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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
Excerpt: ...instruments of his own wherewith to effect a cure on ordinary lines, and what he had seen of herbalists in Spain had inspired him with a vast respect for the simplicity and success of their methods. The wooden box contained a quantity of leaves which, steeped in scalding water, and applied to the patient's throat, possessed the power of reducing the inflammation and drawing out the poison through the pores of the skin. Of their efficacy Michael entertained not the slightest doubt. He walked straight to the bed, and glanced at Arithelli's throat, now almost covered with white patches of membrane. There was no time to waste if she was to be saved from the ghastliness of slow suffocation. He went to the head of the stairs and yelled lustily for Maria, whom he commanded to produce boiling water immediately, thus further adding to the reputation of the mad English for haste and unreasonableness. Then he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and began busily to clear a space on the table, on which he emptied the contents of the box. All his movements had suddenly become alert and energetic. The joy of the true physician, the healer, had awakened in him at the prospect of a duel with Death, and he was no longer merely the slouching, good-natured wastrel who doctored horses at the Hippodrome. He possessed for the moment the dignity of a leader, of the master of a situation. He smiled to himself as he moved about humming a verse of "Let Ireland remember," and swept away a debris of books, a rouge pot, some dead flowers, and a large over-trimmed hat. "Shure 'tis back in the surgery again I am," he told himself, while his lean, ugly face beamed with satisfaction. No one who knew Michael Furness had ever suspected the regret by which he was for ever haunted, regret at the loss of his profession. His rollicking manner made it impossible to believe him capable of any depth of feeling, and he had a trick of talking least about the things for which he cared...