Page:How I Attended a Nervous Patient.pdf/5

Rh of manner his lapse from which Mrs. Oakenfall had so lamented. It was a queer attack, truly, and at times I felt tempted to dismiss it as a case of alcoholism pure and simple, but for one thing. I discovered very soon that he had a disease of the heart, which, although not accounting for all the symptoms, went a long way to explain some of them. I certainly had not discovered it when I first saw him, and it is probable that his nervous tremors prevented me hearing accurately at the time; but at any rate the affection was plain enough now, being of that variety which has been attributed to acute nervous shock or strain, and therein it tallied with Mrs. Oakenfall's account of the onset of his illness. At the end of a week he had so far recovered as to sit out in the little quaint old-fashioned garden at the back of the cottage, well planted with hollyhocks, showing little of their short-lived summer gorgeousness. I found he was fond of cycling, and as the roads thereabouts were fairly level I consented to his taking a daily potter awheel, and put him on the "occasional" column of my visiting list.

All this time I had not been neglecting Smithson, who also prospered under my hands, but I must confess that, quite apart from the uninteresting nature of his complaint, and although there was nothing repellent about the man, I never felt quite at ease in his company. It would have been quite impossible for me to give any logical reason for this, but it might perhaps have

arisen from a vague sense of irritation at the mystery which seemed to enshroud his occupation. Although I had called at all sorts of hours, arranging the visit so as to suit the rest of my round, I never found him at work, and, what seemed more puzzling, I was never able to detect the least sign of his doing any; the pile of new canvases lay as undisturbed, the brushes and palette as cleanly, as on my first visit. He appeared to spend all his time reading yellow-paper covered French novels. He was certainly always ready for a talk, but here again he studiously avoided any hint of art matters, and the only topic which seemed to interest him was foreign politics and travel, on which I need hardly say he did most of the talking. Very excellent talking it was, too, for he was a man of education, possessed of great natural shrewdness, cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word; and had I been about to start in practice on the Riviera, for instance, the information he imparted would have been invaluable. So far as I could see he had no visitors, nor had he any servants, being looked after by an old dame from the village; and he was so much of a recluse that I had some difficulty in persuading him, as his ankle grew stronger, to sit and read in the open air.

It was about a fortnight after my first meeting with Smithson that the incident occurred which converted the feeling of distrust I entertained for him to one of positive aversion. I had been called to a farm just