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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Doctor Therne, by H. Rider Haggard
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Doctor Therne
+
+Author: H. Rider Haggard
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2002 [eBook #5764]
+[Most recently updated: May 11, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: John Bickers, Dagny and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR THERNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Doctor Therne
+
+by H. Rider Haggard
+
+
+Contents
+
+ AUTHOR’S NOTE 
+ CHAPTER I. THE DILIGENCE
+ CHAPTER II. THE HACIENDA
+ CHAPTER III. SIR JOHN BELL
+ CHAPTER IV. STEPHEN STRONG GOES BAIL
+ CHAPTER V. THE TRIAL
+ CHAPTER VI. THE GATE OF DARKNESS
+ CHAPTER VII. CROSSING THE RUBICON
+ CHAPTER VIII. BRAVO THE A.V.’S
+ CHAPTER IX. FORTUNE
+ CHAPTER X. JANE MEETS DR. MERCHISON
+ CHAPTER XI. THE COMING OF THE RED-HEADED MAN
+ CHAPTER XII. THE SHADOW OF PESTILENCE
+ CHAPTER XIII. HARVEST
+
+
+DEDICATED In all sincerity
+(but without permission)
+to the
+MEMBERS OF THE JENNER SOCIETY
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR’S NOTE
+
+
+Some months since the leaders of the Government dismayed their
+supporters and astonished the world by a sudden surrender to the
+clamour of the anti-vaccinationists. In the space of a single evening,
+with a marvellous versatility, they threw to the agitators the
+ascertained results of generations of the medical faculty, the report
+of a Royal Commission, what are understood to be their own convictions,
+and the President of the Local Government Board. After one ineffectual
+fight the House of Lords answered to the whip, and, under the guise of
+a “graceful concession,” the health of the country was given without
+appeal into the hand of the “Conscientious Objector.”
+
+In his perplexity it has occurred to an observer of these events—as a
+person who in other lands has seen and learned something of the ravages
+of smallpox among the unvaccinated—to try to forecast their natural
+and, in the view of many, their almost certain end. Hence these pages
+from the life history of the pitiable, but unfortunate Dr. Therne.[*]
+_Absit omen!_ May the prophecy be falsified! But, on the other hand, it
+may not. Some who are very competent to judge say that it will not;
+that, on the contrary, this strange paralysis of “the most powerful
+ministry of the generation” must result hereafter in much terror, and
+in the sacrifice of innocent lives.
+
+[*] It need hardly be explained that Dr. Therne himself is a character
+convenient to the dramatic purpose of the story, and in no way intended
+to be taken as a type of anti-vaccinationist medical men, who are, the
+author believes, as conscientious in principle as they are select in
+number.
+
+
+The importance of the issue to those helpless children from whom the
+State has thus withdrawn its shield, is this writer’s excuse for
+inviting the public to interest itself in a medical tale. As for the
+moral, each reader can fashion it to his fancy.
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR THERNE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE DILIGENCE
+
+
+James Therne is not my real name, for why should I publish it to the
+world? A year or two ago it was famous—or infamous—enough, but in that
+time many things have happened. There has been a war, a continental
+revolution, two scandals of world-wide celebrity, one moral and the
+other financial, and, to come to events that interest me particularly
+as a doctor, an epidemic of Asiatic plague in Italy and France, and,
+stranger still, an outbreak of the mediaeval grain sickness, which is
+believed to have carried off 20,000 people in Russia and German Poland,
+consequent, I have no doubt, upon the wet season and poor rye harvest
+in those countries.
+
+These occurrences and others are more than enough to turn the public
+mind from the recollection of the appalling smallpox epidemic that
+passed over England last autumn two years, of which the first fury
+broke upon the city of Dunchester, my native place, that for many years
+I had the honour to represent in Parliament. The population of
+Dunchester, it is true, is smaller by over five thousand souls, and
+many of those who survive are not so good-looking as they were, but the
+gap is easily filled and pock-marks are not hereditary. Also, such a
+horror will never happen again, for now the law of compulsory
+vaccination is strong enough! Only the dead have cause of complaint,
+those who were cut off from the world and despatched hot-foot whither
+we see not. Myself I am certain of nothing; I know too much about the
+brain and body to have much faith in the soul, and I pray to God that I
+may be right. Ah! there it comes in. If a God, why not the rest, and
+who shall say there is no God? Somehow it seems to me that more than
+once in my life I have seen His Finger.
+
+Yet I pray that I am right, for if I am wrong what a welcome awaits me
+yonder when grief and chloral and that “slight weakness of the heart”
+have done their work.
+
+Yes—five thousand of them or more in Dunchester alone, and, making
+every allowance, I suppose that in this one city there were very many
+of these—young people mostly—who owed their deaths to me, since it was
+my persuasion, my eloquent arguments, working upon the minds of their
+prejudiced and credulous elders, that surely, if indirectly, brought
+their doom upon them. “A doctor is not infallible, he may make
+mistakes.” Quite so, and if a mistake of his should kill a few
+thousands, why, that is the act of God (or of Fate) working through his
+blindness. But if it does not happen to have been a mistake, if, for
+instance, all those dead, should they still live in any place or shape,
+could say to me, “James Therne, you are the murderer of our bodies,
+since, for your own ends, you taught us that which you knew _not_ to be
+the truth.”
+
+How then? I ask. So—let them say it if they will. Let all that great
+cloud of witnesses compass me about, lads and maidens, children and
+infants, whose bones cumber the churchyards yonder in Dunchester. I
+defy them, for it is done and cannot be undone. Yet, in their company
+are two whose eyes I dread to meet: Jane, my daughter, whose life was
+sacrificed through me, and Ernest Merchison, her lover, who went to
+seek her in the tomb.
+
+They would not reproach me now, I know, for she was too sweet and loved
+me too well with all my faults, and, if he proved pitiless in the first
+torment of his loss, Merchison was a good and honest man, who,
+understanding my remorse and misery, forgave me before he died. Still,
+I dread to meet them, who, if that old fable be true and they live,
+read me for what I am. Yet why should I fear, for all this they knew
+before they died, and, knowing, could forgive? Surely it is with
+another vengeance that I must reckon.
+
+Well, after her mother’s death my daughter was the only being whom I
+ever truly loved, and no future mental hell that the imagination can
+invent would have power to make me suffer more because of her than I
+have always suffered since the grave closed over her—the virgin martyr
+sacrificed on the altar of a false prophet and a coward.
+
+I come of a family of doctors. My grandfather, Thomas Therne, whose
+name still lives in medicine, was a doctor in the neighbourhood of
+Dunchester, and my father succeeded to his practice and nothing else,
+for the old gentleman had lived beyond his means. Shortly after my
+father’s marriage he sold this practice and removed into Dunchester,
+where he soon acquired a considerable reputation as a surgeon, and
+prospered, until not long after my birth, just as a brilliant career
+seemed to be opening itself to him, death closed his book for ever. In
+attending a case of smallpox, about four months before I was born, he
+contracted the disease, but the attack was not considered serious and
+he recovered from it quickly. It would seem, however, that it left some
+constitutional weakness, for a year later he was found to be suffering
+from tuberculosis of the lungs, and was ordered to a warmer climate.
+
+Selling his Dunchester practice for what it would fetch to his
+assistant, Dr. Bell, my father came to Madeira—whither, I scarcely know
+why, I have also drifted now that all is over for me—for here he hoped
+to be able to earn a living by doctoring the English visitors. This,
+however, he could not do, since the climate proved no match for his
+disease, though he lingered for nearly two years, during which time he
+spent all the money that he had. When he died there was scarcely enough
+left to pay for his funeral in the little churchyard yonder that I can
+see from the windows of this _quinta_. Where he lies exactly I do not
+know as no record was kept, and the wooden cross, the only monument
+that my mother could afford to set over him, has long ago rotted away.
+
+Some charitable English people helped my mother to return to England,
+where we went to live with her mother, who existed on a pension of
+about 120 pounds a year, in a fishing-village near Brighton. Here I
+grew up, getting my education—a very good one by the way—at a cheap day
+school. My mother’s wish was that I should become a sailor like her own
+father, who had been a captain in the Navy, but the necessary money was
+not forthcoming to put me into the Royal Navy, and my liking for the
+sea was not strong enough to take me into the merchant service.
+
+From the beginning I wished to be a doctor like my father and
+grandfather before me, for I knew that I was clever, and I knew also
+that successful doctors make a great deal of money. Ground down as I
+had been by poverty from babyhood, already at nineteen years of age I
+desired money above everything on earth. I saw then, and subsequent
+experience has only confirmed my views, that the world as it has become
+under the pressure of high civilisation is a world for the rich.
+Leaving material comforts and advantages out of the question, what
+ambition can a man satisfy without money? Take the successful
+politicians for instance, and it will be found that almost every one of
+them is rich. This country is too full; there is scant room for the
+individual. Only intellectual Titans can force their heads above the
+crowd, and, as a rule, they have not even then the money to take them
+higher. If I had my life over again—and it is my advice to all young
+men of ability and ambition—I would leave the old country and settle in
+America or in one of the great colonies. There, where the conditions
+are more elastic and the competition is not so cruel, a hard-working
+man of talent does not need to be endowed with fortune to enable him to
+rise to the top of the tree.
+
+Well, my desire was to be accomplished, for as it chanced a younger
+brother of my father, who during his lifetime had never taken any
+notice of me, died and left me 750 pounds. Seven hundred and fifty
+pounds! To me at that time it was colossal wealth, for it enabled us to
+rent some rooms in London, where I entered myself as a medical student
+at University College.
+
+There is no need for me to dwell upon my college career, but if any one
+were to take the trouble to consult the old records he would find that
+it was sufficiently brilliant. I worked hard, and I had a natural,
+perhaps an hereditary liking, for the work. Medicine always fascinated
+me. I think it the greatest of the sciences, and from the beginning I
+was determined that I would be among the greatest of its masters.
+
+At four and twenty, having finished my curriculum with high honours—I
+was gold medallist of my year in both medicine and surgery—I became
+house-surgeon to one of the London hospitals. After my term of office
+was over I remained at the hospital for another year, for I wished to
+make a practical study of my profession in all its branches before
+starting a private practice. At the end of this time my mother died
+while still comparatively young. She had never really recovered from
+the loss of my father, and, though it was long about it, sorrow sapped
+her strength at last. Her loss was a shock to me, although in fact we
+had few tastes in common. To divert my mind, and also because I was
+somewhat run down and really needed a change, I asked a friend of mine
+who was a director of a great steamship line running to the West Indies
+and Mexico to give me a trip out, offering my medicine services in
+return for the passage. This he agreed to do with pleasure; moreover,
+matters were so arranged that I could stop in Mexico for three months
+and rejoin the vessel on her next homeward trip.
+
+After a very pleasant voyage I reached Vera Cruz. It is a quaint and in
+some ways a pretty place, with its tall cool-looking houses and narrow
+streets, not unlike Funchal, only more tropical. Whenever I think of
+it, however, the first memories that leap to my mind are those of the
+stench of the open drains and of the scavenger carts going their rounds
+with the _zaphilotes_ or vultures actually sitting upon them. As it
+happened, those carts were very necessary then, for a yellow fever
+epidemic was raging in the place. Having nothing particular to do I
+stopped there for three weeks to study it, working in the hospitals
+with the local doctors, for I felt no fear of yellow fever—only one
+contagious disease terrifies me, and with that I was soon destined to
+make acquaintance.
+
+At length I arranged to start for the City of Mexico, to which in those
+days the journey from Vera Cruz was performed by diligence as the
+railway was not yet finished. At that time Mexico was a wild country.
+Wars and revolutions innumerable, together with a certain natural
+leaning that way, had reduced a considerable proportion of its
+inhabitants to the road, where they earned a precarious living—not by
+mending it, but by robbing and occasionally cutting the throats of any
+travellers whom they could catch.
+
+The track from Vera Cruz to Mexico City runs persistently uphill;
+indeed, I think the one place is 7000 feet above the level of the
+other. First, there is the hot zone, where the women by the wayside
+sell you pineapples and cocoanuts; then the temperate zone, where they
+offer you oranges and bananas; then the cold country, in which you are
+expected to drink a filthy liquid extracted from aloes called _pulque_,
+that in taste and appearance resembles soapy water.
+
+It was somewhere in the temperate zone that we passed a town consisting
+of fifteen _adobe_ or mud houses and seventeen churches. The excessive
+religious equipment of this city is accounted for by an almost
+inaccessible mountain stronghold in the neighbourhood. This stronghold
+for generations had been occupied by brigands, and it was the
+time-honoured custom of each chieftain of the band, when he retired on
+a hard-earned competence, to expiate any regrettable incidents in his
+career by building a church in the town dedicated to his patron saint
+and to the memory of those whose souls he had helped to Paradise. This
+pious and picturesque, if somewhat mediaeval, custom has now come to an
+end, as I understand that the Mexican Government caused the stronghold
+to be stormed a good many years ago, and put its occupants, to the
+number of several hundreds, to the sword.
+
+We were eight in the coach, which was drawn by as many mules—four
+merchants, two priests, myself and the lady who afterwards became my
+wife. She was a blue-eyed and fair-haired American from New York. Her
+name, I soon discovered, was Emma Becker, and her father, who was dead,
+had been a lawyer. We made friends at once, and before we had jolted
+ten miles on our journey I learned her story. It seemed that she was an
+orphan with a very small fortune, and only one near relative, an aunt
+who had married a Mexican named Gomez, the owner of a fine range or
+_hacienda_ situated on the border of the highlands, about eighty miles
+from the City of Mexico. On the death of her father, being like most
+American girls adventurous and independent, Miss Becker had accepted an
+invitation from her aunt Gomez and her husband to come and live with
+them a while. Now, quite alone and unescorted, she was on her way to
+Mexico City, where she expected to be met by some friends of her uncle.
+
+We started from Vera Cruz about mid-day and slept, or rather passed the
+night, at a filthy inn alive with every sort of insect pest. Two hours
+before dawn we were bundled into the _diligencia_ and slowly dragged up
+a mountain road so steep that, notwithstanding the blows and oaths of
+the drivers, the mules had to stop every few hundred yards to rest. I
+remember that at last I fell asleep, my head reposing on the shoulder
+of a very fat priest, who snored tempestuously, then awoke to pray,
+then snored again. It was the voice of Miss Becker, who sat opposite to
+me, that wakened me.
+
+“Forgive me for disturbing you, Dr. Therne,” she said, “but you really
+must look,” and she pointed through the window of the coach.
+
+Following her hand I saw a sight which no one who has witnessed it can
+ever forget: the sun rising on the mighty peak of Orizaba, the Star
+Mountain, as the old Aztecs named it. Eighteen thousand feet above our
+heads towered the great volcano, its foot clothed with forests, its
+cone dusted with snow. The green flanks of the peak and the country
+beneath them were still wrapped in shadow, but on its white and lofty
+crest already the lights of dawn were burning. Never have I seen
+anything more beautiful than this soaring mountain top flaming like
+some giant torch over a world of darkness; indeed, the unearthly
+grandeur of the sight amazed and half paralysed my mind.
+
+A lantern swung from the roof of the coach, and, turning my eyes from
+the mountain, in its light I saw the face of my travelling companion
+and—fell in love with it. I had seen it before without any such idea
+entering my mind; then it had been to me only the face of a rather
+piquante and pretty girl, but with this strange and inconvenient
+result, the sight of the dawn breaking upon Orizaba seemed to have
+worked some change in me. At least, if only for an instant, it had
+pierced the barrier that day by day we build within us to protect
+ourselves from the attack of the impulses of nature.
+
+In that moment at any rate there was a look upon this girl’s
+countenance and a light shining in her eyes which overcame my caution
+and swept me out of myself, for I think that she too was under the
+shadow of the glory which broke upon the crest of Orizaba. In vain did
+I try to save myself and to struggle back to common-sense, since
+hitherto the prospect of domestic love had played no part in my scheme
+of life. It was useless, so I gave it up, and our eyes met.
+
+Neither of us said anything, but from that time forward we knew that we
+did not wish to be parted any more.
+
+After a while, to relieve a tension of mind which neither of us cared
+to reveal, we drifted into desultory and indifferent conversation. In
+the course of our talk Emma told me that her aunt had written to her
+that if she could leave the coach at Orizaba she would be within fifty
+miles of the _hacienda_ of La Concepcion, whereas when she reached
+Mexico City she would still be eighty miles from it. Her aunt had
+added, however, that this was not practicable at present, why she did
+not say, and that she must go on to Mexico where some friends would
+take charge of her until her uncle was able to fetch her.
+
+Presently Emma seemed to fall asleep, at least she shut her eyes. But I
+could not sleep, and sat there listening to the snores of the fat
+priest and the strange interminable oaths of the drivers as they
+thrashed the mules. Opposite to me, tied to the roof of the coach
+immediately above Emma’s head, was a cheap looking-glass, provided, I
+suppose, for the convenience of passengers when making the toilette of
+travel. In it I could see myself reflected, so, having nothing better
+to do, in view of contingencies which of a sudden had become possible,
+I amused myself by taking count of my personal appearance. On the whole
+in those days it was not unsatisfactory. In build, I was tall and
+slight, with thin, nervous hands. My colouring and hair were dark, and
+I had soft and rather large brown eyes. The best part of my face was my
+forehead, which was ample, and the worst my mouth, which was somewhat
+weak. I do not think, however, that any one would have guessed by
+looking at me as I then appeared at the age of seven and twenty, that I
+was an exceedingly hard-working man with extraordinary powers of
+observation and a really retentive memory.
+
+At any rate, I am sure that it was not these qualities which
+recommended me to Emma Becker, nor, whatever we may have felt under the
+influences of Orizaba, was it any spiritual affinity. Doctors, I fear,
+are not great believers in spiritual affinities; they know that such
+emotions can be accounted for in other ways. Probably Emma was
+attracted to me because I was dark, and I to her because she was fair.
+Orizaba and opportunity merely brought out and accentuated these quite
+natural preferences.
+
+By now the day had broken, and, looking out of the window, I could see
+that we were travelling along the side of a mountain. Above us the
+slope was gentle and clothed with sub-tropical trees, while below it
+became a veritable precipice, in some places absolutely sheer, for the
+road was cut upon a sort of rocky ledge, although, owing to the vast
+billows of mist that filled it, nothing could be seen of the gulf
+beneath.
+
+I was reflecting, I remember, that this would be an ill path to drive
+with a drunken coachman, when suddenly I saw the off-front mule stumble
+unaccountably, and, as it fell, heard a shot fired close at hand. Next
+instant also I saw the driver and his companion spring from the box,
+and, with a yell of terror, plunge over the edge of the cliff,
+apparently into the depths below. Then from the narrow compass of that
+coach arose a perfect pandemonium of sounds, with an under cry of a
+single word, “Brigands! Brigands!”
+
+The merchants shouted, supplicated their saints, and swore as with
+trembling hands they tried to conceal loose valuables in their boots
+and hats; one of the priests too literally howled in his terror, but
+the other, a man of more dignity, only bowed his head and murmured a
+prayer. By this time also the mules had tied themselves into a knot and
+were threatening to overturn the coach, to prevent which our captors,
+before meddling with us, cut the animals loose with their _machetés_ or
+swords, and drove them over the brink of the abyss, where, like the
+drivers, they vanished. Then a dusky-faced ruffian, with a scar on his
+cheek, came to the door of the diligence and bowing politely beckoned
+to us to come out. As there were at least a dozen of them and
+resistance was useless, even if our companions could have found the
+courage to fight, we obeyed, and were placed before the brigands in a
+line, our backs being set to the edge of the gulf. I was last but one
+in the line, and beyond me stood Emma Becker, whose hand I held.
+
+Then the tragedy began. Several of the villains seized the first
+merchant, and, stopping his cries and protestations with a blow in the
+mouth, stripped him to the shirt, abstracting notes and gold and
+everything else of value that they could find in various portions of
+his attire where he had hidden them, and principally, I remember, from
+the lining of his vest. When they had done with him, they dragged him
+away and bundled him roughly into the diligence.
+
+Next to this merchant stood the two priests. Of the first of these the
+brigands asked a question, to which, with some hesitation, the
+priest—that man who had shown so much terror—replied in the
+affirmative, whereon his companion looked at him contemptuously and
+muttered a Spanish phrase which means “Man without shame.” Of him also
+the same question was asked, in answer to which he shook his head,
+whereon he was conducted, though without violence or being searched, to
+the coach, and shut into it with the plundered merchant. Then the
+thieves went to work with the next victim.
+
+“Dr. Therne,” whispered Emma Becker, “you have a pistol, do you not?”
+
+I nodded my head.
+
+“Will you lend it me? You understand?”
+
+“Yes,” I answered, “I understand, but I hope that things are not so bad
+as that.”
+
+“They are,” she answered with a quiver in her voice. “I have heard
+about these Mexican brigands. With the exception of that priest and
+myself they will put all of you into the coach and push it over the
+precipice.”
+
+At her words my heart stood still and a palpable mist gathered before
+my eyes. When it cleared away my brain seemed to awake to an abnormal
+activity, as though the knowledge that unless it was used to good
+effect now it would never be used again were spurring it to action.
+Rapidly I reviewed the situation and considered every possible method
+of escape. At first I could think of none; then suddenly I remembered
+that the driver and his companion, who no doubt knew every inch of the
+road, had leaped from the coach, apparently over the edge of the
+precipice. This I felt sure they would not have done had they been
+going to certain death, since they would have preferred to take their
+chance of mercy at the hands of the brigands. Moreover, these gentry
+themselves had driven the mules into the abyss whither those wise
+animals would never have gone unless there was some foothold for them.
+
+I looked behind me but could discover nothing, for, as is common in
+Mexico at the hour of dawn, the gulf was absolutely filled with dense
+vapours. Then I made up my mind that I would risk it and began to
+shuffle slowly backwards. Already I was near the edge when I remembered
+Emma Becker and paused to reflect. If I took her with me it would
+considerably lessen my chances of escape, and at any rate her life was
+not threatened. But I had not given her the pistol, and at that moment
+even in my panic there rose before me a vision of her face as I had
+seen it in the lamplight when she looked up at the glory shining on the
+crest of Orizaba.
+
+Had it not been for this vision I think it possible that I might have
+left her. I wish to gloze over nothing; I did not make my own nature,
+and in these pages I describe it as it was and is without palliation or
+excuse. I know that this is not the fashion in autobiographies; no one
+has done it since the time of Pepys, who did not write for publication,
+and for that very reason my record has its value. I am physically and,
+perhaps morally also, timid—that is, although I have faced it boldly
+enough upon occasion, as the reader will learn in the course of my
+history, I fear the thought of death, and especially of cruel and
+violent death, such as was near to me at that moment. So much did I
+fear it then that the mere fact that an acquaintance was in danger and
+distress would scarcely have sufficed to cause me to sacrifice, or at
+least to greatly complicate, my own chances of escape in order to
+promote hers simply because that acquaintance was of the other sex. But
+Emma had touched a new chord in my nature, and I felt, whether I liked
+it or not, that whatever I could do for myself I must do for her also.
+So I shuffled forward again.
+
+“Listen,” I whispered, “I have been to look and I do not believe that
+the cliff is very steep just here. Will you try it with me?”
+
+“Of course,” she answered; “I had as soon die of a broken neck as in
+any other way.”
+
+“We must watch our chance then, or they will see us run and shoot. Wait
+till I give you the signal.”
+
+She nodded her head and we waited.
+
+At length, while the fourth and last merchant, who stood next to me,
+was being dealt with, just as in our despair we were about to throw
+ourselves into the gulf before them all, fortune gave us our
+opportunity. This unhappy man, having probably some inkling of the doom
+which awaited him, broke suddenly from the hands of his captors, and
+ran at full speed down the road. After him they went pell-mell, every
+thief of them except one who remained—fortunately for us upon its
+farther side—on guard by the door of the diligence in which four
+people, three merchants and a priest, were now imprisoned. With laughs
+and shouts they hunted their wretched quarry, firing shots as they ran,
+till at length one of them overtook the man and cut him down with his
+_macheté_.
+
+“Don’t look, but come,” I whispered to my companion.
+
+In another instant we were at the edge of the cliff, and a foot or so
+below us was spread the dense, impenetrable blanket of mist. I stopped
+and hesitated, for the next step might be my last.
+
+“We can’t be worse off, so God help us,” said Emma, and without waiting
+for me to lead her she swung herself over the edge.
+
+To my intense relief I heard her alight within a few feet, and followed
+immediately. Now I was at her side, and now we were scrambling and
+slipping down the precipitous and rocky slope as swiftly as the dense
+wet fog would let us. I believe that our escape was quite unnoticed.
+The guard was watching the murder of the merchant, or, if he saw us, he
+did not venture to leave the carriage door, and the priest who had
+accepted some offer which was made to him, probably that his life would
+be spared if he consented to give absolution to the murderers, was
+kneeling on the ground, his face hidden in his hands.
+
+As we went the mist grew thinner, and we could see that we were
+travelling down a steep spur of the precipice, which to our left was
+quite sheer, and that at the foot of it was a wide plain thickly but
+not densely covered with trees. In ten minutes we were at the bottom,
+and as we could neither see nor hear any sign of pursuers we paused for
+an instant to rest.
+
+Not five yards from us the cliff was broken away, and so straight that
+a cat could not have climbed it.
+
+“We chose our place well,” I said pointing upwards.
+
+“No,” Emma answered, “we did not choose; it was chosen for us.”
+
+As she spoke a muffled and terrifying sound of agony reached us from
+above, and then, in the layers of vapour that still stretched between
+us and the sky, we perceived something huge rushing swiftly down. It
+appeared; it drew near; it struck, and fell to pieces like a shattered
+glass. We ran to look, and there before us were the fragments of the
+diligence, and among them the mangled corpses of five of our
+fellow-travellers.
+
+This was the fate that we had escaped.
+
+“Oh! for God’s sake come away,” moaned Emma, and sick with horror we
+turned and ran, or rather reeled, into the shelter of the trees upon
+the plain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE HACIENDA
+
+
+“What are those?” said Emma presently, pointing to some animals that
+were half hidden by a clump of wild bananas. I looked and saw that they
+were two of the mules which the brigands had cut loose from the
+diligence. There could be no mistake about this, for the harness still
+hung to them.
+
+“Can you ride?” I asked.
+
+She nodded her head. Then we set to work. Having caught the mules
+without difficulty, I took off their superfluous harness and put her on
+the back of one of them, mounting the other myself. There was no time
+to lose, and we both of us knew it. Just as we were starting I heard a
+voice behind me calling “senor.” Drawing the pistol from my pocket, I
+swung round to find myself confronted by a Mexican.
+
+“No shoot, senor,” he said in broken English, for this man had served
+upon an American ship. “Me driver, Antonio. My mate go down there,” and
+he pointed to the precipice; “he dead, me not hurt. You run from bad
+men, me run too, for presently they come look. Where you go?”
+
+“To Mexico,” I answered.
+
+“No get Mexico, senor; bad men watch road and kill you with _macheté_
+so,” and he made a sweep with his knife, adding “they not want you live
+tell soldiers.”
+
+“Listen,” said Emma. “Do you know the _hacienda_, Concepcion, by the
+town of San Jose?”
+
+“Yes, senora, know it well, the _hacienda_ of Senor Gomez; bring you
+there to-morrow.”
+
+“Then show the way,” I said, and we started towards the hills.
+
+All that day we travelled over mountains as fast as the mules could
+carry us, Antonio trotting by our side. At sundown, having seen nothing
+more of the brigands, who, I suppose, took it for granted that we were
+dead or were too idle to follow us far, we reached an Indian hut, where
+we contrived to buy some wretched food consisting of black _frijole_
+beans and _tortilla_ cakes. That night we slept in a kind of hovel made
+of open poles with a roof of faggots through which the water dropped on
+us, for it rained persistently for several hours. To be more accurate,
+Emma slept, for my nerves were too shattered by the recollection of our
+adventure with the brigands to allow me to close my eyes.
+
+I could not rid my mind of the vision of that coach, broken like an
+eggshell, and of those shattered shapes within it that this very
+morning had been men full of life and plans, but who to-night
+were—what? Nor was it easy to forget that but for the merest chance I
+might have been one of their company wherever it was gathered now. To a
+man with a constitutional objection to every form of violence, and, at
+any rate in those days, no desire to search out the secrets of Death
+before his time, the thought was horrible.
