THE FIRST INSTALMENT OF AN OLD DEBT.
We must now return to Elsley, who had walked home in a state of mind
truly pitiable. He had been flattering his soul with the hope that
Thurnall did not know him; that his beard, and the change which years
had made, formed a sufficient disguise: but he could not conceal
from himself that the very same alterations had not prevented his
recognising Thurnall; and he had been living for two months past in
continual fear that that would come which now had come.
His rage and terror knew no bounds. Fancying Thurnall a merely mean
and self-interested worldling, untouched by those higher aspirations
which stood to him in place of a religion, he imagined him making
every possible use of his power; and longed to escape to the uttermost
ends of the earth from his old tormentor, whom the very sea would not
put out of the way, but must needs cast ashore at his very feet, to
plague him afresh.
What a net he had spread around his own feet, by one act of foolish
vanity! He had taken his present name, merely as a _nom de guerre_,
when first he came to London as a penniless and friendless scribbler.
It would hide him from the ridicule (and, as he fancied, spite) of
Thurnall, whom he dreaded meeting every time he walked London streets,
and who was for years, to his melancholic and too intense fancy, his
_bête noir_, his Frankenstein's familiar. Beside, he was ashamed of
the name of Briggs. It certainly is not an euphonious or aristocratic
name; and "The Soul's Agonies, by John Briggs," would not have sounded
as well as "The Soul's Agonies, by Elsley Vavasour." Vavasour was a
very pretty name, and one of those which is supposed by novelists and
young ladies to be aristocratic;--why so is a puzzle; as its plain
meaning is a tenant-farmer, and nothing more nor less. So he had
played with the name till he became fond of it, and considered that
he had a right to it, through seven long years of weary struggles,
penury, disappointment, as he climbed the Parnassian Mount, writing
for magazines and newspapers, subediting this periodical and that;
till he began to be known as a ready, graceful, and trustworthy
workman, and was befriended by one kind-hearted _littérateur_ after
another. For in London, at this moment, any young man of real power
will find friends enough, and too many, among his fellow book-wrights,
and is more likely to have his head turned by flattery, than his heart
crushed by envy. Of course, whatsoever flattery he may receive, he is
expected to return; and whatsoever clique he may be tossed into on
his _début_, he is expected to stand by, and fight for, against the
universe; but that is but fair. If a young gentleman, invited to enrol
himself in the Mutual-puffery Society which meets every Monday and
Friday in Hatchgoose the publisher's drawing-room, is willing to
pledge himself thereto in the mystic cup of tea, is he not as solemnly
bound thenceforth to support those literary Catilines in their efforts
for the subversion of common sense, good taste, and established things
in general, as if he had pledged them, as he would have done in Rome
of old, in his own life-blood? Bound he is, alike by honour and by
green tea; and it will be better for him to fulfil his bond. For if
association is the cardinal principle of the age, will it not work as
well in book-making as in clothes-making? And shall not the motto
of the poet (who will also do a little reviewing on the sly) be
henceforth that which shines triumphant over all the world, on many a
valiant Scotchman's shield--
"Caw me, and I'll caw thee"?
But to do John Briggs justice, he kept his hands, and his heart also,
cleaner than most men do, during this stage of his career. After the
first excitement of novelty, and of mixing with people who could
really talk and think, and who freely spoke out whatever was in them,
right or wrong, in language which at least sounded grand and deep, he
began to find in the literary world about the same satisfaction for
his inner life which he would have found in the sporting world, or the
commercial world, or the religious world, or the fashionable world, or
any other world and to suspect strongly that wheresoever a world is,
the flesh and the devil are not very far off. Tired of talking when
he wanted to think, of asserting when he wanted to discover, and
of hearing his neighbours do the same; tired of little meannesses,
envyings, intrigues, jobberies (for the literary world, too, has
its jobs), he had been for some time withdrawing himself from the
Hatchgoose soirées into his own thoughts, when his "Soul's Agonies"
appeared, and he found himself, if not a lion, at least a lion's cub.
