Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “I can’t wait for that I must be away from Havre by an early train.”

  “But I — I don’t know that I can pronounce you out of danger,” remonstrated Mark, hardly able yet to realise the fact that a gentleman, thought to be dying in the night, was dressing himself to go off by a steamer in the morning.

  “I know these attacks of mine are bad — dangerous, I suppose, while they last; but once over, I am well, except for weakness. And the long and the short of it is, I must go to Havre by the return boat.”

  Mark Cray saw that further objection would be useless. The chamber-man (I can’t help it if you object to the appellation; the hotel had no women servants) came in with warm water, and the traveller ordered a cup of coffee to be ready by the time he got down. Mark went back to the sitting-room. He would stay and see him on board.

  The steamer’s first bell had rung when the traveller came forth. Mark caught up his hat and gloves. “I hardly know what I am indebted to you,” said the stranger, placing a thin piece of paper in his hand. “Perhaps that will cover it.”

  It was a hundred-franc note. Mark would have given it back, badly though he wanted money. It was too much; altogether too much, he exclaimed.

  “No,” said the stranger. “ I don’t know what I should have done without you; and you have stayed with me the night. That’s being attentive. I was taken ill once before in the night at an hotel in France, where there happened to be an English doctor in the town, and they got him to me. But he was gone again in an hour, and in fact seemed to resent having been disturbed at all. I didn’t pay him more than I was obliged.”

  “Ah, he had plenty of practice, perhaps,” cried Mark, rather too impulsively. “But indeed this is paying me a great deal too much. I don’t like to take it”

  “Indeed it is not, and I hope you will accept my thanks with it,” was the conclusive answer.

  Mark Cray saw the traveller on board the boat, watched it move off, turn, and go steaming down the port And then he made the best of his way home, the hundred-franc note in his pocket seeming to be a very fairy of good fortune.

  They had come to Honfleur the latter end of April; this was the beginning of June; and poor Mark had not found a single patient yet Mr. Barker had been there to receive them on their arrival How Barker contrived to live, or whence his funds came, Mark did not know, but he always seemed flourishing. There are some men who always do seem flourishing, whatever may be their ups and downs. Barker was in Paris now, apparently in high feather, his letters to Mark boasting that he was getting into “something good.”

  Mark ran all the way home; his lodgings were not far, near the ascent of the Mont Joli. Could scenery have supplied the place of meat and drink, then Mark Cray and his wife might have lived as epicures, for nothing could well be more grandly beautiful than the prospect seen from their windows. But, alas! something besides the eyes requires to be ministered to in this world of wants.

  It was a small house with a garden before the door, and was tenanted by a widow lady and her servant Mark and his wife occupied a small sitting-room in it and a bed-chamber above; opening from the sitting-room was a little place about four feet square, which served for kitchen, and was let to them with the rooms. They waited on themselves; it is rare indeed that attendance is furnished with lodgings in France. But madame’s servant was complaisant, and lighted their fire and did many other little things.

  Caroline was in the bedroom, dressing, when Mark returned; — dressing in that listless, spiritless manner which argues badly for the hope and heart It was a pity their expectations in regard to Honfleur had been so inordinately raised, for the disappointment was keen, and Caroline perhaps had not strength to do battle with it She had pictured Honfleur (taking the impression from Barker’s letters and Mark’s sanguine assumptions) as a very haven of refuge; a panacea for their past woes, a place where the English patients, if not quite as plentiful as blackberries, would at least be sufficient to furnish them with funds to live in comfort But it had altogether proved a fallacy. The English patients held aloof. In fact, there were no English patients, so far as they could make out Nobody got ill; or, if they did get ill, they did not come to Mark Cray to be cured. Tribulation in the shape of petty embarrassment was coming upon them, and Caroline began to hate the place. She was weary, side, sad; half dead with disappointment and ennui.

  Unfortunately, there was becoming a reason to suspect that something was radically wrong with Caroline. Not that she thought it yet; still less Mark. Dr. Davenal had surmised that her constitution was unsound.

