Wandering Heath Part 9

A DOCTOR'S STORY.

"_O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hill-top, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour_."--R. L. Stevenson.

"Eucalyptus lies on the eastern slope of the Rockies. It will be fourteen years back this autumn that the coach dropped me there, somewhere about nine in the evening, and Hewson, who was waiting, took me straight to his red-pine house, high up among the foot-hills.

The front of it hung over the edge of a waterfall, down which Hewson sent his logs with a pleasing certainty of their reaching Eucalyptus sooner or later; and right at the back the pines climbed away up to the snow-line. You remember the story of Daniel O'Rourke; how an eagle carried him up to the moon, and how he found it as smooth as an egg-plum, with just a reaping-hook sticking out of its side to grip hold of? Hewson's veranda reminded me of that reaping-hook; and, as a matter of fact, the cliff was so deeply undercut that a plummet, if it could be let through between your heels, would drop clean into the basin below the fall.

"The house was none of Hewson's building. Hewson was a bachelor, and could have made s.h.i.+ft with a two-roomed cabin for himself and his men. He had taken the place over from a New Englander, who had made his pile by running the lumbering business up here and a saw-mill down in the valley at the same time. The place seemed dog-cheap at the time; but after a while it began to dawn upon Hewson that the Yankee had the better of the deal. Eucalyptus had not come up to early promise. In fact, it was slipping back and down the hill with a run. Already five out of its seven big saw-mills were idle and rotting. Its original architect had sunk to a blue-faced and lachrymose bar-loafer, and the roll of plans which he carried about with him--with their unrealised boulevards, churches, munic.i.p.al buildings, and band-kiosks--had pa.s.sed into a dismal standing joke.

Hewson was even now deliberating whether to throw up the game or toss good money after bad by buying up a saw-mill and running it as his predecessor had done.

"'It's like a curse,' he explained to me at breakfast next morning.

'The place is afflicted like one of those unfortunate South Sea potentates, who flourish up to the age of fourteen and then cypher out, and not a soul to know why. First of all, there's the lumbering. Well, here's the timber all right; only Bellefont, farther down the valley, has cut us out. Then we had the cinnabar mines--you may see them along the slope to northward, right over the west end of the town. They went well for about sixteen months; and then came the stampede. A joker in the _Bellefont Sentinel_ wrote that the miners up in Eucalyptus were complaining of the 'insufficiency of exits'; and he wasn't far out. Last there were the 'Temperate Airs and Reinvigorating Pine-odours of America's Peerless Sanatorium. _Come and behold: Come and be healed!_' The promoters billed that last cursed jingle up and down the States till as far south as Mexico it became the pet formula for an invitation to drink.

Well, for three years we averaged something like a couple of hundred invalids, and doctors in fair proportion; and I never heard that either did badly. It was an error of judgment, perhaps, to start our munic.i.p.al works with a costly Necropolis, or rather the gateway of one; two marble pillars, if you please--the only stonework in Eucalyptus to this day--with 'Campo' on one side and 'Santo' on the other. No healthy-minded person would be scared by this. But the invalids complained that we'd made the feature too salient; and the architect has gone ever since by the name of 'Huz-and-Buz,' bestowed on him by some wag who meant 'Jachin and Boaz,' but hadn't Scripture enough to know it. Anyhow the temperate airs and pine-odours are a frost. There's n.o.body, I fancy, living at Eucalyptus just now for the benefit of his health, and I believe that at this moment you're the only doctor within twenty miles of the place.'

"'Well,' said I, 'I'll step down this morning anyway, and take a look.'

"'You can saddle the brown horse whenever you like. You were too sleepy to take note of it last night, but you came up here by a track fit for a lady's pony-carriage. My predecessor engineered it to connect his two places of business. In its way, it's the most palatial thing in the Rockies--two long legs with a short tack between, gentle all the way--and it brings you out by the Necropolis gate. You can hitch the horse up there.'"

