CHAPTER IX.

Whither shall I go now? O Lucian!--to thy ridiculous purgatory,--to find Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging points, and Julius Cæsar making hair-buttons, Hannibal selling blacking, Augustus crying garlic, Charlemagne selling lists by the dozen, and King Pepin crying apples in a cart drawn with one horse?----

Then here's an end of me; farewell, daylight; And, oh! contemptible physic!---- WEBSTER--_Vittoria Corombona_.

Conducted by the old woman, an heir-loom dependant in the Captain's family, whom Miss Loring had designated by the familiar and somewhat endearing title of Aunt Rachel, the grim-faced stranger bore the young painter to a chamber, where he was laid upon a couch, breathing forth occasional groans, but still insensible. His bearer, having thus finished what might have been considered his peculiar charge, lifted up his eyes, and looked around him, not however with any intention of departing. On the contrary, his rude indifference seemed gradually to have melted away, and been succeeded by an anxious wish to render further services to the youth, or at least to be assured they should be rendered by others as capable as himself. He fixed his eyes upon the physician, as if to determine the amount of his professional ability by such outward manifestations of wisdom as might be traced in his visage and person; and the result was so little to his satisfaction that he resolved to remain in the apartment, to give the physician the benefit of his own counsels.

The man of science, who bore the undignified name of Merribody, was a youth of twenty-five or six, though the gravity of his countenance was worthy a practitioner of fifty. His frame was short, and roundest in the middle, and his limbs and neck of conformable brevity and dumpiness. His face corresponded with his body, being round as a melon, with features all highly insignificant, except his nose, which had a short and delicate pug that gave it some importance. His complexion had been originally fair, and his locks flaxen; but a few years' exposure to sun and sleet had communicated a certain foxy swarthiness to both, so that his eyes, which were of a light gray, were now entirely visible. His eye-brows had maintained their original creamy hue; and being the only part of the countenance possessing any great mobility, their motions up and down, and to and fro, were always distinguishable; and indeed they flitted about under the shadow of his hat, like two snowy moths entangled in a cobweb. Though no figure in the world could have been worse adapted to purposes of dignity, Dr. Merribody had thought proper to assume an important air, which he always preserved, except when irritated out of his decorum; a circumstance that not unfrequently happened, owing to a temper naturally testy and inflammable. His countenance he kept in a perpetual frown; and he cultivated an attitude he thought expressive of professional dignity, in which his feet were planted as far from one another as the length of his legs permitted, his head thrown back, or rather his chin turned up, for his neck was too short to allow much liberty to the temple of the soul, and his hands thrust into his breeches pockets; in which attitude he presented a miniature representation of the Rhodian Colossus. He had even bestowed much cultivation upon his voice, which being of a childish treble, and therefore highly incompatible with all pretensions to gravity, he forced it into artificial profundity, and spoke with a husky, catarrhal tone, a sort of falsetto bass, exceedingly pompous, and indeed sometimes majestic. However, the same testy temper which so often robbed him of his dignity of carriage, as frequently threw his voice into its hautboy alto; and on those occasions, he did not appear to advantage. At the present moment, the doctor certainly might be said to be in his glory; for the sight of a patient threw him into the best humour in the world;--and by the presence of his two friends, without counting the stranger and Aunt Rachel, he was assured of witnesses to his skill in a case, which he declared, while trudging up stairs, to be 'exceedingly critical and interesting.' Notwithstanding this favourable condition of things, however, the man of the red hat conceived but a mean opinion of Dr. Merribody's professional skill; and having eyed him a second time, without finding any reason to alter his opinion, he demanded, in no very respectful terms,

"Well now, doctor, here's the man lying half dead and groaning,--what's to be done with him?"

"What's to be done?" echoed the doctor, turning up the cuffs of his coat, throwing out his legs, and looking important and complaisant together; "Why, sir, we are to----but, hark'e, sir, who are you? Don't know you--thought you was Dan Potts, the raftsman, but see you a'n't. Who are you? and what are you doing here? Can't suffer a crowd in the room; it smothers the air. Must beg you to decamp, sir. Have plenty assistance, sir,"----

"Be content, doctor," said the man, drily, but not roughly. "My name is Green, John Green, the trader; every body knows Green, the York trader, as they call me. I fished up the young gentleman;--that is, I helped the lady; and I must see him through his troubles."