There is a house or two in Town where you may meet on certain
evenings, everybody; where duchesses and unfledged poets, bishops and
red republican refugees, fox-hunting noblemen and briefless barristers
who have taken to politics, are jumbled together for a couple of
hours, to make what they can out of each other, to the exceeding
benefit of them all. For each and every one of them finds his
neighbour a pleasanter person than he expected; and none need leave
those rooms without knowing something more than he did when he came
in, and taking an interest in some human being who may need that
interest. To one of these houses, no matter which, Elsley was invited
on the strength of the "Soul's Agonies;" found himself, for the first
time, face to face with high-bred Englishwomen; and fancied--small
blame to him--that he was come to the mountains of the Peris, and to
Fairy Land itself. He had been flattered already: but never with such
grace, such sympathy, or such seeming understanding; for there are few
high-bred women who cannot seem to understand, and delude a hapless
genius into a belief in their own surpassing brilliance and
penetration, while they are cunningly retailing again to him the
thoughts which they have caught up from the man to whom they spoke
last; perhaps--for this is the very triumph of their art--from the
very man to whom they are speaking. Small blame to bashful, clumsy
John Briggs, if he did not know his own children; and could not
recognise his own stammered and fragmentary fancies, when they were
re-echoed to him the next minute, in the prettiest shape, and with the
most delicate articulation, from lips which (like those in the fairy
tale) never opened without dropping pearls and diamonds.
Oh, what a contrast, in the eyes of a man whose sense of beauty and
grace, whether physical or intellectual, was true and deep, to
that ghastly ring of prophetesses in the Hatchgoose drawing-room;
strong-minded and emancipated women, who prided themselves on having
cast off conventionalities, and on being rude, and awkward, and
dogmatic, and irreverent, and sometimes slightly improper; women
who had missions to mend everything in heaven and earth, except
themselves; who had quarrelled with their husbands, and had therefore
felt a mission to assert women's rights, and reform marriage in
general; or who had never been able to get married at all, and
therefore were especially competent to promulgate a model method of
educating the children whom they never had had; women who wrote poetry
about Lady Blanches whom they never had met, and novels about male and
female blackguards whom (one hopes) they never had met, or about whom
(if they had) decent women would have held their peace; and every one
of whom had in obedience to Emerson, "followed her impulses," and
despised fashion, and was accordingly clothed and bedizened as was
right in the sight of her own eyes, and probably in those of no one
else.
No wonder that Elsley, ere long, began drawing comparisons, and using
his wit upon ancient patronesses, of course behind their backs,
likening them to idols fresh from the car of Juggernaut, or from the
stern of a South Sea canoe; or, most of all, to that famous
wooden image of Freya, which once leapt lumbering forth from her
bullock-cart, creaking and rattling in every oaken joint, to belabour
the too daring Viking who was flirting with her priestess. Even so,
whispered Elsley, did those brains and tongues creak and rattle,
lumbering before the blasts of Pythonic inspiration; and so, he verily
believed, would the awkward arms and legs have done likewise, if one
of the Pythonesses had ever so far degraded herself as to dance.
No wonder, then, that those gifted dames had soon to complain
of Elsley Vavasour as a traitor to the cause of progress and
civilisation; a renegade who had fled to the camp of aristocracy,
flunkeydom, obscurantism, frivolity, and dissipation; though there was
not one of them but would have given an eye--perhaps no great loss to
the aggregate loveliness of the universe--for one of his invitations
to 999 Cavendish Street south-east, with the chance of being presented
to the Duchess of Lyonesse.
To do Elsley justice, one reason why he liked his new acquaintances so
well was, that they liked him. He behaved well himself, and therefore
people behaved well to him. He was, as I have said, a very handsome
fellow in his way; therefore it was easy to him, as it is to all
physically beautiful persons, to acquire a graceful manner. Moreover,
he had steeped his whole soul in old poetry, and especially in
Spenser's Faery Queen. Good for him, had he followed every lesson
which he might have learnt out of that most noble of English books:
but one lesson at least he learnt from it; and that was, to be
chivalrous, tender, and courteous to all women, however old or ugly,
simply because they were women. The Hatchgoose Pythonesses did not
wish to be women, but very bad imitations of men; and therefore he
considered himself absolved from all knightly duties toward them: but
toward these Peris of the west, and to the dowagers who had been Peris
in their time, what adoration could be too great? So he bowed down
and worshipped; and, on the whole, he was quite right in so doing.
