Doctor Joe

“ All at once there came the crackle of voices without, the sound of thudding footsteps. Joe flung himself back on the cot and closed his eyes with furious energy as the flap of the tent was lifted and the engineer and the doctor peered within.
“He’s asleep,” said the engineer in a low voice.
“Hm!” said the doctor. He was a wizened little man with spectacles. Then he let the flap drop, and his voice came to Joe brusquely through the canvas. “Well, we’ll come back. I want to talk to him. ”

“ This was lit, and the two hurried up the trail to the wreck of the cabin.
Hiram Bodley was resting where Joe had left him. He was breathing with difficulty and did not at first recognize the doctor.
"Take it off!" he murmured. "Take it off! It is--is crushing th--the life out of--of me!"
"Mr. Bodley--Hiram, don't you know me?" asked Doctor Gardner, kindly.
"Oh! So it's you? I guess you can't do much, doctor, can you? I--I'm done for!" And a spasm of pain crossed the sufferer's face.
"While there is life there is hope," answered the physician, noncommittally. ”

“ Joe comes rushing in.
"I'm sorry, but the servant at the Dentons has cut her hand badly. Don't wait supper for me," he exclaims.
"Jim has not come in, and no one can tell when those children will be back. If the fair should keep open three months longer every one will be dead with fatigue. Yes, we'll wait. I am going to take some toast up to mother."
"The children!" Doctor Joe has a strange, guilty sort of feeling. What if to-night should bring her a new son, as some future night will bring her a new daughter?
Father Underhill sits on the front stoop reading his paper. ”

“ One day Captain Paulby came home earlier than usual, looking very grave, and with him came the kind doctor, and with them another doctor, an older man, but also very kind. They went up into little Mim's room, and they stayed so long that Joe and I stole down from our old dark play-room to hear, if we could, the reason of his father's unexpected return. And Joe and I cried as if our hearts would break, for our dear little wife was dying. ”

“ I knows what you says is right, and you’ll do un better than any other doctor could because you’re fond of Jamie and he’s fond of you, and you’re my friend. Whatever comes of un will be th’ Almighty’s will, and if Jamie goes blind after th’ cuttin’ I’ll never be complainin’.”
“Oh, Doctor Joe!” said Margaret, who had been listening, fascinated by Doctor Joe’s story, and whose eyes were moist with tears, “we all trusts you! We trusts you more than we trusts anybody else in the world!” ”

“ The horses, being considerably longer legged than men, climbed faster up the high steps than a man could do alone, but with the horse’s tail to hang on to, you could manage to keep up. Everybody laughed at first, yelling at one another, but in three minutes the yells had ceased, and in five, the laughter. No one had any breath left for that. If Joe had thought, he probably would have been frightened, for he was certainly disobeying the doctor, but he was having too good a time to remember doctors, and as even the lack of breath did not make him cough, he had nothing to remind him. ”

“ He will do all he can for you, I am sure,” urged Joe.
“Well, Dr. Gardner is a good fellow I admit. If you—can—can get him—I'll—I'll—” The sufferer tried to go on but could not.
“I think I can get him. But I hate to leave you alone.” And Joe stared around helplessly. He wished he had Ned with him.
“Never mind—give me a drink—then go,” answered Hiram Bodley. He had often taken Doctor Gardner out to hunt with him and liked the physician not a little.
Inside of five minutes Joe was on the way to the doctor's residence, which was on the outskirts of Riverside. ”

“ Doc Mitchell was a nice enough chap but as Joe watched Tommy's legs saw the air he thought the doctor might be a little mite gentler with the boy orator. But Doc was getting old and he was probably tired. These first autumn days before the snap and sparkle and snowy gleam of real winter sets in always told on the older folks. They sort of seemed tired and worried and sad.
So Joe stood there, looking at the purple and green and magenta-pink lights of Martin's drug store, the sleepily winking lights of the little station and the mellow golden glow of Sophie Forbes' yellow parlor lamp. ”