"Never heard of you, Mr. Green," said the doctor; "but you may stay. You have something the matter with your eye! Now I don't boast; but I believe I am good at the eyes--I will look at it directly."

"I don't doubt it, doctor," said Mr. Green; "but suppose, instead of talking of my eyes, you make the best use of your own. Here's the young man in great suffering."

"Oh, ay," said doctor Merribody. "The first thing to be done is to strip the patient, and see what's the matter with him. Method is the soul of business. Hurrah, Jingleum; come, off with his coat,--strip it off."

"_Rip_ it off, you mean," said the trader, touching the fractured arm significantly, and indeed somewhat angrily. "Of all fools I ever heard of, those are the greatest who break their arms, when necks are so much less valuable. Here's his right arm smashed like a sassafras-bough; and, I reckon, slipped at the shoulder, too!"

"Ay! the deuce! you don't say so? a luxation!" cried the physician. "Set the old woman to work with her scissors. Aunt Rachel, my good woman, rip up this sleeve; and rip it as gingerly as if every stitch was the nerve of a man's elbow. A comminuted fracture, I can tell by the feel!--Here, Pepperel, pour some warm water into the basin, chill it a thought from the ewer, and soak this rag in it. A very genteel-looking dog, I protest!--Jingleum, lay out my pocket-case, tear an old shirt into bandages two and a half inches wide, and roll 'em up; and you, Mr. York,--that is, Mr. Green, hand me the crooked scissors there, till I shave some of the hair from the wound. A devil of a job, if it turns out a trephine case! We must send off to town for Dr. Muller and his case of round saws--I don't object to consult with Dr. Muller; and if it comes to trephining, why the sooner we are ready for it the better. Method is the soul of business!"

"The cut on the head is but a scratch," said the trader: "I v'e looked at it myself. Goody, rip up the shirt-sleeve here, or let me do it--there's blacker work to look at."

"Method is the soul of business," cried the doctor, whose spirits were beginning to rise to a rapture, as business thickened on his hand, and who now raised himself a tip-toe among his temporary assistants, like a generalissimo surveying the manoeuvres of his subordinates on a field of battle, which is perhaps to determine the destinies of a nation; "there's nothing like method!" he ejaculated. "Aunt Rachel, scrape me a little lint--there are more scratches to be filled.--Hah! what! what the devil's the matter?" he cried, as the trader, groaning with sympathy at the sight, tore away the damp shirt from the shoulder, and displayed it deformed and shapeless from luxation. "Bless my soul, what! a dislocation, really, under the _pectoralis major_, anteriorly luxed! Oh, here's the devil to pay! Method is the soul of business: but what method is there in having at once an arm broke, a shoulder disjointed, a head cracked, and to be half drowned into the bargain? Murdering work, sir! murdering work! Where the deuce can I clap my pulley? and where the deuce, now I think of it, am I to get one?"

"A pulley!" exclaimed the trader, with scorn and indignation; "a pulley to drag a man's arm off! Why, where's your fingers? Come, doctor, now's the time."

"Method is the soul of business!" exclaimed the physician, waxing wroth. "Are you a doctor, a surgeon, a gentleman of the profession, Mr. What-d'-ye-call-'em, that you take it upon you to instruct _me_ what to do? I tell you, sir, a physician is not to be prescribed his duty, sir; and I allow no man to interfere with me in my practice, sir!"

The strength of this declaration was increased by its being delivered in the doctor's natural voice, high and shrill; but it produced little effect on the obdurate trader.

"Come, doctor," said he, "I know all about these matters of broken and disjointed bones, from the toe up to the top-knot, having had a hand in making many of them, as a man who has been an Indian trader, in war-times, may well say. So take the benefit of my advice; for I intend to give it."

"Then, sir," said Dr. Merribody, with becoming indignation, "you may take the matter into your own hands; I wash mine clear of it. I'm not to be ruled by any ignoramus Indian trader, who, I believe, is no better than an Indian himself, and blind of an eye into the bargain; if you are to dictate, you Mr. What-d'-ye-call-'em, I'll have nothing to do with the case,--if I do I'll be hanged. No, sir! work away yourself, and kill the patient as soon as you like: he is at death's door already."

