Her eyes were deep, large, and brown, or a dark gray; her complexion was dark and clear--almost too transparent; her cheeks were flushed a little; and the light in her eyes was unnaturally intense.
She was evidently trying to gain time--to take my measure.
"It is always a rather trying thing to get a new doctor; don"t you think so?" she asked, with another little laugh. "I always feel so foolish to think I have called him to come for so trifling a matter as my ailments are. I am never really ill, you know," she said with nervous haste; "but I am not very strong, and so I often feel--rather--under the weather, and I always fancy that a doctor can prevent, or cure it; but I suppose he cannot. I shall really not expect a great deal of you, in that line, doctor. I cannot expect you to furnish me with robust ancestors, can I?
Just so you keep me out of bed"--and here, for the first time, I noticed a slight tremor in her voice--"just keep me so that I can read, and--so that I shall not need to sit alone, and--think--I shall be quite satisfied--quite." She had turned her face away, as she said the last; but I saw that she was having a hard struggle to keep back the tears, notwithstanding the little laugh that followed.
I had felt her pulse; it was hardly perceptible, and fluttered rather than beat; and I had watched her closely as she spoke; but whenever she came near the verge of showing deeper than the surface she broke in with that non-committal little laugh, or turned her face, or half closed her great eyes, and I was foiled. Her pulse and the faint blue veins told me one story; she tried to tell me quite another.
"How are you suffering to-day," I asked.
She looked steadily at me a moment, then lowered her eyes, raised her left hand (upon which I remember noticing there was a handsome ring), looked at its palm a moment, held her lips tightly closed, and then, with a sudden glance at me, again as if on the defensive said:
"I hardly know; I am only a little under the weather; I am weak. I am losing my--grip--on myself; I am--losing my grip--on my--nerves. I cannot afford to do that." The last was said with more emotion than she cared to display. So she arose, walked swiftly to the dressing-case, took up a lace handkerchief, glanced at herself in the mirror, moved a picture (I noticed that it was a likeness of an old gentleman, perhaps her father), and returned to a chair which stood in the shadow, and then, with a merry little peal of laughter, said: "Well, I don"t wonder, doctor, that you are unable to diagnose that case. It would require a barometer to do that I fancy, from the amount of weather I got into it.
But really, now, how am _I_ to know what is the matter with me? That is for you to say; I am not the doctor. If you tell me it is malaria, as all of you do, I shall be perfectly satisfied--and take your powders with the docility of an infant in arms. I suppose it _is_ malaria, don"t you?"
I wanted to gain time--to study her a little. I saw that she was, or had been really ill; ill, that is, in mind if not in body. I fancied that she had succeeded in deceiving Griswold into treating her for some physical trouble which she did not have, or, if she had it, only as a result of a much graver malady.
The right branch may have been found and nipped off from time time when it grew uncomfortably long, but the root, I believed, had not been touched, and, I thought, had not been even suspected by her former physician.
We of the profession, as you very well know, do not always possess that abiding faith in the knowledge and skill of our brethren that we demand and expect from outsiders.
We claim our right to guess over after our a.s.sociates, and not always to guess the same thing.
I believed that Griswold had not fully understood his former patient.
"Sulph. 12," indeed! Then I smiled, and said aloud:
"Dr. Griswold writes me that in such cases as yours he advises sulph.
12--that it has given relief. Do you call yourself a sulphur patient?" I watched her narrowly, and if she did not smile in a satirical way, I was deceived. "Are you out of that remedy? and do you want more of it?" I asked with a serious face.
She did not reply at once. There seemed to be a struggle in her mind as to how much she would let me know. Then she looked at me attentively for a moment, with a puzzled expression, I thought; an unutterably weary look crossed her face. She said, slowly, deliberately: "I have no doubt sulphur will do as well as anything else. Oh! yes--I am decidedly a sulphur patient, no doubt I suppose I have taken several pints of that innocent remedy in my time. A number of physicians have given it to me from time to time. Your friend is not its only devotee. Sulphur and nux--nux and sulphur! I believe they cure anything short of a broken heart, or actual imbecility, do they not, doctor?" She laughed, not altogether pleasantly.
How far would she go and how far would she let me go, with this humb.u.g.g.e.ry? I looked gravely into her eyes, and said, "Certainly they will do all that, and more. They sometimes hold a patient until a doctor can decide which of those two interesting complaints is the particular one to be treated. In _your_ case I am inclined to suspect--the--that it is--_not_ imbecility. I shall therefore begin by asking you to be good enough to tell me what it is that affects your heart."
I had taken her wrist in my hand, as I began to speak. My finger was on her pulse. It gave a great bound, and then beat rapidly; and although her face grew a shade paler and her eyes wavered as they tried to look into mine, I knew that I had both surprised and impressed her.
She recovered herself instantly, and made up her mind to hedge still further. "If there is anything the matter with my heart, you are the first to suspect it. My father, however, died of heart disease, and I have--always--hoped that I should--die as suddenly. But I shall not! I shall not! I am so--wiry--so all-enduring. I recover! I always recover!"
