The ragged messenger

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IV r

CANNOT LEAVE THE LIBRARY.

II

“ 'T'HAT would never do,” whispered Dr. Colbeck, as I Lady Sarah Joyce came into the room.

She was a tall girl, with dark hair, a pale face, and a stately bearing. Easy and self-composed and gracious, she seemed on a first impression of a not unusual type of well-born, well-nurtured, carefully guarded English girlhood: aristocratically commonplace, gracefully uninteresting. But her pale face, as it became familiar, had many and changing expressions; the gray eyes kindled and glowed, and a fleeting sadness about the gentle mouth was quickly banished by a smile that had in it both mirth and sympathy. Thus it was that people who knew her fairly well generally said that Lady Sarah had considerable charm, and her old friends — of whom Dr. Colbeck was one — were inclined to think her beautiful.

‘‘How are you, Aunt Kate?” said Lady Sarah with a greeting which contained very little warmth. ‘‘Ah, Doctor. You don’t know how we ’ve missed you.”

Her manner had become cordial as Lady Sarah turned to Dr. Colbeck.

“Yes, we have, dreadfully. And what discoveries have you made on your travels ? How did you find the world ? ’ ’

“ Well, it is round,” said. Dr. Colbeck, holding her hand in his. “ Or I should never have got home without turning back.”

“ Oh, what wit! ” and the pleasant, friendly smile which 15

Dr. Colbeck knew so well came and went. “Aunt! I am obliged to go and leave something for a sick friend. It is only across the Park ”

“ Oh, don’t mind me, my dear,” said Lady Tollhurst.

“ I sha’n’t be a quarter of an hour,” said Lady Sarah, fastening her fur cloak about her neck.

Dr. Colbeck with observant eyes watched the slender, ungloved hand. It looked too white on the gray fur. The blue veins showed, and the long fingers were thinner than they ought to have been. The hollows round her eyes seemed darker than Dr. Colbeck remembered, or perhaps it was only a shadow from the big black hat. She looked like a princess, Dr. Colbeck thought — in her long purple cloak with the gray fur collar — so stately and fragile and pale. But she did not look quite the Lady Sarah of a year ago. She was certainly thinner, and there was something of suppressed, but vibrating, excitement in her eyes and in her voice that was new. Some tones in the voice were undoubtedly different: stronger but less musical than in the past.

‘ ‘ I hear of fine goings-on during my absence, ’ ’ said Lady Tollhurst, with over-exuberant cheerfulness.

“ Frightening everybody out of their wits,” said Dr. Colbeck, unconsciously catching the note ; “ too bad, too bad! ”

“ I am glad you have told them about it, father.”

“Oh, yes, I have told them.”

“ Of his heroism,” said Lady Sarah.

“ Presence of mind,” said Dr. Colbeck.

“He saved my life,” said Lady Sarah, pulling on her glove, “ and has made it worth living.”

“ Oh, my dear child — ” cried Lady Tollhurst.

As her niece turned away, Lady Tollhurst cast her eyes upwards and pantomimed signs of abject distress to Dr. Colbeck. Dr. Colbeck stood staring blankly at Lady Tollhurst.

“Father,” said Lady Sarah, gathering together some books which lay on the top of a bureau, “ Mr. Morton is not coming to-day.”

1 7

“ That ’s remarkable,” said Lord Patrington; “ he comes most days.”

“ Father ! ” said Lady Sarah, reproachfully, “ he has n’t been here for a whole week. I have been anxious and a little wounded.”

“ I have n’t taken offence.”

“ But he has written to me,” said Lady Sarah, “ and he promises to come to-morrow afternoon.”

“Does he?”

“ He will bring his follower ”

“ Only one? He generally moves with a troop.”

“ This is his special follower,” said Lady Sarah, arranging the books in a neat little pile. “ Mr. Bigland, of whom I have often spoken. These books are for him. If Mr. Bigland should call to-day ”

“ He did call — I believe,” Lord Patrington confessed.

