"I hate him, and I'll humble him yet!" said Lady Martlett, with her eyes
flashing, as she saw Jack Scales coming along the path towards the
drawing-room window. "How dares he assume such a high tone towards me!
How dares he speak to me as if I were an inferior, or a woman at whom he
laughs as unworthy of his notice! I will humble him, proud as he may
be." She watched him through the window as he walked very thoughtfully
along the path; and probably it was anger that made her countenance show
a higher colour than usual. The visit did not seem pleasant. The
weather was all that could be desired; but there was to her something
unrestful in the atmosphere. Kate Scarlett was nervous and excited, for
some reason or other, and was constantly leaving her alone. Aunt Sophia
had seemed more touchy than usual; and Naomi looked as if she were
afraid of the visitor.
Lady Martlett had come, telling herself that she wanted company; now she
was at The Rosery, she felt that she wanted to be alone. And now that,
for the second time, Lady Scarlett had left her alone, she had been
sitting fretfully, and thinking it very tiresome that she should be
left.
Then came the sound of the footsteps of the doctor--a doctor who would
have treated her complaint to perfection, had she not scornfully
declared to herself that it was out of his power, and that he was an
ignorant pretender, who did not understand her ailment in the least; and
at last her eyes filled with tears.
"I'm a miserable woman!" she said to herself, as she called to mind the
fact that she was a very rich young widow with beauty and a title; that
there were scores of opportunities for making a good match, did she wish
to wed; that she had only to give an order to have it obeyed; and--yes--
here was this careless, indifferent young doctor, always ready to insult
her, always treating her with a cool flippancy of manner, metaphorically
snapping his fingers at her beauty of person, her title, and her wealth,
and all the time utterly refusing to become her slave.
Just then, Lady Martlett uttered a low sigh, biting her lip directly
after, in vexation at her weakness, for Scales had sauntered by the
French window, engagingly open as it was like a trap, with her inside as
a most attractive bait, and without so much as once glancing in.
"I believe he knows I'm in here alone," she said to herself angrily;
"and he has gone by on purpose to pique me. It is his conceit. He
thinks I care for him. Oh, it is unbearable!" she cried impetuously.
"I'll bring him as a supplicant to my knees; and when I do," she
continued, with a flash of triumph in her dark eyes, "he shall know what
it is to have slighted and laughed at me!"
She fanned her flaming cheeks, and started up to pace the room, when
once more there was the sound of the doctor's footsteps, as, in utter
ignorance of Lady Martlett's presence, he returned along the gravel
walk, thinking deeply over the knotty points of his patient's case.
Lady Martlett threw herself back in her seat, composed her features, but
could not chase away the warm flush of resentment upon her checks. She,
however, assumed an air of haughty languor, and appeared to be gazing at
the landscape framed in by the open window.
"Heigh-ho-ha-hum!" sighed, or rather half-yawned Jack Scales, as he
turned in at the window very slowly and thoughtfully, and for the moment
did not see that the room was occupied.
Lady Martlett put her own interpretation upon the noise made by the
doctor--she mentally called it a sigh, and her heart gave a satisfied
throb as she told herself that he was touched--that her triumph was near
at hand when she would humble him; and then--well, cast him off.
"Ah, Lady Martlett, you here?" he said coolly.--"What a lovely day!"
"Yes, doctor; charming," she said, softening her voice.
"And this is a lovely place.--Your home, the Court, is, of course, far
more pretentious."
"I was not aware that there was anything pretentious about Leigh Court,"
said Lady Martlett coldly.
"Well, pretentious is perhaps not the word," said Jack, "I mean big and
important, and solid and wealthy, and that sort of thing."
"Oh, I see," said Lady Martlett.
"And what I meant was, that this place is so much more charming, with
its undulating lawn, its bosky clumps of evergreens, the pillar roses,
and that wonderful clematis of which poor Scarlett is so fond."
"You speak like a house-agent's catalogue. Doctor Scales," said Lady
Martlett scornfully.
"Yes, I do; don't I?" said Jack quietly, "But do you know, Lady
Martlett, I often think that I could turn out a better description of a
country estate than some of those fellows do?"
"Indeed?" said her Ladyship. "Yes, indeed," said Jack, who eagerly
assumed his bantering tones as soon as he was alone with Lady Martlett,
telling himself it was a rest, and that it was a necessity to bring down
her Ladyship's haughtiness.
"Dang her! I'll make her thoroughly disgusted with me," he said to
himself. "I hate the handsome Semiramis!--She'd like to drag me at her
chariot-wheels, and she shall not."
"I believe," he continued, "that I could do something far better than
the well-known specimen about the litter of rose-leaves and the noise of
the nightingales."