"Not at all," said Mr. Green, with a bitter sneer; "if he had been in any danger, I should have taken the matter up myself. Come, doctor," he added, more civilly; "don't be in a passion, and don't play the fool. I tell you, if it will be any satisfaction to you to know, that I, John Green, simple as I stand here, have seen more wounds and broken bones than you, and a dozen other such younkers, will ever have the mending of; and, for the matter of that, I have seen more mended than ever you will see hurt, ay, and helped in the mending, too,--as any man must, who has traded among Indians. So, come; look to your duty; the young gentleman will pay you for your services; and, as he seems to be forlorn-like, with no better friend at hand, I shall stand by him, to see he gets the worth of his money."

The amazement with which the insulted leech listened to these contumelious expressions, was prodigious, and would have been expressed otherwise than by a simple, common-place "whew!" had it not been for the dark scowl that clouded the trader's visage, at the first sign of explosion. It was a look of more than ordinary resentment or menace; and, indeed, expressed equal malignance with the grin of a wild-cat, preparing for the spring. The terror it struck to the bosom of the doctor, was communicated to his friends, who betrayed at first some inclination to enter into the controversy, but ended the heroic impulse in sundry grumbling murmurs.

"A devilish strange fellow as ever I saw!" growled the doctor in the ear of one. "A case of _monomania_, sir; he is mad, sir: yes! I see mania in his eye; he has been hurt on the head, you can tell by the knocks there, the scars on his phys'nomy; and his eye shows the infirmity. So we must humour him, sirs, we must humour him.--'Tis the method; and method is the soul of business."

Thus apologizing for the surrender of his wrath and dignity, the surgeon betook himself again to his patient.

"Hum! hah!" he cried, laying his fingers on Herman's wrist,--"pulse irregular, intermittent.--The struggle between life and death--very low, sir, very low!--Aunt Rachel, make me half a dozen mustard-plasters, roast me a dozen bricks, and get me a coal of fire, to try if there's any feeling in him. One dare not bleed with such a pulse as this."

Green listened with visible impatience to the physician; and then, with as little consideration as before, exclaimed,

"What needs all these knick-knackeries? Clap this shoulder into place, and then think of them."

"My friend," said the doctor, his indignation supplying the place of courage, "I don't like to offend the feelings of any man; but you talk like an ass. Method is the soul of business; and there is no method in reducing a luxation for a man hovering upon the brink of the grave, unless you may consider the act a method of helping him into it. No, sir; the violence of the operation would do his business as expeditiously as a thump over the head with a tomahawk, which I think, as you are an Indian trader and fighter, you know something about. Yes, sir; I'll allow you to be a complete master of the science of tomahawking, skinning, and scalping; but when you come to talk of bones and dislocations, then, sir, I say, in the words of the Latin poet, _Ne sudor ultra crepidam_--I don't know whether it is _sudor_ or _sutor_; but it means, 'Mind your own business.'"

"I speak of nothing but what I know," replied Green, impatiently; "and I say, now is the time to fix the bone with the least trouble. Feel the lad's muscles; they are as loose and limber as a girl's in a swoon; wait till he opens his eyes, and you will find them as tough as ash-boughs. So go to work, doctor; for if you don't, _I_ will--I have clapped a bone in place before now. So, doctor, you or John Green, the York trader; and much good may it do you, when I tell the folks up the river how I out-doctored you!"

The argument was conclusive, and luckily it was given more in the spirit of persuasion than command; Dr. Merribody condescended to adopt the advice of the rude philosopher. As he had intimated, the muscles of the sufferer were in a condition so relaxed, that it required but little effort to restore the bone to its place.

"There! it is done!" cried the surgeon, triumphantly; "but it hurt him like the mischief! He groaned as if I had been cutting his throat. Now for the mustard-plasters"----

"Now, if you please," said the trader, "for your lancet; and leave such things for the old women."

