Part 11 (1/2)
That night, however, a professional visit would detain the ”Doctor”
until half-past twelve. There was still an hour to wait. He felt drowsy; the mysterious incense of the shop, that combined essence of drugs, spice, scented soap, and orris root--which always reminded him of the Arabian Nights--was affecting him. He yawned, and then, turning away, pa.s.sed behind the counter, took down a jar labeled ”Glycyrr. Glabra,”
selected a piece of Spanish licorice, and meditatively sucked it.
Not receiving from it that diversion and sustenance he apparently was seeking, he also visited, in an equally familiar manner, a jar marked ”Jujubes,” and returned ruminatingly to his previous position.
If I have not in this incident sufficiently established the youthfulness of the junior partner, I may add briefly that he was just nineteen, that he had early joined the emigration to California, and after one or two previous light-hearted essays at other occupations, for which he was singularly unfitted, he had saved enough to embark on his present venture, still less suited to his temperament. In those adventurous days trades and vocations were not always filled by trained workmen; it was extremely probable that the experienced chemist was already making his success as a gold-miner, with a lawyer and a physician for his partners, and Mr. Kane's inexperienced position was by no means a novel one. A slight knowledge of Latin as a written language, an American schoolboy's acquaintance with chemistry and natural philosophy, were deemed sufficient by his partner, a regular physician, for practical cooperation in the vending of drugs and putting up of prescriptions. He knew the difference between acids and alkalies and the peculiar results which attended their incautious combination. But he was excessively deliberate, painstaking, and cautious. The legend which adorned the desk at the counter, ”Physicians' prescriptions carefully prepared,” was more than usually true as regarded the adverb. There was no danger of his poisoning anybody through haste or carelessness, but it was possible that an urgent ”case” might have succ.u.mbed to the disease while he was putting up the remedy. Nor was his caution entirely pa.s.sive. In those days the ”heroic” practice of medicine was in keeping with the abnormal development of the country; there were ”record” doses of calomel and quinine, and he had once or twice incurred the fury of local pract.i.tioners by sending back their prescriptions with a modest query.
The far-off clatter of carriage wheels presently arrested his attention; looking down the street, he could see the lights of a hackney carriage advancing towards him. They had already flashed upon the open crossing a block beyond before his vague curiosity changed into an active instinctive presentiment that they were coming to the shop. He withdrew to a more becoming and dignified position behind the counter as the carriage drew up with a jerk before the door.
The driver rolled from his box and opened the carriage door to a woman whom he a.s.sisted, between some hysterical exclamations on her part and some equally incoherent explanations of his own, into the shop. Kane saw at a glance that both were under the influence of liquor, and one, the woman, was disheveled and bleeding about the head. Yet she was elegantly dressed and evidently en fete, with one or two ”tricolor” knots and ribbons mingled with her finery. Her golden hair, matted and darkened with blood, had partly escaped from her French bonnet and hung heavily over her shoulders. The driver, who was supporting her roughly, and with a familiarity that was part of the incongruous spectacle, was the first to speak.
”Madame le Blank! ye know! Got cut about the head down at the fete at South Park! Tried to dance upon the table, and rolled over on some champagne bottles. See? Wants plastering up!”
”Ah brute! Hog! Nozzing of ze kine! Why will you lie? I dance! Ze cowards, fools, traitors zere upset ze table and I fall. I am cut! Ah, my G.o.d, how I am cut!”
She stopped suddenly and lapsed heavily against the counter. At which Kane hurried around to support her into the surgery with the one fixed idea in his bewildered mind of getting her out of the shop, and, suggestively, into the domain and under the responsibility of his partner. The hackman, apparently relieved and was.h.i.+ng his hands of any further complicity in the matter, nodded and smiled, and saying, ”I reckon I'll wait outside, pardner,” retreated incontinently to his vehicle. To add to Kane's half-ludicrous embarra.s.sment the fair patient herself slightly resisted his support, accused the hackman of ”abandoning her,” and demanded if Kane knew ”zee reason of zees affair,”
yet she presently lapsed again into the large reclining-chair which he had wheeled forward, with open mouth, half-shut eyes, and a strange Pierrette mask of face, combined of the pallor of faintness and chalk, and the rouge of paint and blood. At which Kane's cautiousness again embarra.s.sed him. A little brandy from the bottle labeled ”Vini Galli”
seemed to be indicated, but his inexperience could not determine if her relaxation was from bloodlessness or the reacting depression of alcohol.
