All Men are Ghosts Part 8

ALL MEN ARE GHOSTS

I

DR PIECRAFT BECOMES CONFUSED

"'To be or not to be--that is the _question_,' said Hamlet: 'To be is not to be--that is the _answer_,' said Hegel."

Dr Phippeny Piecraft invented this couplet one night for his own edification, as, inert in body and despondent in mind, he lay back in the arm-chair of his consulting-room. "There is more point," he went on, "in Hamlet's 'question' than in Hegel's 'answer.' But the gospel is not in either. Both are futile as physic. At all events, neither of them brings any consolation to me."

Dr Piecraft was reflecting on the hardness of his lot. Ten years had elapsed since he first mounted his bra.s.s plate, and he was still virtually without a practice. He earned just enough from casual patients to pay his rent and keep body and soul together. To be sure, his father had left him a hundred a year; but Piecraft had given the old man a promise "that he would look after Jim." Now Jim was a half-brother, many years younger than himself; and he was also the one being in the world whom Piecraft loved with an undivided heart. So the whole of his income from that source was ear-marked for the boy's education; not for worlds would the doctor have spent a penny of it on himself. He even denied himself cigars, of which he was exceedingly fond, restricting himself to the cheapest of tobacco, in order that Jim might have plenty of pocket-money; and whenever the question arose as to who was to have a new suit of clothes, Jim or the doctor, it was always Jim who went smart and the doctor who went shabby.

He was over forty years of age, and, in his own eyes, a failure. Yet no man could have done more to deserve success. His medical qualifications were of the widest and highest; diplomas of all sorts covered the walls of his consulting-room; a gold medal for cerebral pathology lay in a gla.s.s case on his writing-table. He was actively abreast of advancing medical science; he had run into debt that he might keep himself supplied with the best literature of his profession, and he was prepared at a moment's notice to treat a difficult case in the light of the latest discoveries at Paris, St Petersburg, or New York. Moreover, he had led a clean life, and was known among his friends as a man of irreproachable honour. But somehow the patients seemed to avoid him, and only once in two years had he been summoned to a consultation.

To account for Piecraft's failure as a medical man several theories were in circulation, and it is probable that each of them contained an element of truth. Some persons would set it down to the shabbiness of his appearance, or to the brusqueness of his manners, or to the fact that his consulting-room often reeked with the fumes of cheap tobacco.

Others would say that Piecraft was const.i.tutionally unable to practise those "intelligent hesitations" so often needed in the application of medical principles. They would remind you of his fatal tendency to determine diagnosis on a sudden impulse, which Piecraft called "psychological intuition," and in ill.u.s.tration of this they would tell you a story: how once, when the vicar's wife had brought her petted daughter to be treated for hysteria, the fit happening to come on in the consulting-room, Piecraft had cured the young lady on the spot by soundly boxing her ears. Concerning this incident he had been taken severely to task by an intimate friend of his, an old pract.i.tioner of standing. "It will be time enough to adopt those methods of treatment,"

the friend had said to him, "when you are earning five thousand a year.

At the present stage of your career it is almost fatal. Learn so to treat a patient that the story of the cure when subsequently related after dinner may have the characteristics of High Tragedy, or at all events may reflect some credit on the sufferer. Help him to create a drama, and see to it that he comes out ultimately as its hero. Don't you see that in the present instance you have spoilt a moving story, than which nothing gives greater offence, turning the whole situation into Low Comedy and making the patient a laughing-stock? People will never stand that, Piecraft. It is idle to insist that the cure was efficacious and permanent. So no doubt it was. A better remedy for that type of hysteria could not be devised. But reflect on the fact that you have deprived the vicar's family of a legitimate opportunity for dramatic expression and dethroned the vicar's daughter from her place as heroine. In short, you have committed an outrage on the artistic rights of medicine, and, mark my words, you will have to pay for it. Always remember, Piecraft, that in medicine, as in many other things, it is not the act alone which ensures success, but the gesture with which the act is accompanied."

Moreover, Piecraft held a theory which he never took the least pains to conceal, though it was extremely provoking to his patients both rich and poor. His theory was that more than half the ailments of the human body are best treated by leaving them alone. For example, a certain old gentleman having consulted him about some senile malady, the doctor had dismissed him with the following remark: "My dear sir, the best remedy for the troubles of old age is to grow still older. The matter is in your own hands." Many suchlike epigrams were reported of him, and often they const.i.tuted the sole return which the patients received for the two guineas deposited on the table of the consulting-room. Obviously this kind of thing could not go on. As most of his patients consulted Piecraft because they wished to be extensively interfered with, and objected to nothing so much as being left alone, with or without an epigram to console them, it followed of course that they seldom consulted him a second time.