The doctor was again offended; but the interference of his adviser had effected one desirable object, and he now thought him worthy of remonstrance:

"This, my friend," said he, striking his attitude, sinking his voice to its most majestic depth, and stretching forth his hand, to give emphasis to the oration,--"this is a case of concussion of the brain,--that is, while considered without reference to other minor injuries, such as the wound, the fracture, and the luxation. In concussion, sir, I would have you to understand, sir, the practitioner has to contend, or rather to provide beforehand, sir, against two insidious and dangerous consequences, _videlicet_ depression and inflammation. Ehem, sir! do you understand that? If you don't, sir, you are no better than a--I won't say numskull, sir,--but something of that sort. Bleeding may undoubtedly prevent the latter, but it may as certainly aggravate the former,--it may sink the patient into the grave,--it may send him to the devil,--it may"--

"Open his eyes, and so rob the doctor of a patient," said the trader, gruffly. "Do you see how the blood begins to flush over his face? do you hear how hard he draws his breath? Bleed him, and he opens his eyes; warm him with bricks, and plasters, and such stuff, and he will have a brain-fever. Come, doctor, I'll take the blame. If it should hurt him, why a vein is easier stopped than a fool's mouth."

"_Probatum est_," muttered the physician; "for nothing but a gag could do that for one that shall be nameless.--The fellow has some gumption, though," he muttered to himself. "Well, I'll bleed him but I _should_ like to put Dan Potts, the raftsman, on him, or some such two-fisted fellow, and have him drubbed for his insolence! yes, I should like it!"

And grinning with the agreeableness of the fancy, the doctor phlebotomized the patient.

The wisdom of the trader's suggestion was again shown in the event. The blood, at first merely oozing in drops from the vein, at last gathered strength and volume, and the poor painter opened his eyes, and rolled them wildly from person to person. The trader surveyed him for a moment with a much gentler visage than he had hitherto displayed; then turning to the doctor, he said, softly, as if to avoid disturbing the patient,

"Now you can bind up the broken bone at leisure. Only keep him quiet, and the hurt is nothing. I did not mean to offend you, doctor--I have a rough way with me. Treat the young man well, and he will soon recover."

With these words, he took up his hat, left the apartment, and was soon heard stepping from the porch down to the avenue through the lawn.

"An impudent, ignoramus, unconscionable, rascal, with no manners, and half mad!" growled the doctor, giving his indignation full swing.

"A wasp-mouthed, sharp-tongued, malicious savage!" exclaimed his friends; and even the matron, who had all the time bustled about, seemingly regardless of all conversation that was not specially directed towards herself, concluded the chorus, by muttering,

"And a man that never goes to meeting, I warrant me!"

"Let's have candles here, Aunt Rachel!" cried the doctor, indulging his importance, in all the joy of liberation from restraint. "It is as dark as--oh! here they come, eh? Hark! there's horses' feet in the park! They're coming back from the Rest.--Bless my soul! I forgot all about the murder and the assassin! Hope they don't bring him here, slashed all to pieces by the soldiers; work enough on hand for one surgeon.--Only a simple fracture, after all! Hold the splints here, Jingleum. Don't be distressed, sir; won't hurt you more than I can possibly help."

With these words, the surgeon proceeded to tie up the fractured limb, the painter having recovered so far as to be able to wince and groan to the heart's content of the practitioner. Before the operation was concluded, Captain Loring came puffing and blowing into the room, and being instantly assailed by the doctor's friends with anxious questions concerning the result of the late assault upon the Traveller's Rest, answered in his usual hurried and broken manner,--

"Bird flown, adzooks--beat retreat in time,--struck colours, crossed the river; young Brooks and a posse after him; will have him before morning,--we will, by the lord! But, adzooks, here's my young painter that's to paint me that picture. Hark ye, Harman What-d'-ye-call-it, my boy," he exclaimed, taking a seat on the bed-side, and speaking with rough hospitality; "glad to see your eyes open. Mean to treat you as well as if you were my son Tom. How do you feel now, hark ye, my lad? What the plague sent you tumbling down the rocks, hah? A mighty stupid trick, that, adzooks! How d'e do?"

The young man's wits were not yet clear enough to comprehend the question, or to digest a reply. He merely turned his eyes, with a wild and ghastly stare, upon the interrogator, and then rolled them vacantly from one individual of the company to another. He sighed heavily, and mumbled a little, as the doctor proceeded to secure the splints, but made no resistance.

"I don't like that stare," cried the Captain; "he looks as wild out of the eyes as a squeezed frog; and that's no good sign. I remember me, Tom Loring stared the same way, when the doctor was fishing for the bullet among his ribs. He'll never live to paint me that picture! He'll die, doctor, won't he?"

