St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student

Mildred thought of some new bath experiments which her father had tried to prevent at St. Bernard’s; and could not help saying, with a tinge of maliciousness, “There are some uses of the bath which I think heretical, and would punish as severely as ever did Philip the Second.”

Mr. Crowe remembered his old battle with her father on this question, but prudently declined to discuss medical treatment with any one but a doctor. Mildred, seeing he was getting huffy, did not press her point further. The physiologist was very severe on the old and cherished institutions of Catholic Spain, and did only partial justice to the authors of so many mistakes, whilst he was quite blind to the horrors being perpetrated in the name of Science now, and which a more civilized age, let us hope, will brand with equal infamy.

“How long do you propose to stay here?” asked Mr. Crowe.

“Really, I find it hard to leave; but we must not extend our visit beyond another day or two. What have we still to explore?”

“You don’t want to make any ascent of the Sierra Nevada, do you?”

“Oh, no; I fear it is too fatiguing. My aunt is not equal to camping out in the snow for a night, and I should not like to leave her. But we must visit the gipsy quarter; I am told it was much more interesting than that at Seville.”

“I have not explored it, but shall be glad to do so. Shall we go to-day? I saw Rico, the gipsy king, yesterday, and he was anxious to do the honours of the colony, and make our visit pleasant.”

“Very well, then. My aunt is anxious to go, I know. Will you arrange it all for us?”

“Certainly. They say there is some risk of annoyance; but if you are not very fastidious, I dare say it is nothing very serious.”

Mildred declared that she wanted to see everything that was Spanish, and had not crossed the Pyrenees to be stopped by trifles. So an expedition to the Sacro Monte was arranged for the next day, and the party, with a trustworthy guide, took a carriage for the trip.

* * * * *

The hill of the Albayzin was steep, and the horses not being equal to their work, they made the rest of the ascent on foot, and soon reached the singular region of the Zincali. It was strangely unlike anything else in Europe, and the ladies being anxious to acquaint themselves with the mode of life peculiar to this tribe, went into many of the open grottoes, of course accompanied by the guide. This being one of the show places of the city, the inhabitants are used to visitors, but they often rob and sometimes behave very badly to them. Wandering down the alleys and maze-like turnings amongst the hills, observing the curious trades followed by the bronzed cave-dwellers, they became separated from their guide, who was engaged with the gentlemen in a distant cavern, explaining some of the methods adopted by the gipsies when they want to improve the appearance of a horse they have to sell. Suddenly they were surrounded by a crowd of half-naked, vociferating children, handsome as those of Murillo’s pictures, but rather alarming in their boisterous behaviour, tugging at their dresses, cutting wild and unpleasant capers, and demanding money on every hand. Missing the turning by which they had entered the labyrinth, they were nervous and annoyed with themselves for slipping away from their friends, when suddenly the noisy rabble melted away as if by magic, as a tall young man in Spanish dress came into the lane, and called angrily to the little imps in their own lingo. The young scaramouches at once made off, and the Englishman, apologising with an easy grace for the rudeness of the children, volunteered to escort the ladies to their party. The shortest way was through a patch of garden, and the walk gave the ladies the opportunity of thanking their protector, who soon found the gentlemen and their guide.

Mildred felt certain that she had met the young man before, though it seemed very improbable; but when they reached Mr. Crowe, he at once exclaimed, “Mr. Elsworth, I declare!” As Mr. Crowe had been Elsworth’s physiological teacher at the hospital, it was natural he should easily recognise him. The ladies, of course, had not the same intimate knowledge of him, though they knew of his mysterious disappearance from London. Mildred had not seen him since the day they had first met at a picnic which her father gave to his students at their country place on the Surrey Downs. They had been introduced some months previously; but on that occasion, while showing him the points of interest round the house and grounds, she had been favourably impressed by the earnestness of his interest in many things in which she delighted, and had often confessed to herself that if she should ever be weak enough to bother herself about man in the concrete, it would be somebody very much like Elsworth who would interest her. He knew all her favourite books, and her tastes in poetry coincided with his own. He was something of a Shelley and a Browning enthusiast; and held by Ruskin and Emerson, proving by his criticism of their works how deep a hold their ideas had taken of him. They had talked much that day of these things, and she recalled, as she now met him again after his long absence, the time when they had so long discussed themes congenial to them both. When he disappeared she had been painfully anxious to learn the causes which could have driven so promising a young man from his work and friends, and had speculated deeply as to what could have befallen him. She had never ceased to hope that one day he might turn up again. And here he was, and she had discovered him! Their eyes met, in an instant each recognised the other, and in that glance each told the other that the meeting was of moment to him and her.

