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

Mr. Crowe, under the glare of his enemy’s cruel eye, visibly winced; his face paled, and Ringrose could see that the arrow had gone home. The physiologist beckoned to a waiter, gave his number, paid his bill to the boy who came round for the money, picked up his little brown-paper parcels, and went off.

Mr. Ringrose felt sure that one murderer had lunched that day in decent company.

Now Mr. Mole had long been working to supplant his chief. He aimed at nothing less than the chair of physiology.

In a very short time things became so unpleasant for Mr. Crowe, that he was fain to resign his appointment as surgeon to the hospital, though for the present he retained his lectureship at the medical school.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE BACILLUS OF LOVE

Where both deliberate the love is slight.
Who ever loved that love not at first sight?

    Marlowe.

Love and joy are torches lit
From altar-fires of sacrifice.

    – Coventry Patmore.

Elsworth had lived all this time hitherto in Spain without falling in love; – quite a phenomenal attitude for a healthy young fellow in a land like this, where the women’s eyes, their figures, and incomparable grace, usually make havoc with the men’s hearts. But as yet he had escaped the notice of Cupid, or perhaps the little god was disgusted with his peculiar theories on the subject, and had let him alone out of contempt. Our hero held that love was a kind of zymotic disease, and, like its congeners, could only be caught where there was a predisposition or suitable nidus in the patient. He thought it was very like hydrophobia in some respects, and might be compared to small pox in others. The best way to minimise its attacks was to get vaccinated in early life. You could have a mild “cultivation” of the bacillus. He thought he had undergone this business with Linda, and attributed his immunity to that cause. Now the “protection” of the aforesaid inoculation was very severely tried when Mildred appeared on the scene. Mildred was so sweet and angelic, so kindred in every way to his ideal of what a perfect woman should be, that he had to confess to himself that, impossible as it was for him to descend to the weakness of falling in love, nothing possibly could be more delightful than to have Mildred always near him. It will be seen that our young doctor had very imperfectly studied all the phases which his disorder of love could assume. Far more capable physicians in this branch of practice were his gipsy friends. The Gitanos at once detected that he was suffering from the malady in one of its acutest forms. No man should ever doctor himself; he cannot diagnose properly; it is as unwise as to be one’s own lawyer. It was remarked that he had lost his gaiety, was absorbed in his own thoughts, and spoke often abstractedly, sighed frequently, and had a “far-off look” about his eyes which showed them that his heart was not at Granada.

These acute observers knew all about the beautiful Englishwoman who had met their friend, and the guide told them a good deal of his own impressions on the matter. They all agreed that he was in love. At last our hero was fain to confess there was truth in the poet’s lines, that

“In the arithmetic of life,
The smallest unit is a pair.”

He tried hard to shake it off. Somebody says (but we do not believe him) that by a strong effort of will, a man can rid himself of hydrophobia, and even preach eloquent sermons whilst suffering from Asiatic cholera. It may be so. The martyrs have done more, if the Bollandists are to be credited. But putting all such exceptional cases on one side, there is no denying that this love business is a very subtle and insidious malady, with very pronounced and persistent symptoms. They say seeds found in ancient mummies have retained their vitality to the present day. Love germs are hard to kill also. You cannot detect them by the microscope, or destroy them by cold or heat. Cupid uses poisoned darts. Prophylaxis? There is none except, perhaps, books and hard study, though even these have been known to fail. Still, in the present state of medical science, we must be thankful for small mercies.

Now, with all respect to Love “cultivations,” as Pasteur would call them, there is as much uncertainty about the business as in uglier maladies. For think what Love is – inoculation from a well-aimed bolt of Cupid. Now Cupid hits whom he wills, and you cannot hire the god by the day to go shooting with you; you cannot indicate his mark, direct his aim, or choose his weapon. He will not lend his bow and arrows, neither can he be wooed by cajolery nor coaxed by prayer. He is the most independent little deity, and cares for nothing but having his own sweet will upon us mortals. What he is chiefly to be praised for is the absence of favouritism and perfect impartiality which he always shows. None ever bribed him, none ever clad himself in panoply impervious to his darts. You may be hit before your beard has downed your chin with faintest bloom. You may go shot free till you are grey and bent, and then have to plaster up your hurt when you should be composing your epitaph, like the poor old queen in Browning’s play.

