George Fenn - The Man with a Shadow

He went into the hall, took down his hat, reached a stout cudgel-like stick which his hand gripped firmly, as his nerves tingled, while his left hand clenched, and felt as if it were grasping some one by the collar.

“A scoundrel!” he muttered.

“Going out, dear?”

“Ah, Mary! You there! You go about like a mouse. Yes, I’ve just got to ‘a man’s duty is’ in my sermon, and can’t get any farther, so I’ll go as far as Red Cliff Wood and back for a refresher.”

He nodded and went out.

“Poor Mary!” he muttered; “she must not know; but if I had stayed a minute longer she would have found me out. Now, Master Tom Candlish, if you are there, I’ll – ”

He gave himself a sharp slap on the mouth.

“Steady! Man, man, man! how you do forget your cloth! But if Tom Candlish – Pish! Steady, man! Let’s go and see.”

Mary Salis stood in the deep old mullioned window, gazing after him.

“Hartley never leaves and speaks like that unless there is something wrong,” she said to herself. “If that wretched man has persuaded Leo – she has just gone out – without a word. Oh, no, no! she would not do such a thing as that. How I do picture troubles where there are none!”

She stood watching until her brother disappeared, and then went back into the dining-room, telling herself that it was folly, but her heart refused to be convinced, and set up a low, heavy, ominous throb.

“Yah!”

A virtuous mob’s war-cry. The favourite ejaculation of the unwashed scoundrels who are always ready to redress grievances and hunt down their fellow-creatures for the crimes they glory in themselves – when they can commit them safely.

There is always a large floating contingent ready for this duty, and also – to use their own expression – “to have a go at any think;” and upon several occasions they had had “a go” at the lecture-room of St. Sector’s Hospital, Florsbury, the consequence of such “goes” being that the neighbouring glaziers had a large job; but the authorities preferred to content themselves with keeping out the wind and water, and left the exterior unpainted, showing the stone dents, chipped paint, and batterings of the insensate crew of virtuous beings who revel in destruction whenever they have a chance.

The “Yahoos” had their own theory about St. Sector’s, and allowed themselves to smoulder for a time, but every now and then they burst forth into eruption, and then the consequences were not pleasant to behold.

Lecture night at St. Sector’s, and a goodly gathering present to witness an operation performed by one of the greatest surgical savants of the day. There were medical students present, but some of the cleverest surgeons of London and the country had made a point of being there to see the operation and learn how to combat a terrible disease which, up to that date, had been considered certain death to the unfortunate being who contracted that ill.

The old savant had thought, had experimented, and had given years of his life to studying that evil, and now, having proclaimed the result of his discoveries, and coming as the announcement did from a man of such weight in the profession, a strong band of the lights of surgical science had gathered together to witness the experiment; and also hear a paper read by a young surgeon from the country – Dr Horace North.

Precedence was given to the paper, and a keen, intelligent, handsome young man of thirty stepped up to the lecturer’s table with a roll of papers in his hand. He looked rather pale, and there was a slight twitching at the corners of his lips as he bowed to his audience, after a few words of introduction from the grey-haired chairman of the evening. Then the buzz of conversation, which had ceased for a few moments, began again.

He felt that he had a task before him, that of stopping a gap in front of which an eager crowd were ready to clamour for the treat they had come to hear. Dr Horace North was nothing to them, and the young students voted his paper a bore.

He began to read in a calm, clear voice, expounding his views, and the buzz of voices increased as first one and then another page was read and turned over, scarcely a word being heard.

He stopped and poured out a glass of water, and the carafe was heard to clatter against the glass as the lecturer’s hand trembled.

This was the signal for a titter, which was repeated by some thoughtless student, as the reading was resumed without the water being tasted.

Then five minutes of painful reading ensued, with the buzz of voices increasing.

There was a sudden stoppage, and all were attentive.

For, with an angry gesture, the young doctor rolled up his papers, threw them aside, and took a step forward.

“Gentlemen,” he cried, in a voice which rang through the theatre, “I am addressing you who in the conceit of youth believe that there is little more to learn, and who have treated my reading with such contempt.”

“Hear, hear!” cried the old chairman.

Those two encouraging words touched the speaker, and, with a dramatic earnestness of manner, he exclaimed:

“I have not much to say, but it is the result of years of study, and that you shall hear.”

Then, for the space of half-an-hour, in fluent, forcible language, he poured forth the result of his observations and belief that they, the followers of the noble science of surgery, had a great discovery before them waiting to be made, one which it was the duty of all to endeavour to drag forth from the dark depths in which Nature hid away her treasures.

He declared that death should only follow upon old age, when the fruit was quite ripe, and ready to fall from the tree of life. He left it to the followers of medicine to attack and conquer disease, so that plague and pestilence should no longer carry off their hecatombs of victims, and addressed the surgeon alone, telling him that in case of accident or after operation, no man of health or vigour should be allowed to die.

There was a half laugh here, and a sneer or two.

“I repeat it,” cried the speaker. “No such man should be allowed to die.” Previous to his accident he was in robust health, and his apparent death was only, as it were, a trance, into which he fell while Nature busily commenced her work of restoration, the building-up again of the injured tissues. How the sustaining of the patient while Nature worked her cure was to be carried out, it was the duty of them all to discover, and for one he vowed that he would not rest till the discovery was made.

In the case of drowning it was often but suspended animation. In the case of accident and apparent death, it would be the same. Death by shock, he maintained, was a blot upon the science of the present day. Those who died by shock merely slept. Such body was in full health and vigour, and Nature would repair all damages by the aid of man; and he was convinced that the time would come when surgeons would save a hundred lives where they now saved one.

The speaker sat down amidst a whirlwind of applause, for his manner, his thorough belief, and his earnestness carried away his audience; and the result would have been a most exciting discussion but for the intervention of the chairman, who pointed to the clock, and at once introduced the great surgeon, while a murmur ran through the theatre as a large table was wheeled into the centre of the building from behind a curtain, and those present knew what the draping of the table concealed.

A burst of applause greeted the grave, grey-headed surgeon; and as it ceased, he expressed, in a few well-selected words, the pleasure he had felt in listening to Dr Horace North, to whose theory he expressed himself ready to pin his faith.