Volume Two—Chapter Six.
How Lady Martlett Humbled the Doctor.
“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.”