CHAPTER XXXI.
A HOMŒOPATHIC DOSE.
Captain Kingman died that day, as the doctor had predicted. Mary and Eugene stood by his dying bed; and the daughter, forgetting all that he had been, and all that he had done of evil, ministered unto him as though he had been the best and truest of fathers. He was her parent, and there was not a wrong he had done which was not forgiven.
Mary wore the mourner’s garb now; and no token of respect to a father’s memory was omitted by her or by her devoted husband. Captain Kingman had been a sufferer for a year, and during the last months of his life he had been an imbecile. He had passed away now, and it was best that it should be so. He was at rest after his stormy career.
Eugene’s balance in the Poppleton Bank began to disturb him again. In spite of his best efforts to keep it within a reasonable limit, it continued to get the upper hands of him. His own wants were few and simple, measured by the means at his command. He was obliged to be very extravagant in order to dispose of twenty thousand dollars a year. He hoped to do better, however, the coming season; but there was still a formidable balance in his favor, which, as the almoner of God’s bounty, it would be idleness and neglect to permit any longer to remain unused.
“What shall I do, Mary?” said he to his wife, a week after the funeral. “There is a large balance in the bank, and I feel as though I had not half done my duty.”
“Nobody else thinks so, Eugene,” she replied, putting her arm around his neck, and gazing with tender admiration into his face.
“Perhaps not; but I do not judge myself by what others think. Can’t you help me, Mary?”
“I think I can.”
“Do.”
“I was thinking the other day that we might have a cemetery here like Mount Auburn, Greenwood, or Laurel Hill.”
“I thank you, my dear, for the thought. It shall be commenced at once. Do you think of any suitable locality?”
When they went to ride that forenoon, they visited half a dozen places which might answer the purpose, and gave the preference to a tract of land beyond Pine Hill, between the river and the Summerville Road. The territory was purchased, and there was plenty of work for poor men in Poppleton that summer.
The building for the Poppleton Library was in a forward state, and the institution itself was in practical operation in temporary quarters. The books were circulating through the town, and the bowling alleys and billiard saloons afforded recreation without expense to all who chose to use them. They were under the care of a good man; were closed at ten o’clock; and no gambling, drinking, profanity, or other improper speech, was tolerated.
The amusements of the people were full of interest to Eugene; for innocent recreations were so many preventives of vice. When a dozen young men would form a club, and adopt certain necessary regulations--such as prohibiting intoxicating drinks, profanity, Sabbath breaking--in the association, he presented them a boat, and provided them with a building, uniforms, and other appliances. Four of these clubs were formed at the Port, and three at the Mills; the latter navigating the pond above the dam.
At Mary’s suggestion, sundry thousands were given to various associations in the city, whose object was the moral social, and religious improvement of the race; and thus Eugene’s charities began to extend beyond Poppleton. What he gave in this way was always contributed secretly. He made a literal application of the Scriptural injunction not to let the left hand know what the right hand doeth. If he had any vanity to be known in connection with his liberal gifts, he deemed it a duty to exorcise the feeling. A letter, enclosing a draft for ten thousand dollars, to the treasurer of an association having for its object the wider diffusion of Christianity, contained these remarkable words: “I desire to remain unknown in connection with this gift. It is the Lord’s money, though I give it. To Him give the glory, not to me. If, by the post-mark of my letter, or other means, you should discover my name, you are positively prohibited from making it known. If you should disregard this injunction, all future donations will be withheld.”
It was not disregarded. He did not choose secrecy for the purpose of being found out, and to give an additional halo to the deed. He was sincere. If he ever thought how pleasant it would be to be known as a munificent benefactor of the race, a liberal patron of Christian enterprise, he regarded the sentiment as unworthy of him, and adhered to his fixed rule from principle, not affectation.
The present balance was happily disposed of, with Mary’s cordial coöperation, and Eugene was at peace with himself. But he did not look upon giving as his whole duty. He went among the poor himself, with his loving wife upon his arm. In actual contact with them, he studied their needs. He gave with his own hand. He went to church at the chapel every Sunday with his wife, his mother, and his sister; and he did not occupy an extra-cushioned pew, but took such seats as were vacant. He was a member of several associations, and performed his duty as such with care and fidelity. As an Odd Fellow and a Mason, he watched with the sick himself, be the brother who needed his assistance rich or poor. It was suggested to him that he might hire a man to perform this sacred duty; but he indignantly repelled the idea; and even oftener than his turn came, he kept vigil at the bedside of the sick; for, he said, he could better do it than those who had to work all day. Eugene was a Christian in his own way.
