Dr. Clatworthy was a man in many respects uncommon. To begin with, he had
plenty of money; and next, he was as full of crazes as of learning.
One of these crazes was astronomy, and another was mud-baths, and another
was open windows and long walks in the open air, and another was
skin-diseases and nervous disorders, and another was the Lost Tribes, and
another was Woman's Education; with the Second Advent and Vegetable Diet
to fill up the spaces. Some of these he had picked up at Oxford, and
others in his travels abroad, especially in Moravia: but the sum total was
that you'd call him a crank. Coming by chance into Cornwall, he had taken
an uncommon fancy to our climate and its 'humidity'--that was the word.
There was nothing like it (he said) for the skin--leastways, if taken
along with mud-baths. He had bought half a dozen acres of land at the
head of the creek, a mile above Merry-Garden, and built a whacking great
house upon it, full of bathrooms and adorned upon the outside with statues
in baked earth to represent Trigonometry and the other heathen gods.
He had given the contract to an up-country builder, and brought the
material (which was mainly brick and Bath-stone) from the Lord knows
where; but it was delivered up the creek by barges. There were days, in
the year before William John's death, when these barges used to sail up
past Merry-Garden at high springs in procession without end. But now the
house had been standing furnished for three good years, with fruit-gardens
planted on the slopes below it, and basins full of gold-fish: and there
Dr. Clatworthy lived with half a score of male patients as mad as himself.
For, though rich, he didn't spend his money in enjoyment only, but charged
his guests six guineas a week, while he taught 'em the secret of perfect
health.
Well, you may laugh at the man, but I've heard my mother (who remembers
him) say that, with all his faults, he had the complexion of a baby.
She would describe him as an unmarried man, of the age of fifty,--he had a
prejudice against marrying under fifty,--dressed in nankeen for all
weathers, with no other protection than a whalebone umbrella, and likewise
remarkable for a fine Roman nose. 'Twas this Clatworthy, by the way, that
a discharged gardener advised to go down to Merry-Garden and make a second
fortune by picking cherries, "for," said he, "having such a nose as yours
you can hook on to a bough with it and pick with both hands." I don't
myself believe that he came to visit Merry-Garden on any such
recommendation; but visit it he did, and often, while his own trees were
growing; and there his noble deportment and his lordly way with money made
an impression on Aunt Barbree, who had already heard talk of his
capabilities.
So--as I was saying--one day, being near upon driven to her wits' end,
Aunt Barbree marched the boy up to Hi-jeen Villa (as the new great house
was called), and begged for Dr. Clatworthy's advice; "for I do believe,"
she wound up, "the boy is sinking into a very low state of despondency."
"And so should I be despondent," said the doctor, eyeing Nandy, "if I had
that number of pimples and didn't know a sure way to cure them."
"Fresh fruit don't seem to do no good," said Aunt Barbree, "though I've
heard it confidently recommended."
The doctor made Nandy take off his shirt. "Why," said he,
enthusiastic-like, "the boy's a perfect treasure!"
"You think so?" said Aunt Barbree, a bit dubious, not quite catching his
drift.
"A case, ma'am, like this wouldn't yield to fresh fruit, not in ten years.
It's throwing away your time. Mud is the cure, ma'am--mud-bathing and
constant doses of sulphur-water, varied with a plenty of exercise to open
the pores of the skin."
"Sulphur-water?" Aunt Barbree had used it now and then upon her
fruit-trees, to keep away mildew. She doubted Nandy's taking kindly to
it. "He's easier led, sir, than driven," she said.
"My good woman," said the doctor, "you leave him to me. I'll take up this
case for nothing but the honour and glory of it. He shall board and lodge
here and live like a fighting-cock, and not a penny-piece to pay.
As for curing him--if it'll give you any confidence, look at my
complexion, ma'am. What d'ye think of it?"
"Handsome, sure 'nough," said Aunt Barbree.
"Satin, ma'am--complete satin!" said the doctor. "And I'm like that all
over."
"Well to be sure, if Nandy don't object--" said Aunt Barbree,
hurried-like.
Nandy thought that to live for a while in a fine house and be fed like a
fighting-cock would be a pleasant change; and so the bargain was struck.