“ And they never told me!” said Lady Sarah regretfully. “Of course I would have seen him. If he comes back, please give him these, ’ ’ and she pointed to the books.

“ Certainly.”

“ Au revoir , Aunt Kate. Perhaps you won’t be gone, Doctor, when I get back.”

Dr. Colbeck, with a gravely observant face, stood waiting to open the door.

“ Oh, father,” and Lady Sarah turned again, “ in his letter Mr. Morton says that to-morrow afternoon he wants to speak to you as well as to me ”

“What about?”

“ I have no idea. He says nothing, except that it is a great favor which he has to ask. I feel sure that whatever it is, you ought to grant it.”

Lord Patrington had turned his back and, with frowning brows, was looking into the fire.

“ You seem to have great confidence in Mr. Morton,” said Dr. Colbeck at the door, “ to admire him very much.”

“ I do,” said Lady Sarah, giving him her hand. “ I admire him more than any one I have ever seen, and nearly as much as — anybody I have ever learnt about — or read of.”

“ If he deserves your good opinion ”

“ He does. I want you to know him.”

“So do I.”

“ You ’ll think as I do. Don’t come down.”

Dr. Colbeck, closing the door behind Lady Sarah, turned from it with a very serious face. There w T as a pause until the last sound of footsteps had ceased, and then Lord Patrington broke the perturbed silence.

“Well?”

“Oh, my poor, dear Patrington,” said Lady Tollhurst, “ it is too deplorable! I never saw anything like it in my life. She is altogether changed — changed beyond belief.”

“ Do you think she is ? ”

“ I know she is. She has caught the man’s tone. That mild earnestness, the far-away look, the absent-minded manner.”

“ What do you think, Colbeck ? ”

“ I have always had a very high opinion of Lady Sarah’s abilities, her intellectual ’ ’

“ But you have been very wrong, Patrington,” said Lady Tollhurst, interrupting, “ to allow things to go on to such a point. Seeing her fall under the man’s influence — not to make an effort, not to check it, stop it all somehow or other. ’ ’

‘ ‘ I must confess I agree with Lady Tollhurst, ’ ’ said Dr. Colbeck.

“What could I do?” said Lord Patrington, irritably. “You know what girls are, as obstinate as the devil directly 3'ou try to thwart them ”

“You should have summoned Emily,” said Lady Tollhurst. “ Emily would n’t ”

“Emily refused to come. I did ask her,” said Lord Patrington, angrily. ‘ ‘ Besides, Emily is a bigger fool than her sister.”

Eady Emily Tyrrell was an elder, married daughter. With a contented, easy-going, bucolic husband, a lovely place at Wheatley, in Oxfordshire, extensive and attractive gardens, and a suite of well-tenanted nurseries, with ample means and no cares beyond the j uvenile ailments of her children, Eady Emily was the occasion of old-established complaint from her father. From her marriage day ten years ago, it seemed that she had never done anything to prove herself other than an ungrateful and oblivious daughter. She strenuously plotted and schemed against her father’s ambitions, by at all times debarring her rich husband from holding any stake in the new companies which at intervals had been launched with the name of Patrington on the list of directors. At odd and inconvenient moments she came smiling and chattering to Eondon, and with two or three noisy and irrepressible infants, their nurses and governesses, used the big house in Park Eane as the best of all hotels — the free hotel in which one may grumble without paying the bill. She came thus when she was not wanted again and again; but if you wanted her, if you were in trouble, if by any chance her presence would be of use to anybody — to chaperon Sarah, to read aloud or write one’s letters or play piquet when one had the gout — you called for her in vain. Eady Emily was in despair; her gentle heart was torn by the dilemma in which you had placed her. But she could not come. A gigantic gardening operation was in a critical state of half-completion — no less than the moving on rollers of the whole range of succession houses, or the lifting by two feet ten inches of the sunk rose-garden — the one with the sun-dial — or two beds in the west nursery had been suddenly filled by most appalling nettlerash. Impossible to get away, for three weeks at least! But meantime, Emily sincerely hoped that the little cloud in the Eondon sky would blow over, and whatever the trouble might be, she ventured to offer the humble, homely advice, to make the best of it.

