DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENT.
A Novel
By EDMUND YATES
AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"
SHAKESPEARE.
LONDON
GEORGE RUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET
1878
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EDMUND YATES'S NOVELS
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
KISSING THE ROD.
A ROCK AHEAD.
BLACK SHEEP.
A RIGHTED WRONG.
THE YELLOW FLAG.
THE IMPENDING SWORD.
A WAITING RACE.
BROKEN TO HARNESS.
TWO BY TRICKS.
A SILENT WITNESS.
NOBODY'S FORTUNE.
DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENT.
WRECKED IN PORT.
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CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. Captain Derinzy's Retreat.
II. A Visitor Expected.
III. During Office-hours.
IV. After Office-hours.
V. Family Politics.
VI. Mrs. Stothard.
VII. Friends In Council.
VIII. Corridor No. 4.
IX. Dear Annette.
X. Madame Clarisse.
XI. Behind the Scenes.
XII. A Conquest.
XIII. Another Conquest.
XIV. Paul at Home.
XV. On the Alert.
XVI. The Colonel's Correspondent.
XVII. Well Met.
XVIII. Soundings.
XIX. Two in Pursuit.
XX. Farther Soundings.
XXI. Father and Son.
XXII. L'homme Propose.
XXIII. Poor Paul.
XXIV. George's Determination.
XXV. Warned.
XYXVI. Am Rhein.
XXVII. Patrician and Proletary.
XXVIII. Daisy's Letter.
XXXIX. Relenting.
XXX. Daisy's Recantation.
XXXI. Suspense.
XXXII. Madame Vaughan.
XXXIII. Certainty.
DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENT.
CHAPTER I.
CAPTAIN DERINZY'S RETREAT.
Beachborough, where, in obedience to the strident voice of the railway
porter--voice combining the hardness of the Dorset with the drawl of
the Devon dialect--you, if you be so disposed, "Change for Sandington
Cove and Waverley," is a very different place from what it was even
ten years ago. To be sure the sea is there, and the beach, and the
fishing-luggers with the red sails; but in everything else what
changes! Now there is, as has been said, a railway-station, a forlorn
little oasis of white planking in a desert of sandy heath, inhabited
by a clerk--a London young man, who "went too fast" in the metropolis,
and has been relegated to Beachborough as a good healthy place where
there is no chance of temptation--and a porter, a native of the place,
a muscular person great at wrestling, who is always inviting the male
passers-by of his acquaintance to "come on," and supplying them, on
their doing so, with a very ugly throw known as a "back-fall." There
are not many passers-by, for the newly-formed road leads to no where in
particular, and those who tramp through its winter slush, or struggle
through its summer dust, are generally either tradesmen of the place
anxious about overdue parcels, or servants, sent to make inquiries
about the trains, from some of the houses on the Esplanade.
The Esplanade! Heavens! if old Miss Gollop, who lived at the Baths,
and who used to supply very hot water and very damp towels, and the
greatest number of draughts ever known to be got together into one
small room, to the half-dozen county families to whom Beachborough
was then known as a watering-place--if old Miss Gollop could revisit
the glimpses of the moon, and by its light look upon the Esplanade,
it would, I am certain, be impossible for that worthy old lady to
recognise it as Mussared's Meadow, where she picked cowslips and
sucked sorrel when she was a girl, and which was utterly untainted by
the merest suspicion of brick and mortar when she died twenty years
ago. She would not recognise it any more than in The Dingo Arms--that
great white-faced establishment, with its suites of apartments, its
coffee-room, wine-office, private bar, and great range of stabling,
patronised by, and in its _sanctum sanctorum_ bearing an heraldic
emblazonment of the arms of, Sir Hercules Dingo Dingo, Bart., bloody
hand, four-quartered shield and all--she would have recognised The
Hoy, a tiny "public" where they used to sell the hardest beer and
the most stomach-ache-provoking cider, and which in her day was
the best tavern in the village. The white-faced terrace has sprung
up in Mussared's Meadow; the Esplanade in front of it is a seawall
and a delightful promenade for the Misses Gimp's young ladies, who
are the admiration of Dingo Terrace, and who have deadly rivals in
Madame de Flahault's _demoiselles_, whose piano-playing is at once
the delight and the curse of Powler Square; the cliffs, once so gaunt
and barren and forlorn, are dotted over with cottages and villakins,
all green porch and plate-glass windows; the old barn-like church
has had a fresh tower put on to him, and a fresh minister--one with
his ecclesiastical millinery of the newest cut, and up to the latest
thing in genuflexions--put into him; there is a Roman Catholic chapel
close to the old Wesleyan meeting-house; and they have modernised
and spoiled the picturesque tower where Captain Derinzy wore away a
portion of his days. Great improvements, no doubt. Pavement and gas,
and two policemen, and a railway, and a ritualistic incumbent, and
shops with plate-glass windows, where you can get Holloway's pills and
Horniman's teas, and all the things without which no gentleman's table
is complete. But the events of my story happened ten years ago, when
the inhabitants of Beachborough--shopkeepers, fisher-people, villagers,
and lace-makers--were like one family, and loved and hated and reviled
and back-bit each other as the members of one family only can.
