“Yes. Just so. Just so. I’d better have a look at him.”
“I haven’t dared to tell him I’ve sent for you,” said Violet piteously, reproachful of the doctor’s inhumanity.
“Tut-tut!” observed the doctor, and opened the bedroom door.
He sniffed on entering, glanced placidly at Henry, then at the fireplace, and then went to the window and drew the curtains and blind aside.
“I should advise you to have a fire lighted at once, and we’ll open the window a bit.”
He put his hat carefully on the chest of drawers, but did not even unbutton his overcoat or turn down his collar. Then he removed his gloves and rubbed his hands. At last to Henry:
“Well, Mr. Earlforward, what’s this I hear?”
No diplomacy with the patient! No ingenious excusing of his presence! The patient just had to accept his presence; and the patient, having no alternative, did accept it.
“Shall I light the fire now, ’m?” asked Elsie timidly at the door.
“Yes,” said the doctor shortly, including both the women in his glance.
“But won’t she be disturbing you while you’re …” Violet suggested anxiously. She was afraid that this unprecedented proceeding would terribly upset Henry and so make him worse.
“Not at all.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever had this fire lighted,” said Violet, to which the doctor deigned no reply.
“Run along, Elsie. Take your things off and be quick. The doctor wants a fire immediately.”
Before the doctor, changed now from an aggrieved human being into a scrupulously conscientious professional adviser, had finished his examination, the room was half full of smoke. Violet could not help looking at Elsie reproachfully as if to say: “Really, Elsie, you should be able to control the chimney better than this—and your master so ill!”
The patient coughed excessively, but everyone knew that the coughing was merely his protest against the madness of lighting a fire.
“I’m too hot,” he muttered. “I’m too hot.”
And such was the power of autosuggestion that he did in fact feel too hot, though the fire had not begun to give out any appreciable heat. He privately determined to have the fire out as soon as the doctor had departed; a limit must be set to folly after all. However, Henry was at once faced with a great new crisis which diminished the question of the fire to a detail.
“I can’t come to any conclusion without washing out the stomach,” said Dr. Raste, turning to Violet, and then turning back quickly to Henry: “You say you’ve no pain there? You’re sure?” And he touched a particular point on the chest.
“None,” replied Henry.
“The fellow is lying,” thought the doctor. “It’s amazing how they will lie. I bet anything he’s lying. Why do they lie?”
Nevertheless, the doctor could not be quite sure. And he had a general preference for not being quite sure; he liked to postpone judgment.
“I don’t mind having my stomach washed out,” Henry murmured blandly.
“No, of course not. I’ll telephone to the hospital early tomorrow, and Mrs. Earlforward will take you round there in a cab.” And to Violet: “You’ll see he’s well covered, won’t you?”
“I will,” Violet weakly agreed.
“But I don’t want to go to any hospital,” was Henry’s second protest. “Why can’t you do the business here?”
“Impossible in a house!” the doctor announced. “You can only do that sort of thing where you’ve got all the apparatus and conveniences. But I’ll make it all smooth for you.”
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Not to a hospital!”
The doctor said callously:
“I doubt whether you realize how ill you are, my friend.”
“I’m not that ill. When should I come out again?”
“The moment you are better.”
“Oh, no! No hospital for me. There’s two of them here to nurse me.”
“Your wife is not in a condition to nurse you. You must remember that, please. … Better get him there by eleven o’clock. I shall probably be there first. I’ll give you the order—to let you in.”
Henry ceased to cough; he ceased to feel hot. His condition suddenly improved in a marvellous way. He had been ill. He admitted now that he had been chronically ill. (He had first begun to feel ill either just before or soon after the eating of the wedding cake on his bridal night.) But he was now better, much better. He was aware of a wonderful amelioration, which surprised even himself. At any rate, he would not go into a hospital. The enterprise was too enormous and too perilous. Once in, when would he get out again? And nurses were frightful bullies. He would be helpless in a hospital. And his business? It would fall to ruin. Everything would get askew. And the household? Astounding foolishness would be committed in the house if he lost his grip on it. He could manage his business and he could manage his household; and nobody else could. Besides, there was no sound reason for going into a hospital. As for washing out his stomach, if that was all, give him some mustard and some warm water, and he would undertake to do the trick in two minutes. The doctor evidently desired to make something out of nothing. They were all the same. And women were all the same, too. He had imagined that Violet was not like other women. But he had been mistaken! She had lost her head—otherwise she would never have sent for the doctor in the middle of the night. The doctor would undoubtedly charge double for a night visit. And the fire, choking and roasting him! He saw himself in the midst of a vast general lunacy and conspiracy, and he alone maintaining ordinary common sense and honesty. He felt the whole world against him; but he could fight the whole world. He had perfect confidence in the fundamental hard strength of his nature.
Then he observed that the other two had left the room. Yet he did not remember seeing them go. Elsie
