Doctor Jolly trotted along the road from Bigton to Hartwood, with Huz
and Buz his brother, cantering at his horse's heels, and making short
predatory excursions every now and then into neighbouring gardens and
farmyards on the way, to the apoplectic scaring and bewilderment of
sundry unhappy fowls and ducks. In about half an hour, as he always
rode at a sharp pace, he had reached The Poplars to make his weekly
visit.
"How-de-do!" he shouted to Tom, when he was half a mile off, seeing him
at the gate; and presently the stout doctor was dismounting from his
quadruped with extreme difficulty, owing to the still painful gout, and
limping up the steps of the dowager's mansion.
"So you are here again, are you?" observed that lady with her customary
acrimony, from the open window of the dining-room, which faced the
entrance gate. "Why, you're always running here, now; you'd better come
and live here at once; it would, at all events, save your gouty legs
some exertion."
"Bless my soul! Mrs Hartshorne, why you are looking as blooming as a
daisy. I wish I could wear like you, madam; why you must be sixty, if
you are a day!"
"I'll outlast you at all events, Mister Jolly," said the old lady, as
our friend the doctor, who hated being called "Mister" instead of by his
medical title, walked into the house.
"And how's Susan?" he asked, as he entered the room.
"There she is with her governess, and you can see for yourself,"
snappishly returned the dowager, walking out, and leaving the doctor
with Miss Kingscott and her charge.
Susan looked greatly improved, and timidly offered her hand as he went
up to her in his hearty way.
"And how are we to-day?" he said kindly.
She, to his great astonishment, not only looked him in the face, but
answered him, which she had seldom or ever done before.
"Very well, I thank you," she said, quietly.
It was not much, certainly; not more, perhaps, than a well-trained
parrot might have said, but, then, it was a decided improvement to her
former apathy. She immediately afterwards, however, left the room, as
she heard Markworth playing on the organ up-stairs; and Miss Kingscott
and the doctor were alone.
"By Gad, madam!" exclaimed the doctor, as soon as she had gone--he did
not mean to give Miss Kingscott "brevet rank," but he always addressed
every woman, young or old, as "Madam."
"By Gad, madam! it's positively wonderful. What an improvement;
couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it! But where has she gone
to now--who's that thrumming the old organ?"
"That must be Mr Markworth, I believe," she answered, "and you must
compliment him on Susan's improvement: she's always with him, and he
seems quite devoted to her. It is really quite charming to see them
together."
Who would have dreamt of their joint conspiracy from the way she spoke?
"Really?" enquired our Aesculapius. "To tell you the truth, madam, I
don't like that fellow at all. I'm never deceived in a face; and, if I
do not make a mistake, madam, that man is a scoundrel as certain as God
made little apples."
I do not know why it was, but the doctor always seemed desirous of
connecting the name of the deity with miniature specimens of the
forbidden fruit whenever he wanted to qualify a strong assertion.
"Dear me, doctor!" interposed the lady, "your language is very strong."
"Not a bit of it, madam; not a bit more than he deserves. By Gad,
madam! he must have some object to gain; he would not take all that
trouble for nothing. I know human nature, madam, and he is either going
to marry the old lady, or something else. Ho! ho! ho! what a fine pair
they would make!"
And the doctor sniggered over his own joke, and laughed so contagiously
that Miss Kingscott could not but follow suit.
The doctor presently, however, returned to business. He had been
thinking of this young lady all the way over from Bigton. He had
asserted to himself over and over again that she was "a dooced fine
girl," as if some one else had been disputing the point with him; and
now that he was in her presence she not only looked finer and more
beautiful than ever, but he had one of the best opportunities for
speaking to her alone he had ever had before, or could have wished for.
She looked very refined and ladylike as she stood there in the shaded
dining-room, clad in a light morning dress. Her regular features and
pale complexion gave an air of dignified beauty to her face which her
height and figure well carried out. Altogether she was very charming,
and looked so loveable on the present occasion, in appearance, that she
would have captivated a man even less in love than the doctor, and led
him on to the inevitable "pop!"
