into bed, where he lay helpless.

  He got between the sheets with that sense of utter well-being, of almost sensual satisfaction, which only one who is shivering with fever knows. And, at first, very small things were enough to fill him with content: the smoothness of the pillow’s sleek linen; the shadowy light of the room, after long days spent in the dusty glare outside; the possibility of resting—the knowledge that it was his duty to rest; Polly’s soft, firm hands, which, as she sponged his forehead or administered his self-prescribed doses, were always of the right temperature—warm in the cold stage, cool when the fever scorched him, and neither hot nor cold when the dripping sweats came on. In the beginning, he lay behind the dimity-curtains of the four-poster, feeling as though he had done for ever with the world and its cares. In this white, still haven, the noise of life came to him like the beating of a muffled drum, and soon died away altogether. And the thought crossed his mind that death itself would not be hard to face, if, when one’s hour struck, this sense of aloofness, of detachment from earthly things, prevailed. Wrapped in a dreamless ease, the homing mortal would glide gently down the great River, back into the twilight from which he had sprung.—A further discovery was that only the busy doctor, eternally on the go, eternally, no matter what his own condition, at the beck and call of others, could truly appreciate the luxury of being ill.—But, as the fever declined, and the sweats lengthened, these slight pleasures lost their hold. Then, lying weak and helpless, he was ridden to death by black thoughts. Not only was day being added to day, he meanwhile not turning over a penny; but ideas which he knew to be preposterous insinuated themselves in his brain, and there spread and grew till they had ousted sanity. Thus, for hours on end, he writhed under the belief that his present illness was due solely to the proximity of the Great Swamp; and all that day he lay and cursed his folly, in having chosen just this neighbourhood to build in. Low fever, having once got a grip of its victim, did not readily let go; and he saw his practice cut up, ruined, by continual bouts of ill-health. Had he had the strength to rise, he would then and there have ordered in an army of workmen, bodily to shift the house to another site.— Again, there was the case of typhoid he had been anxious about, prior to his own breakdown: under his locum tenens, peritonitis had set in, and carried off the patient. At the time, he had accepted the news from Polly’s lips with indifference—too ill to care. But, a little later, the knowledge of what it meant broke over him one morning; and, after that, he suffered the tortures of the damned. Not Brace; he alone would be held responsible for the death; and once more he saw his hopeful practice damaged—destroyed. Perhaps not altogether unjustly, either. Lying there, an easy prey to morbid apprehensions, he began to tax himself with a possible error of judgment. He rebuilt the case in memory, struggled to recall each slight variation is temperature, each swift change for better or worse; but, as fast as he captured one such detail, his drowsy brain let the last but one go, and he had to beat it up anew. During the night, he grew confident that the relatives of the dead woman intended to take action against him, for negligence or improper attendance. In all probability, they waited only for him to be on his feet again, to drag him out into the light of scandal and disgrace.

  An attempt he made to speak of these devilish imaginings to wife and friend was a failure. He undertook it in a fit of desperation, when it seemed as if only a strong and well-grounded opposition would save his reason. But this was just what he could not get. Purdy, whom he tried first, held the crude notion that a sick person should never be gainsaid; and soothingly nodded, and sympathised, and agreed, till Mahony could have cried aloud at such blundering stupidity. Polly did better; she contradicted him. But not in the right way. She certainly pooh-poohed his fixed idea of the nearness of Yuille’s Swamp making the house unhealthy; but she did not argue the matter out, step by step, and convince him that he was wrong. She just laughed at him, as at a foolish child, and kissed him, and tucked him in anew. And when it came to the typhoid’s fatal issue, she had not the knowledge needed to combat him with any chance of success. She heard him anxiously out, and allowed herself to be made quite nervous over a possible fault on his part, so jealous was she for his growing reputation.

  So that, in the end, it was he who had to comfort her.

  “Don’t take any notice of what I say to-day, wife! It’s this blessed fever. . . . I’m light-headed, I think.”

  But he could hear her uneasily consulting with Purdy in the passage.

