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Brownsmith's Boy: A Romance in a Garden, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 18. The Gardener Surgeon |
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_ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE GARDENER SURGEON "People sneer at gardening and gardeners, Grant," said the old gentleman to me one day. "Perhaps you may take to some other occupation when you grow older; but don't you never be ashamed of having learned to be a gardener." "I'm sure I never shall," I said. "I hope you will not, my boy, for there's something in gardening and watching the growth of trees and plants that's good for a lad's nature; and if I was a schoolmaster I'd let every boy have a garden, and make him keep it neat. It would be as good a lesson as any he could teach." "I like gardening more and more, sir," I said. "That's right, my boy. I hope you do, but you've a deal to learn yet. Gardening's like learning to play the fiddle; there's always something more to get hold of than you know. I wish I had some more glass." "I wish you had, sir," I said. "Why, boy?--why?" he cried sharply. "Because you seem as if you'd like it, sir," I said, feeling rather abashed by his sharp manner. "Yes, but it was so that I should be able to teach you, sir. But wait a bit, I'll talk to my brother one of these days." Time glided on, and as I grew bigger and stronger I used now and then to go up with Ike to the market. He would have liked me to go every time, but Mr Brownsmith shook his head, and would only hear of it in times of emergency. "Not a good task for you, Grant," he used to say. "I want you at home." We were down the garden one morning after a very stormy night, when the wind had been so high that a great many of the fruit-trees had had their branches broken off, and we were busy with ladder, saw, and knife, repairing damages. I was up the ladder in a fine young apple-tree, whose branch had been broken and was hanging by a few fibres, and as soon as I had fixed myself pretty safely I began to cut, while when I glanced down to see if Old Brownsmith was taking any notice I saw that he was smiling. "Won't do--won't do, Grant," he said. "Cutting off a branch of a tree that has been broken is like practising amputation on a man. Cut lower, boy." "But I wanted to save all that great piece with those little boughs," I said. "But you can't, my lad. Now just look down the side there below where you are cutting, and what can you see?" "Only a little crack that will grow up." "Only a little crack that won't grow up, Grant, but which will admit the rain, and the wet will decay the tree; and that bough, at the end of two or three years, instead of being sound and covered with young shoots, will be dying away. A surgeon, when he performs an amputation, cuts right below the splintered part of the bone. Cut three feet lower down, my lad, and then pare all off nice and smooth, just as I showed you over the pruning. "That's the way," he said, as he watched me. "That's a neat smooth wound in the tree that will dry up easily after every shower, and nature will send out some of her healing gum or sap, and it will turn hard, and the bark, just as I showed you before, will come up in a new ring, and swell and swell till it covers the wood, and by and by you will hardly see where the cut was made." I finished my task, and was going to shoulder the ladder and get on to the next tree, when the old gentleman said in his quaint dry way: "You know what the first workman was, Grant?" "Yes," I said, "a gardener." "Good!" he said. "And do you know who was the first doctor and surgeon?" "No," I said. "A gardener, my boy, just as the men were who first began to improve the way in which men lived, and gave them fruit and corn and vegetables to eat, as well as the wild creatures they killed by hunting." "Oh, yes!" I said, "I see all that, but I don't see how the first doctor and surgeon could have been a gardener." "Don't you?" he said, laughing silently. "I do. Who but a gardener would find out the value of the different herbs and juices, and what they would do. You may call him a botanist, my lad, but he was a gardener. He would find out that some vegetables were good for the blood at times, and from that observation grew the whole doctrine of medicine. That's my theory, my boy. Now cut off that pear-tree branch." I set the ladder right, and proceeded to cut and trim the injury, thinking all the while what a pity it was that the trees should have been so knocked about by the storm. "Do you know who were the best gardeners in England in the olden times, Grant?" said the old gentleman as he stood below whetting my knife. "No, sir,--yes, I think I do," I hastened to add--"the monks." "Exactly. We have them to thank for introducing and improving no end of plants and fruit-trees. They were very great gardeners--famous gardeners and cultivators of herbs and strange flowers, and it was thus that they, many of them, became the doctors or teachers of their district, and I've