The Lane That Had No Turning, Complete - Gilbert Parker
Secord was a brilliant surgeon and physician. With the knife or beside a
sick-bed, he was admirable. His intuitive perception, so necessary in his
work, was very fine: he appeared to get at the core of a patient's
trouble, and to decide upon necessary action with instant and absolute
confidence. Some delicate operation performed by him was recorded and
praised in the Lancet; and he was offered a responsible post in a medical
college, and, at the same time, the good-will of a valuable practice. He
declined both, to the lasting astonishment, yet personal joy, of the Cure
and the Avocat; but, as time went on, not so much to the surprise of the
Little Chemist and Medallion. After three years, the sleepy Little
Chemist waked up suddenly in his chair one day, and said: "Parbleu, God
bless me!" (he loved to mix his native language with English) got up and
went over to Secord's office, adjusted his glasses, looked at Secord
closely, caught his hand with both of his own, shook it with shy
abruptness, came back to his shop, sat down, and said: "God bless my
soul! Regardez ca!"
Medallion made his discovery sooner. Watching closely he had seen a
pronounced deliberation infused through all Secord's indolence of manner,
and noticed that often, before doing anything, the big eyes debated
steadfastly, and the long, slender fingers ran down the beard softly. At
times there was a deep meditativeness in the eye, again a dusky fire. But
there was a certain charm through it all--a languid precision, a
slumbering look in the face, a vague undercurrent in the voice, a
fantastical flavour to the thought. The change had come so gradually that
only Medallion and the wife had a real conception of how great it was.
Medallion had studied Secord from every stand-point. At the very first he
wondered if there was a woman in it. Much thinking on a woman, whose
influence on his life was evil or disturbing, might account somewhat for
the change in Secord. But, seeing how fond the man was of his wife,
Medallion gave up that idea. It was not liquor, for Secord never touched
it. One day, however, when Medallion was selling the furniture of a
house, he put up a feather bed, and, as was his custom--for he was a
whimsical fellow--let his humour have play. He used many metaphors as to
the virtue of the bed, crowning them with the statement that you slept in
it dreaming as delicious dreams as though you had eaten poppy, or
mandragora, or--He stopped short, said, "By jingo, that's it!" knocked
the bed down instantly, and was an utter failure for the rest of the day.
The wife was longer in discovering the truth, but a certain morning, as
her husband lay sleeping after an all-night sitting with a patient, she
saw lying beside him--it had dropped from his waistcoat pocket--a little
bottle full of a dark liquid. She knew that he always carried his
medicine-phials in a pocket-case. She got the case, and saw that none was
missing. She noticed that the cork of the phial was well worn. She took
it out and smelled the liquid. Then she understood. She waited and
watched. She saw him after he waked look watchfully round, quietly take a
wine-glass, and let the liquid come drop by drop into it from the point
of his forefinger. Henceforth she read with understanding the changes in
his manner, and saw behind the mingled abstraction and fanciful
meditation of his talk.
She had not yet made up her mind what to do. She saw that he hid it from
her assiduously. He did so more because he wished not to pain her than
from furtiveness. By nature he was open and brave, and had always had a
reputation for plainness and sincerity. She was in no sense his equal in
intelligence or judgment, nor even in instinct. She was a woman of more
impulse and constitutional good-nature than depth. It is probable that he
knew that, and refrained from letting her into the knowledge of this
vice, contracted in the war when, seriously ill, he was able to drag
himself about from patient to patient only by the help of opium. He was
alive to his position and its consequences, and faced it. He had no
children, and he was glad of this for one reason. He could do nothing now
without the drug; it was as necessary as light to him. The little bottle
had been his friend so long, that, with his finger on its smooth-edged
cork, it was as though he held the tap of life.
The Little Chemist and Medallion kept the thing to themselves, but they
understood each other in the matter, and wondered what they could do to
cure him. The Little Chemist only shrank back, and said, "No, no, pardon,
my friend!" when Medallion suggested that he should speak to Secord. But
the Little Chemist was greatly concerned--for had not Secord saved his
beloved wife by a clever operation? and was it not her custom to devote a
certain hour every week to the welfare of Secord's soul and body, before
the shrine of the Virgin? Her husband told her now that Secord was in
trouble, and though he was far from being devout himself, he had a shy
faith in the great sincerity of his wife. She did her best, and increased
her offerings of flowers to the shrine; also, in her simplicity, she sent
Secord's wife little jars of jam to comfort him.
