CHAPTER I. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER II. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER III. HER STORY.
CHAPTER IV. HER STORY.
CHAPTER V. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER VI. HER STORY.
CHAPTER VII. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER VIII HER STORY.
CHAPTER IX. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER X. HER STORY.
CHAPTER XI. HER STORY.
CHAPTER XII. HIS STORY.
I ended the last page with “I shall write no more here.” It used to be my pride never to have broken a promise nor changed a resolution. Pride! What have I to do with pride?
And resolutions, forsooth! What,—are we omnipotent and omniscient, that against all changes of circumstances, feelings, or events, we should set up our paltry resolutions, urge them and hold to them, in spite of reason and conviction, with a tenacity that we suppose heroic, god-like, yet which may be merely the blind obstinacy of a brute?
I will never make a resolution again. I will never again say to myself, “You, Max Urquhart, in order to keep up that character for virtue, honour, and steadfastness, which heaven only knows whether or no you deserve, ought to do so and so; and, come what will, you must do it.” Out upon me and my doings! Was I singled out to be the scapegoat of the world?
It is my intention here, regularly to set down, for certain reasons, which I may, or may not, afterwards allude to, certain events, which have happened without any act of mine, almost without my volition, if a man can be so led on by force of circumstances, that there seems only one course of conduct open to him to pursue. Whither these circumstances may lead, I am at this moment as utterly ignorant as on the day I was born, and almost as powerless. I make no determinations, attempt no previsions, follow no set line of conduct; doing only from day to day, what is expected of me, and leaving all the rest to—is it? it must be—to God.
The sole thing in which I may be said to exercise any absolute volition, is in writing down what I mean to write here, the only record that will exist of the veritable me—Max Urquhart,—as he might have been known, not to people in general, but to—any one who looked into his deepest heart, and was his friend, his beloved, his very own.
The form of Imaginary Correspondent I henceforward throw aside. I am perfectly aware to whom and for whom I write: yet who, in all human probability, will never read a single line.
Once, an officer in the Crimea, believing himself dying, gave me a packet of letters to burn. He had written them, year by year, under every change of fortune, to a friend he had, to whom he occasionally wrote other letters, not like these; which were never sent nor meant to be sent, during his life-time—though sometimes I fancy he dreamed of giving them, and of their being read, smiling, by two together. He was mistaken. Circumstances which happen not rarely to dreamers like him, made it unnecessary, nay, impossible, for them to be delivered at all. He bade me burn them—at once—in case he died. In so doing there started out of the embers, clear and plain, the name. But the fire and I told no tales; I took the poker and buried it. Poor fellow! He did not die, and I meet him still; but we have never referred to those burnt letters.
These letters of mine I also may one day burn. In the meantime, there shall be no name or superscription on them—no beginning or ending, nor, if I can avoid it, anything which could particularise the person to whom they are written. For all others, they will take the form of a mere statement—nothing more.
To begin. I was sitting about eleven at night, over the fire, in my hut. I had been busy all day, and had had little rest the night before.
It was not my intention to attend our camp concert; but I was in a manner compelled to do so. Ill news from home reached poor young Ansdell of ours—and his colonel sent me to break it to him. I then had to wait about, in order to see the good colonel as he came out from the concert-room. It was, therefore, purely by accident that I met those friends whom I afterwards did not leave for several minutes.
The reason of this delay in their company may be told. It was a sudden agony about the uncertainty of life—young life; fresh and hopeful as pretty Laura Ansdell’s—whom I had chanced to see riding through the North Camp, not two weeks ago—and now she was dead. Accustomed as I am to almost every form of mortality, I had never faced the grim fear exactly in this shape before. It put me out of myself for a little time.
I did not go near Granton the following day, but received from him a message and my plaid. She—the lady to whom I had lent it—was “quite well.” No more: how could I possibly expect any more?