+
+Leaving the shelter at dawn I found Antonio and the Indian who owned
+the hut conversing together in the reeking mist with their _serapes_
+thrown across their mouths, which few Mexicans leave uncovered until
+after the sun is up. Inflammation of the lungs is the disease they
+dread more than any other, and the thin night air engenders it.
+
+“What is it, Antonio?” I asked. “Are the brigands after us?”
+
+“No, senor, hope brigands not come now. This senor say much sick San
+Jose.”
+
+I answered that I was very sorry to hear it, but that I meant to go on;
+indeed, I think that it was only terror of the brigands coupled with
+the promise of a considerable reward which persuaded him to do so,
+though, owing to my ignorance of Spanish and his very slight knowledge
+of English, precisely what he feared I could not discover. In the end
+we started, and towards evening Antonio pointed out to us the
+_hacienda_ of Concepcion, a large white building standing on a hill
+which overshadowed San Jose, a straggling little place, half-town,
+half-village, with a population of about 3,000 inhabitants.
+
+Just as, riding along the rough cobble-paved road, we reached the
+entrance to the town, I heard shouts, and, turning, saw two mounted men
+with rifles in their hands apparently calling to us to come back.
+Taking it for granted that these were the brigands following us up,
+although, as I afterwards discovered, they were in fact _rurales_ or
+cavalry-police, despite the remonstrances of Antonio I urged the jaded
+mules forward at a gallop. Thereupon the _rurales_, who had pulled up
+at a spot marked by a white stone, turned and rode away.
+
+We were now passing down the central street of the town, which I
+noticed seemed very deserted. As we drew near to the _plaza_ or market
+square we met a cart drawn by two mules and led by a man who had a
+_serape_ wrapped about his nose and mouth as though it were still the
+hour before the dawn. Over the contents of this cart a black cloth was
+thrown, beneath which were outlined shapes that suggested—but, no, it
+could not be. Only why did Antonio cross himself and mutter _Muerte!_
+or some such word?
+
+Now we were in the _plaza_. This _plaza_, where in happier times the
+band would play, for all Mexicans are musical, and the population of
+San Jose was wont to traffic in the day and enjoy itself at night, was
+bordered by an arched colonnade. In its centre stood a basin of water
+flowing from a stone fountain of quaint and charming design.
+
+“Look at all those people sleeping,” said Emma, as we passed five or
+six forms that, very small and quiet, lay each under a blanket beneath
+one of the arches. “Why, there are a lot more just lying down over
+there. What funny folk to go to bed in public in the afternoon,” and
+she pointed to a number of men, women and children who seemed to be
+getting up, throwing themselves down and turning round and round upon
+mattresses and beds of leaves in the shadow of the arcade which we
+approached.
+
+Presently we were within three paces of this arcade, and as we rode up
+an aged hag drew a blanket from one of the prostrate forms, revealing a
+young woman, over whom she proceeded to pour water that she had drawn
+from a fountain. One glance was enough for me. The poor creature’s face
+was shapeless with confluent smallpox, and her body a sight which I
+will not describe. I, who was a doctor, could not be mistaken,
+although, as it chanced, I had never seen a case of smallpox before.
+The truth is that, although I have no fear of any other human ailment,
+smallpox has always terrified me.
+
+For this I am not to blame. The fear is a part of my nature, instilled
+into it doubtless by the shock which my mother received before my birth
+when she learned that her husband had been attacked by this horrible
+sickness. So great and vivid was my dread that I refused a very good
+appointment at a smallpox hospital, and, although I had several
+opportunities of attending these cases, I declined to undertake them,
+and on this account suffered somewhat in reputation among those who
+knew the facts. Indeed, my natural abhorrence went even further, as, to
+this day, it is only with something of an effort that I can bring
+myself to inspect the vesicles caused by vaccination. Whether this is
+because of their similarity to those of smallpox, or owing to the
+natural association which exists between them, I cannot tell. That it
+is real enough, however, may be judged by the fact that, terrified as I
+was at smallpox, and convinced as I have always been of the
+prophylactic power of vaccination, I could never force myself—until an
+occasion to be told of—to submit to it. In infancy, no doubt, I was
+vaccinated, for the operation has left a small and very faint cicatrix
+on my arm, but infantile vaccination, if unrepeated, is but a feeble
+protection in later life.
+
+Unconsciously I pulled upon the bridle, and the tired mule stopped.
+“Malignant smallpox!” I muttered, “and that fool is trying to treat it
+with cold water!”[*]
+
+[*] Readers of Prescott may remember that when this terrible disease
+was first introduced by a negro slave of Navaez, and killed out
+millions of the population of Mexico, the unfortunate Aztecs tried to
+treat it with cold water. Oddly enough, when, some years ago, the
+writer was travelling in a part of Mexico where smallpox was prevalent,
+it came to his notice that this system is still followed among the
+Indians, as they allege, with good results.
+
+
+The old woman looked up and saw me. “Si, Senor Inglese,” she said with
+a ghastly smile, “_viruela, viruela!_” and she went on gabbling
+something which I could not understand.
+
+“She say,” broke in Antonio, “nearly quarter people dead and plenty
+sick.”
+
+“For Heaven’s sake, let us get out of this,” I said to Emma, who,
+seated on the other mule, was staring horror-struck at the sight.
+
+“Oh!” she said, “you are a doctor; can’t you help the poor things?”
+
+“What! and leave you to shift for yourself?”
+
+“Never mind me, Dr. Therne. I can go on to the _hacienda_, or if you
+like I will stay too; I am not afraid, I was revaccinated last year.”
+
+“Don’t be foolish,” I answered roughly. “I could not dream of exposing
+you to such risks, also it is impossible for me to do any good here
+alone and without medicines. Come on at once,” and seizing her mule by
+the bridle I led it along the road that ran through the town towards
+the _hacienda_ on the height above.
+
+Ten minutes later we were riding in the great courtyard. The place
+seemed strangely lifeless and silent; indeed, the plaintive mewing of a
+cat was the only sound to be heard. Presently, however, a dog appeared
+out of an open doorway. It was a large animal of the mastiff breed,
+such as might have been expected to bark and become aggressive to
+strangers. But this it did not do; indeed, it ran forward and greeted
+us affectionately. We dismounted and knocked at the double door, but no
+one answered. Finally we entered, and the truth became clear to us—the
+_hacienda_ was deserted. A little burial ground attached to the chapel
+told us why, for in it were several freshly-made graves, evidently of
+_peons_ or other servants, and in an enclosure, where lay interred some
+departed members of the Gomez family, another unsodded mound. We
+discovered afterwards that it was that of the Senor Gomez, Emma’s uncle
+by marriage.
+
+“The footsteps of smallpox,” I said, pointing to the graves; “we must
+go on.”
+
+Emma was too overcome to object, for she believed that it was her aunt
+who slept beneath that mound, so once more we mounted the weary mules.
+But we did not get far. Within half a mile of the _hacienda_ we were
+met by two armed _rurales_, who told us plainly that if we attempted to
+go further they would shoot.
+
+Then we understood. We had penetrated a smallpox cordon, and must stop
+in it until forty days after the last traces of the disease had
+vanished. This, in a wild part of Mexico, where at that time
+vaccination was but little practised and medical assistance almost
+entirely lacking, would not be until half or more of the unprotected
+population was dead and many of the remainder were blinded, deafened or
+disfigured.
+
+Back we crept to the deserted _hacienda_, and there in this hideous
+nest of smallpox we took up our quarters, choosing out of the many in
+the great pile sleeping rooms that had evidently not been used for
+months or years. Food we did not lack, for sheep and goats were
+straying about untended, while in the garden we found fruit and
+vegetables in plenty, and in the pantries flour and other stores.
+
+At first Emma was dazed and crushed by fatigue and emotion, but she
+recovered her spirits after a night’s sleep and on learning from
+Antonio, who was told it by some _peon_, that it was not her aunt that
+the smallpox had killed, but her uncle by marriage, whom she had never
+seen. Having no fear of the disease, indeed, she became quite resigned
+and calm, for the strangeness and novelty of the position absorbed and
+interested her. Also, to my alarm, it excited her philanthropic
+instincts, her great idea being to turn the _hacienda_ into a
+convalescent smallpox hospital, of which she was to be the nurse and I
+the doctor. Indeed she refused to abandon this mad scheme until I
+pointed out that in the event of any of our patients dying, most
+probably we should both be murdered for wizards with the evil eye. As a
+matter of fact, without medicine or assistance we could have done
+little or nothing.
+
+Oh, what a pestilence was that of which for three weeks or so we were
+the daily witnesses, for from the flat roof of the _hacienda_ we could
+see straight on to the _plaza_ of the little town. And when at night we
+could not see, still we could hear the wails of the dying and bereaved,
+the eternal clang of the church bells, rung to scare away the demon of
+disease, and the midnight masses chanted by the priests, that grew
+faint and fainter as their brotherhood dwindled, until at last they
+ceased. And so it went on in the tainted, stricken place until the
+living were not enough to bury the dead, or to do more than carry food
+and water to the sick.
+
+It would seem that about twelve years before a philanthropic American
+enthusiast, armed with a letter of recommendation from whoever at that
+date was President of Mexico, and escorted by a small guard, descended
+upon San Jose to vaccinate it. For a few days all went well, for the
+enthusiast was a good doctor, who understood how to treat ophthalmia
+and to operate for squint, both of which complaints were prevalent in
+San Jose. Then his first vaccination patients developed vesicles, and
+the trouble began. The end of the matter was that the local priests, a
+very ignorant class of men, interfered, declaring that smallpox was a
+trial sent from Heaven which it was impious to combat, and that in any
+case vaccination was the worse disease of the two.
+
+As the _viruela_ had scarcely visited San Jose within the memory of man
+and the vesicles looked alarming, the population, true children of the
+Church, agreed with their pastors, and, from purely religious motives,
+hooted and stoned the philanthropic “Americano” and his guard out of
+the district. Now they and their innocent children were reaping the
+fruits of the piety of these conscientious objectors.
+
+After the first fortnight this existence in an atmosphere of disease
+became absolutely terrible to me. Not an hour of the day passed that I
+did not imagine some symptom of smallpox, and every morning when we met
+at breakfast I glanced at Emma with anxiety. The shadow of the thing
+lay deep upon my nerves, and I knew well that if I stopped there much
+longer I should fall a victim to it in the body. In this emergency, by
+means of Antonio, I opened negotiations with the officer of the
+_rurales_, and finally, after much secret bargaining, it was arranged
+that in consideration of a sum of two hundred dollars—for by good luck
+I had escaped from the brigands with my money—our flight through the
+cordon of guards should not be observed in the darkness.
+
+We were to start at nine o’clock on a certain night. At a quarter to
+that hour I went to the stable to see that everything was ready, and in
+the courtyard outside of it found Antonio seated against the water tank
+groaning and writhing with pains in the back. One looked showed me that
+he had developed the usual symptoms, so, feeling that no time was to be
+lost, I saddled the mules myself and took them round.
+
+“Where is Antonio?” asked Emma as she mounted.
+
+“He has gone on ahead,” I answered, “to be sure that the road is clear;
+he will meet us beyond the mountains.”
+
+Poor Antonio! I wonder what became of him; he was a good fellow, and I
+hope that he recovered. It grieved me much to leave him, but after all
+I had my own safety to think of, and still more that of Emma, who had
+grown very dear to me. Perhaps one day I shall find him “beyond the
+mountains,” but, if so, that is a meeting from which I expect no joy.
+
+The rest of our journey was strange enough, but it has nothing to do
+with this history. Indeed, I have only touched upon these long past
+adventures in a far land because they illustrate the curious fatality
+by the workings of which every important event of my life has taken
+place under the dreadful shadow of smallpox. I was born under that
+shadow, I wedded under it, I—but the rest shall be told in its proper
+order.
+
+In the end we reached Mexico City in safety, and there Emma and I were
+married. Ten days later we were on board ship steaming for England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+SIR JOHN BELL
+
+
+Now it is that I came to the great and terrible event of my life, which
+in its result turned me into a false witness and a fraud, and bound
+upon my spirit a weight of blood-guiltiness greater than a man is often
+called upon to bear. As I have not scrupled to show I have
+constitutional weaknesses—more, I am a sinner, I know it; I have sinned
+against the code of my profession, and have preached a doctrine I knew
+to be false, using all my skill and knowledge to confuse and pervert
+the minds of the ignorant. And yet I am not altogether responsible for
+these sins, which in truth in the first place were forced upon me by
+shame and want and afterwards by the necessities of my ambition.
+Indeed, in that dark and desperate road of deceit there is no room to
+turn; the step once taken can never be retraced.
+
+But if I have sinned, how much greater is the crime of the man who
+swore away my honour and forced me through those gateways? Surely on
+his head and not on mine should rest the burden of my deeds; yet he
+prospered all his life, and I have been told that his death was happy
+and painless. This man’s career furnishes one of the few arguments that
+to my sceptical mind suggest the existence of a place of future reward
+and punishment, for how is it possible that so great a villain should
+reap no fruit from his rich sowing of villainy? If it is possible, then
+verily this world is the real hell wherein the wicked are lords and the
+good their helpless and hopeless slaves.
+
+Emma Becker when she became my wife brought with her a small dowry of
+about five thousand dollars, or a thousand pounds, and this sum we both
+agreed would be best spent in starting me in professional life. It was
+scarcely sufficient to enable me to buy a practice of the class which I
+desired, so I determined that I would set to work to build one up, as
+with my ability and record I was certain that I could do. By
+preference, I should have wished to begin in London, but there the
+avenue to success is choked, and I had not the means to wait until by
+skill and hard work I could force my way along it.
+
+London being out of the question, I made up my mind to try my fortune
+in the ancient city of Dunchester, where the name of Therne was still
+remembered, as my grandfather and father had practised there before me.
+I journeyed to the place and made inquiries, to find that, although
+there were plenty of medical men of a sort, there was only one whose
+competition I had cause to fear. Of the others, some had no presence,
+some no skill, and some no character; indeed, one of them was known to
+drink.
+
+With Sir John Bell, whose good fortune it was to be knighted in
+recognition of his attendance upon a royal duchess who chanced to
+contract the measles while staying in the town, the case was different.
+He began life as assistant to my father, and when his health failed
+purchased the practice from him for a miserable sum, which, as he was
+practically in possession, my father was obliged to accept. From that
+time forward his success met with no check. By no means a master of his
+art, Sir John supplied with assurance what he lacked in knowledge, and
+atoned for his mistakes by the readiness of a bluff and old-fashioned
+sympathy that was transparent to few.
+
+In short, if ever a _faux bonhomme_ existed, Sir John Bell was the man.
+Needless to say he was as popular as he was prosperous. Such of the
+practice of Dunchester as was worth having soon fell into his hands,
+and few indeed were the guineas that slipped out of his fingers into
+the pocket of a poorer brother. Also, he had a large consulting
+connection in the county. But if his earnings were great so were his
+spendings, for it was part of his system to accept civic and
+magisterial offices and to entertain largely in his official
+capacities. This meant that the money went out as fast as it came in,
+and that, however much was earned, more was always needed.
+
+When I visited Dunchester to make inquiries I made a point of calling
+on Sir John, who received me in his best “heavy-father” manner, taking
+care to inform me that he was keeping Lord So-and-so waiting in his
+consulting-room in order to give me audience. Going straight to the
+point, I told him that I thought of starting to practise in Dunchester,
+which information, I could see, pleased him little.
+
+“Of course, my dear boy,” he said, “you being your father’s son I
+should be delighted, and would do everything in my power to help you,
+but at the same time I must point out that were Galen, or Jenner, or
+Harvey to reappear on earth, I doubt if they could make a decent living
+in Dunchester.”
+
+“All the same, I mean to have a try, Sir John,” I answered cheerfully.
+“I suppose you do not want an assistant, do you?”
+
+“Let me see; I think you said you were married, did you not?”
+
+“Yes,” I answered, well knowing that Sir John, having disposed of his
+elder daughter to an incompetent person of our profession, who had
+become the plague of his life, was desirous of putting the second to
+better use.
+
+“No, my dear boy, no, I have an assistant already,” and he sighed, this
+time with genuine emotion. “If you come here you will have to stand
+upon your own legs.”
+
+“Quite so, Sir John, but I shall still hope for a few crumbs from the
+master’s table.”
+
+“Yes, yes, Therne, in anything of that sort you may rely upon me,” and
+he bowed me out with an effusive smile.
+
+“—— to poison the crumbs,” I thought to myself, for I was never for one
+moment deceived as to this man’s character.
+
+A fortnight later Emma and I came to Dunchester and took up our abode
+in a quaint red-brick house of the Queen Anne period, which we hired
+for a not extravagant rent of 80 pounds a year. Although the position
+of this house was not fashionable, nothing could have been more
+suitable from a doctor’s point of view, as it stood in a little street
+near the market-place and absolutely in the centre of the city.
+Moreover, it had two beautiful reception chambers on the ground floor,
+oak-panelled, and with carved Adam’s mantelpieces, which made excellent
+waiting-rooms for patients. Some time passed, however, and our thousand
+pounds, in which the expense of furnishing had made a considerable
+hole, was melting rapidly before those rooms were put to a practical
+use. Both I and my wife did all that we could to get practice. We
+called upon people who had been friends of my father and grandfather;
+we attended missionary and other meetings of a non-political character;
+regardless of expense we went so far as to ask old ladies to tea.
+
+They came, they drank the tea and inspected the new furniture; one of
+them even desired to see my instruments and when, fearing to give
+offence, I complied and produced them, she remarked that they were not
+nearly so nice as dear Sir John’s, which had ivory handles. Cheerfully
+would I have shown her that if the handles were inferior the steel was
+quite serviceable, but I swallowed my wrath and solemnly explained that
+it was not medical etiquette for a young doctor to use ivory.
+
+Beginning to despair, I applied for one or two minor appointments in
+answer to advertisements inserted by the Board of Guardians and other
+public bodies. In each case I was not only unsuccessful, but men
+equally unknown, though with a greatly inferior college and hospital
+record, were chosen over my head. At length, suspecting that I was not
+being fairly dealt by, I made inquiries to discover that at the bottom
+of all this ill success was none other than Sir John Bell. It appeared
+that in several instances, by the shrugs of his thick shoulders and
+shakes of his ponderous head, he had prevented my being employed.
+Indeed, in the case of the public bodies, with all of which he had
+authority either as an official or as an honorary adviser, he had
+directly vetoed my appointment by the oracular announcement that, after
+ample inquiry among medical friends in London, he had satisfied himself
+that I was not a suitable person for the post.
+
+When I had heard this and convinced myself that it was substantially
+true—for I was always too cautious to accept the loose and unsifted
+gossip of a provincial town—I think that for the first time in my life
+I experienced the passion of hate towards a human being. Why should
+this man who was so rich and powerful thus devote his energies to the
+destruction of a brother practitioner who was struggling and poor? At
+the time I set it down to pure malice, into which without doubt it
+blossomed at last, not understanding that in the first place on Sir
+John’s part it was in truth terror born of his own conscious
+mediocrity. Like most inferior men, he was quick to recognise his
+master, and, either in the course of our conversations or through
+inquiries that he made concerning me, he had come to the conclusion
+that so far as professional ability was concerned I _was_ his master.
+Therefore, being a creature of petty and dishonest mind, he determined
+to crush me before I could assert myself.
+
+Now, having ascertained all this beyond reasonable doubt, there were
+three courses open to me: to make a public attack upon Sir John, to go
+away and try my fortune elsewhere, or to sit still and await events. A
+more impetuous man would have adopted the first of these alternatives,
+but my experience of life, confirmed as it was by the advice of Emma,
+who was a shrewd and far-seeing woman, soon convinced me that if I did
+so I should have no more chance of success than would an egg which
+undertook a crusade against a brick wall. Doubtless the egg might stain
+the wall and gather the flies of gossip about its stain, but the end of
+it must be that the wall would still stand, whereas the egg would no
+longer be an egg. The second plan had more attractions, but my
+resources were now too low to allow me to put it into practice.
+Therefore, having no other choice, I was forced to adopt the third,
+and, exercising that divine patience which characterises the Eastern
+nations but is so lacking in our own, to attend humbly upon fate until
+it should please it to deal to me a card that I could play.
+
+In time fate dealt to me that card and my long suffering was rewarded,
+for it proved a very ace of trumps. It happened thus.
+
+About a year after I arrived in Dunchester I was elected a member of
+the City Club. It is a pleasant place, where ladies are admitted to
+lunch, and I used it a good deal in the hope of making acquaintances
+who might be useful to me. Among the _habitués_ of this club was a
+certain Major Selby, who, having retired from the army and being
+without occupation, was generally to be found in the smoking or
+billiard room with a large cigar between his teeth and a whisky and
+soda at his side. In face, the Major was florid and what people call
+healthy-looking, an appearance that to a doctor’s eye very often
+conveys no assurance of physical well-being. Being a genial-mannered
+man, he would fall into conversation with whoever might be near to him,
+and thus I came to be slightly acquainted with him. In the course of
+our chats he frequently mentioned his ailments, which, as might be
+expected in the case of such a luxurious liver, were gouty in their
+origin.
+
+One afternoon when I was sitting alone in the smoking-room, Major Selby
+came in and limped to an armchair.
+
+“Hullo, Major, have you got the gout again?” I asked jocosely.
+
+“No, doctor; at least that pompous old beggar, Bell, says I haven’t. My
+leg has been so confoundedly painful and stiff for the last few days
+that I went to see him this morning, but he told me that it was only a
+touch of rheumatism, and gave me some stuff to rub it with.”
+
+“Oh, and did he look at your leg?”
+
+“Not he. He says that he can tell what my ailments are with the width
+of the street between us.”
+
+“Indeed,” I said, and some other men coming in the matter dropped.
+
+Four days later I was in the club at the same hour, and again Major
+Selby entered. This time he walked with considerable difficulty, and I
+noticed an expression of pain and _malaise_ upon his rubicund
+countenance. He ordered a whisky and soda from the servant, and then
+sat down near me.
+
+“Rheumatism no better, Major?” I asked.
+
+“No, I went to see old Bell about it again yesterday, but he pooh-poohs
+it and tells me to go on rubbing in the liniment and get the footman to
+help when I am tired. Well, I obeyed orders, but it hasn’t done me much
+good, and how the deuce rheumatism can give a fellow a bruise on the
+leg, I don’t know.”
+
+“A bruise on the leg?” I said astonished.
+
+“Yes, a bruise on the leg, and, if you don’t believe me, look here,”
+and, dragging up his trouser, he showed me below the knee a large
+inflamed patch of a dusky hue, in the centre of which one of the veins
+could be felt to be hard and swollen.
+
+“Has Sir John Bell seen that?” I asked.
+
+“Not he. I wanted him to look at it, but he was in a hurry, and said I
+was just like an old woman with a sore on show, so I gave it up.”
+
+“Well, if I were you, I’d go home and insist upon his coming to look at
+it.”
+
+“What do you mean, doctor?” he asked growing alarmed at my manner.
+
+“Oh, it is a nasty place, that is all; and I think that when Sir John
+has seen it, he will tell you to keep quiet for a few days.”
+
+Major Selby muttered something uncomplimentary about Sir John, and then
+asked me if I would come home with him.
+
+“I can’t do that as a matter of medical etiquette, but I’ll see you
+into a cab. No, I don’t think I should drink that whisky if I were you,
+you want to keep yourself cool and quiet.”
+
+So Major Selby departed in his cab and I went home, and, having nothing
+better to do, turned up my notes on various cases of venous thrombosis,
+or blood-clot in the veins, which I had treated at one time or another.
+
+While I was still reading them there came a violent ring at the bell,
+followed by the appearance of a very agitated footman, who gasped out:—
+
+“Please, sir, come to my master, Major Selby, he has been taken ill.”
+
+“I can’t, my good man,” I answered, “Sir John Bell is his doctor.”
+
+“I have been to Sir John’s, sir, but he has gone away for two days to
+attend a patient in the country, and the Major told me to come for
+you.”
+
+Then I hesitated no longer. As we hurried to the house, which was close
+at hand, the footman told me that the Major on reaching home took a cup
+of tea and sent for a cab to take him to Sir John Bell. As he was in
+the act of getting into the cab, suddenly he fell backwards and was
+picked up panting for breath, and carried into the dining-room. By this
+time we had reached the house, of which the door was opened as we
+approached it by Mrs. Selby herself, who seemed in great distress.
+
+“Don’t talk now, but take me to your husband,” I said, and was led into
+the dining-room, where the unfortunate man lay groaning on the sofa.
+
+“Glad you’ve come,” he gasped. “I believe that fool, Bell, has done for
+me.”
+
+Asking those present in the room, a brother and a grown-up son of the
+patient, to stand back, I made a rapid examination; then I wrote a
+prescription and sent it round to the chemist—it contained ammonia, I
+remember—and ordered hot fomentations to be placed upon the leg. While
+these matters were being attended to I went with the relations into
+another room.
+
+“What is the matter with him, doctor?” asked Mrs. Selby.
+
+“It is, I think, a case of what is called blood-clot, which has formed
+in the veins of the leg,” I answered. “Part of this clot has been
+detached by exertion, or possibly by rubbing, and, travelling upwards,
+has become impacted in one of the pulmonary arteries.”
+
+“Is it serious?” asked the poor wife.
+
+“Of course we must hope for the best,” I said; “but it is my duty to
+tell you that I do not myself think Major Selby will recover; how long
+he will last depends upon the size of the clot which has got into the
+artery.”
+
+“Oh, this is ridiculous,” broke in Mr. Selby. “My brother has been
+under the care of Sir John Bell, the ablest doctor in Dunchester, who
+told him several times that he was suffering from nothing but
+rheumatism, and now this gentleman starts a totally different theory,
+which, if it were true, would prove Sir John to be a most careless and
+incompetent person.”
+
+“I am very sorry,” I answered; “I can only hope that Sir John is right
+and I am wrong. So that there may be no subsequent doubt as to what I
+have said, with your leave I will write down my diagnosis and give it
+to you.”
+
+When this was done I returned to the patient, and Mr. Selby, taking my
+diagnosis, telegraphed the substance of it to Sir John Bell for his
+opinion. In due course the answer arrived from Sir John, regretting
+that there was no train by which he could reach Dunchester that night,
+giving the name of another doctor who was to be called in, and adding,
+incautiously enough, “Dr. Therne’s diagnosis is purely theoretical and
+such as might be expected from an inexperienced man.”
+
+Meanwhile the unfortunate Major was dying. He remained conscious to the
+last, and, in spite of everything that I could do, suffered great pain.
+Amongst other things he gave an order that a _post-mortem_ examination
+should be made to ascertain the cause of his death.
+
+When Mr. Selby had read the telegram from Sir John he handed it to me,
+saying, “It is only fair that you should see this.”
+
+I read it, and, having asked for and obtained a copy, awaited the
+arrival of the other doctor before taking my departure. When at length
+he came Major Selby was dead.
+
+Two days later the _post-mortem_ was held. There were present at it Sir
+John Bell, myself, and the third _medico_, Dr. Jeffries. It is
+unnecessary to go into details, but in the issue I was proved to be
+absolutely right. Had Sir John taken the most ordinary care and
+precaution his patient need not have died—indeed, his death was caused
+by the treatment. The rubbing of the leg detached a portion of the
+clot, that might easily have been dissolved by rest and local
+applications. As it was, it went to his lung, and he died.
+
+When he saw how things were going, Sir John tried to minimise matters,
+but, unfortunately for him, I had my written diagnosis and a copy of
+his telegram, documents from which he could not escape. Nor could he
+deny the results of the _post-mortem_, which took place in the presence
+and with the assistance of the third practitioner, a sound and
+independent, though not a very successful, man.
+
+When everything was over there was something of a scene. Sir John
+asserted that my conduct had been impertinent and unprofessional. I
+replied that I had only done my duty and appealed to Dr. Jeffries, who
+remarked drily that we had to deal not with opinions and theories but
+with facts and that the facts seemed to bear me out. On learning the
+truth, the relatives, who until now had been against me, turned upon
+Sir John and reproached him in strong terms, after which they went away
+leaving us face to face. There was an awkward silence, which I broke by
+saying that I was sorry to have been the unwilling cause of this
+unpleasantness.
