The Stickit Minister's Wooing/Peterson's Patient
PETERSON'S PATIENT
When I go out on the round of a morning I generally take John with me. John is my "man," and of course it is etiquette that he should drive me to my patients' houses. But sometimes I tell him to put in old Black Bess for a long round-about journey, and then, in that case, I can drive myself.
For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post—that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. I honestly believe Bess is more than half a cow, and chews the cud on the sly. So whenever I feel a trifle lazy, I take the outer round and Black Bess, leaving the town and what the ambitious might call its "suburbs" to Dr. Peterson, my assistant. Not that this helps me much in the long run, because I have to keep track of what is going on in Peterson's head and revise his treatment. For, though his zeal and knowledge are always to be counted on, Peterson is apt to be lacking in a certain tact which the young practitioner only acquires by experience.
For instance, to take the important matter of diagnosis, Peterson used to think nothing of standing silent five or ten minutes making up his mind what was the matter with a patient. I once told him about this.
"Why," he replied, with, I must say, some slight disrespect for his senior, "you often do that yourself. You said this very morning that it took you twenty minutes to make up your mind whether to treat Job Sampson's wife for scarlet fever or for diphtheria!"
"Yes," I retorted, "I told you so, but I didn't stand agape all the time I was thinking it out. I took the temperature of the woman's armpits, and the back of her neck, and between her toes. I asked her about her breakfast, and her dinner, and her supper of the day before. Then I took a turn at her sleeping powers, and whether she had been eating too many vegetables lately. I inquired if she had had the measles, and the whooping-cough, and how often she had been vaccinated. I was just going to begin on her father, mother, and collateral relatives in order to trace hereditary tendencies, when I made up my mind that it would be safest to treat the woman for scarlet fever."
"Yes," said Peterson, drily, "Job was praising you up to the skies this very day. 'There never was sic a careful doctor,' he swears; 'there wasna a blessed thing that he didna speer into, even unto the third and fourth generation.'"
"There, you hear, Peterson," I said, with sober triumph, "that is the first step in your profession. You must create confidence. Never let them think for a moment you don't know everything. Why, old Ned Harper sent for me to-day—said you didn't understand the case, because you declined to prescribe."
"He is malingering," cried Peterson, hotly; "he only wants to draw full pay out of his two benefit societies. The man is a fraud, open and patent. I wouldn't have anything to do with him."
"Now, Peterson," I said, very seriously, "once for all, this is my practice, 'not yours. You are my salaried assistant. That is what you have to attend to. You are not revising auditor of the local benefit societies. If you do as you did with old Harper a time or two, you will lose me my appointment as Society's doctor, and not that one appointment alone. They all follow each other like a flock of sheep jumping through a slap in a dyke. Besides, the Benefit Society officials don't thank you, not a bit! They expect Harper to do as much for them the next time they feel like taking a holiday between the sheets!"
"What would you do then?" cried this furious young apostle of righteousness. "You surely would not have me become art and part in a swindle."
I patted him on the shoulder.
"Temper your zeal with discretion, my friend," I said. "I have found a rising blister between the shoulder-blades very efficacious in such cases."
Yet my immaculate assistant, had he only known it, was to go further and fare worse.
*******
Meanwhile to pass the time I told him the story of old Maxwell Bone. Peterson was clearly getting restive, and it is not good for young men of the medical profession to think that they know everything at five-and-twenty. Maxwell was an aged hedger-and-ditcher, who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the upper end of Whinnyliggate. Of that parish I was (and still am) parish doctor, and Maxwell being in receipt of half-a-crown a week as parochial supplement to his scanty earnings, I was, ipso facto, responsible for Maxwell's state of health, and compelled in terms of my contract to obey any reasonable summons I might receive from him.
Upon several occasions I had prescribed for the old ruffian, chiefly for rheumatism and the various internal pains and weaknesses affected by ancient paupers. When I was going away on one occasion Maxwell asked me for an order on the Inspector of Poor for a bottle of brandy "for outward application only." I refused him promptly, telling him with truth that he was far better without it.
"Weel, doctor," he said, shaking his head, "dootless ye ken best. But there's nocht like brandy when thae stammack pains come on me. It micht save ye a lang journey some cauld snawy nicht. The guard o' the late train will tak' doon ony message frae the junction, and if I dinna get the brandy to hae at hand to rub my legs wi' ye micht hae a lang road to travel! But gin ye let me hae it, doctor, it micht save ye a heap o' trouble"
"The old wretch!" cried Peterson. "Of course you did not let him have it?"