But beneath these peripheral causes of irritation there lay a deeper offence. The truth is that Piecraft had made himself highly obnoxious to the members of his own profession, and had acquired--though I doubt if he fully deserved it--the reputation of a traitor. "Futile as physic"

was a phrase constantly on his lips; and the words, offensive as they were, were only the foam that broke forth from the deeper waters of his treachery. He had gone so far as to embark on a propaganda for what he called "the Simplification of Medical Practice," publicly proposing that a Society should be founded for that object; and in pursuance of this proposal he had published a series of articles in which he had argued that the healing art is still dominated by the spirit of Magic and enc.u.mbered with a ma.s.s of dogmatic a.s.sumptions and superst.i.tious observances. "The Seat of Authority in Therapeutics," "Medicine without Priest and without Ritual," "Big Words and Little Bottles," were the t.i.tles of some of these abominable essays. The last-named especially had aroused great indignation, not only by the excessively vehement language in which Piecraft pleaded for "simple and rational" principles, but far more by a caustic parallel he had drawn between the doings of a successful London pract.i.tioner and the ritual of a medicine-man among the Australian aborigines. The offence went deep, and the matter became the more serious for Piecraft because the indignation extended from the doctors to the theologians, who suspected--though the suspicion was utterly unfounded--that under the cover of an attack on orthodox medicine he was really engaged in putting a knife, from the back, into official religion; a suspicion which deprived the unfortunate doctor of every one of his clerical patients, including their wives and daughters, at a single stroke.

The combined effect of all these causes was, of course, disastrous. If, for example, you happened to be suffering from a severe pain in the head--_le mal des beaux esprits_--which your family doctor had failed to cure, and suggested to the latter that Piecraft, as a distinguished cerebral pathologist, should be summoned to a consultation, you were pretty certain to be met with this rejoinder: "Yes, Piecraft has beyond all question an unrivalled knowledge of the human brain. But please understand that if you call him in I shall have to retire from the case." And if you pressed for further explanation you would at first be put off with airs of mystery which would gradually consolidate into some such statement as this: "Well, in the profession we don't regard Piecraft as a medical man in the strict sense of the term. He is really a literary man who has mistaken his vocation"; or, "Nature intended Piecraft for a popular agitator"; or, "Piecraft's forte is journalism"; or, "Piecraft's t.i.tle of 'doctor' should always be written in inverted commas"; or, "Piecraft is trying to live in two worlds, the world of imagination and the world of pure science; he will come to grief in both of them." And once the prophetic remark was made: "Piecraft's proper role is that of a character in the Arabian Nights." I have been told, too, that one day the Senior Physician of the hospital where Piecraft held a minor appointment overheard him muttering his favourite phrase by the bedside of a patient, "Futile as physic! futile as physic!"

Whereupon the Senior Physician stepped up to him and, laying his hand on his shoulder in the kindest possible manner, whispered in his ear, "Resign, Piecraft; resign!"

Dr Phippeny Piecraft had no belief in the immortality of the soul: his studies in cerebral pathology had disposed of that question long ago.

"What a philosopher most requires," he used to reflect, "is not so much a big brain of his own as a little knowledge of the brains of other people. Hamlet, for example, if he had studied Yorick's brain instead of sentimentalising over his skull, might have framed his question differently. And as to Hegel--well, that thing knocked all the Hegelism out of me," and he glanced at the gold medal in the gla.s.s case.

But, like many another man who disbelieves in the future life, Dr Piecraft was not a little curious as to what might happen to him after death. He was indulging that curiosity on the very evening we first encounter him. "There is a pill in that little bottle," he was thinking, "which would end the whole wretched business in something less than thirty seconds. I wonder I don't swallow it. I should do it if it were not for Jim. But no, I shouldn't! Hamlet, old boy, you were quite right. I'm as big a coward as the rest of them. There's just a chance that if I were to swallow that pill I should find myself in h.e.l.l-fire in half a minute--and I'm not fool enough, or not hero enough, to run it.

Of course, there's just a chance of heaven too; for, after all, I've been a decent sort of chap, and, as Stevenson says, there's an ultimate decency in the Universe. _Heaven!_--my stars, heaven doesn't attract me!

I've never yet heard a description of heaven which doesn't make it almost as bad as the other place. Extraordinary, that when people try to conceive a better world than this they almost invariably picture something infinitely worse! Mahomet knew that: 'cute fellow, Mahomet.

And yet he was no more successful than the rest."

