Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life Story 6 - The Curse of Eve

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:00)

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Round the Red Lamp by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Section 6 The Curse of Eve.

Robert Johnson was an essentially commonplace man, with no feature to distinguish him from a million others. He was pale of face, ordinary in looks, neutral in opinions, thirty years of age, and a married man.

By trade, he was a gentleman's outfitter in the new North Road, and the competition of business squeezed out of him the little character that was left.

In his hope of conciliating customers, he had become cringing and pliable, until working ever in the same routine from day to day, he seemed to have sunk into a soulless machine rather than a man.

No great question had ever stirred him. At the end of this snug century, self-contained in his own narrow circle, it seemed impossible that any of the mighty, primitive passions of mankind could ever reach him.

Yet birth and lust and illness and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.

Johnson's wife was a quiet little woman, with brown hair and gentle ways. His affection for her was the one positive trait in his character. Together they would lay out the shop window every Monday morning, the spotless shirts in their green cardboard boxes below, the neckties above hung in rows over the brass rails, the cheap studs glistening from the white cars at either side, while in the background were the rows of cloth caps and the bank of boxes in which the more valuable hats were screened from the sunlight.

She kept the books and sent out the bills. No one but she knew the joys and sorrows which crept into his small life. She had shared his exaltations when the gentleman who was going to India had bought ten dozen shirts and an incredible number of collars, and she had been as stricken as he when, after the goods had gone, the bill was returned from the hotel address with the intimation that no such person had lodged there. For five years they had worked, building up the business, thrown together all the more closely because their marriage had been a childless one.

Now, however, there were signs that a change was at hand, and that's speedily. She was unable to come downstairs, and her mother, Mrs. Payton, came over from Camberwell to nurse her and to welcome her grandchild.

Little qualms of anxiety came over Johnson as his wife's time approached. However, after all, it was a natural process. Other men's wives went through it unharmed, and why should not his? He was himself one of a family of fourteen, and yet his mother was alive and hearty. It was quite the exception for anything to go wrong. And yet, in spite of his reasonings, the remembrance of his wife's condition was always like a somber background to all his other thoughts.

Dr. Miles, of Bridport Place, the best man in the neighborhood, was retained five months in advance, and as time stole on, many little packets of absurdly small white garments with frill work and ribbons began to arrive among the big consignments of male necessities. And then one evening, as Johnson was ticketing the scarves in the shop, he heard a bustle upstairs, and Mrs. Peyton came running down to say that Lucy was bad, and that she thought the doctor ought to be there without delay.

It was not Robert Johnson's nature to hurry. He was prim and staid and liked to do things in an orderly fashion. It was a quarter of a mile from the corner of the New North Road where his shop stood to the doctor's house in Bridport Place. There were no cabs in sight, so he set off upon foot, leaving the lad to mine the shop.

At Bridport Place he was told that the doctor had just gone to Harman Street to attend a man in a fit. Johnson started off for Harman Street, losing a little of his primness as he became more anxious. Two full cabs, but no empty ones, passed him on the way. At Harman Street he learned that the doctor had gone on to a case of measles. Fortunately he had left the address, 69 Dunstan Road, at the other side of the Regent's Canal.

Robert's primness had vanished now as he thought of the women waiting at home, and he began to run as hard as he could down the Kingsland Road. Some way along he sprang into a cab which stood by the curb and drove to Dunstan Road. The doctor had just left, and Robert Johnson felt inclined to sit down upon the steps in despair. Fortunately he had not sent the cab away, and he was soon back at Bridport Place. Dr. Miles had not returned yet, but they were expecting him every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on his knees in a high, dim-lit room, the air of which was charged with a faint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive and the books and the shelves were somber, and a squat black clock ticked mournfully on the mantelpiece. It told him that it was half past seven, and that he had been gone an hour and a quarter. Whatever would the women think of him? Every time that a distant door slammed he sprang from his chair in a quiver of eagerness, his ears strained to catch the deep notes of the doctor's voice.