+
+“You may well be sorry, sir,” Sir John answered in a cold voice that
+was yet alive with anger, “seeing that by your action you have exposed
+me to insult, I who have practised in this city for over thirty years,
+and who was your father’s partner before you were in your cradle. Well,
+it is natural to youth to be impertinent. To-day the laugh is yours,
+Dr. Therne, to-morrow it may be mine; so good-afternoon, and let us say
+no more about it,” and brushing by me rudely he passed from the house.
+
+I followed him into the street watching his thick square form, of which
+even the back seemed to express sullen anger and determination. At a
+distance of a few yards stood the brother of the dead man, Mr. Selby,
+talking to Dr. Jeffries, one of whom made some remark that caught Sir
+John’s ear. He stopped as though to answer, then, changing his mind,
+turned his head and looked back at me. My sight is good and I could see
+his face clearly; on it was a look of malignity that was not pleasant
+to behold.
+
+“I have made a bad enemy,” I thought to myself; “well, I am in the
+right; one must take risks in life, and it is better to be hated than
+despised.”
+
+Major Selby was a well-known and popular man, whose sudden death had
+excited much sympathy and local interest, which were intensified when
+the circumstances connected with it became public property.
+
+On the following day the leading city paper published a report of the
+results of the _post-mortem_, which doubtless had been furnished by the
+relatives, and with it an editorial note.
+
+In this paragraph I was spoken of in very complimentary terms; my
+medical distinctions were alluded to, and the confident belief was
+expressed that Dunchester would not be slow to avail itself of my skill
+and talent. Sir John Bell was not so lightly handled. His gross error
+of treatment in the case of the deceased was, it is true, slurred over,
+but some sarcastic and disparaging remarks were aimed at him under
+cover of comparison between the old and the new school of medical
+practitioners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+STEPHEN STRONG GOES BAIL
+
+
+Great are the uses of advertisement! When I went into my
+consulting-room after breakfast that day I found three patients waiting
+to see me, one of them a member of a leading family in the city.
+
+Here was the beginning of my success. Whatever time may remain to me,
+to-day in a sense my life is finished. I am a broken-hearted and
+discomfited man, with little more to fear and nothing to hope.
+Therefore I may be believed when I say that in these pages I set down
+the truth and nothing but the truth, not attempting to palliate my
+conduct where it has been wrong, nor to praise myself even when praise
+may have been due. Perhaps, then, it will not be counted conceit when I
+write that in my best days I was really a master of my trade. To my
+faculty for diagnosis I have, I think, alluded; it amounted to a gift—a
+touch or two of my fingers would often tell me what other doctors could
+not discover by prolonged examination. To this I added a considerable
+mastery of the details of my profession, and a sympathetic insight into
+character, which enabled me to apply my knowledge to the best
+advantage.
+
+When a patient came to me and told me that his symptoms were this or
+that or the other, I began by studying the man and forming my own
+conclusions as to his temperament, character, and probable past. It was
+this method of mine of studying the individual as a whole and his
+ailment as something springing from and natural to his physical and
+spiritual entity that, so far as general principles can be applied to
+particular instances, often gave me a grip of the evil, and enabled me,
+by dealing with the generating cause, to strike at its immediate
+manifestation. My axiom was that in the human subject mind is king; the
+mind commands, the body obeys. From this follows the corollary that the
+really great doctor, however trivial the complaint, should always begin
+by trying to understand the mind of his patient, to follow the course
+of its workings, and estimate their results upon his physical nature.
+
+Necessarily there are many cases to which this rule does not seem to
+apply, those of contagious sickness, for instance, or those of surgery,
+resulting from accident. And yet even there it does apply, for the
+condition of the mind may predispose to infection, and to recovery or
+collapse in the instance of the sufferer from injuries. But these
+questions of predisposition and consequence are too great to argue
+here, though even the most rule-of-thumb village practitioner, with a
+black draught in one hand and a pot of ointment in the other, will
+agree that they admit of a wide application.
+
+At least it is to these primary principles over and above my technical
+skill that I attribute my success while I was successful. That at any
+rate was undoubted. Day by day my practice grew, to such an extent
+indeed, that on making up my books at the end of the second year, I
+found that during the preceding twelve months I had taken over 900
+pounds in fees and was owed about 300 pounds more. Most of this
+balance, however, I wrote off as a bad debt, since I made it a custom
+never to refuse a patient merely because he might not be able to pay
+me. I charged large fees, for a doctor gains nothing by being cheap,
+but if I thought it inexpedient I did not attempt to collect them.
+
+After this matter of the inquest on Major Selby the relations between
+Sir John Bell and myself were very strained—in fact, for a while he
+refused to meet me in consultation. When this happened, without
+attempting to criticise his action, I always insisted upon retiring
+from the case, saying that it was not for me, a young man, to stand in
+the path of one of so great experience and reputation. As might be
+expected this moderation resulted in my triumph, for the time came when
+Sir John thought it wise to waive his objections and to recognise me
+professionally. Then I knew that I had won the day, for in that equal
+field I was his master. Never once that I can remember did he venture
+to reverse or even to cavil at my treatment, at any rate in my
+presence, though doubtless he criticised it freely elsewhere.
+
+And so I flourished, and as I waxed he waned, until, calculating my
+chances with my wife, I was able to prophesy that if no accident or
+ill-chance occurred to stop me, within another three years I should be
+the leading practitioner in Dunchester, while Sir John Bell would
+occupy the second place.
+
+But I had reckoned without his malice, for, although I knew this to be
+inveterate, I had underrated its probable effects, and in due course
+the ill-chance happened. It came about in this wise.
+
+When we had been married something over two years my wife found herself
+expecting to become a mother. As the event drew near she expressed
+great anxiety that I should attend upon her. To this, however, I
+objected strenuously—first, because I cannot bear to see any one to
+whom I am attached suffer pain, and, secondly, because I knew that my
+affection and personal anxiety would certainly unnerve me. Except in
+cases of the utmost necessity no man, in my opinion, should doctor
+himself or his family. Whilst I was wondering how to arrange matters I
+chanced to meet Sir John Bell in consultation. After our business was
+over, developing an unusual geniality of manner, he proposed to walk a
+little way with me.
+
+“I understand, my dear Therne,” he said, “that there is an interesting
+event expected in your family.”
+
+I replied that this was so.
+
+“Well,” he went on, “though we may differ on some points, I am sure
+there is one upon which we shall agree—that no man should doctor his
+own flesh and blood. Now, look here, I want you to let me attend upon
+your good wife. However much you go-ahead young fellows may turn up
+your noses at us old fossils, I think you will admit that by this time
+I ought to be able to show a baby into the world, especially as I had
+the honour of performing that office for yourself, my young friend.”
+
+For a moment I hesitated. What Sir John said was quite true; he was a
+sound and skilful obstetrician of the old school. Moreover, he
+evidently intended to hold out the olive branch by this kind offer,
+which I felt that I ought to accept. Already, having conquered in the
+fray, I forgave him the injuries that he had worked me. It is not in my
+nature to bear unnecessary malice—indeed, I hate making or having an
+enemy. And yet I hesitated, not from any premonition or presentiment of
+the dreadful events that were to follow, but simply because of my
+wife’s objection to being attended by any one but myself. I thought of
+advancing this in excuse of a refusal, but checked myself, because I
+was sure that he would interpret it as a rebuff, and in consequence
+hate me more bitterly than ever. So in the end I accepted his offer
+gratefully, and we parted.
+
+When I told Emma she was a little upset, but being a sensible woman she
+soon saw the force of my arguments and fell in with the situation. In
+truth, unselfish creature that she was, she thought more of the
+advantage that would accrue to me by this formal burying of the hatchet
+than of her own prejudices or convenience.
+
+The time came and with it Sir John Bell, large, sharp-eyed, and jocose.
+In due course and under favourable conditions a daughter was born to
+me, a very beautiful child, fair like her mother, but with my dark
+eyes.
+
+I think it was on the fourth day from the birth of the child that I
+went after luncheon to see my wife, who so far had done exceedingly
+well. I found her depressed, and she complained of headache. Just then
+the servant arrived saying that I was wanted in the consulting-room, so
+I kissed Emma and, after arranging her bed-clothing and turning her
+over so that she might lie more comfortably, I hurried downstairs,
+telling her that she had better go to sleep.
+
+While I was engaged with my visitor Sir John Bell came to see my wife.
+Just as the patient had gone and Sir John was descending the stairs a
+messenger hurried in with a note summoning me instantly to attend upon
+Lady Colford, the wife of a rich banker and baronet who, I knew, was
+expecting her first confinement. Seizing my bag I started, and, as I
+reached the front door, I thought that I heard Sir John, who was now
+nearly at the foot of the stairs, call out something to me. I answered
+that I couldn’t stop but would see him later, to which I understood him
+to reply “All right.”
+
+This was about three o’clock in the afternoon, but so protracted and
+anxious was the case of Lady Colford that I did not reach home again
+till eight. Having swallowed a little food, for I was thoroughly
+exhausted, I went upstairs to see my wife. Entering the room softly I
+found that she was asleep, and that the nurse also was dozing on the
+sofa in the dressing-room. Fearing to disturb them, I kissed her lips,
+and going downstairs returned at once to Sir Thomas Colford’s house,
+where I spent the entire night in attendance on his wife.
+
+When I came home again about eight o’clock on the following morning it
+was to find Sir John Bell awaiting me in the consulting-room. A glance
+at his face told me that there was something dreadfully wrong.
+
+“What is it?” I asked.
+
+“What is it? Why, what I called after you yesterday, only you wouldn’t
+stop to listen, and I haven’t known where to find you since. It’s
+puerperal fever, and Heaven knows what gave it to her, for I don’t. I
+thought so yesterday, and this morning I am sure of it.”
+
+“Puerperal fever,” I muttered, “then I am ruined, whatever happens to
+Emma.”
+
+“Don’t talk like that, man,” answered Sir John, “she has a capital
+constitution, and, I daresay, we shall pull her through.”
+
+“You don’t understand. I have been attending Lady Colford, going
+straight from Emma’s room to her.”
+
+Sir John whistled. “Oh, indeed. Certainly, that’s awkward. Well, we
+must hope for the best, and, look you here, when a fellow calls out to
+you another time just you stop to listen.”
+
+To dwell on all that followed would serve no good purpose, and indeed
+what is the use of setting down the details of so much forgotten
+misery? In a week my beloved wife was dead, and in ten days Lady
+Colford had followed her into the darkness. Then it was, that to
+complete my own destruction, I committed an act of folly, for, meeting
+Sir John Bell, in my mad grief I was fool enough to tell him I knew
+that my wife’s death, and indirectly that of Lady Colford, were due to
+his improper treatment and neglect of precautions.
+
+I need not enter into the particulars, but this in fact was the case.
+
+He did not say much in answer to my accusation, but merely replied:—
+
+“I make allowances for you; but, Dr. Therne, it is time that somebody
+taught you that people’s reputations cannot be slandered with impunity.
+Instead of attacking me I should recommend you to think of defending
+yourself.”
+
+Very soon I learned the meaning of this hint. I think it was within a
+week of my wife’s funeral that I heard that Sir Thomas Colford,
+together with all his relations and those of the deceased lady, were
+absolutely furious with me. Awaking from my stupor of grief, I wrote a
+letter to Sir Thomas expressing my deep regret at the misfortune that I
+had been the innocent means of bringing upon him. To this letter I
+received a reply by hand, scrawled upon half a sheet of notepaper. It
+ran:—
+
+“Sir Thomas Colford is surprised that Dr. Therne should think it worth
+while to add falsehood to murder.”
+
+Then, for the first time, I understood in what light my terrible
+misfortune was regarded by the public. A few days later I received
+further enlightenment, this time from the lips of an inspector of
+police, who called upon me with a warrant of arrest on the charge of
+having done manslaughter on the body of Dame Blanche Colford.
+
+That night I spent in Dunchester Jail, and next morning I was brought
+before the bench of magistrates, who held a special session to try my
+case. The chairman, whom I knew well, very kindly asked me if I did not
+wish for legal assistance. I replied, “No, I have nothing to defend,”
+which he seemed to think a hard saying, at any rate he looked
+surprised. On the other side counsel were employed nominally on behalf
+of the Crown, although in reality the prosecution, which in such a case
+was unusual if not unprecedented, had been set on foot and undertaken
+by the Colford family.
+
+The “information” was read by the clerk, in which I was charged with
+culpable negligence and wilfully doing certain things that caused the
+death of Blanche Colford. I stood there in the dock listening, and
+wondering what possible evidence could be adduced against me in support
+of such a charge. After the formal witnesses, relations and doctors,
+who testified to my being called in to attend on Lady Colford, to the
+course of the illness and the cause of death, etc., Sir John Bell was
+called. “Now,” I thought to myself, “this farce will come to an end,
+for Bell will explain the facts.”
+
+The counsel for the prosecution began by asking Sir John various
+questions concerning the terrible malady known as puerperal fever, and
+especially with reference to its contagiousness. Then he passed on to
+the events of the day when I was called in to attend upon Lady Colford.
+Sir John described how he had visited my late wife, and, from various
+symptoms which she had developed somewhat suddenly, to his grief and
+surprise, had come to the conclusion that she had fallen victim to
+puerperal fever. This evidence, to begin with, was not true, for
+although he suspected the ailment on that afternoon he was not sure of
+it until the following morning.
+
+“What happened then, Sir John?” asked the counsel.
+
+“Leaving my patient I hurried downstairs to see Dr. Therne, and found
+him just stepping from his consulting-room into the hall.”
+
+“Did he speak to you?”
+
+“Yes. He said ‘How do you do?’ and then added, before I could tell him
+about his wife, ‘I am rather in luck to-day; they are calling me in to
+take Lady Colford’s case.’ I said I was glad to hear it, but that I
+thought he had better let some one else attend her ladyship. He looked
+astonished, and asked why. I said, ‘Because, my dear fellow, I am
+afraid that your wife has developed puerperal fever, and the nurse
+tells me that you were in her room not long ago.’ He replied that it
+was impossible, as he had looked at her and thought her all right
+except for a little headache. I said that I trusted that I might be
+wrong, but if nearly forty years’ experience went for anything I was
+not wrong. Then he flew into a passion, and said that if anything was
+the matter with his wife it was my fault, as I must have brought the
+contagion or neglected to take the usual antiseptic precautions. I told
+him that he should not make such statements without an atom of proof,
+but, interrupting me, he declared that, fever or no fever, he would
+attend upon Lady Colford, as he could not afford to throw away the best
+chance he had ever had. I said, ‘My dear fellow, don’t be mad. Why, if
+anything happened to her under the circumstances, I believe that, after
+I have warned you, you would be liable to be criminally prosecuted for
+culpable negligence.’ ‘Thank you,’ he answered, ‘nothing will happen to
+her, I know my own business, and I will take the chance of that’; and
+then, before I could speak again, lifting up his bag from the chair on
+which he had placed it, he opened the front door and went out.”
+
+I will not attempt, especially after this lapse of years, to describe
+the feelings with which I listened to this amazing evidence. The black
+wickedness and the cold-blooded treachery of the man overwhelmed and
+paralysed me, so that when, after some further testimony, the chairman
+asked me if I had any questions to put to the witness, I could only
+stammer:—
+
+“It is a lie, an infamous lie!”
+
+“No, no,” said the chairman kindly, “if you wish to make a statement,
+you will have an opportunity of doing so presently. Have you any
+questions to ask the witness?”
+
+I shook my head. How could I question him on such falsehoods? Then came
+the nurse, who, amidst a mass of other information, calmly swore that,
+standing on the second landing, whither she had accompanied Sir John
+from his patient’s room, she heard a lengthy conversation proceeding
+between him and me, and caught the words, “I will take the chance of
+that,” spoken in my voice.
+
+Again I had no questions to ask, but I remembered that this nurse was a
+person who for a long while had been employed by Sir John Bell, and one
+over whom he very probably had some hold.
+
+Then I was asked if I had any witness, but, now that my wife was dead,
+what witness could I call?—indeed, I could not have called her had she
+been alive. Then, having been cautioned in the ordinary form, that
+whatever I said might be given as evidence against me at my trial, I
+was asked if I wished to make any statement.
+
+I did make a statement of the facts so far as I knew them, adding that
+the evidence of Sir John Bell and the nurse was a tissue of falsehoods,
+and that the former had been my constant enemy ever since I began to
+practise in Dunchester, and more especially since the issue of a
+certain case, in the treatment of which I had proved him to be wrong.
+When my statement had been taken down and I had signed it, the
+chairman, after a brief consultation with his companions, announced
+that, as those concerned had thought it well to institute this
+prosecution, in the face of the uncontradicted evidence of Sir John
+Bell the bench had no option but to send me to take my trial at the
+Dunchester Assizes, which were to be held on that day month. In order,
+however, to avoid the necessity of committing me to jail, they would be
+prepared to take bail for my appearance in a sum of 500 pounds from
+myself, and 500 pounds, in two sureties of 250 pounds, or one of the
+whole amount.
+
+Now I looked about me helplessly, for I had no relations in Dunchester,
+where I had not lived long enough to form friends sufficiently true to
+be willing to thus identify themselves publicly with a man in great
+trouble.
+
+“Thank you for your kindness,” I said, “but I think that I must go to
+prison, for I do not know whom to ask to go bail for me.”
+
+As I spoke there was a stir at the back of the crowded court, and an
+ungentle voice called out, “I’ll go bail for you, lad.”
+
+“Step forward whoever spoke,” said the clerk, and a man advanced to the
+table.
+
+He was a curious and not very healthy-looking person of about fifty
+years of age, ill-dressed in seedy black clothes and a flaming red tie,
+with a fat, pale face, a pugnacious mouth, and a bald head, on the top
+of which isolated hairs stood up stiffly. I knew him by sight, for once
+he had argued with me at a lecture I gave on sanitary matters, when I
+was told that he was a draper by trade, and, although his shop was by
+no means among the most important, that he was believed to be one of
+the richest men in Dunchester. Also he was a fierce faddist and a
+pillar of strength to the advanced wing of the Radical party.
+
+“What is your name?” asked a clerk.
+
+“Look you here, young man,” he answered, “don’t have the impertinence
+to try your airs and graces on with me. Seeing that you’ve owed me 24
+pounds 3s. 6d. for the last three years for goods supplied, you know
+well enough what my name is, or if you don’t I will show it to you at
+the bottom of a county court summons.”
+
+“It is my duty to ask you your name,” responded the disconcerted clerk
+when the laughter which this sally provoked had subsided.
+
+“Oh, very well. Stephen Strong is my name, and I may tell you that it
+is good at the bottom of a cheque for any reasonable amount. Well, I’m
+here to go bail for that young man. I know nothing of him except that I
+put him on his back in a ditch in an argument we had one night last
+winter in the reading-room yonder. I don’t know whether he infected the
+lady or whether he didn’t, but I do know, that like most of the
+poisoning calf-worshipping crowd who call themselves Vaccinators, this
+Bell is a liar, and that if he did, it wasn’t his fault because it was
+God’s will that she should die, and he’d a been wrong to try and
+interfere with Him. So name your sum and I’ll stand the shot.”
+
+All of this tirade had been said, or rather shouted, in a strident
+voice and in utter defiance of the repeated orders of the chairman that
+he should be silent. Mr. Stephen Strong was not a person very amenable
+to authority. Now, however, when he had finished his say he not only
+filled in the bail bond but offered to hand up a cheque for 500 pounds
+then and there.
+
+When it was over I thanked him, but he only answered:—
+
+“Don’t you thank me. I do it because I will not see folk locked up for
+this sort of nonsense about diseases and the like, as though the
+Almighty who made us don’t know when to send sickness and when to keep
+it away, when to make us live and when to make us die. Now do you want
+any money to defend yourself with?”
+
+I answered that I did not, and, having thanked him again, we parted
+without more words, as I was in no mood to enter into an argument with
+an enthusiast of this hopeless, but to me, convenient nature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE TRIAL
+
+
+Although it took place so long ago, I suppose that a good many people
+still remember the case of “The Queen _versus_ Therne,” which attracted
+a great deal of attention at the time. The prosecution, as I have said,
+was set on foot by the relations of the deceased Lady Colford, who,
+being very rich and powerful people, were able to secure the advocacy
+of one of the most eminent criminal lawyers of the day, with whom were
+briefed sundry almost equally eminent juniors. Indeed no trouble or
+expense was spared that could help to ensure my conviction.
+
+On my behalf also appeared a well-known Q.C., and with him two juniors.
+The judge who tried the case was old and experienced but had the
+reputation of being severe, and from its very commencement I could see
+that the perusal of the depositions taken in the magistrates’ court,
+where it will be remembered I was not defended, had undoubtedly biased
+his mind against me. As for the jury, they were a respectable-looking
+quiet set of men, who might be relied upon to do justice according to
+their lights. Of those who were called from the panel and answered to
+their names two, by the way, were challenged by the Crown and rejected
+because, I was told, they were professed anti-vaccinationists.
+
+On the appointed day and hour, speaking in a very crowded court,
+counsel for the Crown opened the case against me, demonstrating clearly
+that in the pursuit of my own miserable ends I had sacrificed the life
+of a young, high-placed and lovely fellow-creature, and brought
+bereavement and desolation upon her husband and family. Then he
+proceeded to call evidence, which was practically the same as that
+which had been given before the magistrates, although the husband and
+Lady Colford’s nurse were examined, and, on my behalf, cross-examined
+at far greater length.
+
+After the adjournment for lunch Sir John Bell was put into the
+witness-box, where, with a little additional detail, he repeated almost
+word for word what he had said before. Listening to him my heart sank,
+for he made an excellent witness, quiet, self-contained, and, to all
+appearance, not a little affected by the necessity under which he found
+himself of exposing the evil doings of a brother practitioner. I
+noticed with dismay also that his evidence produced a deep effect upon
+the minds of all present, judge and jury not excepted.
+
+Then came the cross-examination, which certainly was a brilliant
+performance, for under it were shown that from the beginning Sir John
+Bell had certainly borne me ill-will; that to his great chagrin I had
+proved myself his superior in a medical controversy, and that the fever
+which my wife contracted was in all human probability due to his
+carelessness and want of precautions while in attendance upon her. When
+this cross-examination was concluded the court rose for the day, and,
+being on bail, I escaped from the dock until the following morning.
+
+I returned to my house and went up to the nursery to see the baby, who
+was a very fine and healthy infant. At first I could scarcely bear to
+look at this child, remembering always that indirectly it had been the
+cause of its dear mother’s death. But now, when I was so lonely, for
+even those who called themselves my friends had fallen away from me in
+the time of trial, I felt drawn towards the helpless little thing.
+
+I kissed it and put it back into its cradle, and was about to leave the
+room when the nurse, a respectable widow woman with a motherly air,
+asked me straight out what were my wishes about the child and by what
+name it was to be baptised, seeing that when I was in jail she might
+not be able to ascertain them. The good woman’s question made me wince,
+but, recognising that in view of eventualities these matters must be
+arranged, I took a sheet of paper and wrote down my instructions, which
+were briefly that the child should be named Emma Jane after its mother
+and mine, and that the nurse, Mrs. Baker, should take it to her
+cottage, and be paid a weekly sum for its maintenance.
+
+Having settled these disagreeable details I went downstairs, but not to
+the dinner that was waiting for me, as after the nurse’s questions I
+did not feel equal to facing the other domestics. Leaving the house I
+walked about the streets seeking some small eating-place where I could
+dine without being recognised. As I wandered along wearily I heard a
+harsh voice behind me calling me by name, and, turning, found that the
+speaker was Mr. Stephen Strong. Even in the twilight there was no
+possibility of mistaking his flaming red tie.
+
+“You are worried and tired, doctor,” said the harsh voice. “Why ain’t
+you with your friends, instead of tramping the streets after that long
+day in court?”
+
+“Because I have no friends left,” I answered, for I had arrived at that
+stage of humiliation when a man no longer cares to cloak the truth.
+
+A look of pity passed over Mr. Strong’s fat face, and the lines about
+the pugnacious mouth softened a little.
+
+“Is that so?” he said. “Well, young man, you’re learning now what
+happens to those who put their faith in fashionable folk and not in the
+Lord. Rats can’t scuttle from a sinking ship faster than fashionable
+folk from a friend in trouble. You come along and have a bit of supper
+with me and my missis. We’re humble trades-folk, but, perhaps as things
+are, you won’t mind that.”
+
+I accepted Mr. Strong’s invitation with gratitude, indeed his kindness
+touched me. Leading me to his principal shop, we passed through it and
+down a passage to a sitting-room heavily furnished with solid
+horsehair-seated chairs and a sofa. In the exact centre of this sofa,
+reading by the light of a lamp with a pink shade which was placed on a
+table behind her, sat a prim grey-haired woman dressed in a black silk
+dress and apron and a lace cap with lappets. I noticed at once that the
+right lappet was larger than the left. Evidently it had been made so
+with the design of hiding a patch of affected skin below the ear, which
+looked to me as though it had been caused by the malady called lupus. I
+noticed further that the little woman was reading an anti-vaccination
+tract with a fearful picture of a diseased arm upon its cover.
+
+“Martha,” said Mr. Strong, “Dr. Therne, whom they’re trying at the
+court yonder, has come in for supper. Dr. Therne, that’s my wife.”
+
+Mrs. Strong rose and offered her hand. She was a thin person, with
+rather refined features, a weak mouth, and kindly blue eyes.
+
+“I’m sure you are welcome,” she said in a small monotonous voice. “Any
+of Stephen’s friends are welcome, and more especially those of them who
+are suffering persecution for the Right.”
+
+“That is not exactly my case, madam,” I answered, “for if I had done
+what they accuse me of I should deserve hanging, but I did not do it.”
+
+“I believe you, doctor,” she said, “for you have true eyes. Also
+Stephen says so. But in any case the death of the dear young woman was
+God’s will, and if it was God’s will, how can you be responsible?”
+
+While I was wondering what answer I should make to this strange
+doctrine a servant girl announced that supper was ready, and we went
+into the next room to partake of a meal, plain indeed, but of most
+excellent quality. Moreover, I was glad to find, unlike his wife, who
+touched nothing but water, that Mr. Strong did not include teetotalism
+among his eccentricities. On the contrary, he produced a bottle of
+really fine port for my especial benefit.
+
+In the course of our conversation I discovered that the Strongs, who
+had had no children, devoted themselves to the propagation of various
+“fads.” Mr. Strong indeed was anti-everything, but, which is rather
+uncommon in such a man, had no extraneous delusions; that is to say, he
+was not a Christian Scientist, or a Blavatskyist, or a Great
+Pyramidist. Mrs. Strong, however, had never got farther than
+anti-vaccination, to her a holy cause, for she set down the skin
+disease with which she was constitutionally afflicted to the credit, or
+discredit, of vaccination practised upon her in her youth. Outside of
+this great and absorbing subject her mind occupied itself almost
+entirely with that well-known but most harmless of the crazes, the
+theory that we Anglo-Saxons are the progeny of the ten lost Tribes of
+Israel.
+
+Steering clear of anti-vaccination, I showed an intelligent sympathy
+with her views and deductions concerning the ten Tribes, which so
+pleased the gentle little woman that, forgetting the uncertainty of my
+future movements, she begged me to come and see her as often as I
+liked, and in the meanwhile presented me with a pile of literature
+connected with the supposed wanderings of the Tribes. Thus began my
+acquaintance with my friend and benefactress, Martha Strong.
+
+At ten o’clock on the following morning I returned to the dock, and the
+nurse repeated her evidence in corroboration of Sir John’s testimony. A
+searching cross-examination showed her not to be a very trustworthy
+person, but on this particular point it was impossible to shake her
+story, because there was no standing ground from which it could be
+attacked. Then followed some expert evidence whereby, amongst other
+things, the Crown proved to the jury the fearfully contagious nature of
+puerperal fever, which closed the case for the prosecution. After this
+my counsel, reserving his address, called the only testimony I was in a
+position to produce, that of several witnesses to character and to
+medical capacity.
