Bella Donna Part 94

"Very natural."

"Probably you know my name as a London consulting physician."

"Decidedly. Your success, of course, is great, Doctor Isaacson. Indeed, I wonder you are able to take a holiday. I wonder the ladies will let you go."

He smiled, and touched his moustache affectionately.

"Why the ladies, especially?"

"I understood your practice lay chiefly among the neurotic smart women of London."

"No."

Isaacson's voice echoed the dryness of Doctor Hartley's.

"I'm sorry."

"May I ask why?"

"On the other side of the water we find them--shall I say the best type of patients?"

"Ah!"

Isaacson remembered the sentence of Mrs. Armine which had sent him straight to the sick man. He seemed to detect her cruel prompting in the half-evasive yet sufficiently clear words just spoken.

"Now about Mr. Armine," he said, brus.h.i.+ng the topic of himself away. "I am sure--"

But Doctor Hartley interrupted with quiet firmness. One quality he seemed to have in the fullest abundance. He seemed to be largely self-possessed.

"It always clears the ground to be frank, I find," he said, smoothing out some creases in his ducks. "I don't require a consultation, Doctor Isaacson. I don't consider it a case that needs a consultation at present. Directly I do, I shall be glad to call you in."

Isaacson looked down at the rug beneath his chair.

"You consider Mr. Armine going on satisfactorily?" he asked, looking up.

"It's a severe case of sunstroke. It will take time and care. I have decided to stay aboard for a few days to devote myself entirely to it."

"Very good of you."

"I have no doubt whatever of very soon pulling my patient round."

"You don't see any complications in the case?"

"Complications?"

The tone was distinctly, almost alertly, hostile. But Isaacson reiterated coolly:

"Yes, complications. You are quite satisfied this is a case of sunstroke?"

"Quite."

The word came with a hard stroke, that was like the stroke of finality.

"Well, I'm not."

Doctor Hartley stared.

"I know you have come over with a view to a consultation," he said, stiffly. "But my patient has not demanded it, and as I think it entirely unnecessary, you will recognize that we need not pursue this conversation."

"You say the patient does not wish for my opinion on the case?" said Isaacson, allowing traces of surprise to escape him.

"I do. He is quite satisfied to leave it in my hands. He told me so this morning when I arrived."

"I am not reflecting for a moment on your capacity, Doctor Hartley. But, really, in complex cases, two opinions--"

"Who says the case is complex?"

"I do. I was extremely shocked at the appearance of Mr. Armine when I saw him last night. If you had ever known him in health, you would have been as shocked as I was. He was one of the most robust, the most brilliantly healthy, strong-looking men I have even seen."

As he spoke, Armine seemed to stand before Isaacson as he had been.

"The change in him, mind and body, is appalling," he concluded.

And there was in his voice an almost fearful sincerity.

Doctor Hartley fidgeted. He moved his hat, pulled down his ducks, dropped his cigarette on the rug, then rather hastily and awkwardly put it out with his foot. Sitting with his feet no longer c.o.c.ked up but planted firmly on the rug, he said:

"Of course, an attack like this changes a man. What else could you expect? Really! What else could you expect? I noticed all that! That's why I am going to stay. Upon my word"--as he spoke he seemed to work himself into vexation--"upon my word, Doctor Isaacson, to hear you, anyone would suppose I had been making light of my patient's condition."

Isaacson was confronted with fluffy indignation.

"You'll be accusing me of professional incompetence next, I dare say,"

continued Doctor Hartley. "I have not told you before, but I'll tell you now, that I consider it a breach of the etiquette that governs our profession, your interfering with my patient."

"How interfering?"

"I hear you gave him something last night--something to make him sleep."

"I did."

"Well, it's had a very bad effect upon him."

"Is he worse to-day?"

Isaacson, unknown to himself, said it with an almost fierce emphasis.

Doctor Hartley drew his lips tightly together.

"This is not a consultation," he said coldly.