Healers and Regenerators
Rhoda had spoken to Miss Cursiter. Nobody ever knew what she said to
her, but the next day Miss Cursiter's secretary had the pleasure to
inform Miss Quincey that she would have leave of absence for three
months, and that her place would be kept for her.
Miss Quincey had become a person of importance. Old Martha fumbled about,
unnaturally attentive, even Mrs. Moon acknowledged Juliana's right to be
ill if her foolish mind were set on it. There was nothing active or
spontaneous in the Old Lady's dislike of her niece, it was simply a habit
she had got.
An agreeable sense of her dignity stole in on the little woman of no
account. She knew and everybody knew that hers was no vulgar illness.
It was brain exhaustion; altogether a noble and transcendental
affair; Miss Quincey was a victim of the intellectual life. In all the
five-and-twenty years she had worked there St. Sidwell's had never heard
so much about Miss Quincey's brain. And on her part Miss Quincey was
surprised to find that she had so many friends. Day after day the
teachers left their cards and sympathy; the girls sent flowers with love;
there were even messages of inquiry from Miss Cursiter. And not only
flowers and sympathy, but more solid testimonials poured in from St.
Sidwell's, parcels which by some curious coincidence contained everything
that Dr. Cautley had suggested and Miss Quincey refused on the grounds
that she "couldn't fancy it." For a long time Miss Quincey was supremely
happy in the belief that these delicacies were sent by the Head; and she
said to herself that one had only to be laid aside a little while for
one's worth to be appreciated. It was as if a veil of blessed illusion
had been spread between her and her world; and nobody knew whose fingers
had been busy in weaving it so close and fine.
Dr. Cautley came every day and always at the same time. At first he was
pretty sure to find Miss Vivian, sitting with Miss Quincey or drinking
tea in perilous intimacy with Mrs. Moon. Then came a long spell when,
time it as he would, he never saw her at all. Rhoda had taken it into her
head to choose six o'clock for her visits, and at six he was bound to be
at home for consultations. But Rhoda or no Rhoda, he kept his promise. He
was looking well after Miss Quincey. He would have done that as a matter
of course; for his worst enemies--and he had several--could not say that
Cautley ever neglected his poorer patients. Only he concentrated or
dissipated himself according to the nature of the case, giving five
minutes to one and twenty to another. When he could he gave half-hours to
Miss Quincey. He was absorbed, excited; he battled by her bedside; his
spirits went up and down with every fluctuation of her pulse; you would
have thought that Miss Quincey's case was one of exquisite interest,
rarity and charm, and that Cautley had staked his reputation on her
recovery. When he said to her in his emphatic way, "We _must_ get you
well, Miss Quincey," his manner implied that it would be a very serious
thing for the universe if Miss Quincey did not get well. When he looked
at her his eyes seemed to be taking her in, taking her in, seeing nothing
in all the world but her.
As it happened, sooner than anybody expected Miss Quincey did get well.
Mrs. Moon was the first to notice that. She hailed Juliana's recovery as
a sign of grace, of returning allegiance to the memory of Tollington
Moon.
"Now," said the Old Lady, "I hope we've seen the last of Dr. Cautley."
"Of course we have," said Miss Quincey. She said it irritably, but
everybody knows that a little temper is the surest symptom of returning
health. "What should he come for?"
"To run up his little bill, my dear. You don't imagine he comes for the
pleasure of seeing _you_?"
"I never imagine anything," said the little arithmetic teacher with some
truth.
But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady's theory
was correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of young
men. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. He
kept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well;
and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just to
see how she was getting on," or "because he happened to be passing," or
"to bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of
light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to
supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that
you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding,
sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if
these things were not the most expensive.
All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standard
imposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obvious
disadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was with
time, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemed
that the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to her
for ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey was
always dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wells
of literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_,
and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progress
with glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr.
Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_."
"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life."
It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air of
adventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into the
realms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennyson
and Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, what
could he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelled
extensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poets
and intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able to
make jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside his
light-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter's academic manner showed like the
punctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern this
young man. He served strange gods, healers and regenerators whose names
had never penetrated to St. Sidwell's. Some days he was really dreadful;
he shook his head over the _Idylls of the King_, made no secret of his
unbelief in _The Princess_, and shamelessly declared that a great deal of
_In Memoriam_ would go where Mendelssohn and the old crinolines have
gone.
Then something very much worse than that happened; Miss Quincey gave him
a copy of the "Address to the Students and Teachers of St. Sidwell's,"
and it made him laugh. She pointed out the bit about the healers and
regenerators, and refreshing yourself at the wells of literature. "That
is a beautiful passage," said Miss Quincey.
He laughed more than ever.
"Oh yes, beautiful, beautiful. They're to do it in their evenings, are
they? And when they're faint and weary with their day's work?" And he
laughed again quite loud, laughed till Mrs. Moon woke out of a doze and
started as if this world had come to an end and another one had begun. He
was very sorry, and he begged a thousand pardons; but, really, that
passage was unspeakably funny. He didn't know that Miss Cursiter had such
a rich vein of humour in her. For the life of her Miss Quincey could not
see what there was to laugh at, nor why she should be teased about
Tennyson and bantered on the subject of Browning; but she enjoyed it all
the same. He was so young; he was like a big schoolboy throwing stones
into the living wells of literature and watching for the splash; it did
her good to look at him. So she looked, smiling her starved smile and
snatching a fearful joy from his profane conversation.
There were moments when she asked herself how he came to be there at all;
he was so out-of-place somehow. The Moons and Quinceys denounced him as a
stranger and intruder; the very chairs and tables had memories,
associations that rejected him; everything in the room suggested the same
mystic antagonism; it was as if Mrs. Moon and all her household gods were
in league against him. Oddly enough this attitude of theirs heightened
her sense of intimacy with him, made him hers and no one else's for the
time. The pleasure she took in his society had some of the peculiar
private ecstasy of sin.
And Mrs. Moon wondered what the young man was going to charge for that
little visit; and what the total of his account would be. She said that
if Juliana didn't give him a hint, she would be obliged to speak to him
herself; and at that Juliana looked frightened and begged that Mrs. Moon
would do nothing of the kind. "There will be no charge for friendly
visits," said she; and she made a rapid calculation in the top of her
head. Nineteen visits at, say, seven-and-six a visit, would come to
exactly nine pounds nine and sixpence. And she smiled; possibly she
thought it was worth it.
And really those friendly visits had sometimes an ambiguous character; he
dragged his profession into them by the head and shoulders. He had left
off scribbling prescriptions, but he would tell her what to take in a
light and literary way, as if it was just part of their very interesting
conversation. Browning was bitter and bracing, he was like iron and
quinine, and by the way she had better take a little of both. Then when
he met her again he would ask, "Have you been taking any more Browning,
Miss Quincey?" and while Miss Quincey owned with a blush that she had, he
would look at her and say she wanted a change--a little Tennyson and a
lighter tonic; strychnine and arsenic was the thing.
And Mrs. Moon still wondered. "I never saw anything like the indelicacy
of that young man," said she. "You're running up a pretty long bill, I
can tell you."
Oh, yes, a long, long bill; for we pay heavily for our pleasures in this
sad world, Juliana!