+
+When the last of these gentlemen, none of whom were cross-examined,
+stood down, my counsel addressed the Court, pointing out that my mouth
+being closed by the law of the land—for this trial took place before
+the passing of the Criminal Evidence Act—I was unable to go into the
+box and give on oath my version of what had really happened in this
+matter. Nor could I produce any witnesses to disprove the story which
+had been told against me, because, unhappily, no third person was
+present at the crucial moments. Now, this story rested entirely on the
+evidence of Sir John Bell and the nurse, and if it was true I must be
+mad as well as bad, since a doctor of my ability would well know that
+under the circumstances he would very probably carry contagion, with
+the result that a promising professional career might be ruined.
+Moreover, had he determined to risk it, he would have taken extra
+precautions in the sick-room to which he was called, and this it was
+proved I had not done. Now the statement made by me before the
+magistrates had been put in evidence, and in it I said that the tale
+was an absolute invention on the part of Sir John Bell, and that when I
+went to see Lady Colford I had no knowledge whatsoever that my wife was
+suffering from an infectious ailment. This, he submitted, was the true
+version of the story, and he confidently asked the jury not to blast
+the career of an able and rising man, but by their verdict to reinstate
+him in the position which he had temporarily and unjustly lost.
+
+In reply, the leading counsel for the Crown said that it was neither
+his wish nor his duty to strain the law against me, or to put a worse
+interpretation upon the facts than they would bear under the strictest
+scrutiny. He must point out, however, that if the contention of his
+learned friend were correct, Sir John Bell was one of the wickedest
+villains who ever disgraced the earth.
+
+In summing up the judge took much the same line. The case, that was of
+a character upon which it was unusual though perfectly allowable to
+found a criminal prosecution, he pointed out, rested solely upon the
+evidence of Sir John Bell, corroborated as it was by the nurse. If that
+evidence was correct, then, to satisfy my own ambition or greed, I had
+deliberately risked and, as the issue showed, had taken the life of a
+lady who in all confidence was entrusted to my care. Incredible as such
+wickedness might seem, the jury must remember that it was by no means
+unprecedented. At the same time there was a point that had been
+scarcely dwelt upon by counsel to which he would call their attention.
+According to Sir John Bell’s account, it was from his lips that I first
+learned that my wife was suffering from a peculiarly dangerous ailment.
+Yet, in his report of the conversation that followed between us, which
+he gave practically verbatim, I had not expressed a single word of
+surprise and sorrow at this dreadful intelligence, which to an
+affectionate husband would be absolutely overwhelming. As it had been
+proved by the evidence of the nurse and elsewhere that my relations
+with my young wife were those of deep affection, this struck him as a
+circumstance so peculiar that he was inclined to think that in this
+particular Sir John’s memory must be at fault.
+
+There was, however, a wide difference between assuming that a portion
+of the conversation had escaped a witness’s memory and disbelieving all
+that witness’s evidence. As the counsel for the Crown had said, if he
+had not, as he swore, warned me, and I had not, as he swore, refused to
+listen to his warning, then Sir John Bell was a moral monster. That he,
+Sir John, at the beginning of my career in Dunchester had shown some
+prejudice and animus against me was indeed admitted. Doubtless, being
+human, he was not pleased at the advent of a brilliant young rival, who
+very shortly proceeded to prove him in the wrong in the instance of one
+of his own patients, but that he had conquered this feeling, as a man
+of generous impulses would naturally do, appeared to be clear from the
+fact that he had volunteered to attend upon that rival’s wife in her
+illness.
+
+From all these facts the jury would draw what inferences seemed just to
+them, but he for one found it difficult to ask them to include among
+these the inference that a man who for more than a generation had
+occupied a very high position among them, whose reputation, both in and
+out of his profession, was great, and who had received a special mark
+of favour from the Crown, was in truth an evil-minded and most
+malevolent perjurer. Yet, if the statement of the accused was to be
+accepted, that would appear to be the case. Of course, however, there
+remained the possibility that in the confusion of a hurried interview I
+might have misunderstood Sir John Bell’s words, or that he might have
+misunderstood mine, or, lastly, as had been suggested, that having come
+to the conclusion that Sir John could not possibly form a trustworthy
+opinion on the nature of my wife’s symptoms without awaiting their
+further development, I had determined to neglect advice, in which, as a
+doctor myself, I had no confidence.
+
+This was the gist of his summing up, but, of course, there was a great
+deal more which I have not set down. The jury, wishing to consider
+their verdict, retired, an example that was followed by the judge. His
+departure was the signal for an outburst of conversation in the crowded
+court, which hummed like a hive of startled bees. The superintendent of
+police, who, I imagine, had his own opinion of Sir John Bell and of the
+value of his evidence, very kindly placed a chair for me in the dock,
+and there on that bad eminence I sat to be studied by a thousand
+curious and for the most part unsympathetic eyes. Lady Colford had been
+very popular. Her husband and relations, who were convinced of my guilt
+and sought to be avenged upon me, were very powerful, therefore the
+fashionable world of Dunchester, which was doctored by Sir John Bell,
+was against me almost to a woman.
+
+The jury were long in coming back, and in time I accustomed myself to
+the staring and comments, and began to think out the problem of my
+position. It was clear to me that, so far as my future was concerned,
+it did not matter what verdict the jury gave. In any case I was a
+ruined man in this and probably in every other country. And there,
+opposite to me, sat the villain who with no excuse of hot blood or the
+pressure of sudden passion, had deliberately sworn away my honour and
+livelihood. He was chatting easily to one of the counsel for the Crown,
+when presently he met my eyes and in them read my thoughts. I suppose
+that the man had a conscience somewhere; probably, indeed, his
+treatment of me had not been premeditated, but was undertaken in a
+hurry to save himself from well-merited attack. The lie once told there
+was no escape for him, who henceforth must sound iniquity to its
+depths.
+
+Suddenly, in the midst of his conversation, Sir John became silent and
+his lips turned pale and trembled; then, remarking abruptly that he
+could waste no more time on this miserable business, he rose and left
+the court. Evidently the barrister to whom he was talking had observed
+to what this change of demeanour was due, for he looked first at me in
+the dock and next at Sir John Bell as, recovering his pomposity, he
+made his way through the crowd. Then he grew reflective, and pushing
+his wig back from his forehead he stared at the ceiling and whistled to
+himself softly.
+
+It was very evident that the jury found a difficulty in making up their
+minds, for minute after minute went by and still they did not return.
+Indeed, they must have been absent quite an hour and a half when
+suddenly the superintendent of police removed the chair which he had
+given me and informed me that “they” were coming.
+
+With a curious and impersonal emotion, as a man might consider a case
+in which he had no immediate concern, I studied their faces while one
+by one they filed into the box. The anxiety had been so great and so
+prolonged that I rejoiced it was at length coming to its end, whatever
+that end might be.
+
+The judge having returned to his seat on the bench, in the midst of the
+most intense silence the clerk asked the jury whether they found the
+prisoner guilty or not guilty. Rising to his feet, the foreman, a
+dapper little man with a rapid utterance, said, or rather read from a
+piece of paper, “_Not guilty_, but we hope that in future Dr. Therne
+will be more careful about conveying infection.”
+
+“That is a most improper verdict,” broke in the judge with irritation,
+“for it acquits the accused and yet implies that he is guilty. Dr.
+Therne, you are discharged. I repeat that I regret that the jury should
+have thought fit to add a very uncalled-for rider to their verdict.”
+
+I left the dock and pushed my way through the crowd. Outside the
+court-house I came face to face with Sir Thomas Colford. A sudden
+impulse moved me to speak to him.
+
+“Sir Thomas,” I began, “now that I have been acquitted by a jury——”
+
+“Pray, Dr. Therne,” he broke in, “say no more, for the less said the
+better. It is useless to offer explanations to a man whose wife you
+have murdered.”
+
+“But, Sir Thomas, that is false. When I visited Lady Colford I knew
+nothing of my wife’s condition.”
+
+“Sir,” he replied, “in this matter I have to choose between the word of
+Sir John Bell, who, although unfortunately my wife did not like him as
+a doctor, has been my friend for over twenty years, and your word, with
+whom I have been acquainted for one year. Under these circumstances, I
+believe Sir John Bell, and that you are a guilty man. Nine people out
+of every ten in Dunchester believe this, and, what is more, the jury
+believed it also, although for reasons which are easily to be
+understood they showed mercy to you,” and, turning on his heel, he
+walked away from me.
+
+I also walked away to my own desolate home, and, sitting down in the
+empty consulting-room, contemplated the utter ruin that had overtaken
+me. My wife was gone and my career was gone, and to whatever part of
+the earth I might migrate an evil reputation would follow me. And all
+this through no fault of mine.
+
+Whilst I still sat brooding a man was shown into the room, a smiling
+little black-coated person, in whom I recognised the managing clerk of
+the firm of solicitors that had conducted the case for the prosecution.
+
+“Not done with your troubles yet, Dr. Therne, I fear,” he said
+cheerfully; “out of the criminal wood into the civil swamp,” and he
+laughed as he handed me a paper.
+
+“What is this?” I asked.
+
+“Statement of claim in the case of Colford v. Therne; damages laid at
+10,000 pounds, which, I daresay, you will agree is not too much for the
+loss of a young wife. You see, doctor, Sir Thomas is downright wild
+with you, and so are all the late lady’s people. As he can’t lock you
+up, he intends to ruin you by means of an action. If he had listened to
+me, that is what he would have begun with, leaving the criminal law
+alone. It’s a nasty treacherous thing is the criminal law, and you
+can’t be sure of your man however black things may look against him. I
+never thought they could convict you, doctor, never; for, as the old
+judge said, you see it is quite unusual to prosecute criminally in
+cases of this nature, and the jury won’t send a man to jail for a
+little mistake of the sort. But they will ‘cop’ you in damages, a
+thousand or fifteen hundred, and then the best thing that you can do
+will be to go bankrupt, or perhaps you had better clear before the
+trial comes on.”
+
+I groaned aloud, but the little man went on cheerfully:—
+
+“Same solicitors, I suppose? I’ll take the other things to them so as
+not to bother you more than I can help. Good-afternoon; I’m downright
+glad that they didn’t convict you, and as for old Bell, he’s as mad as
+a hatter, though of course everybody knows what the jury meant—the
+judge was pretty straight about it, wasn’t he?—he chooses to think that
+it amounts to calling him a liar. Well, now I come to think of it,
+there are one or two things—so perhaps he is. Good-afternoon, doctor.
+Let’s see, you have the original and I will take the duplicate,” and he
+vanished.
+
+When the clerk had gone I went on thinking. Things were worse than I
+had believed, for it seemed that I was not even clear of my legal
+troubles. Already this trial had cost me a great deal, and I was in no
+position to stand the financial strain of a second appearance in the
+law courts. Also the man was right; although I had been acquitted on
+the criminal charge, if the same evidence were given by Sir John Bell
+and the nurse in a civil action, without any manner of doubt I should
+be cast in heavy damages. Well, I could only wait and see what
+happened.
+
+But was it worth while? Was anything worth while? The world had treated
+me very cruelly; a villain had lied away my reputation and the world
+believed him, so that henceforth I must be one of its outcasts and
+black sheep; an object of pity and contempt among the members of my
+profession. It was doubtful whether, having been thus exposed and made
+bankrupt, I could ever again obtain a respectable practice. Indeed, the
+most that I might hope for would be some small appointment on the west
+coast of Africa, or any other poisonous place, which no one else would
+be inclined to accept, where I might live—until I died.
+
+The question that occurred to me that evening was whether it would not
+be wiser on the whole to accept defeat, own myself beaten, and ring
+down the curtain—not a difficult matter for a doctor to deal with. The
+arguments for such a course were patent; what were those against it?
+
+The existence of my child? Well, by the time that she grew up, if she
+lived to grow up, all the trouble and scandal would be forgotten, and
+the effacement of a discredited parent could be no great loss to her.
+Moreover, my life was insured for 3000 pounds in an office that took
+the risk of suicide.
+
+Considerations of religion? These had ceased to have any weight with
+me. I was brought up to believe in a good and watching Providence, but
+the events of the last few months had choked that belief. If there was
+a God who guarded us, why should He have allowed the existence of my
+wife to be sacrificed to the carelessness, and all my hopes to the
+villainy, of Sir John Bell? The reasoning was inconclusive, perhaps—for
+who can know the ends of the Divinity?—but it satisfied my mind at the
+time, and for the rest I have never really troubled to reopen the
+question.
+
+The natural love of life for its own sake? It had left me. What more
+had life to offer? Further, what is called “love of life” frequently
+enough is little more than fear of the hereafter or of death, and of
+the physical act of death I had lost my terror, shattered as I was by
+sorrow and shame. Indeed, at that moment I could have welcomed it
+gladly, since to me it meant the perfect rest of oblivion.
+
+So in the end I determined that I would leave this lighted house of
+Life and go out into the dark night, and at once. Unhappy was it for me
+and for hundreds of other human beings that the decree of fate, or
+chance, brought my designs to nothing.
+
+First I wrote a letter to be handed to the reporters at the inquest for
+publication in the newspapers, in which I told the true story of Lady
+Colford’s case and denounced Bell as a villain whose perjury had driven
+me to self-murder. After this I wrote a second letter, to be given to
+my daughter if she lived to come to years of discretion, setting out
+the facts that brought me to my end and asking her to pardon me for
+having left her. This done it seemed that my worldly business was
+completed, so I set about leaving the world.
+
+Going to a medicine chest I reflected a little. Finally I decided on
+prussic acid; its after effects are unpleasant but its action is swift
+and certain. What did it matter to me if I turned black and smelt of
+almonds when I was dead?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE GATE OF DARKNESS
+
+
+Taking the phial from the chest I poured an ample but not an over dose
+of the poison into a medicine glass, mixing it with a little water, so
+that it might be easier to swallow. I lingered as long as I could over
+these preparations, but they came to an end too soon.
+
+Now there seemed to be nothing more to do except to transfer that
+little measure of white fluid from the glass to my mouth, and thus to
+open the great door at whose bolts and bars we stare blankly from the
+day of birth to the day of death. Every panel of that door is painted
+with a different picture touched to individual taste. Some are
+beautiful, and some are grim, and some are neutral-tinted and
+indefinite. My favourite picture used to be one of a boat floating on a
+misty ocean, and in the boat a man sleeping—myself, dreaming happily,
+dreaming always.
+
+But that picture had gone now, and in place of it was one of blackness,
+not the tumultuous gloom of a stormy night, but dead, cold,
+unfathomable blackness. Without a doubt _that_ was what lay behind the
+door—only that. So soon as ever my wine was swallowed and those mighty
+hinges began to turn I should see a wall of blackness thrusting itself
+’twixt door and lintel. Yes, it would creep forward, now pausing, now
+advancing, until at length it wrapped me round and stifled out my
+breath like a death mask of cold clay. Then sight would die and sound
+would die and to all eternities there would be silence, silence while
+the stars grew old and crumbled, silence while they took form again far
+in the void, for ever and for ever dumb, dreadful, conquering silence.
+
+That was the only real picture, the rest were mere efforts of the
+imagination. And yet, what if some of them were also true? What if the
+finished landscape that lay beyond the doom-door was but developed from
+the faint sketch traced by the strivings of our spirit—to each man his
+own picture, but filled in, perfected, vivified a thousandfold, for
+terror or for joy perfect and inconceivable?
+
+The thought was fascinating, but not without its fears. It was strange
+that a man who had abandoned hopes should still be haunted by
+fears—like everything else in the world, this is unjust. For a little
+while, five or ten minutes, not more than ten, I would let my mind
+dwell on that thought, trying to dig down to its roots which doubtless
+drew their strength from the foetid slime of human superstition, trying
+to behold its topmost branches where they waved in sparkling light. No,
+that was not the theory; I must imagine those invisible branches as
+grim skeletons of whitened wood, standing stirless in that atmosphere
+of overwhelming night.
+
+So I sat myself in a chair, placing the medicine glass with the draught
+of bane upon the table before me, and, to make sure that I did not
+exceed the ten minutes, near to it my travelling clock. As I sat thus I
+fell into a dream or vision. I seemed to see myself standing upon the
+world, surrounded by familiar sights and sounds. There in the west the
+sun sank in splendour, and the sails of a windmill that turned slowly
+between its orb and me were now bright as gold, and now by contrast
+black as they dipped into the shadow. Near the windmill was a
+cornfield, and beyond the cornfield stood a cottage whence came the
+sound of lowing cattle and the voices of children. Down a path that ran
+through the ripening corn walked a young man and a maid, their arms
+twined about each other, while above their heads a lark poured out its
+song.
+
+But at my very feet this kindly earth and all that has life upon it
+vanished quite away, and there in its place, seen through a giant
+portal, was the realm of darkness that I had pictured—darkness so
+terrible, so overpowering, and so icy that my living blood froze at the
+sight of it. Presently something stirred in the darkness, for it
+trembled like shaken water. A shape came forward to the edge of the
+gateway so that the light of the setting sun fell upon it, making it
+visible. I looked and knew that it was the phantom of my lost wife
+wrapped in her last garments. There she stood, sad and eager-faced,
+with quick-moving lips, from which no echo reached my ears. There she
+stood, beating the air with her hands as though to bar that path
+against me. . . .
+
+I awoke with a start, to see standing over against me in the gloom of
+the doorway, not the figure of my wife come from the company of the
+dead with warning on her lips, but that of Stephen Strong. Yes, it was
+he, for the light of the candle that I had lit when I went to seek the
+drug fell full upon his pale face and large bald head.
+
+“Hullo, doctor,” he said in his harsh but not unkindly voice, “having a
+nip and a nap, eh? What’s your tipple? Hollands it looks, but it smells
+more like peach brandy. May I taste it? I’m a judge of hollands,” and
+he lifted the glass of prussic acid and water from the table.
+
+In an instant my dazed faculties were awake, and with a swift motion I
+had knocked the glass from his hand, so that it fell upon the floor and
+was shattered.
+
+“Ah!” he said, “I _thought_ so. And now, young man, perhaps you will
+tell me why you were playing a trick like that?”
+
+“Why?” I answered bitterly. “Because my wife is dead; because my name
+is disgraced; because my career is ruined; because they have commenced
+a new action against me, and, if I live, I must become a bankrupt——”
+
+“And you thought that you could make all these things better by killing
+yourself. Doctor, I didn’t believe that you were such a fool. You say
+you have done nothing to be ashamed of, and I believe you. Well, then,
+what does it matter what these folk think? For the rest, when a man
+finds himself in a tight place, he shouldn’t knock under, he should
+fight his way through. You’re in a tight place, I know, but I was once
+in a tighter, yes, I did what you have nearly done—I went to jail on a
+false charge and false evidence. But I didn’t commit suicide. I served
+my time, and I think it crazed me a bit though it was only a month; at
+any rate, I was what they call a crank when I came out, which I wasn’t
+when I went in. Then I set to work and showed up those for whom I had
+done time—living or dead they’ll never forget Stephen Strong, I’ll
+warrant—and after that I turned to and became the head of the Radical
+party and one of the richest men in Dunchester; why, I might have been
+in Parliament half a dozen times over if I had chosen, although I am
+only a draper. Now, if I have done all this, why can’t you, who have
+twice my brains and education, do as much?
+
+“Nobody will employ you? I will find folk who will employ you. Action
+for damages? I’ll stand the shot of that however it goes; I love a
+lawsuit, and a thousand or two won’t hurt me. And now I came round here
+to ask you to supper, and I think you’ll be better drinking port with
+Stephen Strong than hell-fire with another tradesman, whom I won’t
+name. Before we go, however, just give me your word of honour that
+there shall be no more of this sort of thing,” and he pointed to the
+broken glass, “now or afterwards, as I don’t want to be mixed up with
+inquests.”
+
+“I promise,” I answered presently.
+
+“That will do,” said Mr. Strong, as he led the way to the door.
+
+I need not dwell upon the further events of that evening, inasmuch as
+they were almost a repetition of those of the previous night. Mrs.
+Strong received me kindly in her faded fashion, and, after a few
+inquiries about the trial, sought refuge in her favourite topic of the
+lost Tribes. Indeed, I remember that she was rather put out because I
+had not already mastered the books and pamphlets which she had given
+me. In the end, notwithstanding the weariness of her feeble folly, I
+returned home in much better spirits.
+
+For the next month or two nothing of note happened to me, except indeed
+that the action for damages brought against me by Sir Thomas Colford
+was suddenly withdrawn. Although it never transpired publicly, I
+believe that the true reason of this collapse was that Sir John Bell
+flatly refused to appear in court and submit himself to further
+examination, and without Sir John Bell there was no evidence against
+me. But the withdrawal of this action did not help me professionally;
+indeed the fine practice which I was beginning to get together had
+entirely vanished away. Not a creature came near my consulting-room,
+and scarcely a creature called me in. The prosecution and the verdict
+of the jury, amounting as it did to one of “not proven” only, had
+ruined me. By now my small resources were almost exhausted, and I could
+see that very shortly the time would come when I should no longer know
+where to turn for bread for myself and my child.
+
+One morning as I was sitting in my consulting-room, moodily reading a
+medical textbook for want of something else to do, the front door bell
+rang. “A patient at last,” I thought to myself with a glow of hope. I
+was soon undeceived, however, for the servant opened the door and
+announced Mr. Stephen Strong.
+
+“How do you do, doctor?” he said briskly. “You will wonder why I am
+here at such an hour. Well, it is on business. I want you to come with
+me to see two sick children.”
+
+“Certainly,” I said, and we started.
+
+“Who are the children and what is the matter with them?” I asked
+presently.
+
+“Son and daughter of a working boot-maker named Samuels. As to what is
+the matter with them, you can judge of that for yourself,” he replied
+with a grim smile.
+
+Passing into the poorer part of the city, at length we reached a
+cobbler’s shop with a few pairs of roughly-made boots on sale in the
+window. In the shop sat Mr. Samuels, a dour-looking man of about forty.
+
+“Here is the doctor, Samuels,” said Strong.
+
+“All right,” he answered, “he’ll find the missus and the kids in there
+and a pretty sight they are; I can’t bear to look at them, I can’t.”
+
+Passing through the shop, we went into a back room whence came a sound
+of wailing. Standing in the room was a careworn woman and in the bed
+lay two children, aged three and four respectively. I proceeded at once
+to my examination, and found that one child, a boy, was in a state of
+extreme prostration and fever, the greater part of his body being
+covered with a vivid scarlet rash. The other child, a girl, was
+suffering from a terribly red and swollen arm, the inflammation being
+most marked above the elbow. Both were cases of palpable and severe
+erysipelas, and both of the sufferers had been vaccinated within five
+days.
+
+“Well,” said Stephen Strong, “well, what’s the matter with them?”
+
+“Erysipelas,” I answered.
+
+“And what caused the erysipelas? Was it the vaccination?”
+
+“It may have been the vaccination,” I replied cautiously.
+
+“Come here, Samuels,” called Strong. “Now, then, tell the doctor your
+story.”
+
+“There’s precious little story about it,” said the poor man, keeping
+his back towards the afflicted children. “I have been pulled up three
+times and fined because I didn’t have the kids vaccinated, not being
+any believer in vaccination myself ever since my sister’s boy died of
+it, with his head all covered with sores. Well, I couldn’t pay no more
+fines, so I told the missus that she might take them to the vaccination
+officer, and she did five or six days ago. And there, that’s the end of
+their vaccination, and damn ’em to hell, say I,” and the poor fellow
+pushed his way out of the room.
+
+It is quite unnecessary that I should follow all the details of this
+sad case. In the result, despite everything that I could do for him,
+the boy died though the girl recovered. Both had been vaccinated from
+the same tube of lymph. In the end I was able to force the authorities
+to have the contents of tubes obtained from the same source examined
+microscopically and subjected to the culture test. They were proved to
+contain the streptococcus or germ of erysipelas.
+
+As may be imagined this case caused a great stir and much public
+controversy, in which I took an active part. It was seized upon eagerly
+by the anti-vaccination party, and I was quoted as the authority for
+its details. In reply, the other side hinted pretty broadly that I was
+a person so discredited that my testimony on this or any other matter
+should be accepted with caution, an unjust aspersion which not
+unnaturally did much to keep me in the enemy’s camp. Indeed it was now,
+when I became useful to a great and rising party, that at length I
+found friends without number, who, not content with giving me their
+present support, took up the case on account of which I had stood my
+trial, and, by their energy and the ventilation of its details, did
+much to show how greatly I had been wronged. I did not and do not
+suppose that all this friendship was disinterested, but, whatever its
+motive, it was equally welcome to a crushed and deserted man.
+
+By slow degrees, and without my making any distinct pronouncement on
+the subject, I came to be looked upon as a leading light among the very
+small and select band of anti-vaccinationist men, and as such to study
+the question exhaustively. Hearing that I was thus engaged, Stephen
+Strong offered me a handsome salary, which I suppose came out of his
+pocket, if I would consent to investigate cases in which vaccination
+was alleged to have resulted in mischief. I accepted the salary since,
+formally at any rate, it bound me to nothing but a course of inquiries.
+During a search of two years I established to my satisfaction that
+vaccination, as for the most part it was then performed, that is from
+arm to arm, is occasionally the cause of blood poisoning, erysipelas,
+abscesses, tuberculosis, and other dreadful ailments. These cases I
+published without drawing from them any deductions whatever, with the
+result that I found myself summoned to give evidence before the Royal
+Commission on Vaccination which was then sitting at Westminster. When I
+had given my evidence, which, each case being well established, could
+scarcely be shaken, some members of the Commission attempted to draw me
+into general statements as to the advantage or otherwise of the
+practice of vaccination to the community. To these gentlemen I replied
+that as my studies had been directed towards the effects of vaccination
+in individual instances only, the argument was one upon which I
+preferred not to enter.
+
+Had I spoken the truth, indeed, I should have confessed my inability to
+support the anti-vaccinationist case, since in my opinion few people
+who have studied this question with an open and impartial mind can deny
+that Jenner’s discovery is one of the greatest boons—perhaps, after the
+introduction of antiseptics and anaesthetics, the very greatest—that
+has ever been bestowed upon suffering humanity.
+
+If the reader has any doubts upon the point, let him imagine a time
+when, as used to happen in the days of our forefathers, almost
+everybody suffered from smallpox at some period of their lives, those
+escaping only whose blood was so fortified by nature that the disease
+could not touch them. Let him imagine a state of affairs—and there are
+still people living whose parents could remember it—when for a woman
+not to be pitted with smallpox was to give her some claim to beauty,
+however homely might be her features. Lastly, let him imagine what all
+this means: what terror walked abroad when it was common for smallpox
+to strike a family of children, and when the parents, themselves the
+survivors of similar catastrophes, knew well that before it left the
+house it would take its tithe of those beloved lives. Let him look at
+the brasses in our old churches and among the numbers of children
+represented on them as kneeling behind their parents; let him note what
+a large proportion pray with their hands open. Of these, the most, I
+believe, were cut off by smallpox. Let him search the registers, and
+they will tell the same tale. Let him ask old people of what their
+mothers told them when they were young of the working of this
+pestilence in their youth. Finally, let him consider how it comes
+about, if vaccination is a fraud, that some nine hundred and
+ninety-nine medical men out of every thousand, not in England only, but
+in all civilised countries, place so firm a belief in its virtue. Are
+the doctors of the world all mad, or all engaged in a great conspiracy
+to suppress the truth?
+
+These were my real views, as they must be the views of most intelligent
+and thoughtful men; but I did not think it necessary to promulgate them
+abroad, since to do so would have been to deprive myself of such means
+of maintenance as remained to me. Indeed, in those days I told neither
+more nor less than the truth. Evil results occasionally followed the
+use of bad lymph or unclean treatment after the subject had been
+inoculated. Thus most of the cases of erysipelas into which I examined
+arose not from vaccination but from the dirty surroundings of the
+patient. Wound a million children, however slightly, and let flies
+settle on the wound or dirt accumulate in it, and the result will be
+that a certain small proportion will develop erysipelas quite
+independently of the effects of vaccination.
+
+In the same way, some amount of inoculated disease must follow the
+almost promiscuous use of lymph taken from human beings. The danger is
+perfectly preventable, and ought long ago to have been prevented, by
+making it illegal, under heavy penalties, to use any substance except
+that which has been developed in calves and scientifically treated with
+glycerine, when, as I believe, no hurt can possibly follow. This is the
+verdict of science and, as tens of thousands can testify, the common
+experience of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+CROSSING THE RUBICON
+
+
+My appearance as an expert before the Royal Commission gave me
+considerable importance in the eyes of a large section of the
+inhabitants of Dunchester. It was not the wealthiest or most
+influential section indeed, although in it were numbered some rich and
+powerful men. Once again I found myself with a wide and rapidly
+increasing practice, and an income that was sufficient for my needs.