Moreover, he had the good sense to discover, that though the young
Peris were the prettiest to look at, the elder Peris were the better
company; and that it is, in general, from married women that a poet or
any one else will ever learn what woman's heart is like. And so well
did he carry out his creed, that before his first summer was over he
had quite captivated the heart of old Lady Knockdown, aunt to Lucia
St. Just, and wife to Lucia's guardian; a charming old Irishwoman, who
affected a pretty brogue, perhaps for the same reason that she wore a
wig, and who had been, in her day, a beauty and a blue, a friend
of the Miss Berrys, and Tommy Moore, and Grattan, and Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, and Dan O'Connell, and all other lions and lionesses which
had roared for the last sixty years about the Emerald Isle. There was
no one whom she did not know, and nothing she could not talk about.
Married up, when a girl, to a man for whom she did not care, and
having no children, she had indemnified herself by many flirtations,
and the writing of two or three novels, in which she penned on paper
the superfluous feeling which had no vent in real life. She had
deserted, as she grew old, the novel for unfulfilled prophecy; and was
a distinguished leader in a distinguished religious coterie: but she
still prided herself upon having a green head upon grey shoulders; and
not without reason; for underneath all the worldliness and intrigue,
and petty affectation of girlishness, which she contrived to jumble
in with her religiosity, beat a young and kindly heart. So she was
charmed with Mr. Vavasour's manners, and commended them much to Lucia,
who, a shrinking girl of seventeen, was peeping at her first season
from under Lady Knockdown's sheltering wing.
"Me dear, let Mr. Vavasour be who he will, he has not only the
intellect of a true genius, but what is a great deal better for
practical purposes; that is, the manners of one. Give me the man
who will let a woman of our rank say what we like to him, without
supposing that he may say what he likes in return; and considers one's
familiarity as an honour, and not as an excuse for taking liberties. A
most agreeable contrast, indeed, to the young men of the present
day; who come in their shooting jackets, and talk slang to their
partners,--though really the girls are just as bad,--and stand with
their backs to the fire, and smell of smoke, and go to sleep after
dinner, and pay no respect to old age, nor to youth either, I think.
'Pon me word, Lucia, the answers I've heard young gentlemen make to
young ladies, this very season,--they'd have been called out the
next morning in my time, me dear. As for the age of chivalry, nobody
expects that to be restored: but really one might have been spared the
substitute for it which, we had when I was young, in the grand air of
the old school. It was a 'sham,' I daresay, as they call everything
now-a-days: but really, me dear, a pleasant sham is better to live
with than an unpleasant reality, especially when it smells of cigars."
So it befell that Elsley Vavasour was asked to Lady Knockdown's, and
that there he fell in love with Lucia, and Lucia fell in love with
him.
The next winter, old Lord Knockdown, who had been decrepit for some
years past, died; and his widow, whose income was under five hundred
a year,--for the estates were entailed, and mortgaged, and everything
else which can happen to an Irish property,--came to live with her
nephew, Lord Scoutbush, in Eaton Square, and take such care as she
could of Lucia and Valencia.
So, after a dreary autumn and winter of parting and silence, Elsley
found himself the next season invited to Eaton Square; there the
mischief, if mischief it was, was done; and Elsley and Lucia started
in life upon two hundred a year. He had inherited some fifty of his
own; she had about a hundred and fifty, which, indeed, was not yet
her own by right; but little Scoutbush (who was her sole surviving
guardian) behaved on the whole very well for a young gentleman of
twenty-two, in a state of fury and astonishment. The old Lord had,
wisely enough, settled in his will that Lucia was to enjoy the
interest of her fortune from the time that she came out, provided she
did not marry without her guardian's leave; and Scoutbush, to avoid
esclandre and misery, thought it as well to waive the proviso, and
paid her her dividends as usual.