Eord Patrington was angry at the mere thought of Emily’s advice, which, he explained, she had sent him again on this occasion.

“ Oh, why is n’t Sarah married!” cried Lady Tollhurst dolefully. “ It ’s too dreadful to think of. At her age— Sarah is getting on. Sarah ’s getting on for thirty, is n’t she? Oh, she ought to have made a big match years ago.”

“ I only wish she had! ”

“ If you had done your duty, Patrington, you would have hung on to one of these new men — you would have married her to the last new Croesus. ’ ’

“ I never had a chance.”

“ She ought n’t to have been given time for such foolishness.”

“ Lady Sarah,” said Dr. Colbeck, “ will never do anything really foolish.”

“ My dear man, what do you call foolish ? ”

“ I believe,” said Lord Patrington, “ I don’t for a moment doubt, that when he comes to-morrow, he means to ask me for her hand. ’ ’

“You will refuse?” said Dr. Colbeck, quickly.

“ Refuse! Of course I shall refuse.” Lord Patrington was walking about the room, made restless by his discomfort of mind. “ But there may be the devil to pay. You don’t know what girls are. You don’t know the man. Refuse! ” and Lord Patrington laughed satirically. “ Upon my word, that ’s a wonderful and valuable piece of advice, Colbeck. I ask your advice as a man of the world, how I am to do my task, and all you have to say is: ‘ Do your task.’ ” Lord Patrington stalked across to the windows with his hands in his trousers pockets, after giving a shrug of the shoulders expressive of disgust of all things, including married and unmarried daughters, female connections by marriage, and masculine friends.

“ Of course I shall refuse,” he said again, coming back to the fire. “ But I want you to help me — to support me. I ask you both. Come to-morrow and help me through it. I am not as young as I once was; and — and these upsets upset me most infernally. You, Colbeck, can be of use in dealing with the man. And you, Kate, can be of the greatest use in dealing with Sarah. I tell you, Colbeck, you don’t know the man. Help me to tackle him. He carries big guns.”

Ill

D R. COLBECK, deep in thought, walked up Park Lane and turned into Oxford Street without considering or caring where he might be going.

He was thinking of his feeble, selfish, incompetent old friend, the fourth Earl of Patrington; of the Lady Sarah, his second daughter; and of this miserable psalm-singing, street-preaching figure — black, sinister, and ominous — which blind chance had brought from the outer darkness to taint the flower-scented atmosphere, to obscure the tempered sunlight, and throw its grotesque shadow upon the velvet pile and the burnished parquetry of Park Lane. What a monstrous and unendurable thing it would be were such an intruder to snatch and bear away the one priceless treasure of the stately house ! What a fate for a woman so reared to fall — with no hand outstretched to save her — into the life-long embrace of such a mate ! A loud-mouthed, ranting, tub-thumping orator, as bad, nearly, as the seedy socialists and half-drunken demagogues bellowing on their chairs to the wide emptiness of Hyde Park on a summer’s day by the Marble Arch! Accepting Patrington’ s assertion that the fellow was genuine, and not a hypocritical peddler of things divine, a cheap-jack selling his nostrum of salvation to earn his daily bread, at the best, how could one hold him to be higher than this — a crackbrained fanatic, a cranky self-deceiver ?

By the flaring shop-fronts, through the mean splendor and sordid profusion, the vulgar sellers and more vulgar buyers of Oxford Street, Dr. Colbeck instinctively turned his steps in the direction of his old home — the house in Cavendish Square which he had occupied for so many years, first as a barely prospering, then as a fashionable and successful consulting physician. And, as he walked eastward, along the dirty pavements, beneath the black and smoke-stained houses, while the colorless day faded into a misty dinginess of night, that all-pervading spirit of the town itself — this living ugliness of London which he had not known for a year — the lurking Spirit of Sudden Sadness seemed to take him by the hand and whisper to his brooding thoughts wordless messages of pain and weariness.