"Indeed, doctor," said her Ladyship, with a curl of her lip.
"O yes," cried Scales. "Now, for instance, suppose that Leigh Court
were to be let."
"Leigh Court is not likely to be let," said her Ladyship haughtily.
"No?" said the doctor, raising his eyebrows slightly. "Well, perhaps
not, though one never knows. Your Ladyship might take a dislike to it,
say; and if it were to go into the estate-agent's list--"
"It never will, Doctor Scales! I should consider it a profanation,"
said her Ladyship haughtily. "Pray, change the subject."
"Oh, certainly," said Scales politely.--"Been up to the Academy, of
course?"
"Yes," said Lady Martlett coldly. "There was nothing, though, worth
looking at. I was terribly bored."
"Hah! I suppose you would be. I had a couple of hours. All I could
spare. There is some admirable work there, all the same."
"I was not aware that Doctor Scales was an art critic."
"Neither was I; but when I see a landscape that is a faithful rendering
of nature in some beautiful or terrible mood, I cannot help admiring
it."
"Some people profess to be very fond of pictures."
"I am one of those foolish people, Lady Martlett."
"And have you a valuable collection, Doctor Scales?"
"Collection? Well, I have a folio with a few water-colours in it, given
me by artist friends instead of fees, and I have a few photographs; that
is about all. As to their value--well, if sold, they would perhaps
fetch thirty shillings."
Lady Martlett looked at him angrily, for she felt that he was assuming
poverty to annoy her.
"Your Ladyship looks astonished; but I can assure you that a poor
crotchety physician does not get much besides the thanks of grateful
patients."
"I noticed that there were a great many portraits at the Academy," said
her Ladyship, "portraits of great and famous men."
"Yes; of men, too, who are famous without being great," said the doctor,
laughing.
"Indeed!" said Lady Martlett. "I thought the two qualities went
together."
"In anyone else," said Jack, "that would be a vulgar error: in your
Ladyship, of course, though it may be an error, it cannot be vulgar."
"How dearly I should like to box your ears!" thought Lady Martlett, as
she gazed at the provoking face before her. "He doesn't respect me a
bit. He doesn't care for me. The man is a very stone."
"Did you notice the portraits of some of the fashionable beauties,
Doctor Scales?" she continued, ignoring his compliment, and leading him
back to the topic on hand.
"O yes," he said; "several of them, and it set me thinking."
"No? Really!" said her Ladyship, with a mocking laugh. "Was Doctor
Scales touched by the beauty of some of the painted canvases with
speaking eyes?"
"No; not a bit," he said cheerily--"not a bit. It set me wondering how
it was that Lady Martlett's portrait was not on the walls."
"I am not a fashionable beauty," said the lady haughtily.
"Well, let us say a beauty, and not fashionable."
A flash of triumph darted from Lady Martlett's eyes. He had granted,
then, that she was beautiful--at last.
But Jack Scales saw the look.
"I have no desire to be painted for an exhibition," said Lady Martlett
quietly.
"But I thought all ladies loved to be admired."
"Surely not all," she replied. "Are all women so weak?"
"Well, I don't know. That is a question that needs discussing. I am
disposed to think they are. It is a woman's nature; and when she does
not care for admiration, she is either very old, or there is something
wrong."
"Why, you libel our sex."
"By no means, madam. I did not say that they love the admiration of
many. Surely she must be a very unpleasant woman indeed who does not
care for the admiration of one man."
"He is caught!" thought Lady Martlett, with a strange feeling of
triumph. Perhaps there was something else in her sensation, but she
would not own it then.
"Perhaps you are right," she said quietly. "It may be natural; but in
these days, Doctor Scales, education teaches us to master our weakness."
"Which most of us do," he said, with a bow, "But really, if your
Ladyship's portrait, painted by a masterly hand, had been hung."--He
stopped short, as if thinking how to say his next words.
"Well, doctor?" she said, giving him a look that he caught, weighed, and
valued on the instant at its true worth.
"It would have had a crowd around it to admire."
"The artist's work, doctor?"
"No, madam; the beauty of the features the artist had set himself to
limn."
"Is this a compliment, doctor, or a new form of bantering Lady
Scarlett's guest?" said the visitor, rather bitterly.
"Neither the one nor the other, but the simple truth."
Lady Martlett fought hard to conceal the exultation; nay, more, the
thrill of pleasure that ran through her nerves as she heard these words;
but though outwardly she seemed quite calm, her cheeks were more highly
coloured than usual, and her voice sounded deeper and more rich.
Jack Scales told himself she was plotting to humble him to the very
dust, so he stood upon his guard.