"Can't venture to say, Captain," replied Merribody; "a very critical situation, sir, a very critical situation. But I never despair, sir; for while there's life there's hope. My preceptor, the late celebrated Dr. Bones, of Bucks county, used to tell his patients, 'he never despaired till he heard the joiners screwing up the coffin.' A very good rule, that, sir! We'll hope, sir, we'll hope. Pulse very full and vigorous--will take a little more blood, and remain a few hours to watch him."

"Stay all night," said the Captain; "won't let you go, sir."

"As to staying all night, Captain," said the physician, with an air, "I can't say. Must look to my patients in the village----but will stay to tea with great pleasure. Jingleum, hold the basin!"

The practitioner removed the bandage from the vein he had before opened, and (the Captain, in the meanwhile, hobbling out to inquire into the condition of Catherine,) had soon the pleasure of seeing his patient recover his wits so far as to be able to answer questions, though he displayed a much greater inclination to ask them.

His first demand was, "What's the matter? what ails my head, and my arm? and who are you all here about me?--Oh! ay!" he continued, "I remember--that confounded brook! I vow to Heaven, I thought I saw a ghost, though 'twas broad daylight! Heavens! how my shoulder aches, and my arm, how it twinges! Are you a doctor? Where's Elsie?"

"Well, now, I warrant me, doctor," whispered Aunt Rachel, "he begins to wander."

"My dear sir," said the physician, "I must beg you to hold your tongue. Take this cooling draught, and go to sleep; and, for your comfort, know that you are now in much better quarters than you could have had at old witch Elsie's. You are now in Captain Loring's house."

"In Captain Loring's! What, Avondale? Gilbert's Folly," cried the painter, starting up.

"Be quiet, sir," cried Merribody. "Lie down, and keep yourself quiet; or I won't insure your life two hours."

"Nonsense, sir," cried the patient, petulantly. "I will dress, and get me to the Rest forthwith; and I warn you to take your hand from my shoulder; for, besides that, you hurt me insufferably, I don't choose to be treated like a prisoner of war, nor to be quartered on strangers."

"I warn you," cried the physician.----"There! was there ever such a dolt?--Hartshorn, Jingleum!"

The painter's resolution was greater than his ability. His struggle to arise upset the little strength he had remaining, and he fell back almost immediately in a swoon. When recovered again from this, he seemed sufficiently sensible of his impotent and helpless condition; but was still reluctant to remain where he was. He conjured the doctor to have him carried in a coach, an arm-chair, a cart,--in any thing,--but certainly to have him carried to the widow's hovel. Then, discovering the physician to be inflexible, he lowered his tone, consented to remain in the Captain's house, but implored so earnestly that he should send immediately for old Elsie to nurse him, that the doctor's heart was moved, and he condescended to argue the matter:

"Sir," said he, "I never saw a man with such ridiculous notions. Mrs. Rachel Jones here is the best nurse in the world. Old Elsie Bell is a witch and an ignoramus, and knows no more about nursing than she does about Greek; and she would poison you with some quack weed or another. I never trust these old women, that ramble about among the woods. And then, sir, what makes you think she will come to you? Why, sir, it is notorious, she never comes nigh the Folly; they say she swore an oath, when the Hawks were driven out, never to cross the threshold again, until they returned to it. Sir, a lady in this house has as much as admitted, that the old hag refused to come to it point-blank, a dozen times over. She won't come."

"Try her," murmured the patient, eagerly. "Say, I conjure her to come to me; tell her I am sick, dying, and will trust nobody's nursing but her's. And, hark'e, doctor, where's my waistcoat? There's a key there--it opens my saddle-bags----that's it! Send it to her; bid her fetch me some linen, and such things as she thinks I may want. My life upon it, the good old soul will come. Send it, doctor, and I'll take all your vile stuff without grumbling,--yes, all you have the conscience to give me. It is an awful thing to take physic!"

Having prevailed thus upon the physician to send his message and summons to the Rest, though no one perhaps save himself, expected to see it followed by the widow in person, he swallowed, with divers wry faces, the draught repeatedly offered to him before, groaned heavily once or twice, and then turning his face towards the wall, endeavoured to compose himself to sleep, while the physician and all his attendants, save the matron, Mrs. Jones, stole from the chamber.