In a quiet old-fashioned street near Portman Square there is a door
with a brass plate upon it, bearing the name "Dr. Carter." The door
is not singular in possessing a brass plate, for almost every house
in the street displays one, being inhabited nearly entirely by
doctors and musical professors. I do not attempt to explain why it
is so,--whether that part of London is especially unhealthy, and so
requires constant and varied medical advice, or whether there is
something in the air conducive to harmony; or whether the musical
professors attract the doctors, or the doctors the professors, I
leave to more learned heads to discover, only hazarding the
suggestion that perhaps the highly strung musical nerves may be an
interesting study to the faculty, or that music may have charms to
soothe the savage medical breast or drive away the evil spirits of
the dissecting-room. Anyhow, the fact remains that North Crediton
Street is the resort of doctors and musical men, and that on one of
the doors stands the plate of Dr. Carter.
It was an old-fashioned, substantially built house, built about the
beginning of the last century, when people knew how to build solidly,
if not beautifully. It had good thick walls, to which you might
whisper a secret without confiding it to your next-door neighbor, and
firm, well-laid floors, on which you might dance, if you had a mind
to, without fear of descending suddenly into the basement. There
were heavy frames to the windows, and small squares of glass, and
wooden staircases with thick, twisted banisters,--a house altogether,
at which housemaids looked with contempt, as something infinitely
less "genteel" than the "splendid mansions" of lath and plaster,
paint and gilding, which are run up with such magic speed nowadays.
We have no need to ring the bell and disturb the soft-voiced,
deferential man-servant, out of livery, from the enjoyment of his
evening paper in the pantry, for we can pass uninvited and
unannounced into Dr. Carter's consulting-room, and take a look at it
and him. There is nothing remarkable about the room; a book-case
full of medical and scientific books; a large writing-table with
pigeon holes for papers and a stethoscope on the top; a reading-lamp
with a green shade, and an india-rubber tube to supply it with gas
from the burner above; a side-table with more books and papers and a
small galvanic battery; a large india-rubber plant in the window;
framed photographs of eminent physicians and surgeons over the
mantelpiece; a fire burning low in the grate; a thick turkey carpet
and heavy leather chairs; and there you have an inventory of the
furniture, to arrange before your mind's eye if you think it worth
while.
There is something remarkable in the man, John Clement Carter, M.D.,
but I cannot give you an inventory of him, or make a broker's list of
eyes and forehead, nose and mouth. He is not a regularly handsome
man, not one that a sculptor would model or an artist paint, but his
is a face that you never forget if you have once seen it; there is
something about him that makes people move out of his path
involuntarily; and strangers ask, "Who is that?" Power is stamped in
his deep-set eyes and the firm lines of mouth and chin,--power which
gives beauty even to an ugly thing, throwing a grandeur and dignity
round a black, smoky engine, or a huge, ponderous steam-hammer.
Indeed, power is beauty; for there is no real beauty in weakness,
physical or mental. His eyes had the beauty of many doctors'
eyes,--kind and patient, from experience of human weakness and
trouble of all sorts; keen and penetrating, as having looked through
the mists of pain and disease, searching for hope, ay, and finding it
too sometimes where other men could only find despair; brave and
steady, as having looked through the glorious glass of science and
seen, more plainly the more he looked, the working of the Everlasting
Arms; for surely when science brings confusion and doubt, it proves
that the eye of the beholder is dim or distorted, or that he is too
ignorant to use the glass rightly. But there is a different look in
his eyes to-night; pain and trouble and weakness are far from his
thoughts; and he is not gazing through the glass of science, though
he has a _Medical Review_ open before him, and a paper-knife in his
hand to cut the leaves; his eyes have wandered to a bunch of Russian
violets in a specimen glass on the table; and he is looking through
rose-colored spectacles at a successful past, a satisfactory present,
and a beautiful future.
I need not tell my readers that this Dr. John Clement Carter was the
Somersetshire boy whom Dr. Savile had taken by the hand, and whose
talents had made the ladder which carried him up to eminence. The
kind old doctor liked to tell the story over a glass of port wine to
the friends round his shining mahogany (he was old-fashioned, and
thought scorn of claret and dinners _a la Russe_). "I was the making
of the man," he would say; "and I'm as proud of him, by Jove! sir, as
if he were a son of my own."