  During the time of their sojourn at Chelsea, where Mr. Dick Davenal came so suddenly upon them, and Mark was accustomed to go out to take the air adorned with blue spectacles and a moustache, Caroline, in undressing herself one night, found — or fancied that she found — a small lump in her side, below the ribs. She thought nothing whatever about it, it was so very small; in fact, it slipped from her memory. Some time afterwards, however, she accidentally touched her side and felt the same lump there again. This was of course sufficient to assure her that it was not fancy, but still she attached no importance to it, and said nothing. But the lump did not go away; it seemed like a little kernel that could be moved about with the finger; and in the week following their arrival at Honfleur she first spoke of it to Mark. Mark did not pay much attention to it; that is, he did not think there was any cause to pay attention to it; it might proceed from cold, he said, or perhaps she had given herself a knock; he supposed it would go away again. But the lump did not go away, and Caroline had been complaining of it lately.

  On this past night — or rather morning — when Mark was at the hotel with the patient to whom he was called, Caroline had been recreating her imagination with speculations upon what the lump was, and what it was likely to come to. Whether this caused her to be more sensitive to the lump than she had been before, or whether the lump was really beginning to make itself more troublesome, certain it was that her fears in regard to it were at length aroused, and she waited impatiently for the return of her husband.

  “Mark, this lump gets larger and larger. I am certain of it.”

  It was her greeting to Mark when he entered and came up to the chamber. She turned her spiritless eyes upon him, and Mark might have noted the sad listlessness of the tone, but that it had become habitual. He made no reply. He was beginning himself to think that the lump got larger.

  “And it pains me now, — a sort of dull aching. I wonder if it’s coming to anything. Just feel it, Mark.”

  Mark Cray drew her light cotton dressing-gown tight across the place, and passed his fingers gently over and over it He was not so utter a tyro in his profession as to be ignorant that the lump might mean mischief. Caroline, with most rapid quickness of apprehension, noted and did not like his silence.

  “Mark! what is it? What’s going to be the matter with me?”

  “Nothing, I hope,” replied Mark, speaking readily enough now. “It will go away, I daresay. Perhaps you have been fidgeting with it this morning.”

  “No, I have not done that And if the lump meant to go away, why should it get larger? It does get larger, Mark. It seems to me that it has nearly doubled its size in the last week.”

  “I think it is a little larger,” acknowledged Mark, feeling perhaps that he could not get out of the confession. “How long has it pained you?”

  “I can’t remember. The pain came on so imperceptibly that I hardly know when it first began. What is the lump, Mark?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “You can’t tell?”

  “I can’t tell yet Sometimes lumps appear and go away again, and never come to anything.”

  “And if they do come to anything, what is it that they come to?”

  “Oh, sometimes one thing and sometimes another,” answered Mark lightly.

  “Can’t you tell me what the things are?” she rejoined, in a peevishly anxious tone.

  “Well — boils for one thing; and tumours.”<
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  “And what becomes of these tumours?” she quickly rejoined, catching at the word.

  “They have to be taken out “Is it very painful?”

  “Law, no. The pain’s a mere nothing.”

  “And cancers? How do they come?” proceeded Caroline after a pause. “With a little lump at first, like this?”

  “Cancers don’t come there. You need not fear that it’s a cancer. Carine, my dear, you must be nervous this morning.”

  She passed by the remark, hardly hearing it. “But Mark — you say you can’t tell yet what it is.”

  “Neither can I. But I can tell what it is not I’ll get you a little ointment to rub on it, and I make no doubt it will go away.” Caroline was doing her hair at the moment. She had the brush in one hand, the hair in the other; and she paused just as she was, looking fixedly at her husband.

  “Mark, if you don’t know what it is, perhaps somebody else would know. I wish you’d let me show it to a doctor.”

  Mark laughed. He really believed she must be getting nervous about it, and perhaps deemed it would be the best plan to treat it lightly. “A French doctor? Why, Carine, they are not worth a rush.”

  “I have heard Uncle Richard say the contrary,” she persisted. “That the French, as surgeons, are clever men.”

  “He meant with the knife, I suppose. Well, Caroline, you can let a Frenchman see the lump if it will afford you any satisfaction. You don’t ask me what has kept me out all these hours!” rejoined Mark, changing the topic. “I have had a patient at last.”

