Part 21 (2/2)
The doctor half turned in his chair and patted the arch of the young man's knee as he might the neck of a restless horse.
”What, then?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at the pale face with the startled eyes.
Twice the young man parted his lips. Then he stooped with a sudden gesture and turning up the right leg of his trousers he pulled down his sock and thrust forward his s.h.i.+n. The doctor made a clicking noise with his tongue as he glanced at it.
”Both legs?”
”No, only one.”
”Suddenly?”
”This morning.”
”Hum!” The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb down the line of his chin. ”Can you account for it?” he said briskly.
”No.”
A trace of sternness came into the large, brown eyes.
”I need not point out to you that unless the most absolute frankness----”
The patient sprang from his chair.
”So help me G.o.d, doctor,” he cried, ”I have nothing in my life with which to reproach myself. Do you think that I would be such a fool as to come here and tell you lies? Once for all, I have nothing to regret.”
He was a pitiful, half-tragic, and half-grotesque figure as he stood with one trouser leg rolled to his knee, and that ever-present horror still lurking in his eyes. A burst of merriment came from the card-players in the next room and the two looked at each other in silence.
”Sit down!” said the doctor abruptly. ”Your a.s.surance is quite sufficient.” He stooped and ran his finger down the line of the young man's s.h.i.+n, raising it at one point. ”Hum! Serpiginous!” he murmured, shaking his head; ”any other symptoms?”
”My eyes have been a little weak.”
”Let me see your teeth!” He glanced at them, and again made the gentle clicking sound of sympathy and disapprobation.
”Now the eye!” He lit a lamp at the patient's elbow, and holding a small crystal lens to concentrate the light, he threw it obliquely upon the patient's eye. As he did so a glow of pleasure came over his large, expressive face, a flush of such enthusiasm as the botanist feels when he packs the rare plant into his tin knapsack, or the astronomer when the long-sought comet first swims into the field of his telescope.
”This is very typical--very typical indeed,” he murmured, turning to his desk and jotting down a few memoranda upon a sheet of paper. ”Curiously enough I am writing a monograph upon the subject. It is singular that you should have been able to furnish so well marked a case.”
He had so forgotten the patient in his symptom that he had a.s.sumed an almost congratulatory air towards its possessor. He reverted to human sympathy again as his patient asked for particulars.
”My dear sir, there is no occasion for us to go into strictly professional details together,” said he soothingly. ”If, for example, I were to say that you have interst.i.tial kerat.i.tis, how would you be the wiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms I may say that you have a const.i.tutional and hereditary taint.”
The young baronet sank back in his chair and his chin fell forward upon his chest. The doctor sprang to a side table and poured out a half gla.s.s of liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A little fleck of colour came into his cheeks as he drank it down.
”Perhaps I spoke a little abruptly,” said the doctor. ”But you must have known the nature of your complaint, why otherwise should you have come to me?”
”G.o.d help me, I suspected it--but only to-day when my leg grew bad. My father had a leg like this.”
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