But the lurking spirit which thus lies in ambush and pounces has little power over strong men. Like other and living phantoms of the London pavements, it takes one by the hand and keeps pace step for step, but soon drops behind. A drag at one’s sleeve, a last whisper, and the thing has been shaken off and you are free again. It has been but an invitation and a repulse — no more. At the corner of Bond Street, amidst the little crowd waiting for the omnibuses, Dr. Colbeck, who was in truth an unusually strong man, shook himself free of his dark fit; and, with head erect and firm, free footfall, turned southward towards the new flat which was henceforth to be the home of his bachelorhood.

After all, what difference would it make to him — in either event ?

Dr. Colbeck had wasted very few hours of his active, hardworking life. At forty-seven years of age he had done as much work as many a busy man in twice the time. But, from the first, he had loved the work. He was as vigorous and healthy now, in mind and body, as when after winning distinction at Cambridge he had begun to walk the London hospitals twenty-five years ago. A second son of a decent Leicestershire family, he had been born to independence, a modest sufficiency of means which, in the opinion of all his people, rendered science an unworthy and incongruous mistress. With so much natural ability, diplomacy seemed indicated as a suitable avenue to fame; or, if he had an inherent distaste for courts and embassies, why not the Foot Guards with additional parental grants in aid, while he took things easy and looked about him for a few years ? To their simple minds a country doctor and a Tondon doctor were much the same thing; and a thing which they held to be of very small account indeed.

But they did not quarrel with him. They pocketed their slighted advice and saved their proffered allowance, and used all their influence to obtain for the vagrant youth at this early stage of his career the countenance and consideration of such great people in London as they could by any means get at. Thus, in these days, young Dr. Colbeck found himself admitted to certain of the great houses of the noble and the powerful; and coming, from hospital wards and crowded streets in which poverty and suffering stretched out imploring hands all day long towards the wise young healers, to the glittering board and the solemn magnificence of his condescending hosts, was afforded an opportunity of studying the contrast between the splendors and the miseries of life. At such solemn dinners, of a pomp and fashion which have passed away, the young doctor was privileged to meet some of those whose names are written year by year on the crowded and rapidly obliterated scroll of worldly fame: — cabinet ministers, great advocates, successful generals, the author of the hour, the artist of the moment. Sometimes one of these illustrious graybeards would vouchsafe to him a few words of kindly intent, snatching an opportunity on shallow staircases or beneath lofty doorways to encourage, to inspire. “ My dear sir, you have chosen a noble profession. I might, perhaps, say the noblest calling a man can honor himself by following. I have often thought, and not without regret, that had circumstances given me a freedom of selection I would have chosen it myself.’ ’ And young Dr. Colbeck would smile and look pleasant,— to do which is, of course, all that a modest and well-bred young man should

2 5 do on such occasions. Nevertheless, endowed with shrewd observation and a strong sense of humor, he was quick to note this well-known trait of successful greatness: the disbelief in specialized faculties, and the confidence that similar greatness must have resulted from effort in any direction. But this early glimpse of the high and the mighty in the well-guarded privacy of their hours of relaxation, was only transient and fleeting. The great houses had done their duty; they had responded to the appeal; their big doors, yielding to external pressure, had swung on their hinges and opened inwards once, twice, perhaps three times, and had then closed again. On his part, he had done his duty: called and left his card with his impossible, out-of-the-world address on it after each banquet, and had gone away well contented; grateful, as a student of all types of his fellow kind, for the glimpse of these rare specimens; understanding the unwritten law of great houses which governs the swing of their doors. They had opened at the beginning of his journey, and would not open again until he had reached his goal.