"Peterson," I replied, sententiously, "I decline to answer you. Wait till you have been a winter here and know what a thirty-mile drive in a raging snowstorm to the head-end of the parish of Whinnyliggate means. Then you will not have much doubt whether Maxwell got his brandy or not."
Now Peterson was really a very excellent fellow, and when he had run his head against the requisite number of stone walls, and learned to bite hard on his tongue when tempted to over-hasty speech, he made a capital assistant. I shall be sorry to lose him when the time comes.
For one thing Nance is fond of him, especially since he fell in love, and that goes for a great deal in our house. Peterson performed the latter feat quite suddenly and unexpectedly, as he did everything. It happened thuswise.
I had had a hard winter, and Nance was needing a change, so, about Easter, I took her south, for a few weeks in the mild and recuperative air of the Regent Street bonnet shops. I have noted more than once that in Nance's case the jewellers' windows along Bond Street possess tonic qualities, quite unconnected with going inside to buy anything, as also the dark windows of certain merchant tailors in which the patient can see her new dress and hat reflected as in a mirror. As for me, I enjoyed the British Medical Club and the Scientific Museums—which, of course, was what I came for.
But when we went back home we found that Peterson's daily report of cases had not conveyed all the truth. Peterson himself was changed. So far as I could gather, he seemed to have done his work very well and to have given complete satisfaction. He had even added the names of several new patients to my list. One of these was that of a somewhat large proprietor in a neighbouring parish, who was said to be exceedingly eccentric, but of whom I knew nothing save by the vaguest report.
"How did you get hold of old Bliss Bulliston?" I asked my assistant, as I glanced over the list he handed me. We were sitting smoking in the study while Nance was unpacking upstairs and spreading her new things on the bed, amid the rapturous sighs and devotionally clasped hands of Betty Sim, our housemaid.
Peterson turned away towards the mantelpiece for another spill. He appeared to have a difficulty with his pipe.
"Well, I don't exactly know," he said at last, when the problem was solved; "it just came about somehow. You know how these things happen."
"They generally happen in our profession by the patient sending for the physician," I remarked, drily. "I hope you have not been poaching on anyone else's preserves, Peterson. Did Bulliston send for you?"
Peterson stooped for a coal to light his pipe. It had gone out again. Perhaps it was the exertion that reddened his handsome face.
"No," he said, slowly, "he did not send for me. I went of my own accord."
I started from my seat.
"Why, man," I cried, "you'll get me struck off the register, not to speak of yourself. You don't mean to say that you went to the house touting for custom?"
"Now don't get excited," he said, smoking calmly, "and I'll tell you all about it."
I became at once violently calm. Nevertheless, in spite of this, it took some time to get him under way.
"Well," he said at last, "Bulliston has got a daughter."
"Oh," said I, "so you were called in to attend on Mrs. Bulliston."
"When I say he has a daughter, I mean a grown-up daughter, not an infant!"
Peterson seemed quite unaccountably ruffled by my innocent remark. I thought of pointing out to him the advantages of habitual clearness of speech, but, on the whole, decided to let him tell his story, for I was really very anxious about Bulliston.
"Well," I said soothingly, "did Miss Bulliston call you in?"
"It might be looked at that way," he said.
"What was the case?"
"A nest of peregrine's eggs near the top of Carslaw Craig."
"Peterson!" I exclaimed, somewhat sternly, "don't forget that I am talking to you seriously!"
But he continued smoking.
"I am perfectly serious," he said, and stopped. After he had thought a while he continued: "It happened at the end of the first week you were away. I had left John at home. I had old Black Bess with me—you know she will stand anywhere. I took the long round, and was coming home a little tired. As I drove past the end of Carslaw Hill, happening to look up I saw something sticking to the sheer face of the cliff like a fly on a wall. At first I could not believe my eyes, for when I came nearer I saw it was a girl. She seemed to be calling for help. So of course I jumped down and tied old Bess to a post by the roadside. Then I began to climb up towards her, but I soon saw that I could not help the girl that way—to do her any good, that is. So I shouted to her to hold on and I would get at her over the top.
"I ran up an easier place, where the hill slopes away to the left, and came down opposite where the girl was. She had got to within ten feet of the top, but could not get a bit higher to save her life. It looked almost impossible, but luckily, right on top there was a hazel-bush, and I caught hold of the lower boughs—three or four of them—and lowered my legs down over the edge.