I was, as I say, sitting over my hut-fire, with the strangest medley in my mind—rosy Laura Ansdell—now galloping across the moor—now lying still and colourless in her coffin; and another face, about the same age, though I suppose it would not be considered nearly as pretty, with the scarlet hood drawn over it; pallid with cold, yet with such a soft light in the eyes, such a trembling sweetness about the mouth! She must be a very happy-minded creature. I hardly ever saw her, or was with her any length of time, that she did not look the picture of content and repose. She always puts me in mind of Dallas’s pet song, when we were boys—“Jessie, the Flower o’ Dunblane.”
“She’s modest as ony, and blithe as she’s bonnie,
And guileless simplicity marks her its ain,
And far be the villain, divested o’ feelin’,
Wha’d blight in its bud the sweet Flower o’ Dunblane.”
I say amen to that.
It was—to return, for the third time, to simple narrative—somewhere about eleven o’clock, when a man on horseback stopped at my hut-door. I thought it might be a summons to the Ansdells, but it was not. It was the groom from Rockmount, bringing me a letter.
Her letter—her little letter! I ought to burn it—but, as yet, I cannot—and where it is kept, it will be quite safe. For reasons, I shall copy it here.
“Dear Sir,—
“My father has met with a severe accident. Dr. Black is from home, and there is no other doctor in the neighbourhood upon whom we can depend. Will you pardon the liberty I am taking, and come to us at once?
“Yours truly,
“Theodora Johnston.”
There it lies, brief and plain; a firm heart guided the shaking hand. Few things show character in a woman more than her handwriting: this, when steady, must be remarkably neat, delicate, and clear. I did well to put it by—I may never get another line.
In speaking to Jack, I learnt that his master and one of the young ladies had been out to dinner—that master had insisted on driving home himself, probably from Jack’s incompetence, but he was sober enough now, poor lad!—that, coming through the fir-wood, one of the wheels got fixed in a deep rut, and the phaeton was overturned.
I asked, was any one hurt—besides Mr. Johnston?
“Miss Johnston was, a little.”
“Which Miss Johnston?”
“Miss Penelope, sir.”
“No one else?”
“No, sir.”
I had evidence enough of all this before, but just then, at that instant, it went out of my mind in a sudden oppression of fear. The facts of the case gained, I called Jack in to the fire, and went into my bed-room to settle with myself what was best to be done.
Indecision, as to the matter of going or not going, was of course impossible; but it was a sudden and startling position to be placed in. True, I could avoid it by pleading hospital business, and sending the assistant surgeon of our regiment, who is an exceedingly clever young man—but not a young man whom women would like in a sick house, in the midst of great distress or danger. And in that distress and danger, she had called upon me, trusted me.
I determined to go. The cost, whatever it might be, would be purely personal, and in that brief minute I counted it all. I state this, because I wish to make clear that no secondary motive, dream, or desire, prompted me to act as I have done.
On questioning Jack more closely, I found that Mr. Johnston had fallen, they believed, on a stone; that he had been picked up senseless, and had never spoken since.
This indicated at once on what a thread of chance the case hung. The case—simply that and no more; as to treat it at all, I must so consider it. I have saved lives, by God’s blessing—this, then, must be regarded merely as one other life to be saved, if, through His mercy, it were granted me to do it.
I unlocked my desk, and put her letter in the secret drawer; wrote a line to our assistant-surgeon, with hospital orders, in case I should be absent part of the next day; took out any instruments I might want; then, with a glance round my room, and an involuntary wondering as to how and when I might return to it, I mounted Jack’s horse and rode off to Rockmount. The whole had not occupied fifteen minutes, for I remember looking at my watch, which stood at a quarter-past eleven.
Hard-riding makes thinking impossible; and, indeed, my whole mind was bent upon not missing my road in the darkness. A detour of a mile or two, one lost half-hour, might, humanly speaking, have cost the old man’s life; for, in similar cases, it is generally a question of time.