Love is like inspiration; it is not to be commanded, bought, or sold, not even given when deserved. The most unworthy are often most favoured, and the faithful suppliants at the capricious god’s gates often go empty away. You may go “far from the madding crowd,” and hide yourself in the desert. You may bury yourself in a cave in the Thebaid, as the hermits of Egypt did, and you will be hit; while you might have been unscathed in the assemblies of Beauty. Ah, the lives of the Thaumaturgists tell us nothing about all this! Like the testimonials to the quack medicines, we know all about the cures, but what about the failures? Do you think St. Simeon Stylites, atop of his pillar, was out of reach of that bow? Not he! Is he not an ungrateful archer? Does he not come creeping to our doors with wet wings and cold body, craving our warmth and food, and then transfix us? That is just his way, the rogue. “All is fair in love and war,” he cries; and so he transfixed our hero, and wonderful to relate on this occasion benevolently hit our heroine too – double violence. He is not always in this humour. That is the worst of it! When maid and swain are wounded at once, Romeo and Juliet like, where is the harm, though poison and the tomb follow with winged feet? To have loved so is worth the cost. The mischief of it is, when one truly loves, and the other thinks perhaps she loves, and is not hit at all. That is just where all the misery comes, for you can’t catch love like the cholera, by frightening yourself into it. You must have the true vaccine or you won’t get the vesicle. Is not that a horrible simile? Does Cupid poison his darts, and is it a disease he produces after all, and is he a doctor? Hush! The euphemism for the Erinnyes was Eumenides, remember. Do not let us draw their attention by needless plain speaking.

So when Mildred had departed from Granada, and Elsworth was left alone and had time to examine his hurt, he found it was deep. Things were not the same to him as before that day when he rushed out to drive away the rude children who were annoying her. “Ah, blessed children,” he would often say, “you opened heaven to me!”

“O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, —
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?”

Here in this out-of-the-way corner of civilization, then, he had been unearthed, and it was no longer possible to shut himself from the observation of his friends and relatives; he would soon have to return to society and explain his conduct.

He was fain to confess that his energies had long demanded a wider field for their exercise. He had done a certain amount of work which would last. Tho seed sown must bear fruit some day, and in the voluntary retirement he had embraced, he had found a strong internal felicity which could have come to him in no other way. A growing conviction took hold of him that he was being prepared, by an unseen Hand, for some great work which would require all that self-command, that conviction of right, that neglect of selfish ease, which had come to him during these Spanish days. He had found that in the lowest of our race, there is lying dormant that spark of the Divine essence which needs but the call of sympathy to awaken. With these poor folk he had spent some of the happiest years of his life, among them had found many real friends, and had learned in their company a thousand things to enable him to benefit mankind.

CHAPTER XLIII.

DR. SONES SUCCEEDS

I have no title to aspire,
Yet when you sink I seem the higher.

    – Swift

The greatest professor and proficient in any science loves it not so sincerely as to be fully pleased with any finer effort than he can himself produce.

    – Lacon.

Dr. Sones had pursued his investigations till he had made the great discovery of a test for the active principle of the poisonous fungi. He clearly demonstrated that the poison of the deadly Russian fungus was identical with that absorbed by the handkerchiefs which Mrs. Crowe’s maid had given to Mr. Mole. Here then was the detection of a horrible crime! He of course lost no time in communicating these important results to Mr. Mole, whose triumph was complete. They held long deliberation as to what was to be done. In the minds of both these experts there was no doubt of the guilt of Mr. Crowe; but was it advisable to bring his guilt home to him? They decided it was not possible, nor was it expedient even were it in their power. But Mr. Mole determined to do one thing that would test the matter pretty closely. He wrote a learned and exhaustive paper for the Medical Society of the Hospital on “The Physiological and Chemical Tests of the Poisonous Principles of Fungi,” and read it. Mr. Crowe, who was the chairman of the Society, wrote, an hour or two before the meeting, that “important engagements would prevent him having the extreme pleasure of being present that evening to hear Mr. Mole’s deeply interesting paper.”

