第15章

"You may give Dr. Mulbridge my card, if you please," said Grace, before she turned to go into this room; and the other took it, and left her to find a chair for herself. It was a country doctor's office, with the usual country doctor's supply of drugs on a shelf, but very much more than the country doctor's usual library: the standard works were there, and there were also the principal periodicals and the latest treatises of note in the medical world. In a long, upright case, like that of an old hall-clock, was the anatomy of one who had long done with time; a laryngoscope and some other professional apparatus of constant utility lay upon the leaf of the doctor's desk. There was nothing in the room which did not suggest his profession, except the sword and the spurs which hung upon the wall opposite where Grace sat beside one of the front windows. She spent her time in study of the room and its appointments, and in now and then glancing out at Mr. Libby, who sat statuesquely patient in the buggy. His profile cut against the sky was blameless; and a humorous shrewdness which showed in the wrinkle at his eye and in the droop of his yellow mustache gave its regularity life and charm. It occurred to her that if Dr. Mulbridge caught sight of Mr. Libby before he saw her, or before she could explain that she had got one of the gentlemen at the hotel--she resolved upon this prevarication--to drive her to Corbitant in default of another conveyance, he would have his impressions and conjectures, which doubtless the bunch of lilies in her hand would do their part to stimulate. She submitted to this possibility, and waited for his coming, which began to seem unreasonably delayed. The door opened at last, and a tall, powerfully framed man of thirty-five or forty, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of gray Canada homespun appeared. He moved with a slow, pondering step, and carried his shaggy head bent downwards from shoulders slightly rounded. His dark beard was already grizzled, and she saw that his mustache was burnt and turned tawny at points by smoking, of which habit his presence gave stale evidence to another sense. He held Grace's card in his hand, and he looked at her, as he advanced, out of gray eyes that, if not sympathetic, were perfectly intelligent, and that at once sought to divine and class her. She perceived that he took in the lilies and her coming color; she felt that he noted her figure and her dress.

She half rose in response to his questioning bow, and he motioned her to her seat again. "I had to keep you waiting," he said. "I was up all night with a patient, and I was asleep when my mother called me." He stopped here, and definitively waited for her to begin.

She did not find this easy, as he took a chair in front of her, and sat looking steadily in her face. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you"

"Oh, not at all," he interrupted. "The rule is to disturb a doctor."

"I mean," she began again, "that I am not sure that I am justified in disturbing you."

He waited a little while for her to go on, and then he said, "Well, let us hear."

"I wish to consult with you," she broke out, and again she came to a sudden pause; and as she looked into his vigilant face, in which she was not sure there was not a hovering derision, she could not continue. She felt that she ought to gather courage from the fact that he had not started, or done anything positively disagreeable when she had asked for a consultation; but she could not, and it did not avail her to reflect that she was rendering herself liable to all conceivable misconstruction, --that she was behaving childishly, with every appearance of behaving guiltily.

He came to her aid again, in a blunt fashion, neither kind nor unkind, but simply common sense. "What is the matter?"

"What is the matter?" she repeated.

"Yes. What are the symptoms? Where and how are, you sick?"

"I am not sick," she cried. They stared at each other in reciprocal amazement and mystification.

"Then excuse me if I ask you what you wish me to do?"

"Oh!" said Grace, realizing his natural error, with a flush. "It is n't in regard to myself that I wish to consult with you. It's another person--a friend"--"Well," said Dr. Mulbridge, laughing, with the impatience of a physician used to making short cuts through the elaborate and reluctant statements of ladies seeking advice, "what is the matter with your friend?"

"She has been an invalid for some time," replied Grace. The laugh, which had its edge of patronage and conceit, stung her into self-possession again, and she briefly gave the points of Mrs. Maynard's case, with the recent accident and the symptoms developed during the night. He listened attentively, nodding his head at times, and now and then glancing sharply at her, as one might at a surprisingly intelligent child.

"I must see her," he said decidedly, when she came to an end. "I will see her as soon as possible. I will come over to Jocelyn's this afternoon,--as soon as I can get my dinner, in fact."

There was such a tone of dismissal in his words that she rose, and he promptly followed her example. She stood hesitating a moment. Then, "I don't know whether you understood that I wish merely to consult with you," she said; "that I don't wish to relinquish the case to you"--"Relinquish the case--consult"-- Dr. Mulbridge stared at her. "No, I don't understand. What do you mean by not relinquishing the case?

If there is some one else in attendance"

"I am in attendance," said the girl firmly. "I am Mrs. Maynard's physician."

"You? Physician"

"If you have looked at my card"--she began with indignant severity.

He gave a sort of roar of amusement and apology, and then he stared at her again with much of the interest of a naturalist in an extraordinary specimen.

"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed. "I did n't look at it"; but he now did so, where he held it crumpled in the palm of his left hand. "My mother said it was a young lady, and I did n't look. Will you will you sit down, Dr. Breen?" He bustled in getting her several chairs.