It is said, our profession is that, which, of all others, most inclines a man to materialism. I never found it so. The first time I ever was brought close to death—— but that train of thought must be stopped. Since, death and I have walked so long together, that the mere vital principle, common to all breathing creatures, “the life of a beast which goeth downwards,” as the Bible has it, I never think of confounding with “the soul of a man which goeth upwards.” Quite distinct from the life, dwelling in blood or breath, or at that “vital point” which has been lately discovered, showing that in a spot the size of a pin’s head, resides the principle of mortality—quite distinct, I say, from this something which perishes or vanishes so mysteriously from the dead friends we bury, the corpses we anatomize, seems to me the spirit, the ghost; which being able to conceive of and aspire to, must necessarily return to, the one Holy Ghost, the one Eternal Spirit, Himself once manifest in flesh, this very flesh of ours.
And it seemed on that strange, wild night, just such another winter’s night as I remember, years and years ago,—as if this distinction between the life and the soul, grew clearer to me than ever before; as if, pardoning all that had happened to its mortal part, a ghost, which, were such visitations allowed, though I do not believe they are, might be supposed often to visit me—followed my ghost, harmlessly,—nay, pitifully, I
“Being a tiling immortal as itself,”
the whole way between the camp and Rockmount.
I dismounted under the ivy-bush which overhangs the garden-gate, which gate had been left open, so I was able to go, at once, up to the hall-door, where the fan-light flickered on the white stone-floor; the old man’s stick was in the corner, and the young ladies’ hats hung up on the branching stag’s horns.
For the moment, I half-believed myself dreaming; and that I should wake as I have often done, after half an hour’s rest, with the salt morning breeze blowing on me, in the outside gallery of Scutari Hospital,—start up, take my lamp, and go round my wards.
But minutes were precious. I rang the bell; and, almost immediately, a figure slid down the staircase, and opened the door. I might not have thought it flesh and blood, but for the touch of its little cold hand.
“Ah! it is you, at last; I was sure you would come.”
“Certainly.”
Perhaps she thought me cold, “professional,” as if she had looked for a friend, and found only the doctor. Perhaps,—nay, it must be so, she never thought of me at all, except as “the doctor.”
“Where is your father?”
“Upstairs; we carried him at once to his room. Will you come?”
So I followed—I seemed to have nothing to do but to follow that light figure, with the voice so low, the manner so quiet,—quieter than I ever expected to see hers, or any woman’s, under such an emergency. I? what did I ever know of women? What did I deserve to know, except that a woman bore me? It is an odd fancy, but I have never thought so much about my mother as within the last few months. And sometimes, turning over the sole relics I have of hers, a ribbon or two, and a curl of hair, and calling to mind the few things Dallas remembered about her, I have imagined my mother, in her youth, must have been something like this young girl.
She entered the bed-room first.
“You may come in now. You will not startle him; I think he knows nobody.”
I sat down beside my patient. He lay, just as he had been brought in from the road, with a blanket and counterpane thrown over him, breathing heavily, but quite unconscious.
“The light, please. Can you hold it for me? Is your hand steady?” And I held it a moment to judge. That weakness cost me too much; I took care not to risk it again.
When I finished my examination, and looked up, Miss Theodora was still standing by me. Her eyes only asked the question—which, thank God, I could answer as I did.
“Yes—it is a more hopeful case than I expected.”
At this shadow of hope—for it was only a shadow—the deadly quiet in which she had kept herself was stirred. She began to tremble exceedingly. I took the candle from her, and gave her a chair.
“Never mind me. It is only for a minute,” she said. One or two deep, hard sighs came, and then she recovered herself. “Now, what is to be done?”
I told her I would do all that was necessary, if she would bring me various things I mentioned.
“Can I help you? There is no one else. Penelope has hurt her foot, and cannot move, and the servants are mere girls. Shall I stay? If there is to be an operation, I am not afraid.”