“ The good doctor was close to me, with more light, by the aid of which we beheld, in the far corner, facing us, what seemed to be a bundle of blankets, from which protruded a head, a horrible red stream surrounding it, and flowing, as it were, from the open mouth. One second brought me close. It was Joe—Joe, with his poor limbs bound with cruel ropes, and in his mouth for a gag they had forced one of those bright red socks he would always wear. ”

“ At these words the tears sprang into the boy's eyes and it was all he could do to keep from crying outright. Even though the old hermit had been rough in his ways, Joe thought a good deal of the man.
"Cannot you do something, doctor," he pleaded.
"Not here. We might do something in a hospital, but he would not survive the journey. He is growing weaker every moment. Be brave, my lad. It is a terrible trial, I know, but you must remember that all things are for the best."
Joe knelt beside the sufferer and took hold of his hand. Hiram Bodley looked at him and then at the doctor. ”

“ The doctor pronounced it typhoid and he was with us for nine weeks.
The effect upon our lives was sharp. In our small crowded apartment all entertaining was suddenly stopped, and with the sole exception of Sue no one came to see us. Even our little Indian learned to be quiet as a mouse. Our whole home became intense.
Through the thin wall of my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium. Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. ”

“ He did get better, but Big Joe was dead that night. He had the disease on him when he carried me away from the boat, but his heart was set upon his boy. I never can forget that night, and how important a thing it was to be able to relieve suffering, and how much Old Joe was in earnest about having the Doctor.
Now, I want you to consider how important the Doctor is to you. Nobody needs him so much as the poor and laboring man. He is often ill. He [19] is exposed to hunger and wet and cold, and to fever, and to all the diseases of hard labor and poverty. ”

“ Doctor Gardner wanted to be taken across the lake and Joe himself did the job. As he was rowing he asked about the man who had signed the hotel register as David Ball from Montana.
“Is he very sick, doctor?”
“No, I can't say that he is,” was the physician's answer. “He looks to be as healthy as you or I.”
“It's queer he keeps to his room.”
“Perhaps something happened out at his mine to unsettle his nerves. He told me of some sort of an accident.”
“Is he a miner?”
“He is a mine owner, so Mr. Mallison told me, but he never heard of the man before.” ”

“ Then, wrapped in some comfortables, he burst out of the room and ran down the hallway like a person possessed of the evil spirits.
“Come be quick, or we'll get caught!” whispered Joe, and ran into the room, followed by the bell boy. In a trice they pulled loose the strings that held the skulls and the skeleton, and restored the things to the doctor's room from which they had been taken. Then they went below by a back stairs.
The whole hotel was in an alarm, and soon Mr. Mallison came upon the scene.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, severely, of Wilberforce Chaster. ”

“ Joe was invited to go along, and carried the pistols, and two others were let into the secret, including a doctor, who went fully prepared to attend to any wounds that might be inflicted.
It did not take long to load the pistols, with powder only. Great care was taken so that Major Sampson should not suspect the truth.
"Major," said Felix, in a trembling voice. "If I--if anything serious happens to me tell Clara that--that I died like a man."
"Noble boy! I will! I will!" answered the military man. ”

“ Men sick and men well are in separate worlds. She could not speak of it to Joe, for the doctor had forbidden it.
At the end of another month, however, Joe was up and about again; and soon, in spite of the doctor's instructions, he was back at his office hard at work. This of course looked ominous. What was he doing? She could not discover. For his partner, over the telephone, was far from satisfactory. Now that he had Joe back again in that beloved office of theirs, his manner toward Ethel seemed to her to be gruff and unfriendly, to say the least. ”

“ The piercing black eyes searched the doctor's The doctor hesitated a moment, and then, with an air of great candor, said cheerily:
"That's all right, Joe. Miss Gwen will cut circles round your old cayuse yet. But remember," and the doctor was very impressive, "you must make her laugh every day."
Joe folded his arms across his breast and stood like a statue till the doctor rode away; then turning to us he grunted out:
"Him good man, eh?"
"Good man," answered The Duke, adding, "but remember, Joe, what he told you to do. Must make her laugh every day." ”

