THE DOCTOR'S NEWS.
"Oh! how do you do, Doctor Droqville?" said mamma, with a very real
welcome in looks and accent.
"How d'ye do, Droqville?" said my father, a little dryly, I fancied.
"Have you had your breakfast?" asked mamma.
"Two hours ago."
"We are very late here," said papa.
"I should prefer thinking I am very early, in my primitive quarters,"
answered Mr. Droqville.
"I had not an idea we should have found you in town, just now."
"In season or out of season, a physician should always be at his post.
I'm beginning to learn rather late there's some truth in that old
proverb about moss, you know, and rolling stones, and it costs even a
bachelor something to keep body and soul together in this mercenary,
tailoring, cutlet-eating world." At this moment he saw me, and made me a
bow. "Miss Ware?" he said, a little inquiringly to mamma. "Yes, I knew
perfectly it was the young lady I had seen at Malory. Some faces are not
easily forgotten," he added, gallantly, with a glance at me. "I
threatened to run away with her, but she was firm as fate," he smiled
and went on; "and I paid a visit to our friend Carmel, you know."
"And how did you think he was?" she asked; and I listened with interest
for the answer.
"He's consumptive. He's at this side of the Styx, it is true; but his
foot is in the water, and Charon's obolus is always between his finger
and thumb. He'll die young. He may live five years, it is true; but he
is not likely to live two. And if he happens to take cold and begins to
cough, he might not last four months."
"My wife has been complaining," said papa; "I wish you could do
something for her. You still believe in Doctor Droqville? I think she
half believes you have taken a degree in divinity as well as in
medicine; if so, a miracle, now and then, would be quite in your way."
"But I assure you, Doctor Droqville, I never said any such thing. It was
you who thought," she said to my father, "that Doctor Droqville was in
orders."
Droqville laughed.
"But, Doctor Droqville, I think," said mamma, "you would have made a
very good priest."
"There are good priests, madame, of various types; Madame de Genlis, for
instance, commends an abbe of her acquaintance; he was a most
respectable man, she says, and never ridiculed revealed religion but
with moderation."
Papa laughed, but I could see that he did not like Doctor Droqville.
There was something dry, and a little suspicious in his manner, so
slight that you could hardly define it, but which contrasted strikingly
with the decision and _insouciance_ of Doctor Droqville's talk.
"But, you know, you never do that, even with moderation; and you can
argue so closely when you please."
"There, madame, you do me too much honour. I am the worst logician in
the world. I wrote a part of an essay on Christian chivalry, and did
pretty well, till I began to reason; the essay ended, and I was
swallowed up in this argument--pray listen to it. To sacrifice your life
for the lady you adore is a high degree of heroism; but to sacrifice
your soul for her is the highest degree of heroism. But the highest
degree of heroism is but another name for Christianity; and, therefore,
to act thus can't sacrifice your soul, and if it doesn't you don't
practise a heroism, and therefore no Christianity, and, therefore, you
do sacrifice your soul. But if you do sacrifice your soul, it is the
highest heroism--therefore Christianity; and, therefore, you don't
sacrifice your soul, and so, _da capo_, it goes on for ever--and I can't
extricate myself. When I mean to make a boat, I make a net; and this
argument that I invented to carry me some little way on my voyage to
truth, not only won't hold water, but has caught me by the foot,
entangles, and drowns me. I never went on with my essay."
In this cynical trifling there was a contemptuous jocularity quite
apparent to me, although mamma took it all in good faith, and said:
"It is very puzzling, but it can't be true; and I should think it almost
a duty to find out where it is wrong."
Papa laughed, and said:
"My dear, don't you see that Doctor Droqville is mystifying us?"
I was rather glad, for I did not like it. I was vexed for mamma. Doctor
Droqville's talk seemed to me an insolence.
"It is quite true, I am no logician; I had better continue as I am. I
make a tolerable physician; if I became a preacher, with my defective
ratiocination, I should inevitably lose myself and my audience in a
labyrinth. You make but a very short stay in town, I suppose?" he broke
off suddenly. "It isn't tempting, so many houses sealed--a city of the
dead. One does not like, madame, as your Doctor Johnson said to Mrs.
Thrale, to come down to vacuity."
"Well, it is only a visit of two or three days. My daughter Ethel is
coming out next spring, and she came up to meet us here. I wish her to
have a few weeks with masters, and there are more things to be thought
of than you would suppose. Do you think there is anything a country miss
would do well to read up that we might have forgotten?"
"Read? read? Oh! yes, two things."
"What are they?"
"If she has a sound knowledge of the heathen mythology, and a smattering
of the Bible, she'll do very well."
"But she won't talk about the Bible," laughed papa; "people who like it,
read it to themselves."
"Very true," said Doctor Droqville, "you never mention it; but, quite
unconsciously, you are perpetually alluding to it. Nothing strikes a
stranger more, if he understands your language as I do. You had a note
from Lady Lorrimer?"
"No," said mamma.
