X
THE THIRD GENERATION
Scudamore Lane, sloping down riverwards from just behind the Monument,lies at night in the shadow of two black and monstrous walls which loomhigh above the glimmer of the scattered gas-lamps. The footpaths arenarrow, and the causeway is paved with rounded cobblestones so that theendless drays roar along it like so many breaking waves. A fewold-fashioned houses lie scattered among the business premises, and inone of these--half-way down on the left-hand side--Dr. Horace Selbyconducts his large practice. It is a singular street for so big a man,but a specialist who has a European reputation can afford to live wherehe likes. In his particular branch, too, patients do not always considerseclusion to be a disadvantage.
It was only ten o'clock. The dull roar of the traffic which convergedall day upon London Bridge had died away now to a mere confused murmur.It was raining heavily, and the gas shone dimly through the streaked anddripping glass, throwing little yellow circles upon the glisteningcobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of rain, the thin swish ofits fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and gurgle downthe two steep gutters and through the sewer grating. There was only onefigure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It was that of a man, andit stood outside the door of Dr. Horace Selby.
He had just rung and was waiting for an answer. The fanlight beat fullupon the gleaming shoulders of his waterproof and upon his upturnedfeatures. It was a wan, sensitive, clear-cut face, with some subtle,nameless peculiarity in its expression--something of the startled horsein the white-rimmed eye, something, too, of the helpless child in thedrawn cheek and the weakening of the lower lip. The man-servant knew thestranger as a patient at a bare glance at those frightened eyes. Such alook had been seen at that door before.
"Is the doctor in?"
The man hesitated.
"He has had a few friends to dinner, sir. He does not like to bedisturbed outside his usual hours, sir."
"Tell him that I _must_ see him. Tell him that it is of the very firstimportance. Here is my card." He fumbled with his trembling fingers intrying to draw one from the case. "Sir Francis Norton is the name. Tellhim that Sir Francis Norton of Deane Park must see him at once."
"Yes, sir." The butler closed his fingers upon the card and thehalf-sovereign which accompanied it. "Better hang your coat up here inthe hall. It is very wet. Now, if you will wait here in theconsulting-room I have no doubt that I shall be able to send the doctorin to you."
It was a large and lofty room in which the young baronet found himself.The carpet was so soft and thick that his feet made no sound as hewalked across it. The two gas-jets were turned only half-way up, and thedim light with the faint aromatic smell which filled the air had avaguely religious suggestion. He sat down in a shining leather arm-chairby the smouldering fire and looked gloomily about him. Two sides of theroom were taken up with books, fat and sombre, with broad gold letteringupon their backs. Beside him was the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece ofwhite marble, the top of it strewed with cotton wadding and bandages,graduated measures and little bottles. There was one with a broad neck,just above him, containing bluestone, and another narrower one with whatlooked like the ruins of a broken pipe stem, and "Caustic" outside upona red label. Thermometers, hypodermic syringes, bistouries and spatulaswere scattered thickly about, both on the mantelpiece and on the centraltable on either side of the sloping desk. On the same table to the rightstood copies of the five books which Dr. Horace Selby had written uponthe subject with which his name is peculiarly associated, while on theleft, on the top of a red medical directory, lay a huge glass model of ahuman eye, the size of a turnip, which opened down the centre to exposethe lens and double chamber within.
Sir Francis Norton had never been remarkable for his powers ofobservation, and yet he found himself watching these trifles with thekeenest attention. Even the corrosion of the cork of an acid bottlecaught his eye and he wondered that the doctor did not use glassstoppers. Tiny scratches where the light glinted off from the table,little stains upon the leather of the desk, chemical formulae scribbledupon the labels of some of the phials--nothing was too slight to arresthis attention. And his sense of hearing was equally alert. The heavyticking of the solemn black clock above the fireplace struck quitepainfully upon his ears. Yet, in spite of it, and in spite also of thethick, old-fashioned, wooden partition walls, he could hear the voicesof men talking in the next room and could even catch scraps of theirconversation. "Second hand was bound to take it." "Why, you drew thelast of them yourself." "How could I play the queen when I knew the acewas against me?" The phrases came in little spurts, falling back intothe dull murmur of conversation. And then suddenly he heard a creakingof a door, and a step in the hall, and knew with a tingling mixture ofimpatience and horror that the crisis of his life was at hand.
