Pharos, The Egyptian: A Romance

With a deftness, and at the same time a tenderness I had never noticed in him before, he took her from me and placed her upon a sofa. Having done so, he stooped over her and commenced his examination. Thirty seconds had not elapsed before he turned fiercely on me again.

"You fool!" he cried, "are you mad? Lock that door this instant. This is more serious than I imagined. Do you know what it is?"

"How should I?" I answered in agony. "Tell me, tell me, can not you see how much I am suffering?"

I clutched him by the arm so tightly that he winced under it and had to exert his strength to throw me off.

"It is the plague," he answered, "and but for your folly in running away from me she would never have caught it. If she dies the blame will rest entirely with you."

But I scarcely heard him. The knowledge that my darling was the victim of the scourge that was ravaging all Europe drove me back against the wall faint and speechless with terror. "If she dies," he had said, and the words rang in my ears like a funeral knell. But she should not die. If any power in the world could save her, it should be found.

"What can I do?" I whispered hoarsely. "For pity's sake let me help in some way. She must not die, she shall not die!"

"In that case you had better bestir yourself," he said. "There is but one remedy, and that we must employ. Had it not been for your folly I should have it with me now. As it is, you must go out and search the town for it. Give me writing materials."

These were on a neighbouring table, and when I had put them before him he seized the pen and scrawled something upon a sheet of notepaper, then folding it, he handed it to me.

"Take that with all speed to a chemist," he said. "Tell him to be particularly careful that the drugs are fresh, and bring it back with you as soon as you can. In all probability you will have a difficulty in procuring it, but you must do so somewhere. Rest assured of this, that if she does not receive it within an hour nothing can possibly save her."

"I will be back in less than half that time," I answered, and hastened from the room.

From a man in the street I inquired the address of the nearest chemist, and, as soon as he had directed me, hastened thither as fast as my legs could carry me. Entering the shop, I threw the prescription upon the counter, and in my impatience could have struck the man for his slowness in picking it up. If his life had depended upon his deciphering it properly he could not have taken longer to read it. Before he had got to the end of it my impatience had reached boiling heat.

"Come, come," I said, "are you going to make it up or not? It is for an urgent case, and I have wasted ten minutes already."

The man glanced at the paper again, smoothed it out between his fat fingers, and shook his head until I thought his glasses would have dropped from his nose.

"I can not do it," he said at length. "Two of the drugs I do not keep in stock. Indeed, I do not know that I ever saw another prescription like it."

"Why did you not say so at once?" I cried angrily, and snatching the paper from his hand, I dashed madly out and along the pavement. At the end of the street was another shop, which I entered. On the door it was set forth that English, French and German were spoken there. I was not going to risk a waste of time on either of the two first, however, but opened upon the man in his own language. He was very small, with an unwholesome complexion, and was the possessor of a nose large enough to have entitled him to the warmest esteem of the great Napoleon. He took the prescription, read it through in a quarter of the time taken by the other man, and then retired behind his screen. Scarcely able to contain my delight at having at last been successful, I curbed my impatience as well as I could, examined all the articles displayed in the glass case upon the counter, fidgeted nervously with the india-rubber change mat, and when, at the end of several minutes, he had not made it up, was only prevented from going in search of him by his appearance before me once more.

"I am exceedingly sorry to say," he began, and directly he opened his mouth I knew that some fresh misfortune was in store for me, "that I can not make up the prescription for you at all. Of one of the drugs I remember once reading, but of the other I have never even heard. However, if – "

But before he could utter another word I had seized the paper and was out of the shop. This was the second time I had been fooled, and upward of half an hour, thirty precious minutes, had been wasted. Even then Valerie might be dying, and I was powerless to save her. Never in my life before had time seemed so precious. I stopped a passer-by and inquired the direction of the nearest chemist. He referred me to the shop I had just left; I stopped another, but he confessed himself a stranger in the city. At last, at my wit's end to know what to do, finding myself before the office of the steamship company I had visited that afternoon, I determined to go inside and make inquiries.

To my surprise, in place of the half dozen clerks who had stared at me only a few hours before, I found but one man, and before he had opened his lips I realized that he was drunk.

"Ha, ha!" he said, with a burst of tipsy laughter, "so you have come back again, my friend? Want to get a boat to take you to England, I suppose. Oh, of course you do. We know all about that. We're not as blind, I mean as blind drunk, as you suppose."

With that he lurched against the desk, and cannoned off it on to me. Then, having reached that stage of inebriation when music becomes a necessity, he leant against the wall and burst into song: —

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine,
Or leave a kiss within…

He had got no farther when I took him by the collar, and pushing him back against the wall, bumped his head against it until it is a wonder I did not fracture his skull.

