the envelope, I sipped my tea and then wrote a short note regretting my absence from home, and stating my intention to call upon the following morning at eleven o’clock. This I dispatched by boy-messenger.
Hence it was that next morning, when I passed down Stanhope Street and turned into Gloucester Gardens, I felt in no mood to humour and sympathise with the whims and imaginary maladies of a fashionable patient.
With a feeling of irritation and low spirits, I mounted the steps of the house in Gloucester Square and inquired for my new patient.
I was ushered into a pretty morning-room, and shortly afterwards there entered a slim, youngish-looking woman, not exactly handsome, but of refined appearance, dark, with hair well coiled by an expert maid, and wearing a simple dress of pearl-grey cashmere, which clung about her form and showed it to distinct advantage. Before she had greeted me I saw that she was a type subject to nerve-storms, perhaps with a craving for stimulants after the reaction.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she exclaimed, crossing the room and greeting me pleasantly. “I received your note last night. You were absent each time I called.”
“Yes,” I responded. “I was called out to an urgent case, and compelled to remain.”
“Does that happen often in your profession?” she asked, sinking into a chair opposite me. “If it does, I fear that doctors’ wives must have an uncomfortable time. Your housekeeper was quite concerned about you.”
“But when one is a bachelor, as I am, absence is not of any great moment,” I laughed.
At that moment her dark, brilliant eyes met mine, and I fancied I detected a strange look in them.
“Well,” she said with some hesitation, “I am very glad you have come at last, Doctor, for I want to consult you upon a secret and very serious matter concerning myself, and to obtain your opinion.”
“I shall be most happy to give you whatever advice lies in my power,” I responded, assuming an air of professional gravity, and preparing myself to listen to her symptoms. “What is the nature of your ailment?” I inquired.
“Well,” she answered, “I can scarcely describe it: I seem in perpetually low spirits, although I have no cause whatever to be sad, and, further, there is a matter which troubles me exceedingly. I hardly like to confess it, but of late I have developed a terrible craving for stimulants.”
I put to her a number of questions which it is unnecessary here to recount, and found her exactly as I had supposed – a bundle of nerves.
“But this unaccountable craving for stimulants is most remarkable,” she went on. “I am naturally a most temperate woman, but nowadays I feel that I cannot live without having recourse to brandy or some other spirit.”
“Sometimes you feel quite well and strong, then suddenly you experience a sensation of being extremely ill?” I suggested.
“Exactly. How do you account for it?”
“The feeling of strength and vigour is not necessarily the outcome of actual strength, any more than is the feeling of weakness the necessary outcome of actual weakness,” I responded. “A person may be weak to a degree, and the sands of life be almost run out, and yet feel overwhelmingly strong and exuberantly happy, and, on the other hand, when in sound and vigorous health, he may feel exhausted and depressed. Feelings, especially so with women of the better class, rise into being in connexion with the nervous system. Whether a person feels well or ill depends upon the structure of his nervous system and the way in which it is played upon, for, like a musical instrument, it may be made to give forth gay music or sad.”
“But is not my case remarkable?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I responded.
“Then you think that you can treat me, and prevent me from becoming a dipsomaniac?” she said eagerly.
“Certainly,” I replied. “I have no doubt that this craving can be removed by proper treatment. I will write you a prescription.”
“Ah?” she exclaimed, with a sigh. “You doctors, with your serums and the like, can nowadays inoculate against almost every disease. Would that you could give us women an immune from that deadly ailment so common among my sex, and so very often fatal.”
“What ailment?” I asked, rather surprised at her sudden and impetuous speech.
“That of love!” she responded in a low, strained voice – the voice of a woman desperate.
Chapter Eight
What Happened to me
“Do you consider love an ailment?” I asked, looking at her in quick surprise.
“In many cases,” she responded in a serious tone. “I fear I am no exception to the general rule,” she added meaningly.
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