Young Doctor Kildare by Max Brand - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) (eBook)

Max Brand (Autor)

Max Brand (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
140 Seiten
Delphi Classics (Parts Edition) (Verlag)
978-1-78877-943-2 (ISBN)

Infos

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'Young Doctor Kildare by Max Brand - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)' from the bestselling edition of 'The Collected Works of Max Brand'.

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Textauszug

I. THE COMING HOME

THE THREE WHO loved him had prepared the house for the homecoming of young Kildare. From front door to kitchen they had polished and rearranged, and the only room left free of summer flowers was the parlour. This sanctum of the New England home had been turned into an office so that Dr. Lawrence Kildare could have his medical headquarters on one side of the hall, as usual, and on the other side would appear the brass door-plate of Dr. James Kildare, his son.

To be without a parlour was something like being without a face but Lawrence Kildare was determined upon the sacrifice because, as he said, they were welcoming Jimmy home not only as a son but as a doctor. The twenty years of schooling had ended; he had received his degree; and now he must be made to feel that he entered this house upon an equal footing with the oldest man in it. That was the way the elder Dr. Kildare put it, modestly proud of his own humility.

So they had stripped away the flowered carpet for the sake of a tan rug, replaced the family photographs with Jimmy’s framed diplomas from grammar school, high school and college. For the bric-à-brac in the corner cabinet they substituted from the attic reserves a solid mass of battered medical journals and antiquated texts; above all the round table with its bronze bowl gave way to a big mahogany desk. Martha Kildare found it at Jefford’s secondhand store and her hands polished it brighter than new. Now she leaned to blow a speck of dust from the shining surface; with her handkerchief she scoured away the spot of mist which her breath had left; and then she gave her attention to Beatrice Raymond who was reading aloud, softly, the words which old Dr. Lawrence Kildare had written on the white scratch pad that lay in the centre of the desk-blotter. The gravity of the words had caused him to write them with care, like a schoolboy copying a text, but the tremor of his seventy years appeared in the capitals with which each word began:

WELCOME HOME TO MY DEAR SON, FOR EVER!

As she finished reading, Beatrice Raymond lifted her head and murmured: “After all this, how terrible it would be—” but then she was stopped by the anxious, searching eyes of Martha Kildare. Beatrice wore a summer dress of organdy with a flowery pattern climbing dimly over it to her brown throat. Now she held out her skirt daintily and turned like a mannequin. “Do you think I’ll do, Aunt Martha?” she asked. For they were such close neighbours that they had to use family names.

“Darling!” breathed Mrs. Kildare. “But don’t you think you ought to wear the little jacket to the train? It has such a sweet ruffed collar.”

“It would cover my arms, though,” answered the girl, “and I think he ought to see how I’ve improved. I was all elbows, two years ago.”

“As though your points were to be counted, and you were a prize calf,” said Martha Kildare.

“Calves twenty years old generally are called cows,” remarked Beatrice.

“Beatrice! — But what do you mean?” asked Martha Kildare.

“I don’t know, exactly,” answered the girl, “only I hope it’s more than a calf affair—”

Old Dr. Kildare began to be nervous about train-time. They still had half an hour for the eight-minute drive, but then there is always the danger of a tyre blowing. He bundled his wife and Beatrice into the car which had done five years of slow service and would do five years more.

On the way to the station, the wind fluffed the organdy dress and whispered in her hair with a small voice of unhappy prophecy. When they reached the station the doctor looked gloomily around, saying: “You’d think some of the folks might have turned out to welcome Jimmy.”

“He never made many friends — but always fast ones,” said the mother.

“Well,” chuckled the doctor, “it’s true that he always hewed to the line and let his fists fall where they might. But maybe they’ve knocked some of the fight out of him back there in Hillsdale — What’s the matter, mother?”

“I forgot to baste the turkey before I left,” she exclaimed.

“You have the fire turned down low, haven’t you?” suggested the doctor.

“Yes, it’s down low.”