But how had she contrived to marry at all without his leave? That is
an ugly question. I will not say that she had told a falsehood,
or that Elsley had forsworn himself when he got the licence: but
certainly both of them were guilty of something very like a white lie,
when they declared that Lucia had the consent of her sole surviving
guardian, on the strength of an half-angry, half-jesting expression of
Scoutbush's that she might marry whom she chose, provided she did not
plague him. In the first triumph of success and intoxication of wedded
bliss, Lucia had written him a saucy letter, reminding him of his
permission, and saying that she had taken him at his word: but her
conscience smote her; and Elsley's smote him likewise; and smote him
all the more, because he had been married under a false name, a fact
which might have ugly consequences in law which he did not like to
contemplate. To do him justice, he had been half-a-dozen times during
his courtship on the point of telling Lucia his real name and
history. Happy for him had he done so, whatever might have been the
consequences: but he wanted moral courage; the hideous sound of Briggs
had become horrible to him; and once his foolish heart was frightened
away from honesty, just as honesty was on the point of conquering, by
old Lady Knockdown's saying that she could never have married a man
with an ugly name, or let Lucia marry one.
"Conceive becoming Mrs. Natty Bumppo, me dear, even for twenty
thousand a year. If you could summon up courage to do the deed, I
couldn't summon up courage to continue my correspondence with ye."
Elsley knew that that was a lie; that the old lady would have let her
marry the most triumphant snob in England, if he had half that income:
but unfortunately Lucia capped her aunt's nonsense with "There is no
fear of my ever marrying any one who has not a graceful name," and a
look at Vavasour, which said--"And you have one, and therefore I--"
For the matter had then been settled between them. This was too much
for his vanity, and too much, also, for his fears of losing Lucia by
confessing the truth. So Elsley went on, ashamed of his real name,
ashamed of having concealed it, ashamed of being afraid that it would
be discovered,--in a triple complication of shame, which made him
gradually, as it makes every man, moody, suspicious, apt to take
offence where none is meant. Besides they were very poor. He, though
neither extravagant nor profligate, was, like most literary men who
are accustomed to live from hand to mouth, careless, self-indulgent,
unmethodical. She knew as much of housekeeping as the Queen of Oude
does; and her charming little dreams of shopping for herself were
rudely enough broken, ere the first week was out, by the horrified
looks of Clara, when she returned from her first morning's marketing
for the weekly consumption, with nothing but a woodcock, some
truffles, and a bunch of celery. Then the landlady of the lodgings
robbed her, even under the nose of the faithful Clara, who knew as
little about housekeeping as her mistress; and Clara, faithful as
she was, repaid herself by grumbling and taking liberties for being
degraded from the luxurious post of lady's maid to that of servant of
all work, with a landlady, and "marchioness" to wrestle with all day
long. Then, what with imprudence and anxiety, Lucia of course lost
her first child: and after that came months of illness, during which
Elsley tended her, it must be said for him, as lovingly as a mother;
and perhaps they were both really happier during that time of sorrow
than they had been in all the delirious bliss of the honeymoon.
Valencia meanwhile defied old Lady Knockdown (whose horror and wrath
knew no bounds), and walked off one morning with her maid to see her
prodigal sister; a visit which not only brought comfort to the weary
heart, but important practical benefits. For going home, she seized
upon Scoutbush, and so moved his heart with pathetic pictures of
Lucia's unheard-of penury and misery, that his heart was softened;
and though he absolutely refused to call on Vavasour, he made him an
offer, through Lucia, of Penalva Court for the time being; and thither
they went--perhaps the best thing they could have done.
There, of course, they were somewhat more comfortable. A very cheap
country, a comfortable house rent free, and a lovely neighbourhood,
were a pleasant change after dear London lodgings: but it is a
question whether the change made Elsley a better man.