It is quite as difficult to rise in the world gracefully as to come
down; but every one agreed that John Carter managed to do it, and
just from this reason, that there was no pretence about him. He did
not intrude his low origin on every one, forcing it on people's
attention with that fidgety uneasiness which will have people know it
if they are interested in the subject or not, which is only one
remove from the unworthy pride that tries to hide it away altogether.
Neither did he boast of it as something very much to his credit; but
to any one who cared to know he would say, "My family were poor
working people in Somersetshire, and I don't even know if I had a
grandfather; and I owe everything to Dr. Savile." And he would say
it with a smile and a quiet manner, as if it were nothing to be
ashamed of and nothing to be proud of, but just a fact which was
hardly of interest; and his manner somehow made people feel that
birth and breeding were after all mere insignificant circumstances of
life, and of no account by the side of talent and success. "He's a
good fellow, John Carter, and a clever fellow too, without any humbug
about him," the men said; and the women thought much the same, though
they expressed it differently. Indeed, the glimpse of his early
humble country life, simply given, without any pretence or
concealment, grew to be considered an effective, picturesque
background, which showed up to advantage his present success and
dignified position. It was quite true that there was no humbug or
concealment about him; that was the very truth he told; and yet,
somehow, as time went on, the words lost the full meaning they had to
him at first. Don't you know, if you use them even in our prayers,
alas! they are no longer the expression of our feeling, but the words
come first and the feeling follows or does not follow. And then,
don't you know sometimes how we hear with other people's ears, and
see with other people's eyes? And so John Carter, when he said those
simple, truthful words, grew to see the picturesque background,--the
thatched cottage, and the honeysuckle-covered porch, and the grand
old patriarch with white hair, one of nature's noblemen, leaning on
his staff and blessing his son; and he gradually forgot the pigsty
close to the cottage door, and father in a dirty green smock and
hob-nailed boots, doing what he called "mucking it out," and stopping
to wipe the heat from his brow with a snuffy, red cotton handkerchief.
But come back from the pigsty to the violets which are scenting the
consulting-room, and luring Dr. Carter, not unwillingly, from the
_Medical Review_ to thoughts of the giver. Her name is Violet, too,
and so are her eyes, though the long lashes throw such a shadow that
you might fancy they were black themselves. It is not every
one--indeed, it is John Carter alone--who is privileged to look
straight down into those eyes, and see the beauty of their color;
only he, poor, foolish fellow, forgets to take advantage of his
opportunity, and only notices the great love for him that shines
there and turns his brain with happiness. His hand trembles as he
stretches it to take the specimen glass; and the cool, fragrant
flowers lightly touch his lip as he raises them to his face.
"Pshaw!" I hear you say, reminding me of my own words, "there is no
beauty in weakness, and this is weakness indeed!--a sensible man,
past the heyday and folly of youth, growing maudlin and sentimental
over a bunch of violets!" No, reader, it is power--the strongest
power on earth,--the power of love. He had been used to say that his
profession was his lady-love, and he had looked on with wondering
incredulous eyes at the follies and excesses of young lovers; he was
inclined to think it was a mild form of mania, and required physical
treatment. And so he reached five-and-thirty unscathed, and slightly
contemptuous of others less fortunate than himself; when, one day, a
girl's blue eyes, looking shyly at him through dark lashes, brought
him down once and forever from his pedestal of fancied superiority;
and before he could collect his arguments, or reason himself out of
it, he was past cure, hopelessly, helplessly, foolishly in love.
They had been engaged for two days; it was two days since this clever
young doctor, this rising, successful man, with such stores of
learning, such a solid intellect, such a cool, calm brain, had stood
blushing and stammering before a girl of eighteen. If I were to
write down the words he said, you would think my hero an idiot pure
and simple; the most mawkish and feeble twaddle of the most debased
of penny periodicals was vastly superior to what Dr. Carter stammered
out that day. But is not this generally the case? Beautiful,
poetical love scenes are frequent in plays and books, but very rare
in real life. There is not one love scene in a thousand that would
bear being taken down in shorthand, printed in plain, black type, and
read by critical eyes through commonplace spectacles. Nevertheless,
the feelings are no doubt sublime, though the words may be
ridiculous. He was quite another man altogether (happily for him)
when he went to Sir John Meredith, and told him plainly that he was
no match for his daughter as far as birth went.
"My good fellow," the sensible little baronet answered, "there are
only about ten families in England that can put their pedigree by the
side of the Merediths, and it don't seem to me to make much
difference, if you rise from the ranks yourself, or if your father or
grandfather did it."
