Part 2

“I put Charlie round the far corner and told ’im not to move and not even to put ’is ’ead round until they was busy, and then I walked up to the gate. I made a little noise opening the wicket, and then I stepped outside a yard or two and looked the wrong way, and a’most afore you could say ‘knife’ Alf Stevens bolted in and ran on to the wharf.

“‘’Ere!’ I ses, follering ’im up, ‘wot are you arter? Who told you to come on my wharf?’

“He took no more notice of me than if I was a pet lamb. He stood looking all round ’im with his ’ead bent down, and then there came the sound of two or three of the loudest kisses I ever ’eard in my life. Alf Stevens made a noise like a hyena wot wasn’t laughing, and the next moment two of the barrels was rolled out o’ the way and ’e stood looking at the two of ’em cuddling each other on the box.

“‘Got--yer--at--last!’ he ses, grinding ’is teeth.

“He bent over to push Sid away, but ’e ’ad got his ’ead buried in the gal’s shoulder and was ’olding on to ’er as if ’e was frightened out of ’is life.

“‘Stand up!’ ses Alf, pullin’ ’im by the collar--‘Stand up and take wot’s comin’ to you.’

“Sid got up, stooping, with his ’at over ’is eyes, and the next moment Alf was sitting on the ground wondering wot ’ad ’appened to ’im. Then ’is memory come back to ’im and ’e got up and rushed at Sid like a madman, but ’e might as well ’ave tried to ’it the moon. Sid was dancing all round ’im, punching ’im all over the place, and every now and then knocking ’im down for a change.

“I must say Alf was game. He fought as long as ’e could stand, and ’e could ’ardly walk as I ’elped ’im off the wharf. He couldn’t see properly neither, ’cos he thought I was somebody quite different and asked me wot I ’ad done with my tail.

“The others came along as I stood there watching Alf ’obble away. Maud was ’anging on to Sid’s arm and looking up into ’is face, and Charlie was follering up be’ind making noises like a lost kitten.

“‘Didn’t want to pay me the ten bob,’ ses Sid to me. ‘He soon altered ’is mind, though.’

“‘He--he’s got my young lady,’ ses Charlie, ’arf crying, ‘and ten bob too.’

“‘Never mind,’ I ses, patting ’im on the shoulder; ‘a gal like that ain’t worth troubling about.’

“‘Wot’s that?’ ses Sid, shoving ’is face into mine. ‘Wot did you say?’

“‘I mean, ’e oughtn’t to trouble about any gal,’ I ses, very firm. ‘He ought to get a little pet dog instead. A little dog as nobody else wants.’

“Sid stood looking at me for a moment; then he put ’is arm round Maud’s waist and they went off. Charlie and me stood watching them till they was out of sight, and then ’e told me wot ’e thought about Sid.

“I felt a bit sorry for ’im, but arter all bisness is bisness, and as ’e turned to go off I laid my ’and on ’is sleeve and gave a little laugh.

“‘Yes?’ he ses.

“‘Ain’t you forgot something?’ I ses.

“‘Not as I knows of,’ ’e ses, staring.

“‘Wot about my five bob?’ I ses.

“I think ’is trouble must ’ave turned ’is brain. He gave a squeal that set my teeth on edge, and afore I could take my ’ands out o’ my pockets he ’ad given me four or five bangs in the face as ’ard as ’e could hit. Then ’e turned round quick and run for all ’e was worth.”

Taking Pains

Mr. Silvanus Key, changing his position in bed for the third time in five minutes, lay on his back and groaned lamentably.

“I, shall never be well,” he murmured faintly. “Forty-three, good-looking, with the best moustache in the town, and done for.”

“Has the pain come on again?” inquired his wife softly.

“Not what you could call pain,” said Mr. Key. “There’s a red hot corkscrew going through my left shoulder and a very capable monkey-wrench trying to screw my knee-joints out. The only time I get any rest is when it leaves off to spit on its hands. _O-ow! Ouch! O-o!_”

Mrs. Key rose and, standing by the side of the bed, gazed at him compassionately.

“The doctor doesn’t seem to be doing you much good,” she murmured.

“That’ll do,” said the sufferer sharply. “He is doing his best.”

“So it seems,” said his wife dryly. “How you can imagine that stuff out of a bottle can cure you, I can’t think. It’s the soul that wants treating, not the body. You want to be bathed in a stream of healing thought that would kill all those ideas of pain and----”

“_Ideas!_” shouted Mr. Key. “You wait till you get rheumatism, and neuritis, and gout, and sciatica, all mixed up together, and trying to see which can be the worst. If that blessed Circle of Healers, as you call it, was here I’d punch its head.”