One evening the little coterie met by arrangement at the doctor's house.
After waiting an hour or two for Secord, who had been called away to a
critical case, the Avocat and the Cure went home, leaving polite
old-fashioned messages for their absent host; but the Little Chemist and
Medallion remained. For a time Mrs. Secord remained with them, then
retired, begging them to await her husband, who, she knew, would be
grateful if they stayed. The Little Chemist, with timid courtesy, showed
her out of the room, then came back and sat down. They were very silent.
The Little Chemist took off his glasses a half-dozen times, wiped them,
and put them back. Then suddenly turned on Medallion. "You mean to speak
to-night?"
"Yes, that's it."
"Regardez ca--well, well!"
Medallion never smoked harder than he did then. The Little Chemist looked
at him nervously again and again, listened towards the door, fingered
with his tumbler, and at last hearing the sound of sleigh-bells, suddenly
came to his feet, and said: "Voila, I will go to my wife." And catching
up his cap, and forgetting his overcoat, he trotted away home in a
fright.
What Medallion did or said to Secord that night neither ever told. But it
must have been a singular scene, for when the humourist pleads or prays
there is no pathos like it; and certainly Medallion's eyes were red when
he rapped up the Little Chemist at dawn, caught him by the shoulders,
turned him round several times, thumped him on the back, and called him a
bully old boy; and then, seeing the old wife in her quaint padded
night-gown, suddenly hugged her, threw himself into a chair, and almost
shouted for a cup of coffee.
At the same time Mrs. Secord was alternately crying and laughing in her
husband's arms, and he was saying to her: "I'll make a fight for it,
Lesley, a big fight; but you must be patient, for I expect I'll be a
devil sometimes without it. Why, I've eaten a drachm a day of the stuff,
or drunk its equivalent in the tincture. No, never mind praying; be a
brick and fight with me that's the game, my girl."
He did make a fight for it, such an one as few men have made and come out
safely. For those who dwell in the Pit never suffer as do they who
struggle with this appetite. He was too wise to give it up all at once.
He diminished the dose gradually, but still very perceptibly. As it was,
it made a marked change in him. The necessary effort of the will gave a
kind of hard coldness to his face, and he used to walk his garden for
hours at night in conflict with his enemy. His nerves were uncertain,
but, strange to say, when (it was not often) any serious case of illness
came under his hands, he was somehow able to pull himself together and do
his task gallantly enough. But he had had no important surgical case
since he began his cure. In his heart he lived in fear of one; for he was
not quite sure of himself. In spite of effort to the contrary he became
irritable, and his old pleasant fantasies changed to gloomy and bizarre
imaginings.
The wife never knew what it cost her husband thus, day by day, to take a
foe by the throat and hold him in check. She did not guess that he knew
if he dropped back even once he could not regain himself: this was his
idiosyncrasy. He did not find her a great help to him in his trouble. She
was affectionate, but she had not much penetration even where he was
concerned, and she did not grasp how much was at stake. She thought
indeed that he should be able to give it up all at once. He was tender
with her, but he wished often that she could understand him without
explanation on his part. Many a time he took out the little bottle with a
reckless hand, but conquered himself. He got most help, perhaps, from the
honest, cheerful eye of Medallion and the stumbling timorous affection of
the Little Chemist. They were perfectly disinterested friends--his wife
at times made him aware that he had done her a wrong, for he had married
her with thus appetite on him. He did not defend himself, but he wished
she would--even if she had to act it--make him believe in himself more.
One morning against his will he was irritable with her, and she said
something that burnt like caustic. He smiled ironically, and pushed his
newspaper over to her, pointing to a paragraph. It was the announcement
that an old admirer of hers whom she had passed by for her husband, had
come into a fortune. "Perhaps you've made a mistake," he said.
She answered nothing, but the look she gave was unfortunate for both. He
muffled his mouth in his long silken beard as if to smother what he felt
impelled to say, then suddenly rose and left the table.
At this time he had reduced his dose of the drug to eight drops twice a
day. With a grim courage he resolved to make it five all at once. He did
so, and held to it. Medallion was much with him in these days. One
morning in the spring he got up, went out in his garden, drew in the
fresh, sweet air with a great gulp, picked some lovely crab-apple
blossoms, and, with a strange glowing look in his eyes, came in to his
wife, put them into her hands, and kissed her. It was the anniversary of
their wedding-day. Then, without a word, he took from his pocket the
little phial that he had carried so long, rolled it for an instant in his
palm, felt its worn, discoloured cork musingly, and threw it out of the
window.