They got out and stood on the platform. It faced north, and even in August the shadow was iced with a remembrance of winter. An express-man wheeled out a hand-truck. Eccentric old Jim Carrington walked back and forth with a long stride, getting a good constitutional out of the ten-minute wait. Then Phil Watson and Jigger Loring and Steve Barney joined the doctor’s group, smiling, talking cheerfully about how fine it would be to have Jimmy back, and all the while their self-conscious eyes avoided the prettiest girl in town. If only Jimmy had not grown too big for the town!

Then the train was there on them, swaying its tall forehead around the bend, looking as important as a trans-continental limited. The engine shut off. It rolled on momentum; the brakes took hold, passing an electric shudder of vibration into the steel rails; the train stopped. A dozen people were dismounting.

“Beatrice, he couldn’t have missed it!” whispered Martha Kildare.

But there he was getting down last of all with a time-bitten suitcase in his left hand and a book in the right, the forefinger keeping a place. That suitcase had been quite fresh and leather-looking when she helped to pack it two years before. Jimmy had changed, too.

He himself was aware of the alteration as he stepped down the platform, but he felt that the cool of the wind which fingered through his clothes was seeing him more clearly than human eyes. He had a new body. Physical labour had built him up and stressed the important muscles like underlined words on a page of print. He was not proud of that body which his clothes masked but it gave him a more secure and comfortable sense of equipment for the world he was entering.

He put the suitcase down, which gave him a left hand to shake with the three highschool friends. They said: “Hi, Jimmy?” and “Whacha say, old boy?” and “You look great!” Then his mother got to him. She was sixty years old, for Jimmy was a late-born child. She had a high-blood-pressure look, reddish purple high up the cheeks. She was too fat. Between elbow and shoulder the flesh bagged down against the sleeve. Age puckered her eyelids and the weariness of woman was in the eyes. He held her close a moment then turned to grip his father’s hand. The old man was standing too straight. A blow would break him now, for he could not bend. His old-fashioned, professional mask of sharp-trimmed moustaches and pointed beard seemed detached from the face like a wig that barely adhered.

After that he kissed Beatrice. She stood up on tiptoe and turned her cheek like a child being kissed by an older relative. They went on to the car. In the rear seat, he stood up his suitcase between their knees and made sure that his finger had the right place in the book. He made doubly sure by glancing at the page.

 — after the fever has persisted with severity or even with an increasing intensity for five or six days the crisis occurs. In the course of a few hours, accompanied by profuse sweating, sometimes by diarrhoea, the temperature falls to normal or sub-normal.

The crisis may occur as early as the third day or may be delayed to the tenth; it usually comes, however, about the end of the first week. In delicate or elderly persons there may be collapse —

“What do you think of your Beatrice now?” asked his mother, who was turned about to gloat over him.

“Beatrice? She’s great,” said Kildare.

‘“It usually comes about the end of the first week,’” he was rehearsing in his mind, and there had been a thought knocking right behind his teeth, except that his mother’s interruption checked it. He would have to pray that it might return; perhaps it was the diagnosis that he searched for. The question made him look again at Beatrice. She held up her chin and turned her head for him, fixing her smile.

“Don’t be silly,” said Kildare.

“It’s only a prop smile,” admitted Beatrice, “but it’s brand new and I thought it was quite good.”

“See the new wing on the hospital?” asked Lawrence Kildare.

“No,” said Kildare.

“He’s thinking about something,” decided Beatrice. “What are you thinking about, Jimmy?”

“Look back and you’ll see it,” insisted the father. “More than fifty thousand dollars went into that. It’s going to bring surgery right up to date in our town.”

Kildare looked through the back window. The hospital had a block to itself, surrounded by trees which were set adrift by the motion of the automobile; the top branches obscured the highest roof of the building. His eye glanced on up into the empty blue of space.

“They’re all set for you over there,” remarked the father. “You’re going to have a happy interne year in our hospital, my boy.”

“Ah?” murmured Kildare.

“What are you thinking about, Jimmy?” asked the girl.

“Children hate questions,” said...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.7.2017
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Parts Edition (Max Brand)
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Parts Edition (Max Brand)
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Anthologien
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Barry • complete • Doone • Kildare • Rider • silvertip • Western
• ISBN-10: 1-78877-943-6 / 1788779436
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78877-943-2 / 9781788779432