He was a spare man, and, physically, an ill-conditioned man, but at
first glance scarcely a seedy man. The indications of reduced
circumstances in the male of the better class are, I fancy, first
visible in the boots and shirt; the boots offensively exhibiting a
degree of polish inconsistent with their dilapidated condition, and the
shirt showing an extent of ostentatious surface that is invariably
fatal to the threadbare waist-coat that it partially covers. He was a
pale man, and, I fancied, still paler from his black clothes.
He handed me a note.
It was from a certain physician; a man of broad culture and broader
experience; a man who had devoted the greater part of his active life
to the alleviation of sorrow and suffering; a man who had lived up to
the noble vows of a noble profession; a man who locked in his honorable
breast the secrets of a hundred families, whose face was as kindly,
whose touch was as gentle, in the wards of the great public hospitals
as it was beside the laced curtains of the dying Narcissa; a man who,
through long contact with suffering, had acquired a universal
tenderness and breadth of kindly philosophy; a man who, day and night,
was at the beck and call of anguish; a man who never asked the creed,
belief, moral or worldly standing of the sufferer, or even his ability
to pay the few coins that enabled him (the physician) to exist and
practice his calling; in brief, a man who so nearly lived up to the
example of the Great Master that it seems strange I am writing of him
as a doctor of medicine and not of divinity.
The note was in pencil, characteristically brief, and ran thus:—
"Here is the man I spoke of. He ought to be good material for you."
For a moment I sat looking from the note to the man, and sounding the
"dim perilous depths" of my memory for the meaning of this mysterious
communication. The good "material," however, soon relieved my
embarrassment by putting his hand on his waistcoat, coming toward me,
and saying, "It is just here, you can feel it."
It was not necessary for me to do so. In a flash I remembered that my
medical friend had told me of a certain poor patient, once a soldier,
who, among his other trials and uncertainties, was afflicted with an
aneurism caused by the buckle of his knapsack pressing upon the arch of
the aorta. It was liable to burst at any shock or any moment. The
poor fellow's yoke had indeed been too heavy.
In the presence of such a tremendous possibility I think for an instant
I felt anxious only about myself. What I should do; how dispose of the
body; how explain the circumstance of his taking off; how evade the
ubiquitous reporter and the coroner's inquest; how a suspicion might
arise that I had in some way, through negligence or for some dark
purpose, unknown to the jury, precipitated the catastrophe, all flashed
before me. Even the note, with its darkly suggestive offer of "good
material" for me, looked diabolically significant. What might not an
intelligent lawyer make of it?
I tore it up instantly, and with feverish courtesy begged him to be
seated.
"You don't care to feel it?" he asked, a little anxiously.
"No."
"Nor see it?"
"No."
He sighed, a trifle sadly, as if I had rejected the only favor he could
bestow. I saw at once that he had been under frequent exhibition to
the doctors, and that he was, perhaps, a trifle vain of this attention.
This perception was corroborated a moment later by his producing a copy
of a medical magazine, with a remark that on the sixth page I would
find a full statement of his case.
"Could I serve him in any way?" I asked.
It appeared that I could. If I could help him to any light employment,
something that did not require any great physical exertion or mental
excitement, he would be thankful. But he wanted me to understand that
he was not, strictly speaking, a poor man; that some years before the
discovery of his fatal complaint he had taken out a life insurance
policy for five thousand dollars, and that he had raked and scraped
enough together to pay it up, and that he would not leave his wife and
four children destitute. "You see," he added, "if I could find some
sort of light work to do, and kinder sled along, you know—until—"
He stopped, awkwardly.
I have heard several noted actors thrill their audiences with a single
phrase. I think I never was as honestly moved by any spoken word as
that "until," or the pause that followed it. He was evidently quite
unconscious of its effect, for as I took a seat beside him on the sofa,
and looked more closely in his waxen face, I could see that he was
evidently embarrassed, and would have explained himself further, if I
had not stopped him.
Possibly it was the dramatic idea, or possibly chance; but a few days
afterward, meeting a certain kind-hearted theatrical manager, I asked
him if he had any light employment for a man who was an invalid? "Can
he walk?" "Yes." "Stand up for fifteen minutes?" "Yes." "Then I'll
take him. He'll do for the last scene in the 'Destruction of
Sennacherib'—it's a tremendous thing, you know. We'll have two
thousand people on the stage." I was a trifle alarmed at the title,
and ventured to suggest (without betraying my poor friend's secret)
that he could not actively engage in the "Destruction of Sennacherib,"
and that even the spectacle of it might be too much for him. "Needn't
see it at all," said my managerial friend; "put him in front, nothing
to do but march in and march out, and dodge curtain."
He was engaged. I admit I was at times haunted by grave doubts as to
whether I should not have informed the manager of his physical
condition, and the possibility that he might some evening perpetrate a
real tragedy on the mimic stage, but on the first performance of "The
Destruction of Sennacherib," which I conscientiously attended, I was
somewhat relieved. I had often been amused with the placid way in
which the chorus in the opera invariably received the most astounding
information, and witnessed the most appalling tragedies by poison or
the block, without anything more than a vocal protest or command,
always delivered to the audience and never to the actors, but I think
my poor friend's utter impassiveness to the wild carnage and the
terrible exhibitions of incendiarism that were going on around him
transcended even that. Dressed in a costume that seemed to be the very
soul of anachronism, he stood a little outside the proscenium, holding
a spear, the other hand pressed apparently upon the secret within his
breast, calmly surveying, with his waxen face, the gay auditorium. I
could not help thinking that there was a certain pride visible even in
his placid features, as of one who was conscious that at any moment he
might change this simulated catastrophe into real terror. I could not
help saying this to the Doctor, who was with me. "Yes," he said with
professional exactitude; "when it happens he'll throw his arms up above
his head, utter an ejaculation, and fall forward on his face,—it's a
singular thing, they always fall forward on their face,—and they'll
pick up the man as dead as Julius Caesar."