“Some of them are women,” said his wife.

Mr. Key remarked that he supposed women possessed heads, some of them at any rate, and, licking his lips, speculated on the good to be achieved by knocking all the heads of the Circle together.

“Shake their brains up and make ’em think,” he added.

His wife sighed, and bestowed upon him a look of tender and elevating love.

“You are so wilful,” she murmured. “If you would only see Mr. Punshon; no foolish and nasty drugs; no clumsy interference with that wonderful combination of soul and body that we know as man. You are simply out of tune with the infinite. _I_ am never ill.”

“You wouldn’t talk like that if you were,” said Mr. Key. “You’d know better.”

He lay back with closed eyes and pondered gloomily. It was his first real illness and, to an active man fond of rather more than his share of the good things of this life, extremely distasteful. He opened his eyes at a rather sharper twinge than usual and, in a few ill-chosen words, expressed his opinion that members of the medical profession were as useless as the Healers.

“And we work for love,” said his wife, improving the occasion.

Mr. Key closed his eyes again, and a faint and unseemly grin passed furtively.

“Miss Olsen is a healer, isn’t she?” he inquired. “The pretty one. Perhaps I might----”

“She is a neophyte,” said his wife coldly, “the same as myself.”

“Nothing doing,” murmured the graceless Mr. Key. “Still, if she wants a little practice----”

Mrs. Key implored him not to make a jest of solemn things, and spoke with some eloquence of the marvellous cures effected by Mr. Punshon. Her husband pointed out, when she had finished, that she had omitted the marvellous case of old Mr. Jackson, who, after being bedridden for over three years, was able, owing to the healer’s ministrations, to spend the evenings of his life at the Shakespeare Arms.

“It is easy to mock at things,” said Mrs. Key, bitterly. “Mr. Punshon would cure him of that, but the artful old man won’t let him go near him.”

She went out of the room, and the invalid, after turning in the bed with great care, lay gazing wistfully out of the window. There was a cheerful hum from the street below, and he thought with great bitterness of the happy people there who knew nothing of Uric Acid and its liking for hot joints. A visit from the doctor next day depressed him still more.

“Another week or two?” he gasped.

“You’re going on beau-ti-fully,” said the other, with an admiring but thoughtless pat on Mr. Key’s left knee. “Sorry.”

“Don’t mind me,” said the sufferer coldly. “Am I to go on taking that beastly physic of yours?”

The doctor nodded. “For some time,” he said grinning. “Shut your eyes when you are taking it and tell yourself it is a vintage port. Smack your lips over it.”

Mr. Key closed his eyes and groaned.

“And don’t be too sorry for yourself,” pursued the other. “You are not nearly so bad as some of my poor patients. Not nearly.”

Mr. Key, with a faint smile, said that he could quite believe it. He also expressed his firm belief that their troubles would soon be over--one way or another.

“The last bottle,” said his medical attendant, breathing hard, “was not strong enough. You are suffering from depression.”

“You never see me at my best,” said the other; “the moment you come into the room----”

“Good-bye,” said the doctor briskly.

He went downstairs and, meeting in the hall Mrs. Key, who had just come in, announced in a loud voice that the patient was much better. A louder voice from the sick-room denied all knowledge of the fact.

For two days the patient had no reason to alter his opinion, but on the third he confided to Mrs. Key, with a happy smile, that he certainly felt much easier.

“Since when?” inquired his wife, with a mysterious expression on her face.

Mr. Key pondered. “Yesterday afternoon I got the turn, I think. It’s nothing to laugh at.”

“I was not laughing, I was smiling,” said his wife. “With happiness,” she added hastily. “But I’m not surprised. Mr. Punshon had a half-holiday yesterday afternoon.”

Mr. Key gazed at her blankly.

“And instead of going out and enjoying himself stayed at home and gave you ‘absent treatment.’”

“Infernal impudence!” gasped the astonished invalid. “I’ll--I’ll--Punshon----Oh, Lord! How many people have you told!”

“He could do you much more good if he came into contact with you,” said his wife timidly.

“Fancy,” murmured the other brokenly, “that ginger-bearded fraud--treating _me_! Poor Johnson pulls me round and Punshon steps in and takes the credit. I shall be the laughing-stock of the town. Everybody knows what I’ve said about him.”

“You’ve said things--to me--about Dr. Johnson too,” said his wife.