+Mankind suffers from many ailments besides that of smallpox, indeed in
+Dunchester this question of the value of vaccination was at that time
+purely academical, as except for an occasional case there had been no
+outbreak of smallpox for years. Now, as I have said, I was a master of
+my trade, and soon proved myself competent to deal skilfully with such
+illnesses, surgical or medical, as I was called upon to treat. Thus my
+practice grew, especially among the small tradespeople and artisans,
+who did not belong to clubs, but preferred to pay for a doctor in whom
+they had confidence.
+
+Three years and more had gone by since that night on which I sat
+opposite to a wine-glass full of poison and was the prey of visions,
+when once again I received a call from Stephen Strong. With this
+good-hearted, though misguided man, and his amiable, but weak-minded
+wife, I had kept up an intimacy that in time ripened into genuine
+friendship. On every Sunday night, and sometimes oftener, I took supper
+with them, and discussed with Mrs. Strong the important questions of
+our descent from the lost Tribes and whether or no the lupus from which
+she suffered was the result of vaccination in infancy.
+
+Owing to a press of patients, to whom I was obliged to attend, I was
+not able to receive Mr. Strong for nearly half an hour.
+
+“Things are a bit different from what they used to be, doctor,” he said
+as he entered the room looking much the same as ever, with the
+exception that now even his last hairs had gone, leaving him completely
+bald, “there’s six more of them waiting there, and all except one can
+pay a fee. Yes, the luck has turned for you since you were called in to
+attend cobbler Samuels’ children, and you haven’t seen the top of it
+yet, I can tell you. Now, what do you think I have come to see you
+about?”
+
+“Can’t say. I give it up.”
+
+“Then I will tell you. You saw in yesterday’s paper that old brewer
+Hicks, the member for Dunchester, has been raised to the peerage. I
+understand he told the Government that if they kept him waiting any
+longer he would stop his subscription to the party funds, and as that’s
+5000 pounds a year, they gave in, believing the seat to be a safe one.
+But that’s just where they make their mistake, for if we get the right
+man the Rads will win.”
+
+“And who is the right man?”
+
+“James Therne, Esq., M.D.,” he answered quietly.
+
+“What on earth do you mean?” I asked. “How can I afford to spend from
+1000 to 2000 pounds upon a contested election, and as much more a year
+in subscriptions and keeping up the position if I should chance to be
+returned? And how, in the name of fortune, can I be both a practising
+physician and a member of Parliament?”
+
+“I’ll tell you, doctor, for, ever since your name was put forward by
+the Liberal Council yesterday, I have seen these difficulties and been
+thinking them out. Look here, you are still young, handsome, clever,
+and a capital speaker with a popular audience. Also you are very
+hard-working and would rise. But you’ve no money, and only what you
+earn at your profession to live on, which, if you were a member of
+Parliament, you couldn’t continue to earn. Well, such a man as you are
+is wanted and so he must be paid for.”
+
+“No, no,” I said, “I am not going to be the slave of a Radical Five
+Hundred, bound to do what they tell me and vote as they like; I’d
+rather stick to my own trade, thank you.”
+
+“Don’t you be in a hurry, young man; who asked you to be any one’s
+slave? Now, look here—if somebody guarantees every farthing of expense
+to fight the seat, and 1200 pounds a year and outgoings if you should
+be successful, and a bonus of 5000 pounds in the event of your being
+subsequently defeated or electing to give up parliamentary life, will
+you take on the job?”
+
+“On those terms, yes, I think so, provided I was sure of the guarantor,
+and that he was a man from whom I could take the money.”
+
+“Well, you can soon judge of that, doctor, for it is I, Samuel Strong,
+and I’ll deposit 10,000 pounds in the hands of a trustee before you
+write your letter of acceptance. No, don’t thank me. I do it for two
+reasons—first, because, having no chick or kin of my own, I happen to
+have taken a fancy to you and wish to push you on. The world has
+treated you badly, and I want to see you one of its masters, with all
+these smart people who look down on you licking your boots, as they
+will sure enough if you grow rich and powerful. That’s my private
+reason. My public one is that you are the only man in Dunchester who
+can win us the seat, and I’d think 10,000 pounds well spent if it put
+those Tories at the bottom of the poll. I want to show them who is
+“boss,” and that we won’t be lorded over by bankers and brewers just
+because they are rich men who have bought themselves titles.”
+
+“But you are a rich man yourself,” I interrupted.
+
+“Yes, doctor, and I spend my money in helping those who will help the
+people. Now, before you give me any answer, I’ve got to ask you a thing
+or two,” and he drew a paper from his pocket. “Are you prepared to
+support the abolition of ‘tied’ houses?”
+
+“Certainly. They are the worst monopoly in England.”
+
+“Graduated income-tax?”
+
+“Yes; the individual should pay in proportion to the property
+protected.”
+
+“An Old Age Pension scheme?”
+
+“Yes, but only by means of compulsory insurance applicable to all
+classes without exception.”
+
+“Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church?”
+
+“Yes, provided its funds are pooled and reapplied to Church purposes.”
+
+“Payment of members and placing the cost of elections on the rates?”
+
+“Yes, the door of Parliament should not be shut in the face of all
+except the very rich. Election expenditure is at present only a veiled
+form of corruption. If it were put upon the rates it could be reduced
+by at least a half, and elections would be fewer.”
+
+“Home Rule—no, I needn’t ask you that, for it is a dead horse which we
+don’t want to flog, and now-a-days we are all in favour of a big navy,
+so I think that is about everything—except, of course,
+anti-vaccination, which you’ll run for all it’s worth.”
+
+“I never said that I would, Mr. Strong,” I answered.
+
+He looked at me curiously. “No, and you never said you wouldn’t. Now,
+doctor, let us come to an understanding about this, for here in
+Dunchester it’s worth more than all the other things put together. If
+this seat is to be won, it will be won on anti-vaccination. That’s our
+burning question, and that’s why you are being asked to stand, because
+you’ve studied the thing and are believed to be one of the few doctors
+who don’t bow the knee to Baal. So look here, let’s understand each
+other. If you have any doubts about this matter, say so, and we will
+have done with it, for, remember, once you are on the platform you’ve
+got to go the whole hog; none of your scientific finicking, but appeals
+to the people to rise up in their thousands and save their innocent
+children from being offered to the Moloch of vaccination, with enlarged
+photographs of nasty-looking cases, and the rest of it.”
+
+I listened and shivered. The inquiry into rare cases of disease after
+vaccination had been interesting work, which, whatever deductions
+people might choose to draw, in fact committed me to nothing. But to
+become one of the ragged little regiment of medical dissenters, to
+swallow all the unscientific follies of the anti-vaccination agitators,
+to make myself responsible for and to promulgate their distorted
+figures and wild statements—ah! that was another thing. Must I appear
+upon platforms and denounce this wonderful discovery as the “law of
+useless infanticide”? Must I tell people that “smallpox is really a
+curative process and not the deadly scourge and pestilence that doctors
+pretend it to be”? Must I maintain “that vaccination never did, never
+does, and never can prevent even a single case of smallpox”? Must I
+hold it up as a “law (!) of devil worship and human sacrifice to
+idols”?
+
+If I accepted Strong’s offer it seemed that I must do all these things:
+more, I must be false to my instincts, false to my training and
+profession, false to my scientific knowledge. I could not do it. And
+yet—when did a man in my position ever get such a chance as that which
+was offered to me this day? I was ready with my tongue and fond of
+public speaking; from boyhood it had been my desire to enter
+Parliament, where I knew well that I should show to some advantage.
+Now, without risk or expense to myself, an opportunity of gratifying
+this ambition was given to me. Indeed, if I succeeded in winning this
+city, which had always been a Tory stronghold, for the Radical party I
+should be a marked man from the beginning, and if my career was not one
+of assured prosperity the fault would be my own. Already in imagination
+I saw myself rich (for in this way or in that the money would come), a
+favourite of the people, a trusted minister of the Crown and
+perhaps—who could tell?—ennobled, living a life of dignity and repute,
+and at last leaving my honours and my fame to those who came after me.
+
+On the other hand, if I refused this offer the chance would pass away
+from me, never to return again; it was probable even that I should lose
+Stephen Strong’s friendship and support, for he was not a man who liked
+his generosity to be slighted, moreover he would believe me unsound
+upon his favourite dogmas. In short, for ever abandoning my brilliant
+hopes I condemned myself to an experience of struggle as a doctor with
+a practice among second-class people.
+
+After all, although the thought of it shocked me at first, the price I
+was asked to pay was not so very heavy, merely one of the usual
+election platform formulas, whereby the candidate binds himself to
+support all sorts of things in which he has little or no beliefs.
+Already I was half committed to this anti-vaccination crusade, and, if
+I took a step or two farther in it, what did it matter? One crank more
+added to the great army of British enthusiasts could make little
+difference in the scheme of things.
+
+If ever a man went through a “psychological moment” in this hour I was
+that man. The struggle was short and sharp, but it ended as might be
+expected in the case of one of my history and character. Could I have
+foreseen the dreadful issues which hung upon my decision, I believe
+that rather than speak it, for the second time in my life I would have
+sought the solace to be found in the phials of my medicine chest. But I
+did not foresee them, I thought only of myself, of my own hopes, fears
+and ambitions, forgetting that no man can live to himself alone, and
+that his every deed must act and re-act upon others until humanity
+ceases to exist.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Strong after a two or three minutes’ pause, during
+which these thoughts were wrestling in my mind.
+
+“Well,” I answered, “as you elegantly express it, I am prepared to go
+the whole hog—it is a case of hog _versus_ calf, isn’t it?—or, for the
+matter of that, a whole styful of hogs.”
+
+I suppose that my doubts and irritation were apparent in the inelegant
+jocosity of my manner. At any rate, Stephen Strong, who was a shrewd
+observer, took alarm.
+
+“Look here, doctor,” he said, “I am honest, I am; right or wrong I
+believe in this anti-vaccination business, and we are going to run the
+election on it. If you don’t believe in it—and you have no particular
+call to, since every man can claim his own opinion—you’d better let it
+alone, and look on all this talk as nothing. You are our first and best
+man, but we have several upon the list; I’ll go on to one of them,” and
+he took up his hat.
+
+I let him take it; I even let him walk towards the door; but, as he
+approached it, I reflected that with that dogged burly form went all my
+ambitions and my last chance of advancement in life. When his hand was
+already on the handle, not of premeditation, but by impulse, I said:—
+
+“I don’t know why you should talk like that, as I think that I have
+given good proof that I am no believer in vaccination.”
+
+“What’s that, doctor?” he asked turning round.
+
+“My little girl is nearly four years old and she has never been
+vaccinated.”
+
+“Is it so?” he asked doubtfully.
+
+As he spoke I heard the nurse going down the passage and with her my
+daughter, whom she was taking for her morning walk. I opened the door
+and called Jane in, a beautiful little being with dark eyes and golden
+hair.
+
+“Look for yourself,” I said, and, taking off the child’s coat, I showed
+him both her arms. Then I kissed her and sent her back to the nurse.
+
+“That’s good enough, doctor, but, mind you, _she mustn’t be vaccinated
+now_.”
+
+As he spoke the words my heart sank in me, for I understood what I had
+done and the risk that I was taking. But the die was cast, or so I
+thought, in my folly. It was too late to go back.
+
+“Don’t be afraid,” I said, “no cow poison shall be mixed with her
+blood.”
+
+“Now I believe you, doctor,” he answered, “for a man won’t play tricks
+with his only child just to help himself. I’ll take your answer to the
+council, and they will send you the formal letter of invitation to
+stand with the conditions attached. Before you answer it the money will
+be lodged, and you shall have my bond for it. And now I must be going,
+for I am wasting your time and those patients of yours will be getting
+tired. If you will come to supper to-night I’ll have some of the
+leaders to meet you and we can talk things over. Good-bye, we shall win
+the seat; so sure as my name is Stephen Strong we shall win on the A.V.
+ticket.”
+
+He went, and I saw those of my patients who had sat out the wait. When
+they had gone, I considered the position, summing it up in my own mind.
+The prospect was exhilarating, and yet I was depressed, for I had bound
+myself to the chariot wheels of a false doctrine. Also, by implication,
+I had told Strong a lie. It was true that Jane had not been vaccinated,
+but of this I had neglected to give him the reason. It was that I had
+postponed vaccinating her for a while owing to a certain infantile
+delicacy, being better acquainted than most men with the risks
+consequent on that operation, slight though it is, in certain
+conditions of a child’s health, and knowing that there was no danger of
+her taking smallpox in a town which was free from it. I proposed,
+however, to perform the operation within the next few days; indeed, for
+this very purpose I had already written to London to secure some
+glycerinated calf lymph, which would now be wasted.
+
+The local papers next morning appeared with an announcement that at the
+forthcoming bye-election Dunchester would be contested in the Radical
+interest by James Therne, Esq., M.D. They added that, in addition to
+other articles of the Radical faith, Dr. Therne professed the doctrine
+of anti-vaccination, of which he was so ardent an upholder that,
+although on several occasions he had been threatened with prosecution,
+he declined to allow his only child to be vaccinated.
+
+In the same issues it was announced that the Conservative candidate
+would be Sir Thomas Colford.
+
+So the die was cast. I had crossed the Rubicon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+BRAVO THE A.V.’S
+
+
+In another week the writ had been issued, and we were in the thick of
+the fight. What a fight it was! Memory could not record; tradition did
+not even record another half as fierce in the borough of Dunchester.
+For the most part, that is in many of our constituencies, it is not
+difficult for a candidate standing in the Radical interest, if he is
+able, well-backed, and not too particular as to what he promises, to
+win the seat for his party. But Dunchester was something of an
+exception. In a sense it was corrupt, that is, it had always been
+represented by a rich man, who was expected to pay liberally for the
+honour of its confidence. Pay he did, indeed, in large and numberless
+subscriptions, in the endowment of reading-rooms, in presents of public
+parks, and I know not what besides.
+
+At least it is a fact that almost every advantage of this nature
+enjoyed to-day by the inhabitants of Dunchester, has been provided for
+them by former Conservative members for the borough.
+
+Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that in choosing
+a candidate the majority of the electors of the city were apt to ask
+two leading questions: first, Is he rich? and secondly, What will he do
+for the town if he gets in?
+
+Now, Sir Thomas Colford was very rich, and it was whispered that if he
+were elected he would be prepared to show his gratitude in a
+substantial fashion. A new wing to the hospital was wanted; this it was
+said would be erected and endowed; also forty acres of valuable land
+belonging to him ran into the park, and he had been heard to say that
+these forty acres were really much more important to the public than to
+himself, and that he hoped that one day they would belong to it.
+
+It is small wonder, then, that the announcement of his candidature was
+received with passionate enthusiasm. Mine, on the contrary, evoked a
+chorus of disapproval, that is, in the local press. I was denounced as
+an adventurer, as a man who had stood a criminal trial for wicked
+negligence, and escaped the jail only by the skin of my teeth. I was
+held up to public reprobation as a Socialist, who, having nothing
+myself, wished to prey upon the goods of others, and as an
+anti-vaccination quack who, to gain a few votes, was ready to infest
+the whole community with a loathsome disease. Of all the accusations of
+my opponents this was the only one that stung me, because it alone had
+truth in it.
+
+Sir John Bell, my old enemy, one of the nominators of Sir Thomas
+Colford, appeared upon the platform at his first meeting, and, speaking
+in the character of an old and leading citizen of the town, and as one
+who had doctored most of them, implored his audience not to trust their
+political fortunes to such a person as myself, whose doctrines were
+repudiated by almost every member of the profession, which I disgraced.
+This appeal carried much weight with it.
+
+From all these circumstances it might have been supposed that my case
+was hopeless, especially as no Radical had even ventured to contest the
+seat in the last two elections. But, in fact, this was not so, for in
+Dunchester there existed a large body of voters, many of them employed
+in shoe-making factories, who were almost socialistic in their views.
+These men, spending their days in some hive of machinery, and their
+nights in squalid tenements built in dreary rows, which in cities such
+people are doomed to inhabit, were very bitter against the upper
+classes, and indeed against all who lived in decent comfort.
+
+This was not to be marvelled at, for what can be expected of folk whose
+lot, hard as it is, has none of the mitigations that lighten the
+troubles of those who live in the country, and who can at least breathe
+the free air and enjoy the beauties that are common to all? Here, at
+Dunchester, their pleasures consisted for the most part in a dog fight
+or some such refining spectacle, varied by an occasional “boose” at the
+public-house, or, in the case of those who chanced to be more
+intellectually inclined, by attending lectures where Socialism and
+other advanced doctrines were preached. As was but natural, this class
+might be relied upon almost to a man to vote for the party which
+promised to better their lot, rather than for the party which could
+only recommend them to be contented and to improve themselves. To
+secure their support it was only necessary to be extravagant of
+promises and abusive of employers who refused to pay them impossible
+wages.
+
+Next in importance to these red-hot “forwards” came the phalanx of
+old-fashioned people who voted Liberal because their fathers had voted
+Liberal before them. Then there were the electors who used to be
+Conservative but, being honestly dissatisfied with the Government on
+account of its foreign policy, or for other reasons, had made up their
+minds to transfer their allegiance. Also there were the dissenters, who
+set hatred of the Church above all politics, and made its disendowment
+and humiliation their watchword. In Dunchester these were active and
+numerous, a very tower of strength to me, for Stephen Strong was the
+wealthiest and most important of them.
+
+During the first day or two of the canvass, however, a careful estimate
+of our electoral strength showed it to be several hundred votes short
+of that of our opponents. Therefore, if we would win, we must make
+converts by appealing to the prejudices of members of the electorate
+who were of Conservative views; in other words, by preaching “fads.”
+
+Of these there were many, all useful to the candidate of pliant mind,
+such as the total drink-prohibition fad, the anti-dog-muzzling fad, and
+others, each of which was worth some votes. Even the Peculiar People, a
+society that makes a religion of killing helpless children by refusing
+them medical aid when they are ill, were good for ten or twelve. Here,
+however, I drew the line, for when asking whether I would support a
+bill relieving them from all liability to criminal prosecution in the
+event of the death of their victims, I absolutely declined to give any
+such undertaking.
+
+But although all these fancies had their followers, it was the
+anti-vaccination craze that really had a hold in Dunchester. The
+“A.V.’s,” as they called themselves, were numbered by hundreds, for the
+National League and other similar associations had been at work here
+for years, with such success that already twenty per cent. of the
+children born in the last decade had never been vaccinated. For a while
+the Board of Guardians had been slow to move, then, on the election of
+a new chairman and the representations of the medical profession of the
+town, they instituted a series of prosecutions against parents who
+refused to comply with the Vaccination Acts. Unluckily for the
+Conservative party, these prosecutions, which aroused the most bitter
+feelings, were still going on when the seat fell vacant; hence from an
+electoral point of view the question became one of first-class
+importance.
+
+In Dunchester, as elsewhere, the great majority of the anti-vaccinators
+were already Radical, but there remained a residue, estimated at from
+300 to 400, who voted “blue” or Conservative. If these men could be
+brought over, I should win; if they remained faithful to their colour,
+I must lose. Therefore it will be seen that Stephen Strong was right
+when he said that the election would be won or lost upon
+anti-vaccination.
+
+At the first public meeting of the Conservatives, after Sir Thomas’s
+speech, the spokesman of the anti-vaccination party rose and asked him
+whether he was in favour of the abolition of the Compulsory Vaccination
+laws. Now, at this very meeting Sir John Bell had already spoken
+denouncing me for my views upon this question, thereby to some extent
+tying the candidate’s hands. So, after some pause and consultation, Sir
+Thomas replied that he was in favour of freeing “Conscientious
+Objectors” to vaccination from all legal penalties. Like most half
+measures, this decision of course did not gain him a single vote,
+whereas it certainly lost him much support.
+
+On the same evening a similar question was put to me. My answer may be
+guessed, indeed I took the opportunity to make a speech which was
+cheered to the echo, for, having acted the great lie of espousing the
+anti-vaccination cause, I felt that it was not worth while to hesitate
+in telling other lies in support of it. Moreover, I knew my subject
+thoroughly, and understood what points to dwell upon and what to gloze
+over, how to twist and turn the statistics, and how to marshal my facts
+in such fashion as would make it very difficult to expose their
+fallacy. Then, when I had done with general arguments, I went on to
+particular cases, describing as a doctor can do the most dreadful which
+had ever come under my notice, with such power and pathos that women in
+the audience burst into tears.
+
+Finally, I ended by an impassioned appeal to all present to follow my
+example and refuse to allow their children to be poisoned. I called on
+them as free men to rise against this monstrous Tyranny, to put a stop
+to this system of organised and judicial Infanticide, and to send me to
+Parliament to raise my voice on their behalf in the cause of helpless
+infants whose tender bodies now, day by day, under the command of the
+law, were made the receptacles of the most filthy diseases from which
+man was doomed to suffer.
+
+As I sat down the whole of that great audience—it numbered more than
+2000—rose in their places shouting “We will! we will!” after which
+followed a scene of enthusiasm such as I had never seen before,
+emphasised by cries of “We are free Englishmen,” “Down with the
+baby-butchers,” “We will put you in, sir,” and so forth.
+
+That meeting gave me my cue, and thenceforward, leaving almost every
+other topic on one side, I and my workers devoted ourselves to
+preaching the anti-vaccination doctrines. We flooded the constituency
+with tracts headed “What Vaccination Does,” “The Law of Useless
+Infanticide,” “The Vaccine Tyranny,” “Is Vaccination a Fraud?” and so
+forth, and with horrible pictures of calves stretched out by pulleys,
+gagged and blindfolded, with their under parts covered by vaccine
+vesicles. Also we had photographs of children suffering from the
+effects of improper or unclean vaccination, which, by means of magic
+lantern slides, could be thrown life-sized on a screen; indeed, one or
+two such children themselves were taken round to meetings and their
+sores exhibited.
+
+The effect of all this was wonderful, for I know of nothing capable of
+rousing honest but ignorant people to greater rage and enthusiasm than
+this anti-vaccination cry. They believe it to be true, or, at least,
+seeing one or two cases in which it is true, and having never seen a
+case of smallpox, they suppose that the whole race is being poisoned by
+wicked doctors for their own gain. Hence their fierce energy and
+heartfelt indignation.
+
+Well, it carried me through. The election was fought not with foils but
+with rapiers. Against me were arrayed the entire wealth, rank, and
+fashion of the city, reinforced by Conservative speakers famous for
+their parliamentary eloquence, who were sent down to support Sir Thomas
+Colford. Nor was this all: when it was recognised that the fight would
+be a close one, an eloquent and leading member of the House was sent to
+intervene in person. He came and addressed a vast meeting gathered in
+the biggest building of the city. Seated among a crowd of workmen on a
+back bench I was one of his audience. His speech was excellent, if
+somewhat too general and academic. To the “A.V.” agitation, with a
+curious misapprehension of the state of the case, he devoted one
+paragraph only. It ran something like this:—
+
+“I am told that our opponents, putting aside the great and general
+issues upon which I have had the honour to address you, attempt to gain
+support by entering upon a crusade—to my mind a most pernicious
+crusade—against the law of compulsory vaccination. I am not concerned
+to defend that law, because practically in the mind of all reasonable
+men it stands beyond attack. It is, I am told, suggested that the Act
+should be amended by freeing from the usual penalties any parent who
+chooses to advance a plea of conscientious objection against the
+vaccination of his children. Such an argument seems to me too puerile,
+I had almost said too wicked, to dwell upon, for in its issue it would
+mean that at the whim of individuals innocent children might be exposed
+to disease, disfigurement, and death, and the whole community through
+them to a very real and imminent danger. Prophecy is dangerous, but,
+speaking for myself as a private member of Parliament, I can scarcely
+believe that responsible ministers of any party, moved by the pressure
+of an ill-informed and erroneous opinion, would ever consent under this
+elastic plea of conscience to establish such a precedent of surrender.
+Vaccination with its proved benefits is outside the pale of party.
+After long and careful study, science and the medical profession have
+given a verdict in its favour, a verdict which has now been confirmed
+by the experience of generations. Here I leave the question, and,
+turning once more before I sit down to those great and general issues
+of which I have already spoken, I would again impress upon this vast
+audience, and through it upon the constituency at large,” etc., etc.,
+etc.
+
+Within a year it was my lot to listen to an eminent leader of that
+distinguished member (with the distinguished member’s tacit consent)
+pressing upon an astonished House of Commons the need of yielding to
+the clamour of the anti-vaccinationists, and of inserting into the
+Bill, framed upon the report of a Royal Commission, a clause forbidding
+the prosecution of parents or guardians willing to assert before a
+bench of magistrates that they objected to vaccination on conscientious
+grounds.
+
+The appeal was not in vain; the Bill passed in its amended form; and
+within twenty years I lived to see its fruits.
+
+At length came the polling day. After this lapse of time I remember
+little of its details. I, as became a Democratic candidate, walked from
+polling-station to polling-station, while my opponent, as became a
+wealthy banker, drove about the city in a carriage and four. At eight
+o’clock the ballot-boxes were sealed up and conveyed to the town-hall,
+where the counting commenced in the presence of the Mayor, the
+candidates, their agents, and the necessary officers and assistants.
+Box after box was opened and the papers counted out into separate
+heaps, those for Colford into one pile, those for Therne into another,
+the spoiled votes being kept by themselves.
+
+The counting began about half-past nine, and up to a quarter to twelve
+nobody could form an idea as to the ultimate result, although at that
+time the Conservative candidate appeared to be about five and thirty
+votes ahead. Then the last ballot-box was opened; it came from a poor
+quarter of the city, a ward in which I had many supporters.
+
+Sir Thomas Colford and I, with our little knots of agents and
+sub-agents, placed ourselves one on each side of the table, waiting in
+respectful silence while the clerk dealt out the papers, as a player
+deals out cards. It was an anxious moment, as any one who has gone
+through a closely-contested parliamentary election can testify. For ten
+days or more the strain had been great, but, curiously enough, now at
+its climax it seemed to have lost its grip of me. I watched the
+_dénoûment_ of the game with keenness and interest indeed, but as
+though I were not immediately and personally concerned. I felt that I
+had done my best to win, and no longer cared whether my efforts ended
+in success or failure. Possibly this was the result of the apathy that
+falls upon overstrained nerves. Possibly I was oppressed by the fear of
+victory and of that Nemesis which almost invariably dogs the steps of
+our accomplished desires, of what the French writer calls _la page
+effrayante . . . des désirs accomplis_. At least just then I cared
+nothing whether I won or lost, only I reflected that in the latter
+event it would be sad to have told so many falsehoods to no good
+purpose.
+
+“How does it stand?” asked the head Conservative agent of the officer.
+
+The clerk took the last numbers from the counters and added up the
+figures.
+
+“Colford, 4303; Therne, 4291, and two more bundles to count.”
+
+Another packet was counted out.
+
+“How does it stand?” asked the agent.
+
+“Colford, 4349; Therne, 4327, and one more bundle of fifty to count,”
+answered the clerk.
+
+The agent gave a sigh of relief and smiled; I saw him press Sir
+Thomas’s hand in congratulations, for now he was sure that victory was
+theirs.
+
+“The game is up,” I whispered to Strong, who, as my principal
+supporter, had been admitted with me to the hall.
+
+He ground his teeth and I noticed in the gaslight that his face was
+ghastly pale and his lips were blue.
+
+“You had better go out,” I said, “you are overtaxing that dilated heart
+of yours. Go home and take a sleeping draught.”
+
+“Damn you, no,” he answered fiercely in my ear, “those papers come from
+the Little Martha ward, where I thought there wasn’t a wrong ’un in the
+crowd. If they’ve sold me, I’ll be even with them, as sure as my name
+is Strong.”
+
+“Come,” I said with a laugh, “a good Radical shouldn’t talk like that.”
+For me the bitterness was over, and, knowing the worst, I could afford
+to laugh.