Dr. Wilson occupied his place, and so highly did he and the rest of the staff and students present think of the monograph that it was ordered to be printed and circulated at the Society’s expense. Mr. Mole received the warm congratulations of the audience, and it was felt that he had conferred honour on his alma mater by his original research.

The next morning, when Mr. Crowe heard the report of the evening’s work – the nature of the long course of investigations, the Russian treatise which had fallen so strangely into his assistant’s hands, the discovery of the tests and the other points that indicated, as by the finger of an avenging angel, his guilt and downfall – he knew Mole was on his track, knew that he was in his power, and that his doom had come. He was alone with his crime; his murdered wife was avenged. He turned from his pupils, who eagerly questioned him as to his opinion on this and the other points of Mole’s paper, went into his laboratory, seized a bottle of prussic acid, drank its contents, and was a corpse before his class had left the lecture theatre. Everybody attributed the awful tragedy to jealousy of Mole’s success. Two men knew the secret, and kept it. Two women guessed it, and told their suspicions. Gradually, like a bad vapour spread by the law of diffusion of gases, all the world had an inkling of the crime. But Mole and Sones held their peace; and when the former was elected to the vacant chair of physiology at St. Bernard’s, there was only one man besides the occupier of the post who knew the steps by which it had been reached.

Mr. Mole proved a failure; his great monograph was all the original work he ever did, and he lived a poor and obscure man. He never married Janet, after all, so that her Egyptian gentleman misled her no less than the little physiologist. Dr. Sones still occupies his old quarters, and now and then gets a thrill of ecstatic delight as he makes some new discovery in his favourite study; and though he does not acquire a fortune, he gets what he values more – a little fame from time to time in the chemical journals of Europe. His good sister still befriends his poor clients; and even his Board of Guardians acknowledges that, in the medical officer of the south ward of their parish and his estimable sister, they have full value for the salary they pay their doctor. This has actually been admitted at the Board, and nobody opposed it – a fact going far to prove that the officer must either be a very good or an exceedingly bad one.

* * * * *

When Mildred returned to England, she found amongst her correspondence a prospectus of the new hospital and nursing home, with a note from Sister Agnes, asking her to visit the little colony and hospital on her return. Mildred seemed to see in all this the hand of Providence pointing her future course. Was it not strange that her meeting with Elsworth, and the history of his work, should have aroused her interest in, and awakened a desire to promote a similar scheme on a large scale, and immediately on her return to find that the same idea had occurred to her good friend, Sister Agnes? The prospectus declared that the new hospital scheme had proved perfectly feasible, all that was wanting was the necessary money to develop and extend it. For this object a drawing-room meeting was to be held in Kensington Gore in a few days, and Sister Agnes earnestly besought her presence. Mildred was not long in finding her way down to the East End, and assuring her friends at Nightingale Home of her interest in the good work they had so well begun. She paid such frequent visits that at last Aunt Janet jokingly remarked that she fully expected soon to see her don the habit of a sisterhood, unless perchance anybody should come along to forbid the sacrifice.

As she said this, she held up a letter which she had received that morning from Elsworth, announcing his intention to return at once to England, inasmuch as the news had reached him from his men of business, that his father, Major Elsworth, was dead, he having been seized with a fit of apoplexy while engaged at a meeting of the Theosophical Society of Benares.

When Elsworth received the news of his father’s death, he felt that he could no longer remain in Spain. Apart from the necessity of visiting England on business, he yearned to be nearer his newly found friends. Poor fellow, he felt the need of “congenial sympathy” – at least, so he said to himself. The death of his father and the thoughts of Mildred (and Aunt Janet) combined to make him think that gipsies and cholera patients did not completely fill the void in his heart. Aunt Janet had corresponded with him, and spoke in such terms of Mildred that he would have been foolish not to take encouragement from her tone and follow up his advantage. Aunt Janet was evidently developing into a match-maker. She was, in fact, so impressed with Elsworth that, highly as she valued Mildred, she did not consider her a whit too good for such a man. A girl’s women-folk usually think no man is good enough to marry her. Very likely they are right; still, there are some Elsworths yet in the world.