"'Catch hold of my ankles,' I shouted, 'and I'll pull you up.'
"'Can't; they're too thick!' the girl cried; and from that I judged she must be a pretty cool one.
"'Then catch hold of one of them in both hands!' I shouted.
"'Right!' she said, and gripped.
"And it was as well that she did not take my first offer, for, as it turned out, I had all I could do to get her up, jamming the toe of my other boot in the crevices and barking my knee against the hazel roots. Still, I managed it finally."
"Whereupon she promptly fainted away in your arms," I interjected, "and you recovered her with some smelling-salts and sal volatile you happened to have brought in your tail-coat pockets in view of such emergencies."
"Not at all," said Peterson, quite unabashed; "she didn't faint—never thought of such a thing. Instead, she got behind the hazel-bush I had been hanging on to.
"'Stop where you are a moment,' she spluttered; 'till I get rid of these horrid eggs. Then I'll talk to you.'"
"Tears of beauty!" I cried; "emotion hidden behind a hazel-bush. 'Alfred, you have saved my life—accept my hand.' That was what she really said to you—you know it was, Peterson."
"Not much," said Peterson. "She was back again in a trice, and, if you'll believe me, started in to give it me hot and strong for smashing her blissful birds' eggs.
"'Here I've been watching this peregrine for weeks, and I'd got two beauties, and just because I got stuck a bit on the cliff you must come along and jolt me so that I have broken both of them—one was in my mouth, and the other I had tied up in a handkerchief.
"But I told the girl that I knew where I could get her another pair and also a rough-legged buzzard's nest, and that did a lot to comfort her. She was a pretty girl, though I don't believe she had ever given it a thought; and she was dead on to getting enough birds' eggs to beat her brother, who had said that a girl could never get as good a collection as a boy, because of her petticoats!"
"And where are you going to get those eggs?" I said to Paterson. "If you think that hunting falcons' eggs for roving schoolgirls comes within your duties as my assistant—well, I shall have to explicate your responsibilities to you, that's all, young man!"
Peterson laid his finger lightly on his cheek, not far from the bridge of his nose.
"You know old Davie Slimmon, the keeper up at the lodge? You remember I doctored his foot when he got it bitten with an adder. Well, anyway, he would do anything for me. I've had Davie on the egg-hunt ever since."
"And the girl thinks you are getting them all yourself," I said, with some severity. "Peterson, this is both unbecoming and unscientific. More than that, you are a blackguard."
"Oh," said Peterson, lightly, "it's all right. I go regularly to see the old boy. He is a patient properly on the books, and when all is over, you can charge him a swingeing fee. Well, to begin at the beginning, each time I saw the girl I took her all the eggs I could pick up in the interval. I got them properly blown and labelled—particulars, habitat, how many in the clutch, whether the nest was oriented due east and west, whether made of sticks or weeds or curl-papers, the size of the shell in fractions of a millimetre"
"Peterson," I said, sternly, "I don't believe you have the remotest idea what a millimetre is!"
"No more I have," answered Peterson, stoutly, not in the least put out; "but then, no more has she. And it looks well—thundering well!" he added, after a ruminant consideration of the visionary labelled egg. "You've no idea what a finish these tickets give to the collection."
"So this was Miss Bulliston," I said, to bring him back to the point in which I was most immediately interested. "That's all very well, but what was the matter with old Bliss, her father?"
Peterson looked as if he would have winked if he had dared, but the sternness in my eye checked him.
"Something nervous," he said, gazing at me blankly. "Truda kept stirring him up till the poor old boy nearly fretted himself into a fever, and so had me sent for. Oh, I was properly enough called in. You needn't look like that, McQuhirr. You've no gratitude for my getting you a good paying patient. I tell you the old man was so frightened that Truda"
"It had got to 'Truda,' had it?" I interjected, bitterly. But Peterson took no notice, going composedly on with his story.
"... Truda ran all the way to the lodge gates, where I was waiting with two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier, unblown, but all done up in cotton wool."
"What!" I cried, "the birds?"
"No, the eggs, of course," said Peterson; "and she said: 'What have you got there?' So I told her two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier. Then she said: 'Is that all? I thought you would have got that kite's you promised me by this time. But come along and cure my father of the cholera, and the measles, and the distemper, and the spavin! He's got them all this morning, besides several other things I've forgot the names of. Come quick! Cousin Jem from London is with him. He'll frighten him worse than anybody. I'll take you up through the shrubbery. Give me your hand!'
