Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

								

informed of her master’s condition.
“Mr. Edmund—that’s Sir Roderick’s next eldest brother—had dinner with
him last night,” she answered, doubtfully, “But he’s taken his family to
see the procession. Mr. Pym—that’s the eldest, the head of the
firm—isn’t on what you might call good terms with Sir Roderick, who has
nothing to do with the bank now.”
“Were those all?” asked Hugh.
Mrs. Naylor could not suggest anyone else. Sir Roderick—well, he was one
of those gentlemen that you didn’t know how to take. You might offend
him mortally, and you wouldn’t know it except by his never having
anything to do with you afterwards.
“You would rather not take any responsibility in the matter then, Mrs.
Naylor?” asked Hugh, slightly amused.
The character of that strange man, lying for the present dead to the
world without, was being unexpectedly revealed to him.
“I certainly would rather not, sir,” said Mrs. Naylor, briskly.
“But you will not object to give me his brother’s address?”
Mrs. Naylor being quite ready to give Mr. Edmund Pym’s address, Hugh
wrote it down. Then he offered to take Mrs. Naylor to see her master.
From this she seemed to shrink; and it was only after being adjured that
it was her duty to remain, at all events, in the hospital, until someone
else belonging to Sir Roderick came—that she consented to visit the
ward.
Mr. Edmund Pym arrived to visit his brother about nine in the evening: a
singularly impassive personage, who showed no emotion whatever of any
kind, and who departed as soon as possible.
Mrs. Naylor, evidently greatly relieved, slipped away after she had had
a short interview with her master’s brother.
At ten o’clock the old man still lay on the hospital bed—breathing,
living, but apparently dead to all around him.
“What do you think of him, Mr. Paull?” asked the Sister, as Hugh went
his last round—at least the round which was usually his last.
“Think of him?” repeated Hugh, absently. “Oh—well—Dr. Fairlight will be
here in the morning. He will take the case. Tell the night nurse I shall
be down in an hour.”
“You’re not going to sit up, Mr. Paull?”
“I think I shall.”
The Sister looked from patient to doctor, as Hugh went striding out of
the ward, and back again to the livid, solemn face on the pillow.
“That young cabman’s case last week was a good deal worse than this,”
she mused, “and he didn’t sit up. I suppose the old gentleman’s age
makes him anxious.”
Hugh Paull, with his odd attractiveness, his scrupulous fidelity to his
duties, and his learning, which was acknowledged by the great men who
were appointed to the hospital, as well as by his fellow-workers, was
the hero of the resident staff, both doctors and nurses; and it did not
enter the good Sister’s head to dream that any other motive but that of
devotion to duty led to this sacrifice of a night’s rest, and singular