We shall get a little insight into the village politics if we drop in
for a few minutes at Mrs. Powler's long one-storied, thatched-roof
cottage, standing by itself in the middle of the little High Street.
Mrs. Powler is a rich and childless old widow, Powler deceased having
done a little in the vending of home-manufactured lace, and a great
deal in the importing, duty-free, of French lace and brandy. It was
Powler's run when Bill Gollop, the black sheep of the Gollop family,
was shot by the revenue-officer down by Wastewater Hole, a matter which
Powler is scarcely thought to have compromised by giving a new organ
to Bedminster church. However, he has been dead some years, and his
widow is very rich and tolerably hospitable; and her little thatched
cottage--she never lived in any other house--is the centre and focus of
Beachborough gossip.
It is just about Mrs. Powler's supper-time, which is very early in
the summer, and she has guests to supper. There is no linen in all
Beachborough so white as Mrs. Powler's, no such real silver plate, no
such good china or glass. The Beachborough glass generally consists of
fat thick goblets on one stump-leg, or dumpy heavy wineglasses with
a pattern known as "the pretty" halfway up their middle, which, like
the decanters, are heavy and squat, and require a strong wrist to lift
them. But Mrs. Powler had thin, blown, delicate glasses, and elegant
goblets with curling snakes for their handles, and drinking-cups in
amber and green colours, all of which were understood to have come
from "abroad," and were prized by her and respected by her neighbours
accordingly. There never was a bad lobster known in Beachborough; and
it is probable that Mrs. Powler's were no better than her neighbours',
but she certainly had a wondrous knack of showing them off to the best
advantage, setting-off the milk-white of the inside and the deepred of
the shell with layers of crisp curling parsley, as a modern belle sets
off her complexion with artfully-arranged bits of tulle and blonde. Nor
was her boiled beef to be matched within ten miles round. "I du 'low
that other passons' biled beef to Mrs. Fowler's is sallt as brine and
soft as butter," Mrs. Jupp would confess; and Mrs. Jupp was a notable
housewife, and what the vulgar call "nuts" on her own cooking. There
is a splendid proof of it on the table now, cold and firm and solid.
Mr. Jupp has just helped himself to a slice, and it is his muttered
praise that has called forth the tribute of general admiration from
his better-half. Mr. Hallibut, the fish-factor and lace-dealer from
Bedminster, is still occupied with the lobster; for he has a ten-mile
drive home before him, and any fear of indigestion he laughs to scorn,
knowing how he can "settle" that demon with two or three raw "nips" and
one or two steaming tumblers of some of that famous brandy which the
deceased Powler imported duty-free from abroad, and a bottle of which
is always to be found for special friends in the old oak _armoire_,
which stands under the Lord's-Prayer sampler which Mrs. Powler worked
when she was a little girl.
Mrs. Powler is in the place of honour opposite the window. A little
woman, with a dark-skinned deeply-lined face, and small sparkling black
eyes, the fire in which remains undimmed by the seventy years through
which they have looked upon the world, though their sight is somewhat
failing. She wears a fierce black front, and a closely-fitting white
lace cap over it, and an open raspberry-tart-like miniature of her
deceased lord--a rather black and steelly-looking daguerreotype--gleams
on her chest. Mrs. Powler likes her drinks, as she does not scruple to
confess, and has been sipping from a small silver tankard of cider.
"Who was that just went passt the windor, Jupp?" she said, after a
short period of tankard abstraction. "My eyes isn't what they was, and
I du 'low I couldn't see, though I'm settin' right oppo-site like."
"Heart alive!" struck in Mrs. Jupp, after a moment's silence, and
seeing it was perfectly impossible her better-half could sufficiently
masticate the piece of cold beef on which he was engaged in anything
like time for a reply--"heart alive! to hear you talk of your eyes,
Mrs. Powler! Why, there's many a young gal would give anythin' for such
a pair in her head, either for show or for use, either!"
"I should think so," said Mr. Jupp, who had by this time cleared
his mouth and moistened his palate with the contents of the
cider-tankard--"I should think so!" and Mr. Jupp, who was of a
convivial turn, began to troll, "Eyes black--as sloes, and--bo-o-oo-som
rounded----"
"Mr. Jupp," interrupted Mrs. Jupp, a tall, thin, horse-faced woman,
with projecting buck-teeth, and three little sausage curls of iron-gray
hair flattened down on either side her forehead, "reck'lect where you
are, if you please, and keep your ditties to yourself."
