The Bishop sees the Patient.
In the hall Varbarriere met the Reverend Dives Marlowe.
"Well, sir, how is Sir Jekyl?" asked he.
The parson looked bilious and lowering.
"To say truth, Monsieur, I can't very well make out what the Doctor
thinks. I suspect he does not understand very well himself. _Gout_, he
says, but in a very sinking state; and we've sent for the physician at
Slowton; and altogether, sir, I'm very uneasy."
I suppose if the blow had fallen, the reverend gentleman would in a
little while have become quite resigned, as became him. There were the
baronetcy and some land; but on the whole, when Death drew near
smirking, and offered on his tray, with a handsome black pall over it,
these sparkling relics of the late Sir Jekyl Marlowe, Bart., the Rev.
Dives turned away; and though he liked these things well enough, put
them aside honestly, and even with a sort of disgust. For Jekyl, as I
have said, though the brothers could sometimes exchange a sharp sally,
had always been essentially kind to him; and Dives was not married, and,
in fact, was funding money, and in no hurry; and those things were sure
to come to him if he lived, sooner or later.
"And what, may I ask, do you suppose it _is_?" inquired Varbarriere.
"Well, _gout_, you know--he's positive; and, poor fellow, he's got it in
his foot, and a very nasty thing it is, I know, even _there_. We all of
us have it hereditarily--our family." The apostle and martyr did not
want him to suppose he had earned it. "But I am very anxious, sir. Do
_you_ know anything of gout? May it be _there_ and somewhere else at the
same time? Two members of our family died of it in the stomach, and one
in the head. It has been awfully fatal with us."
Varbarriere shook his head. He had never had a declared attack, and had
no light to throw on the sombre prospect. The fact is, if that solemn
gentleman had known for certain exactly how matters stood, and had not
been expecting the arrival of his contumacious nephew, he would have
been many miles on his way to London by this time.
"You know--you know, _sinking_ seems very odd as a symptom of common
gout in the great toe," said Dives, looking in his companion's face, and
speaking rather like a man seeking than communicating information. "We
must not frighten the ladies, you know; but I'm very much afraid of
something in the stomach, eh? and possibly the heart."
"After all, sir," said Varbarriere, with a brisk effort,
"Doctor--a--what's his name?--he's but a rural practitioner--an
apothecary--is not it so?"
"The people here say, however, he's a very clever fellow, though," said
Dives, not much comforted.
"We may hear a different story when the Slowton doctor comes. I venture
to think we shall. I always fancied when gout was well out in the toe,
the internal organs were safe. Oh! there's the Bishop."
"Just talking about poor Jekyl, my lord," said Dives, with a sad smile
of deference, the best he could command.
"And--and how _is_ my poor friend and pupil, Sir Jekyl?--better, I
trust," responded the apostle in gaiters and apron.
"Well, my lord, we hope--I trust everything satisfactory; but the Doctor
has been playing the sphinx with us, and I don't know exactly what to
make of him."
"I saw Doctor Pratt for a moment, and expressed my wish to see his
patient--my poor pupil--before I go, which must be--yes--within an
hour," said the Bishop, consulting his punctual gold watch. "But he
preferred my postponing until Doctor--I forget his name--very much
concerned, _indeed_, that a second should be thought necessary--from
Slowton--should have arrived. It--it gives me--I--I can't deny, a rather
serious idea of it. Has he had many attacks?"
"Yes, my lord, several; never threatened seriously, but once--at
Dartbroke, about two years ago--in the stomach."
"Ah! I forgot it was the stomach. I remember his illness though," said
the Bishop, graciously.
"Not _actually_ the stomach--only threatened," suggested Dives,
deferentially. "I have made acquaintance with it myself, too, slightly;
never so sharply as poor Jekyl. I _wish_ that other doctor would come!
But even at best it's not a pleasant visitor."
"I dare say--I can well suppose it. _I_ have reason to be _very_
thankful. I've _never_ suffered. My poor _father_ knew what it
was--suffered horribly. I remember him at Buxton for it--horribly."
The Bishop was fond of this recollection, people said, and liked it to
be understood that there was gout in the family, though he could not
show that aristocratic gules himself.
At this moment Tomlinson approached, respectfully--I might even say
religiously--and with such a reverence as High-Churchmen make at the
creed, accosted the prelate, in low tones like distant organ-notes,
murmuring Sir Jekyl's compliments to "his lordship, and would be very
'appy to see his lordship whenever it might be his convenience." To
which his lordship assented, with a grave "_Now_, certainly, I shall be
most happy," and turning to Dives--
"This, I hope, looks well. I fancy he must feel better. Let us hope;"
and with slightly uplifted hand and eyes, the good Bishop followed
Tomlinson, feeling so oddly as he threaded the same narrow half-lighted
passages, whose corners and panelling came sharply on his memory as he
passed them, and ascended the steep back stair with the narrow
stained-glass slits, by which he had reached, thirty years ago, the
sick-chamber of the dying Sir Harry Marlowe.
