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'Doc.' Gordon by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> \'Doc.\' Gordon




Neither Clemency nor James made any comment. Both knew where he had
gone, and Emma, seeing that they both knew, grew more hostile than
ever. Her manner of serving the beefsteak was fairly warlike.

After breakfast Aaron told James of some parting instructions which
Gordon had left with him. He had the team harnessed, and was to take
James to visit certain patients.

James went off on a long drive across the country, calling on his way at
the scattered houses of the patients. He did not return until noon, just
before the luncheon-bell rang. Entering by the office door he found
Gordon sitting before the hearth-fire, smoking, and staring gloomily at
the leaping flames. He looked up when James entered, said good morning
in an abstracted fashion, and asked some questions about the patients
whom he had visited. James hesitated about inquiring for the man who had
been injured the night before, but finally he did so. The dog had sprung
up to greet him, and between his pats on the white head and commands of
"Down, sir, down!" he asked as casually as he could if Gordon had seen
his patient who had fallen in the drive the night before, and how he
was. Gordon turned upon James a face of such fierce misery that the
younger man fairly recoiled. "He isn't going to die?" he cried.

"No, he is not going to die. He shall not die!" Gordon replied with
passionate emphasis. Then he added, in response to James's wondering,
half-frightened look, "I have been there all the morning. I have just
come home. I have left everything for him. I don't dare get a nurse. I
am afraid. He may talk a good deal. Georgie K. is with him now. I can
trust him, but I can't trust a nurse. I am going back after luncheon,
and you may go with me. I would like you to see him."

"Does he seem to be very ill?" James asked timidly.

"Not from the--the--wound," replied Gordon, "but I am afraid of
something else."

"What?"

"Erysipelas. I am afraid of that setting in. In fact, I am not
altogether sure that it has not. He is an erysipelas subject. He has
told me of two severe attacks which he has had. When he fell he got an
abrasion of the cheek. That looks worse than the--the--wound. I should
like you to see him. You have seen erysipelas cases, of course, in your
hospital practice."

"Oh, yes."

"There is the bell for luncheon. We will go directly afterward."

James wondered within himself at the feverish haste with which Gordon
swallowed his luncheon, frequently looking at his watch. He was actually
showing more anxiety over this man who had hounded him, of whom he had
lived in dread, than James had seen him show over any patient since he
had been with him. It seemed to him inconsistent. Mrs. Ewing did not
come down to luncheon; Clemency said that she was not feeling as well as
usual but Gordon did not seem much disturbed even by that. He gave
Clemency some powders, with instructions how to administer them to the
sick woman before he left, but he did not show concern, and did not go
upstairs to see her. Clemency herself looked pale and anxious.

She found a chance to whisper to James before he went. "Is that man very
much hurt?" she said close to his ear.

"Hush, dear. I am afraid so."

"Uncle Tom seems terribly worried. I have never seen him so worried even
over mother, and he doesn't seem worried about her now. Oh, James, she
is suffering frightfully, I know." Clemency gave a little sob. Then
Gordon's voice was heard calling imperiously, "Elliot, come along!"
James kissed the poor little face tenderly, and whispered that she must
not worry, that probably the powders would relieve her mother, and then
that she herself had better lie down and try to get a little sleep, and
hurried out.

Gordon was seated in the buggy, waiting for him. "I don't want to lose
any time," he said brusquely as James got in beside him. "Even a few
minutes sometimes work awful changes in a case like this. If he is no
worse I will leave you with him, and make a call on Mrs. Wells. I
haven't seen her to-day, and yesterday it looked like pneumonia, then
there is that child with diphtheria at the Atwaters'. I ought to go
there myself, but if he is worse you will have to go, and to a few
others, and I must stay with him."

Gordon drove furiously. Heads appeared at windows; people on the street
turned faces of wonder and alarm after him. It was soon noised about
Alton that there had been a terrible accident, that somebody was at the
point of death, but of that Gordon and James knew nothing.

