Short Stories 1895-1926 (51 page)

‘And then, doctor, the creeping shadow! First the cautious experts, the statisticians, the exchanges, the markets, and then on and on in ever widening circles of misgiving and panic. And ever more widely the rumour spreads. The merest patch of countryside reveals the secret at last – one glance at the straggling thinning fields, the wilting hedges, the famished cattle, the naked soil, gaping and grinning through the green – growing bald! And so the pinch grows steadily sharper until the world at large – at least the civilized part of it – begins to realize what it is really in for. There is an orgy of crises: changes of Government: International Conferences: ever more and more impotent and ineffectual. And then at last the newspapers fall on the scare like bluebottles on carrion.

‘And the following spring the full realization comes. Things of age-long standing – the forests, the trees, the prairies and savannas – falter, pine, dwindle, fade, perish. And man realizes his final destiny. Even his beloved and trusty law of averages has gone to the deuce, and his just and equable old grandmother Nature is obviously playing the jilt. I can tell you this, doctor; the upshot of that little situation was a good deal worse than the European war. Society, of course, simply falls to pieces. Starvation; mobs; rioting; religious frenzies; fanatics; communities of suicide. You can imagine a starving Europe, a starving America – we have caught glimpses of a starving Asia. And in trouble like that the taking of sides is of comparatively little account. Even an imaginary situation such as that refreshes such dried up old problems as, What do we human beings really believe in? and, Exactly how much do we value posterity? For my part – provided that Nature kept things going just for aesthetic reasons, I cannot honestly see that it would be altogether a calamity if humanity did give up the ghost, or at any rate, if a very large proportion of our superabundant populations did.
I
am ready.'

The doctor spoke muffledly – through his fingers. ‘The birth-rate
is,
I believe, actually falling in most European countries. And naturally there are many economists and eugenists who rejoice at it. You have a vivid fancy, Mr Pritchard, if I may venture to say so. But we may hope things won't reach such an extreme as that.'

His visitor smiled; candidly, almost eagerly. ‘Perhaps not; and of course you are right about the birth-rate. But the death-rate's going down too – and so the tide is kept in genial flood. Isn't that so?'

But Dr Lidgett seemed to have as suddenly lost interest in the question as he had found it. He shut his mouth, unclenched his fingers, looked away. And once more the dark quick face opposite him also lost life and expression. Mr Pritchard indeed was stifling the rudiments of a yawn.

‘Well, that was the story. A mere shocker, of course. It sold well, too. But I agree Nature has as yet ignored my hint.' He looked about him, as if in search of something lost long ago, as if searching had become little more than an automatic reaction. He appeared to be a little uneasy too, as if his conscience were at last chiding him for taking an advantage so extreme of a fellow-professional who merely happened to be at a loose end, and, kindly and tolerant enough to listen to him.

‘But quite, quite seriously, doctor,' he began again apologetically, ‘why
are
some of us singled out to realize the appalling trap we are all in? How many of us, do you suppose, do realize it: have the courage or the fatuity to face the question? And, as for the rest, what is the impulse, the impetus that keeps them going? Deceives them, if you like, but still keeps them going? Are we really to acknowledge that it is a purely physical thing? This fountain of life that keeps green our philosophical fallacies, keeps green our delight in things, our interest in our fellow-creatures, our faith in Hope, or, at any rate, in a decent courage, even though there is not the slightest logical justification for it – is it really and indeed nothing but a sort of physical well-being? If it's merely that, then I suppose treatment might put it right, Dr Lidgett? Treatment, at any rate, could prevent my concerning myself with it any longer. Say a fraction of a grain of prussic acid. But if it's mental, of the soul, well, my God, I shall keep a very silent tongue in my head when talking to anybody else than a man of your profession! On the other hand, if it
is
mental, why, somehow I feel I ought to try to fight it out. What do you suggest?'

