- -
- 100%
- +
Chapter One.
Modern Skill
“Hallo, Sawbones!”
The speaker raised his head from the white pillow of the massive, old-fashioned four-post bed, and set the ornamental bobs and tags of the heavy bullion fringe upon the great cornice quivering. He was a sharp-faced, cleanly shaven man, freshly scraped, and the barber who had been operating was in the act of replacing his razor and strop as these words were spoken to the calm, thoughtful-looking person who entered the substantially furnished room.
“Good morning, Mr Masters. Had a quiet night?”
“Bah! You know I haven’t. How is a man to have a good night when ten thousand imps are boring into him with red-hot iron, and jigging his nerves till he is half mad! Here, you: be off!”
“Without brushing your hair, sir?”
“Brush a birch broom! My head never wants brushing. You know that.”
He gave himself a jerk, and the short, crisp, wavy grey locks glistened in the bright morning sun, which streamed in through the window.
“Look here; you can cut it to-morrow when you come – if I’m not dead. If I am, you may have a bit to keep in remembrance.”
“Oh, not so bad as that, sir, I hope. Dr Thorpe is too – ”
“That’ll do,” said the man in the bed sharply. “I kept to you because you didn’t chatter like the ordinary barber brood. I may get better, so don’t spoil your character. Be off!”
The barber smiled, bowed, and left the room to doctor and patient.
“Well?” said the latter, meeting his attendant’s searching eye. “I’m not gone.”
“No; and I do not mean to let you go if I can help it.”
“Ho! – But perhaps you can’t.”
“God knows, sir; but I shall do my best. I would rather, though, that you would let me bring in some one in consultation.”
“And I wouldn’t. If you can’t set me right, Thorpe, no one in Boston can. Look here; brought your tools?”
The young doctor smiled.
“Ah, it’s nothing to grin about.”
“No; it is serious enough, my dear sir.”
“Then answer my question. Brought your tools?”
“I have come quite prepared.”
“Then I shan’t have it done.”
Michael Thorpe looked at his patient as if he did not believe him, and the latter continued —
“I say: it’s confoundedly hard that I should suffer like this. Spent all my life slaving, and now at sixty, when I want a little peace and enjoyment, this cursed trouble comes on. Look here, Thorpe; don’t fool about with me. Charge me what you like, but tell me; couldn’t you give me some stuff that would cure it without this operation?”
“Do you want me to be perfectly plain with you, sir, once more?”
“Of course. Do I look the sort of man to be humbugged?”
“Then I must tell you, sir, the simple truth. You may go on for months, perhaps a year, as you are. That is the outside.”
“I wouldn’t go on for a week as I have been, my lad. – But if I have it done?”
“There is no reason why you should not live to be eighty, or a hundred, if you can.”
“Right; I’ll go in for the hundred, Thorpe. I’m tough enough. There, get it over.”
“You will have it done?”
“Of course I will. Don’t kill me, or I’ll come back and haunt you.”
“I should be too glad to see a dear old friend again, so that wouldn’t alarm me,” said Thorpe, examining his patient, who smiled grimly. “I shall not kill you. All I’m afraid of is that I may perform the operation so unskilfully that my labour and your suffering will have been in vain.”
“And then I’ll call you a miserable pretender, and shan’t pay you a cent. Bah! You can do it. I know you, Michael Thorpe, and haven’t watched you for nothing.”
The young surgeon held out his hands to his patient.
“Give me your full confidence, Mr Masters,” he said, “work with me, and I can cure you.”
“Right, my lad. But you had it before,” he cried, grasping the hands extended to him. “I trust you, boy, as I always did your father – God bless him! Now, no more talking. Get to work. I won’t holloa. Where are you going?”
“Only down to the drawing-room to fetch the nurse.”
“Ring for her – she’s downstairs.”
“I mean the other – the professional nurse whom I brought with me.”
“What for?”
“To help me now, and to attend you for a few days afterwards exactly as I wish.”
“Two nurses? One has nearly killed me. Two will be downright murder.”
“No, sir,” said Michael Thorpe, smiling. “The good in one will neutralise all the ill that there may be in the other.”
“Fetch her up, then; and look here, Thorpe; I’m a man, not a weak hysterical girl. None of your confounded chloroform, or anything of that kind.”
“You leave yourself in my hands, please,” said the surgeon, smiling, and going across to the door, which he left open, and then uttering a sharp cough, returned.