Not every man who went to Eugene Hungerford with a subscription paper was sure of a donation. He had very decided opinions; and he was so ultra and strange as to believe that it was almost as often necessary to withhold as it was to give. He was a decided man; and certain pious, but narrow-minded, people denounced him because he declined to help forward their projects to make all men believe the same theology. He did not believe that theology would save any man from his sins; and while he would help to build a church for any denomination of Christians, he would not devote a penny to give one man’s creed the advantage over another’s. The good God would condemn no person for the errors of his belief, if he was a sincere and earnest seeker after the truth.
Eugene had a belief precious to himself. It was not at all necessary that others should adopt it. He not only tolerated, but respected, others’ creeds. What he gave, he gave for truth, rather than for the triumph of any human system; for Christianity itself, rather than for the dogmas of men. It required no small degree of discretion and faith to discharge his duty, as he understood it; and between Mary and himself there was much discussion upon these interesting questions; for, fortunately for both, she was a thinking woman, as he was a thinking man.
To these considerations of important topics Dick Birch and the other members of the family were freely admitted; and not unfrequently Dr. Lynch took a part in them. The doctor was still a constant visitor at Pine Hill. He had not “lost hope;” though, since he had surprised his rival in the garden, he could not help thinking that the battle was going against him. He was jealous. He hated Dick, though policy compelled him to treat the offender with the utmost apparent respect and esteem.
Dick was certainly gaining ground. Now that Julia understood him, he found his path more flowery. She oftener placed herself in his way, oftener took his hand when she got into or out of the carriage. He was bold enough to press it; and once he was surprised and delighted to feel a slight return. Then it was constantly replied to; and Dick was almost ready to speak again, to propose once more.
Dr. Lynch could not help noticing this increasing tenderness. It was fatal to his hopes. Julia was kind to him, had not remitted a particle of the gratitude she owed him; but his rival was winning the prize. If it had been possible to bring Dick into disrepute again he would have done it; but a word against Dick was treason against the whole family. Something must be done. He loved her; whatever he was, he loved her with all his soul. If he had any ambitious schemes, they were secondary to the possession of her.
“Something must be done. I am losing ground. One half million is safe; the other is almost beyond my reach; but, worse than this, I shall lose Julia herself,” muttered the doctor to himself, as he left Pine Hill one evening. “I would rather have her than all of John Hungerford’s money.”
He got into his sulky, and drove off, stung by the madness of disappointment, and fully resolved that something should be done. To the pangs of a love growing every day more hopeless, add the prospect of half a million slipping from his grasp, and the feeling of Dr. Lynch is described. If there was much that was good in him,--as there is in all men,--there was much that was bad--base and wicked beyond the comprehension of an honest man. Those at Pine Hill were pure Christian men and women. They were trusting, confiding, unsuspicious. They could not fathom the depth of evil in the honored guest, the beloved physician. He had sinned and been forgiven. They knew his capacity for evil; but to them he was like the tranquil summer sea, which the storms of winter lash into fury, and make the most treacherous of elements.
Dr. Lynch went to Pine Hill the next day. He sat in the sitting-room with the family, giving his opinion in regard to the sanitary effects of bathing, called forth by a project of Eugene’s to erect a bathing establishment in each of the two villages. Dick Birch entered while he was there. He looked paler than usual, which the quick eye of Julia promptly detected.
“Are you ill, Dick?” she asked, in a tone so tender that the doctor wished he could be sick himself, in order to be spoken to so fondly.
“No; not ill; I have the headache,” replied Dick, pressing his hand to his forehead.
“Can I do anything for you?” continued Julia. “Let me bathe your head in cologne.”
“Thank you, Julia; it is hardly necessary that anything should be done,” replied Dick, with a grateful smile.
“Let me prescribe for you, Mr. Birch,” interposed Dr. Lynch.
“No, I thank you; I don’t believe in your system, doctor,” laughed Dick.