In this dilemma he chose a medium course, with aromatic spirits of ammonia, and mixing a diluted quant.i.ty in a measuring-gla.s.s, poured it between her white lips. A start, a struggle, a cough--a volley of imprecatory French, and the knocking of the gla.s.s from his hand followed--but she came to! He quickly sponged her head of the half-coagulated blood, and removed a few fragments of gla.s.s from a long laceration of the scalp. The shock of the cold water and the appearance of the ensanguined basin frightened her into a momentary pa.s.sivity. But when Kane found it necessary to cut her hair in the region of the wound in order to apply the adhesive plaster, she again endeavored to rise and grasp the scissors.
”You'll bleed to death if you're not quiet,” said the young man with dogged gravity.
Something in his manner impressed her into silence again. He cut whole locks away ruthlessly; he was determined to draw the edges of the wound together with the strip of plaster and stop the bleeding--if he cropped the whole head. His excessive caution for her physical condition did not extend to her superficial adornment. Her yellow tresses lay on the floor, her neck and shoulders were saturated with water from the sponge which he continually applied, until the heated strips of plaster had closed the wound almost hermetically. She whimpered, tears ran down her cheeks; but so long as it was not blood the young man was satisfied.
In the midst of it he heard the shop door open, and presently the sound of rapping on the counter. Another customer!
Mr. Kane called out, ”Wait a moment,” and continued his ministrations.
After a pause the rapping recommenced. Kane was just securing the last strip of plaster and preserved a preoccupied silence. Then the door flew open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the threshold. It was that of a miner recently returned from the gold diggings--so recently that he evidently had not had time to change his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood there in his high boots, duck trousers, and flannel s.h.i.+rt, over which his coat was slung like a hussar's jacket from his shoulder. Kane would have uttered an indignant protest at the intrusion, had not the intruder himself as quickly recoiled with an astonishment and contrition that was beyond the effect of any reproval. He literally gasped at the spectacle before him. A handsomely dressed woman reclining in a chair; lace and jewelry and ribbons depending from her saturated shoulders; tresses of golden hair filling her lap and lying on the floor; a pail of ruddy water and a sponge at her feet, and a pale young man bending over her head with a spirit lamp and strips of yellow plaster!
”'Scuse me, pard! I was just dropping in; don't you hurry! I kin wait,”
he stammered, falling back, and then the door closed abruptly behind him.
Kane gathered up the shorn locks, wiped the face and neck of his patient with a clean towel and his own handkerchief, threw her gorgeous opera cloak over her shoulders, and a.s.sisted her to rise. She did so, weakly but obediently; she was evidently stunned and cowed in some mysterious way by his material att.i.tude, perhaps, or her sudden realization of her position; at least the contrast between her aggressive entrance into the shop and her subdued preparation for her departure was so remarkable that it affected even Kane's preoccupation.
”There,” he said, slightly relaxing his severe demeanor with an encouraging smile, ”I think this will do; we've stopped the bleeding. It will probably smart a little as the plaster sets closer. I can send my partner, Dr. Sparlow, to you in the morning.”
She looked at him curiously and with a strange smile. ”And zees Doctor Sparrlow--eez he like you, M'sieu?”
”He is older, and very well known,” said the young man seriously. ”I can safely recommend him.”
”Ah,” she repeated, with a pensive smile which made Kane think her quite pretty. ”Ah--he ez older--your Doctor Sparrlow--but YOU are strong, M'sieu.”
”And,” said Kane vaguely, ”he will tell you what to do.”
”Ah,” she repeated again softly, with the same smile, ”he will tell me what to do if I shall not know myself. Dat ez good.”
Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of spotless white paper and tied it up with narrow white ribbon in the dainty fas.h.i.+on dear to druggists' clerks. As he handed it to her she felt in her pocket and produced a handful of gold.
”What shall I pay for zees, M'sieu?”