For I had, unguardedly, taken out of my pocket the case of instruments which, after all, would not be needed. I told her so, adding that I had rather she left me alone with my patient.
“Very well. You will take care of him? You will not hurt him—poor papa!”
Not very likely. If he and I could have changed places,—he assuming my strength and life, I lying on that bed, with death before me, under such a look as his child left him with,—I think I should at that moment have done it.
When I had laid the old man comfortably in his bed, I sat with his wrist under my fingers, counting, beat by beat, the slow pulse, which was one of my slender hopes for his recovery. As the hand dropped over my knee, powerless, almost, as a dead hand, it recalled, I know not how or why, the helpless drop of that, the first dead hand I ever saw. Happily the fancy lasted only a moment; in seasons like this, when I am deeply occupied in the practice of my profession, all such phantasms are laid. And the present case was urgent enough to concentrate all my thoughts and faculties.
I had just made up my mind concerning it, when a gentle knock came to the door, and on my answering, she walked in; glided rather, for she had taken off her silk gown, and put on something soft and dark, which did not rustle. In her face, white as it was, there was a quiet preparedness, more touching than any wildness of grief—a quality which few women possess, but which heaven never seems to give except to women, compelling us men, as it were, to our knees, in recognition of something diviner than anything we have, or are, or were ever meant to be. I mention this, lest it might be thought of me, as is often thought of doctors, that I did not feel.
She asked me no questions, but stood silently beside me, with her eyes fixed on her father. His just opened, as they had done several times before, wandered vacantly over the bed-curtains, and closed again, with a moan.
She looked at me, frightened—the poor child.
I explained to her that this moaning was no additional cause of alarm, rather the contrary; that her father might lie in his present state for hours—days.
“And can you do nothing for him?”
If I could—at any cost which mortal man could pay!
Motioning her to the furthest corner of the room, I there, as is my habit, when the friends of the patient seem capable of listening and comprehending, gave her my opinion about the course of treatment I intended to adopt, and my reasons for the same. In this case, of all others, I wished not to leave the relatives in the dark, lest they might afterwards blame me for doing nothing; when, in truth, to do nothing was the only chance. I told her my belief that it would be safest to maintain perfect silence and repose, and leave benignant Nature to work in her own mysterious way—Nature, whom the longer one lives, the more one trusts in as the only true physician.
“Therefore,” I said, “will you understand that however little I do, I am acting as I believe to be best? Will you trust me?”
She looked up searchingly, and then said, “Yes.” After a few moments she asked me how long I could stay? if I were obliged to return to the camp immediately?
I told her “No; I did not intend to return till morning.”
“Ah, that is well! Shall I order a room to be prepared for you?”
“Thank you, but I prefer sitting up.”
“You are very kind. You will be a great comfort.”
I, “a great comfort!” I—“kind.”
My thoughts must needs return into their right channel. I believe the next thing she said was something about my going to see “Penelope:” at least I found myself with my hand on the door, all but touching hers, as she was showing me how to open it.
“There: the second room to the left. Shall I go with you? No! I will stay here then, till you return.”
So, after she had closed the door, I remained alone in the dim passage for a few moments. It was well. No man can be his own master at all times.
Miss Johnston was a good deal more hurt than she had confessed. As she lay on the bed, still in her gay dress, with artificial flowers in her hair—her face, pallid and drawn with pain, looked almost like that of an old woman. She seemed annoyed at my coming—she dislikes me, I know: but anxiety about her father, and her own suffering, kept her aversion within bounds. She listened to my medical report from the next room, and submitted to my orders concerning herself, until she learnt that at least a week’s confinement, to rest her foot, would be necessary. Then she rebelled.
“That is impossible. I must be up and about. There is nobody to do anything but me.”
“Your sister?”
“Lisabel is married. Oh, you meant Dora?—We never expect any useful thing from Dora.”