Dr. Horace Selby was a large, portly man, with an imposing presence. Hisnose and chin were bold and pronounced, yet his features were puffy--acombination which would blend more freely with the wig and cravat of theearly Georges, than with the close-cropped hair and black frockcoat ofthe end of the nineteenth century. He was clean shaven, for his mouthwas too good to cover, large, flexible and sensitive, with a kindlyhuman softening at either corner, which, with his brown, sympatheticeyes, had drawn out many a shame-struck sinner's secret. Two masterfullittle bushy side whiskers bristled out from under his ears, spindlingaway upwards to merge in the thick curves of his brindled hair. To hispatients there was something reassuring in the mere bulk and dignity ofthe man. A high and easy bearing in medicine, as in war, bears with it ahint of victories in the past, and a promise of others to come. Dr.Horace Selby's face was a consolation, and so, too, were the large,white, soothing hands, one of which he held out to his visitor.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting. It is a conflict of duties, youperceive. A host to his guests and an adviser to his patient. But now Iam entirely at your disposal, Sir Francis. But, dear me, you are verycold."
"Yes, I am cold."
"And you are trembling all over. Tut, tut, this will never do. Thismiserable night has chilled you. Perhaps some little stimulant----"
"No, thank you. I would really rather not. And it is not the night whichhas chilled me. I am frightened, doctor."
The doctor half turned in his chair and patted the arch of the youngman's knee as he might the neck of a restless horse.
"What, then?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the pale face withthe startled eyes.
Twice the young man parted his lips. Then he stooped with a suddengesture and turning up the right leg of his trousers he pulled down hissock and thrust forward his shin. The doctor made a clicking noise withhis tongue as he glanced at it.
"Both legs?"
"No, only one."
"Suddenly?"
"This morning."
"Hum!" The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb downthe line of his chin. "Can you account for it?" he said briskly.
"No."
A trace of sternness came into the large, brown eyes.
"I need not point out to you that unless the most absolutefrankness----"
The patient sprang from his chair.
"So help me God, doctor," he cried, "I have nothing in my life withwhich to reproach myself. Do you think that I would be such a fool as tocome here and tell you lies? Once for all, I have nothing to regret."
He was a pitiful, half-tragic, and half-grotesque figure as he stoodwith one trouser leg rolled to his knee, and that ever-present horrorstill lurking in his eyes. A burst of merriment came from thecard-players in the next room and the two looked at each other insilence.
"Sit down!" said the doctor abruptly. "Your assurance is quitesufficient." He stooped and ran his finger down the line of the youngman's shin, raising it at one point. "Hum! Serpiginous!" he murmured,shaking his head; "any other symptoms?"
"My eyes have been a little weak."
"Let me see your teeth!" He glanced at them, and again made the gentleclicking sou
nd of sympathy and disapprobation.
"Now the eye!" He lit a lamp at the patient's elbow, and holding a smallcrystal lens to concentrate the light, he threw it obliquely upon thepatient's eye. As he did so a glow of pleasure came over his large,expressive face, a flush of such enthusiasm as the botanist feels whenhe packs the rare plant into his tin knapsack, or the astronomer whenthe long-sought comet first swims into the field of his telescope.
"This is very typical--very typical indeed," he murmured, turning to hisdesk and jotting down a few memoranda upon a sheet of paper. "Curiouslyenough I am writing a monograph upon the subject. It is singular thatyou should have been able to furnish so well marked a case."
He had so forgotten the patient in his symptom that he had assumed analmost congratulatory air towards its possessor. He reverted to humansympathy again as his patient asked for particulars.
"My dear sir, there is no occasion for us to go into strictlyprofessional details together," said he soothingly. "If, for example, Iwere to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be thewiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms Imay say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint."
The young baronet sank back in his chair and his chin fell forward uponhis chest. The doctor sprang to a side table and poured out a half glassof liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A little fleck ofcolour came into his cheeks as he drank it down.
"Perhaps I spoke a little abruptly," said the doctor. "But you must haveknown the nature of your complaint, why otherwise should you have cometo me?"
"God help me, I suspected it--but only to-day when my leg grew bad. Myfather had a leg like this."
"It was from him, then?"
"No, from my grandfather. You have heard of Sir Rupert Norton, the greatCorinthian?"