  “Yes, I suppose that. He was very ill, perhaps, and you had to remain with him.”

  She spoke in the wearied, inert tone that seems to betray an entire absence of interest. When the spirit has been borne down with long-continued disappointment, this weariness becomes a sort of disease. It was very prejudicial now, in a physical point of view, to Caroline Cray.

  Mark took out the note. “See how well he paid me!” he cried, holding it to her. “I wish such patients would come to the Cheval Blanc every day!”

  The sight aroused her from her apathy. “A hundred-franc note!” she exclaimed with dilating eyes. “O Mark! it is quite a godsend. I shall believe next in Sara Davenal’s maxim: that help is sure to turn up in the time of need.”

  In the time of need! It was a time that had certainly come for them. The surplus of Oswald Cray’s twenty pounds, remaining after the expenses of removal were paid, had come to an end, and neither Mark nor his wife had seen their way clear to go on for another week. It was in truth a godsend; more strictly so than Caroline, in her lightness, deemed.

  But the money, welcome as it was, did not take the paramount place in her mind to-day that it might else have done. That was occupied by the lump. Caroline’s fears in regard to it could not be allayed, and she insisted upon being taken to a doctor for his opinion, without any delay. Mark made inquiries, and found a Monsieur Le Bleu was considered to be a clever man. He proposed to ask him to call, but Caroline preferred to go to him, her reason being a somewhat whimsical one, as expressed to Mark: “If he has to come to me I shall think I am really ill.” Accordingly they went that same afternoon, and the interview, what with Mark Cray’s French and the doctor’s English, was productive of some temporary difficulty.

  They started after their early dinner. M. Le Bleu lived not very far from them, but in the heart of the town, and Mark began by calling him Mr. Blue, sans cérémonie. Mark had learned French at school, and therefore considered himself a French scholar. On the door was a brass plate—” M. Le Bleu, Médecin and a young woman in a red petticoat, grey stockings, and sabots, came to the door in answer to the ring.

  “Is Mr. Blue at home?” demanded Mark. “Mossier Blue, chez elle?” continued he, trying to be more explanatory, in answer to the girl’s puzzled stare.

  “O Mark,” whispered Caroline, her cheeks flaming at this specimen of French. “Monsieur Le Bleu, est-il chez lui?” she hastily said, turning to the servant Monsieur Le Bleu was “chez lui,” the girl said to them, and they were admitted. A little middle-aged gentleman in spectacles, with no beard or whiskers or moustache, or any other hair to speak of, for that on his head was as closely cut as it could be, short of being shaved, came forward. He asked what he could have the honour of doing for them.

  “Speak English, Messeu?” began Mark. “Parle Anglishe?”

  “Yas, sare,” was the amiable response, as the doctor handed Caroline a seat “I spack the Anglishe, moi.”

  “Oh then we shall get on,” cried Mark. “Madame here, ma femme, it’s for her. I don’t think it’s much, but she would come. That’s my name” — handing in his card.

  The Frenchman was a little puzzled by so much English all at once, and relieved himself by looking at the card.

  “Ah, c’est ça, Meestare Cr — Cr — Craw,” pronounced the doctor, arriving with satisfaction at the name after some stammering. “And Madame what has she?”

  “Malade,” briefly responded Mark. “Elle a une — une — lump — come in the — the (what’s French for side, I wonder 7) in the coté. Ici, Messeu,” touching himself; “mais il est très petite encore; no larger than a — a — petite pois.”

  Clearly the gentleman did not understand. Mark had drawn him aside, so that they were speaking apart from Caroline.

  “A-t’elle d’enfants, Madame?”

  “Oh, oui, oui,” responded Mark, at a venture, not catching a syllable of the question, the Frenchman seemed to speak so rapidly.

  “Et combien? I ask, sare, how many; and the age of them; the age?”

  “Three-and-twenty. Vingt-trois.”

  “Vingt-trois!” echoed the doctor, pushing up his glasses. “Mais, ce n’est pas possible. I say it not possible, sare, that Madame have twenty-three children.”