+
+The official opened the last packet and began to count aloud.
+
+The first vote was for “Therne,” but bad, for the elector had written
+his name upon the paper. Then in succession came nine for “Colford.”
+Now all interest in the result had died away, and a hum of talk arose
+from those present in the room, a whispered murmur of congratulations
+and condolences. No wonder, seeing that to win I must put to my credit
+thirty-two of the forty remaining papers, which seemed a thing
+impossible.
+
+The counter went on counting aloud and dealing down the papers as he
+counted. One, two, three, four, and straight on up to ten for Therne,
+when he paused to examine a paper, then “One for Colford.” Then, in
+rapid successful, “Five, ten, fifteen for Therne.”
+
+Now the hum of conversation died away, for it was felt that this was
+becoming interesting. Of course it was practically impossible that I
+should win, for there were but fourteen papers left, and to do so I
+must secure eleven of them!
+
+“Sixteen for Therne,” went on the counter, “seventeen, eighteen,
+nineteen, twenty.”
+
+Now the excitement grew intense, for if the run held in two more votes
+I should tie. Every eye was fixed upon the counter’s hand.
+
+To the right and left of him on the table were two little piles of
+voting papers. The pile to the right was the property of Colford, the
+pile to the left was sacred to Therne. The paper was unfolded and
+glanced at, then up went the hand and down floated the fateful sheet on
+to the left-hand pile. “Twenty-one for Therne.” Again the process was
+repeated, and again the left-hand pile was increased. “Twenty-two for
+Therne.”
+
+“By heaven! you’ve tied him,” gasped Stephen Strong.
+
+There were but seven papers left, and the candidate who secured four of
+them would be the winner of the election.
+
+“Twenty-three for Therne, twenty-four, twenty-five”—a silence in which
+you could hear the breath of other men and the beating of your own
+heart.
+
+“_Twenty-six for Therne_, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, all
+for Therne.”
+
+Then, bursting from the lips of Stephen Strong, a shrill hoarse cry,
+more like the cry of a beast than that of a man, and the words, “By
+God! we’ve won. The A.V.’s have done it. Bravo the A.V.’s!”
+
+“Silence!” said the Mayor, bringing his fist down upon the table, but
+so far as Stephen Strong was concerned, the order was superfluous, for
+suddenly his face flushed, then turned a dreadful ashen grey, and down
+he sank upon the floor. As I leant over him and began to loosen his
+collar, I heard the Conservative agent say in strident tones:—
+
+“There is some mistake, there must be some mistake. It is almost
+impossible that Dr. Therne can have polled twenty-nine votes in
+succession. On behalf of Sir Thomas Colford, I demand a recount.”
+
+“Certainly,” answered some official, “let it be begun at once.”
+
+In that ceremony I took no part; indeed, I spent the next two hours,
+with the help of another doctor, trying to restore consciousness to
+Stephen Strong in a little room that opened off the town-hall. Within
+half an hour Mrs. Strong arrived.
+
+“He still breathes,” I said in answer to her questioning glance.
+
+Then the poor little woman sat herself down upon the edge of a chair,
+clasped her hands and said, “If the Lord wills it, dear Stephen will
+live; and if the Lord wills it, he will die.”
+
+This sentence she repeated at intervals until the end came. After two
+hours there was a knocking at the door.
+
+“Go away,” I said, but the knocker would not go away. So I opened. It
+was my agent, who whispered in an excited voice, “The count’s quite
+correct, you are in by seven.”
+
+“All right,” I answered, “tell them we want some more brandy.”
+
+At that moment Stephen Strong opened his eyes, and at that moment also
+there arose a mighty burst of cheering from the crowd assembled on the
+market-place without, to whom the Mayor had declared the numbers from a
+window of the town-hall.
+
+The dying man heard the cheering, and looked at me inquiringly, for he
+could not speak. I tried to explain that I was elected on the recount,
+but was unable to make him understand. Then I hit upon an expedient. On
+the floor lay a Conservative rosette of blue ribbon. I took it up and
+took also my own Radical colours from my coat. Holding one of them in
+each hand before Strong’s dying eyes, I lifted up the Radical orange
+and let the Conservative blue fall to the floor.
+
+He saw and understood, for a ghastly smile appeared upon his distorted
+face. Indeed, he did more—almost with his last breath he spoke in a
+hoarse, gurgling whisper, and his words were, “_Bravo the A.V.’s!_”
+
+Now he shut his eyes, and I thought that the end had come, but, opening
+them presently, he fixed them with great earnestness first upon myself
+and then upon his wife, accompanying the glance with a slight movement
+of the head. I did not know what he could mean, but with his wife it
+was otherwise, for she said, “Don’t trouble yourself, Stephen, I quite
+understand.”
+
+Five minutes more and it was over; Stephen Strong’s dilated heart had
+contracted for the last time.
+
+“I see it has pleased the Lord that dear Stephen should die,” said Mrs.
+Strong in her quiet voice. “When you have spoken to the people out
+there, doctor, will you take me home? I am very sorry to trouble, but I
+saw that after he was gone Stephen wished me to turn to you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+FORTUNE
+
+
+My return to Parliament meant not only the loss of a seat to the
+Government, a matter of no great moment in view of their enormous
+majority, but, probably, through their own fears, was construed by them
+into a solemn warning not to be disregarded. Certain papers and
+opposition speakers talked freely of the writing on the wall, and none
+saw that writing in larger, or more fiery letters, than the members of
+Her Majesty’s Government. I believe that to them it took the form not
+of Hebraic characters, but of two large Roman capitals, the letters A
+and V.
+
+Hitherto the anti-vaccinators had been known as troublesome people who
+had to be reckoned with, but that they should prove strong enough to
+wrest what had been considered one of the safest seats in the kingdom
+out of the hands of the Unionists came upon the party as a revelation
+of the most unpleasant order. For Stephen Strong’s dying cry, of which
+the truth was universally acknowledged, “_The A.V.’s have done it.
+Bravo the A.V.’s!_” had echoed through the length and breadth of the
+land.
+
+When a Government thinks that agitators are weak, naturally and
+properly it treats them with contempt, but, when it finds that they are
+strong enough to win elections, then their arguments become more worthy
+of consideration. And so the great heart of the parliamentary Pharaoh
+began to soften towards the anti-vaccinators, and of this softening the
+first signs were discernible within three or four days of my taking my
+seat as member for Dunchester.
+
+I think I may say without vanity, and the statement will not be
+contradicted by those who sat with me, that I made a good impression
+upon the House from the first day I entered its doors. Doubtless its
+members had expected to find in me a rabid person liable to burst into
+a foam of violence at the word “vaccination,” and were agreeably
+surprised to find that I was much as other men are, only rather quieter
+than most of them. I did not attempt to force myself upon the notice of
+the House, but once or twice during the dinner hour I made a few
+remarks upon subjects connected with public health which were received
+without impatience, and, in the interval, I tried to master its forms,
+and to get in touch with its temper.
+
+In those far-away and long-forgotten days a Royal Commission had been
+sitting for some years to consider the whole question of compulsory
+vaccination; it was the same before which I had been called to give
+evidence. At length this commission delivered itself of its final
+report, a very sensible one in an enormous blue-book, which if adopted
+would practically have continued the existing Vaccination Acts with
+amendments. These amendments provided that in future the public
+vaccinator should visit the home of the child, and, if the conditions
+of that home and of the child itself were healthy, offer to vaccinate
+it with glycerinated calf lymph. Also they extended the time during
+which the parents and guardians were exempt from prosecution, and in
+various ways mitigated the rigour of the prevailing regulations. The
+subject matter of this report was embodied in a short Bill to amend the
+law and laid before Parliament, which Bill went to a standing
+committee, and ultimately came up for the consideration of the House.
+
+Then followed the great debate and the great surprise. A member moved
+that it should be read that day six months, and others followed on the
+same side. The President of the Local Government Board of the day, I
+remember, made a strong speech in favour of the Bill, after which other
+members spoke, including myself. But although about ninety out of every
+hundred of the individuals who then constituted the House of Commons
+were strong believers in the merits of vaccination, hardly one of them
+rose in his place to support the Bill. The lesson of Dunchester amongst
+others was before their eyes, and, whatever their private faith might
+be, they were convinced that if they did so it would lose them votes at
+the next election.
+
+At this ominous silence the Government grew frightened, and towards the
+end of the debate, to the astonishment of the House and of the country,
+the First Lord of the Treasury rose and offered to insert a clause by
+virtue of which any parent or other person who under the Bill would be
+liable to penalties for the non-vaccination of a child, should be
+entirely freed from such penalties if within four months of its birth
+he satisfied two justices of the peace that he conscientiously believed
+that the operation would be prejudicial to that child’s health. The
+Bill passed with the clause, which a few days later was rejected by the
+House of Lords. Government pressure was put upon the Lords, who thereon
+reversed their decision, and the Bill became an Act of Parliament.
+
+Thus the whole policy of compulsory vaccination, which for many years
+had been in force in England, was destroyed at a single blow by a
+Government with a great majority, and a House of Commons composed of
+members who, for the most part, were absolute believers in its virtues.
+Never before did agitators meet with so vast and complete a success,
+and seldom perhaps did a Government undertake so great a responsibility
+for the sake of peace, and in order to shelve a troublesome and
+dangerous dispute. It was a very triumph of opportunism, for the
+Government, aided and abetted by their supporters, threw over their
+beliefs to appease a small but persistent section of the electors.
+Convinced that compulsory vaccination was for the benefit of the
+community, they yet stretched the theory of the authority of the parent
+over the child to such an unprecedented extent that, in order to
+satisfy his individual prejudices, that parent was henceforth to be
+allowed to expose his helpless infant to the risk of terrible disease
+and of death.
+
+It is not for me to judge their motives, which may have been pure and
+excellent; my own are enough for me to deal with. But the fact remains
+that, having power in their hands to impose the conclusions of a
+committee of experts on the nation, and being as a body satisfied as to
+the soundness of those conclusions, they still took the risk of
+disregarding them. Now the result of their action is evident; now we
+have reaped the seed which they sowed, nor did they win a vote or a
+“thank you” by their amiable and philosophic concessions, which earned
+them no gratitude but indignation mingled with something not unlike
+contempt.
+
+So much for the anti-vaccination agitation, on the crest of whose wave
+I was carried to fortune and success. Thenceforward for many long years
+my career was one of strange and startling prosperity. Dunchester
+became my pocket borough, so much so, indeed, that at the three
+elections which occurred before the last of which I have to tell no one
+even ventured to contest the seat against me. Although I was never
+recognised as a leader of men, chiefly, I believe, because of a secret
+distrust which was entertained as to my character and the sincerity of
+my motives, session by session my parliamentary repute increased, till,
+in the last Radical Government, I was offered, and for two years
+filled, the post of Under-Secretary to the Home Office. Indeed, when at
+last we went to the country over the question of the China War, I had
+in my pocket a discreetly worded undertaking that, if our party
+succeeded at the polls, my claims to the Home Secretaryship should be
+“carefully considered.” But it was not fated that I should ever again
+cross the threshold of St. Stephen’s.
+
+So much for my public career, which I have only touched on in
+illustration of my private and moral history.
+
+The reader may wonder how it came about that I was able to support
+myself and keep up my position during all this space of time, seeing
+that my attendance in Parliament made it impossible for me to continue
+in practise as a doctor. It happened thus.
+
+When my old and true friend, Stephen Strong, died on the night of my
+election, it was found that he was even richer than had been supposed,
+indeed his personalty was sworn at 191,000 pounds, besides which he
+left real estate in shops, houses and land to the value of about 23,000
+pounds. Almost all of this was devised to his widow absolutely, so that
+she could dispose of it in whatever fashion pleased her. Indeed, there
+was but one other bequest, that of the balance of the 10,000 pounds
+which the testator had deposited in the hands of a trustee for my
+benefit. This was now left to me absolutely. I learned the fact from
+Mrs. Strong herself as we returned from the funeral.
+
+“Dear Stephen has left you nearly 9000 pounds, doctor,” she said
+shaking her head.
+
+Gathering from her manner and this shake of her head that the legacy
+was not pleasing to her, I hastened to explain that doubtless it was to
+carry into effect a business arrangement we had come to before I
+consented to stand for Parliament.
+
+“Ah, indeed,” she said, “that makes it worse, for it is only the
+payment of a debt, not a gift.”
+
+Not knowing what she could mean, I said nothing.
+
+“Doubtless, doctor, if dear Stephen had been granted time he would have
+treated you more liberally, seeing how much he thought of you, and that
+you had given up your profession entirely to please him and serve the
+party. That is what he meant when he looked at me before he died, I
+guessed it from the first, and now I am sure of it. Well, doctor, while
+I have anything you shall never want. Of course, a member of Parliament
+is a great person, expected to live in a style which would take more
+money than I have, but I think that if I put my own expenses at 500
+pounds a year, which is as much as I shall want, and allow another 1000
+pounds for subscriptions to the anti-vaccination societies, the society
+for preventing the muzzling of dogs, and the society for the discovery
+of the lost Tribes of Israel, I shall be able to help you to the extent
+of 1200 pounds a year, if,” she added apologetically, “you think you
+could possibly get along on that.”
+
+“But, Mrs. Strong,” I said, “I have no claim at all upon you.”
+
+“Please do not talk nonsense, doctor. Dear Stephen wished me to provide
+for you, and I am only carrying out his wishes with his own money which
+God gave him perhaps for this very purpose, that it should be used to
+help a clever man to break down the tyranny of wicked governments and
+false prophets.”
+
+So I took the money, which was paid with the utmost regularity on
+January the first and June the first in each year. On this income I
+lived in comfort, keeping up my house in Dunchester for the benefit of
+my little daughter and her attendants, and hiring for my own use a flat
+quite close to the House of Commons.
+
+As the years went by, however, a great anxiety took possession of me,
+for by slow degrees Mrs. Strong grew as feeble in mind as already she
+was in body, till at length, she could only recognise people at
+intervals, and became quite incompetent to transact business. For a
+while her bankers went on paying the allowance under her written and
+unrevoked order, but when they understood her true condition, they
+refused to continue the payment.
+
+Now my position was very serious. I had little or nothing put by, and,
+having ceased to practise for about seventeen years, I could not hope
+to earn an income from my profession. Nor could I remain a member of
+the House, at least not for long. Still, by dint of borrowing and the
+mortgage of some property which I had acquired, I kept my head above
+water for about eighteen months. Very soon, however, my financial
+distress became known, with the result that I was no longer so
+cordially received as I had been either in Dunchester or in London. The
+impecunious cannot expect to remain popular.
+
+At last things came to a climax, and I was driven to the step of
+resigning my seat. I was in London at the time, and thence I wrote the
+letter to the chairman of the Radical committee in Dunchester giving
+ill-health as the cause of my retirement. When at length it was
+finished to my satisfaction, I went out and posted it, and then walked
+along the embankment as far as Cleopatra’s Needle and back again. It
+was a melancholy walk, taken, I remember, upon a melancholy November
+afternoon, on which the dank mist from the river strove for mastery
+with the gloomy shadows of advancing night. Not since that other
+evening, many many years ago, when, after my trial, I found myself face
+to face with ruin or death and was saved by Stephen Strong had my
+fortunes been at so low an ebb. Now, indeed, they appeared absolutely
+hopeless, for I was no longer young and fit to begin the world afresh;
+also, the other party being in power, I could not hope to obtain any
+salaried appointment upon which to support myself and my daughter. If
+Mrs. Strong had kept her reason all would have been well, but she was
+insane, and I had no one to whom I could turn, for I was a man of many
+acquaintances but few friends.
+
+Wearily I trudged back to my rooms to wait there until it was time to
+dress, for I had a dinner engagement at the Reform Club. On the table
+in the little hall lay a telegram, which I opened listlessly. It was
+from a well-known firm of solicitors in Dunchester, and ran:—
+
+“Our client, Mrs. Strong, died suddenly at three o’clock. Important
+that we should see you. Will you be in Dunchester to-morrow? If not,
+please say where and at what hour we can wait upon you in town.”
+
+“Wait upon you in town,” I said to myself as I laid down the telegram.
+A great firm of solicitors would not wish to wait upon me unless they
+had something to tell me to my advantage and their own. Mrs. Strong
+must have left me some money. Possibly even I was her heir. More than
+once before in life my luck had turned in this sudden way, why should
+it not happen again? But she was insane and could not appoint an heir!
+Why had not those fools of lawyers told me the facts instead of leaving
+me to the torment of this suspense?
+
+I glanced at the clock, then taking a telegraph form I wrote: “Shall be
+at Dunchester Station 8:30. Meet me there or later at the club.” Taking
+a cab I drove to St. Pancras, just in time to catch the train. In my
+pocket—so closely was I pressed for money, for my account at the bank
+was actually overdrawn—I had barely enough to pay for a third-class
+ticket to Dunchester. This mattered little, however, for I always
+travelled third-class, not because I liked it but because it looked
+democratic and the right sort of thing for a Radical M.P. to do.
+
+The train was a fast one, but that journey seemed absolutely endless.
+Now at length we had slowed down at the Dunchester signal-box, and now
+we were running into the town. If my friend the lawyer had anything
+really striking to tell me he would send to meet me at the station,
+and, if it was something remarkable, he would probably attend there
+himself. Therefore, if I saw neither the managing clerk nor the junior
+partner, nor the Head of the Firm, I might be certain that the news was
+trivial, probably—dreadful thought which had not occurred to me
+before—that I was appointed executor under the will with a legacy of a
+hundred guineas.
+
+The train rolled into the station. As it began to glide past the
+pavement of wet asphalt I closed my eyes to postpone the bitterness of
+disappointment, if only for a few seconds. Perforce I opened them again
+as the train was stopping, and there, the very first thing they fell
+upon, looking portly and imposing in a fur coat, was the rubicund-faced
+Head of the Firm himself. “It _is_ good,” I thought, and supported
+myself for a moment by the hat-rack, for the revulsion of feeling
+produced a sudden faintness. He saw me, and sprang forward with a
+beaming yet respectful countenance. “It is _very_ good,” I thought.
+
+“My dear sir,” he began obsequiously, “I do trust that my telegram has
+not incommoded you, but my news was such that I felt it necessary to
+meet you at the earliest possible moment, and therefore wired to you at
+every probable address.”
+
+I gave the porter who took my bag a shilling. Practically it was my
+last, but that lawyer’s face and manner seemed to justify the
+expenditure which—so oddly are our minds constituted—I remember
+reflecting I might regret if I had drawn a false inference. The man
+touched his hat profusely, and, I hope, made up his mind to vote for me
+next time. Then I turned to the Head of the Firm and said:—
+
+“Pray, don’t apologise; but, by the way, beyond that of the death of my
+poor friend, _what_ is the news?”
+
+“Oh, perhaps you know it,” he answered, taken aback at my manner,
+“though she always insisted upon its being kept a dead secret, so that
+one day you might have a pleasant surprise.”
+
+“I know nothing,” I answered.
+
+“Then I am glad to be the bearer of such good intelligence to a
+fortunate and distinguished man,” he said with a bow. “I have the
+honour to inform you in my capacity of executor to the will of the late
+Mrs. Martha Strong that, with the exception of a few legacies, you are
+left her sole heir.”
+
+Now I wished that the hat-rack was still at hand, but, as it was not, I
+pretended to stumble, and leant for a moment against the porter who had
+received my last shilling.
+
+“Indeed,” I said recovering myself, “and can you tell me the amount of
+the property?”
+
+“Not exactly,” he answered, “but she has led a very saving life, and
+money grows, you know, money grows. I should say it must be between
+three and four hundred thousand, nearer the latter than the former,
+perhaps.”
+
+“Really,” I replied, “that is more than I expected; it is a little
+astonishing to be lifted in a moment from the position of one with a
+mere competence into that of a rich man. But our poor friend was—well,
+weak-minded, so how could she be competent to make a binding will?”
+
+“My dear sir, her will was made within a month of her husband’s death,
+when she was as sane as you are, as I have plenty of letters to show.
+Only, as I have said, she kept the contents a dead secret, in order
+that one day they might be a pleasant surprise to you.”
+
+“Well,” I answered, “all things considered, they have been a pleasant
+surprise; I may say a _very_ pleasant surprise. And now let us go and
+have some dinner at the club. I feel tired and thirsty.”
+
+Next morning the letter that I had posted from London to the chairman
+of my committee was, at my request, returned to me unopened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+JANE MEETS DR. MERCHISON
+
+
+Nobody disputed my inheritance, for, so far as I could learn, Mrs.
+Strong had no relatives. Nor indeed could it have been disputed, for I
+had never so much as hypnotised the deceased. When it was known how
+rich I had become I grew even more popular in Dunchester than I had
+been before, also my importance increased at headquarters to such an
+extent that on a change of Government I became, as I have said,
+Under-Secretary to the Home Office. Although I was a useful man
+hitherto I had always been refused any sort of office, because of the
+extreme views which I professed—on platforms in the constituencies—or
+so those in authority alleged. Now, however, these views were put down
+to amiable eccentricity; moreover, I was careful not to obtrude them.
+Responsibility sobers, and as we age and succeed we become more
+moderate, for most of us have a method in our madness.
+
+In brief, I determined to give up political knight-errantry and to
+stick to sober business. Very carefully and in the most conservative
+spirit I took stock of the situation. I was still a couple of years on
+the right side of fifty, young looking for my age (an advantage), a
+desirable _parti_ (a great advantage, although I had no intention of
+re-marrying), and in full health and vigour. Further, I possessed a
+large fortune all in cash or in liquid assets, and I resolved that it
+should not diminish. I had experienced enough of ups and downs; I was
+sick of vicissitudes, of fears and uncertainties for the future. I said
+to my soul: “Thou hast enough laid up for many days; eat, drink and be
+merry,” and I proceeded to invest my modest competence in such a
+fashion that it brought in a steady four per cent. No South African
+mines or other soul-agonising speculations for me; sweet security was
+what I craved, and I got it. I could live with great comfort, even with
+modest splendour, upon about half my income, and the rest of it I
+purposed to lay out for my future benefit. I had observed that brewers,
+merchants and other magnates with cash to spare are in due course
+elevated to the peerage. Now I wished to be elevated to the peerage,
+and to spend an honoured and honourable old age as Lord Dunchester. So
+when there was any shortage of the party funds, and such a shortage
+soon occurred on the occasion of an election, I posed as the friend
+round the corner.
+
+Moreover, I had another aim. My daughter Jane had now grown into a
+lovely, captivating and high-spirited young woman. To my fancy, indeed,
+I never saw her equal in appearance, for the large dark eyes shining in
+a fair and _spirituelle_ face, encircled by masses of rippling chestnut
+hair, gave a _bizarre_ and unusual distinction to her beauty, which was
+enhanced by a tall and graceful figure. She was witty also and
+self-willed, qualities which she inherited from her American mother,
+moreover she adored me and believed in me. I, who since my wife’s death
+had loved nothing else, loved this pure and noble-minded girl as only a
+father can love, for my adoration had nothing selfish in it, whereas
+that of the truest lover, although he may not know it, is in its
+beginnings always selfish. He has something to gain, he seeks his own
+happiness, the father seeks only the happiness of his child.
+
+On the whole, I think that the worship of this daughter of mine is a
+redeeming point in my character, for which otherwise, sitting in
+judgment on it as I do to-day, I have no respect. Jane understood that
+worship, and was grateful to me for it. Her fine unsullied instinct
+taught her that whatever else about me might be unsound or tarnished,
+this at least rang true and was beyond suspicion. She may have seen my
+open faults and divined my secret weaknesses, but for the sake of the
+love I bore her she overlooked them all, indeed she refused to
+acknowledge them, to the extent that my worst political extravagances
+became to her articles of faith. What I upheld was right; what I
+denounced was wrong; on other points her mind was open and intelligent,
+but on these it was a shut and bolted door. “My father says so,” was
+her last argument.
+
+My position being such that I could ensure her a splendid future, I was
+naturally anxious that she should make a brilliant marriage, since with
+monstrous injustice destiny has decreed that a woman’s road to success
+must run past the altar. But as yet I could find no man whom I
+considered suitable or worthy. One or two I knew, but they were not
+peers, and I wished her to marry a peer or a rising politician who
+would earn or inherit a peerage.
+
+And so, good easy man, I looked around me, and said that full surely my
+greatness was a-ripening. Who thinks of winter and its frosts in the
+glow of such a summer as I enjoyed?
+
+For a while everything went well. I took a house in Green Street, and
+entertained there during the sitting of Parliament. The beauty of the
+hostess, my daughter Jane, together with my own position and wealth, of
+which she was the heiress, were sufficient to find us friends, or at
+any rate associates, among the noblest and most distinguished in the
+land, and for several seasons my dinner parties were some of the most
+talked about in London. To be asked to one of them was considered a
+compliment, even by men who are asked almost everywhere.
+
+With such advantages of person, intelligence and surroundings at her
+command, Jane did not lack for opportunities of settling herself in
+life. To my knowledge she had three offers in one season, the last of
+them from perhaps the best and most satisfactory _parti_ in England.
+But to my great and ever-increasing dismay, one after another she
+refused them all. The first two disappointments I bore, but on the
+third occasion I remonstrated. She listened quite quietly, then said:
+
+“I am very sorry to vex you, father dear, but to marry a man whom I do
+not care about is just the one thing I can’t do, even for your sake.”
+
+“But surely, Jane,” I urged, “a father should have some voice in such a
+matter.”
+
+“I think he has a right to say whom his daughter shall not marry,
+perhaps, but not whom she shall marry.”
+
+“Then, at least,” I said, catching at this straw, “will you promise
+that you won’t become engaged to any one without my consent?”
+
+Jane hesitated a little, and then answered: “What is the use of talking
+of such a thing, father, as I have never seen anybody to whom I wish to
+become engaged? But, if you like, I will promise you that if I should
+chance to see any one and you don’t approve of him, I will not become
+engaged to him for three years, by the end of which time he would
+probably cease to wish to become engaged to me. But,” she added with a
+laugh, “I am almost certain he wouldn’t be a duke or a lord, or
+anything of that sort, for, provided a man is a gentleman, I don’t care
+twopence about his having a title.”
+
+“Jane, don’t talk so foolishly,” I answered.
+
+“Well, father,” she said astonished, “if those are my opinions at least
+I got them from you, for I was always brought up upon strictly
+democratic principles. How often have I heard you declare in your
+lectures down at Dunchester that men of our race are all equal—except
+the working-man, who is better than the others—and that but for social
+prejudice the ‘son of toil’ is worthy of the hand of any titled lady in
+the kingdom?”
+
+“I haven’t delivered that lecture for years,” I answered angrily.
+
+“No, father, not since—let me see, not since old Mrs. Strong left you
+all her money, and you were made an Under-Secretary of State, and lords
+and ladies began to call on us. Now, I shouldn’t have said that,
+because it makes you angry, but it is true, though, isn’t it?” and she
+was gone.
+
+That August when the House rose we went down to a place that I owned on
+the outskirts of Dunchester. It was a charming old house, situated in
+the midst of a considerable estate that is famous for its shooting.
+This property had come to me as part of Mrs. Strong’s bequest, or,
+rather, she held a heavy mortgage on it, and when it was put up for
+sale I bought it in. As Jane had taken a fancy to the house, which was
+large and roomy, with beautiful gardens, I let my old home in the city,
+and when we were not in town we came to live at Ashfields.
+
+On the borders of the Ashfields estate—indeed, part of the land upon
+which it was built belongs to it—lies a poor suburb of Dunchester
+occupied by workmen and their families. In these people Jane took great
+interest; indeed, she plagued me till at very large expense I built a
+number of model cottages for them, with electricity, gas and water laid
+on, and bicycle-houses attached. In fact, this proved a futile
+proceeding, for the only result was that the former occupants of the
+dwellings were squeezed out, while persons of a better class, such as
+clerks, took possession of the model tenements at a totally inadequate
+rent.
+
+It was in visiting some of the tenants of these cottages that in an
+evil hour Jane first met Dr. Merchison, a young man of about thirty,
+who held some parish appointment which placed the sick of this district
+under his charge. Ernest Merchison was a raw-boned, muscular and rather
+formidable-looking person, of Scotch descent, with strongly-marked
+features, deep-set eyes, and very long arms. A man of few words, when
+he did speak his language was direct to the verge of brusqueness, but
+his record as a medical man was good and even distinguished, and
+already he had won the reputation of being the best surgeon in
+Dunchester. This was the individual who was selected by my daughter
+Jane to receive the affections which she had refused to some of the
+most polished and admired men in England, and, as I believe, largely
+for the reason that, instead of bowing and sighing about after her, he
+treated her with a rudeness which was almost brutal.
