Mr Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

MacCracken?’
    â€˜I am doing so already, crippled old dog,’ the young doctor murmured, conveying kindness by giving Covington’s arm a squeeze. It was not MacCracken’s intention to run a hospital for his cases, but with Covington he heard himself prattling: ‘Of course, yes, rely on me, sir, I shall make arrangements, etcetera,’—all condensed into one shouted word in his charge’s left ear (the better one): ‘ Yes! ’
    With an instrument sent from Boston by an old professor who still had hopes for him, MacCracken tackled Covington’s ears. Gobbets of wax blocked his view. After careful syringing he saw that both drums were scarred beyond recovery. It was as if firecrackers had popped inside them. Covington’s submission to his care was touching.
    â€˜I went to an aurist about this,’ Covington tapped the side of his head, ‘and he said for a thousand pound he would cut me open and clip my ear-bones, and maybe I would hear better. Would I?’
    â€˜Keep your thousand, grandfather.’
    Mr Covington dozed. MacCracken felt a protectiveness towards the old coot as for a gruff, well-meaning peasant with a crock of gold. A man who could spare a thousandlike that would know of some prime investments. Trying another sort of examination MacCracken ran his fingers across Covington’s scalp. It was like playing on a bag of stones, and using instinct aided by phrenology (at which MacCracken prided himself, believing the craft to lie somewhere in the direction of a firm prediction), he sneaked a mental picture of Covington to verify his first impressions.
    The message MacCracken read through his fingers came to him in a few moments: a doglike fondness was no surprise; the potency of an old sire; powers of concentration and challenge; a streak of resentment; the capacity to deal damage; a certain helpfulness; secretiveness.
    This last was no surprise.
    Covington came awake as MacCracken felt what he had once heard called the ‘band of hopefulness’. It was ridged across Covington’s dome, a veritable rainbow of potential joy, and not seeming to belong with the doleful stranger at all.
    â€˜What are you doing? Are you “reading” me, MacCracken? I won’t have it!’—and he thrust his examiner’s arm aside. ‘You won’t use me?’
    â€˜Dear Mr Covington!’
    â€˜Bumpology. I spit on that art!’
    â€˜Mr Covington!’ (louder in his ear).
    â€˜Yoi?’
    â€˜I—am—your—physician.’
    â€˜You—are—my—meddler.’
    Though Covington gave a quick smile to cover his outburst, and MacCracken smiled with him, they both were astonished by the vehemence of the exchange.
    â€˜Pardon me,’ Covington said. ‘I had a bad time with that business once. When I was jugged and bottled .’
    â€˜You are pardoned, sir. When was that?’
    With the shimmering half-understanding the deaf have, that is also like a charm, Mr Covington scuttled back inside himself and secured MacCracken’s fascination with that‘bad time’ and that ‘business’ by keeping his jaw firmly clamped. It must have had a good outcome, surely, thought MacCracken, because the rainbow ridge of hope said so. Either that or Covington’s fate had not yet run its course.
    Covington lay on a bed in MacCracken’s library and gazed at MacCracken’s books, read their spines and threw his host a sprat of information to chew. ‘I’ve come home, it seems,’ he said. ‘ Home ,’ giving the word a scornful edge. He named a few titles—Murray’s English Grammar , Mackintosh’s History of England , Byron’s HMS Blonde , and Darwin’s Voyage Round the World of HMS Beagle — saying he ‘owned those too’, which MacCracken thought, at the time, a pretty ripe boast for such an old carthorse.
    â€˜It is like a ship’s cabin in here.