In the first place, he became a more idle man. The rich enervating
climate began to tell upon his mind, as it did upon Lucia's health. He
missed that perpetual spur of nervous excitement, change of society,
influx of ever-fresh objects, which makes London, after all, the best
place in the world for hard working; and which makes even a walk along
the streets an intellectual tonic. In the soft and luxurious West
Country Nature invited him to look at her, and dream; and dream he
did, more and more, day by day. He was tired, too--as who would not
be?--of the drudgery of writing for his daily bread; and relieved from
the importunities of publishers and printers'-devils, he sent up fewer
and fewer contributions to the magazines. He would keep his energies
for a great work; poetry was, after all, his forte: he would not
fritter himself away on prose and periodicals, but would win for
himself, etc. etc. If he made a mistake, it was at least a pardonable
one.
But Elsley became not only a more idle, but a more morose man. He
began to feel the evils of solitude. There was no one near with whom
he could hold rational converse, save an antiquarian parson or two;
and parsons were not to his taste. So, never measuring his wits
against those of his peers, and despising the few men whom he met
as inferior to himself, he grew more and more wrapt up in his own
thoughts and his own tastes. His own poems, even to the slightest turn
of expression, became more and more important to him. He grew more
jealous of criticism, more confident in his own little theories, about
this and that, more careless of the opinion of his fellowmen, and,
as a certain consequence, more unable to bear the little crosses and
contradictions of daily life; and as Lucia, having brought one and
another child safely into the world, settled down into motherhood, he
became less and less attentive to her, and more and more attentive to
that self which was fast becoming the centre of his universe.
True, there were excuses for him; for whom are there none? He was
poor and struggling; and it is much more difficult (as Becky Sharp, I
think, pathetically observes) to be good when one is poor than when
one is rich. It is (and all rich people should consider the fact) much
more easy, if not to go to heaven, at least to think one is going
thither, on three thousand a year, than on three hundred. Not only is
respectability more easy, as is proved by the broad fact that it is
the poor people who fill the gaols, and not the rich ones: but virtue,
and religion--of the popular sort. It is undeniably more easy to be
resigned to the will of Heaven, when that will seems tending just as
we would have it; much more easy to have faith in the goodness of
Providence, when that goodness seems safe in one's pocket in the
form of bank-notes; and to believe that one's children are under the
protection of Omnipotence, when one can hire for them in half an hour
the best medical advice in London. One need only look into one's own
heart to understand the disciples' astonishment at the news, that "How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven."
"Who then can be saved?" asked they, being poor men, accustomed to
see the wealthy Pharisees in possession of "the highest religious
privileges, and means of grace." Who, indeed, if not the rich? If the
noblemen, and the bankers, and the dowagers, and the young ladies who
go to church, and read good books, and have been supplied from youth
with the very best religious articles which money can procure, and
have time for all manner of good works, and give their hundreds to
charities, and head reformatory movements, and build churches,
and work altar-cloths, and can taste all the preachers and
father-confessors round London, one after another, as you would taste
wines, till they find the spiritual panacea which exactly suits their
complaint--if they are not sure of salvation, who can be saved?
Without further comment, the fact is left for the consideration of
all readers; only let them not be too hard upon Elsley and Lucia, if,
finding themselves sometimes literally at their wits' end, they went
beyond their poor wits into the region where foolish things are said
and done.
Moreover, Elsley's ill-temper (as well as Lucia's) had its excuses in
physical ill-health. Poor fellow! Long years of sedentary work had
begun to tell upon him; and while Tom Thurnall's chest, under the
influence of hard work and oxygen, measured round perhaps six inches
more than it had done sixteen years ago, Elsley's, thanks to stooping
and carbonic acid, measured six inches less. Short breath, lassitude,
loss of appetite, heartburn, and all that fair company of miseries
which Mr. Cockle and his Antibilious Pills profess to cure, are no
cheering bosom friends; but when a man's breast-bone is gradually
growing into his stomach, they will make their appearance; and small
blame to him whose temper suffers from their gentle hints that he has
a mortal body as well as an immortal soul.
But most fretting of all was the discovery that Lucia knew--if not all
about his original name--still enough to keep him in dread lest she
should learn more.