Dr Lidgett having so long and so patiently (and so unenterprisingly) waited for this opportunity, asked his visitor a few sedate, commonplace questions concerning his actual health: his appetite, the hours he kept, how much he smoked, how badly he slept. But then, he had nothing else to do this long spring afternoon, nothing whatever except to look through a few bundles of discarded letters, to write a cheque or two, one in payment of a nominal fee to a specialist on cancer, another for services rendered by yet another kind of specialist – and then to leave his vacant, his incredibly vacant house, and to go away for a few days. He had indeed already once or twice during his visitor's jerky conversation seen himself pacing the deserted but ‘bracing' esplanade of a small southern watering-place. This untimely creature would not detain him much longer. Besides, he was himself by nature and habit cautious and thorough. He submitted his patient to a close and exhaustive examination; heart, lungs, stomach, knee-jerk and the rest. Then he once more resumed his seat and looked out of the window.

Having no looking-glass handy, Mr Pritchard was now apparently taking particular care over the adjustment of his collar and tie, though the sidelong twist of his head at the moment suggested that of a bird past all care on a poulterer's hook. But his eyes meanwhile were busily exploring the neat efficient furnishings of Dr Lidgett's consulting-room. From object to object they darted, bright as fireflies on a summer's evening. They had become by long practice the willing servants of his craving for ‘local colour'. It was a habit that would no doubt persist even when only a few minutes remained to him of his earthly existence. Indeed, though he must be even in an unusual degree the conscious centre of his own small universe, he was profoundly interested in his fellow-creatures – their absurd little ways and habits and eccentricities. Nothing human shocked or failed to concern him, except possibly most of his fellow-authors' fiction.

On the other hand, though his eyes and senses were at this moment as active as ever, his thoughts were otherwise engaged. Since it could lead to nothing, he was upbraiding himself again for giving all this trouble to the quiet sedate figure seated in the chair over there. He looked a good sort, if ever there was one – probably intensely kind to his poorer patients, even his panel patients, though, as probably, quite unable to appreciate what he himself had been saying, even if he had considered it worthy of attention. A general practitioner must often have to make allowances for patients that appear to him to be little better than freaks; women especially – with nerves rather than minds to pester them.

He had taken a liking to Dr Lidgett; he liked that placid, cautious manner – the reserve of the man. What kind of inward life did
he
lead, he wondered. What kind of home life? ‘Have you – er – any family?' – the doctor's question recurred to him so amusingly that it brought the ghost of a smile into his mind. It must be an odd thing to spend one's days tinkering about with deranged human machines – deranged simply because the silly fool of an engineer has neglected or overworked them. On the other hand, the mere human norm must be as uninteresting as it is probably unprofitable. What ‘family doctors' wanted were patients with plenty of money and small recurrent ailments. For his own particular purpose he himself preferred the human machine that was not running as smoothly as one of those ghastly electric dynamos with the huge buzzing fly-wheel. So much fuel; so much energy: so much lubricating oil; so much pressure to the square inch. Was it even possible to be fully and vividly conscious and physically sound and normal at the same time?

Apart too from the thoughts in Mr Pritchard's mind, dizzying themselves like wasps fluttering round a honey-pot, there lay only half-concealed beneath them the steady horrible conviction that nothing now was of the slightest account; that the spirit within him, past all hope of ease and happiness and reassurance, resembled a wretched fiend howling in the midst of a black cloud – darkness, and tempest. Once more leaning his head a little sidelong he glanced at his reflection in the glass of a picture, and buttoned up the last button of his waistcoat.

‘I am afraid, doctor,' he murmured, ‘I must have been the worst possible type of patient. And what is as bad, I ought not to have forced myself on you at this particular time – outside your consulting hours, I mean, which I confess to having seen on the doorplate. I gather too that just now you are actually taking a holiday. It was infamous. I hope you will forgive me!'

There was something curiously winning and amiable in the looks of the little man as the doctor glanced up at him and smiled, assuring him that there was no need whatever for such apologies. Indeed Dr Lidgett's one inward and unspoken regret was his incapacity to be of any real service to his patient. Only in the most rudimentary fashion could he minister to a mind diseased – even his own.
That
he knew. He knew too, only too well, that he could but potter around the problem which had been presented to him, and that even any practical advice he might give – a few little common-sensical directions regarding work, exercise, food, sleep and so on – would probably be ignored and forgotten as soon as his visitor was out of the house.