Mr. Key lay back and regarded her for some time, deep in thought. “All right,” he said at last, in a ferocious voice, “have it your own way. I’ll give him a run for his money. Punshon has put his hand to the plough and he’d better finish the job. But mind, I shall take the medicine.”

His wife turned upon him a face that literally shone with happiness. “It won’t make much difference,” she said. “Mr. Punshon’s force is much too strong for drugs to interfere with it.”

She brought the healer round the following afternoon, and Mr. Key, gazing at the flabby, bearded face, with its pouched eyes and foolish mouth, waited breathlessly for developments.

“I hope it is not going to be painful,” he remarked.

“We soothe,” said Mr. Punshon, in a deep voice marred by adenoids.

He took a chair by the bed, and taking the patient’s hands in his own, leaned forward and fixed upon him the healing glare of a pair of pale and protuberant blue eyes. Mr. Key, closing his, bit his lips to suppress a smile.

For twenty minutes the silence was unbroken except for the odd noises in Mr. Punshon’s air-passages. He released the patient’s hands and, folding his arms, spoke with authority.

“You feel better!”

“I do,” said Mr. Key in reverent tones. “Waves of--something or other--seemed to go right through me.”

Mr. Punshon smiled and, taking out a handkerchief, wiped his brow.

“You mustn’t expect to be well all at once,” he said, raising a warning hand. “Evil is not destroyed in five minutes. I will come in and give you further treatment to-morrow evening.”

Mr. Key thanked him, and for some time after his departure lay smiling seraphically at the ceiling. Under the combined treatment of Mr. Punshon and Dr. Johnson he improved steadily, the wrath of the latter, when he heard of his collaborator, doing the invalid, according to his own account, more good than medicine.

“I’ve done with you,” said the doctor, fuming. “It’s all over the town that Punshon has cured you when I failed. What do you mean by it?”

“I’m not cured yet,” said the invalid grimly. “Dear Brother Punshon has got to do a lot more for me before he has finished. I have an idea that I am going to be one of his most difficult cases.”

“All this stuff about Christian Science----” began the doctor.

“It’s nothing to do with Christian Science,” retorted the other. “It’s a little special brand of Punshon’s own. He is far too conceited to adopt anybody else’s ideas. He is charged with electricity--a living magnet, that’s the idea, and, in a lesser degree, he thinks he is able to magnetise his followers.”

The doctor stood regarding him with a perplexed grin.

“What is the game?” he inquired bluntly.

“Game?” repeated Mr. Key loftily. “There is no ‘game.’ You don’t understand. Magnetic healing is serious, most serious. So are the healers. If they could see a joke they wouldn’t be healers. Punshon couldn’t see a joke if I put it in front of his nose and burnt coloured lights round it.”

“You might try,” suggested the other.

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” said Mr. Key severely. “Besides, I’m going to. Meantime, you had better leave Punshon a free hand. I don’t want you to get the credit of his cure. You don’t want it either. If you go, and I have a relapse----”

The doctor nodded. “Nobody could expect me to halve a patient with Punshon,” he murmured.

“Exactly,” said the other, “but you needn’t put it in quite such a surgical way. It’s not nice. By the way----”

“Well?”

“What about one weak whisky-and-soda a day?” inquired Mr. Key in persuasive accents.

The doctor stood for a time considering. “Better ask Punshon,” he said at last, and faded slowly from the room.

A good man would have been moved by the tender gratitude displayed by Mrs. Key when she learnt that her husband had abandoned drugs entirely, in favour of spiritual treatment. The only effect on Mr. Key was to confirm him in his iniquities. His spirits rose and the hue of health returned to his cheeks. And he praised Mr. Punshon and his strange and beneficent power until that gentleman nearly fell a victim to the sin of pride.

“Walk across the room,” he commanded.

Mr. Key obeyed.

“Your limbs are straight and supple,” chanted the healer; “your body is strong; your soul is in command; you are healed.”

“Thanks to you,” breathed the admiring Mrs. Key.

“To-morrow you can go for a walk,” continued Mr. Punshon to his patient. “My work is finished.”

Both husband and wife were certain as to his exact words. In fact, the excellent Mrs. Key repeated them to two or three friends the same day. And yet, just before midnight, she sat up in the small bed she occupied in the sick-room almost persuaded that she had heard a moan. Within the next minute five full-grown moans, muffled by the bedclothes, issued from the other bed.

“Aren’t you well?” she inquired.

“Well?” repeated Mr. Key, bringing his head up and suppressing moan number six. “Yes, of course I am. Didn’t Mr. Punshon say I was?”

