Читать книгу The Man with the Double Heart - Muriel Hine - Страница 4

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The hour was close on midday, but the lamps in Cavendish Square shone with a blurred light through the unnatural gloom.

The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting Harcourt House it found room to expand and took on spectral shape; dim forms with floating locks that clung to the stunted trees and, shuddering, pressed against the high London buildings which faded away indistinctly into the blackened sky.

From thence ragged pennons went busily fluttering South to be caught in the draught of the traffic in noisy Oxford Street, where hoarse and confusing cries were blent with the rumble of wheels in all the pandemonium of man at war with the elements.

The air was raw and sooty, difficult to breathe, and McTaggart, already irritable with the nervous tension due to his approaching interview, his throat dry, his eyes smarting as he peered at the wide crossing, started violently as the horn of an unseen motor sounded unpleasantly near at hand.

"Confound the man!" he said, in apology to himself and stepped back quickly onto the narrow path as a shapeless monster with eyes of flame swung past, foiled of its prey.

"A nice pace to go on a day like this!" And here something struck him sharply in the rear, knocking his hat forward onto the bridge of his nose.

"What the...!" he checked his wrath with a sudden shamefaced laugh as he found his unseen adversary to consist of the square railings.

Somewhere down Wigmore Street a clock boomed forth the hour. A quarter to twelve. McTaggart counted the strokes and gave a sigh of relief not unmixed with amusement: the secret congratulation of an unpunctual man redeemed by an accident from the error of his ways.

Wedging his hat more firmly down on his head, he dared again the black space before him, struck the curb on the opposite side and, one hand against the wall, steered round the corner and up into Harley Street.

Under the first lamp he paused and hunted for the number over the nearest door where four brass plates menaced the passer-by with that modern form of torture that few live to escape—the inquisitorial process known as dentistry.

Making a rapid calculation, he came to the conclusion that the house he sought must lie at the further end of the street—London's "Bridge of Sighs"—where breathless hope and despair elbow each other ceaselessly in the wake of suffering humanity.

The fog was changing colour from a dirty yellow to opal, and the damp pavement was becoming visible as McTaggart moved forward with a quick stride that held an elasticity which it did not owe to elation.

He walked with an ease and lightness peculiar in an Englishman who, athletic as he may be, yet treads the earth with a certain conscious air of possessing it: a tall, well-built man, slender and very erect, but without that balanced stiffness, the hall-mark of "drill."

A keen observer would guess at once an admixture of blood that betrayed its foreign strain in that supple grace of his; in the olive skin, the light feet, and the glossy black hair that was brushed close and thick to his shapely head.

Not French. For the Frenchman moves on a framework of wire, fretting toward action, deadly in attack. But the race that bred Napoleon, subtle and resistant, built upon tempered steel that bends but rarely breaks.

Now, as he reached the last block and the house he sought, McTaggart paused for a second, irresolute, on the step.

He seemed to gather courage with a quick indrawn breath, and his mouth was set in a hard line as his hand pressed the bell.

Then he raised his eyes to the knocker above, and with the slight action his whole face changed.

For, instead of being black beneath their dark brows, the man's eyes were blue, an intense, fiery blue; with the clear depths and the temper touch that one sees nowhere else save in the strong type of the hardy mountain race. They were not the blue of Ireland, with her half-veiled, sorrowful mirth; nor the placid blue of England, that mild forget-me-not. They were utterly unmistakable; they brought with them a breath of heather-gloried solitude and the deep and silent lochs.

Here was a Scot—a hillsman from the North; no need of his name to cry aloud the fact.

And yet...

The door was opened, and at once the imprisoned fog finding a new outlet drove into the narrow hall.

A tall, bony parlour maid was staring back at him as, mechanically, McTaggart repeated the great man's name.

"You have an appointment, sir?" Her manner seemed to imply that her dignity would suffer if this were not the case.

Satisfied by his answer, she ushered him into a room where a gas fire burned feebly with an apologetic air, as though painfully conscious of its meretricious logs. Half a dozen people, muffled in coats and furs, were scattered about a long dining table, occupied in reading listlessly the papers, to avoid the temptation of staring at each other. The place smelt of biscuits, of fog and of gas, like an unaired buffet in a railway station.

McTaggart, weighed down by a sense of impending doom, picked up a "Punch" and retired to the window, ostensibly to amuse himself, in reality to rehearse for the hundredth time his slender stock of "symptoms." The clock ticked on, and a bleak silence reigned, broken at intervals by the sniff of a small boy, who, accompanied by a parent and a heavy cold in the head, was feasting his soul on a volume of the "Graphic."