This speech did not surprise me. It merely confirmed a good deal which I had already noticed in this family. Also, it might in degree be true. I think, so far from being blind to them, I see clearer than most people every fault she has.
Neither contradicting nor arguing, I repeated to Miss Johnston the imperative necessity for her attending to my’ orders: adding that I had known more than one case of a person being made a cripple for life by neglecting such an injury as hers.
“A cripple for life!” She started—her color came and went—her eye wandered to the chair beside her, on which was her little writing-case; I conclude that in the intervals of her pain she had been trying to send these ill news, or to apply for help to some one.
“You will be lame for life,” I repeated, “unless you take care.”
“Shall I now?”
“No—with reasonable caution I trust you will do well.”
“That is enough. Do not trouble yourself any more about me. Pray go back to my father.”.
She turned from me and closed her eyes. There was nothing more to be done with Miss Penelope. Calling a servant who stood by, I gave my last orders concerning her, and departed. A strange person—this elder sister. What differences of character exist in families!
There was no change in my other patient. As I stood looking at him, his daughter glided round to my side. We exchanged a glance only—she seemed quite to understand that talking was inadmissible. Then she stood by me, silently gazing.
“You are sure there is no change?”
“None.”
“Lisa—ought she not to know? I never sent a telegraph message; will you tell me how to do it?”
Her quiet assumption of duty—her thoughtful methodical arrangements; surely the sister was wrong,—that is, as I knew well, any great necessity would soon prove her to be wrong—about Miss Theodora.
I said there was no need to telegraph until morning, when, as I rode back to the camp, I would do it myself.
“Thank you.”
No objection or apology; only that soft “thank you”—taking all things calmly and naturally, as a man would like to see a woman take the gift of his life, if necessary. No, not life; that is owed—but any or all of its few pleasures would be cheerfully laid down for such another “thank you.”
While I was considering what should be done for the night, there came a rustling and chattering outside in the passage. Miss Johnston had sent a servant to sit up with her father. She came—knocking at the door-handle, rattling the candlestick, and tramping across the floor like a regiment of soldiers—so that my patient moaned, and put up his hand to his head.
I said—sharply enough, no doubt—that I must have quiet. A loud voice, a door slammed to, even a heavy step across the floor, and I would not answer for the consequences. If Mr. Johnston were meant to recover, there must be no one in his room but the doctor and the nurse.
“I understand—Susan, come away.”
There was a brief conference outside; then Miss Theodora re-entered alone, bolted the door, and was again at my side.
“Will that do?”
“Yes.”
The clock struck two while we were standing there. I stole a glance at her white, composed face.
“Can you sit up?—do you think?”
“Certainly.”
Without more ado—for I was just then too much occupied with a passing change in my patient—the matter was decided. When I next looked for her, she had slipped round the foot of the bed, and taken her place behind the curtain on the other side. There we both sat, hour after hour, in total silence.
I tell everything, you see, just as minutely as I remember it—and shall remember—long after every circumstance, trivial or great, has faded out of every memory except mine. If these letters are ever read by other than myself, words and incidents long forgotten may revive: that when I die, as in the course of nature I shall do, long before younger persons, it may be seen that it is not youth alone which can receive impressions vividly and retain them strongly.
I could not see her—I could only see the face on the pillow, where a dim light fell; just enough to shew me the slightest change, did any come. But, closely as I watched, none did come. Not even a twitch or quiver broke that blank expression of repose which was neither life nor death.
I thought several times that it would settle into death before morning. And then?
Where was all my boasted skill, my belief in my own powers of saving life. Why, sitting here, trusted and looked up to, depended upon as the sole human stay—my countenance examined, as I felt it was, even as if it were the index and arbiter of fate—I—watching as I never watched before by any sick bed, this breath which trembled in the balance, felt myself as ignorant and useless as a child. Nay, I was “as a dead man before Thee,” O Thou humbler of pride!