In confirmation, he groaned three times and wound up with a faint shriek.

“What are you making that noise for then?” inquired his wife, not unnaturally.

Mr. Key made no reply. It was evident by his lamentations that he wanted his breath for other purposes. His wife slipped on a dressing-gown and, lighting a candle, crossed over to him.

“What _is_ the matter?” she said in alarm.

“Don’t mind me,” said the invalid, with a groan that made the ornaments on the mantelpiece rattle. “Go to sleep.”

His wife suppressed an obvious retort and stood regarding him anxiously.

“_O-o-o-o!_” said Mr. Key. “_A-a-a-h!_” He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his pyjamas and, uttering a faint sigh, was taken suddenly with a series of noises in the throat highly reminiscent of Mr. Punshon.

“I wish I could stop that,” he said fretfully. “I suppose it’s Punshon’s influence. Perhaps I’m too receptive. _O-oh!_ my leg!”

Mrs. Key eyed him wistfully. “Which one?” she inquired.

“What the--what does that matter?” exclaimed the sufferer. “Now it’s my shoulder. The _left_ one,” he added, bitterly. “Has Jane gone to bed?”

“Long ago,” replied his wife, staring.

“I can’t bear it,” gasped the sufferer, wildly. “You’ll have to tell her to get up and run for the doctor.”

Mrs. Key clasped her hands. “Oh, Silvanus!” she cried reproachfully.

“I can’t help it,” muttered her husband. “I’d rather have Punshon, of course, but I don’t like to disturb him. He could stop it. As soon as he got his blessed paw--hands--on me, it would go.”

“I’ll ask him to come round in the morning,” said Mrs. Key.

“I can’t wait,” moaned the sufferer. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to ask Jane to get up and go for the doctor. It isn’t far.”

His wife hesitated. “If you are no better in ten minutes,” she said at last, “I’ll go and ask Mr. Punshon to come.”

Mr. Key protested, and for fully five minutes lay silent. At the end of that time he gave a very fine representation of a soul in torment.

“Better take Jane with you,” he said in a weak voice, as his wife began to dress.

“I can’t leave you in the house alone,” she murmured. “I’ll wake her up and let her know I am going out. I shan’t be long.”

She hurried upstairs, and a minute or two later he heard the front door close.

“Poor thing,” he murmured. “Poor thing. It’s an infernal shame; but it’s all for her own good.”

He sat up in bed yawning, every now and then releasing a groan for the benefit of the listener upstairs. The time passed slowly, and a feeling of drowsiness almost overcame him. He hoped fervently that Punshon was as fond of sleep as he was.

He awoke with a start and sat up in bed, listening. A continuous knocking and ringing at the front door seemed to indicate that Mrs. Key had forgotten to take the key with her. It also proved that Jane could sleep as soundly at one in the morning as at seven-thirty.

With an idea that every little helped he added a few whines to the noise below, but in vain. The jangling of the bell was hideous, the knocking incessant. Then he heard, in addition, the boots of a heavy and possibly irritated man kicking the paint off his front door and voices of advice and instruction from his neighbour’s bedroom window. He had just come to the conclusion that the maid had passed away in her sleep when he heard her door open and an apologetic whirlwind pass down the stairs.

Mr. Punshon entered the room in silence and, ignoring the faint smile with which the sufferer endeavoured to greet him, took a chair by the bedside and got to work with the air of a man who was going to crowd half an hour’s work into a few minutes. Mr. Key sighed twice, and then his face resolved itself into an expression of ineffable peace.

“Magician!” he murmured.

Mr. Punshon grunted and bestowed a smile of conscious power upon the admiring Mrs. Key.

“It’s wonderful,” continued the sufferer. “Wonderful! I wonder what caused the relapse?”

Mr. Punshon started. “You must have been thinking wrong,” he said tartly.

“I can’t remember doing so,” said Mr. Key in a diffident voice. “I have only been congratulating myself upon having the good sense to take your treatment. It has been a great joy to me. Great. I knew I was going to get better when I put myself into your hands. Else I shouldn’t have done so.”

The unconscious Mr. Punshon smiled again. “Faith helps,” he admitted. “How do you feel now?”

Mr. Key looked into the red-rimmed, sleepy eyes peering into his, and hesitated.

“Almost free from pain,” he said, at length. “There’s just a tiny bit troubling me in the left knee-cap.”

The healer diverted his gaze to a knob in the bedclothes, and concentrated upon it until the veins stood out on his forehead. An unusual amount of gurgling and choking testified to his absorption.

