CHAPTER XII

The surest test of a man’s efficiency is to leave him in a responsible post with nothing to trust to save his own skill and courage. Young doctors, like raw soldiers, are prone to panic, and your theoretical genius may bungle over the slitting of a whitlow, though he be the possessor of numberless degrees.

Mere book lore never instilled virility into a man, and Frederick Inglis, B.A., A.M., B.Sc., D.Ph., gilded to the last button with the cleverness of the schools, was an amiable fellow whose cultured and finnicking exterior covered unhappy voids of self-distrust. It had been very well for him so long as he could play with a few new drugs, look quietly clever, and leave the grimness of the responsibility to Murchison. Dr. Inglis had found private practice a pleasant pastime. He had come from the laboratories full to the brim with the latest scientific sensations, and a preconceived pity for the average sawbones in the provinces. He boasted a brilliant air so long as he was second in command. It was possible to pose behind the barrier of another man’s strength.

That same Saturday night Murchison’s highly educated assistant had been dragged out of bed at two in the morning, and taken in a bumping milk-cart to a farm some five miles north of Roxton. His youth had been flouted on the very threshold by a stern, keen-eyed woman who had expressed herself dissatisfied with the offer of a juvenile opinion. Dr. Inglis had blushed, and rallied his dignity. Dr. Murchison had intrusted the practice to him; what more could a mere farmer’s wife desire?

Above, in a big bed, Dr. Inglis discovered a fat man writhing with what appeared to be a prosaic and violent colic. A simple case, perhaps, to the lay understanding, but abdominal diagnosis may be a nightmare to a surgeon. It is like feeling for a pea through the thickness of a pillow.

Two straight-backed, hard-faced, and very awesome ladies stood at the bottom of the bed and watched Dr. Inglis with sceptical alertness. The assistant fumbled, stammered, and looked hot. The women exchanged glances. A man’s personal fitness is soon gauged in a sick-room.

“Well, doctor, what’s your opinion?”

The challenge was given with a tilt of the nose and a somewhat suggestive sniff.

“Abdominal colic, madam. The pain is often very violent.”

“Ah, eh, and what may abdominal colic be due to?”

Dr. Inglis bridled at the tone, and attempted the part of Zeus.

“Many causes, very many causes. Mr. Baxter has never had such an attack before, I presume.”

“Never.”

“Yes—how are you feeling, sir?”

“Bad, mighty bad,” came the voice from the feather pillows.

The two austere women seemed to grow taller and more aggressive.

“Do you think you understand the case, doctor?”

“Madam!”

“I wish Dr. Murchison had come himself; my husband has such faith in him.”

Dr. Inglis grew hot with noble indignation.

“Just as you please,” he said, with hauteur, yet looking awed by the tall women beside the bed. “My qualifications are as good as any man’s in Roxton.”

The conceit failed before those two hard and Calvinistic faces.

“I believe in experience, sir; no offence to you.”

“Then you wish me to send for Dr. Murchison?”

“I do.”

And the theoretical youth experienced guilty relief despite the insult to his age and dignity.

Sunday morning came with a flood of gold over Marley Down. The greens and purples were brilliant beyond belief; a blue haze covered the distant hills; woodland and pasture glimmered in the valleys. The faint chiming of the bells of Roxton stirred the air as Kate Murchison walked the garden before the cottage, looking like one who had been awake all night beside a sick-bed. Her face betrayed lines of exhaustion, a dulling of the natural freshness, streaks of shadow under the eyes. She had that half-blind expression, the expression of those whose thoughts are engrossed by sorrow; the trick of seeing without comprehending the significance of the things about her.

She turned suddenly by the gate, and stood looking over the down. The very brilliancy of the summer coloring almost hurt her tired eyes. A familiar sound drowned the Roxton chiming as she listened, and brought a sharp twinge of anxiety to her face. Rounding the pine woods the rakish outline of her husband’s car showed up over the banks of gorse between the cottage and the high-road. The machine came panting over the down, leaving a drifting trail of dust to sully the sunlight. Catherine caught her breath with impatient dread. This day of all days, when defeat was heavy on her husband! Could they not let him rest? If these selfish sick folk only knew!

Dr. Inglis’s gold-rimmed pince-nez glittered nervously over the fence. He was a spare, boyish-looking fellow, with twine-colored hair, weak eyes, and a mouth that attempted resolute precision. Catherine hated him for the moment as he lifted his hat, and opened the gate with a deprecating and colorless smile. Dr. Inglis had the air of a young man much worried, one whose self-esteem had been severely ruffled, and who had been forbidden sleep and a hearty breakfast.

“Good-morning. A mean thing, I’m sure, to bother Dr. Murchison, but really—”

Catherine met him, looking straight and stanch in contrast to the theorist’s faded feebleness.

“What is the matter?”

“Mr. Baxter, of Boland’s Farm, is seriously ill. An obscure case. His wife wishes—”

Catherine foreshadowed what was to come. The assistant appeared to have suffered at the hands of anxious and nagging relatives.

“Well?”