"By ten o'clock I had saddled the brown horse, and was walking him down the track at an easy pace. Hewson had omitted to praise its beauty. Pine-needles lay underfoot as thick and soft as a Persian carpet; and what with the pine-tops arching and almost meeting overhead, and the red trunks raying out left and right into aisles as I went by, and the shafts of light breaking the greenish gloom here and there with glimpses of aching white snowfields high above, 'twas like walking in a big cathedral with bits of the real heaven s.h.i.+ning through the roof. The river ran west for a while from Cornice House, and then tacked north-east with a sudden bend round the base of the foot-hills; and since my track formed a sort of rough hypotenuse to this angle, I heard the voice of the rapids die away and almost cease, and then begin again to whisper and murmur, until, as I came within a mile or so of Eucalyptus, they were loud at my feet, though still unseen. I am not a devout man, but I can take off my hat now and then; and all the way that morning a couple of sentences were ring-dinging in my head: 'Lift up your hearts! We lift them up unto the Lord!' You know where they come from, I dare say.

"By and by the track took a sharp and steep trend down hill, then a curve; the trees on my right seemed to drop away; and we found ourselves on the edge of a steep bluff overhanging the valley, the whole eastern slope of which broke full into sight in that instant, from the river tumbling below--by sticking out a leg I could see it s.h.i.+ning through my stirrup--to the rocky _aretes_ and smoothed-out snowfields round the peaks. It made a big spectacle, and I suppose I must have stared at it till my eyes were dazzled, for, on turning again to follow the track, which at once dived among the pines and into the dusk again, I did not observe, until quite close upon her, a woman coming towards me.

"And yet she was not rigged out to escape notice. She had on a scarlet Garibaldi, a striped red-and-white skirt, bunched up behind into an immense polonaise, and high-heeled shoes that tilted her far forward. She wore no hat, but carried a scarlet sunshade over her shoulder. Her hair, in a towsled chignon, was golden, or rather had been dyed to that colour; her face was painted; and she was glaringly drunk.

"This sudden apparition shook me down with a jerk; and I suppose the sight of me had something of the same effect on the woman, who staggered to the side of the track, and, plumping down amid her flounces, beckoned me feebly with her sunshade. I pulled up, and asked what I could do for her.

"'You're the doctor?' she said slowly, with a tight hold on her p.r.o.nunciation.

"'That's so.'

"'From Cornice House?'

"I nodded.

"She nodded back. 'That's so. Oh, dear, dear! _you_ said that.

I can't help it. I'm drunk, and it's no use pretending!'

"She fell to wringing her hands, and the tears began to run from her bistred eyes.

"'Now, see here, Mrs.--Miss--'

"'Floncemorency.'

"'Miss Florence Montmorency?' I hazarded as a translation.

"'That's so. Formerly of the Haughty Coal.'

"'I beg your pardon? Ah! . . . of the Haute Ecole?'

"'That's so: '_questrienne_.'

"'Well, you'll take my advice, and return home at once and put yourself to bed.'

"'Don't you worry about me. It's the Bishop you've got to prescribe for. I allowed I'd reach Cornice House and fetch you down, if it took my last breath. Pete Stroebel at the drug store told me this morning that Mr. Hewson had a doctor come to stop with him, so I started right along.'

"'And how far did you calculate to reach in those shoes?'

"'I didn't calculate at all; I just started along. If the shoes had hurt, I'd have kicked them off and gone without, or maybe crawled.'

"'Very good,' said I. 'Now, before we go any farther, will you kindly tell me who the Bishop is?'

"'He's a young man, and he boards with me. See here, mister,' she went on, pulling herself together and speaking low and earnest, 'he's good; he's good right through: you've got to make up your mind to that. And he's powerful sick. But what you've got to lay hold of is that he's good. The house is No. 67, West fifteenth Street, which is pretty easy to find, seeing it's the only street in Eucalyptus.

The rest haven't got beyond paper, and old Huz-and-Buz totes them round in his pocket, which isn't good for their growth.'

"'Won't you take me there?'

