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CHAPTER I - THE DILIGENCE
James Therne is not my real name, for why should I publish it to the
world? A year or two ago it was famous--or infamous--enough, but in
that time many things have happened. There has been a war, a
continental revolution, two scandals of world-wide celebrity, one
moral and the other financial, and, to come to events that interest me
particularly as a doctor, an epidemic of Asiatic plague in Italy and
France, and, stranger still, an outbreak of the mediaeval grain
sickness, which is believed to have carried off 20,000 people in
Russia and German Poland, consequent, I have no doubt, upon the wet
season and poor rye harvest in those countries.
These occurrences and others are more than enough to turn the public
mind from the recollection of the appalling smallpox epidemic that
passed over England last autumn two years, of which the first fury
broke upon the city of Dunchester, my native place, that for many
years I had the honour to represent in Parliament. The population of
Dunchester, it is true, is smaller by over five thousand souls, and
many of those who survive are not so good-looking as they were, but
the gap is easily filled and pock-marks are not hereditary. Also, such
a horror will never happen again, for now the law of compulsory
vaccination is strong enough! Only the dead have cause of complaint,
those who were cut off from the world and despatched hot-foot whither
we see not. Myself I am certain of nothing; I know too much about the
brain and body to have much faith in the soul, and I pray to God that
I may be right. Ah! there it comes in. If a God, why not the rest, and
who shall say there is no God? Somehow it seems to me that more than
once in my life I have seen His Finger.
Yet I pray that I am right, for if I am wrong what a welcome awaits me
yonder when grief and chloral and that "slight weakness of the heart"
have done their work.
Yes--five thousand of them or more in Dunchester alone, and, making
every allowance, I suppose that in this one city there were very many
of these--young people mostly--who owed their deaths to me, since it
was my persuasion, my eloquent arguments, working upon the minds of
their prejudiced and credulous elders, that surely, if indirectly,
brought their doom upon them. "A doctor is not infallible, he may make
mistakes." Quite so, and if a mistake of his should kill a few
thousands, why, that is the act of God (or of Fate) working through
his blindness. But if it does not happen to have been a mistake, if,
for instance, all those dead, should they still live in any place or
shape, could say to me, "James Therne, you are the murderer of our
bodies, since, for your own ends, you taught us that which you knew
/not/ to be the truth."
How then? I ask. So--let them say it if they will. Let all that great
cloud of witnesses compass me about, lads and maidens, children and
infants, whose bones cumber the churchyards yonder in Dunchester. I
defy them, for it is done and cannot be undone. Yet, in their company
are two whose eyes I dread to meet: Jane, my daughter, whose life was
sacrificed through me, and Ernest Merchison, her lover, who went to
seek her in the tomb.
They would not reproach me now, I know, for she was too sweet and
loved me too well with all my faults, and, if he proved pitiless in
the first torment of his loss, Merchison was a good and honest man,
who, understanding my remorse and misery, forgave me before he died.
Still, I dread to meet them, who, if that old fable be true and they
live, read me for what I am. Yet why should I fear, for all this they
knew before they died, and, knowing, could forgive? Surely it is with
another vengeance that I must reckon.
Well, after her mother's death my daughter was the only being whom I
ever truly loved, and no future mental hell that the imagination can
invent would have power to make me suffer more because of her than I
have always suffered since the grave closed over her--the virgin
martyr sacrificed on the altar of a false prophet and a coward.
I come of a family of doctors. My grandfather, Thomas Therne, whose
name still lives in medicine, was a doctor in the neighbourhood of
Dunchester, and my father succeeded to his practice and nothing else,
for the old gentleman had lived beyond his means. Shortly after my
father's marriage he sold this practice and removed into Dunchester,
where he soon acquired a considerable reputation as a surgeon, and
prospered, until not long after my birth, just as a brilliant career
seemed to be opening itself to him, death closed his book for ever. In
attending a case of smallpox, about four months before I was born, he
contracted the disease, but the attack was not considered serious and
he recovered from it quickly. It would seem, however, that it left
some constitutional weakness, for a year later he was found to be
suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs, and was ordered to a warmer
climate.
Selling his Dunchester practice for what it would fetch to his
assistant, Dr. Bell, my father came to Madeira--whither, I scarcely
know why, I have also drifted now that all is over for me--for here he
hoped to be able to earn a living by doctoring the English visitors.
