The Pioneers (12 page)

Notwithstanding Dr. Todd's practice, and his success with the leg, he was not a little appalled on entering the hall of the mansion house. It was glaring with the light of day; it looked so splendid and imposing, compared with the hastily built and scantily furnished apartments which he frequented in his ordinary practice, and contained so many well-dressed persons and anxious faces, that his usually firm nerves were a good deal discomposed. He had heard from the messenger who summoned him that it was a gunshot wound, and had come from his own home, wading through the snow, with his saddlebags thrown over his arm, while separated arteries, penetrated lungs, and injured vitals were whirling through his brain, as if he were stalking over a field of battle, instead of Judge Temple's peaceable enclosure.

The first object that met his eye, as he moved into the room, was Elizabeth in her riding habit, richly laced with gold cord, her fine form bending towards him, and her face expressing deep anxiety in every one of its beautiful features. The enormous bony knees of the physician struck each other with a noise that was audible; for in the absent state of his mind, he mistook her for a general officer, perforated with bullets, hastening from the field of battle to implore assistance. The delusion, however, was but momentary, and his eye glanced rapidly from the daughter to the earnest dignity of the father's countenance: thence to the busy strut of Richard, who was cooling his impatience at the hunter's indifference to his assistance by pacing the hall and cracking his whip; from him to the Frenchman, who had stood for several minutes unheeded with a chair for the lady; thence to Major Hartmann, who was very coolly lighting a pipe three feet long by a candle in one of the chandeliers; thence to Mr. Grant, who was turning over a manuscript with much earnestness at one of the lusters; thence to Remarkable, who stood, with her arms demurely folded before her, surveying with a look of admiration and envy the dress and beauty of the young lady; and from her to Benjamin, who with his feet standing wide apart, and his arms akimbo, was balancing his square little body with the indifference of one who is accustomed to wounds and bloodshed. All of these seemed to be unhurt, and the operator began to breathe more freely; but before he had time to take a second look, the Judge, advancing, shook him kindly by the hand, and spoke.

“Thou art welcome, my good sir, quite welcome, indeed; here is a youth whom I have unfortunately wounded in shooting a deer this evening, and who requires some of thy assistance.”

“Shooting at a deer, 'duke,” interrupted Richard, “shooting at a deer. Who do you think can prescribe, unless he knows the truth of the case? It is always so with some people; they think a doctor can be deceived with the same impunity as another man.”

“Shooting at a deer, truly,” returned the Judge, smiling, “although it is by no means certain that I did not aid in destroying the buck; but the youth is injured by my hand, be that as it may; and it is thy skill that must cure him, and my pocket shall amply reward thee for it.”

“Two ver good tings to depend on,” observed Monsieur Le Quoi, bowing politely, with a sweep of his head, to the Judge and the practitioner.

“I thank you, Monsieur,” returned the Judge; “but we keep the young man in pain. Remarkable, thou wilt please to provide linen for lint and bandages.”

This remark caused a cessation of the compliments and induced the physician to turn an inquiring eye in the direction of his patient. During the dialogue the young hunter had thrown aside his overcoat, and now stood clad in a plain suit of the common, light-colored homespun of the country, that was evidently but recently made. His hand was on the lapels of his coat, in the attitude of removing the garment, when he suddenly suspended the movement and looked towards the commiserating Elizabeth, who was standing in an unchanged posture, too much absorbed with her anxious feelings to heed his actions. A slight color appeared on the brow of the youth.

“Possibly the sight of blood may alarm the lady; I will retire to another room while the wound is dressing.”

“By no means,” said Dr. Todd, who, having discovered that his patient was far from being a man of importance, felt much emboldened to perform the duty. “The strong light of these candles is favorable to the operation, and it is seldom that we hard students enjoy good eyesight.”