  It was not till his pulse beat normally again, and he had spirit enough to open a book, that he could smile at such exaggerated fears. And now, too, reviving health brought back a wholesome interest in everyday affairs. He listened, with amusement, to Polly’s account of the shifts Purdy was reduced to, to enter the house unseen by Miss Tilly. On his faithful daily call, the young man would creep round by the back door, and Tilly was growing more and more irate at her inability to waylay him. Yes, Polly was rather readily forced to admit, she had abetted him in his evasions.—(“You know, Poll, I might just as well tie myself up to old Mother B. herself and be done with it!”)—Out of sheer pique, Tilly had twice now accepted old Mr. Ocock’s invitation to drive with him. Once, she had returned with a huge bag of lollies; and once, with a face like a turkey-cock. Polly couldn’t help thinking no, really, Richard, she could not! . . . that, perhaps, something might come of it. He should not laugh; but wait and see.

  But, as he grew stronger, books and gossip alike palled on him; and the last days of his imprisonment had feet of lead. Many inquiries had been made after him; he could appreciate them now. People had missed their doctor, it seemed, and wanted him back. The wish was mutual; he hankered to see how this case had developed in his absence, and what Brace had made of that. It was a real red-letter day when he could snap to the catches of his gloves again, and mount the step of a buggy.

  He had instructed Purdy to arrange for the hire of this vehicle, saddle-work being out of the question for him, in the meantime. And, on his first long journey—it led him past Doyle’s hut, now, he was sorry to see, in the hands of strangers; for the wife, on the way to making a fair recovery, had got up too soon, overtaxed her strength and died, and the broken-hearted husband was gone off no one knew where—on this drive, as mile after mile slid from under the wheels, Mahony felt how grateful was the screen of a hood between him and the sun.

  While he was laid up, the eternal question of how to live on his in-come had left him, relatively speaking, in peace. He had of late adopted the habit of doing his scraping and saving, of denying himself wholesale, at the outset of each quarter, so as to get the money due to Ocock put by betimes; while, for current expenses, Doyle’s gift had been there to fall back on. His illness had naturally made a hole in this; and now the living momentarily from hand to mouth must begin anew.

  With what remained of the sum, he proposed to settle his account at the livery stable. Then, the unexpected happened. His reappearance—he looked very thin and washed-out—evidently jogged a couple of sleepy memories; for, simultaneously, two big bills were paid, one of which he had entirely given up. In consequence, he again found himself fifty pounds to the good. And, driving to Ocock’s office, on term day, he resolved to go on afterwards to the Bank of Australasia, and there deposit the money.

  Grindle, now set off by a pair of flaming “sideboards,” and a manner that aped Ocock’s own, himself ushered Mahony into the sanctum. The latter’s little affair was disposed of in a trice. Ocock was one of the busiest of men nowadays—he no longer needed to invent sham clients and fictitious interviews—and utilised the few odd minutes it took to procure a signature, jot down a note, open a drawer, unlock a tin box, to remark abstractedly on the weather, and put a polite inquiry : “And your good lady? In
the best of health, I trust?”

  On emerging from the inner room, Mahony saw that the places formerly filled by Tom and Johnny, were occupied by strangers; and he was wondering whether it would be indiscreet to ask what had become of the brothers, when Ocock cut across his intention.—“By the way, Jenkins, has that memorandum I spoke of been drawn up?” he turned to a clerk..

  With a sheet of foolscap in his hand, he invited Mahony with a beck of the chin to re-enter his room, where he closed the door. “Half a moment! Now, doctor, if you happen to have a little money lying idle, I can put you on to a good thing—a very good thing indeed. I don’t know, I’m sure, whether you keep an eye on the fluctuations of the share-market. If so, you’ll no doubt have noticed the . . . let me say the extreme instability of those shares known as Porepunkahs.’ After making an excellent start, they have drooped till they are now to be had at one-twentieth of their original value.”

  As a rule, he did not take much interest in mining matters, was Mahony’s reply. However, he knew something of the claim in question, if only because several of his acquaintances had abandoned their shares, in disgust at the repeated calls and the lack of dividends.