The doctor was a man of wide reading with a retentive memory. The namebrought back to him instantly the remembrance of the sinister reputationof its owner--a notorious buck of the thirties, who had gambled andduelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery until even the vileset with whom he consorted had shrunk away from him in horror, and lefthim to a sinister old age with the barmaid wife whom in some drunkenfrolic he had espoused. As he looked at the young man still leaning backin the leather chair, there seemed for the instant to flicker up behindhim some vague presentiment of that foul old dandy with his danglingseals, many-wreathed scarf, and dark, satyric face. What was he now? Anarmful of bones in a mouldy box. But his deeds--they were living androtting the blood in the veins of an innocent man.
"I see that you have heard of him," said the young baronet. "He diedhorribly, I have been told, but not more horribly than he had lived. Myfather was his only son. He was a studious, man, fond of books andcanaries and the country. But his innocent life did not save him."
"His symptoms were cutaneous, I understand."
"He wore gloves in the house. That was the first thing I can remember.And then it was his throat, and then his legs. He used to ask me sooften about my own health, and I thought him so fussy, for how could Itell what the meaning of it was? He was always watching me--always witha sidelong eye fixed upon me. Now at last I know what he was watchingfor."
"Had you brothers or sisters?"
"None, thank God!"
"Well, well, it is a sad case, and very typical of many which come in myway. You are no lonely sufferer, Sir Francis. There are many thousandswho bear the same cross as you do."
"But where's the justice of it, doctor?" cried the young man, springingfrom the chair and pacing up and down the consulting-room. "If I wereheir to my grandfather's sins as well as to their results I couldunderstand it, but I am of my father's type; I love all that is gentleand beautiful, music and poetry and art. The coarse and animal isabhorrent to me. Ask any of my friends and they would tell you that. Andnow that this vile, loathsome thing--Ach, I am polluted to the marrow,soaked in abomination! And why? Haven't I a right to ask why? Did I doit? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And look at me now,blighted and blasted, just as life was at its sweetest! Talk about thesins of the father! How about the sins of the Creator!" He shook his twoclenched hands in the air, the poor, impotent atom with his pinpoint ofbrain caught in the whirl of the infinite.
The doctor rose and placing his hands upon his shoulders he pressed himback into his chair again.
"There, there, my dear lad," said he. "You must not excite yourself! Youare trembling all over. Your nerves cannot stand it. We must take thesegreat questions upon trust. What are we after all? Half evolvedcreatures in a transition stage; nearer, perhaps, to the medusa on theone side than to perfected humanity on the other. With half a completebrain we can't expect to understand the whole of a complete fact, canwe, now? It is all very dim and dark, no doubt, but I think Pope'sfamous couplet sums the whole matter up, and from my heart, after fiftyyears of varied experience, I can say that----"
But the young baronet gave a cry of impatience and disgust.
"Words, words, words! You can sit comfortably there in your chair andsay them--and think them too, no doubt. You've had your life. But I'venever had mine. You've healthy blood in your veins. Mine is putrid. Andyet I am as innocent as you. What would words do for you if you were inthis chair and I in that? Ah, it's such a mockery and a make-belief.Don't think me rude, though, doctor. I don't mean to be that. I only saythat it is impossible for you or any man to realise it. But I've aquestion to ask you, doctor. It's one on which my whole life mustdepend."
He writhed his fingers together in an agony of apprehension.
"Speak out, my dear sir. I have every sympathy with you."
"Do you think--do you think the poison has spent itself on me? Do youthink if I had children that they would suffer?"
"I can only give one answer to that. 'The third and fourth generation,'says the trite old text. You may in time eliminate it from your system,but many years must pass before you can think of marriage."
"I am to be married on Tuesday," whispered the patient.
It was Dr. Horace Selby's turn to be thrilled with horror. There werenot many situations which would yield such a sensation to hiswell-seasoned nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of thecard-table broke in again upon them. "We had a double ruff if you hadreturned a heart." "I was bound to clear the trumps." They were hot andangry about it.
"How could you?" cried the doctor severely. "It was criminal."
"You forget that I have only learned how I stand to-day." He put his twohands to his temples and pressed them convulsively. "You are a man ofthe world, Doctor Selby. You have seen or heard of such things before.Give me some advice. I'm in your hands. It is all so sudden andhorrible, and I don't think I am strong enough to bear it."