A minute later there was a faint rustling sound beyond the heavy curtains, and the patient, frowning heavily, turned his head in the direction of the door. Then the scowl upon his sharp face gave place to a look of wonder and delight as a rather slight, dark-haired girl, in a closely fitting black dress and white-bibbed apron, advanced towards him, with her large dark eyes beaming sympathy, and a smile, half pitying, half affectionate, played about her well-formed, expressive lips.
“Cornel!” he cried. “Why, my dear little girl, this is good of you to come and see me. I thought it was the nurse.”
He stretched out his hands, drew the girl to him, and kissed her tenderly on both cheeks, and then on the lips, before sinking back with the tears in his eyes – two utter strangers, which, possibly finding their position novel, hurriedly quitted their temporary resting-place, fell over the sides, and trickled down his cheeks.
“I am the nurse,” came now, in a sweet, silvery voice, as the new-comer began to arrange the pillow in that peculiarly refreshing way only given by loving hands.
“You? Impossible!”
“Oh no, Mr Masters. Michael told me everything, and I was going to offer, when he asked me if I would come and help him.”
“Oh, but nonsense! You, my child! It would be too horrible and disgusting for a young girl like you.”
“Why?” she replied gently. “Michael trusts me, and thinks I carry out his wishes better than a paid servant would.”
“That’s it, my dear sir. I want, both for the sake of an old friend and for my reputation, to make my operation perfectly successful. Cornel here will carry out my instructions to the letter. She will help me too in the operation.”
“But an operation is not fit – not the place for a young girl.”
“Why not?” said Cornel, smiling.
“It is unsexing you, my child.”
“Unsexing me, when I come to help to calm your pain, to nurse you back to health and strength! A woman never unsexes herself in proving a help to those who suffer. Besides, I have often helped my brother before.”
Meanwhile the surgeon had busied himself at a table upon which he had placed a mahogany case. He had had his back to them, but now turned and advanced to the bed, with a little silver implement in his hand.
“Now, my dear sir, a little manly fortitude and patience, and you may believe me when I tell you that there is nothing to fear.”
“Who is afraid?” said the old man sharply. “But what’s that?”
“A little apparatus for injecting an anaesthetic.”
“I said I wouldn’t have anything of the kind,” cried the patient angrily. “I can and will bear it.”
“But I cannot and will not,” said the surgeon, smiling. “You could not help wincing and showing your suffering. That would trouble, perhaps unnerve me, and I could not work so well.”
“What are you going to do? – give me chloroform?”
“No; I am going to inject a fluid that will dull the sensitive nerves of the part, and place you in such a condition that you will lose all sense of suffering.”
“And if I don’t come to?”
“You will not for some time. Now, old friend, show me your confidence. Are you ready?”
There was a long, deep-drawn breath, a look at the young girl’s patient, trust-giving face and then Ezekiel Masters, one of the wealthiest men in Boston, said calmly —
“Yes.”
A few minutes later he was lying perfectly insensible, and breathing as gently as an infant. “Can you repeat that from time to time, as I tell you?” said the surgeon.
“Yes, dear.”
“Without flinching?”
“Yes. It is to save him. I shall not shrink.”
“Then I depend upon you.”
Busy minutes followed, with the patient lying perfectly unconscious.
“How long could he be kept like this, Michael?” whispered Cornel, whose face looked very white.
“As long as you wished – comparatively. Don’t talk; you hinder me.”
“As long as I liked,” thought Cornel, with her eyes dilating as she gazed at the patient, with the little syringe in her hand, and the stoppered bottle, from which the fluid was taken, close by – “as long as I liked, and he as if quite dead. What an awful power to hold within one’s grasp!”
Chapter Two.
The Certain Person
“Hah!”
A long-drawn sigh of content, which made Cornelia Thorpe emerge from her chair behind the bed-curtains, and bend over to lay her soft white hand upon the patient’s forehead, but only for it to be taken and held to his lips.
“Well, angel?” he said quietly.
“Your head is quite cool; there is no fever. Have you had a good night’s rest?”
“Good, my child? It has been heavenly. I seemed to sink at once into a delicious dreamless sleep, such as I have not known for a year, and I feel as if I had not stirred all night.”
“You have not.”
“Then you have watched by me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Hah!” There was a pause. Then: “You must have given me a strong dose?”