  “Exactly. Well now, doctor, I’m in a position to inform you that ‘Pore-punkahs’ will very shortly be prime favourites on the market, selling at from double to treble their original figure—their original figure, sir! No one with a few hundreds to spare could find a better investment. Now is the time to buy.”

  A few hundreds! . . . what does he take me for? thought Mahony; and declined the transaction off-hand. It was very good of Mr. Ocock to think of him; but he preferred to keep clear of all that kind of thing.

  “Quite so, quite so!” returned Ocock suavely, hitting the note at once; and he dry-washed his hands, with the smile Mahony had never learnt to fathom. “Just as you please, of course.—I’ll only ask you, doctor, to treat the matter as strictly confidential.”

  “I supose he says the same to every one he tells,” was Mahony’s comment as he flicked up his horse; and he wondered what the extent might be of the lawyer’s personal interest in the “Porepunkah Company.” It was quite likely that the number of shareholders was not large enough to take up the capital.

  Still, the incident gave him food for thought, and only when it was after hours did he remember his intention of driving home by way of the Bank.

  Later in the day, he came back on the incident, and pondered over his abrupt refusal of Ocock’s offer. There was nothing out of the way in this: he never took advice well; and, was it forced upon him, a certain inborn contrariness drove him, nine times out of ten, to go and do just the opposite. Besides, he had not yet learned to look with lenience on the rage for speculation that had seized the inhabitants of Ballarat; and he held that it would be culpable for a man of his slender means to risk money in the great game.—But was there any hint of risk in the present instance? To judge from Ocock’s manner, the investment was as safe as a house, and lucrative to a degree that made one’s head swim. “Double to treble their original figure” the lawyer had predicted of the shares. An Arabian-nights fashion of growing rich, and no mistake! Very different from the laborious grind of his days, in which, moreover, he had always to reckon with the chance of not being paid for his services at all. That very afternoon had brought him a fresh example of this. He was returning from the Old Magpie Lead, where he had been called to a case of scarlet fever; and he saw himself covering the same road daily, for some time to come. But he had learned to adjudge his patients in a winking; and these, he could swear to it, would prove to be non-payers; of a kind even to cut and run, once the child was out of danger. Was he really justified, cramped for money as he was, in rejecting the straight tip Ocock had given him? And he debated this moot point—argued his need against his principles—the whole way home.

  As soon as he had changed, and seen his suspect clothing hung out to air, he went impetuously back to Ocock’s office. He had altered his mind. A small gift from a grateful patient: yes, fifty, please; they might bring him luck.—And he saw his name written down as the owner of half a hundred shares.

  After this, he took a new interest in the mining sheet of the Star; turned to it, indeed, first of all. For a week, a fortnight, ‘Porepunkahs’ remained stationary; then they made a call, and, if he did not wish to forfeit, he had to pay out as many shillings as he held shares. A day or two later, they sank a trifle, and Mahony’s hopes with them. There even came a day when they were not mentioned; and he gave up his money for lost. But, of a sudden, they woke to life again, took an upward bound, and, within a month, were quoted at five pounds—on rumour alone. “Very sensitive indeed,” said the Star. Purdy, his only confidant, went about swearing at himself for having let the few he owned lapse; and Mahony itched to sell. He could now have banked two hundred and fifty pounds.

  But Ocock laughed him out of countenance—even went so far as to pat him on the shoulder. On no account was he to think of selling. “Sit tight, doctor . . . sit tight! Till I say the word.”

  And Mahony reluctantly obeyed.