"Now, my dear," he whispered, "we will be happy again."
He held to his determination with a stern anxiety. He took a month's
vacation, and came back better. He was not so happy as he hoped to be;
yet he would not whisper to himself the reason why. He felt that
something had failed him somewhere.
One day a man came riding swiftly up to his door to say that his wife's
father had met with a bad accident in his great mill. Secord told his
wife. A peculiar troubled look came into his face as he glanced carefully
over his instruments and through his medicine case. "God, I must do it
alone!" he said.
The old man's injury was a dangerous one: a skilful operation was
necessary. As Secord stood beside the sufferer, he felt his nerves
suddenly go--just as they did in the war before he first took the drug.
His wife was in the next room--he could hear her; he wished she would
make no sound at all. Unless this operation was performed successfully
the sufferer would die--he might die anyhow. Secord tried to gather
himself up to his task, but he felt it was of no use. A month later when
he was more recovered physically he would be able to perform the
operation, but the old man was dying now, while he stood helplessly
stroking his big brown beard. He took up his pocket medicine-case, and
went out where his wife was.
Excited and tearful, she started up to meet him, painfully inquiring.
"Can you save him?" she said. "Oh, James, what is the matter? You are
trembling."
"It's just this way, Lesley: my nerve is broken; I can't perform the
operation as I am, and he will die in an hour if I don't."
She caught him by the arm. "Can you not be strong? You have a will. Will
you not try to save my father, James? Is there no way?"
"Yes, there is one way," he said. He opened the pocket-case and took out
a phial of laudanum. "This is the way. I can pull myself together with
it. It will save his life." There was a dogged look in his face.
"Well? well?" she said. "Oh, my dear father, will you not keep him here?"
A peculiar cold smile hovered about his lips. "But there is danger to me
in this . . . and remember, he is very old!"
"Oh," she cried, "how can you be so shocking, so cruel!" She rocked
herself to and fro. "If it will save him--and you need not take it again,
ever!"
"But, I tell you--"
"Do you not hear him--he is dying!" She was mad with grief; she hardly
knew what she said.
Without a word he dropped the tincture swiftly in a wine-glass of water,
drank it off, shivered, drew himself up with a start, gave a sigh as if
some huge struggle was over, and went in to where the old man was. Three
hours after he told his wife that her father was safe.
When, after a hasty kiss, she left him and went into the room of
sickness, and the door closed after her, standing where she had left him
he laughed a hard crackling laugh, and said between his teeth:
"An upset price!"
Then he poured out another portion of the dark tincture--the largest he
had ever taken--and tossed it off. That night he might have been seen
feeling about the grass in a moon-lit garden. At last he put something in
his pocket with a quick, harsh chuckle of satisfaction. It was a little
black bottle with a well-worn cork.
A FRAGMENT OF LIVES
They met at last, Dubarre, and Villiard, the man who had stolen from him
the woman he loved. Both had wronged the woman, but Villiard most, for he
had let her die because of jealousy.
They were now in a room alone in the forest of St. Sebastian. Both were
quiet, and both knew that the end of their feud was near.
Going to a cupboard Dubarre brought out four glasses and put them on the
table. Then from two bottles he poured out what looked like red wine, two
glasses from each bottle. Putting the bottles back he returned to the
table.
"Do you dare to drink with me?" Dubarre asked, nodding towards the
glasses. "Two of the glasses have poison in them, two have good red wine
only. We will move them about and then drink. Both may die, or only one
of us."
Villiard looked at the other with contracting, questioning eyes.
"You would play that game with me?" he asked, in a mechanical voice.
"It would give me great pleasure." The voice had a strange, ironical
tone. "It is a grand sport--as one would take a run at a crevasse and
clear it, or fall. If we both fall, we are in good company; if you fall,
I have the greater joy of escape; if I fall, you have the same joy."
"I am ready," was the answer. "But let us eat first."
A great fire burned in the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the
room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and
there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the
barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair
of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the
fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went
lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the kettle. The
ticking of a huge, old-fashioned repeating-watch on the wall was in
unison with these.
Dubarre rose from the table, threw himself upon the little pile of
otter-skins, and lay watching Villiard and mechanically studying the
little room.
Villiard took the four glasses filled with the wine and laid them on a
shelf against the wall, then began to put the table in order for their
supper, and to take the pot from the fire.
