Читать книгу Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 15

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Young Watson had been in the hospital since Wednesday afternoon's clinic. I think he knew I should have discharged

him, for he was bright and uncommonly well versed—for a youngster and a layman—in medical procedure.

On the Sunday of which I am writing now, he had said, when I called in the morning to see him, "You have been very good to me. Doctor Hudson. But I shouldn't stay much longer."

"Want to go?" I asked.

"It isn't that," he replied, "but I am well now."

"Have you any place—in particular—to go?"

"N—no," he confessed, "but it doesn't matter much—does it—whether I go out bumming it to-day—or Tuesday?"

"We'll make it Tuesday," I said, reproaching myself for implying that there might be a solution to his problem in a day or two. There was nothing I could do for him. I might have tried to find him some menial job, but even that would have been impossible with his broken hand. It would be five or six weeks before he would have any practical use of it. I couldn't support him until he was able to work at starvation wages. I had no room for him in my apartment. No—it was quite out of the question.

That evening, Randolph and young Natalie and I had supper under the big maple on their secluded rear lawn; and, after the girl had excused herself, we sat smoking our pipes. Randolph wanted to know, after a considerable pause in the conversation, whether anything interesting had happened in the hospital. It had been a fairly typical, fairly tiresome week, I said. The clinics had been about as drab and dirty as ever.

"Just one enlivening, and rather perplexing incident," I went on. "A young fellow came in the other day with a broken hand; hurt it falling off a freight- car; quite an unusual chap, for a tramp; very likable boy; left home on account of family trouble; the old stock story of a beastly stepfather and a mother who is badgered into being a stepmother; deceased father a doctor; the boy had access to his medical library; pretty well posted on Physiology. I could have discharged him, almost at once, but I didn't like to turn him loose."

Randolph blew several smoke-rings, but made no comment. "I'll have to let him go, in a couple of days," I continued. "He can't work with a broken hand; and, in any case, he has no training for a city job. Eventually—after he is sick of tramping and riding on freight trains—he'll have to stop somewhere and work on a farm. Might amount to something, I think, if he were taken in hand. But I can't see it as my job." I paused to give my host a chance to make some rejoinder. Randolph, with his eyes half closed and his head tipped back, continued to blow smoke-rings.

"He's probably a bum—at heart," I went on. "Probably couldn't settle down to anything. requiring perseverance." I puffed meditatively on my pipe for a while, and asked, "What do you think?"

Some moments elapsed before he gave any sign that he had heard what I had been saying; just sat there blowing rings and staring into the darkening sky and the arriving stars. Then he slowly turned toward me, drew a short sigh, smiled apologetically, and said, "Forgive me, Hudson. I'm afraid I was wool- gathering. It's such a glorious night! Shall we go in? The dew is falling. Besides—I want to beat you at chess."

I felt rebuffed. It was not at all like Randolph to be so inattentive. We rose and walked toward the house, his hand in the crook of my arm, as if to reassure me of his comradeship. On the doorstep he paused, detaining me, and said-just above a whisper, "I didn't mean to be so rude."

It miffed me a bit to have Randolph binding up my babyish bruises, and blotting my tears and blowing my little nose for me; and I replied, crisply, "I didn't mean to be so uninteresting."

He refused to be annoyed; chuckled a little; gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder, and said, "You were not uninteresting, Hudson; you were just unimpressed."

"By the sky—you mean?"

"Well—the sky is impressive, to-night; that's a fact."

We played chess until eleven. Randolph came along out with me to the gate. As I climbed into my car, he said, "Be careful now, Hudson. Good night. God bless you!"

It was an odd thing for Randolph to say. Be careful. God bless you. Almost as if he was giving me farewell advice. In the guarded, urgent tone of one sending another forth on some sort of hazardous mission. Be careful now. God bless you. The words resounded in my ears.