George Fenn - The Tiger Lily

“Hallo, Sawbones!”

The speaker raised his head from the white pillow of the massive, old-fashioned four-post bed, and set the ornamental bobs and tags of the heavy bullion fringe upon the great cornice quivering. He was a sharp-faced, cleanly shaven man, freshly scraped, and the barber who had been operating was in the act of replacing his razor and strop as these words were spoken to the calm, thoughtful-looking person who entered the substantially furnished room.

“Good morning, Mr Masters. Had a quiet night?”

“Bah! You know I haven’t. How is a man to have a good night when ten thousand imps are boring into him with red-hot iron, and jigging his nerves till he is half mad! Here, you: be off!”

“Without brushing your hair, sir?”

“Brush a birch broom! My head never wants brushing. You know that.”

He gave himself a jerk, and the short, crisp, wavy grey locks glistened in the bright morning sun, which streamed in through the window.

“Look here; you can cut it to-morrow when you come – if I’m not dead. If I am, you may have a bit to keep in remembrance.”

“Oh, not so bad as that, sir, I hope. Dr Thorpe is too – ”

“That’ll do,” said the man in the bed sharply. “I kept to you because you didn’t chatter like the ordinary barber brood. I may get better, so don’t spoil your character. Be off!”

The barber smiled, bowed, and left the room to doctor and patient.

“Well?” said the latter, meeting his attendant’s searching eye. “I’m not gone.”

“No; and I do not mean to let you go if I can help it.”

“Ho! – But perhaps you can’t.”

“God knows, sir; but I shall do my best. I would rather, though, that you would let me bring in some one in consultation.”

“And I wouldn’t. If you can’t set me right, Thorpe, no one in Boston can. Look here; brought your tools?”

The young doctor smiled.

“Ah, it’s nothing to grin about.”

“No; it is serious enough, my dear sir.”

“Then answer my question. Brought your tools?”

“I have come quite prepared.”

“Then I shan’t have it done.”

Michael Thorpe looked at his patient as if he did not believe him, and the latter continued —

“I say: it’s confoundedly hard that I should suffer like this. Spent all my life slaving, and now at sixty, when I want a little peace and enjoyment, this cursed trouble comes on. Look here, Thorpe; don’t fool about with me. Charge me what you like, but tell me; couldn’t you give me some stuff that would cure it without this operation?”

“Do you want me to be perfectly plain with you, sir, once more?”

“Of course. Do I look the sort of man to be humbugged?”

“Then I must tell you, sir, the simple truth. You may go on for months, perhaps a year, as you are. That is the outside.”

“I wouldn’t go on for a week as I have been, my lad. – But if I have it done?”

“There is no reason why you should not live to be eighty, or a hundred, if you can.”

“Right; I’ll go in for the hundred, Thorpe. I’m tough enough. There, get it over.”

“You will have it done?”

“Of course I will. Don’t kill me, or I’ll come back and haunt you.”

“I should be too glad to see a dear old friend again, so that wouldn’t alarm me,” said Thorpe, examining his patient, who smiled grimly. “I shall not kill you. All I’m afraid of is that I may perform the operation so unskilfully that my labour and your suffering will have been in vain.”

“And then I’ll call you a miserable pretender, and shan’t pay you a cent. Bah! You can do it. I know you, Michael Thorpe, and haven’t watched you for nothing.”

The young surgeon held out his hands to his patient.

“Give me your full confidence, Mr Masters,” he said, “work with me, and I can cure you.”

“Right, my lad. But you had it before,” he cried, grasping the hands extended to him. “I trust you, boy, as I always did your father – God bless him! Now, no more talking. Get to work. I won’t holloa. Where are you going?”

“Only down to the drawing-room to fetch the nurse.”

“Ring for her – she’s downstairs.”

“I mean the other – the professional nurse whom I brought with me.”

“What for?”

“To help me now, and to attend you for a few days afterwards exactly as I wish.”

“Two nurses? One has nearly killed me. Two will be downright murder.”

“No, sir,” said Michael Thorpe, smiling. “The good in one will neutralise all the ill that there may be in the other.”

“Fetch her up, then; and look here, Thorpe; I’m a man, not a weak hysterical girl. None of your confounded chloroform, or anything of that kind.”

“You leave yourself in my hands, please,” said the surgeon, smiling, and going across to the door, which he left open, and then uttering a sharp cough, returned.

A minute later there was a faint rustling sound beyond the heavy curtains, and the patient, frowning heavily, turned his head in the direction of the door. Then the scowl upon his sharp face gave place to a look of wonder and delight as a rather slight, dark-haired girl, in a closely fitting black dress and white-bibbed apron, advanced towards him, with her large dark eyes beaming sympathy, and a smile, half pitying, half affectionate, played about her well-formed, expressive lips.

“Cornel!” he cried. “Why, my dear little girl, this is good of you to come and see me. I thought it was the nurse.”

He stretched out his hands, drew the girl to him, and kissed her tenderly on both cheeks, and then on the lips, before sinking back with the tears in his eyes – two utter strangers, which, possibly finding their position novel, hurriedly quitted their temporary resting-place, fell over the sides, and trickled down his cheeks.

“I am the nurse,” came now, in a sweet, silvery voice, as the new-comer began to arrange the pillow in that peculiarly refreshing way only given by loving hands.

“You? Impossible!”

“Oh no, Mr Masters. Michael told me everything, and I was going to offer, when he asked me if I would come and help him.”

“Oh, but nonsense! You, my child! It would be too horrible and disgusting for a young girl like you.”

“Why?” she replied gently. “Michael trusts me, and thinks I carry out his wishes better than a paid servant would.”

“That’s it, my dear sir. I want, both for the sake of an old friend and for my reputation, to make my operation perfectly successful. Cornel here will carry out my instructions to the letter. She will help me too in the operation.”

“But an operation is not fit – not the place for a young girl.”

“Why not?” said Cornel, smiling.

“It is unsexing you, my child.”

“Unsexing me, when I come to help to calm your pain, to nurse you back to health and strength! A woman never unsexes herself in proving a help to those who suffer. Besides, I have often helped my brother before.”

Meanwhile the surgeon had busied himself at a table upon which he had placed a mahogany case. He had had his back to them, but now turned and advanced to the bed, with a little silver implement in his hand.

“Now, my dear sir, a little manly fortitude and patience, and you may believe me when I tell you that there is nothing to fear.”

“Who is afraid?” said the old man sharply. “But what’s that?”

“A little apparatus for injecting an anaesthetic.”

“I said I wouldn’t have anything of the kind,” cried the patient angrily. “I can and will bear it.”

“But I cannot and will not,” said the surgeon, smiling. “You could not help wincing and showing your suffering. That would trouble, perhaps unnerve me, and I could not work so well.”