"Well, niver mind my eyes," said Mrs. Powler; she desired to make
peace, but she was a rich woman and in her own house, and consequently
spoke in a dictatorial way--"niver mind my eyes, nor anything else for
the matter of that, but tell who it was that went passt."
"It was the Captain, my dear madam, the Captain," replied Mr. Jupp,
freshly attacking the cold beef, and consoling himself for his snubbing
with his supper. "You had no great loss in not seeing him, ma'am: it
was only the Captain."
"What! Prinsy, Drinsy, what's his name?" said Mr. Hallibut, taking a
clean plate, and delicately clearing his lips and fingers from lobster
remains on the corner of the tablecloth. "I'll trouble you, Jupp!--Is
he still here?"
"His name's Derinzy, Mr. Hollybut," said Mrs. Jupp--"De-rin-zy; it's
a French name." Mrs. Jupp had been a lady's-maid once on a time, and
prided herself on her manners and education.
"And mine's Hallibut, and not Hollybut, Mrs. Jupp," said the
fish-factor jocosely; "and I'll trouble J-u double p--which I take it
is an English name--for some of the inside fat--next the marrer-bone
there!"
"Dear heart!" interrupted Mrs. Powler, feeling her position as hostess
and richest of the company was being made scarcely sufficient of; "how
you do jangle, all of you! Not but what," added the old lady, with
singular inconsequence--"not but what I'm no scholard, and don't see
the use of French names, while English is good enough for me."
"Ah, but some things is better French, as you and I, and one or two
more of us could tell," said jocose Mr. Hallibut, feeling it was time
for a "nip," and availing himself of the turn in the conversation to
point with his elbow to the cellaret, where the special brandy was kept.
"Well, help yourself, and put the bottle on the table," said the
old lady, somewhat mollified. "Ah, that was among the spoils of the
brave, in the good old times when men was men!" she added, in a
half-melancholy tone. She was accustomed to think and speak of her
deceased husband as though he had been the boldest of buccaneers, the
Captain Kyd of the Dorsetshire coast; whereas he, in his lifetime, was
a worthy man in a Welsh wig, who never went to sea, or was present at
the "running" of a keg.
"And so the Captain's still here," pursued Hallibut; "living in the
same house, and doing much the same as usual, I suppose?"
"Jist exactly the same," replied Mr. Jupp. "Wandering about the
village, molloncholly-like, and cussin' all creation."
"Mr. Jupp," broke in his better-half, "reck'lect where you are, if you
please, and keep your profane swearin' to yourself."
"I wonder he don't go away," suggested Hallibut.
"He can't," said Mrs. Jupp solemnly.
"What! do you mean to say he's been running in debt here in
Beachborough, or over in Bedminster?"
"He don't owe a brass farthing in either place," asserted Mrs. Powler;
"if anybody ought to know, I ought;" and to do her justice she ought,
for no one heard scandal sooner, or disseminated it more readily.
"Perhaps he hadn't the chance," said Mr. Jupp, stretching out his hand
towards the tumbler.
"Mr. Jupp," said his wife, "what cause have you to say that? Was you
ever kept waiting for the money for the meal or malt account? Is the
rent paid regular for the bit of pastureland for Miss Annette's cow?
Well, then, reck'lect where you are, if you please, and who you're
speaking of."
"Well, but if he hates the place and cusses--I mean, does what Jupp
said he did just now--what does he stop here for? Why don't he go away?
He must have some reason."
"Of course he has, Mr. Hallibut," said Mrs. Jupp, with an air of
dignity.
"Got the name all right this time, Mrs. Jupp; here's your health," said
the jolly man, sipping his tumbler. "Well, what's the reason?"
"It's because of Miss Annette--she that we was speaking of just now."
"Oh, ah!" said Mr. Hallibut; "she's his daughter, isn't she?"
"Niece," said Mrs. Jupp.
"Oh!" said Mr. Hallibut doubtfully.
"You and I have seen the world, Hallibut," broke in Mr. Jupp, who had
been paying his attentions to the French brandy. "We've heard of nieces
before--priests' nieces and such-like, who----"
"Mr. Jupp, _will_ you reck'lect where you are, _if_ you please?--what
I was goin' to say when thus interrupted, Mr. Hallibut, was, that
it's on account of his niece Miss Annette that Captain Derinzy remains
in this place. She's a dreadful in-val-lid, is Miss Annette, and this
Dorsetsheer air suits her better than any other part of England. As to
her not bein' his niece----"
"La, la, du be quiet, Harriet!" interrupted Mrs. Powler, who saw that
unless she asserted herself with a dash she would be quite forgotten;
"this everlastin' click-clackin', I du 'low it goes threw my head like
a hot knife threw a pat of fresh butter. Av' course Miss Netty's the
Captain's niece; Oh, I don't mind you men--special you, Jupp, sittin'
grinnin' there like the mischief! I've lived long in the world, and
in different sort of society from this; and I know what you mean fast
enough, and I'm not one to pretend I don't, or to be squeamish about
it."