+
+In one of these new model houses lived some people of the name of
+Smith. Mr. Smith was a compositor, and Mrs. Smith, _née_ Samuels, was
+none other than that very little girl whom, together with her brother,
+who died, I had once treated for erysipelas resulting from vaccination.
+In a way I felt grateful to her, for that case was the beginning of my
+real success in life, and for this reason, out of several applicants,
+the new model house was let to her husband as soon as it was ready for
+occupation.
+
+Could I have foreseen the results which were to flow from an act of
+kindness, and that as this family had indirectly been the cause of my
+triumph so they were in turn to be the cause of my ruin, I would have
+destroyed the whole street with dynamite before I allowed them to set
+foot in it. However, they came, bringing with them two children, a
+little girl of four, to whom Jane took a great fancy, and a baby of
+eighteen months.
+
+In due course these children caught the whooping-cough, and Jane
+visited them, taking with her some delicacies as a present. While she
+was there Dr. Merchison arrived in his capacity of parish doctor, and,
+beyond a curt bow taking no notice of Jane, began his examination, for
+this was his first visit to the family. Presently his eye fell upon a
+box of sweets.
+
+“What’s that?” he asked sharply.
+
+“It’s a present that Miss Therne here has brought for Tottie,” answered
+the mother.
+
+“Then Tottie mustn’t eat them till she is well. Sugar is bad for
+whooping-cough, though, of course, a young lady couldn’t be expected to
+know that,” he added in a voice of gruff apology, then went on quickly,
+glancing at the little girl’s arm, “No marks, I see. Conscientious
+Objector? Or only lazy?”
+
+Then Mrs. Smith fired up and poured out her own sad history and that of
+her poor little brother who died, baring her scarred arm in proof of
+it.
+
+“And so,” she finished, “though I do not remember much about it myself,
+I do remember my mother’s dying words, which were ‘to mind what the
+doctor had told her, and never to have any child of mine vaccinated,
+no, not if they crawled on their knees to ask it of me.’”
+
+“The doctor!” said Merchison with scorn, “you mean the idiot, my good
+woman, or more likely the political agitator who would sell his soul
+for a billet.”
+
+Then Jane rose in wrath.
+
+“I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,” she said, “but the
+gentleman you speak of as an idiot or a political agitator is Dr.
+Therne, my father, the member of Parliament for this city.”
+
+Dr. Merchison stared at her for a long while, and indeed when she was
+angry Jane was beautiful enough to make any one stare, then he said
+simply, “Oh, indeed. I don’t meddle with politics, so I didn’t know.”
+
+This was too much for Jane, who, afraid to trust herself to further
+speech, walked straight out of the cottage. She had passed down the
+model garden and arrived at the model gate when she heard a quick
+powerful step behind her, and turned round to find herself face to face
+with Dr. Merchison.
+
+“I have followed you to apologise, Miss Therne,” he said; “of course I
+had no idea who you were and did not wish to hurt your feelings, but I
+happen to have strong feelings about vaccination and spoke more roughly
+than I ought to have done.”
+
+“Other people, sir, may also have strong opinions about vaccination,”
+answered Jane.
+
+“I know,” he said, “and I know, too, what the end of it all will be, as
+you will also, Miss Therne, if you live long enough. It is useless
+arguing, the lists are closed and we must wait until the thing is put
+to the proof of battle. When it is, one thing is sure, there will be
+plenty of dead,” he added with a grim smile. Then taking off his hat
+and muttering, “Again I apologise,” he returned into the cottage.
+
+It seems that for a while Jane was very angry. Then she remembered
+that, after all, Dr. Merchison had apologised, and that he had made his
+offensive remarks in the ignorance and prejudice which afflicted the
+entire medical profession and were more worthy of pity than of anger.
+Further, she remembered that in her indignation she had forgotten to
+acknowledge or accept his apology, and, lastly, she asked him to a
+garden-party.
+
+It is scarcely necessary for me to dwell upon the subsequent
+developments of this unhappy business—if I am right in calling it
+unhappy. The piteous little drama is played, both the actors are dead,
+and the issue of the piece is unknown and, for the present, unknowable.
+Bitterly opposed as I was to the suit of Merchison, justice compels me
+to say that, under the cloak of a rough unpromising manner, he hid a
+just and generous heart. Had that man lived he might have become great,
+although he would never have become popular. As least something in his
+nature attracted my daughter Jane, for she, who up to that time had not
+been moved by any man, became deeply attached to him.
+
+In the end he proposed to her, how, when or where I cannot say, for I
+never inquired. One morning, I remember it was that of Christmas Day,
+they came into my library, the pair of them, and informed me how
+matters stood. Merchison went straight to the point and put the case
+before me very briefly, but in a manly and outspoken fashion. He said
+that he quite understood the difficulties of his position, inasmuch as
+he believed that Jane was, or would be, very rich, whereas he had
+nothing beyond his profession, in which, however, he was doing well. He
+ended by asking my consent to the engagement subject to any reasonable
+conditions that I might choose to lay down.
+
+To me the shock was great, for, occupied as I was with my own affairs
+and ambitions, I had been blind to what was passing before my face. I
+had hoped to see my daughter a peeress, and now I found her the
+affianced bride of a parish sawbones. The very foundation of my house
+of hopes was sapped; at a blow all my schemes for the swift
+aggrandisement of my family were laid low. It was too much for me.
+Instead of accepting the inevitable, and being glad to accept it
+because my child’s happiness was involved, I rebelled and kicked
+against the pricks.
+
+By nature I am not a violent man, but on that occasion I lost my temper
+and became violent. I refused my consent; I threatened to cut my
+daughter off with nothing, but at this argument she and her lover
+smiled. Then I took another ground, for, remembering her promise that
+she would consent to be separated for three years from any suitor of
+whom I did not approve, I claimed its fulfilment.
+
+Somewhat to my surprise, after a hurried private consultation, Jane and
+her lover accepted these conditions, telling me frankly that they would
+wait for three years, but that after these had gone by they would
+consider themselves at liberty to marry, with my consent if possible,
+but, if necessary, without it. Then in my presence they kissed and
+parted, nor until the last did either of them attempt to break the
+letter of their bond. Once indeed they met before that dreadful hour,
+but then it was the workings of fate that brought them together and not
+their own design.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE COMING OF THE RED-HEADED MAN
+
+
+Half of the three years of probation had gone by and once more we found
+ourselves at Dunchester in August. Under circumstances still too recent
+to need explanation, the Government of which I was a member had decided
+to appeal to the country, the General Election being fixed for the end
+of September, after the termination of harvest. Dunchester was
+considered to be a safe Radical seat, and, as a matter of parliamentary
+tactics, the poll for this city, together with that of eight or ten
+other boroughs, was fixed for the earliest possible day, in the hope
+that the results might encourage more doubtful places to give their
+support. Constituencies are very like sheep, and if the leaders jump
+through a certain gap in the political hedge the flock, or a large
+proportion of it, will generally follow. All of us like to be on the
+winning side.
+
+Few people who are old enough to remember it will ever forget the
+August of two years ago, if only because of the phenomenal heat. Up to
+that month the year had been very cold, so cold that even during July
+there were some evenings when a fire was welcome, while on several days
+I saw people driving about the roads wrapped up in heavy ulsters. But
+with the first day of August all this changed, and suddenly the climate
+became torrid, the nights especially being extraordinarily hot. From
+every quarter of the country came complaints of the great heat, while
+each issue of the newspapers contained lists of those who had fallen
+victims to it.
+
+One evening, feeling oppressed in the tree-enclosed park of Ashfields,
+I strolled out of it into the suburb of which I have spoken. Almost
+opposite the private garden of the park stands a board school, and in
+front of this board school I had laid out an acre of land presented by
+myself, as a playground and open space for the use of the public. In
+the centre of this garden was a fountain that fell into a marble basin,
+and around the fountain, but at some distance from it, stood iron
+seats. To these I made my way and sat down on one of them, which was
+empty, in order to enjoy the cool sound of the splashing water, about
+which a large number of children were playing.
+
+Presently, as I sat thus, I lifted my eyes and saw the figure of a man
+approaching towards the other side of the fountain. He was quite fifty
+yards away from me, so that his features were invisible, but there was
+something about his general aspect which attracted my attention at
+once. To begin with, he looked small and lonely, all by himself out
+there on the wide expanse of gravel; moreover, the last rays of the
+setting sun, striking full upon him, gave him a fiery and unnatural
+appearance against the dense background of shadows beyond. It is a
+strange and dreadful coincidence, but by some extraordinary action of
+the mind, so subtle that I cannot trace the link, the apparition of
+this man out of the gloom into the fierce light of the sunset reminded
+me of a picture that I had once seen representing the approach to the
+Norwegian harbour of the ship which brought the plague to the shores of
+Scandinavia. In the picture that ship also was clothed with the fires
+of sunset, while behind it lay the blackness of approaching night. Like
+this wanderer that ship also came forward, slowly indeed, but without
+pause, as though alive with a purpose of its own, and I remember that
+awaiting it upon the quay were a number of merry children.
+
+Shaking myself free from this ridiculous but unpleasant thought, I
+continued to observe the man idly. Clearly he was one of the great army
+of tramps, for his coat was wide and ragged and his hat half innocent
+of rim, although there was something about his figure which suggested
+to me that he had seen better days. I could even imagine that under
+certain circumstances I might have come to look very much like this
+poor man, now doubtless turned into a mere animal by drink. He drew on
+with a long slow step, his head stretched forward, his eyes fixed upon
+the water, as he walked now and again lifting a long thin hand and
+scraping impatiently at his face and head.
+
+“That poor fellow has got a touch of prickly heat and is thirsty,” I
+thought, nor was I mistaken, for, on arriving at the edge of the
+fountain, the tramp knelt down and drank copiously, making a moaning
+sound as he gulped the water, which was very peculiar and unpleasant to
+hear. When he had satisfied his thirst, he sat himself upon the marble
+edge of the basin and suddenly plunged his legs, boots and all, into
+the water. Its touch seemed to please him, for with a single swift
+movement he slipped in altogether, sitting himself down on the bottom
+of the basin in such fashion that only his face and fiery red beard,
+from which the hat had fallen, remained above the surface, whereon they
+seemed to float like some monstrous and unnatural growth.
+
+This unusual proceeding on the part of the tramping stranger at once
+excited the most intense interest in the mind of every child on the
+playground, with the result that in another minute forty or fifty of
+them had gathered round the fountain, laughing and jeering at its
+occupant. Again the sight brought to my mind a strained and
+disagreeable simile, for I bethought me of the dreadful tale of Elisha
+and of the fate which overtook the children who mocked him. Decidedly
+the heat had upset my nerves that night, nor were they soothed when
+suddenly from the red head floating upon the water came a flute-like
+and educated voice, saying—
+
+“Cease deriding the unfortunate, children, or I will come out of this
+marble bath and tickle you.”
+
+Thereat they laughed all the more, and began to pelt the bather with
+little stones and bits of stick.
+
+At first I thought of interfering, but as it occurred to me that the
+man would probably be violent or abusive if I spoke to him, and as,
+above all things, I disliked scenes, I made up my mind to fetch a
+policeman, whom I knew I should find round the corner about a hundred
+yards away. I walked to the corner, but did not find the policeman,
+whereon I started across the square to look for him at another point.
+My road led me past the fountain, and, as I approached it, I saw that
+the water-loving wanderer had been as good as his word. He had emerged
+from the fountain, and, rushing to and fro raining moisture from his
+wide coat, despite their shrieks half of fear and half of laughter, he
+grabbed child after child and, drawing it to him, tickled and kissed
+it, laughing dementedly all the while, in a fashion which showed me
+that he was suffering from some form of mania.
+
+As soon as he saw me the man dropped the last child he had caught—it
+was little Tottie Smith—and began to stride away towards the city at
+the same slow, regular, purposeful gait with which I had seen him
+approach the fountain. As he passed he turned and made a grimace at me,
+and then I saw his dreadful face. No wonder it had looked red at a
+distance, for the _erythema_ almost covered it, except where, on the
+forehead and cheeks, appeared purple spots and patches.
+
+Of what did it remind me?
+
+Great Heaven! I remembered. It reminded me of the face of that girl I
+had seen lying in the _plaza_ of San Jose, in Mexico, over whom the old
+woman was pouring water from the fountain, much such a fountain as that
+before me, for half unconsciously, when planning this place, I had
+reproduced its beautiful design. It all came back to me with a shock,
+the horrible scene of which I had scarcely thought for years, so
+vividly indeed that I seemed to hear the old hag’s voice crying in
+cracked accents, “_Si, senor, viruela, viruela!_”
+
+I ought to have sent to warn the police and the health officers of the
+city, for I was sure that the man was suffering from what is commonly
+called confluent smallpox. But I did not. From the beginning there has
+been something about this terrible disease which physically and morally
+has exercised so great an influence over my destiny, that seemed to
+paralyse my mental powers. In my day I was a doctor fearless of any
+other contagion; typhus, scarletina, diphtheria, yellow fever, none of
+them had terrors for me. And yet I was afraid to attend a case of
+smallpox. From the same cause, in my public speeches I made light of
+it, talking of it with contempt as a sickness of small account, much as
+a housemaid talks in the servants’ hall of the ghost which is supposed
+to haunt the back stairs.
+
+And now, coming as it were from that merry and populous chamber of life
+and health, once again I met the Spectre I derided, a red-headed,
+red-visaged Thing that chose me out to stop and grin at. Somehow I was
+not minded to return and announce the fact.
+
+“Why,” they would say, “_you_ were the one who did not believe in
+ghosts. It was _you_ who preached of vile superstitions, and yet merely
+at the sight of a shadow you rush in with trembling hands and bristling
+hair to bid us lay it with bell, book, and candle. Where is your faith,
+O prophet?”
+
+It was nonsense; the heat and all my incessant political work had tried
+me and I was mistaken. That tramp was a drunken, or perhaps a crazy
+creature, afflicted with some skin disease such as are common among his
+class. Why did I allow the incident to trouble me?
+
+I went home and washed out my mouth, and sprinkled my clothes with a
+strong solution of permanganate of potash, for, although my own folly
+was evident, it is always as well to be careful, especially in hot
+weather. Still I could not help wondering what might happen if by any
+chance smallpox were to get a hold of a population like that of
+Dunchester, or indeed of a hundred other places in England.
+
+Since the passing of the famous Conscience Clause many years before, as
+was anticipated would be the case, and as the anti-vaccinators intended
+should be the case, vaccination had become a dead letter amongst at
+least seventy-five per cent. of the people.[*] Our various societies
+and agents were not content to let things take their course and to
+allow parents to vaccinate their children, or to leave them
+unvaccinated as they might think fit. On the contrary, we had
+instituted a house-to-house canvass, and our visitors took with them
+forms of conscientious objection, to be filled in by parents or
+guardians, and legally witnessed.
+
+[*] Since the above was written the author has read in the press that
+in Yorkshire a single bench of magistrates out of the hundreds in
+England has already granted orders on the ground of “conscientious
+objection,” under which some 2000 children are exempted from the scope
+of the Vaccination Acts. So far as he has seen this statement has not
+been contradicted. At Ipswich also about 700 applications, affecting
+many children, have been filed. To deal with these the Bench is holding
+special sessions, sitting at seven o’clock in the evening.
+
+
+At first the magistrates refused to accept these forms, but after a
+while, when they found how impossible it was to dive into a man’s
+conscience and to decide what was or what was not “conscientious
+objection,” they received them as sufficient evidence, provided only
+that they were sworn before some one entitled to administer oaths. Many
+of the objectors did not even take the trouble to do as much as this,
+for within five years of the passing of the Act, in practice the
+vaccination laws ceased to exist. The burden of prosecution rested with
+Boards of Guardians, popularly elected bodies, and what board was
+likely to go to the trouble of working up a case and to the expense of
+bringing it before the court, when, to produce a complete defence, the
+defendant need only declare that he had a conscientious objection to
+the law under which the information was laid against him? Many idle or
+obstinate or prejudiced people would develop conscientious objections
+to anything which gives trouble or that they happen to dislike. For
+instance, if the same principle were applied to education, I believe
+that within a very few years not twenty-five per cent. of the children
+belonging to the classes that are educated out of the rates would ever
+pass the School Board standards.
+
+Thus it came about that the harvest was ripe, and over ripe, awaiting
+only the appointed sickle of disease. Once or twice already that sickle
+had been put in, but always before the reaping began it was stayed by
+the application of the terrible rule of isolation known as the improved
+Leicester system.
+
+Among some of the natives of Africa when smallpox breaks out in a
+kraal, that kraal is surrounded by guards and its inhabitants are left
+to recover or perish, to starve or to feed themselves as chance and
+circumstance may dictate. During the absence of the smallpox laws the
+same plan, more mercifully applied, prevailed in England, and thus the
+evil hour was postponed. But it was only postponed, for like a
+cumulative tax it was heaping up against the country, and at last the
+hour had come for payment to an authority whose books must be balanced
+without remittance or reduction. What is due to nature that nature
+takes in her own way and season, neither less nor more, unless indeed
+the skill and providence of man can find means to force her to write
+off the debt.
+
+Five days after my encounter with the red-headed vagrant, the following
+paragraph appeared in one of the local papers: “Pocklingham. In the
+casual ward of the Union house for this district a tramp, name unknown,
+died last night. He had been admitted on the previous evening, but, for
+some unexplained reason, it was not noticed until the next morning that
+he suffered from illness, and, therefore, he was allowed to mix with
+the other inmates in the general ward. Drs. Butt and Clarkson, who were
+called in to attend, state that the cause of death was the worst form
+of smallpox. The body will be buried in quicklime, but some alarm is
+felt in the district owing to the deceased, who, it is said, arrived
+here from Dunchester, where he had been frequenting various tramps’
+lodgings, having mixed with a number of other vagrants, who left the
+house before the character of his sickness was discovered, and who
+cannot now be traced. The unfortunate man was about forty years of age,
+of medium height, and red-haired.”
+
+The same paper had an editorial note upon this piece of news, at the
+end of which it remarked, as became a party and an anti-vaccination
+organ: “The terror of this ‘filth disease,’ which in our fathers’ time
+amounted almost to insanity, no longer afflicts us, who know both that
+its effects were exaggerated and how to deal with it by isolation
+without recourse to the so-called vaccine remedies, which are now
+rejected by a large proportion of the population of these islands.
+Still, as we have ascertained by inquiry that this unfortunate man did
+undoubtedly spend several days and nights wandering about our city when
+in an infectious condition, it will be as well that the authorities
+should be on the alert. We do not want that hoary veteran—the smallpox
+scare—to rear its head again in Dunchester, least of all just now,
+when, in view of the imminent election, the accustomed use would be
+made of it by our prejudiced and unscrupulous political opponents.”
+
+“No,” I said to myself as I put the paper down, “certainly we do not
+want a smallpox scare just now, and still less do we want the
+smallpox.” Then I thought of that unfortunate red-headed wretch, crazy
+with the torment of his disease, and of his hideous laughter, as he
+hunted and caught the children who made a mock of him—the poor
+children, scarcely one of whom was vaccinated.
+
+A week later I opened my political campaign with a large public meeting
+in the Agricultural Hall. Almost up to the nomination day no candidate
+was forthcoming on the other side, and I thought that, for the fourth
+time, I should be returned unopposed. Of a sudden, however, a name was
+announced, and it proved to be none other than that of my rival of many
+years ago—Sir Thomas Colford—now like myself growing grey-headed, but
+still vigorous in mind and body, and as much respected as ever by the
+wealthier and more educated classes of our community. His appearance in
+the field put a new complexion on matters; it meant, indeed, that
+instead of the easy and comfortable walk over which I had anticipated,
+I must fight hard for my political existence.
+
+In the course of my speech, which was very well received, for I was
+still popular in the town even among the more moderate of my opponents,
+I dwelt upon Sir Thomas Colford’s address to the electorate which had
+just come into my hands. In this address I was astonished to see a
+paragraph advocating, though in a somewhat guarded fashion, the
+re-enactment of the old laws of compulsory vaccination. In a draft
+which had reached me two days before through some underground channel,
+this paragraph had not appeared, thus showing that it had been added by
+an afterthought and quite suddenly. However, there it was, and I made
+great play with it.
+
+What, I asked the electors of Dunchester, could they think of a man who
+in these modern and enlightened days sought to reimpose upon a free
+people the barbarous infamies of the Vaccination Acts? Long ago we had
+fought that fight, and long ago we had relegated them to _limbo_,
+where, with such things as instruments of torment, papal bulls and
+writs of attainder, they remained to excite the wonder and the horror
+of our own and future generations.
+
+Well would it have been for me if I had stopped here, but, led away by
+the subject and by the loud cheers that my treatment of it, purposely
+flamboyant, never failed to evoke, forgetful too for the moment of the
+Red-headed Man, I passed on to deductions. Our opponents had
+prophesied, I said, that within ten years of the passing of the famous
+Conscience Clause smallpox would be rampant. Now what were the facts?
+Although almost twice that time had gone by, here in Dunchester we had
+suffered far less from smallpox than during the compulsory period, for
+at no one time during all these eighteen or twenty years had three
+cases been under simultaneous treatment within the confines of the
+city.
+
+“Well, there are five now,” called out a voice from the back of the
+hall.
+
+I drew myself up and made ready to wither this untruthful brawler with
+my best election scorn, when, of a sudden, I remembered the Red-headed
+Man, and passed on to the consideration of foreign affairs.
+
+From that moment all life went out of my speech, and, as it seemed to
+me, the enthusiasm of the meeting died away. As soon as it was over I
+made inquiries, to find that the truth had been hidden from me—there
+were five, if not seven cases of smallpox in different parts of the
+city, and the worst feature of the facts was that three of the patients
+were children attending different schools. One of these children, it
+was ascertained, had been among those who were playing round the
+fountain about a fortnight since, although he was not one whom the
+red-haired tramp had touched, but the other two had not been near the
+fountain. The presumption was, therefore, that they had contracted the
+disease through some other source of infection, perhaps at the
+lodging-house where the man had spent the night after bathing in the
+water. Also it seemed that, drawn thither by the heat, in all two or
+three hundred children had visited the fountain square on this
+particular evening, and that many of them had drunk water out of the
+basin.
+
+Never do I remember feeling more frightened than when these facts came
+to my knowledge, for, added to the possible terrors of the position,
+was my constitutional fear of the disease which I have already
+described. On my way homewards I met a friend who told me that one of
+the children was dead, the malady, which was of an awful type, having
+done its work very swiftly.
+
+Like a first flake from a snow-cloud, like a first leaf falling in
+autumn from among the myriads on some great tree, so did this little
+life sink from our number into the silence of the grave. Ah! how many
+were to follow? There is a record, I believe, but I cannot give it. In
+Dunchester alone, with its population of about 50,000, I know that we
+had over 5000 deaths, and Dunchester was a focus from which the
+pestilence spread through the kingdom, destroying and destroying and
+destroying with a fury that has not been equalled since the days of the
+Black Death.
+
+But all this was still to come, for the plague did not get a grip at
+once. An iron system of isolation was put in force, and every possible
+means was adopted by the town authorities, who, for the most part, were
+anti-vaccinationists, to suppress the facts, a task in which they were
+assisted by the officials of the Local Government Board, who had their
+instructions on the point. As might have been expected, the party in
+power did not wish the political position to be complicated by an
+outcry for the passing of a new smallpox law, so few returns were
+published, and as little information as possible was given to the
+papers.
+
+For a while there was a lull; the subject of smallpox was _taboo_, and
+nobody heard much about it beyond vague and indefinite rumours. Indeed,
+most of us were busy with the question of the hour—the eternal question
+of beer, its purity and the method of its sale. For my part, I made few
+inquiries; like the ostrich of fable I hid my head in the sands of
+political excitement, hoping that the arrows of pestilence would pass
+us by.
+
+And yet, although I breathed no word of my fears to a living soul, in
+my heart I was terribly afraid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+THE SHADOW OF PESTILENCE
+
+
+Very soon it became evident that the fight in Dunchester would be
+severe, for the electorate, which for so many years had been my patient
+servant, showed signs of rebelling against me and the principles I
+preached. Whether the voters were moved by a desire for change, whether
+they honestly disagreed with me, or whether a secret fear of the
+smallpox was the cause of it, I do not know, but it is certain that a
+large proportion of them began to look upon me and my views with
+distrust.
+
+At any other time this would not have caused me great distress; indeed
+defeat itself would have had consolations, but now, when I appeared to
+be on the verge of real political distinction, the mere thought of
+failure struck me with dismay. To avoid it, I worked as I had not
+worked for years. Meetings were held nightly, leaflets were distributed
+by the ton, and every house in the city was industriously visited by my
+canvassers, who were divided into bands and officers like a regiment.
+
+The head of one of these bands was my daughter Jane, and never did a
+candidate have a more able or enthusiastic lieutenant. She was gifted
+with the true political instinct, which taught her what to say and what
+to leave unsaid, when to press a point home and when to abandon it for
+another; moreover, her personal charm and popularity fought for her
+cause.
+
+One evening, as she was coming home very tired after a long day’s work
+in the slums of the city, Jane arrived at the model cottages outside my
+park gates. Having half an hour to spare, she determined to visit a few
+of their occupants. Her second call was on the Smith family.
+
+“I am glad to see you now as always, miss,” said Mrs. Smith, “but we
+are in trouble here.”
+
+“What, is little Tottie ill again?” Jane asked.
+
+“No, miss, it isn’t Tottie this time, it’s the baby. She’s got
+convulsions, or something like it, and I’ve sent for Dr. Merchison.
+Would you like to see her? She’s lying in the front room.”
+
+Jane hesitated. She was tired and wanted to get home with her canvass
+cards. But the woman looked tired too and in need of sympathy; possibly
+also, for nature is nature, Jane hoped that if she lingered there a
+little, without in any way violating her promise, she might chance to
+catch a brief glimpse of the man she loved.
+
+“Yes, I will come in for a minute,” she answered and followed Mrs.
+Smith into the room.
+
+On a cheap cane couch in the corner, at the foot of which the child,
+Tottie, was playing with a doll, lay the baby, an infant of nearly
+three. The convulsive fit had passed away and she was sitting up
+supported by a pillow, the fair hair hanging about her flushed face,
+and beating the blanket with her little fevered hands.
+
+“Take me, mummy, take me, I thirsty,” she moaned.
+
+“There, that’s how she goes on all day and it fairly breaks my heart to
+see her,” said the mother, wiping away a tear with her apron. “If
+you’ll be so kind as to mind her a minute, miss, I’ll go and make a
+little lemonade. I’ve got a couple of oranges left, and she seems to
+like them best of anything.”
+
+Jane’s heart was stirred, and, leaning down, she took the child in her
+arms. “Go and get the drink,” she said, “I will look after her till you
+come,” and she began to walk up and down the room rocking the little
+sufferer to and fro.
+
+Presently she looked up to see Dr. Merchison standing in the doorway.
+
+“Jane, you here!” he said.
+
+“Yes, Ernest.”
+
+He stepped towards her, and, before she could turn away or remonstrate,
+bent down and kissed her on the lips.
+
+“You shouldn’t do that, dear,” she said, “it’s out of the bargain.”
+
+“Perhaps I shouldn’t,” he answered, “but I couldn’t help it. I said
+that I would keep clear of you, and if I have met you by accident it is
+not my fault. Come, let me have a look at that child.”
+
+Taking the little girl upon his knee, he began to examine her, feeling
+her pulse and looking at her tongue. For a while he seemed puzzled,
+then Jane saw him take a little magnifying glass from his pocket and by
+the help of it search the skin of the patient’s forehead, especially
+just at the roots of the hair. After this he looked at the neck and
+wrists, then set the child down on the couch, waving Jane back when she
+advanced to take it, and asked the mother, who had just entered the
+room with the lemonade, two or three short, quick questions.
+
+Next he turned to Jane and said—
+
+“I don’t want to frighten you, but you will be as well out of this.
