Mose did so; and once there, the doctor, abusing and bullying his
patient, got him upstairs and into the bed, and then applied to the
protesting man who seldom had known what it was even to have a cold, all
manner of exposurial antidotes.
"But the patient that you were going to see!" protested Thomas Cathcart
Blake.
"No friend of mine," returned Dr. DeLancey. "Only a patient. Patients are
plenty, but friends are few. Let him get someone else, or die, as he
chooses. It's none of my business. Here, drink this." And he poured
between the protesting lips of Thomas Cathcart Blake a nauseating draught
of something that was most malodorous; for Dr. DeLancey was an allopath,
and a good one.
But, good as he was, he was too late. Pneumonia had been before him; and,
two weeks later, in spite of all that the good doctor, and several other
equally good doctors, could do, Thomas Cathcart Blake died. And he didn't
seem sorry at going.
Before he went, he called to him his son, and to that son he said many
things. Most of the things that he said are neither your business nor
mine. But of the things that he said, we may know one. He wanted his son
to marry the daughter of the widow of Jimmy Blair.
Young Tom Blake, between the sobs that are becoming a man, answered:
"I want to, dad. I've always wanted to. And I will, if I can."
His father counselled, weakly:
"Get her honestly, boy, or not at all. If you get her, cherish her--give
her everything that there is in you to give--for there's nothing that a
man can give that a good woman doesn't deserve. Now, God bless you, son--
and--go."
Tom Blake clung to the sheets. It was hard to lose such a father and such
a mother, and all within a six month. He cried, as you would cry, or I,
and be glad that crying might be.... Dr. DeLancey, at length, managed to
loosen his clenching fingers. Dr. DeLancey was crying, too; the tears ran
down his veined cheeks to lose themselves in the hair of his cheeks. He
tried to fume and fuss and splutter, as was his wont; but he couldn't. He
could just put his hand around Tom Blake's heaving young shoulders,
listen to his choking, broken sobs and say, over and over, and over
again: "There, there, my boy! There, there! There, there!"
It's pretty hard, you know, to lose a father and a mother like that, and
all within six months.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER NINE.
OF CERTAIN OTHER GOINGS.
John Stuyvesant Schuyler's end was different. He was a man reserved--a
man who thought much and told little. His illness baffled Dr. DeLancey at
first; but then he knew what the disease was; although to it he could
give no polysyllabic name of Latin, and for it he could prescribe no
remedies; for the cure had gone from the hands of man into the hands of
God. And to the hands of God, John Stuyvesant Schuyler went, at length,
to find it; and who shall say that his quest was unsuccessful?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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