"So she took my hand, and we ran up together to the house."
"Peterson," I said, "you and I have a monthly engagement. On this day month I shall have no further occasion for your services. Suppose anyone had seen you! What would they have thought of Dr. McQuhirr's assistant?"
"I never gave it a thought," he said, waving the interruption away; "and anyway, if all tales are true, you did a good deal of light skirmishing up about Nether Neuk in your own day!"
Now this was a most uncalled-for remark, and I answered: "That may be true or not, as the case may be. But, at all events, I was no one's locum tenens at that time."
"Oh," he said, "it's no use making a fuss now, McQuhirr. Nobody saw us, and as soon as we got to the open part near the house, Truda said: 'Now I'm going to get these eggs fixed into their cases. So you trot round and physic up the old man. And mind and ask to see his collection of dog-whips. It is the finest in the world. We all collect something here. Pa is crazy about dog-whips. And if you can't find anything else wrong with him, tell him that his corns want cutting. They always do!'
"'But I haven't a knife with me,' I objected.
"'I'll lend you a ripper.' (Truda had an answer ready every time.) 'I keep it edged like a razor. It is a cobbler's leather knife. It will make the shavings fly off dad's old corns, I tell you!'
"'But I never pared a corn in my life,' I said.
"'Then you've jolly well got to now, my friend,' she said, 'for I've yarned it to him that his life may depend on it, and that only a trained surgeon can operate on his sort. So don't you give me away, or he may let you have the contents of a shot-gun as you go out through the front window. And what will happen to me, I don't know. Now go on!'
"And with that she vanished in the direction of the stables."
"A most lively young lady!" I cried, with enthusiasm.
"Um-m," grunted Peterson (I have often had cause to remark Peterson's gruffness). "Lively, you think? Well, she nearly got me into a pretty mess with her liveliness. The butler put me into a waiting-room out of the hall. It was all sparred round with fishing-rods, and had crossed trophies of dog-whips festooned about the walls. I waited here for a quarter of an hour, listening to the rumbling bark of an angry voice in the distance, and wondering what the mischief Truda had let me in for.
"Presently the girl came round to the open window, and as the sill was a bit high she gave a sort of sidelong jump and sat perched on the ledge outside.
"'You are a great donkey,' she said, looking in at me; 'both the kestrels' are set as hard as a rock—here, take them!'
"And with that she threw the eggs in at me one after another through the open sash of the window. One took me right on the pin of my tie and dripped on to my waistcoat. Smell? Well, rather! Just then the old butler came in, looking like a field-marshal and archbishop rolled in one, and there was I rubbing the abominable yolk from my waistcoat. Truda had dropped off the window-sill like a bird, and the old fellow looked round the room very suspiciously. I think he thought I must have been pocketing the spoons or something.
"'Mr. Bliss Bulliston waits!' he said, as if he were taking me into the presence-chamber of royalty. And so he was, by George! I was shown into a large library-looking room where two men were sitting. One was a little Skye-terrier of a man, with bristly gray hair that stood out everyway about his head. He was lying in a long chair, half reclining, a rug over his knees though the day was warm. The other man sat apart in the window, a quiet fellow to all appearance, bald-headed, and rather tired-looking.
"'You are the doctor from Cairn Edward my daughter has been pestering me to see,' snapped the elder man. 'My case is a very difficult and complicated one, and quite beyond the reach of an average local practitioner, but I understand from my daughter that you have very special qualifications.' Whereupon I bowed, and said that I was your assistant."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Peterson, had you no sense? Why on earth did you bring my name into the affair? I shall never get over it!"
"Oh," he answered, lightly; "wait a bit. I cleared you sufficiently in the end. Just listen.
"I was in a tight place, you will admit, but I thought it was best to put on my most impressive manner, and after a look or two at the old fellow, I resolved to treat him for nervous exhaustion. It was a dead fluke, but I had been reading Webb-Playfair's article on Neurasthenia just before I went out, and though men don't often have it, I thought it would do as well for old Bulliston as anything else.
"So I yarned away to him about his condition and symptoms, emaciated physical state, and so forth. Well, when I was getting pretty well warmed up I saw the young man with the hair thin-sown on top rise and go quietly over to another window. I put this down to modesty on his part. He wished to leave me alone with my patient. So I became more and more confidential to old Bulliston."
