During this period, the most remarkable things that happened to Dr. and
Mrs. Staines were really those which I have related as connecting them
with Phoebe Dale and her brother; to which I will now add that Dr.
Staines detailed Dick's case in a remarkable paper, entitled “Oedema of
the Glottis,” and showed how the patient had been brought back from
the grave by tracheotomy and artificial respiration. He received a high
price for this article.
To tell the truth, he was careful not to admit that it was he who had
opened the windpipe; so the credit of the whole operation was given to
Mr. Jenkyn; and this gentleman was naturally pleased, and threw a good
many consultation fees in Staines's way.
The Lucases, to his great comfort--for he had an instinctive aversion to
Miss Lucas--left London for Paris in August, and did not return all the
year.
In February he reviewed his year's work and twelve months' residence in
the Bijou. The pecuniary result was, outgoings, nine hundred and fifty
pounds; income, from fees, two hundred and eighty pounds; writing,
ninety pounds.
He showed these figures to Mrs. Staines, and asked her if she
could suggest any diminution of expenditure. Could she do with less
housekeeping money?
“Oh, impossible! You cannot think how the servants eat; and they won't
touch our home-made bread.”
“The fools! Why?”
“Oh, because they think it costs us less. Servants seem to me always to
hate the people whose bread they eat.”
“More likely it is their vanity. Nothing that is not paid for before
their eyes seems good enough for them. Well, dear, the bakers will
revenge us. But is there any other item we could reduce? Dress?”
“Dress! Why, I spend nothing.”
“Forty-five pounds this year.”
“Well, I shall want none next year.”
“Well, then, Rosa, as there is nothing we can reduce, I must write more,
and take more fees, or we shall be in the wrong box. Only eight hundred
and sixty pounds left of our little capital; and, mind, we have not
another shilling in the world. One comfort, there is no debt. We pay
ready money for everything.”
Rosa colored a little, but said nothing.
Staines did his part nobly. He read; he wrote; he paced the yard. He
wore his old clothes in the house; he took off his new ones when he came
in. He was all genius, drudgery, patience.
How Phoebe Dale would have valued him, co-operated with him, and petted
him, if she had had the good luck to be his wife!
The season came back, and with it Miss Lucas, towing a brilliant bride,
Mrs. Vivian, young, rich, pretty, and gay, with a waist you could span,
and athirst for pleasure.
This lady was the first that ever made Rosa downright jealous. She
seemed to have everything the female heart could desire; and she was No.
1 with Miss Lucas this year. Now, Rosa was No. 1 last season, and had
weakly imagined that was to last forever. But Miss Lucas had always a
sort of female flame, and it never lasted two seasons.
Rosa did not care so very much for Miss Lucas before, except as a
convenient friend; but now she was mortified to tears at finding Miss
Lucas made more fuss with another than with her.
This foolish feeling spurred her to attempt a rivalry with Mrs. Vivian,
in the very things where rivalry was hopeless.
Miss Lucas gave both ladies tickets for a flower-show, where all the
great folk were to be, princes and princesses, etc.
“But I have nothing to wear,” sighed Rosa.
“Then you must get something, and mind it is not pink, please; for we
must not clash in colors. You know I'm dark, and pink becomes me. (The
selfish young brute was not half so dark as Rosa.) Mine is coming
from Worth's, in Paris, on purpose. And this new Madame Cie, of Regent
Street, has such a duck of a bonnet, just come from Paris. She wanted
to make me one from it; but I told her I would have none but the pattern
bonnet--and she knows very well she can't pass a copy off on me. Let
me drive you up there, and you can see mine, and order one, if you like
it.”
“Oh, thank you! let me just run and speak to my husband first.”
Staines was writing for the bare life, and a number of German books
about him, slaving to make a few pounds--when in comes the buoyant
figure and beaming face his soul delighted in.
He laid down his work, to enjoy the sunbeam of love.
“Oh, darling, I've only come in for a minute. We are going to
a flower-show on the 13th; everybody will be so beautifully
dressed--especially that Mrs. Vivian. I have got ten yards of beautiful
blue silk in my wardrobe, but that is not enough to make a whole
dress--everything takes so much stuff now. Madame Cie does not care
to make up dresses unless she finds the silk, but Miss Lucas says she
thinks, to oblige a friend of hers, she would do it for once in a way.
You know, dear, it would only take a few yards more, and it would last
as a dinner-dress for ever so long.”
Then she clasped him round the neck, and leaned her head upon his
shoulder, and looked lovingly up in his face. “I know you would like
your Rosa to look as well as Mrs. Vivian.”