It was now twelve months and more that this new terror had leapt up
and stared in his face. He had left a letter about--a thing which he
was apt to do--in which the Whitbury lawyer made some allusions to his
little property; and he was sure that Lucia had seen it; the hated
name of Briggs certainly she had not seen; for Elsley had torn it out
the moment he opened the letter: but she had seen enough, as he soon
found, to be certain that he had, at some time or other, passed under
a different name.
If Lucia had been a more thoughtful or high-minded woman, she would
have gone straight to her husband, and quietly and lovingly asked him
to tell her all: but, in her left-handed Irish fashion, she kept the
secret to herself, and thought it a very good joke to have him in her
power, and to be able to torment him about that letter when he got out
of temper. It never occurred, however, to her that his present name
was the feigned one. She fancied that he had, in some youthful
escapade, assumed the name to which the lawyer alluded. So the
next time he was cross, she tried laughingly the effect of her
newly-discovered spell; and was horror-struck at the storm which she
evoked. In a voice of thunder, Elsley commanded her never to mention
the subject again; and showed such signs of terror and remorse, that
she obeyed him from that day forth, except when now and then she lost
her temper as completely, too, as he. Little she thought, in her
heedlessness, what a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, ever deepening
and spreading, she had put between his heart and hers.
But if Elsley had dreaded her knowledge of his story, he dreaded ten
times more Tom's knowledge of it. What if Thurnall should tell Lucia?
What if Lucia should make a confidant of Thurnall? Women told their
doctors everything; and Lucia, he knew too well, had cause to complain
of him. Perhaps, thought he, maddened into wild suspicion by the sense
of his own wrong-doing, she might complain of him; she might combine
with Thurnall against him--for what purpose he knew not: but the
wildest imaginations flashed across him, as he hurried desperately
home, intending as soon as he got there to forbid Lucia's ever calling
in his dreaded enemy. No, Thurnall should never cross his door again!
On that one point he was determined, but on nothing else.
However, his intention was never fulfilled. For long before he reached
home he began to feel himself thoroughly ill. His was a temperament
upon which mental anxiety acts rapidly and severely; and the burning
sun, and his rapid walk, combined with rage and terror to give him
such a "turn" that, as he hurried down the lane, he found himself
reeling like a drunken man. He had just time to hurry through the
garden, and into his study, when pulse and sense failed him, and he
rolled over on the sofa in a dead faint.
Lucia had seen him come in, and heard him fall, and rushed in. The
poor little thing was at her wits' end, and thought that he had had
nothing less than a _coup-de-soleil._ And when he recovered from his
faintness, he began to be so horribly ill, that Clara, who had been
called in to help, had some grounds for the degrading hypothesis (for
which Lucia all but boxed her ears) that "Master had got away into the
woods, and gone eating toadstools, or some such poisonous stuff;" for
he lay a full half-hour on the sofa, death-cold, and almost pulseless;
moaning, shuddering, hiding his face in his hands, and refusing
cordials, medicines, and, above all, a doctor's visit.
However, this could not be allowed to last. Without Elsley's
knowledge, a messenger was despatched for Thurnall, and luckily met
him in the lane; for he was returning to the town in the footsteps of
his victim.
Elsley's horror was complete, when the door opened, and Lucia brought
in none other than his tormentor.
"My dearest Elsley, I have sent for Mr. Thurnall. I knew you would not
let me, if I told you; but you see I have done it, and now you must
really speak to him."
Elsley's first impulse was to motion them both away angrily; but the
thought that he was in Thurnall's power stopped him. He must not show
his disgust. What if Lucia were to ask its cause, even to guess it?
for to his fears even that seemed possible. A fresh misery! Just
because he shrank so intensely from the man, he must endure him!
"There is nothing the matter with me," said he languidly.
"I should be the best judge of that, after what Mrs. Vavasour has just
told me," said Tom, in his most professional and civil voice; and
slipped, catlike, into a seat beside the unresisting poet.
He asked question on question: but Elsley gave such unsatisfactory
answers, that Lucia had to detail everything afresh for him,
with--"You know, Mr. Thurnall, he is always overtasking his brain, and
will never confess himself ill,"--and all a woman's anxious comments.