Then followed years of unremitting labor. Driven by the spur of a high-minded ambition, he gave of his best, the utmost that was in him, in his effort to do something, howsoever small, for the good of his fellows. With hand and with brain, with tongue and pen, he humbly and strenuously labored to make some advance in the mighty task which has for its aim the lessening of the sum of pain in the annual audit of the world’s progress. Following the pioneers of thought, in the forefront of the battle waged by science against the powers of darkness, no new theory was too daring for him to welcome, no toil of research too heavy for him to attack. And, gradually and very slowly, he began to gain reward, the only reward he valued — recognition from the luminous workers, the master-minds, the great originators themselves. He was doing good work, they said, really assisting, not hindering. This much was from one of the leaders. Then, now and again, a leader would accept of aid from him; would set him a task: like a sensible master with a bright pupil, would give him something to do which wanted doing, but which would be a squandering of precious time for the master himself — to clear up the confusion caused by some foolish fellows, to bring some untidy piece of workmanship into order and neatness. Then as time passed, more and more praise came to him. He had, in a pamphlet, shown some weak links in the chain of logic of a very strong thinker; his last two articles in the heavy reviews had exhibited a widely comprehensive view of a very wide field; his volume in amplification of the new Leipzig theory of changing neuroplasm was a distinctly valuable contribution to the literature of this branch. One of the greatest of living men, in Colbeck’ s opinion, said to him, in effect, — “ We are proud of you. Go on and prosper — but, Colbeck, — if I may give you a word of counsel — begin to concentrate.”

It was the same venerable mentor who, five years later, advised him to go into general practice. An opportunity had occurred; an offer which most people would term advantageous had come unsought from a man of established reputation to share his steady and reasonably lucrative practice in Cavendish Square. To his eminent and respected mentor, Colbeck went in doubt and in fear, as to an unerring judge from whose lips he was to hear his sentence. Already he knew in his heart that he had shot his bolt and fallen short of the mark; that in spite of receptive brain, intuitive perception, rapid and comprehensive power of analysis and induction, singleness of aim and intentness of purpose, not to him had been given the sacred flame, the light-giving torch. He might enlarge, he would never originate; he might be a useful lieutenant, he could never be a leader. All this his old friend conveyed to him in the most kind and suavest manner as his own opinion also.

“As to your writing,” said the eminent mentor, “ I would not, if I were you, attach too much importance to that. But so far as it goes, why, my dear boy, you will have more leisure to devote to it; and it will therefore gain rather than lose.”

It was the bitterest pill which that learned hand had ever administered.

paying aside all his splendid hopes, as a man going into exile puts by his fine clothes, full-dress uniform, or court dress, scarce daring to tell himself that he will one day return to take them out and wear them once more, Dr. Colbeck ordered his brass plate and went to Cavendish Square. It was hard work now, because for a time it was bitter work; but he stuck to it manfully, giving his services at the hospital still, practising his healing art in the old black streets with no guerdon and little gratitude, as well as earning the fees and thanks of his well-to-do clientele. The dull years flew: in the unchanging routine of his days the wheel of time spun faster and faster. His partner had retired, and he was alone with a practice that was slowly shrinking, when, in a moment, it seemed, he was sought by all the town and making more money than he knew what to do with.

By way of relaxation from his serious writing he had done some light articles for one of the popular monthly reviews. It amused him, in treating of social problems, — the unequal distribution of wealth, overcrowding, underfeeding, how the poor live, and such hackneyed themes, — to give free play to the sense of humor which he had always possessed, and to a certain cynical method of expressing himself which had come to him gradually with his experience of the world. Editors asked for more of the same sort of thing; and, in a still lighter vein, he turned his pen to the question of how the rich live. He gave them worldly philosophy and medical advice woven together with a thin thread of fun — soundest of advice in the most flimsy and fantastic garb — telling them that they starved their minds and overloaded their stomachs; thought too little, slept too much; and showed them that in wrapping their lives in cotton wool, they did not take sufficient care that it was the proper wool from the most sanitary of jewellers’ shops. This class of thing was a novelty in those days, and the writer of the articles achieved a success by which he was humiliated. He had offered the treasures of his intellect and nobody wanted them; and now all the world welcomed its sweepings as a priceless gift.