When they arrived at the hotel, Gordon, after he had tied his horse,
took his medicine-case, and, followed by James, entered, and went
directly upstairs to a large room at the back of the hotel. This room
was somewhat isolated in position, having a corridor on one side and
linen closets on another, it being a corner apartment with two outer
walls. Gordon opened the door softly and entered with James behind him.
The bed stood between the two west windows. It was a northwest room. The
afternoon sun had not yet reached it. It was furnished after the usual
fashion of country hotel bedrooms. It was clean and sparse, and the
furniture had the air of having a past, of having witnessed almost
everything which occurs to humanity. It seemed battered and stained,
though not with wear, but with humanity. The old-fashioned black walnut
bedstead in which the sick man lay seemed to have a thousand voices of
experiences. A great piece was broken off one corner of the footboard.
The wound in the wood looked sinister. Directly opposite the bed stood
the black walnut bureau, with its swung glass. The glass was cracked
diagonally, and reflected the bed and its occupant with an air of
experience. Gordon went directly to his patient. Beside him sat Georgie
K. He looked at the two doctors and shook his head gravely. His great
blond face was unshaven and paled with watching. Nobody spoke a word.
All three looked at the man in the bed, who lay either asleep, or
feigning sleep, or in a stupor. Gordon felt for his pulse softly, with
keen eyes upon his face. This face was unspeakably ghastly. The throat
was swathed in bandages. There was one tiny spot of red on the white of
the linen. The man's eyes were rolled upward. Around an abrasion on the
cheek, which glistened oily with some unguent which had been applied to
it, was a circle of painful red clearly defined from the pallor of the
rest of the cheek.

Gordon spoke. "How do you feel?" he asked of the man, who evidently
heard and understood, but did not reply. He simply made a little motion
of facial muscles, of shoulders, of his whole body under the
bed-clothes, which indicated rage and impatience.

"Does that place on your cheek burn?" asked Gordon.

Again there was no answer, this time not even any motion.

"Have you any pain?" asked Gordon. The man lay motionless. "Is there any
one in the parlor?" Gordon asked abruptly of Georgie K.

"No, Doc. You can go right in there."

Gordon beckoned to James, and the two went downstairs, and entered the
room of the wax flowers and the stuffed canary.

"It looks like erysipelas," Gordon said with no preface.

James nodded.

"All I have done so far, in the absence of any positive proof of the
truth of that diagnosis, is to apply what you will think an old woman's
remedy, but I have known it to give good results in light cases, and I
did not like to resort to the more strenuous methods until I was sure of
my ground, for fear of complications. I applied a little mutton tallow,
and that was all, but the inflammation has increased since I saw him. It
now looks to me like a clearly defined case of erysipelas."

"It does to me," said James.

"So far--the--wound in the throat seems to be doing well," said Gordon
gloomily. Then he looked at the younger physician with an odd, helpless
expression. "His life must be saved," said he. "Which do you prefer of
the two methods of treating the disease--that is, of the two primary
ones? Of course, there are methods innumerable. I may have grown rusty
in my country practice. Do you prefer the leaches, the nitrate of
silver, the low diet, or the reverse?"

"I think I prefer the reverse."

"Well, you may be right," said Gordon, "and yet you have to consider
that this is a man in full vigor," he added, "that presumably he has
considerable reserve strength upon which to draw. Still if you prefer
the other treatment--"

"I have seen very good results from it," said James. He was becoming
more and more astonished at the older man's helpless, almost appealing,
manner toward himself. "What is the man's name?" he asked.

"I don't know what name he has given here," Gordon replied evasively. "I
will tell you later on what his name is."

Suddenly the parlor door was flung open, and a woman appeared. She was
middle-aged, very large, clad in black raiment, which had an effect of
sliding and slipping from her when she moved. She kept clutching at the
buttons of her coat, which did not quite meet over her full front. She
brought together the ends of a black fur boa, she reached constantly for
the back of her skirts, and gave them a firm tug which relaxed the next
moment. Her decent black bonnet was askew, her large face was flushed.
She had been a strapping, handsome country girl once; now she was almost
indecent in her involuntary exuberance of coarse femininity.

"How do you do, Mrs. Slocum?" Doctor Gordon said politely.

James rose, Gordon introduced him. Mrs. Slocum did not bow, she jerked
her great chin upward, then she spoke with really alarming ferocity.
"Where has my boarder went? That's what I want to know. That's what I
have come here for, not for no bowin's and scrapin's. Where has my
boarder went?"

A keen look came into Gordon's face. "I don't know who your boarder is,
Mrs. Slocum," he said.




CHAPTER X


Mrs. Slocum looked at the doctor with a wide gape of surprise.