“No one ever looks as well, in my eyes, as my Rosa. There, the dress
will add nothing to your beauty; but go and get it, to please yourself;
it is very considerate of you to have chosen something of which you have
ten yards, already. See, dear, I'm to receive twenty pounds for this
article; if research was paid it ought to be a hundred. I shall add it
all to your allowance for dresses this year. So no debt, mind; but come
to me for everything.”
The two ladies drove off to Madame Cie's, a pretty shop lined with dark
velvet and lace draperies.
In the back room they were packing a lovely bridal dress, going off the
following Saturday to New York.
“What, send from America to London?”
“Oh, dear, yes!” exclaimed Madame Cie. “The American ladies are
excellent customers. They buy everything of the best, and the most
expensive.”
“I have brought a new customer,” said Miss Lucas; “and I want you to do
a great favor, and that is to match a blue silk, and make her a pretty
dress for the flower-show on the 13th.”
Madame Cie produced a white muslin polonaise, which she was just going
to send home to the Princess -----, to be worn over mauve.
“Oh, how pretty and simple!” exclaimed Miss Lucas.
“I have some lace exactly like that,” said Mrs. Staines.
“Then why don't you have a polonaise? The lace is the only expensive
part, the muslin is a mere nothing; and it is such a useful dress, it
can be worn over any silk.”
It was agreed Madame Cie was to send for the blue silk and the lace, and
the dresses were to be tried on on Thursday.
On Thursday, as Rosa went gayly into Madame Cie's back room to have the
dresses tried on, Madame Cie said, “You have a beautiful lace shawl,
but it wants arranging; in five minutes I could astonish you with what I
could do to that shawl.”
“Oh, pray do,” said Mrs. Staines.
The dressmaker kept her word. By the time the blue dress was tried on,
Madame Cie had, with the aid of a few pins, plaits, and a bow of blue
ribbon, transformed the half lace shawl into one of the smartest and
distingue things imaginable; but when the bill came in at Christmas,
for that five minutes' labor and distingue touch, she charged one pound
eight.
Madame Cie then told the ladies, in an artfully confidential tone,
she had a quantity of black silk coming home, which she had purchased
considerably below cost price; and that she should like to make them
each a dress--not for her own sake, but theirs--as she knew they would
never meet such a bargain again. “You know, Miss Lucas,” she continued,
“we don't want our money, when we know our customers. Christmas is soon
enough for us.”
“Christmas is a long time off,” thought the young wife, “nearly ten
months. I think I'll have a black silk, Madame Cie; but I must not
say anything to the doctor about it just yet, or he might think me
extravagant.”
“No one can ever think a lady extravagant for buying a black silk; it's
such a useful dress; lasts forever--almost.”
Days, weeks, and months rolled on, and with them an ever-rolling tide of
flower-shows, dinners, at-homes, balls, operas, lawn-parties, concerts,
and theatres.
Strange that in one house there should be two people who loved each
other, yet their lives ran so far apart, except while they were asleep:
the man all industry, self-denial, patience; the woman all frivolity,
self-indulgence, and amusement; both chained to an oar, only--one in a
working boat, the other in a painted galley.
The woman got tired first, and her charming color waned sadly. She came
to him for medicine to set her up. “I feel so languid.”
“No, no,” said he; “no medicine can do the work of wholesome food and
rational repose. You lack the season of all natures, sleep. Dine at home
three days running, and go to bed at ten.”
On this the doctor's wife went to a chemist for advice. He gave her
a pink stimulant; and, as stimulants have two effects, viz., first to
stimulate, and then to weaken, this did her no lasting good. Dr. Staines
cursed the London season, and threatened to migrate to Liverpool.
But there was worse behind.
Returning one day to his dressing-room, just after Rosa had come
down-stairs, he caught sight of a red stain in a wash-hand-basin. He
examined it; it was arterial blood.
He went to her directly, and expressed his anxiety.
“Oh, it is nothing,” said she.
“Nothing! Pray, how often has it occurred?”
“Once or twice. I must take your advice, and be quiet, that is all.”
Staines examined the housemaid; she lied instinctively at first, seeing
he was alarmed; but, being urged to tell the truth, said she had seen it
repeatedly, and had told the cook.
He went down-stairs again, and sat down, looking wretched.
“Oh, dear!” said Rosa. “What is the matter now?”
“Rosa,” said he, very gravely, “there are two people a woman is mad to
deceive--her husband and her physician. You have deceived both.”