got an idea in my head that it was on just such a morning as this that some old monk--no, he must have been a young monk, and a very bold and clever one--here, take your knife, it's as sharp as a razor now." I stooped down and took the knife, and hanging my saw from one of the rounds of the ladder began to cut, and the old gentleman went on: "It must have been after such a morning as this, boy, that some monk made the first bold start at surgery." I looked down at him, and he went on: "You may depend upon it that during the storm some poor fellow had been caught out in the forest by a falling limb of a tree, one of the boughs of which pinned him to the ground and smashed his leg." "An oak-tree," I said, quite enjoying the fact that he was inventing a story. "No, boy, an elm. Oak branches when they break are so full of tough fibre that they hang on by the stump. It is your elm that is the treacherous tree, and snaps short off, and comes down like thunder." "An elm-tree, then," I said, paring away. "Yes, a huge branch of an elm, and there the poor fellow lay till some one heard his shouts, and came to his help." "Where he would be lying in horrible agony," I said, trimming away at the bough. "Wrong again, Grant. Nature is kinder than that. With such an injury the poor fellow's limb would be numbed by the terrible shock, and possibly he felt but little pain. I knew an officer whose foot was taken off in a battle in India. A cannon-ball struck him just above the ankle, and he felt a terrible blow, but it did not hurt him afterwards for the time; and all he thought of was that his horse was killed, till he began to struggle away from the fallen beast, when he found that his own leg was gone." "How horrible!" I said. "All war is horrible, my boy," he said gravely. "Well, to go on with my story. I believe that they came and hoisted out the poor fellow under the tree, and carried him up to the old priory to have his broken leg cured by one of the monks, who would be out in his garden just the same as we are, Grant, cutting off and paring the broken boughs of his apple and pear trees. Then they laid him in one of the cells, and his leg was bound up and dressed with healing herbs, and the poor fellow was left to get well." "And did he?" I said. "Then the gardener monk went out into the garden again and continued to trim off the broken branches, sawing these and cutting those, and thinking all the while about his patient in the cell. "Then the next day came, and the poor fellow's relatives ran up to see him, and he was in very great agony, and they called upon the monks to help him, and they dressed the terrible injury again, and the poor fellow was very feverish and bad in spite of all that was done. But at last he dropped off into a weary sleep, and the poor people went away thinking what a great thing it was to have so much knowledge of healing, while, as soon as they had gone the monk shook his head. "Next day came, and the relatives and friends were delighted, for the pain was nearly all gone, and the injured man lay very still. "'He'll soon get well now,' they said; and they went away full of hope and quite satisfied; but the monk, after he had given the patient some refreshing drink, went out into his garden among his trees, and then after walking about in the sunny walk under the old stone wall, he stopped by the mossy seat by the sun-dial, and stood looking down at the gnomon, whose shadow marked the hours, and sighed deeply as he thought how many times the shadow would point to noon before his poor patient was dead." "Why, I thought he was getting better," I said. "Carry your ladder to the next tree, Grant," said the old gentleman, "and you shall work while I prattle." I obeyed him, and this time I had a great apple-tree bough to operate upon with the thin saw. I began using the saw very gently, and listening, for I seemed to see that monk in his long grey garment, and rope round his waist, looking down at the sun-dial, when Old Brownsmith went on slowly: "He knew it could not be long first, for the man's leg was crushed and the bone splintered so terribly that it would never heal up, and that the calm sense of comfort was a bad sign, for the limb was mortifying, and unless that mortification was stopped the man must die." "Poor fellow!" I ejaculated, for the old man told the story with such earnestness that it seemed to be real. "Yes, poor fellow! That is what the monk said as he thought of all the herbs and decoctions he had made, and that not one of them would stop the terrible change that was going on. He felt how helpless he was, and at last, Grant, he sat down on the mossy old stone bench, and covering his face with his hands, cried like a child." "But he was a man," I said. "Yes, my lad; but there are times when men are so prostrated by misery and despair that they cry like women--not often--perhaps only once or twice in a man's life. My monk cried bitterly, and then he jumped up, feeling ashamed of himself, and began walking up and down. Then he went and stood by the great fish