“A serious case, I’m afraid. I am sure Dr. Murchison would not wish me to assume all the responsibility. The wife, Mrs. Baxter, is rather an excitable woman—”

His apologetics would have been amusing at any other season. Catherine bit her lip and ignored the limp youth’s deprecating and sensitive distress.

“They wish to see my husband?”

“Yes; I must suggest, Mrs. Murchison—”

“I understand the matter perfectly. Dr. Murchison cannot come.”

She was bold, nay, aggressive, and the theorist looked blank behind his glasses.

“Am I to infer—?”

“Dr. Murchison is not well,” and she hesitated, groping fiercely for excuses; “he has had—I think—some kind of ptomaine poisoning. Yes, he is better now, and asleep. I cannot have him disturbed.”

“Indeed! I am excessively sorry. May I—?”

She saw the proposal quivering on his lips, and beat it back ere it was uttered.

“Thank you, no; you had better call in Dr. Hicks; he will advise you temporarily. Dr. Murchison will be able to resume work, I hope, to-morrow. If the case is very urgent—”

Dr. Inglis tugged at his gloves.

“I will send over word,” he said, dejectedly.

“Thank you; you sympathize, I am sure.”

“Of course.” And being a nice youth he showed his consideration by retreating and buttoning his coat up over his burden of incompetence.

The physical prostration of a strong man who has sinned against his body is as nothing to the bitter humiliation of his soul. Ethical defeat is the most poignant of all disasters. Like an athlete who has strained heart and lungs only to be beaten, he feels that anguish of exhaustion, that miserable sense of impotence, the conviction that his strength has been of no avail. Spiritual defeat has its more subtle agonies. In some such overwhelming of the soul the man may turn his face like Hezekiah to the wall, and refuse to be comforted because of his own shame.

To Catherine her husband’s awakening anguish had been pitiable in the extreme. He had lain like one wounded to the death, refusing to be comforted or to be assured of hope. Slowly, as she had sat by him and held his hand, he had told her everything, blurting out the confession with a sullen yet desperate self-hate. The very pathos of her trust in him, the divine quickness in her to forgive, had been as girdles of thorn about his body. What had he done to justify her love? Disgraced and humiliated her in this haven of rest her hands had made for him!

To appreciate to the full the irony of life, a man has but to be unfortunate for—perhaps—three days. It was about four in the afternoon when Catherine, sitting beside her husband’s bed, heard the unwelcome panting of the car. The man Gage had driven fast from Boland’s Farm. He had a letter from Dr. Inglis, an urgent message, so he had been told.

Catherine met him at the gate, and took the letter to her husband.

“A message, dear, from Dr. Inglis.”

He reached for it with a hand that trembled, his eyes faltering from her face. She sat down by the bed, watching him silently as he tore open the envelope and read the letter.

“Dear Murchison,—Please come over at once, if possible. Hicks has diagnosed acute internal strangulated hernia. He has been called off to a midwifery case. The relatives are getting out of hand. I think an immediate operation will be necessary. I have been to Lombard Street, and got the instruments together.

“Inglis.”

The jerky, straggling sentences betrayed the theorist’s loss of nerve and self-control. It was evident that the gentleman with the gilded degrees was in no enviable panic.

“Well, dear?”

She bent over him, and touched his forehead.

“I shall have to go,” he said, sombrely.

“Go, but you are not fit!”

He sat up in bed, looked at her, and gave a wry and miserable smile.

“If I had not been such an infernal fool! The last time, Kate, I swear!”

She caught the letter and read it through.

“Inglis is a miserable thing to lean on.”

“Don’t blame the youngster. At least he is sober.”

She winced, as though his self-condemnation hurt her, and surrendering her fortitude of a sudden, broke out into tears. Murchison looked at her helplessly, feeling like a man bound and chained by the shame of his own manhood. He felt himself unworthy to touch her, too much humiliated even to offer comfort. The very sincerity of his self-disgust drove him to action. He sprang out of bed and began to dress.

Catherine, still sobbing, went to the window and strove to overcome the shuddering weakness that had seized her. Her husband’s determination appeared to increase at the expense of her surrender. It was as though they had exchanged moods in a moment, and that the wife’s tears had given the man courage.

“Kate.”

She leaned against the window, and brushed her tears aside with her hand.

“Forgive me, dear. I was a fool, an accursed fool. Never again. Trust me.”

He touched her arm appealingly, like an awed lover who fears to offend. Catherine turned her head and looked at him, her courage shining through her tears.

“Your words hurt me. You called yourself a drunkard. No, no, you are not that. Oh, my beloved, I need you now—and you must go.”

His arms were round her in an instant.

“Wife, look up. God help me, I will conquer the curse! How can I fail, with you?”

“Never again?—swear it.”

“Never. It was a trick of the brain, a damned piece of moral vanity. And I am a man who advises others!”

She turned, and, standing before the glass, pinned on her hat and threw her dust cloak round her.

“I will come with you.”

“Where?”

“Home, to the children,” and she gave a great sob. “Mrs. Graham can look after the cottage. You will want me at home.”

“Wife, I want you always.”