  Silent Snow, Secret Snow

  CONRAD AIKEN

  JUST why it should have happened, or why it should have happened just when it did, he could not, of course, possibly have said; nor perhaps could it even have occurred to him to ask. The thing was above all a secret, something to be preciously concealed from Mother and Father; and to that very fact it owed an enormous part of its deliciousness. It was like a peculiarly beautiful trinket to be carried unmentioned in one’s trouser-pocket—a rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a sea shell distinguishable from all others by an unusual spot or stripe—and, as if it were anyone of these, he carried around with him every-where a warm and persistent and increasingly beautiful sense of possession. Nor was it only a sense of possession—it was also a sense of protection. It was as if, in some delightful way, his secret gave him a fortress, a wall behind which he could retreat into heavenly seclusion. This was almost the first thing he had noticed about it—apart from the oddness of the thing itself—and it was this that now again, for the fiftieth time, occurred to him, as he sat in the little schoolroom. It was the half hour for geography. Miss Buell was revolving with one finger, slowly, a huge terrestrial globe which had been placed on her desk. The green and yellow continents passed and repassed, questions were asked and answered, and now the little girl in front of him, Deirdre, who had a funny little constellation of freckles on the back of her neck, exactly like the Big Dipper, was standing up and telling Miss Buell that the equator was the line that ran around the middle.

  Miss Buell’s face, which was old and grayish and kindly, with gray stiff curls beside the cheeks, and eyes that swam very brightly, like little minnows, behind thick glasses, wrinkled itself into a complication of amusements.

  “Ah! I see. The earth is wearing a belt, or a sash. Or someone drew a line round it!”

  “Oh, no—not that—I mean—”

  In the general laughter, he did not share, or only a very little. He was thinking about the Arctic and Antarctic regions, which of course, on the globe, were white. Miss Buell was now telling them about the tropics, the jungles, the steamy heat of equatorial swamps, where the birds and butterflies, and even the snakes, were like living jewels. As he listened to these things, he was already, with a pleasant sense of half-effort, putting his secret between himself and the words. Was it really an effort at all? For effort implied something voluntary, and perhaps even something one did not especially want; whereas this was distinctly pleasant, and came almost of its own accord. All he needed to do was to think of that morning, the first one, and then of all the others—

  But it was all so absurdly simple! It had amounted to so little. It was nothing, just an idea—and just why it should have become so Wonderful, so permanent, was a mystery—a very pleasant one, to be sure, but also, in an amusing way, foolish. However, without ceasing to
listen to Miss Buell, who had now moved up to the north temperate zone, he deliberately invited his memory of the first morning. It was only a moment or two after he had waked up—or perhaps the moment itself. But was there, to be exact, an exact moment? Was one awake all at once? or was it gradual? Anyway, it was after he had stretched a lazy hand up toward the headrail, and yawned, and then relaxed again among his warm covers, all the more grateful on a December morning, that the thing had happened. Suddenly, for no reason, he had thought of the postman, he remembered the postman. Perhaps there was nothing so odd in that. After all, he heard the postman almost every morning in his life—his heavy boots could be heard clumping round the corner at the top of the little cobbled hill-street, and then, progressively nearer, progressively louder, the double knock at each door, the crossings and re-crossings of the street, till finally the clumsy steps came stumbling across to the very door, and the tremendous knock came which shook the house itself.

  (Miss Buell was saying “Vast wheat-growing areas in North America and Siberia.”

  Deirdre had for the moment placed her left hand across the back of her neck.)

  But on this particular morning, the first morning, as he lay there with his eyes closed, he had for some reason waited for the postman. He wanted to hear him come round the corner. And that was precisely the joke—he never did. He never came. He never had come—round the corner—again. For when at last the steps were heard, they had already, he was quite sure, come a little down the hill, to the first house; and even so, the steps were curiously different—they were softer, they had a new secrecy about them, they were muffled and indistinct; and while the rhythm of them was the same, it now said a new thing—it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep. And he had understood the situation at once—nothing could have seemed simpler—there had been snow in the night, such as all winter he had been longing for; and it was this which had rendered the postman’s first footsteps inaudible, and the later ones faint. Of course! How lovely! And even now it must be snowing—it was going to be a snowy day—the long white ragged lines were drifting and sifting across the street, across the faces of the old houses, whispering and hushing, making little triangles of white in the corners between cobblestones, seething a little when the wind blew them over the ground to a drifted corner; and so it would be all day, getting deeper and deeper and silenter and silenter.