Mac's Enteric Fever

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Title:     Mac's Enteric Fever
Author: S. R. Crockett [More Titles by Crockett]

Merry are the months when the years go slow,
Shining on ahead of us, like lamps in a row:
Lamps in a row in a briskly moving town.
Merry are the moments ere the night shuts down.

"Halleval and Haskeval."

In those days we took great care of our health. It was about the only thing we had to take care of. So we went to lodge on the topmost floor of a tall Edinburgh land, with only some indifferent slates and the midnight tomcats between us and the stars. The garret story in such a house is, medically speaking, much the healthiest. We have always had strong views about this matter, and we did not let any considerations of expense prevent us taking care of our health.

Also, it is a common mistake to over-eat. Therefore, we students had porridge twice a day, with a herring in between, except when we were saving up for a book. Then we did without the herring. It was a fine diet, wholesome if sparse, and kept us brave and hungry. Hungry dogs hunt best, except retrievers.

In this manner we lived for many years with an excellent lady, who never interfered with our ploys unless we broke a poker or a leaf of the table at least. Then she came in and told us what she thought of us for ten eloquent minutes. After that we went out for a walk, and the landlady gathered up the fragments that remained.

It was a lively place when Mac and I lodged together. Mac was a painter, but he had not yet decided which Academy he would be president of--so that in the meantime Sir Frederick Langton and Sir Simeon Stormcloud could sleep in their beds with some ease of mind.

Our room up near the sky was festooned with dim photographs of immense family tombstones--a perfect graveyard of them, which proved that the relations of Mrs. Christison, our worthy landlady, would have some trouble in getting to bed in anything like time if by chance they should be caught wandering abroad at cock-crow. Mixed with these there were ghastly libels on the human form divine, which Mac had brought home from the students' atelier--ladies and gentlemen who appeared to find it somewhat cold, and had therefore thoughtfully provided themselves with a tight-fitting coat of white-wash. Mac said this was the way that flesh-colour was painted under direct illumination. Well, it might have been. We did not set up for judges. But to an inexperienced eye they looked a great deal more like deceased white-washed persons who had been dug up after some weeks' decent burial. We observed that they appeared to be mildewed in patches, but Mac explained that these were the muscles. This also was possible; but, all the same, we had never seen any ladies or gentlemen who carried their muscles outside, so to speak. Mac said he did this sort of thing because he was applying for admission to the Academy Life Class. We all hoped he would get in, for we had had quite enough of dead people, especially when they were white-washed and resurrected, besides given to wearing their muscles outside.

Mac used, in addition to this provocation, to play jokes on us, because Almond and I were harmless and quiet. Almond was studying engineering because he was going to be a wholesale manufacturer of wheelbarrows. I was an arts student who wrote literary and political articles in the office of a moribund newspaper all night, and wakened in time to go along the street to dine in a theological college.

So Mac used to play off his wicked jokes upon Almond and myself for the reasons stated. He bored a hole through the wall at the head of our bed, and awoke us untimeously in the frosty mornings by squirting mysterious streams of water upon us. He said he had promised Almond's mother to see that he took a bath every morning, and he was going to do it. He anticipated us at our tins of sardines, and when we re-opened them we found all the tails carefully preserved in oil and sawdust. He made disgraceful caricatures of our physiognomies by falsely representing that he wished us to sit for our portraits. He perpetrated drawings upon the backs of our college exercises, mixing them with opprobrious remarks concerning our preceptors, which we did not observe till our attention was called to them upon their return by the preceptors themselves. We bore these things meekly on the whole, for that was our nature--at least mine.

Occasionally the worm turned, and then a good many articles of furniture were overset; and the Misses Hope, who resided beneath us, knocked up through the ceiling with the tongs, whereupon the landlady and her daughter came in armed with the poker and a long-handled broom to promote peace.

But after the affair of the squirt Almond and I took counsel, and Almond said (for Professor Jeeming Flenkin had discovered on the back of a careful drawing of an engine wheel a caricature of himself pointing with index-finger and saying, "Very smutty!") that he would stand this sort of thing no longer.

So we resolved to work a sell on Mac which he would not forget to his dying day. To effect this we took our landlady and our landlady's daughter into the plot, and the matter was practically complete when Mac came home. We heard him whistling up the stairs. The engineer was drawing a cherub in Indian ink. The arts student was reading a text-book of geology. The landlady and her daughter were busy about their work in their own quarters. All was peace.

The key clicked in the lock, and then the whistle stopped as Mac entered.

The landlady met him at the door. She gazed anxiously and maternally at his face. She seemed surprised also, and a trifle agitated.

"Dear me, Maister Mac, what's the maitter? Ye're no' lookin' weel."

Mac was a little surprised, but not alarmed.

"There is nothing the matter, Mrs. Christison," said he lightly.

"Eh, Teena, come here," she cried to her daughter.

Teena came hurriedly at her mother's call. But as she looked upon Mac the fashion of her countenance changed.

"Are you not well?" she said, peering anxiously into the pupils of Mac's eyes.

Such attentions are flattering, and Mac, being a squire of dames, was desirous of making the most of it.

"Well, I was not feeling quite up to the mark, but I daresay it'll pass off," he said diplomatically.

"You must not be working so hard. You will kill yourself one of these days."

For which we hope and trust she may be forgiven, though it is a good deal to hope.

"Where do you feel it most, Mr. Mac?" then inquired Teena tenderly.