Dubarre noticed that just above where the glasses stood on the shelf a
crucifix was hanging, and that red crystal sparkled in the hands and feet
where the nails should be driven in. There was a painful humour in the
association. He smiled, then turned his head away, for old memories
flashed through his brain--he had been an acolyte once; he had served at
the altar.
Suddenly Dubarre rose, took the glasses from the shelf and placed them in
the middle of the table--the death's head for the feast.
As they sat down to eat, the eyes of both men unconsciously wandered to
the crucifix, attracted by the red sparkle of the rubies. They drank
water with the well-cooked meat of the wapiti, though red wine faced them
on the table. Each ate heartily; as though a long day were before them
and not the shadow of the Long Night. There was no speech save that of
the usual courtesies of the table. The fire, and the wind, and the watch
seemed the only living things besides themselves, perched there between
heaven and earth.
At length the meal was finished, and the two turned in their chairs
towards the fire. There was no other light in the room, and on the faces
of the two, still and cold, the flame played idly.
"When?" said Dubarre at last. "Not yet," was the quiet reply.
"I was thinking of my first theft--an apple from my brother's plate,"
said Dubarre, with a dry smile. "You?"
"I, of my first lie."
"That apple was the sweetest fruit I ever tasted."
"And I took the penalty of the lie, but I had no sorrow."
Again there was silence.
"Now?" asked Villiard, after an hour had passed. "I am ready."
They came to the table.
"Shall we bind our eyes?" asked Dubarre. "I do not know the glasses that
hold the poison."
"Nor I the bottle that held it. I will turn my back, and do you change
about the glasses."
Villiard turned his face towards the timepiece on the wall. As he did so
it began to strike--a clear, silvery chime: "One! two! three--!"
Before it had finished striking both men were facing the glasses again.
"Take one," said Dubarre.
Villiard took the one nearest himself. Dubarre took one also. Without a
word they lifted the glasses and drank.
"Again," said Dubarre.
"You choose," responded Villiard.
Dubarre lifted the one nearest himself, and Villiard picked up the other.
Raising their glasses again, they bowed to each other and drank.
The watch struck twelve, and stopped its silvery chiming.
They both sat down, looking at each other, the light of an enormous
chance in their eyes, the tragedy of a great stake in their clinched
hands; but the deeper, intenser power was in the face of Dubarre, the
explorer.
There was more than power; malice drew down the brows and curled the
sensitive upper lip. Each man watched the other for knowledge of his own
fate. The glasses lay straggling along the table, emptied of death and
life.
All at once a horrible pallor spread over the face of Villiard, and his
head jerked forward. He grasped the table with both hands, twitching and
trembling. His eyes stared wildly at Dubarre, to whose face the flush of
wine had come, whose look was now maliciously triumphant.
Villiard had drunk both glasses of the poison!
"I win!" Dubarre stood up. Then, leaning over the table towards the dying
man, he added: "You let her die-well! Would you know the truth? She loved
you--always."
Villiard gasped, and his look wandered vaguely along the opposite wall.
Dubarre went on. "I played the game with you honestly, because--because
it was the greatest man could play. And I, too, sinned against her. Now
die! She loved you--murderer!"
The man's look still wandered distractedly along the wall. The sweat of
death was on his face; his lips were moving spasmodically.
Suddenly his look became fixed; he found voice. "Pardon--Jesu!" he said,
and stiffened where he sat. His eyes were fixed on the jewelled crucifix.
Dubarre snatched it from the wall, and hastening to him held it to his
lips: but the warm sparkle of the rubies fell on eyes that were cold as
frosted glass. Dubarre saw that he was dead.
"Because the woman loved him!" he said, gazing curiously at the dead man.
He turned, went to the door and opened it, for his breath choked him.
All was still on the wooded heights and in the wide valley.
"Because the woman loved him he repented," said Dubarre again with a
half-cynical gentleness as he placed the crucifix on the dead man's
breast.
THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA
The man who died at Alma had a Kilkenny brogue that you could not cut
with a knife, but he was called Kilquhanity, a name as Scotch as
McGregor. Kilquhanity was a retired soldier, on pension, and Pontiac was
a place of peace and poverty. The only gentry were the Cure, the Avocat,
and the young Seigneur, but of the three the only one with a private
income was the young Seigneur.
What should such a common man as Kilquhanity do with a private income! It
seemed almost suspicious, instead of creditable, to the minds of the
simple folk at Pontiac; for they were French, and poor, and laborious,
and Kilquhanity drew his pension from the headquarters of the English
Government, which they only knew by legends wafted to them over great
tracts of country from the city of Quebec.