stew, where the big carp and tench were growing fatter as they fed by night and basked in the sunshine among the water weeds by day; but no thought came to him as to how he could save the poor fellow lying in the cell." Old Brownsmith stopped to blow his nose on a brown-and-orange silk handkerchief, and stroke two or three cats, while I sawed away very slowly, waiting for what was to come. "Then he went round by where one apple-tree, like that, had lost a bough, and whose stump he had carefully trimmed--just as you are going to trim that, Grant." "I know," I cried, eagerly; "and then--" "You attend to your apple-tree, sir, and let me tell my story," he said, half gruffly, half in a good-humoured way, and I sawed away with my thin saw till I was quite through, and the stump I had cut off fell with such a bang that the cats all jumped in different directions, and then stared back at the stump with dilated eyes, till, seeing that there was no danger, one big Tom went and rubbed himself against it from end to end, and the others followed suit. "All at once, as he stood staring at the broken tree, an idea flashed across his brain, Grant." "Yes," I said, pruning-knife in hand. "He knew that if he had not cut and trimmed off that branch the limb would have gone on decaying right away, and perhaps have killed the tree." "Yes, of course," I said, still watching him. "Isn't your knife sharp enough, my lad?" said Old Brownsmith dryly. "Yes, sir," I said; and I went on trimming. "Well, he thought that if this saved the tree, why should it not save the life of the man?" and he grew so excited that he went in at once and had a look at the patient, and then went in to the prior, who shook his head. "'Poor fellow,' he said; 'he will die.' "'Yes,' said the young monk, 'unless--' "'Unless--' said the prior. "'Yes, unless,' said the young monk; and he horrified the prior by telling him all his ideas, while the other monks shook their heads. "'It could not be done,' they said. 'It would be too horrible.' "'There is no horror in performing an act like that to save a man's life,' said the young monk; 'it is a duty.' "'But it would kill the poor fellow,' they chorused. "'He will die as it is,' said the young monk. 'You said as much when I came in, and I am sure of it.' "'Yes,' said the prior sadly, 'he will die.' "'This might save his life,' said the young monk; but the old men shook their heads. "'Such a thing has never been done,' they said. 'It is too horrible.' "'And even if it saved his life he would only have one leg.' "'Better have no legs at all,' said the young monk, 'than die before his time.' "'But it would be his time,' said the old monks. "'It would not be his time if I could save his life,' said the young monk. "But still the old monks shook their heads, and said that no man had ever yet heard of such a thing. It was too terrible to be thought of, and they frowned very severely upon the young monk till the prior, who had been very thoughtful, exclaimed:-- "'And cutting the limb off the apple-tree made you think that?' "The young monk said that it was so. "'But a man is not an apple-tree,' said the oldest monk present; and all the others shook their heads again; but, oddly enough, a few minutes later they nodded their heads, for the prior suddenly exclaimed:-- "'Our brother is quite right, and he shall try.' "There was a strange thrill ran through the monks, but what the prior said was law in those days, Grant, and in a few minutes it was known all through the priory that Brother Anselm was going to cut off the poor swineherd's leg. "Then--I say, my boy, I wish you'd go on with your work. I can't talk if you do not," said Old Brownsmith, with a comical look at me, and I went on busily again while he continued his story. "When Brother Anselm had obtained the prior's leave to try his experiment he felt nervous and shrank from the task. He went down the garden and looked at the trees that he had cut, and he felt more than ever that a man was, as the monks said, not an apple-tree. Then he examined the places which looked healthy and well, and he wondered whether if he performed such an operation on the poor patient he also would be healthy and well at the end of a week, and he shook his head and felt nervous." "If you please, Mr Brownsmith," I said, "I can't go on till you've done, and I must hear the end." He chuckled a little, and seating himself on a bushel basket which he turned upside down, a couple of cats sprang in his lap, another got on his shoulder, and he went on talking while I thrust an arm through one of the rounds of the ladder, and leaned back against it as he went on. "Well, Grant," he said, "Brother Anselm felt sorry now that he had leave to perform his experiment, and he went slowly back to the cell and talked to the poor swineherd, a fine handsome, young man with fair curly brown hair and a skin as white as a woman's where the sun had not tanned him. "And he talked to him about how he felt; and the poor fellow said he felt much better and much worse--that the pain had all