“Mr. Elsworth, I was sure!” she exclaimed.

“And Miss Lee, of course!” said he.

Aunt Janet had met, but did not recall the handsome man who had just done them so grateful a service. She was soon enlightened however.

“Auntie dear, you remember Mr. Elsworth who used to visit us, and who alarmed us all so much by going away and leaving no address, making us all wonder what could have become of him?”

Auntie remembered all in a moment; and as quickly reflected with a woman’s instinct that perhaps their kind friend would not thank them for thus unearthing him, which they had literally done by drawing him from the gipsies’ cave. “Mr. Elsworth will, I am sure, forgive us,” she said, without embarrassment, “for inadvertently trespassing upon his retirement, and he may rest assured we will not break the secret we have unwittingly discovered.”

“Oh, for that matter,” said he, as they turned into a field planted thickly with prickly pears, and shaded by olives, “you have but precipitated what would have come to pass very soon, for I had resolved to return.” He had noticed Mildred’s deep mourning, but he had no knowledge of her father’s death. He had immediately, on recognising her, remarked a great alteration in her features. True, it was six years since they had last met; but he had not forgotten, amid the hosts of beautiful faces which he had since seen, those bright eyes and the face free from all anxiety or trace of melancholy which had fixed themselves upon his memory. She was more beautiful now, but there was not the sparkling playfulness of the eye, nor the light-hearted glow in the features; she was more like our Lady of Sorrows whom he had seen above so many Spanish altars, than the merry, laughing maiden of his student days. “You are not quite the Miss Lee of the picnic, if you will forgive me saying so. Have you not passed through some great anxiety or trial?”

“Did you not know I had lost my father? Do you get no English newspapers here?”

“I do not see them often. I have so much to occupy me here that I am unpatriotic enough to confess that I have lost much of my interest in the affairs of my own country.”

“We must hear your story, Mr. Elsworth,” said Aunt Janet, “for there must be a most romantic one to tell, I am thinking. You are more Spanish now than English, and we anticipate quite a revelation of the real life of the people we mix with, but do not in the least understand.”

“Here are the carriages,” said Dr. Graves, who had walked on with Mr. Crowe a little in advance.

Dr. Graves and Mr. Crowe expressed their regret for neglecting the ladies. It was, in fact, a risky neighbourhood; and as they had been warned that they might suffer annoyance if they got away from their guide, they could only blame themselves.

Mr. Crowe was not very cordial in his manner towards Elsworth. Dr. Graves was courteous enough in a formal sort of way. He had known his father; and with a fashionable physician’s worldly wisdom made it a rule never to make an enemy of anybody if he could help it, but to be on his best behaviour to all the world.

“You have dropped from the clouds, Mr. Elsworth,” said he.

“Or sprung from the earth, rather,” said Mr. Crowe.

Elsworth knew Crowe did not like him. They had never quite got on together since he neglected to attend his experimental physiology class which met at church time on Sunday mornings in his own private laboratory – the chamber of horrors it was called. He could never bring himself to do so.

“Neither a fall nor a rise,” rejoined Elsworth, quietly; “nothing but a very matter-of-fact story of disgust with the noisy world of men, and a relish for a sojourn in the wilderness for study and meditation. Not quite without precedent in the history of civilisation, eh, Mr. Crowe?”

“Well, friend, I always said that a man who refused to learn practical physiology was a ‘heathen man and a publican,’ so I am surprised at nothing that has happened to you.”

“Is the evisceration of a living cat the passport to all the Beatitudes with you, Mr. Crowe?” asked Miss Lee, in a rather contemptuous manner.

“Symbolically, for a medical man, yes,” said he, “as implying the true scientific mind.”