Aesculapius was a long time beating about the bush. Although he was
generally free and easy in his speech, the doctor was now tongue-tied
when he most wanted to speak, and his already ruddy face was more
"peonified" than ever--if I may be allowed to coin that word--while his
heart thumped against his ribs "like a pestle against the sides of a
pill mortar," as he expressed it professionally.
"Ha! hum! a fine morning, madam--a fine morning! Don't you think so?"
Miss Kingscott assented, of course. She saw his embarrassment, and
wished to lead him on to an _eclaircissement_; but she could scarcely
refrain herself from smiling at the ludicrous endeavours of the doctor
to hide his nervousness, which was unmistakeably increasing.
"Yes, madam, it's a fine day; but hot, madam. Don't you think so?"
"Certainly, doctor, I think it is warm," answered the lady,
confirmatively.
And, indeed, any one looking into his face could not but agree with the
remark.
"Warm, madam, is no term for it, it is confoundedly hot! But I beg your
pardon, madam, were you ever in love?" he blurted out abruptly, after a
great effort, bolting into his subject, as it were.
"Good gracious me, doctor?" said Miss Kingscott, with a charmingly acted
surprise, and blushing embarrassment. "What a strange question for you
to ask!"
"Not at all, madam--not at all. I said the weather was hot. Don't you
see, madam? and it is hot. I asked you about love--and love is hot.
There's my proposition, you see the connection between the two?"
And the doctor's face glowed with perspiration.
"I do not follow your argument," said the governess, calmly. "You seem
to arrive very rapidly at your deductions; but what has the result to do
with me?" she asked, with ingenuous innocence.
"A good deal, madam--a good deal. How fearfully warm it is! You see,
madam, before you an old man."
"Not so very old, doctor, I'm sure," she interrupted, looking
bewitchingly into his perspiring countenance.
"Well, well," he continued, in a gratified tone, "perhaps not exactly an
old man; but I'm not a young one. Still, if it wasn't for the
confounded gout, I daresay I should be as young and skittish as the best
of them."
"Oh! I'm so sorry for that horrid gout--and I do pity you so when I see
you in pain," condoled Miss Kingscott, thinking of the doctor being
"skittish," as if she had heard of an elephant dancing a hornpipe.
"Are you really--do you really?" he asked eagerly, a flush of joy
overspreading his already flushed and perspiring face. "Well, I tell
you what, madam, I'm in love."
And the doctor heaved a portentous and languishing sigh, which quivered
through his colossal frame which shook like a mould of jelly.
"Are you really, doctor? I am sure I hope the young lady is nice, for
your sake; and I hope she will make you a good wife," she replied,
ignoring the doctor's nervousness until she got him to the point.
"You are very kind, madam, very kind; but you are always kind--you can't
help it, for it is in your nature. Infernally hot, is it not, madam?"
"Very warm," said the lady, encouragingly.
"Bless my soul! madam, so it is. But, madam, Miss Kingscott that is--"
"Well?" she encouraged him, her eyes sparkling with ill-concealed fun at
the doctor's predicament.
"You sly little creature! Why, you are laughing at me all the time!"
"Oh! dear no; but who's the young lady, doctor? You have not told me
her name yet, and I'm dying to know."
"You wicked little baggage! you know all the time."
"How can I? when you have not yet told me."
"By Gad! women are the most provoking creatures under the sun."
"Not _all_, doctor," she pleaded, demurely, tapping the carpet
impatiently with her foot.
"Well, perhaps not all; but dooced near it. I am an old fool! Here am
I bungling about and can't say what I mean!"
"Can I help you, doctor?"
"I wish you would, and tell me what to say to you, young baggage!"
"Do be calm, doctor. Suppose I'm the old lady now, and that you were
talking to me--I am not so very young you know, either."
And she looked so demurely grave and elderly, that Aesculapius was
charmed anew.
"Well, I must say it. It's better to have it out, like a bad tooth;
there's no good in keeping it in my head. I'm an old fool I know,
madam; but I am really in earnest now, and I want you to listen
seriously to me for a moment. The fact is, madam, Miss Kingscott that
is--how fearfully warm it is!"
At that moment, just when he was trembling on the verge of his
disclosure, the shrill tones of Mrs Hartshorne's voice was heard
without.
"George! George!" she cried to the faithful servitor (she pronounced
his name indeed _Jodge_! _Jodge_! speaking in her usual rapid manner,
with quick utterance). "Who's that at the gate? Don't you let anybody
in, man!"
