A silent witness
that my presence might be objected to. I hope you will forgive me.”
My humility appeared entirely to appease her; in a moment her stiff
and forbidding manner melted into one that was quite gracious and she
rewarded me with a smile that made her face really charming.
“Of course,” she said, “it was silly of me to be so cantankerous and
so rude, too. But it did look a little callous, you know, when I saw
you playing with his poor, dead hand; so you must make allowances.”
She smiled again, very prettily, and at this moment my two colleagues
re-entered the room.
“Now, then,” said O’Connor, “let us see the body and then we shall
have finished.”
He strode over to the bed, and, turning back the sheet, made a rapid
inspection of the corpse.
“Ridiculous farce,” he muttered. “Looks all right. Would, in any case
though. Parcel of red tape. What’s the good of looking at the outside
of a body? Post-mortem’s the only thing that’s any use. What’s this
piece of tape-plaster on the back?”
“Oh,” said Batson, “that is a little cut that he made by falling on a
broken bottle. I stuck the plaster on because you can’t get a bandage
to hold satisfactorily on the back. Besides, he didn’t want a bandage
constricting his chest.”
“No, of course not,” O’Connor agreed. “Well, it’s all regular and
straightforward. Give me the form and I’ll fill it up and sign it.” He
seated himself at the table, looked once more at his watch, groaned
aloud and began to write furiously.
“The Egyptians weren’t such bad judges, after all,” he remarked as he
laid down the pen and rose from his chair. “Embalming may have been
troublesome, but when it was done it was done for good. The deceased
was always accessible for reference in case of a dispute, and all this
red tape was saved. Good-night, Mrs. Samway.” He buttoned up his coat
and bustled off, and a minute or so later we followed.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Batson, “this business has upset my arrangements
finely. I shall have to buck up if I’m going to catch my train.
There’s all the medicine to be made up and sent out yet, to say
nothing of dinner. But dinner will have to wait until the business is
all settled up. Don’t you hurry, Jardine. I’ll just run on and get to
work.” He broke into an elephantine trot and soon disappeared round a
corner, and, when I arrived at the surgery, I found him posting up the
day-book with the speed of a parliamentary reporter.
Batson’s dexterity with medicine-bottles and wrapping paper filled me
with admiration and despair. I made a futile effort to assist, but in
the end, he snatched away the crumpled paper in which I was struggling
to enswathe a bottle, dropped it into the waste-paper basket, snatched
up a clean sheet and--slap! bang! in the twinkling of an eye, he had
transformed the bottle into a neat, little white parcel as a conjuror
changes a cocked hat into a guinea-pig. It was wonderful.
My host was a cheerful soul, but restless. He got up from the table no
less than six times to pack some article that he had just thought of;
and after dinner, when I accompanied him to his bedroom, I saw him
empty his trunk no less than three times to make sure that he had
forgotten nothing. He quite worried me. Your over-quick man is apt to
wear out other people’s nerves more than his own. I began to look
anxiously at the clock, and felt a real relief when the maid came to
announce that the cab was at the door.
“Well, good-bye, Doctor!” he sang out cheerily, shaking my hand
through the open window of the cab. “Don’t forget to keep the
stock-bottles filled up. Saves a world of trouble. And don’t take too
long on your rounds. Ta! ta!”
The cab rattled away and I went back into the house, a full-blown
general practitioner.
CHAPTER V.
THE LETHAL CHAMBER
A young and newly-qualified doctor, emerging for the first time into
private practice, is apt to be somewhat surprised and disconcerted by
the new conditions. Accustomed to the exclusively professional and
scientific atmosphere of the hospital, the sudden appearance of the
personal element as the predominant factor rather takes him aback. He
finds himself in a new and unexpected position. No longer a mere,
impersonal official, a portion of a great machine, he is the paid
servant of his patients: who are not always above letting him feel the
conditions of his service. The hospital patient, drilled into a
certain respectful submissiveness by the discipline of the wards, has
given place to an employer, usually critical, sometimes truculent and
occasionally addicted to a disagreeable frankness of speech.
The _locum tenens_, moreover, is peculiarly susceptible to these
conditions, especially if, as in my case, his appearance is youthful.
Patients resent the substitution of a stranger for the familiar
medical attendant and are at no great pains to disguise the fact. The
“old woman with the liver” (to adopt Batson’s pellucid phrase) hinted
that I was rather young, adding encouragingly that I should get the
better of that in time; while the more morose typhoid bluntly informed
me that he hadn’t bargained for being attended by a medical student.
Taken as a whole, I found private practice disappointing and soon
began to wish myself back in the wards and to sigh for my quiet,
solitary rambles on Hampstead Heath.
Still, there were rifts in the cloud. Some of the patients appreciated
the interest that I took in their cases, evidently contrasting it with
the rather casual attitude of my principal, and some were positively
friendly. But, in general, my reception was such as to make me
slightly apprehensive whenever a new patient appeared.
On the fourth evening after Batson’s departure, Mrs. Samway was
announced and I prepared myself for the customary snub. But I was
mistaken. Nothing could be more gracious than her manner towards me,
though the object of her visit occasioned me some embarrassment.
