The girl flushed a little.
“I get on very well,” she said, and strove to turn the conversation. But it was a known fact that no human soul had ever turned Sir John from his set inquisitional course.
“Happy, and that sort of thing?” he asked.
Edith nodded, keeping her eyes on the wall behind the General’s head.
“I suppose you love him—hey?”
Edith was embarrassed, and no less so were the two men; but Sir John was not alone in imagining that doctors have little sense of decency and lawyers no idea of propriety. They were saved further discussion by the arrival of the coffee, and the girl was thankful.
“I am going to keep you here until Gilbert comes up for you,” said the old man suddenly. “I suppose you know, but probably you do not, that you are the first of your sex that I have ever tolerated in my house.”
She laughed.
“It is a fact,” he said seriously. “You know I do not get on with women. They do not realise that though I am an irritable old chap there is really no harm in me, and I am an irritable old chap,” he confessed. “It is not that they are impertinent or rude, but it is their long-suffering meekness that I cannot stand. If a lady tells me to go to the devil I know where I am. I want the plain, blunt truth without gaff. I prefer my medicine without sugar.”
The Doctor laughed.
“You are different from most people, Sir John. I know men who are rather sensitive about the brutal truth.”
“More fools they,” said Sir John.
“I do not know,” said the Doctor reflectively. “I sympathise with a man who does not want the whole bitterness of fact hurled at his head in the shape of an honest half a brick, although there is an advantage in knowing the truth sometimes, it saves a lot of needless unhappiness,” he added a little sadly. He seemed to have aroused some unpleasant train of thought. “I will give you an extraordinary instance,” he went on in his usual deliberate manner.
“What’s that?” asked the General suddenly.
“I think it was a noise in the hall,” said Edith.
“I thought it was a window,” growled the General, rather ashamed that he should have been detected in his jump.
“Go on with your story, Doctor.”
“A few months ago,” Dr. Seymour recalled, “a young man came to me. He was a gentleman, and evidently not a townsman of Leeds, at any rate I did not know him. I found afterwards that he had come from London to consult me. He had some little tooth trouble, a jagged molar, a very commonplace thing, and he had made a slight incision in the inside of his mouth. Apparently it worried him, the more so when he discovered that the tiny scratch would not heal. Like most of us, he had a terrible dread of cancer.” He lowered his voice as a doctor often will when he speaks of this most dreadful malady. “He did not want to go to his own doctor; as a matter of fact, I do not think he had one. He came to me, and I examined him. I had my doubt as to there being anything wrong with him, but I cut a minute section of the membrane for microscopic examination.”
The girl shivered.
“I am sorry,” said the Doctor hastily, “that is all there is in the story which is gruesome unless you think—However,” he went on, “I promised to send him the result of my examination, and I wanted his address to send it. This, however, he refused. He was very, very nervous. ‘I know I am a moral coward,’ he said, ‘but somehow I do not want to know just the bare truth in bald language; but if it is as I fear, I would like the news broken to me in the manner which is the least jarring to me.’ ”
“And what was that?” asked Sir John, interested in spite of himself.
The Doctor drew a long breath.
“It seems,” he said, “that he was something of a musician”—Edith sat upright, clasping her hands, her face set, her eyes fixed upon the Doctor—“he was something of a musician, that is to say, he was very keen on music, and the method he had of breaking the news to himself was unique, I have never heard anything quite like it before in my life. He gave me two cards and an addressed envelope, addressed to an old musician in London whom he patronised.”
Edith saw the room go swaying round and round, but held herself in with an effort. Her face was white, her hands that held the chair were clenched so tightly that the bones shone white through them.
“They were addressed to an old friend of his, as I say, and they were identically worded with this exception. One of them said in effect you will go to such and such a place and you will play the ‘Melody in F,’ and the other gave the same instructions but varied to this extent, that he was to play the ‘Spring Song.’ Now here comes the tragedy.” He raised his finger. “He gave me the ‘Melody in F’ to signal to him the fact that he had cancer.”
There was a long silence, which only the quick breathing of the girl broke.
“And, and—?” whispered Edith.
“And”—the Doctor looked at her with his faraway eyes—“I sent the wrong card,” he said. “I sent it and destroyed the other before I remembered my error.”
“Then he has not cancer?” whispered the girl.
“No, and I do not know his address, and I cannot get at him,” said Barclay-Seymour. “It was tragic in many ways. I think he was just going to marry, for he said this much to me: ‘If this is true, and I am married, I will leave my wife a pauper,’ and he asked me a curious question,” added the Doctor. “He said, ‘Don’t you think that