Piecraft's reflections, once started on that line, plunged further. "I wonder what sort of heaven _would_ attract me," he thought. "Let me see.

Why, yes! If I could be sure of going to a place where I should be professionally busy all day long, plenty of interesting and difficult cases, and no need to worry about Jim's education and his future--I'd swallow the pill this instant. _By heaven_, I would! I'd do harder things than that. I'd stick it out in this wretched hole for another ten years, I'd give up smoking s.h.a.g, I'd give up everything, except Jim--if only at the end of the time I could go to some heaven where the stream of patients would never cease! I really don't think I could accept salvation on any other terms. But wait! Yes, there is just one other offer I would look at. If only they'd let me go back to the old home in Gower Street, if they'd make the old street _look_ as it did in those days, and _smell_ as it did, and give tobacco the same taste it had then, and show me Dad standing at the window with Jim in his arms, and let me be in love again with that nice girl at the Slade School--yes, and if they'd let me go into the s.h.i.+lling seats at the Lyceum to see Mary Anderson as Perdita--by Gad, I'd take the pill for that, indeed I would!"

He was pursuing these reflections when his housekeeper entered the room with three or four letters. He looked them over, and his face brightened when he saw that one of them was from his half-brother Jim. A pipe was instantly filled and Piecraft re-settled himself in his arm-chair with the open letter in his hand. Jim's letter was dated from Harrow and ran as follows:--

"DEAR PHIP,--Many thanks for your congratulations on my eighteenth birthday and for the enclosure of two pounds. Don't be angry, old chap, when I tell you how I spent them. I got leave at once to go down town, and bought you a silk hat, a pair of gloves, some collars, and a couple of ties. You will get them all to-morrow, and I hope the hat and gloves are the right size. I am pretty sure they are. I was half inclined to buy you a box of cigars, but I thought you needed the other things more.

"The fact of the case is, Phip, I have definitely made up my mind to be a burden on you no longer. True, I might get a scholars.h.i.+p at the 'Varsity, as I got one at Harrow. But you would still have to pinch to maintain me; and when I remember how long you have done it already, I feel a perfect beast. I am old enough now to understand what it means, and I tell you, Phip, that nothing will induce me to come back to Harrow after the present term. So please give notice at once. I mean to go out to the Colonies with a man from the Modern Side, and I shall earn my living somehow--as a labourer if need be, for I am big and strong enough. Indeed, I would rather enlist than go on with this.

"Have you ever thought of trying to make a bit _by writing_, Phip? I believe you could write a novel. Don't you remember what bully stories you used to tell me when I was a kid? Have a shot at it, old boy. There's a person here in the Sixth who has a knack that way, and he made a hundred pounds by a thing he wrote. He got the tip for it out of a book on the art of novel-writing, the advertis.e.m.e.nt of which I have cut out of the _Daily Mail_ and send you enclosed. I would have sent you the book itself had there been enough left out of the two pounds.

But there was only fourpence.

"The Head preached a capital sermon last night on the text, 'Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.' The instant he gave out the words I thought of you, old Phip. And I went on thinking of you till he had done. That's how I know the sermon was a good one, though I didn't listen to another word. Anything that makes me think of you _must_ be good. Phip, _you are a dead cert. for heaven when you die_. But don't die yet, there's a good chap.

For if you go, I shall go too.--Ever yours, JIM.

"_P.S._--Don't forget to give notice that I am leaving this term."

When Dr Piecraft laid down the letter his eyes were full of tears. "The only bit of heaven that's left me," he said aloud, "is going to be taken away. There's one person in the world, anyhow, who doesn't think me a failure. If you go to the Colonies, Jim, I shall take the pill, come what may. You're a warm-hearted boy, Jim, but cruel too. I'd rather spend a hundred a year on you and go threadbare in consequence, than earn ten thousand a year and not have you to spend it on. At the same time, my only chance of making you relent is to earn some money.--What the deuce is all this about novel-writing?"

He took up the advertis.e.m.e.nt which had fallen in his lap, and read as follows: "How to Write Novels--a Guide to Fortune in Literature.

Containing Practical Instructions for Amateurs, whereby Success is a.s.sured. By an Old Hand."

Next morning Piecraft bought the book. As no patients came that day he had ample leisure to read it. "Easy as lying," he said to himself when he had finished. "I see the trick of it. And, by George, I'll make the first attempt this very night. I have half a dozen ideas already.

Cerebral pathology is no bad training for a novelist."

So he sat down to work, and by two in the morning had written the first chapter of a very promising novel. In ten days more the novel was complete.

