Читать книгу Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 5

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IT all began on a fine June morning in 1905. Nothing has been the same since. Life took on a new meaning, that day.

It was the first anniversary of my wife's death. I had found it hard to reconcile myself to that loss, and the recurrence of the date revived in sharp detail the whole pitiful story of Joyce's unwilling departure and my unspeakable desolation.

For some time it had been in my mind to order a suitable marker for her grave. I had been tardy about it, hoping that my financial circumstances might improve. But there was no sign of such improvement. My affairs were growing more dismaying.

Restless and lonely, I resolved to visit some concern dealing in memorial stones and see whether I could afford to honour my dear girl's grave with a little monument. It was while engaged in this errand that I came by the secret of personal power.

Joyce and I had been very companionable. Not only were we naturally congenial, but her long illness had bound us together in a tender intimacy hardly to be achieved under any other circumstance. During the last year of her life, which we spent in Tucson, I made no attempt to do anything but keep her comfortable and amused. I tried to stand between her and all the little jars and irks and shocks. When the baby cried, I promptly found out what she wanted and got it for her. I have been doing that ever since, and if she isn't a spoiled child she has every right to be.

I loved my wife no more for her devotion to me than my own sympathy for her. I think we love best those whom we serve most zealously. It is an ennobling experience to love anyone in need of tender ministries. The time comes when nothing else matters much but the happiness of one's beloved.

There are plenty of afflictions more difficult to deal with than pulmonary tuberculosis. The patient is usually hopeful, cheerful, wistful. As physical vitality ebbs, the psychical forces flow with the strength and speed of a harvest tide.

If it ever becomes your destiny to entertain an invalid over any considerable length of time, it will be to your advantage if the patient's disability has not struck him below the belt. Your heart and lung people are optimists.

Of course I couldn't help knowing that Joyce was doomed. Had she been only one-tenth as sweet and patient, my sense of obligation to her would have kept me by her side. But I sincerely enjoyed that final year with her. We read innumerable books, lounged in the sun, swam in the pool, played together like children; and all this at a period of my career when—under normal conditions—I should have been working eighteen hours of every twenty-four to get a start in my profession.

Once in a while I would be swept by a surge of dismay over my inability to do anything at all when it was so obvious that I should have been going forward with my vocation. But these misgivings gripped me less frequently and more feebly as the days passed. The sunshine was genial, the air was sedative, my excuse for indolence was valid. I almost forgot I wanted to be a doctor.

Even now, after more than nine years, I cannot bring myself to the point of relating the events of Joyce's last hours, the sad and all but interminable journey home, the funeral, and—afterwards—the enervating depression; the feeling that life was barely worth the bother; the almost sickening aversion to the thought of resuming the old routine in the clinic.

The people at the hospital were very kind and forbearing. I must have been a dreadful nuisance. It should have been easy enough to see that my heart wasn't in it. But they seemed to understand; Doctor Pyle, especially. Pyle had always been a bit crusty, and I hadn't known him very well. They used to say of Pyle that if you could let him do all the abdominal surgery with the understanding that the patient would never see him again, he might become popular. Next morning after removing a kidney or a gall-bladder, Pyle would call on his uncomfortable victim and offer him some such amenity as, "What in hell are you making so much racket about? Lots of people in this hospital with more pain than you have."

But it was good old Pyle that helped me—roughly—back into the harness. I still hated it, and it galled me, but I wore it. Pyle fitted it on me again, muttering many a what-in-hell, but apparently bent on making something of me—a very unpromising project. One day I told him I believed I had better give it all up and go into business.

"What kind of business?" he growled. "If you went out as grim and glum and licked as you look to-day, you couldn't sell silver dollars for a nickel apiece. You stick to your job, young fellow."

So—I stuck to the job; but I didn't like it.

It was in that state of mind that I went to look for the little tombstone. I told the manager it would have to be something inexpensive. He was quite obliging, treated me as considerately as he might if I had come to spend a thousand dollars. We agreed upon a small block of granite at what I thought was a merciful price. Then he asked me what I wanted engraved on the stone. I wrote Joyce's name and the dates.