The ladies had now re-entered their carriage, and warmly thanking Elsworth for his assistance, and expressing their delight at having discovered him, like Stanley finding Livingstone, they ended by begging that he would join them at dinner that day at their hotel. He declared his readiness to do so, and bowing with all the dignity and grace of a real Spaniard, he turned and left them.

The guide who had taken the party to the gipsy quarter knew and saluted Elsworth, and when he had taken his place beside the coachman, turning to the party, said, “That gentleman is the friend of all the poor in Granada. The gipsies call him their English king; he has lived here several years. When the people are sick he attends them, for he is a clever doctor; he takes no money from anybody, but he gives away a great deal to the poor. He can go amongst the worst people unmolested. Where the priest goes, he can go – to brigands, to thieves, to all the gipsies everywhere. He can travel alone over the mountains where none of us could go safely without an escort. He is a good man – a saint I ought to have said.”

“Why does he stay so long in Granada?” asked Mildred.

“Oh, he is studying the language and the manners and customs of the gipsies; he has a printing press, and he prints books to give them. He has a school, and he teaches their children. He is writing, they say, a great work on the origin and the life of the Spanish gipsies; but we hear he is going back soon to his own country. He had a hospital down in the city for the cholera patients last year, and has been decorated by the king for his services in the epidemic. There will be many tears when he leaves us, señora.”

The exile dined with his friends at the hotel, and enlightened them all on many points of interest which a mere tourist would be certain to miss. Every one noticed the change in Elsworth. Even Mr. Crowe, with his hard, unsympathetic soul, could not help seeing that in him was a renewed man, “one who had been set apart by Nature (as he expressed it to his colleague afterwards) for some great work.” Mildred and Aunt Janet saw that here was a man called to be an apostle; called, like the men of Galilee, from their nets and money tables, to serve the highest purposes of God; and they longed to hear the story they knew he must have to tell. After dinner the ladies contrived to have a chat with him, while Mr. Crowe and Dr. Graves were walking on the terrace smoking. To no one had he spoken, during these years of retirement, of the causes which had led him away from his haunts and profession; but these sweet women, with their sympathy which invited his confidence, soon heard his story; and in listening to it Mildred felt as Desdemona when Othello told his own; and listening, loved. Here, she thought, is a man with a heart and a conscience! All her life had been spent amongst selfish seekers after fame, wealth, or the amusements of life; men who cared not whom they overthrew could they but climb themselves; men of genius, who cared no more for the troubles of their fellowmen than the heartless libertines for the victims of their pleasures. She remembered Moore’s lines: —

“Out on the craft – I’d rather be
One of those hinds that round me tread,
With just enough of sense to see
The noon-day sun that’s o’er my head, —
Than thou, with high-built genius cursed,
That hath no heart for its foundation,
Be all, at once, that’s brightest, worst,
Sublimest, meanest in creation!”

Here was a man who had left all and followed his Master; not as a missionary sent out by a society, with all the prestige and protection of his Church behind him, but who went forth to save his own soul and aid his brother man. This was devotion, true self-sacrifice, of which this age seems almost to have lost the idea. One cannot give a cup of cold water now-a-days to a thirsty child unless at the bidding of a committee. Our charity is done to order and by deputy. Elsworth’s way of going to work was like that of an early Christian, and savoured of real heroism; and women love heroes, because every woman has the germ of heroism in her own heart, and self-sacrifice is of her nature.

Mildred had found her ideal man. They talked of many things, but most of his hospital down in the city, and the next day they all went to see it, and many other of the charitable agencies of the town.

Of course Mr. Crowe was huffy and upset at the meeting, and at the reception which the ladies gave to the handsome young fellow whom they had discovered. He was jealous, too; for Mildred did not conceal the interest she felt in all that was shown her, and Mr. Crowe could not scoff down the good works of which he had evidence that day, though he tried hard to make game of any attempt to Christianize the gipsies, and protested it was a great pity to waste so many opportunities of investigating cholera germs and inoculations in such a favourable field.

Mildred set him down when he spoke contemptuously of Elsworth’s Gitano friends.

“Now, Mr. Crowe, you surprise me, as a deep student of natural phenomena, to hear you talk so. Don’t you know —

‘No creature’s made so mean
But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,
Its supreme worth’?”

Mr. Crowe did not think the game was worth the candle; besides, it would spoil the artists’ chances to civilize the gipsies.