Читать книгу The Fortunes Of Glencore - Lever Charles James - Страница 3

When the Corporal, followed by Billy, entered the gloomy hall of the Castle, they found two or three country people conversing in a low but eager voice together, who speedily turned towards them, to learn if the doctor had come.

“Here ‘s all I could get in the way of a doctor,” said Craggs, pushing Billy towards them as he spoke.

“Faix, and ye might have got worse,” muttered a very old man; “Billy Traynor has the lucky hand.’”

“How is my lord, now, Nelly?” asked the Corporal of a woman who, with bare feet, and dressed in the humblest fashion of the peasantry, appeared.

“He’s getting weaker and weaker, sir; I believe he’s sinking. I’m glad it’s Billy is come; I’d rather see him than all the doctors in the country.”

“Follow me,” said Craggs, giving a signal to step lightly; and he led the way up a narrow stone stair, with a wall on either hand. Traversing a long, low corridor, they reached a door, at which having waited for a second or two to listen, Craggs turned the handle and entered. The room was very large and lofty, and, seen in the dim light of a small lamp upon the hearthstone, seemed even more spacious than it was. The oaken floor was uncarpeted, and a very few articles of furniture occupied the walls. In one corner stood a large bed, the heavy curtains of which had been gathered up on the roof, the better to admit air to the sick man.

As Billy drew nigh with cautious steps, he perceived that, although worn and wasted by long illness, the patient was a man still in the very prime of life. His dark hair and beard, which he wore long, were untinged with gray, and his forehead showed no touch of age. His dark eyes were wide open, and his lips slightly parted, his whole features exhibiting an expression of energetic action, even to wildness. Still he was sleeping; and, as Craggs whispered, he seldom slept otherwise, even when in health. With all the quietness of a trained practitioner, Billy took down the watch that was pinned to the curtain and proceeded to count the pulse.

“A hundred and thirty-eight,” muttered he, as he finished; and then, gently displacing the bedclothes, laid his hand upon the heart.

With a long-drawn sigh, like that of utter weariness, the sick man moved his head round and fixed his eyes upon him.

“The doctor!” said he, in a deep-toned but feeble voice. “Leave me, Craggs – leave me alone with him.”

And the Corporal slowly retired, turning as he went to look back towards the bed, and evidently going with reluctance.

“Is it fever?” asked the sick man, in a faint but unfaltering accent.

“It’s a kind of cerebral congestion, – a matter of them membranes that’s over the brain, with, of course, febrilis generalis.”

The accentuation of these words, marked as it was by the strongest provincialism of the peasant, attracted the sick man’s attention, and he bent upon him a look at once searching and severe.

“What are you – who are you?” cried he, angrily.

“What I am is n’t so aisy to say; but who I am is clean beyond me.”

“Are you a doctor?” asked the sick man, fiercely.

“I’m afear’d I’m not, in the sense of a gradum Universitatis, – a diplomia; but sure maybe Paracelsus himself just took to it, like me, having a vocation, as one might say.”

“Ring that bell,” said the other, peremptorily.

And Billy obeyed without speaking.

“What do you mean by this, Craggs?” said the Viscount, trembling with passion. “Who have you brought me? What beggar have you picked off the highway? Or is he the travelling fool of the district?”

But the anger that supplied strength hitherto now failed to impart energy, and he sank back wasted and exhausted. The Corporal bent over him, and spoke something in a low whisper, but whether the words were heard or not, the sick man now lay still, breathing heavily.

“Can you do nothing for him?” asked Craggs, peevishly – “nothing but anger him?”

“To be sure I can if you let me,” said Billy, producing a very ancient lancet-case of boxwood tipped with ivory. “I’ll just take a dash of blood from the temporal artery, to relieve the cerebrum, and then we’ll put cowld on his head, and keep him quiet.”

And with a promptitude that showed at least self-confidence, he proceeded to accomplish the operation, every step of which he effected skilfully and well.

“There, now,” said he, feeling the pulse, as the blood continued to flow freely, “the circulation is relieved at once; it’s the same as opening a sluice in a mill-dam. He ‘s better already.”

“He looks easier,” said Craggs.

“Ay, and he feels it,” continued Billy. “Just notice the respiratory organs, and see how easy the intercostials is doing their work now. Bring me a bowl of clean water, some vinegar, and any ould rags you have.”

Craggs obeyed, but not without a sneer at the direction.

“All over the head,” said Billy; “all over it, – back and front, – and with the blessing of the Virgin, I’ll have that hair off of him if he is n’t cooler towards evening.”

So saying, he covered the sick man with the wetted cloths, and bathed his hands in the cooling fluid.

“Now to exclude the light and save the brain from stimulation and excitation,” said Billy, with a pompous enunciation of the last syllables; “and then quies– rest – peace!”