Perhaps he did not know himself. Who does? If he had, he might have
acted differently as he met Lady Martlett's eyes when she raised hers
and said; "Ah, then, Doctor Scales has turned courtier and flatterer."
"No; I was speaking very sincerely."
"Ought I to sit here," said Lady Martlett, "and listen to a gentleman
who tells me I am more handsome than one of the fashionable beauties of
the season?"
"Why not?" he said, smiling. "Is the truthful compliment so
displeasing?"
"No," she said softly; "I do not think it is;" and beneath her lowered
lashes, the look of triumph intensified as she led him on to speak more
plainly.
"It ought not to be," he said, speaking warmly now. "I have paid you a
compliment, Lady Martlett, but it is in all sincerity."
"He will be on his knees to me directly," she thought, "and then--"
"For," he continued, "woman generally is a very beautiful work of
creation: complicated, wonderful--mentally and corporeally--perfect."
"Perfect, Doctor Scales?"
"Yes, madam; perfect. Your Ladyship, for instance, is one of the most--
I think I may say _the_ most perfect woman I ever saw."
"Doctor Scales?" she said quickly, as she drew herself up, half-angry,
but thoroughly endorsing his words; and then to herself, in the triumph
that flushed her as she saw the animation in his eyes and the colour in
his checks: "At last he is moved; he never spoke or looked like that
before." Then aloud: "You are really very complimentary, Doctor
Scales;" and she gave him a sharp arrow-like glance, that he saw was
barbed with contempt.
"Well, yes, Lady Martlett, I suppose I am," he said; "but it was truly
honest, and I will be frank with you. Really, I never come into your
presence--I never see you--But no; I ought not to venture to say so
much."
"Why not?" she said, with an arch look. "I am not a silly young girl,
but a woman who has seen something of the world."
"True, yes," he said, as if encouraged; and Lady Martlett's bosom rose
and fell with the excitement of her expected triumph.
Still he hesitated, and asked himself whether he was misjudging her in
his belief that she intended to lead him on to a confession of his love,
and then cast him off with scorn and insult; but as he looked at her
handsome face and shifting eager eyes, he told himself that there was
something mingled with the partiality for him which she might possess,
and he became hard as steel.
"Well," she said, smiling, and that smile had in it a power that nearly
brought him to her feet; "you were saying: `I never see you'--"
"Exactly. Yes," he said quickly; "I will say it. You'll pardon me, I
know. I am but a weak man, with an intense love--"
She drew a long breath, and half turned away her head.
"For the better parts of my profession." Lady Martlett's face became
fixed, and she listened to him intently.
"Yes; I confess I do love my profession, and I never see you in your
perfection of womanly beauty, without feeling an intense desire to
dissect you."
Lady Martlett started up from the seat, where, in a studied attitude,
she had well displayed the graceful undulations of her figure, and stood
before Jack Scales, proud, haughty, and indignant. Her eyes flashed;
there was an ardent colour in her cheeks, which then seemed to flood
back to her heart, leaving her white with anger.
"How dare you!" she began, in the mortification and passion that came
upon her; and then, thoroughly mastered, and unable to control herself
longer, she burst into a wild hysterical fit of laughter and hurried out
of the room.
Jack Scales rose and stood watching the door as it swung to, and there
was a look of tenderness and regret in his countenance as he muttered:
"Too bad--too bad! Brutal and insulting! And to a woman--a lady of her
position and refinement! I'll go and beg her pardon--ask her to forgive
me--make confession of why I spoke so.--No. Put my head beneath her
heel, to be crushed by her contempt! It wouldn't do. She goaded me to
it. She wants to triumph over me. I could read her looks. If she
cared for me, and those looks were real, I'd go down upon my knees
humbly and tell her my sorrow; and then--then--then--What should I do
then?
"Hah!" he cried, after a pause, "what would you do then, Jack Scales!
Go away, and never set eyes upon her again, for it would not do. It is
impossible, and I am a fool." He stood with his brows knit for a few
minutes, and then said, in quite a different mood: "And now I am a man
of the world again. Yes; you are about the most handsome woman I ever
saw; but a woman is but a woman to a doctor, be she titled or only a
farmer's lass. Blue blood is only a fiction after all; for if I blooded
my lady there, pretty Fanny Cressy, and one of Brother William Cressy's
pigs into separate test tubes, and placed them in a rack; and if,
furthermore, I left them for a few minutes, and some busybody took them
up and changed their places, I might, when I returned, fiddle about for
long enough with the various corpuscles, but I could not tell which was
which.--Lady Martlett, I am your very obedient servant, but I am not
going to be your rejected slave."
Volume 2, Chapter VII.