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قراءة كتاب Mark Gildersleeve: A Novel

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‏اللغة: English
Mark Gildersleeve: A Novel

Mark Gildersleeve: A Novel

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 7

you know, and so forth. A simple contusion—plastered it up—he'll be all right when he gets sober. He's just ugly enough, too, to appear worse than he is, and frightened his sweet little sister out of her wits. The others, though, didn't seem to mind it so much, and no wonder. But what makes you so anxious about him? When you came after me, you looked so pale and agitated hopes arose of a profitable patient. They're not so plenty now as they might be, and I welcome them with joy and gratitude," said the doctor, tapping Mark familiarly on the shoulder.

"I feel so relieved, doctor; I was afraid he might be seriously hurt. He provoked me, and I retaliated. Had I noticed or known that he was drunk, perhaps I would not have minded him. He fell so heavily that I feared he might have broken his neck."

"He might, I grant, but he didn't. More's the pity, perhaps, for his friends and family. Especially for that poor wife of his, whom he will certainly kill in time, if he don't kill himself first. But, so you were the one that caused all this row, eh? You didn't say anything about that before. How dared you, rash youth, raise your ire against the heir-apparent? Fear you not the wrath of the prince-regnant? Know ye not that for thrift to follow it is as necessary now, as ever, to fawn to wealth and position? Anchylosis, my boy, invariably affects the pocket, mind that!"

"If it were not for—" began Mark, with a determined look, which he suddenly checked, to add with a quiet smile, "No one knows better than you, doctor, what little store I set by thrift, or any considerations of that kind. I trust my ambition aims higher than that."

"Fresh and admirable adolescence! Roseate age, when the glistening soap-bubble, Fame, hath more charms than substantial shekels! So be it, and well it is so, for without those soft illusions the aridity of existence would be insupportable, the world a desert and life a blank. And now, my boy, while I wash my hands bring out the chess-board. I'll give you a bishop to-night, and unless I am interrupted by some silly biped seeking admittance to this sphere of trouble, or some still sillier one reluctant to leave it, we'll have a snug hour or two of enjoyment. So, votary of Caïssa, to chess—to chess."

Soon the polished dome of the doctor's capacious head, and the curly black pate of the young man, were bent in intense study over the checkered field of mimic battle. In silence passed the moments until a scratching at the door announced a visitor. "Ah, Dagon! Open the door, Mark, and let him in, please," said the doctor.

The young man complied, and a large black Newfoundland dog walked gravely in towards the doctor, and rested his head on his master's knee to be caressed. "True friend—faithful heart! Mark, three winters ago that dog saved my life. I was called out the night of the great snowstorm to go to the Furnaces, and but for Dagon your most obedient wouldn't be here. I've told it you before, I believe, so I'll not repeat the circumstances, but I love to dwell on them. Last spring he drew a child out of the canal; he would allow himself to be cut to pieces for me, and yet they say he has no soul! The Turks say the same of women. Are we any wiser? They say, too, he has no reason. Look at his expressive, sagacious eye. The gibbering idiot has a soul, the vilest miscreant reason; but this noble animal has neither, 'tis said, and man's vanity invents instinct! O man—man, what a conceited fool thou art! Check, eh? Ha! a bold move, my boy."

The doctor's speculations were cut short by a brilliant stroke on the part of his adversary, and as the game is becoming more absorbing, and the players less communicative, we will leave them, to digress a little.

Dr. Basil Wattletop had been an English army-surgeon, and as such had spent much of his time in foreign parts. How he came to drift into Belton, no one knew positively, although there was a legend that he had stopped there one day, on his way from Canada, to view the cataract, and had remained in the town ever since. Be this as it might, there he was and had been for many years, enjoying a lucrative practice, as he doubtless well deserved, for he was a skilful practitioner. An odd-looking man he was, a bachelor of very uncertain age, yet hale and vigorous; in person short and rotund, like the typical Briton of mature years, with thin wisps of brown hair brushed around his bald crown, and large searching dark eyes set in a long, grave, rubicund face. In attire inclined to carelessness, but scrupulous as to polished shoes and immaculate linen, wearing collars perilously starched over a throttling black stock, the buckle and tag of which prominently ornamented his nape. Partial indeed was he to this stock, despite the sway of fashion. In moments of caprice he would replace it by swaddling his short neck in a black cravat of many folds, the knot of which invariably slipped around and under his ear, giving him a losel and dissipated air.

His benevolent disposition had made him popular with the people of Belton, and many a poor body had reason to thank the good physician not only for gratuitous attendance, but for the wherewithal to buy indispensable remedies and comforts. We say had reason to thank him, for they seldom ventured to do so, certainly not a second time, for the doctor was exceedingly impatient of any manifestations of gratitude, and generally received them with a cynical or tart comment.

One weakness the doctor had in common with many of his countrymen—devotion to the social glass and flowing bowl, and when he had indulged over freely he was a changed man. Then his ordinary blandness forsook him, and he became pompous and choleric. He buttoned his coat tightly over his chest, carried his cane under his arm, and gave a defiant cock to his hat. Beware then how you contradicted him; beware how you defended that absurd heresy, homoeopathy; and above all, beware how you disparaged, even in the remotest degree, her Majesty of England, God bless her! as he would add, reverently lifting his hat. His loyalty and pomposity increased in proportion to the depths of his potations, but, whether in rigid obedience to a self-imposed law, or owing to the resistant power of his brain, he never appeared to exceed a certain well-defined limit; and no one had ever seen the doctor overcome, or known him to be in a worse state than that peculiar one indicated by a highly burnished nose, tetchy dignity, and exaggerated self-importance. The doctor was generally in this condition three evenings in the week, beginning at about four o'clock post-meridian, and so far from its being considered prejudicial to the exercise of his professional duties by his patients, many of them religiously believed that his sagacity was keener and skill greater at those times than at others.

The doctor was an enigma to the Belton folk. While they all respected him for his good qualities, many were offended at his sarcasm, puzzled by his paradoxes, or displeased at his oracular utterances. A few even pronounced him an "infidel" and an "atheist." Opinionated George Gildersleeve objected to the doctor's opinionativeness, and rated him a "pig-headed John Bull." As to the charge of atheism, who could have believed it that had ever seen the doctor at service, as he stood reverentially burying his red face in his stiff hat on Sundays in the fifth pew from the chancel, in the middle aisle of St. Jude's?

"Atheist, bosh!" said the doctor; "the old Latin proverb, Ubi tres medici duo athei, is simply nonsensical. Who comes so closely in contact with the mysterious ways of God, and realizes so thoroughly his own ignorance and impotence, as the physician? No—no, a corner of the veil has been uplifted to us, and we stand appalled and humble."

Mark Gildersleeve was almost an adopted son of the old physician, who had taken the youth in affection and proved an invaluable friend to him, chiefly by directing a course of reading and study. A priceless benefit this to Mark, whose advantages for instruction had been slight, for he

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