“I have called, Dr. Jardine,” she said, “to ask you if you could let
me have the account for poor Mr. Maddock. My husband is the executor,
you know, and, as we shall be going back to Paris quite shortly, he
wants to get everything settled up.”
I was in rather a quandary. Of the financial side of practice I was
absolutely ignorant and I thought it best to say so. “But,” I added,
“Dr. Batson will be back on Friday evening, if you can wait so long.”
“Oh, that will do quite well,” she replied, “but don’t forget to tell
him that we want the account at once.”
I promised not to forget, and then remarked that she would, no doubt,
be glad to be back in Paris.
“No,” she answered, “I shall be rather sorry. Of course Camden Town is
not a very attractive neighbourhood, but it is close to the heart of
London; and then there are some delightful places near and quite
accessible. There is Highgate, for instance.”
“Yes; but it is getting very much built over, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately it is; but yet there are some very pleasant places
left. The old village is still charming. So quaint and old world. And
then there is Hampstead. What could be more delightful than the Heath?
But perhaps you don’t know Hampstead?”
“Oh, yes I do,” said I; “my rooms are at Gospel Oak, quite near the
Heath, and I think I know every nook and corner of the neighbourhood.
I am pining for a stroll on the Heath at this very moment.”
“I daresay you are,” she said sympathetically. “This is a depressing
neighbourhood if you can’t get away from it. We found it very dismal,
at first, after Paris.”
“Do you live in Paris?” I asked.
“Not permanently,” she replied. “But we spend a good deal of time
there. My husband is a dealer in works of art, so he has to travel
about a good deal. That is how we came to know Mr. Maddock.”
“He was a dealer too, wasn’t he?” I enquired.
“Yes, in a way. But he had means of his own and his dealing was a mere
excuse for collecting things that he was not going to keep. He had a
passion for buying, and then he used to sell the things in order to
buy more. But I am afraid I am detaining you with my chatter?”
“No, not at all,” I said eagerly, only too glad to have an
intelligent, educated person to talk to; “you are the last caller, and
I hope I have finished my day’s work.”
Accordingly she stayed quite a long time, chatting on a variety of
subjects and finally on that of cremation.
“I daresay,” she said, “it is more sanitary and wholesome than burial,
but there is something rather dreadful about it. Perhaps it is because
we are not accustomed to the idea.”
“Did you go to the funeral?” I asked.
“Yes. Mr. Maddock had no friends in England but my husband and me, so
we both went. It was very solemn and awesome. The coffin was laid on
the catafalque while a short service was read, and then two metal
doors opened and it was passed through out of our sight. We waited
some time and presently they brought us a little terra-cotta urn with
just a handful or two of white ash in it. That was all that was left
of our poor friend Septimus Maddock. Don’t you think it is rather
dreadful?”
“Death is always rather dreadful,” I answered. “But when we look at
the ashes of a dead person, we realize the total destruction of the
body; whereas the grave keeps its secrets. If we could look down
through the earth and see the changes that are taking place, we should
probably find the slow decay more shocking than the swift consumption
by fire. Fortunately we cannot. But we know that the final result is
the same in both.”
Mrs. Samway shuddered slightly, and drew her wraps more closely about
her.
“Yes,” she said with a faint sigh; “the same end awaits us all--but it
is better not to think about it.”
We were both silent for awhile. I sat with my gaze bent rather
absently on the case-book before me, turning over her last somewhat
gloomy utterance, until, chancing to look up, I found her pale,
penetrating eyes fixed on me with the same strange intentness that I
had noticed when she had looked at me as I sat by the body of Maddock.
As she met my glance, she looked down quickly but without confusion,
and with a return to her habitual reposefulness.
Half-unconsciously I returned her scrutiny. She was a
remarkable-looking woman. A beautiful woman, too, but of a type that
is, in our time and country, rare: an ancient or barbaric type in
which womanly beauty and grace are joined to manifest physical
strength. I felt that some unusual racial mixture spoke in her
inconsistent colouring; her clear, pink skin, her pale eyes and the
jet-black hair that rippled down either side of her low forehead in
little crimpy waves, as regular and formal as the “archaic curls” of
early Greek sculpture.
But predominant over all other qualities was that of strength. Full
and plump, soft and almost ultra-feminine, lissom and flexible in
every pose and movement, yet, to me, the chief impression that her
appearance suggested was strength--sheer, muscular strength; not the
rigid bull-dog strength of a strong man, but the soft and supple
strength of a leopard. I looked at her as she sat almost limply in her
chair, with her head on one side, her hands resting in her lap and a
beautiful, soft, womanly droop of the shoulders; and I felt that she
could have started up in an instant, active, strong, formidable, like
a roused panther.
I was going on, I think, to make comparisons between her and that
other woman who was wont to trip so daintily down Millfield Lane, when
she raised her eyes slowly to mine; and suddenly she blushed scarlet.
“Am I a _very_ remarkable-looking person, Dr. Jardine?” she asked
quietly, as if answering my thoughts.
The rebuke was well merited. For an instant a paltry compliment
fluttered on my lips; but I swallowed it down. She wasn’t that kind of
woman.