Six months after Mildred’s visit to Granada, Elsworth, the exile, returned to London. His first visit was to St. Bernard’s. Having entered as a perpetual student, he had the right to all the advantages of the hospital for life. He saw the warden and several of the staff, explained the reasons of his absence, and requested that his name might at once be put down for the appointments he had the right to hold. As it happened, there was a vacant house-physicianship just then at his service, and, as he was very popular at the place, he went into residence almost at once.

It was not long before he looked up Aunt Janet and Mildred. That was the arrangement on his surface mind – his deeper soul said “Mildred and Aunt Janet,” but he did not permit this to be audible to his own ears. He feared she was too high for him; her wealth had placed a barrier between her and his striving. Still, he could call upon Aunt Janet, and that would be something towards keeping up the acquaintance with Mildred.

As soon as it became known that Elsworth had turned up again, he had visits from many old friends. Alas! some of his former acquaintances were dead; others had gone hopelessly to the dogs. Many were in good practice – some in London, others in the country. A few had spent the interval in going backwards and forward as surgeons in ships trading to the Antipodes: but there were at least a dozen fellows who, having failed to pass any of their examinations, were still hanging about the hospital, which was heartily ashamed of them, while they divided their time impartially between the dissecting-room and the neighbouring taverns. Of course, it was not to many of these Elsworth told the story of his going, but it soon oozed out. Was he chaffed? Not the least. The lowest mind, the most besotted intellect admires and respects the genuine conversion of a sinner, even as the angels rejoice at the fact. Not that Elsworth would now, in the strength he had imbibed from his long communion with God, have cared in the least for the jeers of these men. He was quite strong enough now to

“Take temptation by the head and hair.”

He was very popular with all the staff, but still more with the patients and the nurses; not quite so popular with the students. They might tax his energies to the utmost; he never tired of helping them to learn all they could learn honestly and fairly, but with him it was patient first and pupils next; no tricks were played upon the occupants of any beds in his wards. He had been just two months in his post as resident physician, when the secretary of the hospital sent for him to his office, to ask him if he would like to take a rather valuable appointment as resident surgeon to the Nightingale Hospital. He had been told by Miss Mildred Lee that he was just the man they wanted for their new charity.

The secretary was compelled to give the invitation himself, as the staff would not even recognise the place. When the doctors heard of the new hospital, they poured their scorn and contempt upon it. “The newest fad of the faddists;” “the humanitarian craze of the shrieking sisterhood;” “the college of all the antis,” and the like complimentary epithets were bestowed upon it.

Of course none of them would give it the least of their countenance or support, and all would have dealt hardly with any friends who helped it.

Elsworth thought he would like this position above all things, and lost no time in calling upon Mildred for further particulars. He learned from Aunt Janet that her niece had absolutely made over the great bulk of her fortune to the trustees of the new buildings, and had besides interested some wealthy friends who rendered valuable assistance; and that, so convinced were they that he was the man for the post of medical superintendent, that they begged him to accept it, with the stipend of £500 a year. Elsworth did not hesitate, but accepting the offer at once, set to work to elaborate a scheme for the efficient conduct of an institution so consonant with his ideal of what a true hospital should be.

At first it was not proposed to establish a Medical School, as it would involve too great an expenditure for their present means. But such an institution would ultimately be included in the work proposed, as they considered that it was perfectly possible efficiently to educate men for the medical profession, if they were of worthy material, without entailing suffering, shame, or loss on man, woman, or child.

Of course Aunt Janet knew perfectly well that Mildred and Elsworth loved each other, though neither had given her any real cause for speaking on the subject. The great difficulty was the heiress’ wealth; to a man of Elsworth’s principle this would ever prove a barrier to any avowal of his passion. He would have hidden his love to his life’s end, sooner than be suspected of designs upon her fortune. By the death of his father, he was in a position to maintain a wife in a sufficient luxury, for the Major had left him a very handsome provision, but this was far below what he considered enough for Mildred. When, however, her niece had finally disburdened herself of the greater portion of her golden encumbrance, Aunt Janet thought that as an equilibrium was more nearly approached, he might be encouraged a little; and she did not hesitate to let him know he might avow himself with some prospect of success.

CHAPTER XLIV.