"Thought you knew," said she. "His name is Meserve, Mr. Edward Meserve,
and if he has come and went, and not told where, he was good pay, and if
he was took sick whilst he was to my house, I could have asked twice as
much as I did before. I'd like to know what right you had to take my
boarder to the hotel. He was my boarder. He wan't your boarder. I want
him fetched right back. That's what I have came for."

"Mrs. Slocum," said Gordon in a hard voice, "Mr. Meserve is too sick to
be moved, and his disease may be contagious. You might lose all your
other boarders, and whether he recovers or not, you would be obliged to
fumigate your house, and have his room repapered and plastered."

"He's got money enough to pay for it," Mrs. Slocum said doggedly.

"How do you know?"

"You think he ain't?"

Gordon looked imperturbable.

"He always paid me regular, and he ain't been to meals or to home nights
two-thirds of the time."

Gordon said nothing.

"You mean if my other boarders went, and the room had to be done over,
he ain't got money enough to make it good?"

Gordon said nothing. The woman fidgeted. "Well," said she, "if there's
any doubt of it, mebbe he _is_ better off here." Suddenly she gave a
suspicious glance at Gordon. "Say," said she, "the room here will have
to be done over. Who's goin' to pay for that?"

"The room is isolated," replied Gordon briefly.

The woman stared. She evidently did not know the meaning of the word.

"Well," said she at last, "if the room _is_ insulted, it will have to be
done over. Who's going to pay for that?"

"I am."

"Well, I don't see why you couldn't pay _me_ for that as well as Mr.
Evans."

"Don't you?"

"No."

"Well, I do. Now, Mrs. Slocum, I really have no more time to waste. Mr.
Meserve is a very sick man, and I have to go to him. I came down here
to consult with my assistant, and you have hindered us. Good-day!"

But the woman still stood her ground. "I'm goin' to see him," she said.
"He's my boarder."

"You will do so at your own risk, and also, if your call should prove
injurious to him, at a risk of being indicted for manslaughter, besides
possibly catching the disease."

"You say it's ketching?"

"I said it might be. We have not yet entirely formed our diagnosis."

The woman stared yet again. Then she turned about with a switch which
disclosed fringy black petticoats and white stockings. "Well, form your
noses all you want to," said she. "You have took away my boarder, an' if
he gits well, and it ain't ketchin', I'll have the law on ye."

Gordon drew a deep breath when the door closed behind her. "It seems
sometimes to me as if comedy were the haircloth shirt of tragedy," he
said grimly. "Well, Elliot, we will go upstairs and begin the fight. I
am going to fight to the death. I shall remain here to-night. You will
have to look after my other patients when you leave here. I am sorry to
put so much upon you."

"Oh, that's all right," said James, following Gordon upstairs. But as he
spoke he wondered more and more that this man, after what he had known
of him, should be of more importance to Gordon than all others.

Even during the short time they had been downstairs the angry red around
the abrasion on the cheek had widened, and widened toward the head.
Gordon opened his medicine-case and took out a bottle and hairbrush and
commenced work. Directly the entire cheek was blackened with the
application of iron. Georgie K. had brought glasses, and medicine had
been forced into the patient's mouth. "Now go and have some eggnog
mixed, Georgie K.," said Gordon, "and bring it here yourself, if you
will. I hate to trouble you."

"That's all right, Doc," said Georgie K., and went.

James remained only a short time, since he had the other calls to make.
He returned quite late to find that dinner had been kept waiting for
him, and Clemency in her pretty red gown was watching. Mrs. Ewing had
not come down all day. "Mother says she is easier," Clemency observed,
"only she thinks it better to keep perfectly still." Clemency said very
little about the man at the hotel. She seemed to dread the very mention
of him. She and James spent a long evening together, and she was
entirely charming. James began to put behind him all the mystery and
dark hints of evil. Clemency, although fond, was as elusive as a
butterfly. She had feminine wiles to her finger tips, but she was quite
innocent of the fact that they were wiles. It took the whole evening for
the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon his knee for
the space of about five minutes. She nestled closely to him with a
little sigh of happiness for a very little while, then she slipped away,
and stood looking at him like an elf. "I am not going to do that much,"
said she.

"Why not, darling?"

"Because I am not. It is silly. I love you, but I will not be silly. I
want only what will last. The love will last, but the silliness won't.
We are going to be married, but I shall not want to sit on your knee all
the time, and what is more, you will not want me to. Suppose we should
live to be very old. Who ever saw a very old woman sitting on her very
old husband's knee? The love will last, but that will not. We will not
have so very much of that which will not last."