When Kilquhanity first came with his wife, it was without introductions
from anywhere--unlike everybody else in Pontiac, whose family history
could be instantly reduced to an exact record by the Cure. He had a
smattering of French, which he turned off with oily brusqueness; he was
not close-mouthed, he talked freely of events in his past life; and he
told some really wonderful tales of his experiences in the British army.
He was no braggart, however, and his one great story which gave him the
nickname by which he was called at Pontiac, was told far more in a spirit
of laughter at himself than in praise of his own part in the incident.
The first time he told the story was in the house of Medallion the
auctioneer.
"Aw the night it was," said Kilquhanity, after a pause, blowing a cloud
of tobacco smoke into the air, "the night it was, me darlin's! Bitther
cowld in that Roosian counthry, though but late summer, and nothin' to
ate but a lump of bread, no bigger than a dickybird's skull; nothin' to
drink but wather. Turrible, turrible, and for clothes to wear--Mother of
Moses! that was a bad day for clothes! We got betune no barrick quilts
that night. No stockin' had I insoide me boots, no shirt had I but a
harse's quilt sewed an to me; no heart I had insoide me body; nothin' at
all but duty an' shtandin' to orders, me b'ys!
"Says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick to me, 'Kilquhanity,' says he, 'there's
betther places than River Alma to live by,' says he. 'Faith, an' by the
Liffey I wish I was this moment'--Liffey's in ould Ireland, Frenchies!
'But, Kilquhanity,' says he, 'faith, an' it's the Liffey we'll never see
again, an' put that in yer pipe an' smoke it!' And thrue for him.
"But that night, aw that night! Ivery bone in me body was achin', and
shure me heart was achin' too, for the poor b'ys that were fightin' hard
an' gettin' little for it. Bitther cowld it was, aw, bitther cowld, and
the b'ys droppin' down, droppin', droppin', droppin', wid the Roosian
bullets in thim!
"'Kilquhanity,' says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick to me, 'it's this
shtandin' still, while we do be droppin', droppin', that girds the soul
av yer.' Aw, the sight it was, the sight it was! The b'ys of the rigimint
shtandin' shoulder to shoulder, an' the faces av 'm blue wid powder, an'
red wid blood, an' the bits o' b'ys droppin' round me loike twigs of an'
ould tree in a shtorm. Just a cry an' a bit av a gurgle tru the teeth,
an' divil the wan o' thim would see the Liffey side anny more. "'The
Roosians are chargin'!' shouts Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick. 'The Roosians
are chargin'--here they come!' Shtandin' besoide me was a bit of a lump
of a b'y, as foine a lad as ever shtood in the boots of me rigimint--aw!
the look of his face was the look o' the dead. 'The Roosians are
comin'--they're chargin'!' says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick, and the bit av
a b'y, that had nothin' to eat all day, throws down his gun and turns
round to run. Eighteen years old he was, only eighteen--just a straight
slip of a lad from Malahide. 'Hould on! Teddie,' says I, 'hould on!
How'll yer face yer mother if yer turn yer back on the inimy of yer
counthry?' The b'y looks me in the eyes long enough to wink three times,
picks up his gun, an' shtood loike a rock, he did, till the Roosians
charged us, roared on us, an' I saw me slip of a b'y go down under the
sabre of a damned Cossack. 'Mother!' I heard him say, 'Mother!' an'
that's all I heard him say--and the mother waitin' away aff there by the
Liffey soide. Aw, wurra, wurra, the b'ys go down to battle and the
mothers wait at home! Some of the b'ys come back, but the most of thim
shtay where the battle laves 'em. Wurra, wurra, many's the b'y wint down
that day by Alma River, an' niver come back! "There I was shtandin', when
hell broke loose on the b'ys of me rigimint, and divil the wan o' me
knows if I killed a Roosian that day or not. But Sergeant-Major
Kilpatrick--a bit of a liar was the Sergeant-Major--says he: 'It was tin
ye killed, Kilquhanity.' He says that to me the noight that I left the
rigimint for ever, and all the b'ys shtandin' round and liftin' lasses
an' saying, 'Kilquhanity! Kilquhanity! Kilquhanity!' as if it was sugar
and honey in their mouths. Aw, the sound of it! 'Kilquhanity,' says he,
'it was tin ye killed;' but aw, b'ys, the Sergeant-Major was an awful
liar. If he could be doin' annybody anny good by lyin', shure he would be
lyin' all the time.