This was a hard hit at Mrs. Jupp, who took it accordingly, and said:
"Well, but, Mrs. Powler, if Jupp were not brought up sudden, as it
were----"
"Like enough, my dear, like enough; but when you're as old as I
am, you'll find it's very hard to have to give up chat for fear of
these kind of things, unless indeed there's young girls present, and
then--well, of course!" said Mrs. Powler, with a sigh. "But, Lord,
you're all wrong about why Captain Derinzy stops at Beachborough."
"Do you know why it is, Mrs. Powler?" asked Mr. Hallibut, feigning
intense interest, under cover of which he mixed himself a second
tumbler of brandy-and-water.
"Well, I think I do," said the old lady.
"Tell us, by all means," said the fish-factor, looking at his hostess
very hard, and dropping two lumps of sugar into his tumbler.
"Well, Harriet's right so far--there's no doubt about Miss Annette
being the Captain's niece; at least, there's no question of her being
his daughter, as you two owdacious men--and, Jupp, you ought to know
better, having been churchwarden, and your name in gold letters in
front of the organ-loft, on account of the church being warmed by the
hot pipes, which only made a steam and a smell, and no heat at all--as
you two owdacious men hinted at. Lor' bless you, you don't know Mrs.
Derinzy."
"That's what I tell 'em, Mrs. Powler," chorused Mrs. Jupp; "they don't
know the Captain's wife. Why, she's as proud as proud; and he daren't
say his soul's his own, let alone introducin' anyone into the house
that she didn't know all about, or wish to have there."
"But still you don't know what makes them stay here," said Mrs. Powler,
not at all influenced by her friend's partisanship, and determined to
press her point home upon her audience.
"Well, if it isn't Miss Netty's illness, I don't," said Mrs. Jupp
slowly, and with manifest reluctance at having to acknowledge herself
beaten.
"Then I'll tell you," said the old lady triumphantly, smoothing her
dress, looking slowly round, and pausing before she spoke. "You know
Mrs. Stothard?"
"Miss Annette's servant--yes," said Mrs. Jupp.
"Servant--pouf!" said Mrs. Powler, snapping her fingers, and thereby
awaking Mr. Jupp, who had just dropped asleep, and was dreaming that he
was in his mill, and dared not stretch out his legs for fear of getting
them entangled in the machinery. "Who ever saw her do any servant's
work; did you?"
"N-no; I can't say I ever did," replied Mrs. Jupp; "but then, I have
never been to the house."
"What does that matter?" asked the old lady, rather illogically; "no
one ever did. No one ever saw her do a stroke of servant's work in the
house: mend clothes, wash linen, darn stockings, make beds. Dear heart
alive! she's no servant."
"What is she then?" asked Mrs. Jupp eagerly.
"A poor relation!" hissed Mrs. Powler, bending over the table; "a poor
relation, my dear, of either his or hers, with something about her that
prevents them shaking her off, and obliges them to keep her quiet."
"Do you think so--_really_ think so?"
"I'm sure of it, my dear--certain sure."
"Lord, I remember," said Mrs. Jupp, with a sudden affectation of a
mincing manner, and a lofty carriage of her head; "I remember once
seeing something of the sort at the play-house: but then the poor
relation was a man, a man who always went about in a large cloak, and
appeared in places where he was least expected and most unwelcome. It
was in Covent Garden Theatre."
"Covent Garden Theatre," said Jupp, suddenly waking up. "I remember, in
the saloon----"
"Mr. Jupp, reck'lect where you are, _if_ you please, and spare the
company your reminiscences."
Here Mr. Hallibut, who, finding himself bored by the conversation about
people of whom he knew nothing, had quietly betaken himself to drink,
and had got through three tumblers of brandy-and-water unobserved,
remarked that, as he had a long drive before him, he thought it was
time for him to go; and, after making his adieux, departed to find the
ostler at The Hoy, who had his rough old pony in charge. Mrs. Jupp put
on her bonnet, and after a word of promise to look in next morning and
hear the remainder of her hostess's suspicions about Mrs. Stothard,
roused up Mr. Jupp, who, balancing himself on frail and trembling
legs, which he still believed to be endangered by the proximity of his
mill's machinery, staggered out into the open air, where he was bid to
reck'lect himself _if_ he pleased, and to walk steadily, so that the
coastguard then passing might not see he was drunk.