Lord Oakhurst's Curse

In Mezzotint

The doctor had long ago ceased his hospital practice, but whenever there was a case of special interest among the wards, his spirited team of bays was sure to be seen standing at the hospital gates. Young, handsome, at the head of his profession, possessing an ample income, and married but six months to a beautiful girl who adored him, his lot was certainly one to be envied.

It must have been nine o'clock when he reached home. The stableman took the team, and he ran up the steps lightly. The door opened, and Doris's arms were flung tightly about his neck, and her wet cheek pressed to his.

"Oh, Ralph," she said, her voice quivering and plaintive, "you are so late. You can't think how I miss you when you don't come at the usual hour. I've kept supper warm for you. I'm so jealous of those patients of yours⁠—they keep you from me so much."

"How fresh and sweet and wholesome you are, after the sights I have to see," he said, smiling down at her girlish face with the airy confidence of a man who knows himself well beloved. "Now, pour my coffee, little one, while I go up and change clothes."

After supper he sat in the library in his favorite armchair, and she sat in her especial place upon the arm of the chair and held a match for him to light his cigar. She seemed so glad to have him with her; every touch was a caress, and every word she spoke had that lingering, loving drawl that a woman uses to but one man⁠—at a time.

"I lost my case of cerebrospinal meningitis tonight," he said gravely.

"I have you, and I don't have you," she said. "Your thoughts are always with your profession, even when I think you are most mine. Ah, well," with a sigh, "you help the suffering, and I would see all that suffer relieved or else like your cerebro⁠—what is it?⁠—patient, at rest."

"A queer case, too," said the doctor, patting his wife's hand and gazing into the clouds of cigar smoke. "He should have recovered. I had him cured, and he died on my hands without any warning. Ungrateful, too, for I treated that case beautifully. Confound the fellow. I believe he wanted to die. Some nonsensical romance worried him into a fever."

"A romance? Oh, Ralph, tell it to me. Just think! A romance in a hospital."

"He tried to tell it to me this morning in snatches between paroxysms of pain. He was bending backward till his head almost touched his heels, and his ribs were nearly cracking, yet he managed to convey something of his life story."

"Oh, how horrible," said the doctor's wife, slipping her arm between his neck and the chair.

"It seems," went on the doctor, "as well as I could gather, that some girl had discarded him to marry a more well-to-do man, and he lost hope and interest in life, and went to the dogs. No, he refused to tell her name. There was a great pride in that meningitis case. He lied like an angel about his own name, and he gave his watch to the nurse and spoke to her as he would to a queen. I don't believe I ever will forgive him for dying, for I worked the next thing to a miracle on him. Well, he died this morning, and⁠—let me get a match⁠—oh, yes, here's a little thing in my pocket he gave me to have buried with him. He told me about starting to a concert with this girl one night, and they decided not to go in, but take a moonlight walk instead. She tore the ticket in two pieces and gave him one-half and kept the other. Here's his half, this little red piece of pasteboard with the word 'Admit⁠—' printed on it. Look out, little one⁠—that old chair arm is so slippery. Hurt you?"

"No, Ralph. I'm not so easy hurt. What do you think love is, Ralph?"

"Love? Little one! Oh, love is undoubtedly a species of mild insanity. An overbalance of the brain that leads to an abnormal state. It is as much a disease as measles, but as yet, sentimentalists refuse to hand it over to us Doctor of Medicine for treatment."

His wife took the half of the little red ticket and held it up. "Admit⁠—" she said, with a little laugh. "I suppose by this time he's admitted somewhere, isn't he, Ralph?"

"Somewhere," said the doctor, lighting his cigar afresh.

"Finish your cigar, Ralph, and then come up," she said. "I'm a little tired, and I'll wait for you above."

"All right, little one," said the doctor. "Pleasant dreams!" He smoked the cigar out, and then lit another.

It was nearly eleven when he went upstairs.

The light in his wife's room was turned low, and she lay upon her bed undressed. As he stepped to her side and raised her hand, some steel instruments fell and jingled upon the floor, and he saw upon the white countenance a creeping red horror that froze his blood.

He sprang to the lamp and turned up the blaze. As he parted his lips to send forth a shout, he paused for a moment, with his eyes upon his dead patient's half ticket that lay upon the table. The other half had been neatly fitted to it, and it now read:

ADMIT TWO