As we walked home across the frost-bitten fields and icy lanes Dr Dilke, who walked beside me, as he had sat beside me in church, began to complain of cold; he said he believed that he had caught a chill. I was rather amused to hear this old-womanish expression on the lips of a successful physician, and I told him that I had been taught in my more enlightened days that there was no such thing as “catching a chill”. To my surprise he did not laugh at this, but said:
“Oh, yes, there is, and I believe I’ve got it – I keep on shivering; I think it was that slab of black stone I was sitting next. It was as cold as ice, for I touched it, and it seemed to me exuding moisture – some of that old stone does, you know; it’s always, as it were, sweating; and I felt exactly as if I were sitting next a slab of ice from which a cold wind was blowing; it was really as if it penetrated my flesh.”
He looked pale, and I thought how disagreeable it would be for us all, and particularly for Mrs Janey, if the good man was to be taken ill in the midst of her already not too successful Christmas party. Dr Dilke seemed, too, in that ill-humour which so often presages an illness; he was quite peevish about the church and the service, and the fact that he had been asked to go there.
“These places are nothing but charnel-houses after all,” he said fretfully; “one sits there among all those rotting bones, with that damp marble at one’s side. . . .”
“It is supposed to give you ‘atmosphere’,” I said. “The atmosphere of an old-fashioned Christmas . . . Did you notice who your black stone was erected ‘to the memory of?’” I asked, and the doctor replied that he had not.
“It was to a woman – a young woman, I took it, and her husband: ‘Philadelphia Carwithen’, I noticed that, and of course there was a long eulogy of her virtues, and then underneath it just said that he had died a few months afterwards. As far as I could see it was the only example of that name in the church – all the rest were Verralls. I suppose they were strangers here.”
“What was the date?” asked the doctor, and I replied that really I had not been able to make it out, for where the Roman figures came the stone had been very worn.
The day ambled along somehow, with games, diversions, and plenty of good food and drink, and towards the evening we began to feel a little more satisfied with each other and our hostess. Only Dr Dilke remained a little peevish and apart, and this was remarkable in one who was obviously of a robust temperament and an even temper. He still continued to talk of a “chill”, and I did notice that he shuddered once or twice, and continually sat near the large fire which Mrs Janey had rather laboriously arranged in imitation of what she would call “the good old times.”
That evening, the evening of Christmas Day, there was no talk whatever of ghosts or psychic matters; our discussions were entirely topical and of mundane affairs, in which Dr Dilke, who seemed to have recovered his spirits, took his part with ability and agreeableness. When it was time to break up I asked him, half in jest, about his mysterious chill, and he looked at me with some surprise and appeared to have forgotten that he had ever said he had got such a thing; the impression, whatever it was, which he had received in the church had evidently been effaced from his mind. I wish to make that quite clear.
The next morning Dr Dilke appeared very late at the breakfast table, and when he did so his looks were matter for hints and comment; he was pale, distracted, troubled, untidy in his dress, absent in his manner, and I, at least, instantly recalled what he had said yesterday, and feared he was sickening for some illness.
On Mrs Janey putting to him some direct question as to his looks and manner, so strange and so troubled, he replied rather sharply: “Well, I don’t know what you can expect from a fellow who’s been up all night. I thought I came down here for a rest.”
We all looked at him as he dropped into his place and began to drink his coffee with eager gusto; I noticed that he continually shivered. There was something about this astounding statement and his curious appearance which held us all discreetly silent. We waited for further developments before committing ourselves; even Mrs Janey, whom I had never thought of as tactful, contrived to say casually:
“Up all night, doctor. Couldn’t you sleep then? I’m so sorry if your bed wasn’t comfortable.”
“The bed was all right,” he answered, “that made me the more sorry to leave it. Haven’t you got a local doctor who can take the local cases?” he added.
“Why, of course we have; there’s Dr Armstrong and Dr Fraser – I made sure about that before I came here.”
