With Edge Tools Part 19

"You are an awful girl not to tell me before. How could you be in the house since yesterday and not say anything? I suppose Harold Wainwright is the man, but I don't much care who he is. You are a provoking creature," and she emphasized her remarks by throwing another cushion which hit wide of the mark, and sent some books spinning off the library table onto the floor.

Marion was over her depression now, and, jumping up, she threw her arms about Florence and kissed her, saying: "Sit down, dear, and tell me all about it. When did it happen? When is it going to be announced? When are you going to be married? I always felt you would marry him. Who are you going to have for bridesmaids?"

Florence laughed at Marion's mult.i.tude of questions. "You dear girl,"

she said, kissing her, "I am glad I made you smile again; but I can answer only one of those questions. It happened last Sunday at Fairville."

"And you didn't tell me until now! O, I will pay you up for this. But come, let's talk it all over and decide about the wedding and the bridesmaids."

A servant entered the room and announced "Dr. Maccanfrae." Marion and Florence hurriedly a.s.sumed different positions and adjusted their ruffled hair. Then the kind face of the philanthropic physician appeared in the doorway.

"How do I find my patient this morning?" said the Doctor, coming toward the window where they were seated.

"Better, I hope," said Florence, turning round.

"Miss Moreland!" exclaimed the Doctor in astonishment. "I thought you were somewhere in the White Mountains."

"No; I came back yesterday," she continued as he shook her hand. "I thought you needed a nurse for your patient."

"Nurse and remedy combined, for you are the best cure I could prescribe for Mrs. Sanderson."

"You are very flattering, Doctor. Under your advice I shall try to do my best, but, if you will excuse me, I shall run away and do some unpacking." Saying this, Florence left her seat, and, bidding the Doctor good-by, walked toward the door. As she was leaving the room she called to him, asking when he would give her another lecture on pantheism.

"I fear if I do I shall have to suffer for the sin of corrupting the heart of a Puritan," said the Doctor.

"A Puritan is always fortified against Satan's wiles," she answered laughingly, as she stopped in the doorway, "and, besides, my grandfathers, for six generations, were ministers."

"A case of the transmission of the original sin, I suppose," answered the Doctor, as she retired through the door. "And how is my patient to-day?" he repeated, as Florence's laughter died away and her steps were heard hurrying up the stairs.

"I don't think I am a bit better," said Marion somewhat mournfully, having relapsed into her former state in the presence of the Doctor.

After adjusting the cloth on her aching head, she continued: "I have no animation or ambition; I have these frightful nervous pains and headaches; my appet.i.te is all gone; nothing seems to amuse me any more, and I lie here all day long feeling utterly wretched. In the evening I manage to develop animation enough to take me out, and, for a while, I forget myself, but when it is over I feel worse than ever. Oh, Doctor, what is the matter with me?"

Dr. Maccanfrae looked at Marion a moment as though hesitating to answer her question, then, feeling her pulse, he replied: "Mrs. Sanderson, there is nothing the matter with you."

"What do you mean, Doctor?" said Marion somewhat angrily. "Do you suppose I don't know how I feel?"

"When I say there is nothing the matter with you, I mean you have no organic disease. You are simply suffering from the fashionable complaint of nervous depression, or neurasthenia, as we physicians call it. Almost every woman in your station in life has it sooner or later. It is nothing but a symptom, but it may grow into a great many worse things."

"Well, why don't you cure me then, if it is nothing?" remarked Marion in a provoked manner.

The Doctor looked at her a moment; then he asked slowly, but with an emphasis which seemed to carry a hidden meaning: "Do you want to get well, Mrs. Sanderson?"

Marion looked up somewhat startled. "Why do you ask such a question?"

she replied.

"Because you produced the disease yourself, and you alone can cure it."

"You are positively rude, Doctor."

"I know I should ask pardon for my brusqueness, but I am your physician, and I desire to see you well again. The only way that can be accomplished is for you to take the case in your own hands."

"I don't understand, Doctor."

"I take a sincere interest in you and your husband. If you will let me talk to you as a friend, and will take my advice, I hope I may do you much good; but if I am to remain the physician and must confine myself to writing prescriptions for worthless drugs, I fear the improvement will be slow."

"Go on, Doctor. I promise to listen," said Marion, prompted more by a curiosity to hear his advice than by a resolution to follow it.

"I may say some very plain things. Will you promise to take them in the friendly way in which they are meant?"

"Go on, Doctor. I shall not get angry, I promise you."

The Doctor leaned forward and said, in a more sympathetic manner: "Mrs.

Sanderson, every physician whose patients are drawn from the cla.s.ses we call society has to deal with scores of cases precisely like yours. One of us will administer bromides; another will feed his patients on extract of beef; another will use electricity; another will recommend ma.s.sage, and so on. But all these remedies are fruitless except in so far as they a.s.sist the sufferer to believe that she is improving, or afford some temporary relief. The disease, if so I may term a depressed state of the nervous system, is caused by the habits of the patient, and can only be cured by changing those habits."

"I am not dissipated," said Marion somewhat resentfully.

"I did not say that, Mrs. Sanderson, but if you desire to get well you must completely change your mode of life."

"What must I do?"

"I fear you will only laugh when I tell you, and call me a silly old fool."

"No, I sha'n't; I promise."

"You must go to bed before eleven every night. You must be up by half-past seven. You must walk or ride every morning, drink no wine, tea, or coffee, eat plain food, and read no novels. You must develop an interest in your household affairs, get a wholesome occupation for every hour of the day, and take no more medicine. When you feel a headache go into the fresh air; when you feel depressed, throw the mood off by finding some work to do."

"But, Doctor, I had almost sooner die than do all that. I could never live in such a routine of the commonplace."

"I know that is very hard, but perhaps it is not all," said the Doctor.

"You have no children, Mrs. Sanderson."

"No, thank heaven. I am worried enough without that."

"Unfortunately we are confronted in this world with a certain amount of worry. I think experience proves that it is better to accept the worries nature intended than to create worse ones by trying to circ.u.mvent her.

However, I see you weary of my preaching. Think it over until Monday, and then I shall give you some more advice provided you think your nerves can bear it."

"You are just as bad as Dr. Thompson."

"Only I have no choir boys and spring bonnets to attract an audience,"

replied the Doctor, rising to leave. Then he continued in a different tone: "I trust you will pardon what I have said, and even if you don't follow my disagreeable _regime_, I want you to feel that I gave you the best advice that I could."

The Doctor bade her good-by, and when he was gone she buried her face in the pillows and thought over what he had said. "I never could do all that," she thought; "besides, he is a perfect crank on fresh air and diet. If I thought Roswell would let me, I would go to someone else. I think he is too old to be up with the times, and Mrs. Smythe says Dr.

Wimbleton is a perfect dear and helped her from the first day she went to him. O, my poor head, how it does ache!" she called out, half expecting sympathy from the oak book-shelves and the bric-a-brac; then she turned over nervously and continued her restless thinking. "I wish I were dead," she moaned. "So little comes into my life that living it is scarcely worth the trouble. If there were only someone to bring me sympathy. If I could only forget those days when, for a few moments, I felt as other women feel."

Florence came into the room again and Marion, hearing her step, looked up. "Is it you?" she said.

"Yes," answered Florence; "I heard the Doctor go out so I thought I would come back. What did he say?"

"O, a lot of nonsense which I really did not listen to. He ought to do more to cure me and talk less. In fact, I think his personality exasperates me, and I am afraid I shall have to change physicians if I want to get any better."