He went to the library, and presently returned with a little vial filled with small globules.
“This is my medicine for the headache,” he said, exhibiting the vial.
“What is it?” asked the doctor.
“Belladonna.”
Dr. Lynch laughed heartily, and indulged in some sharp strictures upon homœopathy; called it a humbug and a delusion.
“One thing is certain, doctor,” replied Dick, as he swallowed half a dozen of the globules, “either homœopathy is true as a medical science, or all medicines are unnecessary.”
“That is a rather violent conclusion.”
“I have taken no medicine but these globules for ten years, except a blue pill you prescribed for me last summer; and I was a fool to take that.”
“Because you have not been very sick.”
“Yes, I had a fever four years ago.”
“Then you got well in spite of your medicine, not on account of it.”
“But it proves that medicine was not necessary, if it does not show that my system is correct.”
Dick mentioned a dozen desperate cases, where patients had been saved by homœopathy, and the doctor mentioned two dozen, given up by homœopathic practitioners, who had been cured by allopathy. As usual in such cases, nothing was established.
“Doctor, my headache is gone,” said Dick, triumphantly, after the three dozen cases had been adduced.
“Do you suppose the belladonna had anything to do with it?” asked the doctor.
“Of course I do. I am satisfied the globules cured me this time as they have twenty times before.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Birch! I should not hesitate to take the entire contents of your vial.”
“That is the beauty of the system; if it does not cure, it does not kill.”
“If there is no virtue in the medicine, what is the use of taking it?” laughed the doctor.
“Fire won’t burn water. It is the nice adaptation of the medicine to the system which gives it efficiency. If you are well, there is no work for the medicine. If you are sick, it finds something in the system for which it has an affinity.”
“All bosh!”
“Why don’t you try the system before you condemn it?”
“Try it! Why don’t I try the spells of the Indian medicine men? the charm of the Hottentot? the vagaries of mesmerism and spiritualism? Simply because I don’t believe in them. Why don’t I try a hangman’s rope for scrofula?”
“There is reason in all things.”
“In everything but homœopathy. Do you believe those little pellets cured your headache?”
“I do.”
“What a delusion!”
“What did then?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you had reached the end of the malady when you took the pills; perhaps a change of air cured you; perhaps it was the excitement of this discussion, which started your blood, removed some stagnation, and restored the equilibrium of the circulation.”
“Excitement does not generally cure the headache,” said Dick, incredulously.
“Sometimes it does. About a week ago, a man came to my office at daylight in the morning to have a tooth extracted. He had been in agony all night; but the moment he saw my instrument his toothache left him, and he would not have the tooth taken out. What cured him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it was the smell of belladonna in my office! It was the excitement. If one of your friends--Miss Hungerford, for instance--were dangerously sick, as she was last summer, would you trust her in the hands of a professor of this humbug?”
“I would trust her in the hands of a skilful homœopathic physician.”
“Would you trust yourself to such treatment, Miss Hungerford?”
“I am entirely satisfied with my physician, doctor, and I am not competent to give an opinion,” replied Julia.
In the library, half an hour later, the doctor picked up the bottle of globules, and examined them for a moment. He took a couple of the pellets, and restored the vial to its place. He looked strange as he did so; perhaps he was indignant that sensible men should have faith in such puny helps.
The next day he called, in the afternoon. Eugene and Dick were both out, but Parkinson said they would return in a short time. The doctor would wait in the library; there was a book there he wished to examine. But the book seemed to have less interest than the vial of homœopathic globules. Dr. Lynch kept the bottle a few moments, and returned it to the place where he had found it, but with its contents changed. There was something diabolical in the looks of the doctor as he restored the medicine. He sat down in an arm-chair; he took up a book, but he did not read it. He turned the leaves, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
The carriage stopped at the front door. Eugene and Dick, with the ladies, had just returned from a visit to the new cemetery. Dr. Lynch rose from his chair, and went into the sitting-room. He paused before the looking-glass. Was he pale? was there any change in his countenance or his expression?
“Waiting for us, doctor?” said Eugene.
“Only a few moments. I have just come. How do you do to-day, Miss Hungerford?”
“Pretty well; but I have a headache. I believe when Dick lost his yesterday, it passed to me, for I have had one ever since,” replied Julia.