This, however, he could not do, since the climate proved no match for
his disease, though he lingered for nearly two years, during which
time he spent all the money that he had. When he died there was
scarcely enough left to pay for his funeral in the little churchyard
yonder that I can see from the windows of this /quinta/. Where he lies
exactly I do not know as no record was kept, and the wooden cross, the
only monument that my mother could afford to set over him, has long
ago rotted away.
Some charitable English people helped my mother to return to England,
where we went to live with her mother, who existed on a pension of
about 120 pounds a year, in a fishing-village near Brighton. Here I
grew up, getting my education--a very good one by the way--at a cheap
day school. My mother's wish was that I should become a sailor like
her own father, who had been a captain in the Navy, but the necessary
money was not forthcoming to put me into the Royal Navy, and my liking
for the sea was not strong enough to take me into the merchant
service.
From the beginning I wished to be a doctor like my father and
grandfather before me, for I knew that I was clever, and I knew also
that successful doctors make a great deal of money. Ground down as I
had been by poverty from babyhood, already at nineteen years of age I
desired money above everything on earth. I saw then, and subsequent
experience has only confirmed my views, that the world as it has
become under the pressure of high civilisation is a world for the
rich. Leaving material comforts and advantages out of the question,
what ambition can a man satisfy without money? Take the successful
politicians for instance, and it will be found that almost every one
of them is rich. This country is too full; there is scant room for the
individual. Only intellectual Titans can force their heads above the
crowd, and, as a rule, they have not even then the money to take them
higher. If I had my life over again--and it is my advice to all young
men of ability and ambition--I would leave the old country and settle
in America or in one of the great colonies. There, where the
conditions are more elastic and the competition is not so cruel, a
hard-working man of talent does not need to be endowed with fortune to
enable him to rise to the top of the tree.
Well, my desire was to be accomplished, for as it chanced a younger
brother of my father, who during his lifetime had never taken any
notice of me, died and left me 750 pounds. Seven hundred and fifty
pounds! To me at that time it was colossal wealth, for it enabled us
to rent some rooms in London, where I entered myself as a medical
student at University College.
There is no need for me to dwell upon my college career, but if any
one were to take the trouble to consult the old records he would find
that it was sufficiently brilliant. I worked hard, and I had a
natural, perhaps an hereditary liking, for the work. Medicine always
fascinated me. I think it the greatest of the sciences, and from the
beginning I was determined that I would be among the greatest of its
masters.
At four and twenty, having finished my curriculum with high honours--I
was gold medallist of my year in both medicine and surgery--I became
house-surgeon to one of the London hospitals. After my term of office
was over I remained at the hospital for another year, for I wished to
make a practical study of my profession in all its branches before
starting a private practice. At the end of this time my mother died
while still comparatively young. She had never really recovered from
the loss of my father, and, though it was long about it, sorrow sapped
her strength at last. Her loss was a shock to me, although in fact we
had few tastes in common. To divert my mind, and also because I was
somewhat run down and really needed a change, I asked a friend of mine
who was a director of a great steamship line running to the West
Indies and Mexico to give me a trip out, offering my medicine services
in return for the passage. This he agreed to do with pleasure;
moreover, matters were so arranged that I could stop in Mexico for
three months and rejoin the vessel on her next homeward trip.
After a very pleasant voyage I reached Vera Cruz. It is a quaint and
in some ways a pretty place, with its tall cool-looking houses and
narrow streets, not unlike Funchal, only more tropical. Whenever I
think of it, however, the first memories that leap to my mind are
those of the stench of the open drains and of the scavenger carts
going their rounds with the /zaphilotes/ or vultures actually sitting
upon them. As it happened, those carts were very necessary then, for a
yellow fever epidemic was raging in the place. Having nothing
particular to do I stopped there for three weeks to study it, working
in the hospitals with the local doctors, for I felt no fear of yellow
fever--only one contagious disease terrifies me, and with that I was
soon destined to make acquaintance.
At length I arranged to start for the City of Mexico, to which in
those days the journey from Vera Cruz was performed by diligence as
the railway as not yet finished. At that time Mexico was a wild
country. Wars and revolutions innumerable, together with a certain
natural leaning that way, had reduced a considerable proportion of its
inhabitants to the road, where they earned a precarious living--not by
mending it, but by robbing and occasionally cutting the throats of any
travellers whom they could catch.
The track from Vera Cruz to Mexico City runs persistently uphill;
indeed, I think the one place is 7000 feet above the level of the
other. First, there is the hot zone, where the women by the wayside
sell you pineapples and cocoanuts; then the temperate zone, where they
offer you oranges and bananas; then the cold country, in which you are
expected to drink a filthy liquid extracted from aloes called
/pulque/, that in taste and appearance resembles soapy water.