The doctor's heavy brows thickened into two straight lines and he bithis nails in perplexity.
"The marriage must not take place."
"Then what am I to do?"
"At all costs it must not take place."
"And I must give her up?"
"There can be no question about that!"
The young man took out a pocket-book and drew from it a smallphotograph, holding it out towards the doctor. The firm face softened ashe looked at it.
"It is very hard on you, no doubt. I can appreciate it more now that Ihave seen that. But there is no alternative at all. You must give up allthought of it."
"But this is madness, doctor--madness, I tell you. No, I won't raise myvoice! I forgot myself! But realise it, man! I am to be married onTuesday--this coming Tuesday, you know. And all the world knows it. Howcan I put such a public affront upon her? It would be monstrous."
"None the less it must be done. My dear sir, there is no way out of it."
"You would have me simply write brutally and break the engagement atthis last moment without a reason? I tell you I couldn't do it."
"I had a patient once who found himself in a somewhat similar situationsome years ago," said the doctor thoughtfully. "His device was asingular one. He de
liberately committed a penal offence and so compelledthe young lady's people to withdraw their consent to the marriage."
The young baronet shook his head.
"My personal honour is as yet unstained," said he. "I have little elseleft, but that at least I will preserve."
"Well, well, it's a nice dilemma and the choice lies with you."
"Have you no other suggestion?"
"You don't happen to have property in Australia?"
"None."
"But you have capital?"
"Yes."
"Then you could buy some--to-morrow morning, for example. A thousandmining shares would do. Then you might write to say that urgent businessaffairs have compelled you to start at an hour's notice to inspect yourproperty. That would give you six months at any rate."
"Well, that would be possible--yes, certainly it would be possible. Butthink of her position--the house full of wedding presents--guests comingfrom a distance. It is awful. And you say there is no alternative."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, then, I might write it now, and start to-morrow--eh? Perhaps youwould let me use your desk. Thank you! I am so sorry to keep you fromyour guests so long. But I won't be a moment now." He wrote an abruptnote of a few lines. Then, with a sudden impulse, he tore it to shredsand flung it into the fireplace. "No, I can't sit down and tell her alie, doctor," said he rising. "We must find some other way out of this.I will think it over, and let you know my decision. You must allow me todouble your fee as I have taken such an unconscionable time. Now,good-bye, and thank you a thousand times for your sympathy and advice."
"Why, dear me, you haven't even got your prescription yet. This is themixture, and I should recommend one of these powders every morning andthe chemist will put all directions upon the ointment box. You areplaced in a cruel situation, but I trust that these may be but passingclouds. When may I hope to hear from you again?"
"To-morrow morning."
"Very good. How the rain is splashing in the street. You have yourwaterproof there. You will need it. Good-bye, then, until to-morrow."
He opened the door. A gust of cold, damp air swept into the hall. Andyet the doctor stood for a minute or more watching the lonely figurewhich passed slowly through the yellow splotches of the gas-lamps andinto the broad bars of darkness between. It was but his own shadow whichtrailed up the wall as he passed the lights, and yet it looked to thedoctor's eye as though some huge and sombre figure walked by amannikin's side, and led him silently up the lonely street.
Doctor Horace Selby heard again of his patient next morning and ratherearlier than he had expected. A paragraph in the _Daily News_ caused himto push away his breakfast untasted, and turned him sick and faint whilehe read it. "A Deplorable Accident" it was headed, and it ran in thisway:--
"A fatal accident of a peculiarly painful character is reported from King William Street. About eleven o'clock last night a young man was observed, while endeavouring to get out of the way of a hansom, to slip and fall under the wheels of a heavy two-horse dray. On being picked up, his injuries were found to be of a most shocking character, and he expired while being conveyed to the hospital. An examination of his pocket-book and card-case shows beyond any question that the deceased is none other than Sir Francis Norton of Deane Park, who has only within the last year come into the baronetcy. The accident is made the more deplorable as the deceased, who was only just of age, was on the eve of being married to a young lady belonging to one of the oldest families in the south. With his wealth and his talents the ball of fortune was at his feet, and his many friends will be deeply grieved to know that his promising career has been cut short in so sudden and tragic a fashion."