Heart and Science | Page 3

that we may be again indebted to each
other on this occasion. So, to our infinite relief on either side, we part

friends after all.
W. C.
London: April 1883
CHAPTER I.
The weary old nineteenth century had advanced into the last twenty
years of its life.
Towards two o'clock in the afternoon, Ovid Vere (of the Royal College
of Surgeons) stood at the window of his consulting-room in London,
looking out at the summer sunshine, and the quiet dusty street.
He had received a warning, familiar to the busy men of our time--the
warning from overwrought Nature, which counsels rest after excessive
work. With a prosperous career before him, he had been compelled (at
only thirty-one years of age) to ask a colleague to take charge of his
practice, and to give the brain which he had cruelly wearied a rest of
some months to come. On the next day he had arranged to embark for
the Mediterranean in a friend's yacht.
An active man, devoted heart and soul to his profession, is not a man
who can learn the happy knack of being idle at a moment's notice. Ovid
found the mere act of looking out of window, and wondering what he
should do next, more than he had patience to endure.
He turned to his study table. If he had possessed a wife to look after
him, he would have been reminded that he and his study table had
nothing in common, under present circumstances. Being deprived of
conjugal superintendence, he broke though his own rules. His restless
hand unlocked a drawer, and took out a manuscript work on medicine
of his own writing. "Surely," he thought, "I may finish a chapter, before
I go to sea to-morrow?"
His head, steady enough while he was only looking out of window,
began to swim before he had got to the bottom of a page. The last

sentences of the unfinished chapter alluded to a matter of fact which he
had not yet verified. In emergencies of any sort, he was a patient man
and a man of resource. The necessary verification could be
accomplished by a visit to the College of Surgeons, situated in the great
square called Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here was a motive for a walk--with
an occupation at the end of it, which only involved a question to a
Curator, and an examination of a Specimen. He locked up his
manuscript, and set forth for Lincoln's Inn Fields.
CHAPTER II.
When two friends happen to meet in the street, do they ever look back
along the procession of small circumstances which has led them both,
from the starting-point of their own houses, to the same spot, at the
same time? Not one man in ten thousand has probably ever thought of
making such a fantastic inquiry as this. And consequently not one man
in ten thousand, living in the midst of reality, has discovered that he is
also living in the midst of romance.
From the moment when the young surgeon closed the door of his house,
he was walking blindfold on his way to a patient in the future who was
personally still a stranger to him. He never reached the College of
Surgeons. He never embarked on his friend's yacht.
What were the obstacles which turned him aside from the course that
he had in view? Nothing but a series of trivial circumstances, occurring
in the experience of a man who goes out for a walk.
He had only reached the next street, when the first of the circumstances
presented itself in the shape of a friend's carriage, which drew up at his
side. A bright benevolent face encircled by bushy white whiskers,
looked out of the window, and a hearty voice asked him if he had
completed his arrangements for a long holiday. Having replied to this,
Ovid had a question to put, on his side.
"How is our patient, Sir Richard?"
"Out of danger."

"And what do the other doctors say now?"
Sir Richard laughed: "They say it's my luck."
"Not convinced yet?"
"Not in the least. Who has ever succeeded in convincing fools? Let's try
another subject. Is your mother reconciled to your new plans?"
"I can hardly tell you. My mother is in a state of indescribable agitation.
Her brother's Will has been found in Italy. And his daughter may arrive
in England at a moment's notice."
"Unmarried?" Sir Richard asked slyly.
"I don't know."
"Any money?"
Ovid smiled--not cheerfully. "Do you think my poor mother would be
in a state of indescribable agitation if there was not money?"
Sir Richard was one of those obsolete elderly persons who quote
Shakespeare. "Ah, well," he said, "your mother is like Kent in King
Lear--she's too old to learn. Is she as fond as