"It"s I that want Dr. Veiga"s opinion about you, and I must insist on having it. And what"s more, you know I"ve never cared for your friend Dr. Plott. He never seems to be interested. He scarcely listens to what you have to say. He scarcely examines you. He just makes you think your health is of no importance at all, and it doesn"t really matter whether you"re ill or well, and that you may get better or you mayn"t, and that he"ll humour you by sending you a bottle of something."
"Stuff!" said Mr. Prohack. "He"s a first-rate fellow. No infernal nonsense about _him!_ And what do _you_ know about Veiga? I should like to be informed."
"I met him at Mrs. Cunliff"s. He cured her of cancer."
"You told me Mrs. Cunliff hadn"t got cancer at all."
"Well, it was Dr. Veiga who found out she hadn"t, and stopped the operation just in time. She says he saved her life, and she"s quite right. He"s wonderful."
Mrs. Prohack was now sitting on the bed. She gazed at her husband"s features with acute apprehension and yet with persuasive grace.
"Oh! Arthur!" she murmured, "you are a worry to me!"
Mr. Prohack, not being an ordinary Englishman, knew himself beaten--for the second time that morning. He dared not trifle with his wife in her earnest, lofty mood.
"I bet you Veiga won"t come," said Mr. Prohack.
"He will come," said Mrs. Prohack blandly.
"How do you know?"
"Because he told me he"d come at once if ever I asked him. He"s a perfect dear."
"Oh! I know the sort!" Mr. Prohack said sarcastically. "And you"ll see the fee he"ll charge!"
"When it"s a question of health money doesn"t matter."
"It doesn"t matter when you"ve got the money. You"d never have dreamed of having Veiga this time yesterday. You wouldn"t even have sent for old Plott."
Mrs. Prohack merely kissed her husband again, with a kind of ineffable resignation. Then Machin came in with her breakfast, and said that Dr.
Veiga would be round shortly, and was told to telephone to the Treasury that her master was ill in bed.
"And what about my breakfast?" the victim enquired with irony. "Give me some of your egg."
"No, dearest, egg is the very last thing you should have with that colour."
"Well, if you"d like to know, I don"t want any breakfast. Couldn"t eat any."
"There you are!" Mrs. Prohack exclaimed triumphantly. "And yet you swear you aren"t ill! That just shows.... It will be quite the best thing for you not to take anything until Dr. Veiga"s been."
Mr. Prohack, helpless, examined the ceiling, and decided to go to the office in the afternoon. He tried to be unhappy but couldn"t. Eye was too funny, too delicious, too exquisitely and ingenuously "firm," too blissful in having him at her mercy, for him to be unhappy.... To say nothing of the hundred thousand pounds! And he knew that Eve also was secretly revelling in the hundred thousand pounds. Dr. Veiga was her first bite at it.
II
Considering that he was well on the way to being a fashionable physician, Dr. Veiga arrived with surprising prompt.i.tude. Mr. Prohack wondered what hold Eve had upon him and how she had acquired it. He was prejudiced against the fellow before he came into the bedroom, simply because Eve, on hearing the noise of a car and a doorbell, had hurried downstairs, and a considerable interval had elapsed between the doctor"s entrance into the house and his appearance at the bedside. Mr. Prohack guessed easily that those two had been plotting against him. Strange how Eve could be pa.s.sionately loyal and basely deceitful simultaneously! The two-faced creature led the doctor forward with a candid smile that partook equally of the smile of a guardian angel and the smile of a cherub. She was an unparalleled comedian.
Dr. Veiga was fattish and rather shabby; about sixty years of age. He spoke perfectly correct English with a marked foreign accent. His demeanour was bland, slightly familiar, philosophical and sympathetic.
Dr. Plott"s eyes would have said: "This is my thirteenth visit this morning, and I"ve eighteen more to do, and it"s all very tedious. Why _do_ you people let yourselves get ill--if it"s a fact that you really are ill? I don"t think you are, but I"ll see." Dr. Veiga"s eyes said: "How interesting your case is! You"ve had no luck this time. We must make the best of things; but also we must face the truth. G.o.d knows I don"t want to boast, but I expect I can put you right, with the help of your own strong commonsense."
Mr. Prohack, a connoisseur in human nature, noted the significances of the Veiga glance, but he suspected that there might also be something histrionic in it. Dr. Veiga examined heart, pulse, tongue. He tapped the torso. He asked many questions. Then he took an instrument out of a leather case which he carried, and fastened a strap round Mr. Prohack"s forearm and attached it to the instrument, and presently Mr. Prohack could feel the strong pulsations of the blood current in his arm.
"Dear, dear!" said Dr. Veiga. "175. Blood pressure too high. Much too high! Must get that down."
Eve looked as though the end of the world had been announced, and even Mr. Prohack had qualms. Ten minutes earlier Mr. Prohack had been a strong, healthy man a trifle unwell in a bedroom. He was suddenly transformed into a patient in a nursing-home.
"A little catarrh," said Dr. Veiga.
"I"ve got no catarrh," said Mr. Prohack, with conviction.
"Yes, yes. Catarrh of the stomach. Probably had it for years. The duodenum is obstructed. A little accident that easily happens."
He addressed himself as it were privately to Mrs. Prohack. "The duodenum is no thicker than that." He indicated the pencil with which he was already writing in a pocket-book. "We"ll get it right."
"What is the duodenum?" Mr. Prohack wanted to cry out. But he was too ashamed to ask. It was hardly conceivable that he, so wise, so prudent, had allowed over forty years to pa.s.s in total ignorance of this important item of his own body. He felt himself to be a bag full of disconcerting and dangerous mysteries. Or he might have expressed it that he had been smoking in criminal nonchalance for nearly half a century on the top of a powder magazine. He was deeply impressed by the rapidity and a.s.surance of the doctor"s diagnosis. It was wonderful that the queer fellow could in a few minutes single out an obscure organ no bigger than a pencil and say: "There is the ill." The fellow might be a quack, but sometimes quacks were men of genius. His shame and his alarm quickly vanished under the doctor"s rea.s.suring and bland manner. So much so that when Dr. Veiga had written out a prescription, Mr. Prohack said lightly:
"I suppose I can get up, though."
To which Dr. Veiga amiably replied:
"I shall leave that to you. Perhaps if I tell you you"ll be lucky if you don"t have jaundice...! But I think you _will_ be lucky. I"ll try to look in again this afternoon."
These last words staggered both Mr. and Mrs. Prohack.
"I"ve been expecting this for years. I knew it would come." Mrs. Prohack breathed tragically.
And even Mr. Prohack reflected aghast:
"My G.o.d! Doctor calling twice a day!"
True, "duodenum" was a terrible word.
Mrs. Prohack gazed at Dr. Veiga as at a high priest, and waited to be vouchsafed a further message.
"Anyhow, if I find it impossible to call, I"ll telephone in any case,"
said Dr. Veiga.
Some slight solace in this!
Mrs. Prohack, like an acolyte, personally attended the high priest as far as the street, listening with acute attention to his recommendations. When she returned she had put on a carefully bright face. Evidently she had decided, or had been told, that cheerfulness was essential to ward off jaundice.
"Now that"s what I _call_ a doctor," said she. "To think of your friend Plott...! I"ve telephoned for a messenger boy to go to the chemist"s."
"You"re at liberty to call the man a doctor," answered Mr. Prohack. "And I"m at liberty to call him a fine character actor."