Crying to myself thus—Job’s cry—I thought of another Hebrew, who sought “not unto the Lord, but unto the physicians;” and died. It came into my mind, May there not be, even in these days, such a thing as “seeking the Lord?”
I believe there is: I know there is.
The candle went out. I had sat with my eyes shut, and had not noticed it, till I heard her steal across the room, trying to get a light. Afraid to trust my own heavy step—hers seemed as soft as snow—I contrived to pull the window-blind aside, so that a pale white streak fell across the hearth where she was kneeling—the cheerless hearth, for I had not dared to risk the noise of keeping up a fire.
She looked up, and shivered.
“Is that light morning?”
“Yes. Are you cold?”
“A little.”
“It is always cold at day-break. Go and get a shawl.”
She took no notice, but put the candle in its place and came over to me.
“How do you think he is?”
“No worse.”
A sigh, patient, but hopeless. I took an opportunity of examining her closely, to judge how long her self-control was likely to last; or whether, after this great shock and weary night-watch, her physical strength would fail. So looking, I noticed a few blood-drops trickling over her forehead, oozing from under her hair:—
“What is this?”
“Oh, nothing. I struck myself as we were lifting papa from the carriage. I thought it had ceased bleeding.”
“Let me look at it a moment. There—I shall not hurt you.”
“Oh, no. I am not afraid.”
I cut the hair from round the place, and plastered it up. It hardly took a minute; was the smallest of surgical operations; yet she trembled. I saw her strength was beginning to yield; and she might need it all.
“Now, you must go and lie down for an hour.”
She shook her head.
“You must.”
There might have been something harsh in the words—I did not quite know what I was saying—for she looked surprised.
“I mean you ought; which is enough argument with a girl like you. If you do not rest, you will never be able to keep up for another twelve hours, during which your father may need you. He does not need you now.”
“And you?”
“I had much rather be alone.” Which was most true.
So she left me; but, ten minutes after, I heard again the light step at the door.
“I have brought you this” (some biscuits and a glass of milk) “I know you never take wine.”
Wine! O Heaven, no! Would that, years ago, the first drop had burnt my lips—been as gall to my tongue—proved to me not drink, but poison—as the poor old man now lying there once wished it might have happened to any son of his. Well might my father, my young happy father, who married my mother, and, loving and loved, spent with her the brief years of their youth—well, indeed, might my father have wished it for me!
So there I sat, after the food she brought me had been swallowed down somehow—for it would have hurt her to come back and find it untouched. Thus watching, hope lessened by degrees, sank into mere conjectures as to the manner in which the watch would end. Possibly, in this state of half-consciousness, the breath would quietly pass away, without struggle or pain; which would be easiest for them all.
I laid my plans, in that case, either to be of any use to the family if I could, by remaining until the Trehernes arrived, or to leave immediately all was over. Circumstances, and their apparent wish, must be my only guide. Afterwards there would be no difficulty; the less they saw of any one who had been associated with such a painful time, the better. Better for all of them.
The clock below struck—what hour I did not count, but it felt like morning. It was,—must be—I must make it morning.
I went to the window to refresh my eyes with the soft white dawn, which, as I opened the blind, stole into the room, making the candle buRN yellow and dim. The night was over and gone. Across the moorland, and up on the far hills, it was already morning.
A thought struck me, suggesting one more chance. Extinguishing the candle, I drew aside all the curtains, so as to throw the daylight in a full stream across the foot of the bed; and by the side of it—with the patient’s hand between mine, and my eyes fixed steadily on his face—I sat down.
His eyes opened, not in the old blank way, but with an expression in them that I never expected to see again. They turned instinctively to the light; then, with a slow, a wandering, but perfectly rational, look towards me, feebly, the old man smiled.
That minute was worth dying for; or rather, having lived for, all these twenty years.
The rest which I have to tell must be told another time.
I have not been able to continue this. Every day has been full of business, and every night I have spent at Rockmount for the last three weeks.