“Well, then,” demanded Dr Dilke angrily, “why on earth couldn’t one of them have gone last night?”
Mrs Janey looked at me helplessly, and I, obeying her glance, took up the matter.
“What do you mean, doctor? Do you mean that you were called out of your bed last night to attend a case?” I asked deliberately.
“Of course I was – I only got back with the dawn.”
Here Mrs Janey could not forbear breaking in.
“But, whoever could it have been? I know nobody about here yet, at least, only one or two people by name, and they would not be aware that you were here. And how did you get out of the house? It’s locked every night.”
Then the doctor gave his story in rather, I must confess, a confused fashion, and yet with an earnest conviction that he was speaking the simple truth. It was broken up a good deal by ejaculations and comments from the rest of us, but I give it you here shorn of all that and exactly as I put it down in my note-book afterwards:
“I was awoken by a tap at the door. I was instantly wide awake and I said: ‘Come in.’ I thought immediately that probably someone in the house was ill – a doctor, you know, is always ready for these emergencies. The door opened at once and a man entered holding a small ordinary storm-lantern. I noticed nothing peculiar about the man. He had a dark great-coat on, and appeared extremely anxious. ‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ he said at once, ‘but there is a young woman dangerously ill. I want you to come and see her.’ I, somehow, did not think of arguing or of suggesting that there were other medical men in the neighbourhood, or of asking how it was he knew of my presence at Verrall. I dressed myself quickly and accompanied him out of the house. He opened the front door without any trouble, and it did not occur to me to ask him how it was he had obtained either admission or egress. There was a small carriage outside the door, such a one as you may still see in isolated country places, but such a one as I was certainly surprised to see here. I could not very well make out either the horse or the driver for, though the moon was high in the heavens, it was frequently obscured by clouds. I got into the carriage and noticed, as I have often noticed before in these ancient vehicles, a most repulsive smell of decay and damp. My companion got in beside me. He did not speak a word during the whole of the journey, which was, I have the impression, extremely long, and yet I could not say how long. I had also the sense that he was in the greatest trouble, anguish, and almost despair; I do not know why I did not question him. I should tell you that he had drawn down the blinds of the carriage and we travelled in darkness, yet I was perfectly aware of his presence and seemed to see him in his heavy dark great-coat turned up round his chin, his black hair low on his forehead, and his anxious, furtive dark eyes.
“I think I may have gone to sleep in the carriage, I was tired and cold. I was aware, however, when it stopped, and of my companion opening the door and helping me out. We went through a garden, down some steps and past a fish-pond; I could see by the moonlight the silver and gold shapes of fishes slipping in and out of the black water. We entered the house by a side-door – I remember that very distinctly – and went up what seemed to be some secret or seldom-used stairs, and into a bedroom. I was by now quite alert, as one is when one gets into the presence of the patient, and I said to myself, ‘What a fool I’ve been, I’ve brought nothing with me’; and I tried to remember, but could not quite do so, whether or not I had brought anything with me – my cases and so on – to Verrall.
“The room was very badly lit, but a certain illumination, I could not say whether it came from any artificial light within the room or merely from the moonlight through the open window, draped with mauve velvet curtains, fell on the bed, and there I saw my patient. She was a young woman who, I surmised, would have been, when in health, of considerable though coarse charm. She was now in great suffering, twisted and contorted with agony, and in her struggles of anguish had pulled and torn the bedclothes into a heap. I noticed that she wore a dress of some light material spotted with small roses, and it occurred to me at once that she had been taken ill during the daytime and must have lain thus in great pain for many hours, and I turned with some reproach to the man who had fetched me and demanded why help had not been sought sooner. For answer he wrung his hands – a gesture that I do not remember having noticed in any human being before; one hears a great deal of hands being wrung but one does not so often see it. This man, I remember distinctly, wrung his hands, and muttered, ‘Do what you can for her – do what you can!’ I feared that this would be very little. I endeavoured to make an examination of the patient, but
