headed staff nurse brushed his hair he started asking my views on the original works of Hippocrates.
'You'll soon be back among your books again,' I said, not wishing to pursue the subject.
'Indeed, Doctor, I believe my library is the only pleasure in my life. Except on Saturday nights, when I sometimes play the piano.'
I was reflecting that this sort of existence would have me stone dead in a fortnight when we were interrupted by the surgeon himself, a big, red-faced, jolly Irishman. Most orthopods are, when you come to think of it, just as ophthalmologists look like dyspeptic watchmakers and bladder surgeons resemble prosperous commercial travellers.
'He's all yours now, m'boy,' said the surgeon, as we left the room together after examining the patient. 'His rehabilitation will go much smoother at home, and this sister-in-law seems agreeable enough to nurse him. Anyway, I'm off on Monday for a month's fishing in County Mayo. How is he for cash, by the by?'
'According to village gossip, crammed with it.'
'Is he now?' The orthopod seemed to brighten at the prospect of having his fishing on Lord Nutbeam's hip. 'Odd sort of feller, don't you think? I couldn't see him saying 'Boo' to a newly hatched gosling. I'll be sending you the usual letter about treatment. Meanwhile, tell him to confine his reading to the bottom shelf.'
When a few mornings later they unloaded his Lordship at Nutbeam Hall and I pushed his new wheel-chair into the library, I felt pretty contented with myself. The whole episode had already increased my professional standing in Long Wotton no end. I'm far from saying the natives were hostile, but in the country they regard anyone who hasn't lived among them for thirty years as a day tripper, and now there was plenty of glowing gossip to warm the ears of the old uncle on his return. If I could present him with a Lord Nutbeam skipping about the front lawn, he'd not only give fewer of those old-fashioned looks whenever I suggested enterprising lines of treatment, but painlessly disgorge my cash on the spot.
'I am certainly glad my brother-in-law is back in his own home, Doctor,' remarked Amanda Nutbeam. 'It is only here, I think, that we really understand his best interests.'
'So I've noticed,' I told her. 'And now for a few weeks of rest and quiet and nourishing food,' I added confidently, 'and his Lordship will be dancing the Highland Fling if he wants to.'
But I should have learned long ago that in the turf and therapeutics it's disastrous to back a dead certainty.
For some reason, Lord Nutbeam didn't want to get better. I'd imagined that once he was home he'd settle down to a nice long read, but instead he sat staring out of time window with cups of beef-tea getting cold at his elbow. Sometimes he picked up _The Anatomy of Melancholy,_ but it didn't seem to hold him. Sometimes he pushed himself to the piano, but he could manage only a few bars of _Valse Triste._ To cheer him up, I wheeled him round the garden telling funny stories, but he never seemed to see the point. 'Alas, poor Yorick!' was the most I could get out of him.
His Lordship grew steadily feebler and feebler, while everything else in sight was burgeoning wildly in the sunshine. It wasn't long before I began to grow alarmed about his condition. Modern medicine's all very well, with antibiotics and heart-lung machines and so on, but once a chap's decided he doesn't want to live any more we're not much better off than the witchdoctors in Central Africa. And my professional problems weren't made easier by the other Nutbeams, who now the excitement had died down treated me like the man come to mend the drains. Far from his Lordship, they were terrible snobs-particularly the missus, whom everyone knew in the village was only a road-house remnant from Percy Nutbeam's youth, anyway.
'It would be much more convenient if you could make your daily visit earlier,' she said, as I limped into Nutbeam Hall one evening after a heavy day's practice among the pigsties. 'We are expecting Lord and Lady Farnborough for dinner any minute, and I should naturally prefer my guests not to be greeted in the hall by the doctor. Perhaps you would also have the goodness to change your shoes before coming to us, Dr Grimsdyke. I realize that you cannot avoid walking through the farmyards during the day, but-'
I must say, her attitude made me pretty annoyed. Particularly as I felt she wouldn't have tried it with the old uncle, not with those old-fashioned looks of his. Then, a couple of days later, Lord Nutbeam went off his food and started looking like Socrates eyeing the hemlock.
'We're all bursting to see you back to normal again,' I told him, hopefully writing a prescription for another tonic. 'Here's something which will have you chirping with the birds in no time.'
'Thank you, Doctor. You are very kind. Indeed, everyone is very, very kind. Especially, of course, my dear brother and his wife.' He listlessly turned a few pages of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall._ 'But I fear my accident had more effect than I imagined. I've hardly been out of Nutbeam Hall for many years, you know, on account of my delicate health. Meeting so many people in the hospital was something of a disturbance. You are doubtless familiar with the lines in Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard-'_
Feeling that churchyards were definitely out, I interrupted with the story about the parrot. But I don't think he got that one either.
I left him in the library, wondering whether to assemble the family again and confess the old boy wasn't living up to my prognosis. But I was stopped by Percy Nutbeam himself in the hall.
'Could you spare time for a whisky and soda, Doctor?'
My professional duties being over for the day, I accepted.
'I'm very worried about my brother's condition,' he declared, after a bit of chat about the weather and the crops.
'And so am I,' I told him.
'I remember the case of our aunt so well. The collapse seemed to set in all at once. Like a pricked balloon. I suppose there's not any danger of-er, is there?'
I nodded. 'I'm afraid I've got to say there is.'
The poor chap looked so concerned I felt I must have misjudged him all along.
'Then how long, Doctor, would you give him-?'
'Might be a matter of only a week or two,' I said gloomily.
'Good God! Not before May the twenty-eighth?'
I looked puzzled, wondering if they'd arranged a picnic or something.
'This is a very delicate business, Doctor.'
He poured himself another whisky. 'But I must be frank with you. You remember Sir Kenneth Cowberry?'
'I don't think I've had the pleasure.'
'He was leaving as you returned, the night of the accident. He's the head of Hoskins, Harrison, Cowberry, and Blackthorn. My brother's accountants, you know. I thought we'd better send for him at once, in case there were any arrangements my brother might have wished-'
'Quite,' I said.
'Lord Nutbeam naturally desires to leave my wife and myself his entire fortune. After all, we have devoted our lives to his welfare.'
'Quite, quite.'
'But it was only that evening we learned-my brother is oddly secretive about money matters-that he had in fact already made over his estate to me. In order to-er, escape death duties. You may have heard of other cases, Doctor? But under the rules of the Inland Revenue Department my brother must stay alive for five years after signing the document, or it doesn't hold water. And those five years are up at midnight, May the twenty-eighth. So, Doctor, if you can keep him alive till then-I mean, I hope and trust he will have many happy years among us yet-you understand the position…? I didn't think highly before of this pint-sized Lord and Lady Macbeth. Now I felt it would serve them damn well right if the Government carted off the lot, to pay, among other things, my National Health salary.
'I understand the position very well,' I replied, wishing I could produce one of the uncle's looks.
I'd very much taken to old Nutbeam, and I was determined to keep him alive for the three score and ten. But the situation was getting beyond a chap of my modest experience, and out in the country I hadn't any of my chums to ask for advice. I wished the uncle would get fed up sitting on the beach at Montego Bay and come home. I even wished Miles would turn up for the week-end. I was wondering what to say next when I had another of those profitable inspirations of mine.
'I think it would be wise,' I announced, 'to have another opinion. There might be some other condition I've overlooked. After all, doctors can make mistakes. Just like accountants.'
