Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 10

"It will be necessary, then, that I see your physician?" asked Mr.

Halliburton.

"Yes. It cannot be dispensed with. We would not insure without it. He attends here twice a week. In the intervening days, he may be seen in Savile-row, from three to five. It is Dr. Carrington. His days for coming here are Mondays and Thursdays."

"And this is Friday," remarked Mr. Halliburton. "I shall probably go up to him."

Mr. Halliburton said good morning, and came away with his paper. "It's great nonsense, my seeing this doctor!" he said to himself as he hastened home to dinner, which he knew he must have kept waiting. "But I suppose it is necessary as a general rule; and of course they won't make me an exception."

Hurrying over his dinner, in a manner that prevented its doing him any good--as Jane a.s.sured him--he sat down to his desk when it was over and wrote for the certificate of his birth. Folding and sealing the letter, he put on his hat to go out again.

"Shall you go to Savile-row this afternoon?" Jane inquired.

"If I can by any possibility get my teaching over in time," he answered.

"Young Finchley's hour is four o'clock, but I can put him off until the evening. I dare say I shall get up there."

By dint of hurrying, Mr. Halliburton contrived to reach Savile-row, and arrived there in much heat at half-past four. There was no necessity for hurrying there on this particular day, but he felt impatient to get the business over; as if speed now could atone for past neglect. Dr.

Carrington was at home but engaged, and Mr. Halliburton was shown into a room. Three or four others were waiting there; whether ordinary patients, or whether mere applicants of form like himself, he could not tell; and it was their turn to go in before it was his.

But his turn came at last, and he was ushered into the presence of the doctor--a little man, fair and reserved, with powder on his head.

Reserved in ordinary intercourse, but certainly not reserved in asking questions. Mr. Halliburton had never been so rigidly questioned before.

What disorders had he had, and what had he not had? What were his habits, past and present? One question came at last: "Do you feel thoroughly strong?--healthy, elastic?"

"I feel languid in hot weather," replied Mr. Halliburton.

"Um! Appet.i.te sound and good?"

"Generally speaking. It has not been so good of late."

"Breathing all right?"

"Yes; it is a little tight sometimes."

"Um! Subject to a cough?"

"I have no settled cough. A sort of hacking cough comes on at night occasionally. I attribute it to fatigue."

"Um! Will you open your s.h.i.+rt? Just unb.u.t.ton it here"--touching the front--"and your flannel waistcoat, if you wear one."

Mr. Halliburton bared his chest in obedience and the doctor sounded it, and then put down his ear. Apparently his ear did not serve him sufficiently, for he took a small instrument out of a drawer, placed it on the chest, and then put his ear to that, changing the position of the instrument three or four times.

"That will do," he said at length.

He turned to put up his stethoscope again, and Mr. Halliburton drew the edges of his s.h.i.+rt together and b.u.t.toned them.

"Why don't you wear flannel waistcoats?" asked the doctor, with quite a sharp accent, his head down in the drawer.

"I do wear them in winter; but in warm weather I leave them off. It was only last week that I discarded them."

"Was ever such folly known!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dr. Carrington. "One would think people were born without common sense. Half the patients who come to me say they leave off their flannels in summer! Why, it is in summer they are most needed! And this warm weather won't last either. Go home, sir, and put one on at once."

"Certainly, if you think it right," said Mr. Halliburton with a smile.

"I thank you for telling me."

He took up his hat and waited. The doctor appeared to wait _for him to go_. "I understood at the office that you would give me a paper testifying that you had examined me," explained Mr. Halliburton.

"Ah--but I can't give it," said the doctor.

"Why not, sir?"

"Because I am not satisfied with you. I cannot recommend you as a healthy life."

Mr. Halliburton's pulses quickened a little. "Sir!" he repeated. "Not a healthy life?"

"Not sufficiently healthy for insurance."

"Why! what is the matter with me?" he rejoined.

Dr. Carrington looked him full in the face for the s.p.a.ce of a minute before replying. "I have had that question asked me before by parties whom I have felt obliged to decline as I am now declining you," he said, "and my answer has not always been palatable to them."

"It will be palatable to me, sir; in so far as that I desire to be made acquainted with the truth. What do you find amiss with me?"

"The lungs are diseased."

A chill fell over Mr. Halliburton. "Not extensively, I trust? Not beyond hope of recovery?"

"Were I to say not extensively, I should be deceiving you; and you tell me that you wish for the truth. They are extensively diseased----"

A mortal pallor overspread Mr. Halliburton's face, and he sank into a chair. "Not for myself," he gasped, as Dr. Carrington drew nearer to him. "I have a wife and children. If I die, they will want bread to eat."

"But you did not hear me out," returned the doctor, proceeding with equanimity, as if he had not been interrupted. "They are extensively diseased, but not beyond a hope of recovery. I do not say it is a strong hope; but a hope there is, as I judge, provided you use the right means and take care of yourself."

"What am I to do? What are the means?"

"You live, I presume, in this stifling, foggy, smoky London."

"Yes."

"Then got away from it. Go where you can have pure air and a clear atmosphere. That's the first and chief thing; and that's most essential.

Not for a few weeks or months, you understand me--going out for a change of air, as people call it--you must leave London entirely; go away altogether."

"But it will be impossible," urged Mr. Halliburton. "My work lies in London."

"Ah!" said the doctor; "too many have been with me with whom it was the same case. But, I a.s.sure you that you must leave it; or it will be London _versus_ life. You appear to me to be one who never ought to have come to London----You were not born in it?" he abruptly added.

"I never saw it until I was eighteen. I was born and reared in Devons.h.i.+re."

"Just so. I knew it. Those born and reared in London become acclimatized to it, generally speaking, and it does not hurt them. It does not hurt numbers who are strangers: they find London as healthy a spot for them as any on the face of the globe. But there are a few who cannot and ought not to live in London; and I judge you to be one of them."