human
Can't you tell me something about it, dear? she suggested.
gpt
Nothing I ought not to know, of course, but the thing which makes you so miserable. It can't be because the case is going wrong,--that wouldn't affect you just as this is doing.
human
You've seen it, I suppose. I thought I'd kept in, before you.
gpt
You have--only of course I have seen that something was wearing you--keeping you on a tension. You've not been quite yourself for several days.
human
I am myself. I'm the real fellow--only you haven't known him before. The other is just--the devil disguised in a goodly garment, one that doesn't belong to him.
gpt
Oh, no!
human
No question of it. I'm so swearing mad this minute I could kill somebody,--in other words, that foul fiend of a James Van Horn--smooth-tongued hypocrite that he is!
gpt
Has he injured you?
human
Injured me? Knifed me in the back, every chance he got. Always has--but he never had such a chance as he has now. And plays the part of an angel of light in that house--fools them all. I'm the ill-tempered incompetent, he's the forbearing wise man. The case is mine, but he's played the game till they all have more confidence in him than they have in me. And he's got all the cards in his hand!
gpt
The patient is a man of prominence--the matter of his recovery is a great necessity. If he were able to bear it he ought to be operated upon; but there isn't one chance in a hundred he'd survive an operation at present. There's at least one chance in ten he'll get well without one. I'm usually keen enough to operate, but for once I don't dare risk it. Van Horn advises operation--unreservedly. And the deuce of it is that with every hour that goes by he lets the family understand that he considers the patient's chances for relief by operation are lessening. He's fixing it so that however things come out he's safe, and however things come out I'm in the hole.
human
Not if the patient gets well.
gpt
No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten, at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he.
human
Would he have liked to operate himself?
gpt
Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,--or rather for his slim chance to live,--knowing all the while that I was probably digging my own grave. Easy enough to let Van Horn operate, in the beginning, and kill the patient and prove himself right,--if he would have done it. Easy enough to pull out of the case and let them have somebody who would operate on Van Horn's advice.
human
Is the patient going down?
gpt
No, he's holding his own fairly well, but the disease isn't one that would take him off overnight. It'll be a matter of two or three days yet, either way. How I'm going to get through them, with things going as they are;--meeting that Judas there at the bedside, three times a day, and trying to keep my infernal temper from making me disgrace myself--
human
Red, dear,--
gpt
That's where Dr. Van Horn is stronger than you, and in no other way. He can control himself.
human
Not inside! Nor outside--if you know him. He's exactly as mad as I am, only--
gpt
He doesn't show it. And so he has the advantage.
human
Do you think I don't know that? But I'm right and he's wrong--
gpt
So you are the one who should keep cool. You've heard the saying of some wise man--_'If you are right you have no need to lose your temper--if you are wrong you can't afford to.'_
human
You can give me all the wise advice you want to, but the fact remains.--I have reason to be angry, and I am angry, and I can't help it, and won't help it! Great heavens, I'm human!
gpt
Yes, dear, you're human, and so am I. You have great provocation, and I think I'm almost as angry, in my small way, with Dr. Van Horn, as you are, now that I know. But--I want you somehow to keep control of yourself. You are a gentleman, and he is not, but he is acting like a gentleman--hush--on the outside, I mean--and--you are not!
human
What!
gpt
Dear, _are_ you?
human
What do you know about it?
gpt
From the little I saw outside the house this morning.
human
Lord! If you mean that I ought to grin at him, as he does at me, the snake in the grass--
gpt
I don't mean that, of course. But I do think you shouldn't allow yourself to look as if you wanted to knock him down.
human
There's nothing in life that would give me greater satisfaction!