"Doctor, why is it that people get ill?"

He laughed and chuckled at her puzzled frown.

"Well! There's a question to ask a man after his dinner. Do you know it took me the best part of seven years at the hospital to learn the answer?

And even now my knowledge is not what you might call exhaustive."

"It seems so queer--mother being ill, and father; then Jean's headaches and my neuralgia. And Wullie all twisted up."

The doctor let the reins drop on the horse's neck and lighted a very old pipe. He had very little chance of a talk, and was glad to talk, even to a girl.

"Just in those people you've mentioned, Marcella, you've almost every cause of illness." He paused, puffed at the pipe and went on, "Wullie--he was born like it."

"Yes. I know. It seems all wrong."

"It is wrong. It's a mistake," said the doctor slowly.

"Whose mistake?" she asked quickly.

"Ah, there you have me, Marcella. It was to answer questions like that that men invented the devil, I believe; they like to say he put the grit in the machine that turned out Wullie, and made him like that out of perversity."

"But what do you say?" she said, looking into his face.

"I don't know. I think several things. For one thing, I like to imagine that G.o.d, or Nature, whichever you like to call it--isn't a perfect machine yet, and that we human beings can step in to help a bit."

"But how?"

"Wullie's father, I've heard, was drowned before he was born, and his mother was too proud to tell when she was hungry. She used to go out every night and take his place with the fishing boats, rowing, sitting cramped, drawing the nets. We can help there by stopping that sort of thing."

Marcella watched him, wide-eyed. She was completely mystified but so full of questions that she could not find which one to ask first.

"That's what I'd have said when I was at the hospital, a young man. In those days I dealt much more with cells and bodies than--than I do now.

Queer thing, Marcella--youngsters go for physiology mostly. When they get older they see that there's more in psychology. I'm old now. Maybe I'm more foolish, but I've a feeling, right down at my marrow, that I'm wiser. I like to think that Wullie's an example of the law of compensation and, by losing physical strength and beauty, has gained a beautiful soul. But for the Lord's sake don't go telling anyone I--a doctor--talked such arrant nonsense," he added with a laugh as he puffed at his pipe.

"It seems wrong to me," said Marcella slowly. "I can't see why a beautiful mind and body shouldn't be part of each other."

"You've never been introduced to your body yet, Marcella, nor shaken hands with it. It's never popped up and made faces at you. When it does you'll find folks like Wullie have a good deal to be thankful for. Your father, for instance--"

He stopped short, coughed loudly and pulled up the horse to a sharp trot.

"Yes. The barrel," she said gravely.

"Who's been telling you that?"

"Wullie. I asked him."

"I wouldn't have told you, yet. But it's right you should know. You saw how it was with your father. Whisky ruled him. It rules all your menfolk like that. It wasn't till his body grew weak with sickness--and sickness, mind you, caused by the whisky--that he got it in hand. Then, you see, it was too late. He conquered a wounded foe. And, of course, he died. If he'd got religion earlier, perhaps--and, after all, that's only another obsession."

"Poor father," she whispered.

"If your father, without religion or anything, could have conquered, Marcella, he'd have been a very heroic figure. He'd have left footprints in the sand of time, as the poet said."

Marcella nodded. This was the first time the idea of conscious heroism came to her. She said rather breathlessly:

"But are bodies _wicked_, doctor? Lots of people seem to think so. Aunt Janet thinks people's bodies are _wrong_. All saints seem to think that too."

"They're very splendid and bonny if you can keep them in hand. Christ taught that bodies--Humanity, that is--are the veils of G.o.d. It's only when bodies get out of hand that they go wrong and put a man in h.e.l.l. I expect the idea of Trinity-worship that we get in most religions was an unconscious aiming at this truth, that to be a perfect human being you must be the Trinity--body, brain and spirit. But we're not up to that Trinity yet, la.s.sie, by a long chalk."

"When I used to read those scientific books, and those queer philosophies to father, it seemed to me that bodies were all that mattered. That was when I was reading biology books and lectures. It seemed so useless to me--just living, and handing on life, and living no more."

"That was the idea when I was at the hospital. At a hospital, of course, bodies do count tremendously. But in my day more than now because we were in the reactionary stage from blood-letting, incantations and so on. I remember how Biology came to me with a sense of crystal precision and inevitability in those days."

He paused. Marcella asked rather doubtfully:

"But do you think that Biology is wrong?"

"Oh, Marcella, your 'rights' and 'wrongs' are so funny, if you only knew it! You might as well say, 'Is fire wrong?' It's there. There's no getting away from it. When I was a wee laddie at home I had to write copy-book lessons on Sat.u.r.day afternoons to keep me out of mischief. One I wrote so often that it keeps coming into my mind in the most foolish way often. 'Fire is a good servant but a bad master.' That was the sentence. The times I've written it, thick down strokes, thin upstrokes!

Well, that's like any of these ologies--biology especially. It's a good teacher. You don't have to let it be a taskmaster."

"I'd like to learn ologies, doctor. I'd like to learn to the roots of things. All the things I know--legends, history, poetry, haven't any roots at all. Professor Kraill's a biologist, isn't he?"

"Well, yes--rather a heterodox one, but he's getting believed now. But how on earth did you know?" he said, turning on her in surprise.

"There was an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a book of his lectures. It was called 'Questing Cells' and father got it. I had to read it to him--with a dictionary at almost every line, because I didn't understand it. It showed me that, though I am muddled now, there is such a thing as clearness in the world. It seemed to me that if I knew all the things Professor Kraill knows things might be like a crystal ball--all the things in the world, you know, beautifully clear and rounded off. I read a lot of books to father after that and got muddled again. But I never lost the feel of Professor Kraill's book. I couldn't tell you a word of it now, but it's like the memory of a most beautiful music. I love him.

I'd love to hear him--to see him. He's the wisest man in the world."

"Heaven forbid!" said the doctor, laughing a little.

"Why? Don't you admire him?"

"Immensely, though he's heterodox. But he's just what I was saying to you just now--an example of a man who isn't the Trinity. Being a biologist, he's run all to body and brain. He's let his spirit get famished a bit. Queer things--one hears, too--inevitable things."

"How do you mean?" she cried, quick to defend her hero, but eager with curiosity about him.

"Oh, things you wouldn't understand. He's given up his chair at the University."

There was a long silence. Then Marcella said definitely:

"Anyway, he's splendid. I love him." The doctor laughed and told her it was a good thing she wasn't a student if she fell in love with professors from their lectures.

"Well, go on with what you were saying," she said imperiously, and the doctor began to think that he had not quite reckoned with Marcella's pa.s.sion for getting to the roots of things. But he expounded his theory to her, telling her that before many years things that were miracles in the time of Christ would be scientific bagatelles in the hospitals.

"We've been having a materialistic time, Marcella, ever since Huxley and Darwin. Now we're coming to the swing of the pendulum. The body and its appet.i.tes have got very strong. Soon we'll have them beat by the mind."

There was a long silence. Then, with a suddenness that disconcerted the doctor, she asked him what Wullie had meant by saying that the Lashcairn women took the man they needed, and went on strange roads.

He filled and lit his pipe before he answered her.

"If I told you you wouldn't understand. You'll come to it in time. When you do, remember what I said to you. If you don't keep your body in hand it's going to run away with you, like it ran away with your father into yon barrel. See?"