“Let me cure it for you, Julia!” exclaimed Dick, as he rushed into the library, returning with the vial of globules.
If the doctor had looked in the glass now, he might have seen that his face was deadly pale.
“Here, Julia, take half a dozen of these. I am sure they will cure you,” added Dick, as he removed the cork from the bottle.
“No, no!” cried the doctor, with energy. “Don’t take them, Miss Hungerford.”
“Why not, doctor?” asked Dick, surprised at the emphatic tones of the physician.
“They will injure her,” gasped the doctor.
His ashen face and pallid lips attracted the attention of all in the room.
“Yesterday you said you would be willing to take the whole bottle full.”
“So I should, but I am not willing Miss Hungerford should take them. As her physician, I protest against her taking them,” replied the doctor, with a decision which seemed to be out of place in a matter of so little consequence.
“I am not afraid to take them,” laughed Julia. “If they will cure my headache, I should be very glad to swallow the whole vial full.”
There was a little vein of opposition in her character, which prompted her to be obstinate in a case like the present; and the doctor’s decided manner did not please her. He had been her physician when she was sick; but he was not with her just then in that capacity. His interference she regarded as rather tyrannical--as an assumption of power which she was not prepared to acknowledge.
“Give me the bottle, Dick,” said she.
“I don’t wish you to take them, if the doctor objects,” replied he, handing her the vial.
“I do object,” added Dr. Lynch.
“How many make a dose, Dick?”
“Six.”
“Don’t take them, Miss Hungerford!” exclaimed the doctor, rushing towards her.
“O, but I will, doctor, if it is only to plague you,” laughed she, retreating a step or two.
“Do not! They will injure you.”
“These harmless little things?”
“They will, indeed.”
“You are afraid they will cure me, doctor, and you will lose an interesting patient.”
“No; far from it. I never beg for patients.”
She turned the bottle to pour some of the globules into her hand.
“Have I no influence with you, Miss Hungerford?” pleaded Dr. Lynch.
“But these are harmless.”
“They are not harmless.”
“Mr. Birch takes them.”
“They are not harmless to you.”
“How pale you are, doctor!”
“I am quite well.”
“Let me have them,” interposed Dick.
“But I am going to take some of them.”
“Don’t, Julia, since the doctor objects so strongly.”
“I will take them!”
“To please me, Julia, do not.”
She looked at him. Dick was pale now, as well as the doctor. What had been a pleasant frolic seemed suddenly to have become a very serious affair. Dick’s lips quivered. What was the matter?
“Give them to me, Julia,” said the doctor.
“Of course I will not take them if you all object,” said she.
“Give me the bottle,” repeated Dr. Lynch.
But Dick Birch took it out of her hand, and put it in his pocket.
“I think my headache is better,” said Julia. “It must have been the odor from the vial that cured me.”
Dick looked intensely troubled; so did the doctor. Each gazed at the other. It appeared as though the old doubts, the old suspicions, had been suddenly revived. The ladies went up stairs, and the gentlemen retired to the library, Dick going directly to the office.
“Mr. Birch, I hope you will pardon my apparent rudeness,” said the doctor, as Dick joined them.
“Don’t mention it, doctor; you are very careful of your patients,” replied Dick.
“I always intend to be. Will you allow me to examine those globules?”
“I hope you will pardon my apparent rudeness if I refuse,” replied Dick.
His answer filled Eugene with consternation, for it certainly boded a quarrel.
“If six of those globules cured your headache yesterday, they are not a safe medicine for a delicate female. I should like to analyze those pellets.”
“I meant no offence, doctor,” replied Dick.
“I took none.”
“Do you really wish for the bottle?”
“I do--for the purpose I stated.”
“You shall have it. I put it in the office. I will go for it.”
Dick went to the office. On the desk lay the vial. He poured out the globules into a paper, and refilled it from a larger vial taken from the desk. He rolled up the pellets in the paper, and put them in his pocket. Returning to the library, he handed the bottle to the doctor, who soon after took his leave.
“That was a great excitement to grow out of a small affair,” said Eugene. “I hope you will not discuss medical topics again.”
“Not so small an affair as it might have seemed,” replied Dick, as he left the house.