  “Children!” shouted Mark, “I thought you said age. She has not any children; pas d’enfants, Messeu. She found of it before we quitted England — avant nous partons d’Angleterre.”

  Monsieur Le Bleu tried hard to understand. “ Where you say it is, sare, the mal? Est-ce que c’est une blessure?”

  “It’s here,” said Mark, touching him now. “ It came of itself — venait tout seule, grande at first comme the tête of an épingle, not much more; à présent larger than a big pea — a petite pois.”

  The doctor’s ear was strained, and a faint light broke upon it. He had enjoyed the pleasure of conversing with English patients before; in fact it was mostly from them that he was enabled to shine in the language.

  “Ah, je vois. Pardon, sare, it not a blessure, it a — a — clou? — a bouton? I ask, sare, is it a button?”

  “It’s a lump” returned Mark, staring very much. “ A sort of a kernel, you know. Comprends, Messeu?” he questioned, in no hurry, perhaps, to make any worse suggestion.

  The doctor gravely nodded; not caring to confess his ignorance. “ When did he arrive, sare?”

  “When did who arrive?”

  “Him — the mal, sare.”

  “Oh, the lump. Several weeks back — quelques semaines, Messeu. Pas beaucoup de trouble avec; de pain! mais trouve nervous this morning, and — and — thought she’d like a doctor’s opinion,” concluded Mark, his French completely breaking down.

  “Bon,” said the surgeon, wishing Mark did not talk English quite so fast. “Madame has not consultayed a docteur donc, encore?”

  “Only me,” replied Mark. “ I’m a doctor myself — docteur moimême, Messeu.”

  “Ah, Monsieur est médecin lui-même,” cried the doctor, making a succession of bows in his politeness. “That will facilitate our understandings, sare. Has Madame the good — the bonne santé de l’ordinaire?” he continued, coming to a breakdown himself.

  “Santé de l’ordinaire! — I wonder what that is,” debated Mark within himself “Vin ordinaire means thin claret, I know. I no comprendre, Messeu,” he confessed aloud. “ Ma femme eats and drinks everything.”

  “Is Madame — je ne trouve pas le mot,
moi — is she saine, I would ask?”

  “San?” repeated the puzzled Mark. “Why, you never mean sane, surely!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “She’s as sane as you or I. What on earth put that in your head, Messeu? she doesn’t look mad, I hope!”

  “I no say mad,” disclaimed Messeu. “ I ask if she — ah, voilà le mot, quel bonheur! — if she healthy? — if she partake of the good constitution?”

  A recollection flashed across Mark Cray’s memory of a doubt he had once heard drop from Dr. Davenal as to whether Caroline’s constitution was a healthy one. “Elle a porté très bien,” was his answer to Monsieur, plunging into his French again. “This mayn’t be anything, you know, Messeu.”

  “I not like these boutons though, sare.”

  “Which buttons,” demanded Mark.

  “The buttons you do me the honour to consult for. Je ne les aime pas, soit clou, soit tumeur — n’importe pour l’espèce. In the place you indicate to me it is like to be a tumeur, and she is obstinate.”

  “Who is, Messeu?” asked Mark, in doubt whether the incomprehensible Frenchman did not allude to his wife’s temper.

  “She herself,” lucidly explained Messeu. “I have held cases that would not terminate themselves at all by any way, no not for the years.”

  “Oh, but this is not a case of that sort,” said Mark, half resentfully. “A few simple remedies may disperse it.”

  “Yas, I hope,” agreed the doctor. “I would demand of Monsieur if he has tried the sangsues?”

  “The what?” cried Mark, who had not the remotest idea what sort of a thing “ sangsues” could be. “No, I have not tried it.”

  “J’aime assez la sangsue, moi. She is a useful beast, sare.” Mark nearly groaned, Whatever had “useful beasts” to do with this lump of Caroline’s? Useful beasts? “Is it a camel you are talking of?” he asked.

  “A camel!” repeated the doctor, staring at Mark. “Pardon, I no understand.”

  Mark was sure he didn’t. “You spoke of useful beasts, Messeu?”