Once more those big doors swung inwards to make hospitable passage for the last new fashionable physician; the great houses, or the living and often bilious presiding spirits of them, came to Cavendish Square to put out their furred tongues and grovel in gratitude for that which their footmen obtained without necessarily saying ‘ ‘ Thank you ’ ’ at the chemist’s round the corner. Far-off country castles — immovablepiles of granite on Scottish moorland, and frowning Norman keeps by sluggish midland streams — flashed their summons, and had their pulse felt in a hurry which laughed at distance and scorned the tale of guineas per mile. In his waiting-room the Tollhursts and Meltons, the Patringtons and Wiltshires patiently waited their turn; in his consultingroom Fashion, with Frivolity sitting as chaperon, back turned and ear pricked, besought him in hysterical panic to say just once again that there was nothing the matter with her; or masculine Folly, pretending to have caught a feverish desire to be wise, appealed as to an Oracle for some new golden rule of conduct. Standing on his hearthrug, with gravely smiling face, he dealt out his wise-man lore: not medicine but common sense. He told the silly young ladies to go for a long walk, and the idle young men to go and get married. And day by day his fame grew, and month by month the rivulet of gold flowed into his banking account and mounted and spread into a wide lake on the carefully drawn map of his pass-book. He is more than a doctor, said the fashionable world: he is a magician; and from one to another the legend of his wisdom was confidentially whispered. “ He told me that when a fellow gets to my age — say thirty, a

2 9 fellow wants a wife. I should never have thought it, but, upon my honor, I believe a fellow does! ”

Listened to as a wise man by day, he was listened to as a funny man by night. No dinner party was complete, it appeared, without the assistance of the shrewdly cynical and humorously critical Dr. Colbeck. Feted and applauded, he found like many a wit that an established reputation is more than half the battle in the saying of good things; that very small jokes are sufficient to satisfy very big people; and that this order of fame is nourished not only by what you say yourself, but by what is invented and said for you. Dr. Colbeck took it all as it came — the success, the lengthening rouleaux of pounds and shillings, the dinner parties, the foolish praise, the frivolous friendship of the world — with a calm, grave face and a steady composure of demeanor. One thing only amazed him. Those great lights, the master-minds, to whom trash, however popular, must still be trash, affected also to welcome his nonsense as inspired writings. The skilled hands, whose life-task it was to beat out grain from chaff, grasped his in congratulation. “ Invaluable,” said the revered white heads, nodding in approbation, — ‘ ‘ work which any one might be proud of — work that will live. ’ ’ He could only think of that phrase of a great phrasemaker. He had shown them the Medusa-head of Success, and the critics — even such critics as these — had been frozen into acquiescence.

The necessity of women! That was the theme of the mad parson. Love, comradeship, solace and strength, in work and idleness — some one to share the labor, to share the rewards! Dr. Colbeck, on his hearthrug, proclaimed the law; told his male patients of over thirty to obey it without delay: bade them go forth and find for themselves wives. Yet, in his own case, he, the lawgiver, had disregarded the law.

But his life had not been entirely loveless.

One winter’s day chance had brought him a new patient

— a pretty, nervous, shyly confidential stranger, who was suffering from insomnia. She had been shopping in Regent Street, she explained, and, walking through the square, she had suddenly decided to ring the first doctor’s bell and go boldly in and ask for sleep. Anything would do — the very simplest drug — just a prescription to enable the chemist to make up a bottle or a pill-box containing eight or nine hours of dreamless slumber.

“ I really can’t bear it much longer,” she said, with eyes appealing and a pretty little mouth that began to tremble. “ Please help me. If it goes on, I think I may do something — dreadful.”

Dr. Colbeck waved away this foolish threat with a gesture half-deprecating, half-reproving. Certainly he would help her: if not by doubtful drugs, by well-tried advice. That was his business. But she must tell him something more of her trouble. Then, while she babbled out the tale of her distress, in childlike but somehow lovable abandonment of all reticence when once she had begun, he watched the pretty face and read it as though it had been a book. Weakness — clinging, yielding weakness; but kindness, innocence — one of those women meant for happiness, who are too fragile by nature to support the storms of life: flowers in the sunlight, but broken stems and tumbled petals when the storm-gust blows.