The word "note," I think, struck papa as implying that she was nearer
than letter-writing distance, and he glanced quickly at Doctor
Droqville.
"And where is Lady Lorrimer now?" asked papa.
"That is what I came to tell you. She is at Mivart's. I told her you
were in town, and I fancied you would have had a note from her; but I
thought I might as well look in and tell you."
"She's quite well, I hope?" said mamma.
"Now did you ever, Mrs. Ware, in all your life, see her quite well? I
never did. She would lose all pleasure in life, if she thought she
wasn't leaving it. She arrived last night, and summoned me to her at ten
this morning. I felt her pulse. It was horribly regular. She had slept
well, and breakfasted well, but that was all. In short, I found her
suffering under her usual chronic attack of good health, and, as the
case was not to be trifled with, I ordered her instantly some medicine
which could not possibly produce any effect whatever; and in that
critical state I left her, with a promise to look in again in the
afternoon to ascertain that the more robust symptoms were not gaining
ground, and in the interval I came to see you and tell you all about
it."
"I suppose, then, I should find her in her bed?" said mamma.
"No; I rather think she has postponed dying till after dinner--she
ordered a very good one--and means to expire in her sitting-room, where
you'll find her. And you have not been very well?"
"Remember the story he has just told you of your aunt Lorrimer, and take
care he doesn't tell her the same story of you," said papa, laughing.
"I wish I could," said Doctor Droqville; "few things would please me
better. That pain in the nerves of the head is a very real torment."
So he and mamma talked over her head-aches in an undertone for some
minutes; and while this was going on there came in a note for mamma.
The servant was was waiting for an answer in the hall.
"Shall I read it?" said papa, holding it up by the corner. "It is Lady
Lorrimer's, I'm sure."
"Do, dear," said mamma, and she continued her confidences in Doctor
Droqville's ear.
Papa smiled a little satirically as he read it. He threw it across the
table, saying:
"You can read it, Ethel; it concerns you rather."
I was very curious. The hand was youthful and pretty, considering Lady
Lorrimer's years. It was a whimpering, apathetic, selfish little note.
She was miserable, she said, and had quite made up her mind that she
could not exist in London smoke. She had sent for the doctor.
She continued: "I shall make an effort to see you, if you can look in
about three, for a few minutes. Have you any of your children with you?
If they are very quiet I should like to see them. It would amuse me. It
is an age since I saw your little people, and I really forget their
ages, and even their names. Say if I am to expect you at three. I have
told the servant to wait."
People who live in the country fancy themselves of more importance than
they really are. I was mortified, and almost shocked at the cool
sentences about "the little people," etc.
"Well, you promise to be very quiet, won't you? You won't pull the cat's
tail, or light paper in the fire, or roar for plum-cake?" said papa.
"I don't think she wants to see us. I don't think she cares the least
about us. Perhaps mamma won't go," I said, resentfully, hoping that she
would not pay that homage to the insolent old woman.
Doctor Droqville stood up, having written a prescription.
"Well, I'm off; and I think this will do you a world of good. Can I do
any commission for you about town; I shall be in every possible
direction in the next three hours?"
No, there was nothing; and this man, whom I somehow liked less than
ever, although he rather amused me, vanished, and we saw his cab drive
by the window.
"Well, here's her note. You'll go to see her, I suppose?" said papa.
"Certainly; I have a great affection for my aunt. She was very kind to
me when there was no one else to care about me."
Mamma spoke with more animation than I believed her capable of--I
thought I even saw tears in her eyes. It struck me that she did not like
papa's tone in speaking about her. The same thing probably struck him.
"You are quite right, darling, as you always are in a matter of feeling,
and you'll take Ethel, won't you?"
"Yes, I should like her to come."
"And you know, if she should ask you, don't tell her I'm a bit better
off than I really am. I have had some awful losses lately. I don't like
bothering you about business, and it was no fault or negligence of mine;
but I really--it is of very great importance she should not do anything
less that she intended for you, or anything whimsical or unjust. I give
you my honour there isn't a guinea to spare now, it would be a positive
cruelty."
Mamma looked at him, but she was by this time so accustomed to alarms of
that kind that they did not make a very deep impression upon her.
"I don't think she's likely to talk about such matters, dear," said
mamma; "but if she should make any inquiries, I shall certainly tell her
the truth."
I remembered Lady Lorrimer long ago at Malory. It was a figure seen in
the haze of infancy, and remembered through the distance of many years.
I recollect coming down the stairs, the nursery-maid holding me by the
hand, and seeing a carriage and servants in the court before the door. I
remember, as part of the same dream, sitting in the lap of a strange
lady in the drawing-room, who left a vague impression of having been
richly dressed, who talked to me in a sweet, gentle voice, and gave me
toys, and whom I always knew to have been Lady Lorrimer. How much of
this I actually saw, and how much was picked up with the vivid power of
reproducing pictures from description that belongs to children, I cannot
say; but I always heard of Aunt Lorrimer afterwards with interest, and
now at length I was about to see her. Her note had disappointed me,
still I was curious.