Something familiar in the cartoon under his eyes drew McTaggart away from his own dreary thoughts.

"I mustn't forget to tell him..." he was saying to himself, when he realized that the paper he held was dated five months back! He felt immediately quite unreasonably annoyed. A sudden desire to rise up and go invaded his mind. In his nervous state the excuse seemed amply sufficient. A "Punch" five months old! ... it was a covert insult.

A doctor who could trade on his patient's credulity—pocketing his three guineas, don't forget that!—and offer them literature but fit to light the fire...

A "Punch" Five Months Old! ... he gathered up his gloves.

But a noiseless step crossed the room, a voice whispered his name.

"Mr. McTaggart? This way, please."

He found himself following the bony parlour maid, past the aggressive eyes of the still-waiting crowd, out into the hall and down a glass-roofed passage.

"Now I'm in for it..." he said silently... "Oh! ... damn!" He put on his most truculent air.

The maid tapped at a door.

"Come in," said a sharp voice.

McTaggart entered and stood still for a moment, blinking on the threshold, irresolute.

For the scene was unexpected. Despite the heavy fog that filtered through the windows with its insidious breath, a hint of Spring was there in the fresh white walls, the rose-covered chintzes and the presence of flowers.

The place seemed filled with them. An early bough of blossom, the exquisite tender pink of the almond in bloom, stood against a mirror that screened a recess; and the air was alive with the scent of daffodils, with subtle yellow faces, like curious Chinamen, peering over the edge of a blue Nankin bowl.

In the centre of the room a man in a velvet coat was bending over a mass of fresh violets, adding water carefully to the surrounding moss out of a copper jug that he held in his hands.

McTaggart stared at him; at the lean, colourless face under its untidy thatch of coarse, gray hair; at the spare figure, the long, steady hands and the loose, unconventional clothes that he wore. He might have been an artist of Rossetti's day in that shabby brown coat and soft faded shirt. But the great specialist—whose name carried weight wherever science and medicine were wont to foregather. Had he made a mistake? It seemed incredible.

The doctor gave a parting touch to an overhanging leaf and wheeled round to greet his patient with a smile.

"I can't bear to see flowers die from lack of care, and this foggy weather tries them very hard. Excuse me a moment." He passed into the recess, and washed his hands vigorously, talking all the while.

"Some years ago," he switched off the tap, "I went to a public dinner of agriculturists. Found to my surprise I was sitting next Oscar Wilde—one doesn't somehow associate him with such a function! On my left was a farmer of the good old-fashioned type, silent, aggressive, absorbed in his food. I happened to remark that the flowers were all withered; the heat of the room had been too much for them.

"'Not withered'—Wilde corrected me—'but merely weary...'

"The farmer turned his head, and gave him one glance.

"'Silly Ass!' he said explosively and returned to his dinner. It was his single contribution to the evening's conversation. I've never forgotten it, nor the look on Wilde's face."

McTaggart laughed. He felt oddly at ease.

The doctor glanced at his nails and came back into the room.

He pushed an easy-chair toward his patient and leaning against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pocket:

"Now, tell me all the trouble," he suggested quietly.

A slight flush crept up under the olive skin. McTaggart was suddenly immensely ashamed.

"I don't believe really ... there's anything ... wrong..." He gave an apologetic, husky little laugh ... "but the fact is, a friend of mine—he's a medical student—ran over me the other day, and, well—he said—there was something odd—that he couldn't understand—something about the beat of my heart. I'd fainted, you know—awfully inconvenient—at a supper party, too ... I'd been feeling pretty cheap..." He broke off, confused, as for the first time the older man deliberately fixed his eyes upon him. Hazel eyes they were with curious flecks of yellow, bright and hard beneath his pince-nez.

"You fainted? For how long were you unconscious?" He added a few more questions, nodded his shaggy head, and crossing the room sat down at his desk. He opened a book, massively bound, where on each page was printed, hideous and suggestive, an anatomical sketch of the human form divine.

"I'd like your name in full." He picked up the card which McTaggart had sent in by the parlour maid.

"P. M. McTaggart—what does that stand for?"

"It's rather a mouthful." The owner smiled. "Peter Maramonte."

The specialist glanced up shrewdly.

"Italian?—I thought so."

"On my mother's side. My father was Scotch, an Aberdonian."

"Your parents are living?"

"No, both dead." He stood there, tall and sombre, watching the other write in a thin, crabbed hand the unusual name.

