Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life Story 8 - A Physiologist's Wife, Part 1

Tyler DeWald (0:01)

8 of Round the Red Lamp. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org.

Recording by Tyler Dewald.

Round the Red Lamp by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Section 8 A Physiologist's Wife. Part 1

Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to breakfast at the usual hour. The presentation chiming clock which stood between the terracotta busts of Claude Bernard and John Hunter upon the dining room mantelpiece had rung out the half hour and the three quarters.

Now, its golden hand was verging upon the nine, and yet there were no signs of the master of the house. It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the twelve years that she had kept house for him, his younger sister had never known him a second behind the time. She now sat in front of the high silvered coffee pot, uncertain whether to order the gong to be resounded or to wait on in silence. Either course might be a mistake. Her brother was not a man who permitted mistakes. Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle height, thin with peering puckered eyes, and the rounded shoulders which mark the bookish woman. Her face was long and spare, flecked with color above the cheekbones, with a reasonable, thoughtful forehead, and a dash of absolute obstinacity in her thin lips and prominent chin. Snow-white cuffs and collar with a plain dark dress, cut with almost Quaker-like simplicity, bespoke the primness of her taste. An ebony cross hung over her flattened chest. She sat very upright in her chair, listening with raised eyebrows and swinging her eyeglasses backwards and forwards with a nervous gesture, which was peculiar to her. Suddenly, she gave a sharp, satisfied jerk of the head and began to pour out the coffee. From outside, there came the dull thudding sound of heavy feet upon thick carpet. The door swung open and the professor entered with a quick nervous step. He nodded to his sister and seating himself at the other side of the table, began to open the small pile of letters which lay beside his plate. Professor Ainslie Grey, at that time 43 years of age, nearly 12 years older than his sister. His career had been a brilliant one. At Edinburgh, at Cambridge, and at Vienna, he had laid the foundations of his great reputation, both in physiology and zoology. His pamphlet, on the mesoblastic origin of excitomotor nerve roots, had won him his fellowship of the Royal Society, and his researches upon the nature of the bathobias. With some remarks upon the lithococci, had been translated into at least three European languages. He had been referred to by one of the greatest living authorities as being the very type and embodiment of all that was best in modern society. No wonder, then, that when the commercial city of Birch's Pool decided to create a medical school, they were only too glad to confer the chair of physiology upon Mr. Ainslie Grey. They valued him the more for his conviction that the class was only one step in his upward journey and that the first vacancy would remove him to some more illustrious seat of learning. In person, he was not unlike his sister, the same eyes, the same contour, the same intellectual forehead. His lips, however, were firmer, and his long thin lower jaw was sharper and more decided. He ran his finger and thumb down it from time to time as he glanced over his letters.

Those maids are very noisy, he remarked, as a clack of tongues sounded in the distance. It is Sarah, said his sister. I shall speak about it. She handed over his coffee cup and was sipping at her own, glancing furtively through her narrowed lids at the austere face of her brother. The first great advance of the human race, said Professor, was when the development of their left frontal convolutions, they attained the power of speech. Their second advance was when they learned to control that power. Woman has not yet attained the second stage. He half closed his eyes as he spoke, and thrust his chin forward, but as he ceased, he had a trick of suddenly opening both eyes very wide and staring sternly at his interlocutor. I am not garrulous, John, said his sister. No, Ada, in many respects you approach the superior or male type. The professor bowed over his eggs with the manner of one who utters courtly compliment, but the lady pouted and gave an impatient little shrug of her shoulders. You were late this morning, John, she remarked after a pause. Yes, Ada, I slept badly. Some little cerebral congestion, no doubt, due to the overstimulation of the centers of thought. I have been a little disturbed in my mind. His sister stared across at him in astonishment. The professor's mental processes had hitherto been as regular as his habits. Twelve years' continual intercourse had taught her he lived in a serene and rarefied atmosphere of scientific calm, high above the petty emotions which affect humbler minds.