For all that, James caught Clemency and kissed her until her soft face
was crimson, but he said to himself, when he was in his own room, that
never was a girl so wise, and how much more he wanted to hold her upon
his knee--as if he had not already held her there--and yet she was not
coquettish. She was simply earnest, with an odd, wise, childlike
earnestness.

Early the next morning James went to the hotel, and found Gordon haggard
and intense, sitting beside his patient, who was evidently worse. The
terrible red fire of Saint Anthony had mounted higher, and settled
lower. "It has attacked his throat now," Gordon said in a whisper. "I
expect every minute it will reach his brain. When it does, nobody but
you and I must be with him, not even Georgie K. He is getting some rest.
He was up half the night, bless him! But when it reaches the brain two
will be needed here, and the two must be you and I. Take this list, and
make the calls as quickly as you can, and come back here." James, with a
last glance at the black and swollen face of the man, who now seemed to
be in a state of coma, obeyed. He hurried through his list, and
returned. He found no apparent change in the patient, and tried to
persuade Gordon to take a little rest, but the elder man was obdurate.
"No" he said, "here I stay. I have had a bit to eat and drink. You go
down yourself and get something, then come back. The crisis may arrive
any second. Then I shall need you."

The fire had outstripped the blackness on the man's cheek toward the
temple. One eye was closed.

When James returned after a hurried lunch, he heard a loud, terrible
voice in the room. Outside the door a maid stood with a horrified face
listening. James grasped her roughly by the shoulder. "Get out of this,"
he ordered. "If I find you or any one else here listening, you'll be
sorry for it."

The maid gasped out an excuse and fled. James tried the door, but it was
locked. "Is that you, Elliot?" called Gordon above the other awful
voice.

"Yes."

The door was unlocked, and James sprang into the room, but he was hardly
quick enough, for the man was almost out of bed, when the two doctors
forced him back with all their strength. Then he sat up and raved, and
such raving! James felt his very blood cold within him. Revelations as
of a devil were in those ravings. Once in a while James opened the door
cautiously to be sure that no one was listening. The raving man
reiterated names as of a multitude. Gordon's was among them, and many
names of women, one especially--Catherine. He repeated that name more
frequently than the others, but the others were legion. There was
something indescribably horrible in hearing this repetition of names of
unknown people, accompanied with statements beyond belief regarding them
and the raving man. Gordon's face was ghastly, and so was the younger
doctor's. "Look and see if any one is listening, for God's sake," Gordon
gasped, after one terrific outburst, and James looked, but Georgie K.
was keeping watch that nobody approached the door.

James never knew how long he was in that room with Gordon listening to
those frenzied ravings, and striving with him to keep the man from
injuring himself. The daylight waned, James lighted a lamp. Then a
mighty creaking was heard outside, and Georgie K., himself bearing a
great supper tray, knocked at the door. "It's me, and I brought you
something," he shouted, and then they heard his retreating footsteps.
Much delicacy was there in Georgie K., and much affection for Doctor
Gordon.

James brought in the tray, and now and then he and Gordon took advantage
of a slight lull to take a bite, but neither had any desire for food. It
was only the instinctive sense that they must keep up their strength in
order that nobody else should hear what they were hearing, that forced
them to eat and drink. Well into the evening the ravings stopped
suddenly, the man fell back upon his pillow, and lay still. James
thought at first that all was over, but presently stertorous breathing
began.

"Now get Georgie K. up," Gordon said hoarsely. "There is no further need
for us to be alone, and there will be directions to be given."

James went out and found Georgie K. sitting up in his bar-room.

"Doctor Gordon wants you," he said.

"How is he?" asked Georgie K., following James.

"Dying."

Georgie K. made an indescribable sound in his throat as the two men
ascended the stair.

The man was a long time dying. It seemed to James as if that awful
struggle of the soul for release from the body would never cease. He
knew, or thought he knew, that there was no suffering to the dying man,
but, after all, the sounds as of suffering seemed almost to prove it.
Gordon whispered for a while to Georgie K., as if the dying man might be
disturbed by audible speech. Then Georgie K. tiptoed out in his creaking
boots, and James knew that some arrangements were to be perfected for
the last services to the dead. Gordon stood over the bed, with his own
face as ghastly as that of its occupant. James dared not speak to him.

