LITMIR.BIZ

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unconscious.

      "Please put him down, mademoiselle."

      These were the first words that I ever spoke to Rosetta Rosa, and, out of sheer acute nervousness, I uttered them roughly, in a tone of surly command. I was astonished at myself. I was astonished at my own voice. She glanced up at me and hesitated. No doubt she was unaccustomed to such curt orders.

      "Please put him down at once," I repeated, trying to assume a bland, calm, professional, authoritative manner, and not in the least succeeding. "It is highly dangerous to lift an unconscious person from a recumbent position."

      Why I should have talked like an article in a medical dictionary instead of like a human being I cannot imagine.

      "This is a doctor—Mr. Carl Foster," Sir Cyril explained smoothly, and she laid Alresca's head gently on the bare planks of the floor.

      "Will everyone kindly stand aside, and I will examine him."

      No one moved. The King continued his kingly examination of the prone form. Not a fold of Ortrud's magnificent black robe was disturbed. Then Sir Cyril translated my request into French and into German, and these legendary figures of the Middle Ages withdrew a little, fixing themselves with difficulty into the common multitude that pressed on them from without. I made them retreat still further. Rosetta Rosa moved gravely to one side.

      Almost immediately Alresca opened his eyes, and murmured faintly, "My thigh."

      I knelt down, but not before Rosa had sprung forward at the sound of his voice, and kneeling close by my side had clasped his hand. I tried to order her away, but my tongue could not form the words. I could only look at her mutely, and there must have been an effective appeal in my eyes, for she got up, nodding an acquiescence, and stood silent and tense a yard from Alresca's feet. With a violent effort I nerved myself to perform my work. The voice of Nolan, speaking to the audience, and then a few sympathetic cheers, came vaguely from the other side of the big curtain, and then the orchestra began to play the National Anthem.

      The left thigh was broken near the knee-joint. So much I ascertained at once. As I manipulated the limb to catch the sound of the crepitus the injured man screamed, and he was continually in very severe pain. He did not, however, again lose consciousness.

      "I must have a stretcher, and he must be carried to a room. I can't do anything here," I said to Sir Cyril. "And you had better send for a first-rate surgeon. Sir Francis Shorter would do very well—102 Manchester Square, I think the address is. Tell him it's a broken thigh. It will be a serious case."

      "Let me send for my doctor—Professor Eugene Churt," Rosa said. "No one could be more skilful."

      "Pardon me," I protested, "Professor Churt is a physician of great authority, but he is not a surgeon, and here he would be useless."

      She bowed—humbly, as I thought.

      With such materials as came to hand I bound Alresca's legs together, making as usual the sound leg fulfil the function of a splint to the other one, and he was placed on a stretcher. It was my first case, and it is impossible for me to describe my shyness and awkwardness as the men who were to carry the stretcher to the dressing-room looked silently to me for instructions.

      "Now," I said, "take short steps, keep your knees bent, but don't on any account keep step. As gently as you can—all together—lift."

      Rosa followed the little procession as it slowly passed through the chaotic anarchy of the stage. Alresca was groaning, his eyes closed. Suddenly he opened them, and it seemed as though he caught sight of her for the first time. He lifted his head, and the sweat stood in drops on his brow.

      "Send her away!" he cried sharply, in an agony which was as much mental as physical. "She is fatal to me."

      The bearers stopped in alarm at this startling outburst; but I ordered them forward, and turned to Rosa. She had covered her face with her hands, and was sobbing.

      "Please go away," I said. "It is very important he should not be agitated."

      Without quite intending to do so, I touched her on the shoulder.

      "Alresca doesn't mean that!" she stammered.

      Her blue eyes were fixed on me, luminous through her tears, and I feasted on all the lovely curves of that incomparable oval which was her face.

      "I am sure he doesn't," I answered. "But you had better go, hadn't you?"

      "Yes," she said, "I will go."

      "Forgive my urgency," I murmured. Then she drew back and vanished in the throng.

      In the calm of the untidy dressing-room, with the aid of Alresca's valet, I made my patient as comfortable as possible on a couch. And then I had one of the many surprises of my life. The door opened, and old Toddy entered. No inhabitant of the city of Edinburgh would need explanations on the subject of Toddy MacWhister. The first surgeon of Scotland, his figure is familiar from one end of the town to the other—and even as far as Leith and Portobello. I trembled. And my reason for trembling was that the celebrated bald expert had quite recently examined me for my Final in surgery. On that dread occasion I had made one bad blunder, so ridiculous that Toddy's mood had passed suddenly from grim ferociousness to wild northern hilarity. I think I am among the few persons in the world who have seen and heard Toddy MacWhister laugh.

      I hoped that he would not remember me, but, like many great men, he had a disconcertingly good memory for faces.

      "Ah!" he said, "I've seen ye before."

      "You have, sir."

      "You are the callant who told me that the medulla oblongata—"

      "Please—" I entreated.

      Perhaps he would not have let me off had not Sir Cyril stood immediately behind him. The impresario explained that Toddy MacWhister (the impresario did not so describe him) had been in the audience, and had offered his services.

      "What is it?" asked Toddy, approaching Alresca.

      "Fracture of the femur."

      "Simple, of course."

      "Yes, sir, but so far as I can judge, of a somewhat peculiar nature. I've sent round to King's College Hospital for splints and bandages."

      Toddy took off his coat.

      "We sha'n't need ye, Sir Cyril," said he casually.

      And Sir Cyril departed.

      In an hour the limb was set—a masterly display of skill—and, except to give orders, Toddy had scarcely spoken another word. As he was washing his hands in a corner of the dressing-room he beckoned to me.

      "How was it caused?" he whispered.

      "No one seems to know, sir."

      "Doesn't matter much, anyway! Let him lie a wee bit, and then get him home. Ye'll have no trouble with him, but there'll be no more warbling and cutting capers for him this yet awhile."

      And Toddy, too, went. He had showed not the least curiosity as to Alresca's personality, and I very much doubt whether he had taken the trouble to differentiate between the finest tenor in Europe and a chorus-singer. For Toddy, Alresca was simply an individual who sang and cut capers.

      I made the necessary dispositions for the transport of Alresca in an hour's time to his flat in the Devonshire Mansion, and then I sat down near him. He was white and weak, but perfectly conscious. He had proved himself to be an admirable patient. Even in the very crisis of the setting his personal distinction and his remarkable and finished politeness had suffered no eclipse. And now he lay there, with his silky mustache disarranged and his hair damp, exactly as I had once seen him on the couch in the garden by the sea in the third act of "Tristan," the picture of nobility. He could not move, for the sufficient reason that a strong splint ran from his armpit to his ankle, but his arms were free, and he raised his left hand, and beckoned me with an irresistible gesture to come quite close to him.

      I

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