Mac is of opinion that, if anywhere, he feels it worst in his head, but his chest is also paining him a little.

"Gang richt awa' in, my laddie," says the landlady, "an' lie doon and rest ye on the sofa, an' I'll be ben the noo wi' something till ye!"

Mac comes in with a slightly scared and conscious expression on his face. Almond and I look up from our work as he enters, though, as it were, only in a casual manner. But what we see arrests our attention, and Almond's jaw drops as he looks from Mac to me, and back again to Mac.

"Good gracious, what's wrang wi' ye, man?" he gasps, in his native tongue.

I get up hastily and go over to the patient. I take him by the arm, pull him sharply to the window and turn him round--an action which he resents.

"I wish to goodness you fellows would not make asses of yourselves," he says, as he flings himself down on the sofa.

Almond and I look at one another as if this fretfulness were one of the worst signs, and we had quite expected it. We say nothing for a little as we sit down to work; but uneasily, as if we have something on our minds. Presently I rise, and, going into the bedroom, motion to Almond as I go. This action is not lost on Mac. I did not mean that it should be. We shut the door and whisper together. Mac comes and shakes the door, which is locked on the inside.

"Come out of that, you fellows," he cries, "and don't be gibbering idiots!"

But for all that he is palpably nervous and uneasy.

"Go away and lie down, like a good fellow," I say soothingly; "it'll be all right--all right."

But Mac is not soothed in the least. Then we whisper some more, and rustle the leaves of a large Quain which lies on the mantelpiece, a legacy from some former medical lodger. After a respectable time we come out without looking at Mac, who peers at us steadily from the sofa. I go directly to the Scotsman of the day, and run my finger down the serried columns till I come to the paragraph which gives the mortality for the week. Almond looks over my shoulder the while, and I make a score with my finger-nail under the words "enteric fever." We are sure that Mac does not know what enteric fever is. No more do we, but that does not matter.

We withdraw solemnly one by one, as if we were a procession, with a muttered excuse to Mac that we are going out to see a man. Almond sympathetically and silently brings a dressing-gown to cover his feet. He angrily kicks it across the floor.

"I say, you fellows--" he begins, as we go out.

But we take no heed. The case is too serious. Then we go into the kitchen and discuss it with the landlady.

We do this with solemn pauses, indicative of deep thought. We go back into the sitting-room. Mac has been to look at the paper where my nail scored it. We knew he would, and he is now lying on the sofa rather pale. He even groans a little. The symptoms work handsomely. It is small wonder we are alarmed.

We ring for the landlady, and she comes in hastily and with anxiety depicted on her countenance. She asks him where he feels it worst. Teena runs for Quain, and, being the least suspect of the party, she reads, in a low, hushed tone, an account of the symptoms of enteric fever (previously inserted in manuscript) which would considerably astonish Dr. Quain and the able specialist who contributed the real account of that disease to the volume.

It seems that for the disease specified, castor-oil and a mustard blister, the latter applied very warm between the shoulders, are the appropriate and certain cures. There is nothing that Mac dislikes so much as castor-oil. He would rather die than take it--so he says. But a valuable life, which might be spent in the service of the highest art, must not be permitted to be thus thrown away. So we get the castor-oil in a spoon, and with Teena coaxing and Almond acting on the well-known principle of twenty years' resolute government--down she goes.

Instantly Mac feels a little better, for he can groan easier than before. That is a good sign. The great thing now is to keep up the temperature and induce perspiration. The mustard approaches. The landlady cries from the kitchen to know if he is ready. Teena retires to get more blankets. The patient is put to bed, and in a little the mustard plaster is being applied in the place indicated by Quain. We tell one another what a mercy it is that we have all the requisites in the house. (There is no mustard in the plaster, really--only a few pepper-corns and a little sand scraped from the geological hammer.) But we say aloud that we hope Mac can bear it for twenty minutes, and we speculate on whether it will bring all the skin with it when it comes off.

This is too much, and the groaning recommences. The blankets are applied, and in a trice there is no lack of perspiration. But within three minutes Mac shouts that the abominable plaster is burning right down through him. It is all pure mustard, he says. We must have put a live coal in by mistake. We tell him it will be all right--in twenty minutes. It is no use; he is far past advice, and in his insanity he would tear it off and so endanger the success of the treatment. But this cannot be permitted. So Almond sits on the plaster to keep it in its place, while I time the twenty minutes with a stop-watch.

At the end of this period of crisis the patient is pronounced past the worst. But, being in a state of collapse, it becomes necessary to rouse him with a strong stimulant. So, having sent the ladies to a place of safety, we take off the plaster tenderly, and kindly show Mac the oatmeal and the sand. We tell him that there was never anything the matter with him at all. We express a hope that he will find that the castor-oil has done him good. A little castor-oil is an excellent thing at any time. And we also advise him, the next time he feels inclined to work off a sell on us or play any more of his pranks, to have a qualified medical man on the premises. Quain is evidently not good enough. He makes mistakes. We show him the passage.

Then we advise him to put on his clothes, and not make a fool of himself by staying in bed in the middle of the day.

Whereupon, somewhat hurriedly, we retreat to our bedrooms; and, locking the doors, sit down to observe with interest the bolts bending and the hinges manfully resisting, while Mac with a poker in either hand flings himself wildly against them. He says he wants to see us, but we reply that we are engaged.

[The end]
S. R. Crockett's short story: Mac's Enteric Fever

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