He had struck on the idea of the fear of disease before this as the reason for her state of mind; now her words confirmed him.
“Doesn’t it depend?” he asked. “I mean, don’t you have to consider what seems to be wrong with you? What is it, Nancy?”
“Don’t ask me. Promise not to ask me about it?”
“Why, of course.”
“It’s something that the usual doctors couldn’t help. But this man, Nora says, looks in your eyes and knows what’s wrong with you. He was away today, but she’s located him. After all, it wouldn’t be possible for him to do any harm, would it? Not if he simply looked at me and guessed what might be wrong?”
A man practising without a licence, accepting “gifts” for his services, diagnosing cases by a look into the eyes of the patient exactly fulfilled the definition of a quack, and association with such a fellow or the encouragement or assistance of him in any way by a licensed physician simply removed the doctor from the class of honest practitioners and made a quack out of him in turn. The rules of medical associations and state boards of health were precise on this matter, so precise that Kildare hesitated for an instant as he listened to the girl. He remembered the case of Loder, who had twenty-five years of honourable practice behind him; but when the state board discovered that for three months after receiving his licence he had hung out his shingle with a faker, he was drummed out of the ranks. They called Loder a quack because he once had given countenance to a sham doctor; they revoked his licence and ruined his life for the sake of those three months which had been used carelessly if not criminally so long before. With that memory in his mind, it was no wonder that Kildare paused for a moment and the girl had to ask again: “Would I be a fool if I went to such a fellow, Johnny?”
“They’re a little ratty, aren’t they—fakes like that?”
“I suppose they are.”
“Whereas a licensed physician would at least…”
“Physicians—physicians—I know what they do!” she said, a shudder in both voice and body. “They fill up the house with the thought of death long before death comes. They turn our rooms into coffins. They bury us alive…Don’t let me talk about them!”
“Forget about them then. And go to this fellow who reads your troubles in your eyes.”
“Shall I, after all?”
“Of course.”
As he made the answer, it seemed to Kildare that all the faces of his old teachers looked in upon him with horror; he heard their voices; he heard the uproar of the great Gillespie sounding above all. A quack is the lowest form of humanity; the very lowest of all. “Anyone who shall aid, abet, or countenance unsound medical practice, shall not be considered worthy to retain his licence.” That was what the book said, and the law stood by to take a corrective hand when need might be.
However, he left his recommendation unchanged as they reached the old country place again. Nora had seen them coming, and she issued from the front door, pulling a coat on to her high shoulders as they drew up before the house. Nancy took the middle place on the seat as her nurse climbed in.
“We’ll go right into town,” said Nora. “Right to the middle of the village, and there you and me can get out, Nancy.”
“Johnny knows where we’re going,” said Nancy. “It’s all right.”
“Ah, you told the doctor, did you?” said Nora, persisting in her fancy. She turned her bold eye on Kildare, with as much leer as smile. “Or maybe he’s only a vet.”
Kildare uttered a faint exclamation. Nancy said: “Nora, Nora, nobody has time for your jokes just now.”
“Ah, but Mr. Archbold is no joke, darling,” answered Nora, giving a characteristic switch to the subject. “There’s a man that’s a man, and a man’s eye in a man’s head on his shoulders too. He gives you a look that drops into you like a stone into a pool and scares all the little fish inside you. The doctors said Mrs. Winters had stone and wanted to cut her to pieces, bad luck to them, but dear Mr. Archbold laid eyes and hands on her and now she’s a well woman. And Tad Givens was a failing man for years, with his back bending over and a blink in one of his eyes like too much whisky; but in three treatments didn’t Mr. Archbold have him fit to climb trees? He was jailed for breaking the peace only the Sunday after. I tell you, there’s things that never was in books, and Mr. Archbold has most of them. I’ve talked to him about you darling, and he says…”
“I told you not to speak to him about me! I told you not to, Nora. We may as well turn back if you’ve talked to him about my case beforehand.”
“I spoke only the one word to him,” said Nora, indignant, “and what harm could there be in that? He knows no more of you than the side of that hill. But in one look he’ll see farther than all the rest, you can be sure.”
They came through the little town as a thunderhead rolled up over it and with a downpour of rain covered the hills in a greenish murk of twilight. Nora had the car stopped near the entrance of a building.
“Will you come up with me, Johnny?” asked the girl in a whisper. “I’m a bit afraid; and I’m almost sure that I’m being a fool.”
He went with her behind Nora up a flight of linoleum-covered stairs and down a dark hallway to the rear of the office building where the single word “Archbold” appeared on a glass door and under it the legend: “Personal Advice.” They walked into a small waiting room that was brightened by a window box of late-blooming flowers, and Archbold himself appeared at once from his inner office. The only sign of age about him was the flow of his long white hair. He was a big man, straight as a bolt and with a step like a yearling colt. His bare feet were in sandals; his shirt was open at a hairy throat; and in spite of the sixty years which he must have carried, his eyes were as bright and bold as those of a young lad.
“Ah, Miss Messenger,” he said, and taking her hand he drew himself close to her and lowered the brush of his white eyebrows, inspecting her. “Your trouble is here—above the eyes—here, I think,” said Archbold, clasping his hand across his own forehead. “Will you come inside with me?”
That first remark struck Nancy hard. Her lips parted, her eyes aghast, she held back a moment to give one frightened, reproachful glance to Nora. The old nurse said: “It’s all what he sees for himself and nothing that I ever told him. Oh, he’s going to blow your troubles away like smoke. Go on in with him, darling.”
So Nancy disappeared through the door, which the hand of the great Archbold closed behind them.
“Now why should you look so scared?” Nora asked, staring at Kildare.
“I hope that he’s not a rascal,” said Kildare.
“Trust me for that,” answered Nora. “I had a terrible pain in my left shoulder and all the tonics wouldn’t rub it away, but a touch from dear Mr. Archbold turned the trick and I can lie on the left side all night long now and laugh at the doctors in the morning. You wouldn’t take me wrong because I’ve laughed a little in my own way, calling you a doctor, Mr. Stevens, would you? Not when my dear girl is like a sister to Johnny; and the kind eye that she lays on you too! But you wouldn’t be offended with me, would you, Mr. Stevens? The Irish has to come out one way or the other, and God help it!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A SLIGHT hubbub of voices in the street called Nora to the window at this moment; she had her nose flat against the glass when the door of the inner office opened again and Nancy came out with the doctor standing huge and bland on the threshold behind her, rubbing his hands together as though to get rid of the excess of good which had just flowed from them. Nancy seemed both bewildered and delighted.