Reading over his ma.n.u.script, and severely criticising himself by the rules of his Manual, he found that he had put in too much scenery, had undercoloured the beauty of the heroine, had forgotten to describe her dress, and had introduced no action to break the tedious sentiment of the love-dialogues. These errors he at once set himself to correct, pruning down the excesses and making good the defects. Then, reviewing the whole, he satisfied himself that he had done well. The plot turned on a love affair, and was easily intelligible. The s.e.xes were evenly balanced, and every character had its foil. There was plenty of incident and continuous action. And the whole was unified by a single purpose or controlling idea.

This last gave Piecraft peculiar satisfaction. He had feared when he began that unity of purpose would be of all the rules the most difficult to satisfy. In the purpose of his life he had failed; was it likely, he asked himself, that he would do any better in romance? Judge, then, of his pleasure on discovering that a clear thread of intention ran through the novel from the first sentence to the last, and came to adequate fulfilment in the final catastrophe. "Purpose," he reflected, "is going to be my strongest point. I shall score heavily on that."

He sent his ma.n.u.script to a publisher, and was rejoiced to hear of its acceptance within a week. In the six months that followed, having little else to do, he produced two more novels. Each of them had a Purpose. The publisher bought the ma.n.u.scripts outright for fifty pounds apiece.

"It's the Purpose that pays," thought Piecraft. "It's the Purpose that works the oracle. It's the Purpose the public like. Next time I'll introduce more Purpose and stand out for better terms with the publisher."

Meanwhile he had been compelled, much against his will, to give notice of Jim's withdrawal from school. In spite of the brightening of his prospects the half-brother had proved inexorable. "I will borrow from you," wrote Jim, "enough to pay my third-cla.s.s fare across the ocean and leave me with a pound or two on landing. After that, not another penny."

"All right, Jim; have it your own way," was Phippeny's answer. "I shall work away until I have saved 500, and then, my boy, _I'll join you on the other side and life will begin again for both of us_. Meanwhile, I'm growing uncommonly prolific in the way of pot-boilers. But I'm not exactly in love with it, and shall abandon my new profession without a sigh. I wish I could produce something really good. Perhaps when I join you I shall get a new inspiration. I believe one can find a pen and ink in the Colonies."--Thus the matter was arranged.

Dr Phippeny Piecraft was not in the habit of going to church, but one Sunday evening, shortly after these events, he found himself there by accident and heard a sermon, some sentences of which caught his attention. It happened that just then he was gravelled for lack of matter; and he was busy during the service in vainly attempting to construct a plot in which a gamekeeper's daughter was to be betrayed by a young lord under circ.u.mstances of excruciating novelty. In spite of the novelty of the circ.u.mstances he could not help recognising that the main theme was a trifle stale; and as they were singing the hymn before the sermon he confessed to himself that the plot was not worth elaboration, and began to think about other things.

Piecraft's mind, indeed, was just then in a state of extreme confusion.

Now he would be listening to the words of the preacher, now giving way to anxieties about Jim, now returning to the plot of his novel like a moth to a candle-light, and now reflecting, with the acute discomfort of a double consciousness, on his inability to concentrate his thoughts.

"There is nothing," he mused, "which sooner demoralises a man's intelligence than the discovery that he can make money by following the demand of a degenerate public taste. It leads to mental incoherence and to the most extraordinary self-deception. I am afraid that that cursed Manual has undone me. It seems to have resurrected another personality who belongs to a lower order of being than my true and proper self.

Having failed to earn my living by being the man I am, I am now in a way to make money by being the man I am not. What business have I to be constructing these ridiculous plots? And how is it that, once started on that line, I am unable to prevent myself going further? I had thought that a scientific training was the best safeguard against obsession. But I perceive it is no such thing. Is it possible that I am so far like Frate Alberigo--my proper soul expelled to another world, and perhaps practising medicine there, while a demon holds possession of my body and writes third-rate novels in this?"

A moment later he was thinking about Jim.

"I hope the boy won't forget to send me a cable when he reaches the port; somehow I feel unaccountably anxious about him." Then he turned to wondering how much he would be able to screw out of the publishers for the next novel, and how everything would depend on the breadth of the Purpose.

Suddenly a sentence of the sermon caught his ear: "_Illusion is an integral part of Reality_."

"Tip-top," thought Piecraft. "So it is." And in a moment his imagination began to cast about for a reality of which three parts should be illusion. But he could think of nothing that answered the description, and again he said to himself, "I am not in a normal condition to-day.

One should never force a reluctant brain. And I can't help being anxious about Jim. I had better turn my attention to the sermon."