While speaking, Elnathan placed a pair of large iron-rimmed spectacles on his face, where they dropped as it were by long practice, to the extremity of his slim pug nose; and if they were of no service as assistants to his eyes, neither were they any impediment to his vision; for his little gray organs were twinkling above them, like two stars emerging from the envious cover of a cloud. The action was unheeded by all but Remarkable, who observed to Benjamin:

“Dr. Todd is a comely man to look on, and dispu't pretty. How well he seems in spectacles! I declare, they give a grand look to a body's face. I have quite a great mind to try them myself.”

The speech of the stranger recalled the recollection of Miss Temple, who started, as if from deep abstraction, and coloring excessively, she motioned to a young woman who served in the capacity of maid, and retired with an air of womanly reserve.

The field was now left to the physician and his patient, while the different personages who remained gathered around the latter, with faces expressing the various degrees of interest that each one felt in his condition. Major Hartmann alone retained his seat, where he continued to throw out vast quantities of smoke, now rolling his eyes up to the ceiling, as if musing on the uncertainty of life, and now bending them on the wounded man, with an expression that bespoke some consciousness of his situation.

In the meantime Elnathan, to whom the sight of a gunshot wound was a perfect novelty, commenced his preparations with a solemnity and care that were worthy of the occasion. An old shirt was procured by Benjamin and placed in the hands of the other, who tore divers bandages from it, with an exactitude that marked both his own skill and the importance of the operation.

When this preparatory measure was taken, Dr. Todd selected a piece of the shirt with great care, and handing it to Mr. Jones, without moving a muscle, said:

“Here, Squire Jones, you are well acquainted with these things; will you please to scrape the lint? It should be fine and soft, you know, my dear sir; and be cautious that no cotton gets in, or it may p'ison the wound. The shirt has been made with cotton thread, but you can easily pick it out.”

Richard assumed the office, with a nod at his cousin that said quite plainly, “You see this fellow can't get along without me,” and began to scrape the linen on his knee with great diligence.

A table was now spread with phials, boxes of salve, and divers surgical instruments. As the latter appeared in succession from a case of red morocco, their owner held up each implement to the strong light of the chandelier, near to which he stood, and examined it with the nicest care. A red silk handkerchief was frequently applied to the glittering steel, as if to remove from the polished surfaces the least impediment which might exist, to the most delicate operation. After the rather scantily furnished pocket case which contained these instruments was exhausted, the physician turned to his saddlebags and produced various phials, filled with liquids of the most radiant colors. These were arranged in due order, by the side of the murderous saws, knives, and scissors, when Elnathan stretched his long body to its utmost elevation, placing his hand on the small of his back, as if for support, and looked about him to discover what effect this display of professional skill was likely to produce on the spectators.

“Upon my wort, toctor,” observed Major Hartmann, with a roguish roll of his little black eyes, but with every other feature of his face in a state of perfect rest, “put you have a very pretty pocketpook of tools tere, and your toctor-stuff glitters as if it was petter for ter eyes as for ter pelly.”

Elnathan gave a hem—one that might have been equally taken for that kind of noise which cowards are said to make in order to awaken their dormant courage, or for a natural effort to clear the throat; if for the latter, it was successful; for turning his face to the veteran German, he said:

“Very true, Major Hartmann, very true, sir; a prudent man will always strive to make his remedies agreeable to the eyes, though they may not altogether suit the stomach. It is no small part of our art, sir,” and he now spoke with the confidence of a man who understood his subject, “to reconcile the patient to what is for his own good, though at the same time it may be unpalatable.”

“Sartain! Dr. Todd is right,” said Remarkable, “and has Scripter for what he says. The Bible tells us how things may be sweet to the mouth, and bitter to the inwards.”

“True, true,” interrupted the Judge, a little impatiently; “but here is a youth who needs no deception to lure him to his own benefit. I see, by his eye, that he fears nothing more than delay.”

The stranger had, without assistance, bared his own shoulder, when the slight perforation produced by the passage of the buckshot was plainly visible. The intense cold of the evening had stopped the bleeding, and Dr. Todd, casting a furtive glance at the wound, thought it by no means so formidable an affair as he had anticipated. Thus encouraged he approached his patient and made some indication of an intention to trace the route that had been taken by the lead.