She said this pa.s.sionately, and as if it were a grave misfortune--as if she were very old. I pretended to take it humorously.
"Perhaps at your advanced age your father might have said the same."
She laughed. She saw a loophole, and immediately took it. "Oh, you think I am very young, doctor, but I am not. People always think me younger than I am--at first. I look older when you get used to me. I am nearly thirty."
I was surprised; I had taken her to be about twenty-three.
"In years or in experience?" I said. "Which way do you count your age?"
She got up suddenly again and walked to the dressing-case, then to the window. In doing so she raised her hand to her eyes. It was the hand with the lace handkerchief in it.
"Experience!" she exclaimed; and then, checking herself. "No, people never think me so old--not at first," she said, returning to her chair.
"But I suppose I am not too old to be cured with sulph. 12, am I?" Then she laughed her little nervous, quick laugh, and added: "Dear old Dr.
Griswold, what faith he must have in "sulph. 12." and in his patients.
He seems to think that they were made for each other, as it were; and--of course, I am not a doctor--how do I know they were not?"
"Miss Campbell," I said, stepping quickly to her side and surprising her, "you do not need sulphur. You need to be relieved of this strain on your nerves. Make up your mind to tell me your history to-morrow morning--to tell it all; I do not want some fairy-tale. Until then, take these drops to quiet your nerves."
There were tears in her eyes. She did not attempt to hide them. They ran down her cheeks, and she simply closed the lids and let them flow.
I took her lace handkerchief and wiped her cheeks. Then I dropped it in her lap, placed the phial on her stand, took up my hat, and left.
III.
But I did not get her story the next day, nor the next, nor the next.
Her tact was perfectly mystifying in its intricacy; her power of evasion marvellous, and her study of me amusing. She grew weaker and more languid every day; but insisted that she had no pain--"nothing upon which to hang a symptom," she would say.
I suggested that refuge of all puzzled doctors--a change.
"A change!" she said, wearily. "A change! Let me see, I have been here nearly five months. I stayed two months in the last place. I was nine days in San Francisco, one year doing the whole of Europe, and seven months in Asia. Yes, decidedly, I must need a change. There are three places left for me to try, which one do you advise?" There was a bitter little laugh, but her expression was sweet, and her eyes twinkled as she glanced at me.
"I am glad I have three places to choose from," I said. "I was afraid you were not going to leave so many as that, and had already begun to plan "electric treatment" as a final refuge."
She laughed nervously, but I thought I saw signs of a mental change.
I had always found that I could do most with her by falling into her own moods of humor or merry satire upon her own condition or upon the various stages of medical ignorance and pretence into which we are often driven.
"Where are these three unhappy places that you have so shamelessly neglected? Was it done in malice? I sincerely hope, for their sakes, that it was not so bad as that--that it was a mere oversight on your part," I went on.
"Australia has been spared my presence so far through malice; the other two, through defective theology. I dislike the idea of one of them on account of the climate, and of the other, because of the stupid company," she said, with a droll a.s.sumption of perplexity; "so, you see, I can"t even hope for a pleasant change after death. Oh, my case is quite hopeless, I a.s.sure you, doctor; _quite!_" She laughed again.
I had her where I wanted her now. I thought by a little adroitness I might get, at least, a part of the truth.
"So you are really afraid to die, and yet think that you must," I said, bluntly.
She turned her great luminous eyes on me, and her lip curled slightly, with real scorn, before she forced upon her face her usual mask of good-hum-ored sarcasm.
"Afraid!" she exclaimed, "afraid to die! afraid of what, pray? I cannot imagine being afraid to die. It is _life_ I am afraid of. If I could only--" This last pa.s.sionately. She checked herself abruptly, and with an evident effort resumed her usual light air and tone. "But it does always seem so absurdly impossible to me, doctor, to hear grownup people talk about being afraid to die. It almost surprised me into talking seriously, a reprehensive habit I never allow myself. A luxury few can afford, you know. It skirts too closely the banks of Tragedy. One is safer on the high seas of Frivolity--don"t you think?"
"Much safer, no doubt, my child," said I, taking her hand, which was almost as cold and white as marble; "much safer from those deceived and confiding persons who prescribe "sulph. 12" for the broken heart and overwrought nerves of a little woman who tries bravely to fly her gay colors in the face of defeat and to whistle a tune at a grave."
I had called late, and we were sitting in the twilight, but I saw tears fall on her lap, and she did not withdraw her hand, which trembled violently.
I had touched the wound roughly--as I had determined to do--but, old man as I was, and used to the sight of suffering as I had been for years, I could restrain myself only by an effort from taking her in my arms and asking her to forget what I had said. She seemed so utterly shaken. We sat for some moment in perfect silence, except for her quick, smothered little sobs, and then she said, pa.s.sionately:
"Oh, my G.o.d! doctor, how did you know?" And then, with a flash of fear in her voice, "Who told you? No one has talked me over to you? No one has written to you?"