“ Joe cried.
“I mean you can’t play second for a long time,” said the doctor, gravely.
“Is—is there something the matter with me?” Joe cried, growing a little pale.
“There isn’t much yet, but there will be, if you don’t do what I tell you,” the doctor answered. “You have a case of incipient tuberculosis, that hasn’t developed enough yet so we can’t cure it, and make you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds by the time you are twenty, or even nineteen. You ought to be a big man, you know. But it will all depend on you.” 23
Tom was leaning half out of his chair to listen. ”

“ The more he reflected over the nature of the wrongs he had suffered under, the less he thought of the Doctor.
Joe, who also came with this band, was half Anglo-Saxon; an able-bodied man, thirty-four years of age. He said, that "Miss Elizabeth Gordon, a white woman living in Alexandria," claimed him. He did not find much fault with her. She permitted him to hire his time, find his own clothing, etc., by which regulation Joe got along smoothly. Nevertheless he declared, that he was tired of wearing the yoke, and felt constrained to throw it off as soon as possible. ”

“ A Government ship these days is nothing more nor less than a traveling dispensary. Scarcely a day passes without some call of this kind.”
“I should think it would be especially hard when you can’t see your patient,” remarked Joe.
“It is,” the doctor admitted. “I can’t feel their pulse, I can’t note their temperature, I can’t judge by their appearance, I can’t do a dozen things a doctor likes to do when he’s treating a case. I have to depend on descriptions, more or less intelligent. But with all those handicaps, an immense amount of service can be rendered over the radio. ”

“ Frankie snatched off the cap, but speak he would not.
“He’s a fantastical bye,” she explained. “Ye’d never believe the notions he has. What’s in his mind now is he wants to be a doctor; and I’ve come to see will ye make a doctor of him?”
Dr. Joe began to laugh, but he stopped when he saw the woman’s face.
“But you see—” he said. “A child of that age—how old is he?”
“He is eight.”
“He can’t know what he wants!”
“He knows,” she asserted tranquilly. “It’s a doctor he wants to be. ”

“ Well, he persevered and kept at it until he had persuaded all those old parties to get [Pg 429] up a dance in the schoolroom; they were to have printed programmes, and champagne, and everything in style—for Joe had a bit of money, and was as free as you like with it, and meant to stand a good deal more than his share of the expenses.
Then the vicar and Doctor Pillikin consulted with the squire—the squire and the vicar being justices of the peace—whether they hadn't better give old Joe in charge and lock him up out of harm's way ”

“ Cinnabar Joe's be'n doped."
"Cinnabar Joe!" The doctor's surprise was genuine.
"Yes. Cinnabar Joe. An' you better get on the job an' bring him to, or they'll be tossin' dry ones in on top of you about tomorrow. Sold any drugs that w'd do a man that way, lately?"
The doctor knitted his brow. "Why let's see. I don't remember——"
"Your mem'ry ain't no better'n what your eyesight an' hearin' is, is it? I reckon mebbe a little jolt might get it to workin'." ”

“ Loring suddenly, “have you always hot water in your bathroom?”
“Yes, doctor,” I said; “yes. Why do you ask? Do you mean—is it possible—there is life?” And I took Joe's little head in my arms, and forgot he was only a servant, only a poor, common little page-boy. I only know I pressed him to my breast, and called him by all the endearing names I used to call my own children in after years, when God gave me some, and kissed his white forehead in my joy at the blessed ray of hope.
No want of willing arms to carry Joe up-stairs. Mrs. ”

“ It was his first votive offering at the shrine of love.
The effect of Joe's efforts were prompt and satisfactory. The next day being Sunday, he spent the major part of it in passing and repassing the house on the corner, only going home between times to remove the mud from his shoes and give an extra brush to his hair. The girl, meanwhile, was devoting her day to sweeping off the front pavement, a scant three feet of pathway from her steps to the wooden gate. Every time Joe passed she looked up and smiled, and every time she smiled Joe suffered all the symptoms of locomotor ataxia! ”