It was somewhere in the temperate zone that we passed a town
consisting of fifteen /adobe/ or mud houses and seventeen churches.
The excessive religious equipment of this city is accounted for by an
almost inaccessible mountain stronghold in the neighbourhood. This
stronghold for generations had been occupied by brigands, and it was
the time-honoured custom of each chieftain of the band, when he
retired on a hard-earned competence, to expiate any regrettable
incidents in his career by building a church in the town dedicated to
his patron saint and to the memory of those whose souls he had helped
to Paradise. This pious and picturesque, if somewhat mediaeval, custom
has now come to an end, as I understand that the Mexican Government
caused the stronghold to be stormed a good many years ago, and put its
occupants, to the number of several hundreds, to the sword.
We were eight in the coach, which was drawn by as many mules--four
merchants, two priests, myself and the lady who afterwards became my
wife. She was a blue-eyed and fair-haired American from New York. Her
name, I soon discovered, was Emma Becker, and her father, who was
dead, had been a lawyer. We made friends at once, and before we had
jolted ten miles on our journey I learned her story. It seemed that
she was an orphan with a very small fortune, and only one near
relative, an aunt who had married a Mexican named Gomez, the owner of
a fine range or /hacienda/ situated on the border of the highlands,
about eighty miles from the City of Mexico. On the death of her
father, being like most American girls adventurous and independent,
Miss Becker had accepted an invitation from her aunt Gomez and her
husband to come and live with them a while. Now, quite alone and
unescorted, she was on her way to Mexico City, where she expected to
be met by some friends of her uncle.
We started from Vera Cruz about mid-day and slept, or rather passed
the night, at a filthy inn alive with every sort of insect pest. Two
hours before dawn we were bundled into the /diligencia/ and slowly
dragged up a mountain road so steep that, notwithstanding the blows
and oaths of the drivers, the mules had to stop every few hundred
yards to rest. I remember that at last I fell asleep, my head reposing
on the shoulder of a very fat priest, who snored tempestuously, then
awoke to pray, then snored again. It was the voice of Miss Becker, who
sat opposite to me, that wakened me.
"Forgive me for disturbing you, Dr. Therne," she said, "but you really
must look," and she pointed through the window of the coach.
Following her hand I saw a sight which no one who has witnessed it can
ever forget: the sun rising on the mighty peak of Orizaba, the Star
Mountain, as the old Aztecs named it. Eighteen thousand feet above our
heads towered the great volcano, its foot clothed with forests, its
cone dusted with snow. The green flanks of the peak and the country
beneath them were still wrapped in shadow, but on its white and lofty
crest already the lights of dawn were burning. Never have I seen
anything more beautiful than this soaring mountain top flaming like
some giant torch over a world of darkness; indeed, the unearthly
grandeur of the sight amazed and half paralysed my mind.
A lantern swung from the roof of the coach, and, turning my eyes from
the mountain, in its light I saw the face of my travelling companion
and--fell in love with it. I had seen it before without any such idea
entering my mind; then it had been to me only the face of a rather
piquante and pretty girl, but with this strange and inconvenient
result, the sight of the dawn breaking upon Orizaba seemed to have
worked some change in me. At least, if only for an instant, it had
pierced the barrier that day by day we build within us to protect
ourselves from the attack of the impulses of nature.
In that moment at any rate there was a look upon this girl's
countenance and a light shining in her eyes which overcame my caution
and swept me out of myself, for I think that she too was under the
shadow of the glory which broke upon the crest of Orizaba. In vain did
I try to save myself and to struggle back to common-sense, since
hitherto the prospect of domestic love had played no part in my scheme
of life. It was useless, so I gave it up, and our eyes met.
Neither of us said anything, but from that time forward we knew that
we did not wish to be parted any more.
After a while, to relieve a tension of mind which neither of us cared
to reveal, we drifted into desultory and indifferent conversation. In
the course of our talk Emma told me that her aunt had written to her
that if she could leave the coach at Orizaba she would be within fifty
miles of the /hacienda/ of La Concepcion, whereas when she reached
Mexico City she would still be eighty miles from it. Her aunt had
added, however, that this was not practicable at present, why she did
not say, and that she must go on to Mexico where some friends would
take charge of her until her uncle was able to fetch her.