Poor lad, he repented it before the first week was out. He couldn't abide
the mud-baths, which he took in the garden, planted up to the chin in a
ring with a dozen old gentlemen, stuck out there like cabbages, and with
Clatworthy planted in the middle and haranguing by the hour, sometimes on
politics and Napoleon Bonaparte, sometimes on education, but oftenest on
his system and the good they ought to be deriving from it. Moreover,
though they fed him well enough, according to promise, the sulphur-water
acted on his stomach in a way that prevented any lasting satisfaction with
his vittles. In short, before the week was out he wanted to run away
home; and only one thing hindered him--that he'd fallen in love.
This was the way it happened. Dr. Clatworthy, having notions of his own
upon matrimony, and money to carry them out, had picked out a pretty child
and adopted her, and set her to school with a Miss St. Maur of Saltash, to
be trained up in his principles, till of an age to make him 'a perfect
helpmeet,' as he called it.
The poor child--she was called Jessica Venning to begin with, but the
doctor had rechristened her Sophia--was grown by this time into a young
lady of seventeen, pretty and graceful. She could play upon the harp and
paint in water-colours, and her needlework was a picture, but not half so
pretty a picture as her face. She came from Devonshire, from the edge of
the moors behind Newton Abbot, where the folks have complexions all
cream-and-roses. She'd a figure like a wand for grace, and an eye
half-melting, half-roguish. People might call Clatworthy a crank, or
whatever word answered to it in those days: but he had made no mistake in
choosing the material to make him a bride--or only this, that the poor
girl couldn't bear the look or the thought of him. Well, the time was
drawing on when Clatworthy, according to his plans, was to marry her, and
to prepare her for it he had taken to writing her a letter every day,
full of duty and mental improvement. Part of Nandy's business was to walk
over with these letters to Saltash. The doctor explained to him that it
would open the pores of his skin, and he must wait for an answer.
And so it came about that Nandy saw Miss Sophia, and fell over head and
ears in love with her.
But towards the end of the second week he felt that he could stand life at
Hi-jeen Villa no longer--no, not even for the sake of seeing Miss Sophia
daily.
"It's no use, miss," he told her very dolefully, as he delivered Friday's
letter; "I've a-got to run for it, and I'm going to run for it to-morrow."
He heaved a great sigh.
"But how foolish of you, Nandy!" said Miss Sophia, glancing up from the
letter. "When you know it's doing you so much good!"
"Good?" said Nandy, savage-like. "How would _you_ like it? There now--
I'm sorry, Miss Sophia. I forgot--and now I've made you cry!"
"I--I sh--shan't like it at all," quavered Miss Sophia, blinking away her
tears. "And--and it's not at all the same thing."
"No," agreed Nandy; "no, o' course not: you ha'n't got no pimples.
Oh, Miss Sophia," he went on, speaking very earnest, "would you really
like me better if I weren't so speckity?"
"Ever so much better, Nandy. You can't think what an improvement it would
be."
"'Tis only skin-deep," said Nandy. "At the bottom of my heart, miss,
I'd die for you. . . . But I can't stand it no longer. To-morrow I've
made up my mind to run home to Merry-Garden: and there, if it gives you
any pleasure, I can go on taking mud-baths on my own account."
"Merry-Garden?" said Miss Sophia. "Why, that's where Dr. Clatworthy wants
us to take tea with him to-morrow! He writes that he is inviting Miss St
Maur to bring all the girls in the top class, and he will meet us there.
. . . See, here's the letter enclosed."
"That settles it," said Nandy.
He walked home that afternoon with two letters--a hypocritical little note
from Sophia, a high polite one from Miss St. Maur. Miss St. Maur
accepted, on behalf of her senior young ladies, Dr. Clatworthy's truly
delightful invitation to take tea with him on the morrow. She herself--
she regretted to say--would be detained until late in the afternoon by
some troublesome tradesmen who were fixing new window-sashes in the
schoolroom. She could not trust them to do the work correctly except
under her supervision, and to defer it would entail a week's delay, the
schoolroom being vacant only on Saturday afternoons. The young ladies
should arrive, however, punctually at 3.30 p.m., in charge of Miss de la
Porcheraie, her excellent French instructress: she herself would follow at
5 o'clock or thereabouts, and meanwhile she would leave her charges,
in perfect confidence, to Dr. Clatworthy's polished hospitality. . . .
Those were the words. My mother--who was fond of telling the story--had
'em by heart.