The Queen of Hearts by Wilkie Collins (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

You will naturally ask me what had been the matter with him, and I might treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled with what the children call hard words. I prefer telling you that, in this case, cause and effect could not be satisfactorily joined together by any theory whatever. There are mysteries in life and the conditions of it which human science has not fathomed yet; and I candidly confess to you that, in bringing that man back to existence, I was, morally speaking, groping haphazard in the dark. I know (from the testimony of the doctor who attended him in the afternoon) that the vital machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our senses, had, in this case, unquestionably stopped, and I am equally certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital principle was not extinct. When I add that he had suffered from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole nervous system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know of the physical condition of my dead-alive patient at the Two Robins Inn.

When he “came to,” as the phrase goes, he was a startling object to look at, with his colorless face, his sunken cheeks, his wild black eyes, and his long black hair. The first question he asked me about himself when he could speak made me suspect that I had been called in to a man in my own profession. I mentioned to him my surmise, and he told me that I was right.

He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached to a hospital; that he had lately returned to England, on his way to Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill on the journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at Doncaster. He did not add a word about his name, or who he was, and of course I did not question him on the subject. All I inquired when he ceased speaking was what branch of the profession he intended to follow.

“Any branch,” he said, bitterly, “which will put bread into the mouth of a poor man.”

At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent curiosity, burst out impetuously in his usual good-humored way:

“My dear fellow” (everybody was “my dear fellow” with Arthur), “now you have come to life again, don’t begin by being down-hearted about your prospects. I’ll answer for it I can help you to some capital thing in the medical line, or, if I can’t, I know my father can.”

The medical student looked at him steadily.

“Thank you,” he said, coldly; then added, “May I ask who your father is?”

“He’s well enough known all about this part of the country,” replied Arthur. “He is a great manufacturer, and his name is Holliday.”

My hand was on the man’s wrist during this brief conversation. The instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse under my fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterward for a minute or two at the fever rate.

“How did you come here?” asked the stranger, quickly, excitably, passionately almost.

Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his first taking the bed at the inn.

“I am indebted to Mr. Holliday’s son, then, for the help that has saved my life,” said the medical student, speaking to himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice. “Come here!”

He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony right hand.

“With all my heart,” said Arthur, taking his hand cordially. “I may confess it now,” he continued, laughing, “upon my honor, you almost frightened me out of my wits.”

The stranger did not seem to listen. His wild black eyes were fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur’s face, and his long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur’s hand. Young Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze, amazed and puzzled by the medical student’s odd language and manners. The two faces were close together; I looked at them, and, to my amazement, I was suddenly impressed by the sense of a likeness between them—not in features or complexion, but solely in expression. It must have been a strong likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out, for I am naturally slow at detecting resemblances between faces.

“You have saved my life,” said the strange man, still looking hard in Arthur’s face, still holding tightly by his hand. “If you had been my own brother, you could not have done more for me than that.”

He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words “my own brother,” and a change passed over his face as he pronounced them—a change that no language of mine is competent to describe.

“I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,” said Arthur. “I’ll speak to my father as soon as I get home.”

“You seem to be fond and proud of your father,” said the medical student. “I suppose, in return, he is fond and proud of you?”

“Of course he is,” answered Arthur, laughing. “Is there anything wonderful in that? Isn’t your father fond—”

The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday’s hand and turned his face away.

“I beg your pardon,” said Arthur. “I hope I have not unintentionally pained you. I hope you have not lost your father?”

“I can’t well lose what I have never had,” retorted the medical student, with a harsh mocking laugh.

“What you have never had!”

The strange man suddenly caught Arthur’s hand again, suddenly looked once more hard in his face.

“Yes,” he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh. “You have brought a poor devil back into the world who has no business there. Do I astonish you? Well, I have a fancy of my own for telling you what men in my situation generally keep a secret. I have no name and no father. The merciful law of society tells me I am nobody’s son! Ask your father if he will be my father too, and help me on in life with the family name.”

Arthur looked at me more puzzled than ever.

I signed to him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the man’s wrist. No. In spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just made, he was not, as I had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-headed. His pulse, by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his skin was moist and cool. Not a symptom of fever or agitation about him.

Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my advice about the future course of medical treatment to which he ought to subject himself. I said the matter required careful thinking over, and suggested that I should send him a prescription a little later. He told me to write it at once, as he would most likely be leaving Doncaster in the morning before I was up. It was quite useless to represent to him the folly and danger of such a proceeding as this. He heard me politely and patiently, but held to his resolution, without offering any reasons or explanations, and repeated to me that, if I wished to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must write it at once.

Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a traveling writing-case, which he said he had with him, and, bringing it to the bed, shook the notepaper out of the pocket of the case forthwith in his usual careless way. With the paper there fell out on the counterpane of the bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little water-color drawing of a landscape.

The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it. His eye fell on some initials neatly written in cipher in one corner. He started and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than over; his wild black eyes turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.

“A pretty drawing,” he said, in a remarkably quiet tone of voice.

“Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,” said Arthur. “Oh, such a pretty girl! I wish it was not a landscape—I wish it was a portrait of her!”

“You admire her very much?”

Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for answer.

“Love at first sight,” said young Holliday, putting the drawing away again. “But the course of it doesn’t run smooth. It’s the old story. She’s monopolized, as usual; trammeled by a rash engagement to some poor man who is never likely to get money enough to marry her. It was lucky I heard of it in time, or I should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave me that drawing. Here, doctor, here is pen, ink, and paper all ready for you.”

“When she gave you that drawing? Gave it? gave it?”

He repeated the words slowly to himself, and suddenly closed his eyes. A momentary distortion passed across his face, and I saw one of his hands clutch up the bedclothes and squeeze them hard. I thought he was going to be ill again, and begged that there might be no more talking. He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed them once more searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly:

“You like her, and she likes you. The poor man may die out of your way. Who can tell that she may not give you herself as well as her drawing, after all?”

Before young Holliday could answer he turned to me, and said in a whisper: “Now for the prescription.” From that time, though he spoke to Arthur again, he never looked at him more.

When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of it, and then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us goodnight. I offered to sit up with him, and he shook his head. Arthur offered to sit up with him, and he said, shortly, with his face turned away, “No.” I insisted on having somebody left to watch him. He gave way when he found I was determined, and said he would accept the services of the waiter at the inn.

“Thank you both,” he said, as we rose to go. “I have one last favor to ask—not of you, doctor, for I leave you to exercise your professional discretion, but of Mr. Holliday.” His eyes, while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and never once turned toward Arthur. “I beg that Mr. Holliday will not mention to any one, least of all to his father, the events that have occurred and the words that have passed in this room. I entreat him to bury me in his memory as, but for him, I might have been buried in my grave. I cannot give my reason for making this strange request. I can only implore him to grant it.”

His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the pillow. Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge. I took young Holliday away with me immediately afterward to the house of my friend, determining to go back to the inn and to see the medical student again before he had left in the morning.

I returned to the inn at eight o’clock, purposely abstaining from waking