Rogue Tom knew all the while well enough what was the cause: but he
saw, too, that Elsley was very ill. He felt that he must have the
matter out at once; and, by a side glance, sent the obedient Lucia out
of the room to get a table-spoonful of brandy.
"Now, my dear sir, that we are alone," began he blandly.
"Now, sir!" answered Vavasour, springing off the sofa, his whole
pent-up wrath exploding in hissing steam, the moment the safety-valve
was lifted. "Now, sir! What--what is the meaning of this insolence,
this intrusion?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour," answered Tom, rising, in a tone of
bland and stolid surprise.
"What do you want here, with your mummery and medicine, when you know
the cause of my malady well enough already? Go, sir! and leave me to
myself."
"My dear sir," said Tom firmly, "you seem to have forgotten what
passed between us this morning."
"Will you insult me beyond endurance?" cried Elsley.
"I told you that, as long as you chose, you were Elsley Vavasour, and
I the country doctor. We have met in that character. Why not sustain
it? You are really ill; and if I know the cause, I am all the more
likely to know the cure."
"Cure?"
"Why not? Believe me, it is in your power to become a much happier
man, simply by becoming a healthier one."
"Impertinence!"
"Pish! What can I gain by being impertinent, sir? I know very well
that you have received a severe shock; but I know equally well, that
if you were as you ought to be, you would not feel it in this way.
When one sees a man in the state of prostration in which you are,
common sense tells one that the body must have been neglected, for the
mind to gain such power over it."
Elsley replied with a grunt; but Tom went on, bland and imperturbable.
"Believe me, it may be a very materialist view of things: but fact
is fact--the _corpus sanum_ is father to the _mens sana_--tonics and
exercise make the ills of life look marvellously smaller. You have
the frame of a strong and active man; and all you want to make you
light-hearted and cheerful, is to develop what nature has given you."
"It is too late," said Elsley, pleased, as most men are, by being told
that they might be strong and active.
"Not in the least. Three months would strengthen your muscles, open
your chest again, settle your digestion, and make you as fresh as a
lark, and able to sing like one. Believe me, the poetry would be the
better for it, as well as the stomach. Now, positively, I shall begin
questioning you."
So Elsley was won to detail the symptoms of internal _malaise_, which
he was only too much in the habit of watching himself; but there were
some among them which Tom could not quite account for on the ground of
mere effeminate habits. A thought struck him.
"You sleep ill, I suppose?" said he carelessly.
"Very ill."
"Did you ever try opiates?"
"No--yes--that is, sometimes."
"Ah!" said Tom, more carelessly still, for he wished to hide, by all
means, the importance of the confession. "Well, they give relief for a
time: but they are dangerous things--disorder the digestion, and have
their revenge on the nerves next morning, as spitefully as brandy
itself. Much better try a glass of strong ale or porter just before
going to bed. I've known it give sleep, even in consumption--try it,
and exercise. You shoot?"
"No."
"Pity; there ought to be noble cocking in these woods. However, the
season's past. You fish?"
"No."
"Pity again. I hear Alva is full of trout. Why not try sailing?
Nothing oxygenates the lungs like a sail, and your friends the
fishermen would be delighted to have you as super-cargo. They are
always full of your stories to them, and your picking their brains for
old legends and adventures."
"They are noble fellows, and I want no better company; but,
unfortunately, I am always sea-sick."
"Ah! wholesome, but unpleasant: you are fond of gardening?"
"Very; but stooping makes my head swim."
"True, and I don't want you to stoop. I hope to see you soon as erect
as a Guardsman. Why not try walks?"
"Abominable bores--lonely, aimless--"
"Well, perhaps you're right. I never knew but three men who took long
constitutionals on principle, and two of them were cracked. But why
not try a companion; and persuade that curate, who needs just the same
medicine as you, to accompany you? I don't know a more gentleman-like,
agreeable, well-informed man than he is."
"Thank you. I can choose my acquaintances for myself."