Presently Emma seemed to fall asleep, at least she shut her eyes. But
I could not sleep, and sat there listening to the snores of the fat
priest and the strange interminable oaths of the drivers as they
thrashed the mules. Opposite to me, tied to the roof of the coach
immediately above Emma's head, was a cheap looking-glass, provided, I
suppose, for the convenience of passengers when making the toilette of
travel. In it I could see myself reflected, so, having nothing better
to do, in view of contingencies which of a sudden had become possible,
I amused myself by taking count of my personal appearance. On the
whole in those days it was not unsatisfactory. In build, I was tall
and slight, with thin, nervous hands. My colouring and hair were dark,
and I had soft and rather large brown eyes. The best part of my face
was my forehead, which was ample, and the worst my mouth, which was
somewhat weak. I do not think, however, that any one would have
guessed by looking at me as I then appeared at the age of seven and
twenty, that I was an exceedingly hard-working man with extraordinary
powers of observation and a really retentive memory.
At any rate, I am sure that it was not these qualities which
recommended me to Emma Becker, nor, whatever we may have felt under
the influences of Orizaba, was it any spiritual affinity. Doctors, I
fear, are not great believers in spiritual affinities; they know that
such emotions can be accounted for in other ways. Probably Emma was
attracted to me because I was dark, and I to her because she was fair.
Orizaba and opportunity merely brought out and accentuated these quite
natural preferences.
By now the day had broken, and, looking out of the window, I could see
that we were travelling along the side of a mountain. Above us the
slope was gentle and clothed with sub-tropical trees, while below it
became a veritable precipice, in some places absolutely sheer, for the
road was cut upon a sort of rocky ledge, although, owing to the vast
billows of mist that filled it, nothing could be seen of the gulf
beneath.
I was reflecting, I remember, that this would be an ill path to drive
with a drunken coachman, when suddenly I saw the off-front mule
stumble unaccountably, and, as it fell, heard a shot fired close at
hand. Next instant also I saw the driver and his companion spring from
the box, and, with a yell of terror, plunge over the edge of the
cliff, apparently into the depths below. Then from the narrow compass
of that coach arose a perfect pandemonium of sounds, with an under cry
of a single word, "Brigands! Brigands!"
The merchants shouted, supplicated their saints, and swore as with
trembling hands they tried to conceal loose valuables in their boots
and hats; one of the priests too literally howled in his terror, but
the other, a man of more dignity, only bowed his head and murmured a
prayer. By this time also the mules had tied themselves into a knot
and were threatening to overturn the coach, to prevent which our
captors, before meddling with us, cut the animals loose with their
/machetes/ or swords, and drove them over the brink of the abyss,
where, like the drivers, they vanished. Then a dusky-faced ruffian,
with a scar on his cheek, came to the door of the diligence and bowing
politely beckoned to us to come out. As there were at least a dozen of
them and resistance was useless, even if our companions could have
found the courage to fight, we obeyed, and were placed before the
brigands in a line, our backs being set to the edge of the gulf. I was
last but one in the line, and beyond me stood Emma Becker, whose hand
I held.
Then the tragedy began. Several of the villains seized the first
merchant, and, stopping his cries and protestations with a blow in the
mouth, stripped him to the shirt, abstracting notes and gold and
everything else of value that they could find in various portions of
his attire where he had hidden them, and principally, I remember, from
the lining of his vest. When they had done with him, they dragged him
away and bundled him roughly into the diligence.
Next to this merchant stood the two priests. Of the first of these the
brigands asked a question, to which, with some hesitation, the priest
--that man who had shown so much terror--replied in the affirmative,
whereon his companion looked at him contemptuously and muttered a
Spanish phrase which means "Man without shame." Of him also the same
question was asked, in answer to which he shook his head, whereon he
was conducted, though without violence or being searched, to the
coach, and shut into it with the plundered merchant. Then the thieves
went to work with the next victim.
"Dr. Therne," whispered Emma Becker, "you have a pistol, do you not?"
I nodded my head.
"Will you lend it me? You understand?"
"Yes," I answered, "I understand, but I hope that things are not so
bad as that."
"They are," she answered with a quiver in her voice. "I have heard
about these Mexican brigands. With the exception of that priest and
myself they will put all of you into the coach and push it over the
precipice."
At her words my heart stood still and a palpable mist gathered before
my eyes. When it cleared away my brain seemed to awake to an abnormal
activity, as though the knowledge that unless it was used to good
effect now it would never be used again were spurring it to action.
Rapidly I reviewed the situation and considered every possible method
of escape. At first I could think of none; then suddenly I remembered
that the driver and his companion, who no doubt knew every inch of the
road, had leaped from the coach, apparently over the edge of the
precipice. This I felt sure they would not have done had they been
going to certain death, since they would have preferred to take their
chance of mercy at the hands of the brigands. Moreover, these gentry
themselves had driven the mules into the abyss whither those wise
animals would never have gone unless there was some foothold for them.