And our friends inside could hear her feet scrunching the gravel as she
walked towards the gate in order to see who it was; so they went to the
window also to look on, and the interesting conversation I have just
detailed, was abruptly broken off at the indefinite point it had
reached.
"Plaise, marm," replied the rustic voice of George, "it's a leddy, marm,
and she says as how she's coomed to say un."
"I don't know any ladies, and don't want to know any, either; I wonder
who is the flaunting creature? Get back to your work, you grinning
baboon! I'll speak to the woman myself."
At the gate, seated in her pony carriage, and accompanied by her two
daughters, all dressed out and equipped in their state-costume for the
payment of calls, was Lady Inskip. She looked astounded--for she had
heard every word of the dialogue between the dowager and her henchman;
and not only she had heard it, but her daughters also; and the grinning
page, covered with sugar-loaf buttons, who sat perched on a mushroom
sort of seat that sprang out as a sort of excrescence from behind the
equipage. The old campaigner was surprised and astounded: but she tried
to appear cool and collected as befitted her dignity: the languid Laura
was as apathetic as ever; and the fast Carry seemed inclined to follow
the Buttons example and laugh aloud.
The dowager, in another moment, was on the scene of operations, and
addressed the campaigner who sat in her pony carriage, with her forces
drawn up in _echelon_ behind the gate.
"Who are you, woman; and what do you want?"
"My name is Lady Inskip," answered the veteran, with bridling dignity.
"I presume I have the honour of addressing Mistress Hartshorne?"
"I don't know you--that's my name; what do you want, woman? My time is
valuable, and I can't stop cackling with you all day."
"You might be a little more polite, madam," said Lady Inskip, with
freezing politeness and sarcasm. "I came with my daughters just to pay
a customary call of civility, and I expected, at all events, to be
treated like a lady, by a lady, whom I expected to meet here; but I now
find out I am mistaken."
"Is that all? Then you and your daughters can just take yourselves off,
with all your flauntings and finery! I don't want any grand people
coming about me! _I_ never go to see anybody, and I don't want anybody
to come and see me. Quite a pity, isn't it, after you had bedizened
yourself so finely too?"
"Laura!" exclaimed Lady Inskip, ignoring the presence of the dowager, "I
think we had better drive home, and leave this vulgar woman to herself.
Perhaps," she said, turning to the dowager as she whirled the ponies
round, "you will have the civility to give that letter to your son, it
contains an invitation to a pic-nic. I suppose we need not hope for the
pleasure of your sweet company?"
"I don't want any of your pic-nics, or jakanapes, or your impudence!"
said the downright old woman, raising her shrill voice even more
piercingly. "I will give the letter to my son. If he cares about
running after you, _I_ don't. Go! You said you were going home, and
the sooner you go the better, for you don't come in here, my lady!"
Then, considering the engagement terminated, she slammed-to the gate
menacingly, and turned on her way back to the house, leaving the
discomfitted campaigner to retreat at her leisure.
Our friends, the doctor and the governess, had heard the whole of the
interview, and much amused they were over it, too, I promise you; but it
stopped the coming proposal. Miss Kingscott was rather pleased at this,
for she thought there was still some hope of gaining over Master Tom,
the young squire, and she did not wish either to finally accept or
reject the doctor until she knew which was the best card to play.
He, on his way home, was also pleased that he had not fully committed
himself.
"It would never have done for Deb," he considered; "she would never have
liked it. At all events, I was just stopped in time, though, and a miss
is as good as a mile. But I am a damned old fool! That's a fact."
He kept to his promise with Pythias, did Damon, and drank a bottle of
port to himself that day after dinner, shaking his head as he muttered
to himself every now and then, while, with half-cocked eye, he held up
his glass to the light--
"It's a lucky escape; but I'm a confounded old fool!"
Twice he bethought him of telling Deborah all about it; but she looked
so comfortable and composed, as she sat there darning his socks, that he
thought it would be a pity to disturb and agitate her. So his dreams,
when he retired to rest, were very wild indeed, and he passed altogether
a sleepless night.--So much for the doctor's love-making.
Volume 1, Chapter XI.