“Did I say ‘left’?” inquired Mr. Key, as the other wiped his brow. “How stupid of me; I meant ‘right.’”

He brought another knob into prominence and, patting it for Mr. Punshon’s guidance, waited with calm confidence while the other swallowed a gurgle that threatened to choke him.

“I’m afraid Mr. Punshon is tired,” said Mrs. Key.

“He never tires of good works,” said her husband, reproachfully.

Mr. Punshon smiled wanly and, suppressing a yawn, continued his ministrations.

“I feel so selfish lying here snug and warm in bed and keeping you out of yours,” said Mr. Key. “But perhaps you don’t care much for sleep.”

“Eight hours,” said Mr. Punshon somewhat shortly. “Always. Any pain in the knee now?”

Mr. Key shook his head. “It’s gone,” he said in a hushed voice.

Mr. Punshon leaned back with a sigh, a noisy sigh, of relief.

“Into my left shoulder,” continued the invalid querulously.

Mr. Punshon got up with great suddenness and stood glowering at him. Mrs. Key, with her hands clasped, eyed them in silent dismay.

“Please don’t trouble any more,” said Mr. Key gently. “I’m afraid it is a difficult case. Too difficult, perhaps. I ought not to have bothered you. I suppose Johnson would have pulled me round, in time.”

He closed his eyes wearily and lay back listening in great content to an excited whispering between his wife and the healer. Then he heard the chair creak and felt a pair of clammy hands take his. For some time the stertorous breathing of Mr. Punshon was the only sound in the room. Then even that ceased and Mr. Key, opening his eyes to ascertain the reason, discovered to his indignation that the healer had gone. Daylight was coming in at the window, and it was only too clear that his victim had taken advantage of the sleep into which Mr. Key had fallen, to escape. A clock downstairs struck five. He groaned in spirit, but soon coming to the conclusion that that was no good, gave utterance to several fleshly ones. The other bed creaked.

“Do you want anything?” inquired Mrs. Key sleepily.

“Where’s Punshon?” demanded her husband in an aggrieved voice.

“Why, he left hours ago,” said Mrs. Key, sitting up. “He put you into a refreshing slumber and went.”

“Fetch him back,” said the invalid, briefly.

Mrs. Key’s cry of consternation left him unmoved. Mr. Punshon had taken the case out of the doctor’s hands by giving absent treatment in the first place, and, after that, had taken full charge. In a stern voice, broken by pain and marred by snufflings, Mr. Key ordered him to be fetched forthwith.

“I can’t,” said his wife desperately.

“Well, will you please go and ask him whether he has any objection to my consulting Dr. Johnson?”

Mrs. Key went--but only after a long argument--to return an hour later with a ferocious and demoralised-looking Mr. Punshon, who, advancing reluctantly to the foot of the bed, stood there gobbling.

“Good of you!” murmured the invalid.

Mr. Punshon took not the slightest notice.

“I do hope this pain will soon go,” continued Mr. Key. “I don’t want to fetch you out of your bed every night. I know you don’t mind, still----”

Mr. Punshon stared at him and endeavoured--but in vain--to concentrate his mind upon healing.

“I suppose I can’t have that walk you spoke of, to-day,” said Mr. Key. “It’s very disappointing. I was looking forward to it. I wanted to go round and tell people what mental healing had done for me. Some of them are so incredulous.”

“You must have patience,” said the healer. “Fifty years of wrong living----”

“Forty-three,” murmured the invalid. “And I feel younger since you have been treating me. It almost seems as though your healthy, virile spirit has become part of myself. I feel different. A better man. I think differently. I--I breathe differently. How is Mrs. Punshon?”

“She is quite well, thank you,” said the healer with some surprise.

Mr. Key half closed his eyes and a seraphic smile played around his lips. “I dream of her,” he said softly.

“_Dream!_ Dream of her? Dream of _my wife_?” stuttered the outraged husband in tones that nearly drowned the exclamation of the startled Mrs. Key.

Mr. Key nodded. “Ever since you started treating me,” he replied. “It’s very curious. I suppose your powerful mind has overcome mine and your thoughts have become my thoughts. Have any of your other patients----?”

“No, sir,” interrupted the other with violence.

Mr. Key sighed. “It’s very curious,” he repeated. “I dreamt of her three times last night. And there’s another funny thing; since this treatment started I have had an almost irresistible craving for whisky. Do you----”

“I’m a life-long teetotaller,” said the glaring Mr. Punshon.