Dr. Graham

“ Miss Graham was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when their eyes began to dance dangerously.
However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small, round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the sinner, and drew 'amens' of admiration from the saints. ”

“ Graham going away to school, and manfully fixing his mind on his first long trousers, so he would not cry; Graham at college, coming in with the winning crew, and stumbling, half collapsed, into the arms of a waiting, cheering crowd. And the Graham who had followed his mother up the stairs that night, to come down baffled, thwarted, miserable.
He rose and threw away his cigar. He must have the thing out with Natalie. The boy's soul was more important than his body. He wanted him safe. God, how he wanted him safe! But he wanted him to be a man. ”

“ I daresay you'll succeed in gaining disciples,' said Graham, with a shrug. 'There is no belief strange enough for some men to doubt. After Mormonism and Joseph Smith's deification, I am prepared to believe that humanity will go to any length in its search after the unseen. No doubt you'll form a sect in time, Mr Baltic. If so, call your disciples Hobsonites.'
'Why, Dr Graham?'
'Because the gist of your preaching, so far as I can understand, is a Hobson's choice,' retorted the doctor. ”

“ As a physician, he felt a keen pleasure; as a friend, a keen pain. His faculties each sprang to its post, awaiting the next development of the scene.
While Mr. Marchand was giving some order to his steward, the beautiful girl at his other hand leaned toward him, and also whispered confidentially in his ear: "Dr. Graham, if you really are my brother's friend, I pray you watch him closely, and tell me at some future time if you have any fears—any suspicions of—Oh, I implore you, sir, do not deceive me!" ”

“ You are far nicer than the statue.’ And a look almost of wonder came into Graham’s face.
Next, making him sit down, he put him in the posture of the ‘Spinario,’ his old favourite; and then, raising him to his feet once more, he made him stand like the praying boy of the Berlin Museum, the ‘Adorante,’ his face and hands uplifted to the joy of the morning.
‘And now what else?’ he murmured. ‘You are too young for an athlete. Your body is too slender. I will make you into a youthful Dionysus instead. Let me put this seaweed in your hair. ”

“ Graham is now in a state of violent hysterics. If they haven’t, she has at least sufficient material to keep her in a state of worry for about one year.” He finished his coffee. “I believe I’ll run out to Marston to-morrow,” he continued, thoughtfully; [262] “that is, if I’m not too much occupied.” (Pennington religiously made this reservation, though since he had become a doctor he had never been too much occupied.) “I haven’t been there for a long time, and the burglaries will give me a good excuse for leaving my patients.” ”

“ His face changed, the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed an expression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe.
Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face. ”

“ I gave my opinion about him pretty plainly to Dr Graham, I can tell you, and Graham's the only man with brains in this city of fools.'
'Is Dr Graham young?' asked Miss Norsham, in the faint hope that Mrs Pansey's list of inhabitants might include a wealthy bachelor.
'Young? He's sixty, if you call that young, and in his second childhood. An Atheist, too. ”

“ I have heard that his workers sometimes turn out a myriad myriad pills a day in the twenty-four hours. Fancy a myriad myriad!”
“A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud,” said Graham. “Pills! What a wonderful time it is! That man in purple?”
“He is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. He is really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of the Medical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, are shareholders in the Medical Faculty Company, and wear that purple. You have to be—to be qualified. ”

“ HONORED MISTRESS DEERING,--I lay myself at your feet, and with myself a pretty bit of game I have just killed, thinking that the fair Venetian might fancy a venison steak for her breakfast. I kiss your hand, dear my lady, and am your most unworthy but loyal servitor,
JOHN GRAHAM.
"Of course, knew it was Graham, queer creature. Wonder why he did not stop and take breakfast with us. He is an unaccountable fellow."
"What did you call him?"
"Graham; his full name is John Douglass Graham. Just like a hero's in a novel. But Graham never does anything very heroic, I fancy." ”

“ For Graham, these years had been precisely that transition period in which a lad separates himself from the aggregate mass of youth, and stands forth in the world as a man of his own right, according to that which is in him. This tall, thin, brown young army doctor, who has passed brilliant examinations, who is already beginning to be known favourably in the profession, whose name has appeared at the end of more than one approved article in scientific Reviews; who has travelled, seen something of Italy, Switzerland, Belgium ”

“ Never, to the last day of his life, one may fancy, would Graham forget the little scene before him, which, indeed, always returned to his memory with an impression as vivid as that made upon him now—the overturned table, the scattered cards, Madelon in her white frock, her pale scared face, her wavy hair, her great brown eyes illuminated by the candle she still held, the terrified Legros, the ghastly look of the dying man—he saw it all at a glance, as he entered the room he had left so dim and silent but half an hour ago. ”

“ Graham threw his cigar away. "I'm not!" he cried, with a sudden, uncontrollable outburst. "I feel as rotten as I am. I can't sit here and listen to you, father. Don't be kind to me, I can't stand it." He put his head down between his hands and burst out crying like a boy.
The Doctor was startled. He got up quickly and stood hesitatingly. He wanted to put his hands on the boy's shoulders, but the sudden breakdown brought back his shyness. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Peter, do you know?"
Peter nodded. He then made up his mind to let things take their course. "Let him tell you," he said. ”

