Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University. Will Irwin
University and politics and climatic conditions in Montana and California; the musician joined in the conversation politely but without great enthusiasm, wondering when the man was going; there was not any too much time now for breakfast and a careful toilet. He ventured to speak.
"If you have other patients that call you, Doctor, you mustn't stay with me. I can get along, even if it is lonely in a hotel, and you'll be in again to-day, won't you?"
"Appendicitis," said the doctor, with his heaviest air, "is not a thing to be treated lightly. Just now you are in a critical condition inasmuch as we are not sure what turn your trouble may take. You are likely to be seized suddenly with the usual symptoms: then an operation will be an immediate necessity. I have the needed instruments right here in my valise, and I can give you relief at once. If, however, I should leave you, I might not be within reach until serious complications had time to arise; for that reason I shall be obliged to watch you through to-day. Afterwards it may not be necessary."
This speech fairly paralyzed the man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. He put out a feeler.
"That medicine of yours is the real thing. The pain is very much less now."
Dr. Mead looked at him over his glasses.
"Is it entirely gone?"
"Yes," answered Van, cheerily, "it certainly is."
"That is a dangerous symptom. The plaster should have drawn the pain to the surface, but not stopped it. That numbness is exactly what I wished to avoid."
He rose and poured out medicine from another bottle. Van nearly choked in swallowing this. It was eleven o'clock. Sounds of Christmas revelry floated even into his secluded upper room. The bells were telling to the people of the City of the Angels their message of peace on earth, good will toward men; they were dinning into the ears of the victim of a modern disease the fact that he ought at that moment to be waiting for Dolores on her pious way to Mission Los Angeles. He pictured her with some ancient missal in her slender hands, and flanked on one side by her sympathetic duenna of a mother. The certainty that her American father would be safe at home did not detract from the charm of the situation.
"The drinks seem to be on me!" thought he after his next dose. The sun of southern California was shining brightly out of doors; it must be a glorious day at Westlake Park. The bedclothes were warm and irksome, and that confounded plaster had begun to itch. If he was ever to see Dolores again he should have to make a clean breast of the whole thing.
He sat up.
"Say, Doctor, I haven't appendicitis at all; I am as well as I ever was. I just put this up as a joke on the fellows because I wanted to stay in town instead of going farther south. I've imposed on you, I'm sorry to say. I haven't any pain whatever. I was faking."
"Yes," said the doctor, soothingly, "I knew you were, but you are not well at all, my boy, and my advice to you is to stay right there in bed. You have appendicitis symptoms in spite of there being no pain, and you might do yourself no end of harm by getting up now. I wouldn't let any man go out of doors after taking that belladonna for the world. It would be suicidal."
"But, Doctor, I'm not sick, I tell you; I feel out of sight," and Van threw off the clothes and was about to spring out, plaster and all.
Dr. Mead thought it time to act.
"Get back in there," he said, quietly but firmly. He was a man of powerful physique and Van thought it best to obey until he could reason with him.
"I know what I am talking about, young man," he went on, "and you must listen to me. I want you to stay in bed."
This was too much.
"I'll be hanged if I will!" shouted the patient, preparing to rise.
"Keep covered up!" ordered the doctor. He had a big, deep voice. He stood a little way off, with his forefinger pointed at the student, sighting over it with a cold, gray eye. Something in his manner began to frighten Van. He shivered under the bedclothes. A hideous story which he had read about a maniac barber came into his mind with sickening effect. The man's whole appearance, all his actions, his eager grasping of the appendicitis theory, proclaimed insanity. He meant to operate on him, whether or no! There were the surgical instruments in that black bag on the bureau, and he was shut up in the room with the whole crazy outfit! He would have given his soul to be in Pomona with the club.
"All right, Doctor," he said weakly, sliding a little farther down into the bed, "I'll do just as you say. Only I wish you'd ring and see if any mail has come for me."
The boy who answered the doctor's call was an athletic young fellow. Van thought that between them they could manage the maniac; so he sprang out crying, "Quick! This man is crazy. Help me get him down!"
To his surprise the boy seized him and deposited him back in bed.
"What in thunder is the matter with you people?" shouted Van. "I'm not going to stay here with that man when there's nothing the matter with me!"
"There, there," coaxed the boy, "you're all right, sir; try to go to sleep, can't you?"
Then Van turned over to the wall and wept salt Freshman tears, and the awe-struck boy gently closed the door. And Cupid, with his wings folded over his little arms, sat upon the bureau and laughed long and cynically.
It was now past twelve o'clock. Church was over, and Dolores was returning. Home-ward gently she rode with surging thoughts in her bosom, and an expression of sweet, religious calm hovering over her straight black brows. That was the Spanish of her. The moment the front door closed behind her she sprinted for the telephone. That was the American of her.
Had Papa Payson not been absorbed in the forty-eight-page Christmas edition of the Los Angeles Herald, he might have overheard the following semi-conversation:
"——"
"Main eight-double-eight."
"——"
"Yes."
"——"
"Is this the Westminster?"
"——"
"Will you—er—that is—did the Stanford Glee Club leave this morning?"
"——"
"Oh! Will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Cecil Van Dyke left with them?"
"——"
"Oh, I'm so sorry! What's the matter?"
"——"
"Appendicitis!" The receiver dropped and swung against the wall. Dolores had fled to mamma.
Perkins and Mason, treating each other at every station short of the prohibition town of Pomona, would have felt less complacent over their little joke had they seen the procession that left the Hotel Westminster at one-thirty P. M. on that balmy Christmas day. The order of march, as instituted by the American Dolores, was as follows:
1. The Payson carriage, with Mrs. and Miss Payson on the forward seat and a tenderly wrapped Freshman on the other, and the coachman instructed to drive gently.
2. Dr. Mead and the devoted bell-boy in a phaëton.
3. Small citizens on foot.
The doctor, obeying to the letter the orders of Perkins, who had commanded him not to leave his patient for one moment, smiled broadly as he gathered the lunatic into his arms and bore him past the fatal poinsettia bushes and up the broad steps where the grave major-domo was waiting to receive them. The scale upon which the Payson household was conducted just suited the ideas of that worthy practitioner.
On Saturday, Perkins and Mason asked at the hotel for Van Dyke and the doctor.
"They