"Would you like a brief epitaph?" he asked.

"Is it necessary?" I wondered.

"It is customary," he replied.

I told him I had nothing in mind, and he suggested that I go out into the production room where many monuments were in process. Perhaps I might see something suitable. It was a good idea.

He opened the door and considerately left me to explore on my own. Several stone-cutters glanced up and nodded as I paused to watch their work. I wasn't very much impressed by the various texts they were carving. None of them sounded much like anything Joyce would have been likely to quote.

Presently I came to the half-open door of a large studio where a man was at work on an amazingly beautiful piece of statuary. High above me on the catwalk of the scaffolding, and intent upon his occupation, the man did not notice me standing there until I had time to survey his creation deliberately. This fellow was not a mere stonecutter; he was a sculptor, and an uncommonly good one, I surmised.

The piece he was working on seemed to be nearing completion. It was a triumphant angelic figure, heroic size, gracefully poised on a marble pedestal, altar-shaped; an exquisitely modelled hand shading the eyes which gazed into the far horizon, entranced by some distant radiance. It occurred to me that no man could have invested those eyes with such an expression of serenity and certitude unless he himself was convinced, beyond all doubt, that something was to be seen Out There. The statue was august in its simplicity. It had all the combined delicacy and strength of a Canova. On the face of the altar-shaped pedestal there was engraved, in gothic lettering and in high relief, a text which was not decipherable from where I stood. My movement for a better view caught the sculptor's attention. He must have seen that I was impressed.

"Come in," he said, cordially. "My name is Randolph. Anything I can do for you?"

"My name is Hudson. I have been looking about for a suitable epitaph to have engraved on a tombstone."

Randolph leaned over and pointed down with the handle of his mallet.

"How do you like this one?" he asked.

The inscription read, "Thanks Be to God Who Giveth Us the Victory."

"Means nothing to me!" I remarked, rather testily, I fear. "If there is a God, He probably has no more interest in any man's so-called victory, which can always be circumstantially explained, than in the victory of a cabbage that does well in a favourable soil."

"Then you're related to God same as a cabbage," chuckled Randolph. "That's good." He resumed his work, deftly tapping his chisel. "I used to think that," he went on, talking half to himself. "Made a little experiment, and changed my mind about it." He put down the mallet, leaned far forward; and, cupping his mouth with both hands, confided, in a mysterious tone, "I've been on the line!"

He did not have the tone or stance of a fanatic; spoke quietly; had none of the usual tricks by which aberrations are readily identified; talked well, with absolute self-containment. "Victory? Well—rather! I now have everything I want and can do anything I wish! So can you! So can anybody! All you have to do is follow the rules! There's a formula, you know. I came upon it by accident!" He took up his chisel again.

He was a queer one. I felt shy and embarrassed. Clearly, he was cracked, but his manner denied it. I tried to remember that he was an artist, with permission to be eccentric; but this was more than an eccentricity. He made me shivery. I wanted away. So—I was backing through his doorway when he called, "Doctor—do you have victory?"

"Victory over what?" I demanded, impatiently. I had not told him I was discouraged; hadn't mentioned I was a doctor... I never did find out how he guessed that—the question being eclipsed by more important mysteries.

"Oh—over anything—everything! Listen!" He climbed swiftly down from his scaffolding, and gliding stealthily toward me as if he had some great secret to impart he whispered into my ear—his hand firmly gripping my coat-lapel, somewhat to my own anxiety—"Would you like to be the best doctor in this town?"

So—then I knew he was crazy, and I began tugging myself loose.

"Come to my house, to-night, about nine o'clock," he said, handing me his card, "and I'll tell you what you want to know!"

I must have looked dazed, for he laughed hilariously, as he climbed up again. I laughed too as I reached the street—the epitaph matter having completely left my mind for the time. I had never heard so much nonsense in my life. "Like hell," I growled, as I started my car, "will I waste an evening with that fool!"