gone, but that he did not think he should ever be well any more. "This set the brother thinking more and more, but he felt that he could do nothing that day, and he waited till the next, lying awake all night thinking of what he would do and how he would do it, till the cold time about sunrise, when he had given up the idea in despair. But when he saw the light coming in the east, with the glorious gold and orange clouds, and then the bright sunshine of a new day, he began to think of how sad it would be for that young man, cut down as he had been in a moment, to be left to die when perhaps he might be saved. He thought, too, about trees that had been cut years before, and which had been healthy and well ever since, and that morning, feeling stronger in his determination, he went to the cell where the patient lay, to talk to him, and the first thing the poor fellow said was:-- "'Tell me the truth, please. I'm going to die, am I not?' "The young monk was silent. "'I know it,' said the swineherd sadly. 'I feel it now.' "Brother Anselm looked at him sadly for a few minutes and then said to him:-- "'I must not deceive you at such a time--yes; but one thing might save your life.' "'What is that?' cried the poor fellow eagerly; and he told him as gently as he could of the great operation, expecting to see the patient shudder and turn faint. "'Well,' he said, when the monk had ended, 'why don't you do it?' "'But would you rather suffer that--would you run the risk?' "'Am I not a man?' said the poor fellow calmly. 'Yes: life is very sweet, and I would bear any pain that I might live.' "That settled the matter, and the monk went out of the cell to shut himself up in his own and pray for the space of two hours, and the old monks said that it was all talk, and that he had given up his horrible idea; but the prior knew better, and he was not a bit surprised to see Anselm coming out of his cell looking brave, and calm, and cool. "Then he took a bottle of plant juice that he knew helped to stop bleeding, and he got ready his bandages, and his keenest knives, and his saw, and a bowl of water, and then he thought for a bit, and ended by asking the monks which of them would help him, but they all shrank away and turned pale, all but the prior, who said he would help, and then they went into the poor fellow's cell." Old Brownsmith stopped here, and kept on stroking one of the cats for such a long time, beginning at the tip of his nose and going right on to the end of his tail, that I grew impatient. "And did he perform the operation?" I said eagerly. "Yes, bravely and well, but of course very clumsily for want of experience. He cut off the leg, Grant, right above where the bone was splintered, and all the terrible irritation was going on." "And the poor fellow died after all?" I said. "No, he did not, my lad; it left him terribly weak and he was very low for some days, but he began to mend from the very first, and I suppose when he grew well and strong he had to make himself a wooden leg or else to go about with a crutch. About that I know nothing. There was the poor fellow dying, and there was a gardener who knew that if the broken place were cut Nature would heal it up; for Nature likes to be helped sometimes, my boy, and she is waiting for you now." "Yes, sir, I'll do it directly," I said, glancing at the stump I had sawn off, and thinking about the swineherd's leg, and half-wondering that it did not bleed; "but tell me, please, is all that true?" "I'm afraid not, Grant," he said smiling; "but it is my idea--my theory about how our great surgeons gained their first knowledge from a gardener; and if it is not true, it might very well be." "Yes," I said, looking at him wonderingly as he smoothed the fur of his cats and was surrounded by them, rubbing themselves and purring loudly, "but I did not know you could tell stories like that." "I did not know it myself, Grant, till I began, and one word coaxed out another. Seriously, though, my boy, there is nothing to be ashamed of in being a gardener." "I'm not ashamed," I said; "I like it." "Gardeners can propagate and bring into use plants that may prove to be of great service to man; they can improve vegetables and fruits--and when you come to think of what a number of trees and plants are useful, you see what a field there is to work in! Why, even a man who makes a better cabbage or potato grow than we have had before is one who has been of great service to his fellow-creatures. So work away; you may do something yet." "Yes," I cried, "I'll work away and as hard as I can; but I begin to wish now that you had some glass." "So do I," said the old gentleman. "There!" I said, coming down the ladder, "I think that will heal up now, like the poor swineherd's leg. It's as smooth as smooth." "Let me look," said a voice behind me; and I started with surprise to find myself face to face with a man who seemed to be Old Brownsmith when he was, if not Young Brownsmith, just about what he would have been at forty. _ |
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