And with this direction, imparted with a caution to enforce its benefits, he moved stealthily towards the door and passed out.

“What do you think of him?” asked the Corporal, eagerly.

“He ‘ll do – he ‘ll do,” said Billy. “He’s a sanguineous temperament, and he’ll bear the lancet. It’s just like weatherin’ a point at say. If you have a craft that will carry canvas, there’s always a chance for you.”

“He perceived that you were not a doctor,” said Craggs, when they reached the corridor.

“Did he, faix?” cried Billy, half indignantly. “He might have perceived that I did n’t come in a coach; that I had n’t my hair powdered, nor gold knee-buckles in my smallcloths; but, for all that, it would be going too far to say that I was n’t a doctor! ‘T is the same with physic and poetry – you take to it, or you don’t take to it! There’s chaps, ay, and far from stupid ones either, that could n’t compose you ten hexameters if ye’d put them on a hot griddle for it; and there’s others that would talk rhyme rather than rayson! And so with the ars medicatrix– everybody has n’t an eye for a hectic, or an ear for a cough —non contigit cuique adire Corintheum. ‘T is n’t every one can toss pancakes, as Horace says.”

“Hush – be still!” muttered Craggs, “here’s the young master.” And as he spoke, a youth of about fifteen, well grown and handsome, but poorly, even meanly clad, approached them.

“Have you seen my father? What do you think of him?” asked he, eagerly.

“‘Tis a critical state he’s in, your honor,” said Billy, bowing; “but I think he ‘ll come round —deplation, deplation, deplation – actio, actio, actio; relieve the gorged vessels, and don’t drown the grand hydraulic machine, the heart – them’s my sentiments.”

Turning from the speaker with a look of angry impatience, the boy whispered some words in the Corporal’s ear.

“What could I do, sir?” was the answer; “it was this fellow or nothing.”

“And better, a thousand times better, nothing,” said the boy, “than trust his life to the coarse ignorance of this wretched quack.” And in his passion the words were uttered loud enough for Billy to overhear them.

“Don’t be hasty, your honor,” said Billy, submissively, “and don’t be unjust. The realms of disaze is like an unknown tract of country, or a country that’s only known a little, just round the coast, as it might be; once ye’re beyond that, one man is as good a guide as another, coeteris paribus, that is, with ‘equal lights.’”

“What have you done? Have you given him anything?” broke in the boy, hurriedly.

“I took a bleeding from him, little short of sixteen ounces, from the temporial,” said Billy, proudly, “and I’ll give him now a concoction of meadow saffron with a pinch of saltpetre in it, to cause diaphoresis, d’ye mind? Meanwhile, we’re disgorging the arachnoid membranes with cowld applications, and we’re relievin’ the cerebellum by repose. I challenge the Hall,” added Billy, stoutly, “to say is n’t them the grand principles of ‘traitment.’ Ah! young gentleman,” said he, after a few seconds’ pause, “don’t be hard on me, because I ‘m poor and in rags, nor think manely of me because I spake with a brogue, and maybe bad grammar, for, you see, even a crayture of my kind can have a knowledge of disaze, just as he may have a knowledge of nature, by observation. What is sickness, after all, but just one of the phenomenons of all organic and inorganic matter – a regular sort of shindy in a man’s inside, like a thunderstorm, or a hurry-cane outside? Watch what’s coming, look out and see which way the mischief is brewin’, and make your preparations. That’s the great study of physic.”

The boy listened patiently and even attentively to this speech, and when Billy had concluded, he turned to the Corporal and said, “Look to him, Craggs, and let him have his supper, and when he has eaten it send him to my room.”

Billy bowed an acknowledgment, and followed the Corporal to the kitchen.

“That’s my lord’s son, I suppose,” said he, as he seated himself, “and a fine young crayture too —puer ingenuus, with a grand frontal development.” And with this reflection he addressed himself to the coarse but abundant fare which Craggs placed before him, and with an appetite that showed how much he relished it.

“This is elegant living ye have here, Mr. Craggs,” said Billy, as he drained his tankard of beer, and placed it with a sigh on the table; “many happy years of it to ye – I could n’t wish ye anything better.”

“The life is not so bad,” said Craggs, “but it’s lonely sometimes.”

“Life need never be lonely so long as a man has health and his faculties,” said Billy; “give me nature to admire, a bit of baycon for dinner, and my fiddle to amuse me, and I would n’t change with the King of Sugar ‘Candy.’”

“I was there,” said Craggs, “it’s a fine island.”

“My lord wants to see the doctor,” said a woman, entering hastily.

“And the doctor is ready for him,” said Billy, rising and leaving the kitchen with all the dignity he could assume.