I looked behind me but could discover nothing, for, as is common in
Mexico at the hour of dawn, the gulf was absolutely filled with dense
vapours. Then I made up my mind that I would risk it and began to
shuffle slowly backwards. Already I was near the edge when I
remembered Emma Becker and paused to reflect. If I took her with me it
would considerably lessen my chances of escape, and at any rate her
life was not threatened. But I had not given her the pistol, and at
that moment even in my panic there rose before me a vision of her face
as I had seen it in the lamplight when she looked up at the glory
shining on the crest of Orizaba.
Had it not been for this vision I think it possible that I might have
left her. I wish to gloze over nothing; I did not make my own nature,
and in these pages I describe it as it was and is without palliation
or excuse. I know that this is not the fashion in autobiographies; no
one has done it since the time of Pepys, who did not write for
publication, and for that very reason my record has its value. I am
physically and, perhaps morally also, timid--that is, although I have
faced it boldly enough upon occasion, as the reader will learn in the
course of my history, I fear the thought of death, and especially of
cruel and violent death, such as was near to me at that moment. So
much did I fear it then that the mere fact that an acquaintance was in
danger and distress would scarcely have sufficed to cause me to
sacrifice, or at least to greatly complicate, my own chances of escape
in order to promote hers simply because that acquaintance was of the
other sex. But Emma had touched a new chord in my nature, and I felt,
whether I liked it or not, that whatever I could do for myself I must
do for her also. So I shuffled forward again.
"Listen," I whispered, "I have been to look and I do not believe that
the cliff is very steep just here. Will you try it with me?"
"Of course," she answered; "I had as soon die of a broken neck as in
any other way."
"We must watch our chance then, or they will see us run and shoot.
Wait till I give you the signal."
She nodded her head and we waited.
At length, while the fourth and last merchant, who stood next to me,
was being dealt with, just as in our despair we were about to throw
ourselves into the gulf before them all, fortune gave us our
opportunity. This unhappy man, having probably some inkling of the
doom which awaited him, broke suddenly from the hands of his captors,
and ran at full speed down the road. After him they went pell-mell,
every thief of them except one who remained--fortunately for us upon
its farther side--on guard by the door of the diligence in which four
people, three merchants and a priest, were now imprisoned. With laughs
and shouts they hunted their wretched quarry, firing shots as they
ran, till at length one of them overtook the man and cut him down with
his /machete/.
"Don't look, but come," I whispered to my companion.
In another instant we were at the edge of the cliff, and a foot or so
below us was spread the dense, impenetrable blanket of mist. I stopped
and hesitated, for the next step might be my last.
"We can't be worse off, so God help us," said Emma, and without
waiting for me to lead her she swung herself over the edge.
To my intense relief I heard her alight within a few feet, and
followed immediately. Now I was at her side, and now we were
scrambling and slipping down the precipitous and rocky slope as
swiftly as the dense wet fog would let us. I believe that our escape
was quite unnoticed. The guard was watching the murder of the
merchant, or, if he saw us, he did not venture to leave the carriage
door, and the priest who had accepted some offer which was made to
him, probably that his life would be spared if he consented to give
absolution to the murderers, was kneeling on the ground, his face
hidden in his hands.
As we went the mist grew thinner, and we could see that we were
travelling down a steep spur of the precipice, which to our left was
quite sheer, and that at the foot of it was a wide plain thickly but
not densely covered with trees. In ten minutes we were at the bottom,
and as we could neither see nor hear any sign of pursuers we paused
for an instant to rest.
Not five yards from us the cliff was broken away, and so straight that
a cat could not have climbed it.
"We chose our place well," I said pointing upwards.
"No," Emma answered, "we did not choose; it was chosen for us."
As she spoke a muffled and terrifying sound of agony reached us from
above, and then, in the layers of vapour that still stretched between
us and the sky, we perceived something huge rushing swiftly down. It
appeared; it drew near; it struck, and fell to pieces like a shattered
glass. We ran to look, and there before us were the fragments of the
diligence, and among them the mangled corpses of five of our fellow-
travellers.
This was the fate that we had escaped.
"Oh! for God's sake come away," moaned Emma, and sick with horror we
turned and ran, or rather reeled, into the shelter of the trees upon
the plain.
Content of CHAPTER I - THE DILIGENCE [H. Rider Haggard's novel: Doctor Therne]
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