"Hold your tongue, you drunken fool!" I said, feeling as if I could kill him where he stood, "and tell me where the man is who attended to me this afternoon."

The energy with which I had administered the punishment must have somewhat sobered the fellow, for he pulled himself together, and rubbing the back of his head with his hand asked me if I had heard the news.

"I have heard nothing," I cried. "What news do you mean?"

"Why, that the man you spoke to this afternoon is dead. He died of the plague within an hour after you were here, rolling on the floor, and making an awful mess of things. Then all the other fellows ran away. They didn't know there was a bottle and a half of brandy in the cupboard in the manager's room, but, bless your heart, I did, and now I'm not afraid of the plague. Don't you believe it!"

"Dead?" I cried, for I could scarcely credit that what he told me could be true. The man had seemed so well when I had seen him only a few hours before. However, I had no time to think of him.

"I want a chemist," I cried. "I must find one at once. Can you give me the address of one?"

"The first turning to the left," he cried, "and the third shop on the right; Dittmer is the name. But I say, you're looking precious white about the gills. Though you did treat me badly just now, I don't bear any malice, so you can have a drop of this if you like. There's enough here for two of us. You won't? Well, then, I will. A short life and a merry one's my motto, and here's to you, my buck."

Before he could have half filled his glass I had passed out of the office and was in the street he had mentioned. Drunk as he was, his information proved correct, and a chemist's shop, with the name of Dittmer over the door, was the third house on the right hand side. I entered and handed the prescription to the venerable-looking man I found behind the counter.

"I am afraid you will have some difficulty in getting this made up," he said after he had read it. "Two of the drugs are not in common use, and personally I do not keep them. Is the case an urgent one?"

"It's a matter of life and death," I answered. "All my happiness in life depends upon it. If you can not help me, can you direct me to any one who will? I assure you there is not a moment to be lost."

Evidently the man was touched by my anxiety. At any rate he went out of his way to do a kindly action, for which no amount of gratitude on my part will ever be able to repay him.

"I do not know anything about the merits of the prescription," he said, "but if these two drugs are necessary, I don't mind telling you that I think I know where I can procure them. I have an old friend, a quack, so the other chemists call him, who is always trying experiments. It is within the bounds of possibility he may have them. If you will wait here for a few minutes I'll run up to his house and see. It is only a few doors from here, and he is always at home at this hour."

"I will await only too willingly," I answered earnestly. "Heaven grant you may be successful!"

He said no more but ran out of the shop. While he was gone I paced up and down in a fever of impatience. Every minute seemed an hour, and as I looked at my watch and realized that if I wished to get back to the hotel within the time specified by Pharos I had only ten minutes in which to do it, I felt as if my heart would stop beating. In reality the man was not gone five minutes, and when he burst into the shop again he waved two bottles triumphantly above his head.

"There's not another man in Hamburg could have got them!" he cried with justifiable pride. "Now I can make it up for you."

Five minutes later he handed the prescription to me.

"I shall never be able to thank you sufficiently for your kindness," I said as I took it. "If I can get back with it in time you will have saved a life that I love more than my own. I do not know how to reward you, but if you will accept this and wear it as a souvenir of the service you have rendered me, I hope you will do so."

So saying, I took from my pocket my gold watch and chain and handed them across the counter to him. Then, without waiting for an expression of his gratitude, I passed into the street and, hailing a cab, bade the man drive me as fast as his horse could go to my hotel.

Reaching it, I paid him with the first coin I took from my pocket and ran upstairs. What my feelings were as I approached the room where I had left Pharos and Valerie together I must leave you to imagine. With a heart beating like a sledge-hammer I softly turned the handle of the door and stole in, scarcely daring to look in the direction of the sofa. However, I might have spared myself the pain, for neither Pharos nor Valerie were there, but just as I was wondering what could have become of them the former entered the room.

"Have you got it?" he inquired eagerly, his voice trembling with emotion.

"I have," I answered, and handed him the medicine. "Here it is. At one time I began to think I should have to come back without it."

"Another ten minutes and I can promise you you would have been too late," he answered. "I have carried her to her room and placed her upon her bed. You must remain here and endeavour to prevent any one suspecting what is the matter. If your medicine proves what I hope, she should be sleeping quietly in an hour's time, and on the high road to recovery in two. But remember this, if the people in this house receive any hint of what she is suffering from they will remove her to the hospital at once, and in that case, I pledge you my word, she will be dead before morning."

"You need have no fear on that score," I answered. "They shall hear nothing from me."

Thereupon he took his departure, and for the next hour I remained where I was, deriving what satisfaction I could from the assurance he had given me.

It was quite dark by the time Pharos returned.

"What news do you bring?" I inquired anxiously. "Why do you not tell me at once how she is? Can you not see how I am suffering?"