It was midnight when the dreadful breathing ceased, and there was
silence. Georgie K. had returned. The three living men looked at one
another with ghastly understanding of what had happened, then they
hastily arranged some matters. The dead man was decently composed and
dressed, his throat swathed anew in linen handkerchiefs, and another
handkerchief laid over the discolored face, which had in death a strange
peace, as if relieved of an uneasy and wearing tenant. Before Georgie K.
went out, the village undertaker had been summoned, and had been waiting
for some time in the parlor with a young assistant. They mounted the
stairs bearing some appurtenances of their trade. Gordon addressed the
undertaker briefly, giving some directions, then he motioned to James,
and they passed out. Georgie K. remained in the room. He prevented the
undertaker from removing the linen swathe on the dead man's throat. "Doc
says it's catching," he said, and the undertaker drew back quickly.

When Gordon and James were in the buggy on the way home, Gordon all at
once gave a great sigh, like that of a swimmer who yields to the force
of the current, or the fighter who sinks before his opponent. "I'm about
done, too," he said. "Here, take the lines, Elliot."

James took the reins and looked anxiously at his companion's face, a
pale blue in the moonlight. "You are not ill?" he said.

"No, only done up. For God's sake let me rest, and don't talk till we
get home!" James drove on. Gordon's head sank upon his breast, and he
began to breathe regularly. He did not wake until James roused him when
they reached home.

* * * * *

The next morning before breakfast James was awakened by a loud voice in
the office, the high-pitched one of a woman. He recalled how exhausted
Doctor Gordon had been the night before, and rose and dressed quickly.
When he entered the office Gordon was sitting huddled up in his old
armchair before the fire, while bolt upright beside him sat Mrs. Slocum,
discoursing in loud and angry tones, which Gordon seemed scarcely to
heed. When James entered she turned upon him. "Now I'll see if I can git
anythin' out of you," she said. "He" (pointing to Gordon) "don't act as
if he was half-alive. I'm goin' to have my rights if I have to go to law
to git 'em. Doctor Gordon took away my boarder. And if I'd had him sick
and die to my house, I could have got extra. Now what I want is jest
this, an' I'm goin' to hev it, too! Doctor Gordon said Mr. Meserve
didn't have money. I don't know nothin' about that. I ain't went through
his pockets, but his trunk is to my house, and there's awful nice men's
clothes into it, and I mean to hev 'em. That ain't nothin' more'n fair.
That's what I hev came here for, jest as soon as I heard the poor man
had passed away. I left my daughter to git the breakfast for the
boarders, and I hev came here to see about that trunk, and hisn's
clothes."

James laughed. "But, Mrs. Slocum," he said, "what on earth do you want
with men's clothes? You can't wear them."

To his intense surprise the great face of the woman suddenly reddened
like that of a young girl, but the next moment she gave her head a
defiant toss, and stared boldly at him. "What if I can't?" said she.
"There's other men as can wear 'em, and they'll jest fit Bill Todd. He's
been boardin' with me five year, and if he wants to git married and save
his board bill, it's his business and mine and nobody else's."

James turned to Gordon, who seemed prostrated before this feminine
onslaught. "Do you object to this woman's having the trunk?" he asked.

Gordon made an effort and roused himself. "She can have it after I have
examined it for papers," he said.

"There ain't a scrap of writin' in the trunk," Mrs. Slocum vociferated.
"Me an' my boarder hev looked. There ain't no writin' an' no jewelry,
an' no money. He used to carry his money with him, and he had a bank
book in his pocket, and a long, red book he used to git money out of the
bank. I've seen 'em. Doctor Gordon said he didn't have no money. He did
hev money. Once he left the long, red book on his bureau, and I looked
in it, and the leaves that are as good as money wan't a quarter torn
out. I know he had money, an' I've been cheated out of it. But all I ask
is that trunk."

"For God's sake take the trunk and clear out," shouted Gordon with
unexpected violence, "but if there is a scrap of written paper in that
trunk, and you keep it, you'll be sorry."

"There ain't," said the woman with evident truthfulness. She rose and
clutched at the back of her skirt, and tugged at her boa and coat.
"Thank you, Doctor Gordon," said she. "When is the funeral goin' to be?"

"Tell her to-morrow at two o'clock at the hotel, and tell her to leave,"
said Gordon, and his voice was suddenly apathetic again.

When the woman had gone Gordon turned to James. "How comedy will prick
through tragedy," he said.

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