“ The two soldiers found their surgeon in the principal room of the Ark. He was just quitting the pallet of Hetty, with an expression of sorrowful regret on his hard, pock-marked Scottish features, that it was not usual to see there. All his assiduity had been useless, and he was compelled reluctantly to abandon the expectation of seeing the girl survive many hours. Dr. Graham was accustomed to death-bed scenes, and ordinarily they produced but little impression on him. ”

“ He remained motionless—his every sense intent upon the flickering patch of darkness. He became aware of some faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. They came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of the uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed white, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, he perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him.
Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. He saw the head of a man pass near. ”

“ I immediately acted upon this [Pg 170] knowledge. Assuming a slight disguise, I repeated my former stroll through Printing House Square, looking into each doorway as I passed. John Graham was in one of them, staring in his old way at the passing crowd, but evidently seeing nothing but the images formed by his own disordered brain. A manuscript roll stuck out of his breast-pocket, and from the way his nervous fingers fumbled with it, I began to understand the restless glitter of his eyes, which were as full of wretchedness as any eyes I have ever seen. ”

“ A tall, dark man in a flowing black robe, with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a man who for all the little things about him held neither ears nor eyes nor thoughts.... For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham’s bloodless face. In a moment it had gone and he was fighting in the swaying crowd. A lad weeping with terror thrust against him, pressing towards the stairways, yelling “Clear for the aeropile!” The bell that clears the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging. ”

“ Beyond one illegible scrawl nothing was to be seen. After that he never rallied, and before the doctor came, his holsters crammed with remedies, poor Graham was gone. It is curious how trifles strike one more strongly than the important factors in these tragedies of life. I remember thinking the scatter-brained Irish doctor was more sorry at losing the chance of trying some new nostrum than at the actual death of my poor friend. He waxed eloquent in regret at the delay; asserting that one little half hour might have saved a life ”

“ When Graham had finished the hasty conversation he had to fly to make his train, and when at last he lay back in his seat in the parlor car and let the waves of his anxiety and trouble roll over him he was almost overwhelmed. He had led a comparatively tranquil life for a young man who had never tried to steer clear of trouble, and this was the first great calamity that had ever come his way. ”

“ But not all his philosophy and will could accomplish the impossible. 'We are a finite lot of fools,' said he, 'and when we think we know most we know least. How that nameless Unseen Power must smile at our attempts to scale the stars,' by which remark it will be seen that Dr Graham was not the atheist Beorminster believed him to be. And here may end his speculations for the present.
Shortly, Mrs Pendle and Lucy began to pack a vast number of boxes with garments needful and ornamental, and sufficient in quantity to last them for at least twelve months. ”

“ Piled up on the horizon, like a vast range of purple-black hills, heavy masses of cloud drifted, scarce perceptibly, from east to west of the pale slate-blue sky; and where these rugged heaps were broken the heavens sank away in limitless wells of pure pale light, each edged with a border of bright grass-green. All the light of the day seemed gathered there—like a reflection from a world beyond—and Graham, as he stood at gaze before it, began to wonder if he should ever come any nearer to it than he was just there and then. ”

“ But the characteristic which won Graham's interest most strongly was her abounding mirthfulness. It ran through all her words like a golden thread. The instinctive craving of every nature is for that which supplements itself, and Graham found something so genial in Miss St. John's ready smile and laughing eyes, which suggested an over-full fountain of joyousness within, that his heart, chilled and repressed from childhood, began to give signs of its existence, even during the first hour of their acquaintance. ”

“ It would have puzzled Graham to tell which of these moods he preferred: perhaps it would have depended on which of them he was experiencing at the moment.
His saving grace was a sturdy sense of his duty to himself. He felt that sense to be sadly shaken in many ways; but he clung to his work tenaciously, perhaps a little feverishly.
"Nuthin' like a woman to make a man work," observed Bill Martin sagely, "whether she's fur him, or agin' him."
"How about Billy?" inquired Old Mizzou. ”

“ On first entering the gardens, Graham's eye was attracted and dazzled by a brilliant form. It was standing under a festoon of flowers extended from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite shone full upon the face,—the face of a girl in all the freshness of youth. If the freshness owed anything to art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature. The beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant; and yet one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of deep mournfulness. She was surrounded by a group of young men, and the ring of her laugh jarred upon Graham's ear. ”

“ The black in the wasp uniform stood aside like a well-trained servant, and closed the valve behind him.
Compared with any of the places Graham had seen thus far, this second hall appeared to be decorated with extreme richness. On a pedestal at the remoter end, and more brilliantly lit than any other object, was a gigantic white figure of Atlas, strong and strenuous, the globe upon his bowed shoulders. It was the first thing to strike his attention, it was so vast, so patiently and painfully real, so white and simple. ”

“ His manner was breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"—he used that phrase—that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing. He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness and passed.
"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham
"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He has studied from the life." ”