“No,” said Cornel, smiling. “Your sleep was quite natural. Why should it not be? Michael says the cause of all your suffering is completely removed, and that he has been successful beyond his hopes.”
The old man lay holding his nurse’s hand, and gazing at her fair, innocent face intently for some minutes before breaking the silence again.
“When was it?” he said at last.
“A week to-day, and in another month you may be up again.”
“Hah! And they say there are no miracles now, and no angels upon earth,” said the patient, half to himself. Then more loudly, “Cornel, my child, I think I must turn over a new leaf.”
“Don’t,” she said, smiling. “I like the old page. You have always been my fathers dear friend – always good and kind.”
“I? Bah! A regular money-scraping, harsh tyrant. A regular miser.”
“Nonsense, Mr Masters.”
“Then I’ll prove it. I won’t pay Michael his fees, nor you your wages for nursing me – not till I’m dead. Well, have I said something funny? Why do you laugh?”
“I smiled because I felt pleased.”
“Because I’m better?”
“Yes; and because you are not going to insult Michael, nor your nurse, by offering us – ”
“Dollars? Humph! There, let’s talk about something else. Does Michael still hold to that insane notion of going to Europe?”
“Oh yes; we should have been there now, if it had not been for your illness.”
“Then he gave it up for a time, because I wanted him to attend me?”
Cornel bowed her head.
“Humph! Sort of madness to want to go at all. Isn’t America big enough for him?”
“Of course,” said Cornel, laughing gently; and now the air of the nurse appeared to have dropped away, to give place to the bright happy look of a girl of twenty. “Surely it is not madness to want to increase his knowledge by a little study at the English and French hospitals. Besides, it was our father’s wish.”
“Yes; Jack was very mad about the English doctors, when there was not one who could touch him. I say, though: Michael is going to be as clever.”
“I hope so,” said Cornel, with animation. “He studies very hard.”
“Yes, he’s a clever one, girl; and Jack Thorpe would have been very proud of him if he had lived. But, I say – ”
Cornel looked inquiringly in the keen eyes which searched her face.
“You really want to go with your brother?”
“Yes,” she said with animation – “I should very much like to go.”
“To study with him in the English and French hospitals?”
“I should like him to take me round with him,” she said, with her cheeks growing slightly tinged. “I am always interested in his cases, and surely a woman is none the worse for a little surgical and medical knowledge.”
“A precious deal better, my dear. But, I say – ”
“Yes, dear guardian,” she said, with a sweet, thrilling modulation now in her tones, as her eyes grew dim, and she laid both her little hands in the patient’s.
“I promised your father I’d always have an eye on you two, and I don’t think I ought to let you think of going, Cornel dear.”
She was silent.
“Isn’t it a sort of madness for you – to – eh? You know.”
“To love and keep my faith to Armstrong Dale?” she said gently; and the love-light shone brightly in the eyes which met the old man’s now without shrinking.
“Yes; that’s what I meant, little one. I don’t know how you could get yourself engaged to him.”
Cornel laughed gently – a pleasant, silvery little laugh, which seemed to do the patient good, for he smiled and listened to the last note of the musical sounds. But he grew serious, and there was a cynicism in his tones as he went on.
“I don’t believe in him, my girl. He’s good-looking and a bit clever; but when you have said that, you have said all.”
A little white finger was laid upon the speaker’s lips, but he went on.
“I know: he gammoned you with his love nonsense, but if he had been the fellow I took him for, he’d have stayed here in Boston and painted and glazed. Painted you. Painted me – glazed me too, if he had liked. What did he want to go and study at Rome and Paris and London for? We’ve cleverer people in the States than out there.”
“To get breadth, and learn his own failings,” said Cornel gently.
“Hadn’t any – I mean he was full of ’em, of course. Couldn’t have loved you, or he’d have stopped at home.”
“It was to show his love for me, and to try and make himself a master of his art, that he went away,” said Cornel, with a look of faith and pride in her eyes.
“Bah! He has forgotten you by this time. Give him up, puss. He’ll never come back. He’ll marry some fine madam in the old country.”
Cornel winced, and her eyes dilated as these words stung her; but the pang was momentary, and she laughed in the full tide of her happy trust in the man she loved.
