The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE HIPPOCRATES SOCIETY IS HOUSED IN A CHARMING IF slightly worn building in Chelsea. The butler takes our coats and ushers us through a wide parlor—where several gentlemen sit smoking cigars, playing chess, and arguing politics—and into the largest library I have ever seen. An assortment of mismatched chairs fill out the corners. Several are grouped about the roaring fire as if there has just been a rousing debate there. The rugs are Persian and so old that they’ve worn through in spots. Every single bookcase is stuffed and seems it can hold no more. Medical texts; scientific studies; Greek, Latin, and classic volumes line the shelves. I should like to sit and read for weeks.

Dr. Hamilton greets us. He is a man of seventy with white hair gone to mere threads on top. “Ah, you’re here. Good, good. Our man has prepared a marvelous feast. Let’s not keep him waiting.”

There are twelve of us at the table, a lively mix of doctors, writers, philosophers, and their wives. The conversation is spirited and fascinating. A bespectacled gentleman at the other end of the table argues vehemently with Dr. Hamilton.

“I tell you, Alfred, socialism is the way of the future! Imagine it! Economic and social equality among men. No more classes, perhaps the end to poverty. Complete social harmony. Utopia is at hand, gentlemen, and its name is socialism.”

“Ah, Wells, best stick to writing fantastical novels, old boy. I did rather enjoy that time-travel story. Bit dotty at the end with the Eloi, though.”

A man with ruddy cheeks and a broad belly speaks up. “Wells, perhaps you’ve confused us with the Fabian Society.”

Everyone has a good chuckle at this. Some raise their glasses. “Hear, hear!” they say.

The man in the spectacles excuses himself. “I am only sorry that I must take my leave and cannot stay to argue the point with you. But I shall take up the cause when next we meet.”

“Who was that gentleman?” I try to ask quietly.

“Mr. Herbert George Wells,” the ruddy-cheeked man answers. “You may know him as H. G. Wells, the novelist. Good man. Solid mind. Wrong on socialism, though. Life without a queen? Without landowners but ‘cooperative societies’? Anarchy, I say. Sheer madness. Ah, here is dessert.”

A silent butler places a great crème soufflé before the man and he plunges his spoon into it with relish.

We discuss science and religion, books and medicine, the social season as well as politics. But it is Father who truly commands the table with his wit and tales of India.

“And then there is the story of the tiger, but I fear I have already held your attention far too long,” Father says, that merry twinkle back in his eyes.

The guests will have their curiosity satisfied. “A tiger!” they cry. “Why, you must tell it.”

Delighted, Father leans forward. His voice grows hushed. “We had taken a house in Lucknow for a month, hoping to escape the heat in Bombay.”

“Lucknow!” a woolly-haired gentleman exclaims. “I do hope you didn’t meet up with any mutinous Indian sepoys!”

The assembled break into arguments about the famous Indian uprising decades before.

“To think those savages murdered innocent British citizens, and after all we’d done for them!” One of the wives clucks.

“The fault was ours, dear lady. How could they ask Hindu and Moslem soldiers to bite cartridges greased with pig and cow fat when such a thing is abhorrent to their religious beliefs?” Dr. Hamilton argues.

“Come now, old chap, surely you’re not justifying slaughter?” the woolly-haired man protests.

“Certainly not,” Dr. Hamilton says. “But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others.”

“I should like to hear Mr. Doyle’s tale about the tiger,” a woman in a tiara says, reminding us.

The guests are agreed, and Father continues his story. “Our Gemma was no more than six. She loved to play in the garden that bordered the trees whilst our housekeeper, Sarita, hung the wash and kept watch. That spring, the news spread from village to village: a Bengal tiger had been seen walking the villages, bold as you please. The daring fellow had destroyed a market in Delhi and scared the life out of a regiment there. There was a reward of one hundred pounds sterling offered for its capture. We never dreamed the tiger would reach us.”

Every head is inclined toward Father and he basks in his audience’s attention. “One day, as Sarita tended to the wash, Gemma played in the garden. She was a knight, you see, with a sword fashioned out of wood. Most formidable, she was, though I didn’t quite know how formidable. As I sat in my study, I heard screaming from outside. I ran to see what the commotion was about. Sarita called to me, wide-eyed with fear, ‘Oh, Mr. Doyle, look—over there!’ The tiger had entered the garden and was making his way toward where our Gemma frolicked with her wooden sword. Beside me, our house servant, Raj, drew his blade so stealthily it seemed to simply appear in his hand by magic. But Sarita stayed his hand. ‘If you run for him with your knife, you will provoke the tiger,’ she advised. ‘We must wait.’”