("Peterson," I moaned, "all is over between us from this moment!")
"But the old ruffian would not allow Mr. Bald-head to remove himself quietly," said Peterson, continuing his tale calmly.
"'James,' he cried, sharply, 'stop where you are. All this should be very interesting to you.'
"'So it is,' said the young man, smiling in the rummest way, 'very interesting indeed!'
"So, somewhat elated, I went on prescribing rest, massage, the double-feeding dodge, and, above all, no intercourse with his own family. When I got through my rigmarole, the old fellow cocked his head to the side like a blessed dicky-bird, and remarked: 'It shows what wonderful similarity there is between the minds of you men of science. Talk of the transference of ideas! Why, that is just what my nephew was saying before you came in—almost in the same words. Let me introduce you to my nephew, Dr. Webb-Playfair, of Harley Street.'
"You could have knocked me down with a straw. I could hardly return the fellow's very chilly nod. I heartily confounded that little bird-nesting minx who had got me into such a scrape. But I had an idea.
"'Perhaps, sir,' I said, 'if you would allow me to consult Dr. Webb-Playfair we might be able to assist one another.'
"'Certainly,' cried the little old man, speaking as sharply as a Skye-terrier yelps; 'be off into the library. Jem, you know the way!'
"I tell you what, McQuhirr, I did not feel particularly chirpy as I followed that fellow's shiny crown into the next room. He sat down on a table, swinging one leg and looking at me without speaking. For a moment I could not find words to begin, but his eyes were on me with a kind of twinkle in them.
"'Well?' he said, as if he had a right to demand an explanation. That decided me. I would make a clean breast of it.
"So I told him the whole story—how I had first met Truda, of our bird-nesting, and how Truda wanted me to be able to come often to the house—because of the eggs.
"The bald young man began to laugh as I went on with my narrative, though it was no laughing matter to me, I can tell you. And especially when I confessed that I did not think there was anything the matter with his uncle, and that Neurasthenia was the first thing that came into my head, because I had been reading his own article in the Lancet before I came out. He thought that was the cream of the joke. He was all of a good fellow, and no mistake.
"'So,' he said, 'to speak plainly, you are in love with my cousin, and you plotted to keep the father in bed in order that you might make love to the daughter! That is the most remarkable recent application of medical science I have heard of!'
"'Oh no,' I cried, 'I assure you it was Truda who!
"'Ah,' he said, quietly, 'it was Truda, was it? I can well believe that.'
"Then he thought a long while, and at last he said, 'Well, it will do the old man a great deal of good to stay in bed and not worry his own family and the whole neighbourhood with his whimsies. Moreover, milk diet is a very soothing thing. We will let it go at that. You can settle your own affairs with my cousin Gertrude, Dr. Peterson; I have nothing to do with that. Indeed, I would not meddle with that volcanic young person's private concerns for all the wealth of the Indies! Let us go back to my uncle.'
"So," concluded Peterson, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the bars of the grate, "the old fellow has been in bed ever since and has drunk his own weight in good cow's milk several times over. He is putting on flesh every day, and his temper is distinctly improving. He can be trusted with a candlestick beside him on the stand now, without the certainty of his throwing it at his nurse."
"And Truda?" I suggested, "what did she say?"
"Well, of course I told her how her cousin had said that I had ordered the father to bed, in order that I might make love to the daughter. She and I were in the waterside glade beyond the pond at the time. You know the place. We were looking for dippers' nests. She stopped and said:
"'Jem Playfair said that, did he?'
"'Yes, these were his very words,' I said, with a due sense of their heinousness.
"'He said you sent my father to bed that you might make love to me?'
"'Yes.'
"She looked all about the glade, and then up at me.
"'Well, did you?' she said."
*******
This is Peterson's story exactly as he told it to me on my return. That is some time ago now, but there is little to add. Mr. Bliss Bulliston is now much better both in health and in temper, and there is every reason to believe that I shall lose my assistant some of these days. The young couple are talking of going out to British Columbia. No complete collection of the eggs of that Colony has ever been made, and Peterson says that the climate is so healthy there, that for some years there will be nothing for him to do but to help Truda with her collecting.
This is all very well now, in the first months of an engagement, but as a family man myself, I have my doubts as to the permanence of such an arrangement.