“You mark my words, Cornel,” said the old man; “that fellow will throw you over, and then that will set your monkey up, and you’ll come and ask me to marry you, and I will. The folks ’ll all laugh, but let ’em. We shall be all right, little one. I shall have a sweet little nurse and housekeeper to take care of me to the end, and you’ll have an ugly, cantankerous old husband, who won’t live very long, and will die and leave you a million dollars, so that you can laugh at the whole world, and be the prettiest little widow in Boston – bah! in the whole States – and with too much good sense to throw yourself away. – Who’s that?”
“Doctor,” said Michael Thorpe, entering. “How is he, Cornel?”
“Getting better fast; so well this morning that he is saying all kinds of harsh and cruel things.”
“Capital sign,” said the young surgeon. – “Yes, capital. Why, you are splendid, Mr Masters, and at the end of only a week.”
“Oh, I’m better. Only said you were mad to want to go to Europe; and that she’s worse to pin her faith to a gad-about artist who’ll only break her heart.”
Michael Thorpe’s stern, thoughtful face expanded into a pleasant smile.
“Yes, Cornel dear,” he said; “there’s no doubt about it; he’s mending fast. I’ll book my cabin in one of the Allan boats for about the beginning of next month. You will not be able to go.”
Chapter Three.
A Fair Client
A noble-looking specimen of humanity, with a grand grizzly head, and strongly marked aquiline features, lit up by deeply set, piercing eyes, got out of a four-wheeler at Number 409 Portland Place, knocking off a very shabby hat in the process.
“Mind the nap, guv’nor,” said the battered-looking driver with a laugh, as his fare stooped to pick up the fallen edifice; and as he spoke, the man’s look took in the ill-fitting coat and patched boots of him whom he had driven only from Fitzroy Square.
“Not the first time that’s been down, cabby. Hand ’em off.”
A minute later, Daniel Jaggs, familiarly known in art circles as “The Emperor,” and by visitors to the Royal Academy from his noble face, which had appeared over the bodies of noble Romans and heroes of great variety, stood on the pavement with an easel under one arm, a large blank canvas under the other, and a flat japanned box of oil colours and case of brushes held half hidden by beard, beneath his chin.
He walked up to the door of the great mansion, whose window-sills and portico were gay with fresh flowers, and gave a vigorous tug at the bell.
The double doors flew open almost directly, and “The Emperor” was faced by a portly butler, who was flanked by a couple of men in livery.
“Oh! the painters traps,” said the former. “Look here, my good fellow; you should have rung the other bell. Step inside.”
“The Emperor” obeyed, and, leaving the visitor waiting in the handsome hall, in company with the footman and under-butler, who looked rather superciliously at the well-worn garments of the artist’s model, the out-of-livery servant walked slowly up the broad staircase to the drawing-room, and as slowly returned, to stand beckoning.
“You are to bring them up yourself,” he said haughtily.
Daniel Jaggs placed his hat upon one of the crest-blazoned hall chairs, loaded himself well with the artistic impedimenta, and then went forward to the foot of the stairs up which the butler was leading the way, when, hearing a sound, he turned sharply.
“Here! Hi!” he cried loudly; “what are you going to do with that ’at?”
For one of the footmen was putting it out of sight, disgusted with the appearance of the dirty lining.
“Hush! Recollect where you are,” whispered the butler. “Her ladyship will hear.”
“But that’s my best ’at,” grumbled the model, and then he subsided into silence as he was ushered into a magnificently furnished room; the door was closed behind him, and he stood staring round, thinking of backgrounds, when there was the rustling of silk, and “The Emperor” was dazzled, staring, as he told himself, at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
Valentina, Contessa Dellatoria, was worthy of the man’s admiration as she stood there with her dark eyes half veiled by their long lashes, in all the proud matured beauty of a woman of thirty, who could command every resource of jewel and robe to heighten the charms with which nature had liberally endowed her. She was beautiful; she knew it; and at those moments, eager with anticipations which had heightened the colour in her creamy cheeks, and the lustre in her eyes, she stood ready to be amused as she thoroughly grasped the meaning of the man’s astonished gaze.
“You have brought those from Mr Dale, have you not?” she said at last, in a rich, soft voice.
“Yes, my lady. I ’ave, my lady. The heasel and canvas, my lady.”
“Perhaps you had better bring them into this room.”
“Yes, my lady – of course, my lady,” said the model eagerly, as he blundered after the Contessa, “The Emperor’s” rather shambling movements, being due to a general looseness of joint, in no wise according with the majesty of his head and face.