After that, I used to go night after night, with a certain hideous
fascination; but, while it will be remembered the "Destruction of
Sennacherib" had a tremendous run, it will also be remembered that not
a single life was really lost during its representation.
It was only a few weeks after this modest first appearance on the
boards of "The Man with an Aneurism," that, happening to be at dinner
party of practical business men, I sought to interest them with the
details of the above story, delivered with such skill and pathos as I
could command. I regret to say that, as a pathetic story, it for a
moment seemed to be a dead failure. At last a prominent banker sitting
next to me turned to me with the awful question: "Why don't your friend
try to realize on his life insurance?" I begged his pardon, I didn't
quite understand. "Oh, discount, sell out. Look here—(after a
pause). Let him assign his policy to me, it's not much of a risk, on
your statement. Well—I'll give him his five thousand dollars, clear."
And he did. Under the advice of this cool-headed—I think I may add
warm-hearted—banker, "The Man with an Aneurism" invested his money in
the name of and for the benefit of his wife in certain securities that
paid him a small but regular stipend. But he still continued upon the
boards of the theatre.
By reason of some business engagements that called me away from the
city, I did not see my friend the physician for three months afterward.
When I did I asked tidings of The Man with the Aneurism. The Doctor's
kind face grew sad. "I'm afraid—that is, I don't exactly know whether
I've good news or bad. Did you ever see his wife?"
I never had.
"Well, she was younger than he, and rather attractive. One of those
doll-faced women. You remember, he settled that life insurance policy
on her and the children: she might have waited; she didn't. The other
day she eloped with some fellow, I don't remember his name, with the
children and the five thousand dollars."
"And the shock killed him," I said with poetic promptitude.
"No—that is—not yet; I saw him yesterday," said the Doctor, with
conscientious professional precision, looking over his list of calls.
"Well, where is the poor fellow now?"
"He's still at the theatre. James, if these powders are called for,
you'll find them, here in this envelope. Tell Mrs. Blank I'll be there
at seven—and she can give the baby this until I come. Say there's no
danger. These women are an awful bother! Yes, he's at the theatre
yet. Which way are you going? Down town? Why can't you step into my
carriage, and I'll give you a lift, and we'll talk on the way down?
Well—he's at the theatre yet. And—and—do you remember the
'Destruction of Sennacherib?' No? Yes you do. You remember that
woman in pink, who pirouetted in the famous ballet scene! You don't?
Why, yes you do! Well, I imagine, of course I don't know, it's only a
summary diagnosis, but I imagine that our friend with the aneurism has
attached himself to her."
"Doctor, you horrify me."
"There are more things, Mr. Poet, in heaven and earth than are yet
dreamt of in your philosophy. Listen. My diagnosis may be wrong, but
that woman called the other day at my office to ask about him, his
health, and general condition. I told her the truth—and she FAINTED.
It was about as dead a faint as I ever saw; I was nearly an hour in
bringing her out of it. Of course it was the heat of the room, her
exertions the preceding week, and I prescribed for her. Queer, wasn't
it? Now, if I were a writer, and had your faculty, I'd make something
out of that."
"But how is his general health?"
"Oh, about the same. He can't evade what will come, you know, at any
moment. He was up here the other day. Why, the pulsation was as
plain—why, the entire arch of the aorta— What! you get out here?
Good-by."
Of course no moralist, no man writing for a sensitive and strictly
virtuous public, could further interest himself in this man. So I
dismissed him at once from my mind, and returned to the literary
contemplation of virtue that was clearly and positively defined, and of
Sin, that invariably commenced with a capital letter. That this man,
in his awful condition, hovering on the verge of eternity, should allow
himself to be attracted by—but it was horrible to contemplate.
Nevertheless, a month afterwards, I was returning from a festivity with
my intimate friend Smith, my distinguished friend Jobling, my most
respectable friend Robinson, and my wittiest friend Jones. It was a
clear, star-lit morning, and we seemed to hold the broad, beautiful
avenue to ourselves; and I fear we acted as if it were so. As we
hilariously passed the corner of Eighteenth Street, a coupe rolled by,
and I suddenly heard my name called from its gloomy depths.
"I beg your pardon," said the Doctor, as his driver drew up by the
sidewalk, "but I've some news for you. I've just been to see our poor
friend ——. Of course I was too late. He was gone in a flash."
"What! dead?"
"As Pharaoh! In an instant, just as I said. You see, the rupture took
place in the descending arch of—"
"But, Doctor!"
"It's a queer story. Am I keeping you from your friends? No? Well,
you see she—that woman I spoke of—had written a note to him based on
what I had told her. He got it, and dropped in his dressing-room, dead
as a herring."
"How could she have been so cruel, knowing his condition? She might,
with woman's tact, have rejected him less abruptly."
"Yes; but you're all wrong. By Jove! she ACCEPTED him! was willing to
marry him!"
"What?"
"Yes. Don't you see? It was joy that killed him. Gad, we never
thought of THAT! Queer, ain't it? See here, don't you think you might
make a story out of it?"
"But, Doctor, it hasn't got any moral."
"Humph! That's so. Good morning. Drive on, John."