"Any hereditary tendency to heart trouble?"

"Not that I know of. My father was drowned—out fishing, one day. The boat overturned, caught by a squall. He was, I believe, a strong healthy man."

"And your mother?"

"She never seemed the same after his death. And then the climate tried her. She'd been brought up in the South. The end was pneumonia. I was only twelve at the time, but I don't think that either of them suffered from the heart."

"I see. And now if you'll take off your things—strip to the waist, please—and lie on that sofa."

It seemed to McTaggart that at this juncture the devil himself entered into his clothes. Buttons multiplied and waxed evasive, his collar stud stuck, his vest clove to his head.

He dragged it off at last, breathless and ruffled.

"That's capital." The great man adjusted his stethoscope and leaned over the white young body outstretched. McTaggart felt dexterous hands passing swiftly, surely; tapping here, pressing there, over his bare flesh.

"A deep breath—so. Thank you, that will do. Now gently in and out ... quite naturally. Ah...!" He paused, listened a second and gave a grunt. "I wonder?"

A wave of anger swept over the prostrate man.

"He's found something, damn him!" he said to himself, resenting the eager light on that lean, absorbed face.

"Curious!" The specialist drew himself upright, and reached round for a shorter, wooden instrument.

Another silence followed, pregnant of disaster. The pressure of the wooden disk upon McTaggart's chest seemed to become insupportable—a thing of infinite weight.

The doctor's coarse gray hair exhaled a faint scent where brilliantine, ineffectually, had played a minor part, and in some mysterious way it added to the other's annoyance. The suspense was unbearable.

"Found anything wrong?" His voice, unnaturally cheerful, brought a frown to the doctor's face.

"Don't move, please. Keep silent, now." The disk slid across his chest and settled above his ribs, on the right side this time, with its load of discomfort.

"Marvellous ... extraordinary! One's read of it, of course, but never come across it ... my first experience." The great man stood erect, perplexity at end, a vast enthusiasm glowing in his eyes.

Suddenly he divined the patient's anxiety. "Nothing to worry about," he added soothingly. "You can dress now. Your heart's perfectly sound." He walked away to his writing table, still engrossed in thought.

McTaggart felt an immense relief that swamped curiosity. The ordeal was over, and life still smiled at him. He tumbled into his clothes and groped for his collar stud, which, with the guile of these wayward things, had crept away to hide.

Suddenly in a glass he caught his own reflection—his hair dishevelled, his collar bent, and felt an insane desire, despite these minor flaws, to shake himself by the hand, as though, by personal effort, he had prolonged his days!

The doctor still stood motionless, gazing into space. In the silence of the room a faint pattering told of the almond blossom falling on the polished floor.

McTaggart straightened his tie, and with his back turned, surreptitiously began to dive in his pocket for the fee.

He found it at last, and took a step forward toward the absorbed figure at the desk.

"I'd like to know," he suggested, "what you really think is the cause...."

"Of course!" The lean face lifted with a start. "You must forgive me. The fact is"—he smiled—"I'm too interested in your case to remember your natural anxiety. I think your present trouble is caused by an error in digestion. The palpitation comes from that and the other symptoms too. A little care with your diet—I'll write you a prescription—a bismuth mixture to be taken after meals. But if you've further worry, come to me again. As a friend—you understand? ... Oh, no!—it's pure selfishness. I don't want to lose sight of you. You see—to cut it short—you're by way of being a freak! You've got—for want of a better name—what I call a Double Heart. One heart's on your right side and one's in the proper place. It's the most amazing thing I've ever come across. You're perfectly healthy—sound as a bell. I shouldn't wonder, upon my soul, if you hadn't two lives!"

McTaggart stared at him, trying to take it in.

"It sounds rather mad. But you say it doesn't matter?"

"It doesn't seem to affect your circulation in the least. I'm certain what you complain about is due to indigestion—the aftermath perhaps of a touch of Influenza."

A twinkle crept into the blue eyes watching him. "I suppose one heart's Italian and the other purely Scotch?" He ventured the joke against himself in a spirit of relief.

"That's it!" His new friend laughed ... "a dual personality. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with a physical excuse." He gave loose reins for a moment to his vivid imagination, which swept him on with the current of his thoughts.

"You're not married, you say? Well—you'd better be careful. It might lead to bigamy! If so, refer to me."

A curious expression came into the young man's face as he echoed the other's laugh with a trace of confusion.

"A fair wife and a dark one? Porridge and ... Chianti!"

He paid his fee and went out into the London fog.