“Yes; about there. That will do; they are sure to be moved.”
“Oh yes, my lady, on account of the light. Mr Dale’s very partickler.”
“Indeed? Will he be here soon?”
“Direc’ly, I should say, my lady. He bordered me to bring on his traps.”
“From his studio?” said the lady, sinking into a chair, and taking a purse from a little basket on a table.
“The Emperor’s” eyesight was very good, and the movement suggested pleasant things. The lady, too, seemed disposed to question him, and he winked to himself mentally, as he glanced at the beautiful face before him, thought of his employer’s youth and good looks, and then had sundry other thoughts, such as might occur to a man of a very ordinary world.
But his hands were not idle; they were as busy as his thoughts, and he spread the legs of the easel, and altered the position of the pegs ready for the canvas.
“Will you take this – for your trouble?” came in that soft, rich, thrilling voice.
“Oh no – thank you, my lady – that ain’t necessary,” said the man hastily, as his fingers closed over the coin extended with a smile by fingers glittering with jewels. – “A suv, by jingo,” he added to himself.
“Are you Mr Dale’s servant?”
“No, ma’am – my lady. Oh, dear, no. An old friend – that is, you know, I sit for him – and stand. I’m in a many of his pictures.”
“Oh, I see. He takes your portrait?”
“Well, no, my lady; portraits is quite another line. I meant for his gennery pictures.”
“Genre?”
“Yes, my lady. I was standing for Crackticus that day when you and his lordship come to the studio.”
“Indeed? I did not see you.”
“No, my lady. I had to go into the next room. You see I was a hancient Briton, and not sootable for or’nary society ’cept in a picture. – I think that’ll do, my lady. He’ll alter it to his taste.”
“Yes, but – er – does Mr Dale paint many portraits of ladies?” said the Contessa, detaining the model as he made as if to depart.
“Oh no, my lady. I never knew him do such a thing afore. He never works away from his studio, and he went on a deal about having to come here – er – that is – of course, he did not know,” added the man hastily.
The Contessa smiled.
“But he has painted the human countenance a great deal? I mean the faces of ladies. There were several of nymphs in his Academy picture this year – beautiful women.”
“The Emperor” smiled and shook his head.
“On’y or’nary models, my lady. He made ’em look beautiful. That’s art, my lady.”
“Then he had sitters for that picture?” she asked, rather eagerly.
“Oh yes, my lady; but Lor’ bless you! it isn’t much you’d think of them. He’s a doing a picture now – a tayblow about Juno making a discovery over something. Her good man wasn’t quite what he ought to have been, my lady, and she’s in a reg’lar rage.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, my lady; and he tried all the reg’lar lady models – spent no end on ’em, but they none of ’em wouldn’t do.”
“Not beautiful enough?”
“He didn’t think so, my lady, though, as I told him, it was too much to expeck to get one as was perfeck. You see in art, to make our best studies, we has to do a deal of patching.”
“Painting the picture over and over again?”
“Your ladyship does not understand. It’s like this: many of our best tayblows of goddesses and nymphs is made up. One model does for the face, another for the arms and hands, another for busties and – I beg your ladyship’s pardon; I was only talking art.”
“I understand. I take a great deal of interest in the subject.”
“Thankye, my lady. I told Mr Dale as it was expecting too much to get a perfeck woman for a model, for there wasn’t such a thing in nature. But, all hignorance, my lady, all hignorance. I hadn’t seen your ladyship then. I beg your ladyship’s pardon for being so bold.”
“The Emperor” had seen the dreamy dark eyes open wide and flash angrily, but the look changed back to the listless, half-contemptuous again, and the lady said with a smile —
“Granted. – That will do. I suppose you will fetch Mr Dale’s easel when it is removed?”
“I hope so, my lady, and thank you kindly. So generous! Never forget it, and – oh! I beg your pardon, sir.”
“The Emperor” had been backing toward the door, and nearly came in contact with a short, slight, carefully dressed, middle-aged man – that is to say, he was about forty-five, looked sixty-five the last thing at night, and as near thirty-five as his valet could make him in the day.
He gazed keenly at the noble features of the man who towered over him, and “The Emperor” returned the gaze, noting, from a professional point of view, the rather classic Italian mould of the features, disfigured by a rather weak sensual mouth, and dark eyes too closely set.