Was not Humanity itself for that matter habitually ignoring counsel and directions from mind and heart that were none the less sound for being instinctive and commonplace? The pity was that when so little was really wrong – for, so far as the mere circumstances of his visitor were concerned, there appeared to be absurdly little justification for complaint – there was no obvious handle to take hold of. These maladies of the spirit – what cure for
them
? Probably his best advice would be: Try the streets, my friend, for a week or two; without a halfpenny in your pocket and with your jacket for shirt. Or, Give away all you've got and get a dustman's, or stoker's, or fish-porter's job; and then come back to me in a month's time. Or, Take up some beastly philanthropic work – visiting cancer patients or syphilitic children. No doubt what Mr Pritchard was really in need of was a moral shock: something to ‘larn him' to be a pessimist and a hypochondriac.

Nothing of all this showed on Dr Lidgett's tranquil and sober face, however. He went about what he was at with an almost feminine neatness and circumspection. And though his hand trembled a little as he held out the prescription he had written down, he talked quietly on awhile, specifying with precision the little things that might be of benefit, and assuring his visitor that the worst thing in the world was to look too closely at things. Except, of course, at things of nature, which after all (and in spite of his little extravaganza) had up to the present proved astonishingly faithful, and bore even the keenest scrutiny with triumphant ease. Provided you accepted its mute decrees and vetoes, with as much resolution as you were capable of.

He did not utter this last thought aloud, however. It had occurred to him merely because his eye had once more strayed to the young green leafing plum-tree crucified upon his garden wall. But the rest of his professional advice had not fallen on deaf ears, apparently. With a smiling reference to his ‘pestilent' memory, his visitor had actually gone so far as to scribble down a few memoranda in his pocket-book while the doctor was speaking.

But when the pleasant suppressed voice had ceased, the merest glance at those restless eyes, as Mr Pritchard pushed back the tiny pencil into its place, and re-pocketed his pocket-book, would have perceived that once more the spirit within was circling like a coal-black swift over a gloomy and deserted waste of stones and brawling water – would have perceived, too, that the superficial mind of the creature was as active as ever over its own chosen trifles. He looked at the doctor, opened his mouth, hesitated: and even began again.

‘The curious thing is,' he said, ‘and oddly enough it has only just occurred to me – I once began a story with a situation in it very much like ours now.'

The doctor raised his head and lifted his eyebrows a little. It had at last occurred to his generous and unsuspicious mind that this scarecrow of a fellow was merely amusing himself at his expense, that he was making a butt of him. But at one glimpse again of that candid, darkly-hollowed face, the tiny flame of righteous indignation that had sprung up within him instantly faded out.

‘How that?' he said kindly.

‘Why, it was like this. The author – who was what is called for some God-forsaken reason a realist, which so far as I can make out merely means that he restricts his material (just like most of our men of science) to what ordinary human beings in their ordinary human moments would agree are “the facts of the case” – this author goes to a doctor. Neither of them was like ourselves. My author was a raw-boned, lanky fellow, with a shock of reddish hair; and the doctor was a kind of specialist, or rather consultant; a dark saturnine man with bristling black eyebrows – pallid. The author – mainly in search of copy, of course – concocted some cock-and-bull story that his wife had suicidal tendencies. And what did the specialist advise?'

‘And what
did
he advise?' enquired Dr Lidgett, but not as if with any particular curiosity.

‘Well, you see, the doctor himself was at his last gasp, so to speak – had been speculating, and had lost all his money. And in addition, or in subtraction, whichever way one likes to put it, his own wife had run away from him. He asked his visitor a few questions, and the wretch, having a pretty quick invention and abundant
sang froid,
supplied him with vivid and convincing details of his wife's symptoms: how she had been dragged back angry and weeping from the very jaws of the grave.'