The Bishop sighed, looking round him, as he stood on the lobby outside
the little ante-room. The light fell through the slim coloured orifice
opposite on the oak before him, just as it did on the day he last stood
there. The banisters, above and below, looked on him like yesterday's
acquaintances; and the thoughtful frown of the heavy oak beams overhead
seemed still knit over the same sad problem.
"_Thirty_ years ago!" murmured the Bishop, with a sad smile, nodding his
silvery head slightly, as his saddened eyes wandered over these things.
"What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou
so regardest him?"
Tomlinson, who had knocked at the Baronet's door, returned to say he
begged his lordship would step in.
So with another sigh, peeping before him, he passed through the small
room that interposed, and entered Sir Jekyl's, and took his hand very
kindly and gravely, pressing it, and saying in the low tone which
becomes a sick-chamber--
"I trust, my dear Sir Jekyl, you feel better."
"Thank you, pretty well; very good of you, my lord, to come. It's a long
way, from the front of the house--a journey. He told me you were in the
hall."
"Yes, it is a large house; interesting to me, too, from earlier
recollections."
"You were in this room, a great many years ago, with my poor father. He
died here, you know."
"I'm afraid you're distressing yourself speaking. Yes; oddly enough, I
recognised the passages and back stairs; the windows, too, are peculiar.
The _furniture_, though, that's changed--is not it?"
"So it is. I hated it," replied Sir Jekyl. "Balloon-hacked blue silk
things--faded, you know. It's curious you should remember, after such a
devil of a time--such a great number of years, my lord. I hated it. When
I had that fever here in this room--thirteen--fourteen years ago--ay, by
Jove, it's _fifteen_--they were going to write for _you_."
"Excuse me, my dear friend, but it seems to me you _are_ exerting
yourself too much," interposed the prelate again.
"Oh dear no! it does me good to talk. I had all sorts of queer visions.
People fancy, you know, they see things; and I used to think I saw
him--my poor father, I mean--every night. There were six of those
confounded blue-backed chairs in this room, and a nasty idea got into my
head. I had a servant--poor Lewis--then a very trustworthy fellow, and
liked me, I think; and Lewis told me the doctors said there was to be a
crisis on the night week of the first consultation--seven days, you
know."
"I really fear, Sir Jekyl, you are distressing yourself," persisted the
Bishop, who did not like the voluble eagerness and the apparent fatigue,
nevertheless, with which he spoke.
"Oh! it's only a word more--it doesn't, I assure you--and I perceived he
sat on a different chair, d'ye see, every night, and on the fourth
night he had got on the fourth chair; and I liked his face less and less
every night. You know he hated me about Molly--about _nothing_--he
always hated me; and as there were only six chairs, it got into my head
that he'd get up on my bed on the seventh, and that I should die in the
crisis. So I put all the chairs out of the room. They thought I was
raving; but I was quite right, for he did not come again, and here I
am;" and with these words there came the rudiments of his accustomed
chuckle, which died out in a second or two, seeming to give him pain.
"Now, you'll promise me not to talk so much at a time till you're
better. I am glad, sir--very glad, Sir Jekyl, to have enjoyed your
hospitality, and to have even this opportunity of thanking you for it.
It is very delightful to me occasionally to find myself thus beholden to
my old pupils. I have had the pleasure of spending a few days with the
Marquis at Queen's Dykely; in fact, I came direct from him to you. You
recollect him--Lord Elstowe he was then? You remember Elstowe at
school?"
"To be sure; remember him very well. We did not agree, though--always
thought him a cur," acquiesced Sir Jekyl.
The Bishop cleared his voice.
"He was asking for you, I assure you, very kindly--very kindly indeed,
and seems to remember his school-days very affectionately, and--and
pleasantly, and quite surprised me with his minute recollections of all
the boys."
"They all hated him," murmured Sir Jekyl. "I did, I know."
"And--and I think we shall have a fine day. I drive always with two
windows open--a window in front and one at the side," said the Bishop,
whose mild and dignified eyes glanced at the windows, and the pleasant
evidences of sunshine outside, as he spoke, "I was almost afraid I
should have to start without the pleasure of saying good-bye. You
remember the graceful farewell in Lucretius? I venture to say your
brother does. I made your class recite it, do you remember?"
And the Bishop repeated three or four hexameters with a look of
expectation at his old pupil, as if looking to him to take up the
recitation.
"Yes, I am sure of it. I think I remember; but, egad! I've quite forgot
my Latin, any I knew," answered the Baronet, who was totally unable to
meet the invitation; "I--I don't know how it is, but I'm sorry you have
to go to-day, very sorry;--sorry, of course, any time, but particularly
I feel as if I should get well again very soon--that is, if you were to
stay. Do you think you can?"
"Thank you, my dear Marlowe, thank you very much for that feeling," said
the good Bishop, much gratified, and placing his old hand very kindly in
that of the patient, just as Sir Jekyl suddenly remembered his doing
once at his bedside in the sick-house in younger days, long ago, when he
was a school-boy, and the Bishop master; and both paused for a moment in
one of those dreams of the past that make us smile so sadly.