"You touchy ass!" said Thurnall to himself. "If we were in the blessed
state of nature now, wouldn't I give you ten minutes' double thonging,
and then set you to work, as the runaway nigger did his master, Bird
o' freedom Sawin, till you'd learnt a thing or two." But blandly still
he went on.
"Try the dumb-bells then. Nothing like them for opening your chest.
And do get a high desk made, and stand to your writing instead of
sitting." And Tom actually made Vavasour promise to do both, and bade
him farewell with--
"Now, I'll send you up a little tonic; and trouble you with no more
visits till you send for me. I shall see by one glance at your face
whether you are following my prescriptions. And, I say, I wouldn't
meddle with those opiates any more; try good malt and hops instead."
"Those who drink beer, think beer," said Elsley, smiling; for he
was getting more hopeful of himself, and his terrors were vanishing
beneath Tom's skilful management.
"And those who drink water, think water. The Elizabethans--Sidney and
Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,--and you
would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth: Believe me,
to write well, you must live well. If you take it out of your brain,
you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try it for
yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband,
covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill
as he really was, and so nursed and petted him, that he felt himself,
for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her
for a moment. Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in
your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels
you might make us all!
"So," said Tom, as he went home, "he has found his way to the
elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale? It's no concern of
mine: but as a professional man, I must stop that. You will certainly
be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands."
Tom went straight home, showed the blacksmith how to make a pair of
dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the
next morning with directions to be used for half an hour morning and
evening.
And something--whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or
wholesome fear of the terrible doctor--kept Elsley for the next month
in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.
Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley. She
succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that
he had something to learn from the other. Elsley improved daily in
health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful
doctor who had been cast on shore in their world's end; and received
from her after a while this, amid much more--for fancy is not
exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady's letter.
"--I am so ashamed. I ought to have told you of that doctor a
fortnight ago; but, rattle-pate as I am, I forgot all about it. Do
you know, he is Sabina Mellot's dearest friend; and she begged me to
recommend him to you; but I put it off, and then it slipped my memory,
like everything else good. She has told me the most wonderful stories
of his courage and goodness; and conceive--she and her husband were
taken prisoners with him by the savages in the South Seas, and going
to be eaten, she says: but he helped them to escape in a canoe--such
a story--and lived with them for three months on the most beautiful
desert island--it is all like a fairy tale. I'll tell it you when I
come, darling--which I shall do in a fortnight, and we shall be all so
happy. I have such a box ready for you and the chicks, which I shall
bring with me; and some pretty things from Scoutbush beside, who is
very low, poor fellow, I cannot conceive what about: but wonderfully
tender about you. I fancy he must be in love; for he stood up the
other day about you to my aunt, quite solemnly, with, 'Let her alone,
my lady. She's not the first whom love has made a fool of, and she
won't be the last: and I believe that some of the moves which look
most foolish, turn out best after all. Live and let live; everybody
knows his own business best; anything is better than marriage without
real affection.' Conceive my astonishment at hearing the dear little
fellow turn sage in that way!
"By the way, I have had to quote his own advice against him; for I
have refused Lord Chalkclere after all. I told him (C. not S.) that he
was much too good for me: far too perfect and complete a person; that
I preferred a husband whom I could break in for myself, even though he
gave me a little trouble. Scoutbush was cross at first; but he said
afterwards that it was just like Baby Blake (the wretch always calls
me Baby Blake now, after that dreadful girl in Lever's Novel); and I
told him frankly that it was, if he meant that I had sooner break in
a thorough-bred for myself, even though I had a fall or two in the
process, than jog along on the most finished little pony on earth, who
would never go out of an amble. Lord Chalk may be very finished, and
learned, and excellent, and so forth: but, _ma chère_, I want, not a
white rabbit (of which he always reminds me), but a hero, even though
he be a naughty one. I always fancy people must be very little if they
can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them,
they would take somewhat longer to grow. Lord Chalk would do very well
to bind in Russian leather, and put on one's library shelves, to be
consulted when one forgot a date; but really even your Ulysses of a
doctor--provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and
don't leave out his h's--would be more to the taste of your naughtiest
of sisters."