Remarkable often found occasions, in after days, to recount the minutiae of that celebrated operation; and when she arrived at this point she commonly proceeded as follows: “And then the Doctor tuck out of the pocketbook a long thing, like a knitting needle, with a button fastened to the end on't; and then he pushed it into the wownd; and then the young man looked awful; and then I thought I should have swaned away—I felt in sitch a dispu't taking; and then the doctor had run it right through his shoulder, and shoved the bullet out on t'other side; and so Dr. Todd cured the young man—of a ball that the Judge had shot into him, for all the world, as easy as I could pick out a splinter with my darning needle.”

Such were the impressions of Remarkable on the subject; and such doubtless were the opinions of most of those who felt it necessary to entertain a species of religious veneration for the skill of Elnathan; but such was far from the truth.

When the physician attempted to introduce the instrument described by Remarkable, he was repulsed by the stranger, with a good deal of decision, and some little contempt, in his manner.

“I believe, sir,” he said, “that a probe is not necessary; the shot has missed the bone, and has passed directly through the arm to the opposite side, where it remains but skin-deep, and whence, I should think, it might be easily extracted.”

“The gentleman knows best,” said Dr. Todd, laying down the probe with the air of a man who had assumed it merely in compliance with forms; and turning to Richard, he fingered the lint with the appearance of great care and foresight. “Admirably well scraped, Squire Jones! It is about the best lint I have ever seen. I want your assistance, my good sir, to hold the patient's arm while I make an incision for the ball. Now, I rather guess there is not another gentleman present who could scrape the lint so well as Squire Jones.”

“Such things run in families,” observed Richard, rising with alacrity to render the desired assistance. “My father, and my grandfather before him, were both celebrated for their knowledge of surgery; they were not, like Marmaduke here, puffed up with an accidental thing, such as the time when he drew in the hip joint of the man who was thrown from his horse: that was the fall before you came into the settlement, Doctor; but they were men who were taught the thing regularly, spending half their lives in learning those little niceties; though for the matter of that, my grandfather was a college-bred physician, and the best in the colony, too—that is, in his neighborhood.”

“So it goes with the world, Squire,” cried Benjamin, “if so be that a man wants to walk the quarter-deck with credit, d'ye see, and with regular built swabs on his shoulders, he mustn't think to do it by getting in at the cabin windows. There are two ways to get into a top, besides the lubbershole. The true way to walk aft is to begin forrard; tho'f it be only in a humble way, like myself, d'ye see, which was, from being only a hander of topgallant sails, and a stower of the flying jib, to keeping the key of the Captain's locker.”

“Benjamin speaks quite to the purpose,” continued Richard. “I dare say that he has often seen shot extracted in the different ships in which he has served; suppose we get him to hold the basin; he must be used to the sight of blood.”

“That he is, Squire, that he is,” interrupted the
cidevant
steward. “Many's the good shot, round, doubleheaded, and grape, that I've seen the doctors at work on. For the matter of that, I was in a boat, alongside the ship, when they cut out the twelve-pound shot from the thigh of the Captain of the Foody-rong, one of Mounsheer Ler Quaw's countrymen!”
¹¹

“A twelve-pound ball from the thigh of a human being?” exclaimed Mr. Grant, with great simplicity, dropping the sermon he was again reading and raising his spectacles to the top of his forehead.

“A twelve-pounder!” echoed Benjamin, staring around him with much confidence; “A twelve-pounder! Ay! A twenty-four pound shot can easily be taken from a man's body, if so be a doctor only knows how. There's Squire Jones, now, ask him, sir; he reads all the books; ask him if he never fell in with a page that keeps the reckoning of such things.”

“Certainly, more important operations than that have been performed,” observed Richard. “The Encyclopædia mentions much more incredible circumstances than that, as, I dare say, you know, Doctor Todd.”