'You're wanted at once, Doctor!' cried Matthew, his anxious
upturned face gleaming palely towards the other. 'My mother's ill. She's been taken very bad.'
'What's the nature of her trouble?' returned Renwick.
'I couldn't tell you, Doctor,' exclaimed Matthew brokenly. 'I knew nothing about it till she just collapsed. Oh! But she's in awful pain. Come quickly.'
'Where is it, then?' said Renwick resignedly. He did not view the matter from the same unique and profoundly disturbing aspect as Matthew; it was, to him merely a night call which might or might not be serious, the repetition of a frequent and vexatious experience the loss of a good night's rest.
'Brodie's the name, Doctor. You surely know the house at the end of Darroch Road.'
'Brodie!' exclaimed the doctor; then, after a short pause, he said in an altered, interrogative tone, 'Why do you come to me? Your mother is not a patient of mine.'
'Oh! I don't know anything about that,' cried Matthew feverishly. 'She must have a doctor. Ye must come she's suffering so much. I beg of ye to come. It's a matter of life or death.'
It was a different Renwick from two years ago, one to whom success had given the power of differentiating, of refusing work he did not wish, but he could not resist this appeal.
'I'll come then,' he said shortly. 'Go on ahead of me. I'll be after you in a few moments.'
Matthew sighed with relief, poured forth a babble of effusive gratitude towards the now closed window, then turning, hurriedly made his way home. Yet, when he arrived at the house, he was afraid to go in alone and stood shivering outside, in his insufficient garments, feeling that he must wait for the doctor's support before he could enter. Although he buttoned his jacket to the neck and held it close about him, the chilly night air pierced him like a knife, yet the fear that he might make some terrible discovery, that he might perhaps find Mamma lying lifeless upon his bed, kept him standing indecisively at the gate, trembling with cold and fear. He had not long to wait, however, for soon the yellow blurs of two gig lamps came into sight around the bend of the road. Finally they drew into the side of the road and stopped with their full glare upon him and, from the darkness behind, Renwick's voice came crisply:
'Why haven't you gone in? It's folly to stand like that after running. You'll catch your death of cold hanging about there, with every pore of you open.' He jumped out of his gig and, from the contrasting obscurity beyond, advanced towards the other in the circle of light. 'Man alive!' he said suddenly; 'what's happened to your head? Have you had a blow?'
'No!' stammered Matthew awkwardly. 'I I fell down.'
'It's an ugly bruise,' returned Renwick slowly, looking at the other questioningly; yet he said no more but swung his bag forward in his hand and with it motioned the other towards the house.
They went in. Stillness and blackness immediately surrounded them.
'Get a light, man, for heaven's sake,' said Renwick irritably. The longer he was with Matthew, the more his quick judgment estimated and condemned the other's weakness and indecision. 'Couldn't you have seen to all this before I arrived? You'll need to pull yourself together if you want to help your mother.'
'It's all right,' whispered Matthew, 'I have a box in my pocket.' With a shaking hand he struck a match and lit the small gas jet in the hall, and in this dim wavering gleam together they moved forward, following their own flickering shadows as they mounted the stairs. The door of Mrs. Brodie's room stood half open and from within came the sound of quick breathing, at which Matthew broke down and sobbed, 'Thank God, she's alive!'
By a miracle of heroic endeavour she had made her way back to her own room and now lay helpless, like a wounded animal that, by a last supreme effort, has reached its lair. The doctor took the matches from Matthew's useless fingers and, having lit the gas in the bedroom, guided him quietly out of the room, then closing the door, he turned and seated himself beside the figure upon the bed His dark, sombre eyes fixed themselves upon the outlines of her ravaged figure and, as he gently felt the quick, compressible pulse and noted the sunken hollows where emaciation had already touched her, his face shadowed slightly at the suspicion already forming in his mind. Then he laid his palm upon her body softly, with a sensitive touch which registered immediately the abnormal resistance of her rigid muscles, and simultaneously the concern of his face deepened. At this moment she opened her eyes and fastened them appealingly upon his, then whispered slowly:
'You've come!' Her words and her regard recognised him as her deliverer. He altered his expression, adapting his features, the instant she looked at him, to an air of kind and reassuring confidence.
'It hurts you here,' he indicated gently, by a pressure of his hand. 'This is the place.'
She nodded her head. It was wonderful to her that he should immediately divine the seat of her pain; it invested him with a miraculous and awe-inspiring power; his touch at once seemed healing and his gently moving hand became a talisman which would discover and infallibly reveal the morbid secret of her distress. Willingly she submitted her racked body to his examination, feeling that here was one in whom lay an almost divine power to make her well.
'That's better,' he encouraged, as he felt her relax. 'Can you let me go a little deeper just once?' he queried. Again she nodded her head and, following his whispered injunction, tried to breathe quietly, whilst his long, firm fingers sent shivers of pain pulsating through her. 'That was splendid!' He thanked her with a calm consideration. 'You are very brave.' Not by so much as the flicker of his eyelids could she have discerned that, deep in the tissues of
her body, he had discovered nodules of a wide-rooted growth which he knew to have progressed far beyond the aid of any human skill.
'How long have you had trouble?' he asked casually 'Surely this Is not the first attack you've had?'
With difficulty she spoke.
'No! I've had it for a long time, off and on, Doctor, but never for such a spell as this. The pain used to go away at once, but this one is a long time in easin'. It's better, mind you, but it hasna gone.'
'You've had other symptoms surely, Mrs. Brodie,' he exclaimed, his speaking eye conveying a meaning beyond his simple words. 'You must have known you were not right. Why did you not see about it sooner?'
'I knew well enough,' she answered, 'but I seemed never to have the time to bother about myself.' She made no mention of her husband's intolerance as she added, 'I just let it gang on. I thought that in time it would go away.'
He shook his head slowly in a faint reproof, saying:
'You've neglected yourself sadly, I'm afraid, Mrs. Brodie. It may mean that you'll be laid up in bed for a little. You must make up your mind for a rest that's what you've needed for a long time. Rest and no worry!'
'What's wrong with me, then?' she whispered. 'It's it's nothing serious?'
He raised himself from the bed and surveyed her kindly.
'What did I say about worrying?' he replied. 'I'm coming again to-morrow for a fuller examination, when you have no pain. Just now you are going to have a good sleep. I've something here to give you relief.'
'Can you ease me?' she murmured weakly. 'I couldna bear yon again.'
'You'll have no more of that,' he comforted her. 'I'll see to it.'
She watched him silently as he picked up his bag, opened it and produced a small phial from which he measured some drops carefully into a glass; then, as he added some water and turned to her again, she placed her worn hand on his and said, movingly, 'You're so kind to me. It's no wonder your name's on a' bodies' tongues. I canna but thank you for your goodness in coming to me to-night, and thank you I do with all my heart.'
'You drink this, then,' he murmured, gently pressing her dry, calloused fingers. 'It's the very thing for you.'
She took the glass with all the sublime trust of a young child and drained it to the dark dregs, forced even a faint, tragic smile to her pale lips as she whispered:
'That was bitter, Doctor. It maun be good medicine.'
He smiled back at her reassuringly.
'Now rest,' he ordained. 'You need a good long sleep;' and, with her hand still in his, he sat down again beside her, waiting whilst the opiate took effect. His presence reassured her by its benign, magnetic power; the talisman that she clasped as though she feared to relinquish it, comforted her; occasionally her eyes would open to regard him gratefully. Then her pupils contracted slowly, the drawn lines of her features became erased, drowsily she murmured:
'God bless you, Doctor. 'Twas you saved my Mary's life and yell make me better too. Come to me again please.' Then she slept.