"'Not to-day. I guess I've got to sit here till I feel better.

Another thing is, you'll be doing me a kindness if you don't let on to the Bishop that you found me in this--this state. He never saw me like this: he's good, I tell you. And he'd be sick and sorry if he knew. I'm just mad with myself, too; but I swear I never meant to be like this to-day. I just took a dose to fix me up for the journey; but ever since I've been holding off from the whisky the least drop gets into my walk. You didn't happen to notice a spring anywhere hereabouts, did you? There used to be one that ran right across the track.'

"'I pa.s.sed it about a hundred yards back.'

"I dismounted and led her to the spring, where she knelt and bathed her face in the water, cold from the melting snowfields above.

Then she pulled out a small handkerchief, edged with cheap lace, and fell to dabbing her eyes.

"'Hullo!' she cried, breaking off sharply.

"'Yes,' I answered, 'you had forgotten that. But another wash will take it all off, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you won't look any the worse. After that you shall soak my handkerchief and bandage it round your forehead till you feel better. Here, let me help.'

"'Thank you,' she said, as I tied the knot. 'And now hurry along, please. Sixty-seven, West Fifteenth Street. I'll be waiting here with your handkerchief.'

"I mounted and rode on. At the end of half a mile the track began to dip more steeply, and finally emerged by a big clearing and the two marble pillars of which Hewson had spoken; and here I tethered the brown horse, and had a look around before walking down into Eucalyptus. Within the clearing a few groups of Norfolk pines had been left to stand, and between these were burial lots marked out and numbered, with here and there a painted wooden cross; but the inhabitants of this acre were few enough. Behind and above the 'Necropolis' the hill rose steeply; and there, high up, were traces of the disused cinnabar mines--patches of orange-coloured earth thrusting out among the pines.

"The road below the cemetery ran abruptly down for a bit, then heaved itself over a green knoll and descended upon what I may call a very big and flat meadow beside the river. It was here that Eucalyptus stood; and from the knoll, which was really the beginning of the town, I had my first good view of it--one long street of low wooden houses running eastward to the river's brink, where a few decayed mills and wharves straggled to north and south--a T, or headless cross, will give you roughly the shape of the settlement. From the knoll you looked straight along the main street; with a field-gun you could have swept it clean from end to end, and, what's more, you wouldn't have hurt a soul. The place was dead empty--not so much as a cur to sit on the sidewalk--and the only hint of life was the laughing and banjo-playing indoors. You could hear that plain enough. Every second house in the place was a saloon, and every saloon seemed to have a billiard-table and a banjo player. I never heard anything like it. I should say, if you divided the population into four parts, that two of these were playing billiards, one tum-tumming 'Hey, Juliana' on the banjo, and the remaining fourth looking on and drinking whisky, and occasionally taking part in the chorus. All the way down the sidewalk I had these two sounds--the _click, click_ of the b.a.l.l.s and the _thrum, thrum, tinkle, tinkle_ of 'Juliana'--ahead of me; and left silence in my wake, as the inhabitants dropped their occupations and sauntered out to stare at 'the Last Invalid,' which was the name promptly coined for me by the disheartened but still humorous promoters of America's Peerless Sanatorium.

"You don't know 'Juliana'--neither tune nor words? Nor did I when I set foot in Eucalyptus; but I lived on pretty close terms with it for the next two months, and it ended by clearing me out of the neighbourhood. It was a sort of n.i.g.g.e.r camp-meeting song, and a hybrid at that. It went something like this:"

'O, de lost ell-an'-yard is a-huntin' fer de morn'--

The lost ell-and-yard is Orion's sword and belt, I may tell you--

'Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-holy!

An' my soul's done sicken fer de Hallelujah horn, Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-ho!

Was it weary there, In de wilderness?

Was it weary-y-y, 'way down in Goshen?

'O, de children s.h.i.+bber by de Jordan's flow-- Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-holy!

An' it's time fer Gaberl to shake hisself an' blow, Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-ho!