+It’s lucky for you,” he added with a little smile, “that when you were
+born it wasn’t the fashion for doctors to be anti-vaccinationists, for,
+unless I am much mistaken, that child has got smallpox.”
+
+“Smallpox!” said Jane, then added aggressively, “Well, now we shall see
+whose theory is right, for, as you saw, I was nursing her, and I have
+never been vaccinated in my life. My father would not allow it, and I
+have been told that it won him his first election.”
+
+Ernest Merchison heard, and for a moment his face became like that of a
+man in a fit.
+
+“The wicked——” he began, and stopped himself by biting his lips till
+the blood came. Recovering his calm with an effort, he turned to Jane
+and said in a hoarse voice:—
+
+“There is still a chance; it may be in time; yes, I am almost sure that
+I can save you.” Then he plunged his hand into his breast pocket and
+drew out a little case of instruments. “Be so good as to bare your left
+arm,” he said; “fortunately, I have the stuff with me.”
+
+“What for?” she asked.
+
+“To be vaccinated.”
+
+“Are you mad, Ernest?” she said. “You know who I am and how I have been
+brought up; how, then, can you suppose that I would allow you to put
+that poison into my veins?”
+
+“Look here, Jane, there isn’t much time for argument, but just listen
+to me for one minute. You know I am a pretty good doctor, don’t you?
+for I have that reputation, haven’t I? and I am sure that you believe
+in me. Well, now, just on this one point and for this one occasion I am
+going to ask you to give up your own opinion and to suppose that in
+this matter I am right and your father is wrong. I will go farther, and
+say that if any harm comes to you from this vaccination beyond the
+inconvenience of a swollen arm, you may consider all that has been
+between us as nothing and never speak to me again.”
+
+“That’s not the point,” she answered. “If you vaccinated me and my arm
+fell off in consequence I shouldn’t care for you a bit the less,
+because I should know that you were the victim of a foolish
+superstition, and believed what you were doing to be right. No, Ernest,
+it is of no use; I can assure you that I know a great deal more about
+this subject than you do. I have read all the papers and statistics and
+heard the cleverest men in England lecture upon it, and nothing,
+nothing, _nothing_ will ever induce me to submit to that filthy, that
+revolting operation.”
+
+He heard and groaned, then he tried another argument.
+
+“Listen,” he said: “you have been good enough to tell me—several
+times—well, that you loved me, and, forgive me for alluding to it, but
+I think that once you were so foolish as to say that you cared for me
+so much that you would give your very existence if it could make me
+happy. Now, I ask you for nothing half so great as that; I ask you to
+submit to a trifling inconvenience, and, so far as you are personally
+concerned, to waive a small prejudice for my sake, or, perhaps I had
+better say, to give in to my folly. Can’t you do as much as that for
+me, Jane?”
+
+“Ernest,” she answered hoarsely, “if you asked anything else of me in
+the world I would do it—yes, anything you can think of—but this I can’t
+do and won’t do.”
+
+“In God’s name, why not?” he cried.
+
+“Because to do it would be to declare my father a quack and a liar, and
+to show that I, his daughter, from whom if from anybody he has a right
+to expect faith and support, have no belief in him and the doctrine
+that he has taught for twenty years. That is the truth, and it is cruel
+of you to make me say it.”
+
+Ernest Merchison ground his teeth, understanding that in face of this
+woman’s blind fidelity all argument and appeal were helpless. Then in
+his love and despair he formed a desperate resolve. Yes, he was very
+strong, and he thought that he could do it.
+
+Catching her suddenly round the waist he thrust her into a cottage
+armchair which stood by, and, despite her struggles, began to cut at
+the sleeve of her dress with the lancet in his hand. But soon he
+realised that the task was hopeless.
+
+“Ernest Merchison,” she said, as she escaped from him with blazing eyes
+and catching breath, “you have done what I will never forgive. Go your
+own way in life and I will go mine.”
+
+“——To _death_, Jane.”
+
+Then she walked out of the house and through the garden gate. When she
+had gone ten or fifteen yards she looked back to see her lover standing
+by the gate, his face buried in his hands, and his strong frame shaking
+with sobs. For a moment Jane relented; it was terrible to see this
+reserved and self-reliant man thus weeping openly, and she knew that
+the passion must be mighty which would bring him to this pass. In her
+heart, indeed, she had never loved him better than at this moment; she
+loved him even for his brutal attempt to vaccinate her by force,
+because she understood what instigated the brutality. But then she
+remembered the insult—she to be seized like a naughty child who will
+not take its dose, and in the presence of another woman. And, so
+remembering, she hardened her heart and passed out of his sight towards
+the gateways of the grave.
+
+At that time Jane said nothing of her adventure to me, though
+afterwards I learned every detail of it from her and Mrs. Smith. She
+did not even tell me that she had visited the Smiths’ cottage until one
+morning, about eight days afterwards, when some blundering servant
+informed us at breakfast that the baby Smith was dead of the smallpox
+in the hospital, and that the other child was dangerously ill. I was
+shocked beyond measure, for this brought the thing home, the people
+lived almost at my gates. Now I remembered that I had seen the
+red-headed tramp catch the child Tottie in his arms. Doubtless she
+introduced the infection, though, strangely enough, her little sister
+developed the disease before her.
+
+“Jane,” I said when the servant had left, “did you hear about the Smith
+baby?”
+
+“Yes, father,” she answered languidly, “I knew that it had smallpox a
+week ago.”
+
+“Then why did you not tell me, and how did you know?”
+
+“I didn’t tell you, dear, because the mere mention of smallpox always
+upsets you so much, especially just now with all this election worry
+going on; and I knew it because I was at the Smiths’ cottage and
+nursing the baby when the doctor came in and said it was smallpox.”
+
+“You were nursing the baby!” I almost screamed as I sprang from my
+seat. “Great heavens, girl; why, you will infect the whole place.”
+
+“That was what Ernest—Dr. Merchison—seemed to think. He wanted to
+vaccinate me.”
+
+“Oh, and did you let him?”
+
+“How can you ask me such a question, father, remembering what you have
+always taught me? I said——” and with omissions she told me the gist of
+what had passed between them.
+
+“I didn’t mean that,” I answered when she had done. “I thought that
+perhaps under the influence of shock——Well, as usual, you showed your
+wisdom, for how can one poison kill another poison?” and, unable to
+bear it any longer, making some excuse, I rose and left the room.
+
+Her wisdom! Great heavens, her wisdom! Why did not that fool,
+Merchison, insist? He should have authority over her if any man had.
+And now it was too late—now no vaccination on earth could save her,
+unless by chance she had escaped infection, which was scarcely to be
+hoped. Indeed, such a thing was hardly known as that an unvaccinated
+person coming into immediate contact with a smallpox patient after the
+eruption had appeared, should escape infection.
+
+What did this mean? It meant that within a few days Jane, my only and
+darling child, the very hope and centre of my life, would be in the
+fangs of one of the most dreadful and dangerous diseases known to
+humanity. More, having never been vaccinated, that disease was sure to
+strike her with its full force, and the type of it which had appeared
+in the city was such that certainly not more than one-half of the
+unprotected persons attacked came alive out of the struggle.
+
+This was bad enough, but there were other things behind. I had never
+been vaccinated since infancy, over fifty years ago, and was therefore
+practically unprotected with the enemy that all my lifetime I had
+dreaded, as I dreaded no other thing or imagination, actually standing
+at my door. I could not go away because of the election; I dared not
+show fear, because they would cry: “Look at the hangman when he sees
+the rope.” Here, since compulsory vaccination had been abandoned, we
+fought smallpox by a system of isolation so rigorous that under its
+cruel provisions every one of whatever age, rank or sex in whom the
+disease declared itself was instantly removed to a hospital, while the
+inhabitants of the house whence the patient came were kept practically
+in prison, not being allowed to mix with their fellows. We had returned
+to the preventive measures of centuries ago, much as they were
+practised in the time of the Great Plague.
+
+But how could I send my daughter to one of those dreadful pest-pits,
+there at the moment of struggle to be a standing advertisement of the
+utter failure and falsity of the system I had preached, backing my
+statements with the wager of her life? Moreover, to do so would be to
+doom myself to defeat at the poll, since under our byelaws, which were
+almost ferocious in their severity, I could no longer appear in public
+to prosecute my canvass, and, if my personal influence was withdrawn,
+then most certainly my adversary would win.
+
+Oh, truly I who had sown bounteously was reaping bounteously. Truly the
+birds which I had sent out on their mission of evil had come home to
+roost upon my roof-tree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+HARVEST
+
+
+Another five days went by—to me they were days of most unspeakable
+doubt and anguish. Each morning at breakfast I waited for the coming of
+Jane with an anxiety which was all the more dreadful because I forced
+myself to conceal it. There had been no further conversation between us
+about the matter that haunted both our minds, and so fearful was I lest
+she should divine my suspense that except in the most casual way I did
+not even dare to look at her as she entered the room.
+
+On the fifth morning she was late for breakfast, not a common thing,
+for as a rule she rose early. I sent one of the parlour-maids to her
+room to ask if she was coming down, and stood awaiting the answer with
+much the same feeling as a criminal on his trial awaits the verdict of
+the jury. Presently the girl returned with the message that Miss Therne
+would be down in a few minutes, whereat I breathed again and swallowed
+a little food, which till then I had been unable to touch.
+
+Soon she came, and I saw that she was rather pale and languid, owing to
+the heat, perhaps, but that otherwise she looked much as usual.
+
+“You are late, dear,” I said unconcernedly.
+
+“Yes, father,” she answered; “I woke up with a little headache and went
+to sleep again. It has gone now; I suppose that it is the heat.”
+
+As she spoke she kissed me, and I thought—but this may have been
+fancy—that her breath felt cold upon my cheek.
+
+“I daresay,” I said, and we sat down to table. By my plate lay a great
+pile of correspondence, which I opened while making pretence to eat,
+but all the time I was watching Jane over the top of those wearisome
+letters, most of them from beggars or constituents who “wanted to
+know.” One, however, was anonymous, from a person who signed herself
+“Mother.” It ran:—
+
+“Sir,—After hearing your speeches some years ago, and being told that
+you were such a clever man, I became a Conscientious Objector, and
+would not let them vaccinate any more of my children. The three who
+were not vaccinated have all been taken to the hospital with the
+smallpox, and they tell me (for I am not allowed to see them) that one
+of them is dead; but the two who were vaccinated are quite well. Sir, I
+thought that you would like to know this, so that if you have made any
+mistake you may tell others. Sir, forgive me for troubling you, but it
+is a terrible thing to have one’s child die of smallpox, and, as I
+acted on your advice, I take the liberty of writing the above.”
+
+Again I looked at Jane, and saw that although she was sipping her tea
+and had some bacon upon her plate she had eaten nothing at all. Like
+the catch of a song echoed through my brain that fearsome sentence: “It
+is a terrible thing to have one’s child die of the smallpox.” Terrible,
+indeed, for now I had little doubt but that Jane was infected, and if
+she should chance to die, then what should I be? I should be her
+murderer!
+
+After breakfast I started upon my rounds of canvassing and
+speech-making. Oh, what a dreadful day was that, and how I loathed the
+work. How I cursed the hour in which I had taken up politics, and sold
+my honour to win a seat in Parliament and a little cheap notoriety
+among my fellow-men. If Stephen Strong had not tempted me Jane would
+have been vaccinated in due course, and therefore, good friend though
+he had been to me, and though his wealth was mine to-day, I cursed the
+memory of Stephen Strong. Everywhere I went that afternoon I heard
+ominous whispers. People did not talk openly; they shrugged their
+shoulders and nodded and hinted, and all their hints had to do with the
+smallpox.
+
+“I say, Therne,” said an old friend, the chairman of my committee, with
+a sudden outburst of candour, “what a dreadful thing it would be if
+after all we A.V.’s were mistaken. You know there are a good many cases
+of it about, for it’s no use disguising the truth. But I haven’t heard
+of any yet among the Calf-worshippers” (that was our cant term for
+those who believed in vaccination).
+
+“Oh, let be!” I answered angrily, “it is too late to talk of mistakes,
+we’ve got to see this thing through.”
+
+“Yes, yes, Therne,” he said with a dreary laugh, “unless it should
+happen to see us through.”
+
+I left him, and went home just in time to dress. There were some people
+to dinner, at which Jane appeared. Her lassitude had vanished, and, as
+was her manner when in good spirits, she was very humorous and amusing.
+Also I had never seen her look so beautiful, for her colour was high
+and her dark eyes shone like the diamond stars in her hair. But again I
+observed that she ate nothing, although she, who for the most part
+drank little but water, took several glasses of champagne and two
+tumblers of soda. Before I could get rid of my guests she had gone to
+bed. At length they went, and going to my study I began to smoke and
+think.
+
+I was now sure that the bright flush upon her cheeks was due to what we
+doctors call _pyrexia_, the initial fever of smallpox, and that the
+pest which I had dreaded and fled from all my life was established in
+my home. The night was hot and I had drunk my fill of wine, but I sat
+and shook in the ague of my fear. Jane had the disease, but she was
+young and strong and might survive it. I should take it from her, and
+in that event assuredly must die, for the mind is master of the body
+and the thing we dread is the thing that kills us.
+
+Probably, indeed, I had taken it already, and this very moment the
+seeds of sickness were at their wizard work within me. Well, even if it
+was so?—I gasped when the thought struck me—as Merchison had recognised
+in the case of Jane, by immediate vaccination the virus could be
+destroyed, or if not destroyed at least so much modified and weakened
+as to become almost harmless. Smallpox takes thirteen or fourteen days
+to develop; cowpox runs its course in eight. So even supposing that I
+had been infected for two days there was still time. Yes, but none to
+lose!
+
+Well, the thing was easy—I was a doctor and I had a supply of
+glycerinated lymph; I had procured some fresh tubes of it only the
+other day, to hold it up before my audiences while I dilated on its
+foulness and explained the evils which resulted from its use. Supposing
+now that I made a few scratches on my arm and rubbed some of this stuff
+into them, who would be the wiser? The inflammation which would follow
+would not be sufficient to incapacitate me, and nobody can see through
+a man’s coat sleeve; even if the limb should become swollen or helpless
+I could pretend that I had strained it. Whatever I had preached to
+prove my point and forward my ambition, in truth I had never doubted
+the efficacy of vaccination, although I was well aware of the dangers
+that might result from the use of impure or contaminated lymph, foul
+surroundings, and occasionally, perhaps, certain conditions of health
+in the subject himself. Therefore I had no prejudice to overcome, and
+certainly I was not a Conscientious Objector.
+
+It came to this then. There were only two reasons why I should not
+immediately vaccinate myself—first, that I might enjoy in secret a
+virtuous sense of consistency, which, in the case of a person who had
+proved himself so remarkably inconsistent in this very matter, would be
+a mere indulgence of foolish pride; and secondly, because if I did I
+might be found out. This indeed would be a catastrophe too terrible to
+think of, but it was not in fact a risk that need be taken into
+account.
+
+But where was the use of weighing all these pros and cons? Such foolish
+doubts and idle arguments melted into nothingness before the presence
+of the spectre that stood upon my threshold, the hideous, spotted
+Pestilence who had slain my father, who held my daughter by the throat,
+and who threatened to grip me with his frightful fingers. What were
+inconsistencies and risks to me compared to my living terror of the
+Thing that had dominated my whole existence, reappearing at its every
+crisis, and by some strange fate even when it was far from me, throwing
+its spell over my mind and fortunes till, because of it, I turned my
+skill and knowledge to the propagation of a lie, so mischievous in its
+results that had the world known me as I was it would have done wisely
+to deal by me as it deals with a dangerous lunatic?
+
+I would do it and at once.
+
+First, although it was unnecessary as all the servants had gone to
+rest, I locked that door of my study which opened into the hall. The
+other door I did not think of locking, for beyond it was nothing but
+the private staircase which led to the wing of the house occupied by
+Jane and myself. Then I took off my coat and rolled up my shirt sleeve,
+fastening it with a safety-pin to the linen upon my shoulder. After
+this I lit a spirit-lamp and sterilised my lancet by heating it in the
+flame. Now, having provided myself with an ivory point and unsealed the
+tiny tube of lymph, I sat down in a chair so that the light from the
+electric lamp fell full upon my arm, and proceeded to scape the skin
+with the lancet until blood appeared in four or five separate places.
+Next I took the ivory point, and, after cleansing it, I charged it with
+the lymph and applied it to the abrasions, being careful to give each
+of them a liberal dose. The operation finished, I sat still awhile
+letting my arm hang over the back of the chair, in order that the blood
+might dry thoroughly before I drew down my shirt sleeve.
+
+It was while I was sitting thus that I heard some movement behind me,
+and turned round suddenly to find myself face to face with my daughter
+Jane. She was clothed only in her nightdress and a bedroom wrapper, and
+stood near to the open staircase door, resting her hand upon the end of
+a lounge as though to support herself.
+
+For one moment only I saw her and noted the look of horror in her eyes,
+the next I had touched the switch of the electric light, and, save for
+the faint blue glimmer of the spirit lamp, there was darkness.
+
+“Father,” she said, and in the gloom her voice sounded far away and
+hollow, “what are you doing to your arm?”
+
+“I stumbled and fell against the corner of the mantelpiece and
+scratched it,” I began wildly, but she stopped me.
+
+“O father, have pity, for I cannot bear to hear you speak what is not
+true, and—_I saw it all_.”
+
+Then followed a silence made more dreadful by the darkness which the
+one ghostly point of light seemed to accentuate.
+
+Presently my daughter spoke again.
+
+“Have you no word of comfort to me before I go? How is it that you who
+have prevented thousands from doing this very thing yet do it yourself
+secretly and at the dead of night? If you think it safer to vaccinate
+yourself, why was I, your child, left unvaccinated, and taught that it
+is a wicked superstition? Father, father, for God’s sake, answer me, or
+I shall go mad.”
+
+Then I spoke, as men will speak at the Judgment Day—if there is one—and
+for the same reason, because I must. “Sit down, Jane, and listen, and,
+if you do not mind, let it remain dark; I can tell you best in the
+dark.”
+
+Then, briefly, but with clearness and keeping nothing back, I told her
+all, I—her father—laying every pitiable weakness of my nature open to
+my child’s sight; yes, even to the terror of infection that drove me to
+the act. All this while Jane answered no word, but when at length I
+finished she said:—
+
+“My poor father, O my poor father! Why did you not tell me all this
+years ago, when you could have confessed your mistake? Well, it is
+done, and you were not to blame in the beginning, for they forced you
+to it. And now I have come to tell you that I am very ill—that is why I
+am here—my back aches dreadfully, and I fear that I must have caught
+this horrible smallpox. Oh! had I known the truth a fortnight ago, I
+should have let Ernest vaccinate me. It broke my heart to refuse him
+the first thing he ever asked of me. But I thought of what you would
+feel and what a disgrace it would be to you. And now—you see.
+
+“Turn up the light, for I must go back. I daresay that we shall never
+meet again, for remember you are not to come into my room. I will not
+allow you to come into my room, if I have to kill myself to prevent it.
+No, you must not kiss me either; I daresay that I have begun to be
+infectious. Good-bye, father, till we meet again somewhere else, for I
+am sure that we do not altogether die. Oh! now that I know everything,
+I should have been glad enough to leave this life—if only I had
+never—met Ernest,” and turning, Jane, my daughter, crept away, gliding
+up the broad oak stairs back to the room which she was never to quit
+alive.
+
+As for me, daylight found me still seated in the study, my brain
+tormented with an agony of remorse and shame which few have lived to
+feel, and my heart frozen with fear of what the morrow should bring
+forth.
+
+After but one day of doubt, Jane’s sickness proved to be smallpox of
+the prevailing virulent type. But she was not removed to the hospital,
+for I kept the thing secret and hired a nurse, who had recently been
+revaccinated, for her from a London institution. The doctoring I
+directed myself, although I did not actually see her, not now from any
+fear of consequences, for I was so utterly miserable that I should have
+been glad to die even of smallpox, but because she would not suffer it,
+and because also, had I done so, I might have carried infection far and
+wide, and should have been liable to prosecution under our isolation
+laws.
+
+I wished to give up the fight for the seat, but when I suggested it,
+saying that I was ill, my committee turned upon me fiercely.
+
+“Smallpox,” they declared, “was breaking out all over the city, and I
+should stop there to ‘sweep out my own grate,’ even if they had to keep
+me by force. If I did not, they would expose me in a fashion I should
+not like.”
+
+Then I gave in, feeling that after all it did not matter much, as in
+any case it was impossible for me to leave Dunchester. Personally I had
+no longer any fear of contagion, for within a week from that fatal
+night four large vesicles had formed on my arm, and their presence
+assured me that I was safe. At any other time this knowledge would have
+rejoiced me more than I can tell, but now, as I have said, I did not
+greatly care.
+
+Another six days went by, bringing me to the eve of the election. At
+lunch time I managed to get home, and was rejoiced to find that Jane,
+who for the past forty-eight hours had been hovering between life and
+death, had taken a decided turn for the better. Indeed, she told me so
+herself in quite a strong voice as I stood in the doorway of her room,
+adding that she hoped I should have a good meeting that night.
+
+It would seem, however, that almost immediately after I left a change
+for the worse set in, of such a character that Jane felt within herself
+her last hour was at hand. Then it was that she ordered the nurse to
+write a telegram at her dictation. It was to Dr. Merchison, and ran:
+“Come and see me at once, do not delay as I am dying.—Jane.”
+
+Within half an hour he was at her door. Then she bade the nurse to
+throw a sheet over her, so that he might not see her features which
+were horribly disfigured, and to admit him.
+
+“Listen,” she said, speaking through the sheet, “I am dying of the
+smallpox, and I have sent for you to beg your pardon. I know now that
+you were right and I was wrong, although it broke my heart to learn
+it.”
+
+Then by slow degrees and in broken words she told him enough of what
+she had learned to enable him to guess the rest, never dreaming, poor
+child, of the use to which he would put his knowledge, being too ill
+indeed to consider the possibilities of a future in which she could
+have no part.
+
+The rest of that scene has nothing to do with the world; it has nothing
+to do with me; it is a private matter between two people who are dead,
+Ernest Merchison and my daughter, Jane Therne. Although my own beliefs
+are nebulous, and at times non-existent, this was not so in my
+daughter’s case. Nor was it so in the case of Ernest Merchison, who was
+a Scotchman, with strong religious views which, I understand, under
+these dreadful circumstances proved comfortable to both of them. At the
+least, they spoke with confidence of a future meeting, which, if their
+faith is well founded, was not long delayed indeed; for, strong as he
+seemed to be, within the year Merchison followed his lover to the
+churchyard, where they lie side by side.
+
+About half-past six Jane became unconscious, and an hour afterwards she
+died.
+
+Then in his agony and the bitterness of his just rage a dreadful
+purpose arose in the mind of Merchison. He went home, changed his
+clothes, disinfected himself, and afterwards came on to the
+Agricultural Hall, where I was addressing a mass meeting of the
+electors. It was a vast and somewhat stormy meeting, for men’s minds
+were terrified and overshadowed by the cases of disease which were
+reported in ever-increasing numbers, and even the best of my supporters
+had begun to speculate whether or no my anti-vaccination views were
+after all so absolutely irrefutable.
+
+Still, my speech, which by design did not touch on the smallpox scare,
+was received with respect, if not with enthusiasm. I ended it, however,
+with an eloquent peroration, wherein I begged the people of Dunchester
+to stand fast by those great principles of individual freedom, which
+for twenty years it had been my pride and privilege to inculcate; and
+on the morrow, in spite of all arguments that might be used to dissuade
+them, fearlessly to give their suffrages to one who for two decades had
+proved himself to be their friend and the protector of their rights.
+
+I sat down, and when the cheers, with which were mixed a few hoots, had
+subsided, my chairman asked if any one in the meeting wished to
+question the candidate.
+
+“I do,” said a voice speaking from beneath the shadow of the gallery
+far away. “I wish to ask Dr. Therne whether he believes in
+vaccination?”
+
+When the meeting understood the meaning of this jester’s question, a
+titter of laughter swept over it like a ripple over the face of a pond.
+The chairman, also rising with a smile, said: “Really, I do not think
+it necessary to put that query to my friend here, seeing that for
+nearly twenty years he has been recognised throughout England as one of
+the champions of the anti-vaccination cause which he helped to lead to
+triumph.”
+
+“I repeat the question,” said the distant voice again, a cold deep
+voice with a note in it that to my ears sounded like the knell of
+approaching doom.
+
+The chairman looked puzzled, then replied: “If my friend will come up
+here instead of hiding down there in the dark I have no doubt that Dr.
+Therne will be able to satisfy his curiosity.”
+
+There was a little commotion beneath the gallery, and presently a man
+was seen forcing his way up the length of the huge and crowded hall.
+For some reason or other the audience watched his slow approach without
+impatience. A spirit of wonder seemed to have taken possession of them;
+it was almost as though by some process of telepathy the thought which
+animated the mind of this questioner had taken a hold of their minds,
+although they did not quite know what that thought might be. Moreover
+the sword of smallpox hung over the city, and therefore the subject was
+of supreme interest. When Death is near, whatever they may pretend, men
+think of little else.
+
+Now he was at the foot of the platform, and now in the gaunt, powerful
+frame I recognised my daughter’s suitor, Ernest Merchison, and knew
+that something dreadful was at hand, what I could not guess.
+
+There was still time—I might have pretended to be ill, but my brain was
+so weary with work and sorrow, and so occupied, what was left of it, in
+trying to fathom Merchison’s meaning, that I let the precious moment
+slip. At length he was standing close by me, and to me his face was
+like the face of an avenging angel, and his eyes shone like that
+angel’s sword.
+
+“I wish to ask you, sir,” he said again, “whether or no you believe
+that vaccination is a prophylactic against smallpox.”
+
+Once more there were opportunities of escape. I might for instance have
+asked for a definition of vaccination, of prophylactics and of
+smallpox, and thus have argued till the audience grew weary. But some
+God of vengeance fought upon his side, the hand of doom was over me,
+and a power I could not resist dragged the answer from my lips.
+
+“I think, sir,” I replied, “that, as the chairman has told you, the
+whole of my public record is an answer to your question. I have often
+expressed my views upon this matter; I see no reason to change them.”
+
+Ernest Merchison turned to the audience.
+
+“Men of Dunchester,” he said in such trumpet-like and thrilling tones
+that every face of the multitude gathered there was turned upon him,
+“Dr. Therne in answer to my questions refers to his well-known views,
+and says that he has found no reason to change them. His views are that
+vaccination is useless and even mischievous, and by preaching them he
+has prevented thousands from being vaccinated. Now I ask him to
+illustrate his faith by baring his left arm before you all.”
+
+What followed? I know not. From the audience went up a great gasp
+mingled with cries of “_yes_” and “_shame_” and “_show him_.” My
+supporters on the platform murmured in indignation, and I, round whom
+the whole earth seemed to rush, by an effort recovering my
+self-control, rose and said:—
+
+“I am here to answer any question, but I ask you to protect me from
+insult.”
+
+Again the tumult and confusion swelled, but through it all, calm as
+death, inexorable as fate, Ernest Merchison stood at my side. When it
+had died down, he said:—
+
+“I repeat my challenge. There is smallpox in this city—people are lying
+dead of it—and many have protected themselves by vaccination: let Dr.
+Therne prove that he has not done this also by baring his left arm
+before you all.”
+
+The chairman looked at my face and his jaw dropped. “I declare this
+meeting closed,” he said, and I turned to hurry from the platform,
+whereat there went up a shout of “_No, no_.” It sank to a sudden
+silence, and again the man with the face of fate spoke.
+
+“Murderer of your own child, I reveal that which you hide!”
+
+Then with his right hand suddenly he caught me by the throat, with his
+left hand he gripped my linen and my garments, and at one wrench ripped
+them from my body, leaving my left breast and shoulder naked. And
+there, patent on the arm where every eye might read them, were those
+proofs of my infamy which he had sought.
+
+I swooned away, and, as I sank into oblivion, there leapt from the lips
+of the thousands I had betrayed that awful roar of scorn and fury which
+has hunted me from my home and still haunts me far across the seas.
+
+My story is done. There is nothing more to tell.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR THERNE ***
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