"I can scarcely claim even to be a gentleman," the young man went on,
feeling pretty sure of success by that time.
"Not another word, my dear boy; not another word! I respect your
candor, and I esteem you very highly as an honest man---the noblest
work of God, you know, eh?--though I'd like to hear any one say that
you were not a gentleman as well. There, go along! shake hands! God
bless you! You'll find Violet in the drawing-room. Sly little puss!
but I saw what was coming--and mind you dine with us this evening at
seven sharp--old-fashioned folk, old-fashioned hours."
I think the wary old baronet also respected Dr. Carter's income, and
esteemed very highly his success, and having weighed the advantages
of family and birth against success and income, had found that the
latter were the more substantial in the worldly scales.
And so Dr. Carter was dreaming rosy dreams that evening in his quiet
room, as was fit and proper after two days' wandering in fairyland
with Violet Meredith. But as the scent of the violets had led him to
think of the giver, so it drew his thoughts away from her again back
to springtime many years ago at Sunnybrook, and the bank where the
earliest violets grew in the sheltered lane leading to the Croft
farm. Did ever violets smell so sweet as those? He remembered one
afternoon, after school, going to fetch the milk from the farm, and
the scent luring him across the little runlet by the side of the
path, which was swollen into a small, brawling brook by the lately
thawed snow. He set down the can safely before he made the venture;
and Dr. Carter laughed softly to himself to think how short and fat
the legs were that found the little stream such a mighty stride. He
was busy diving for the flowers among the layers of dead elm leaves,
which the blustering autumn winds had blown there, when a sound
behind him caused him to look round and there was the can upset, and
the young fox-hound quartered at the Croft licking up the white pool
from the pebbles. In his anger and fear and haste, he slipped as he
tried to jump back, and went full-length into the stream, and
scrambled out in a sad plight, and went home crying bitterly, with a
very wet pinafore, and dirty face, and empty milk can, with the cause
of his mishap, the sweet violets, still clasped unconsciously in his
little scratched hand. And his mother--ah! she was always a good
mother! He could remember still the comforting feeling of mother's
apron wiping away dirt and tears, and the sound of her voice bidding
him "Never mind! and hush up like a good little Laddie." His heart
felt very warm just then toward that mother of his; and he made up
his mind that, cost what trouble it might, he would go down and see
her before he was married, if it were only for an hour or two, just
to make sure that she was comfortable and not working about and
wearing herself out. His conscience pricked him a little at the
thought of what a pleasure the sight of him would have been to the
old woman, and how year after year had slipped away without his going
down. But still a comforting voice told him that he had been
substantially a good son, and it was accident and not intention that
had kept him away. "Anyhow," he said to himself, "another month
shall not pass without my seeing my mother."
At this moment the deferential man knocked at the door and aroused
Dr. Carter to the consciousness of how far his wandering thoughts had
carried him from his consulting room and _Medical Review_.
"What is it, Hyder?"
"Please, sir, there's some one wishes to see you. I told her it was
too late, and you was engaged very particular, but she wouldn't be
put off nohow, sir."
"What is her name?"
There was a slight smile disturbing the usually unruffled serenity of
Mr. Hyder's face, as if he had a lingering remembrance of something
amusing.
"She didn't give no name, sir, and she wouldn't say what she wanted,
though I asked if a message wouldn't do; but she said her business
was too particular for that, sir,"
"What sort of person is she?"
The corners of the man's mouth twitched, and he had to give a little
cough to conceal an incipient chuckle.
"Beg your pardon, sir. She appears to be from the country, sir.
Quite a countrified, homely old body, sir."
[Illustration: (Dr. Carter and his mother)]
Perhaps the odor of the violets and the country memories they had
called up made him more amiably inclined; but instead of the sharp,
decided refusal the servant expected, "Tell her it is long past my
time for seeing patients, and I am busy, and she must call again
to-morrow," he said, "Well, show her in;" and the man withdrew in
surprise.
"Countrified, homely old body." Somehow the description brought back
to his mind his mother coming down the brick path from the door at
home, with her Sunday bonnet on, and her pattens in her hand, and the
heavy-headed double stocks and columbines tapping against her short
petticoats. The doctor smiled to himself; and even while he smiled
the door was pushed open, and before him he saw, with a background of
the gas-lit hall and the respectful Hyder, by this time developed
into an incontrollable grin, his mother, in her Sunday bonnet and
with her pattens in her hand.