Dr. North’s Wound
It is generally supposed, by poets and philosophers, if not by men of science, that love resides within the heart. Until my apprenticeship to Dr. North, indeed, I too believed this to be so.
Late in the year of 1878, in the tenth month of my indenture to him, the doctor chose to make an example of me before his dinner guests at one of his renowned soirees. There were eight of us at table, and to my mortification Arabella Fanshawe was one of the party; I could have forgiven my employer anything but cutting me down before her, which he chose to do with some relish. Dr. North, handsome, sallow-faced with a smile like a fox said in response to my comment on the question about where love resides: “As an analytical thinker, Jerome, a chemist—of some talent I might add”—and here he winked provokingly at Arabella who sat to his left—“You surely cannot subscribe to such rhetorical rot.”
I felt myself grow pale as I saw the blush flare on Arabella’s cheek; but whether this was from anger at Dr North or shame for me I could not say, and neither could I look either the Doctor or Arabella in the eye, such was my humiliation. This was particularly the case when my employer compounded the slight with: “Perhaps you should relinquish your training as an apothecary and take to writing romantic doggerel for spinsters and young girls.”
Laughter rippled like the legs of a centipede around the table. Arabella thankfully did not participate.
Harold McKenzie, the wealthiest landowner in the county of R— by contrast, brayed, even as he was playfully slapped across the back of his hand by his usually timid wife.
“Write something for my dear Gwendolyn, too,” he said, pinching his wife’s cheek. “For, she says I have not a romantic bone in my body. Though,” he added, “I did not hear you complain last night, eh, my dear?”
The ladies around the table, the ancient Mrs Quinn and her prissy daughter Jane in particular, were horrified at this off-colour remark, and some of the men too, myself included, took to studying intently the remains of the entrée on their dinner plates. Dr. North, however, saw this as another opening.
“Oh,” he said, “I am speaking not of physical love, of lust, of animal passions, but of the so-called union of souls.”
“Ah, so you believe in the soul, doctor?”
This from my friend and cousin, Robert Theakston, a playful irony in his tone.
Dr. North stiffened somewhat at this; and Arabella put a napkin to her lips, and I could have sworn by the fetching creases at the corners of her eyes, that she was smiling behind it.
“I speak in the sense of energy fields, Mr Theakston. Galvanic experiments, the new work with electricity, has demonstrated the existence of such energy. It is no small matter to—”
Robert interrupted: “Reanimating the amputated leg of a dead frog is hardly proof of universal energy, sir.”
By now it was my turn to try to conceal a smile. Robert cherished debate and was contradictory never from strong conviction by merely from the pleasure of the game. My mentor’s eyes took on the cyanotic hue of rainclouds, and I feared another tantrum building. I need not have worried, for now that I know him better it is clear that he is too clever, too manipulative to make such an exhibition before guests who might be of service to him in the future. Yes, I know the man now: these dinner companions commanded power in the community, and if Dr. North desired anything it was that power, or at any rate the ability to harness it. The desiccated Mrs Quinn, who sat next to my cousin opposite her daughter, would easily identify with this desire, for the widow of the mill owner, Bartholomew Quinn, had acquired power through just such social engineering, forming alliances and committees and political collectives of the wealthy and influential around her to further her own ends; her daughter, Joan, showed no such cleverness, unless her fluttering and obvious admiration of Dr. North and her flirtatiousness with him were a ruse by which she hoped to gain such power for herself.
The debate continued a while longer, the doctor’s motion being for the existence of universal energy as the spark which animates all life, and within which love—if such a thing can be empirically proven—must be a part. Robert, sometimes abetted by Mr McKenzie, presented counter arguments, or toyed with the doctor’s point of view, now seeming to side with it, now knocking it down again in light-hearted ways, to the amusement of all at the table, including it appeared, Dr. North himself. His witty counter arguments drew smiles and admiring glances from the ladies.
It was within my power to break the stalemate by revealing the nature of the doctor’s lifelong work. But to describe, or even hint at the experiments with which I presently assisted him, would have put in jeopardy not only my present position and sole means of income, but any prospects for my future here or anywhere else.
