Volume One—Chapter Eight.
Damon and Pythias.
He is not a very romantic Damon is Doctor Jolly, nor is he at the present time to be seen under favourable circumstances, or in the most picturesque of situations.
The fact is, Dr Jolly has got an attack of the gout, “his old friend,” as he calls that hereditary and choleric disease; and here he is, seated in his snug parlour—he knew how to live well and be comfortable did the doctor—with his feet in a pail of cold water, like Patience on a monument smiling at grief; (one can’t help quoting the “noble bard.”) He was pursuing a rather violent method for reducing the inflammation in his pedal extremities in order that he might be able to go out and pay his usual pharmaceutical round of visits, and he was writhing and swearing inwardly, most probably, and often aloud, from the pain of the gout and remedy combined.
“Bless my soul! Deb!” he exclaimed, as irascibly as his natural good temper would allow, to his sister Deborah, our Pythias, who was in the room along with him. “Bless my soul! Whew I what a twinge. Confound the gout, Deborah!”
“Confound it with all my heart, Richard, if it will do you any good,” she replied, calmly, drawing the thread through the heel of a stocking which she was darning; “but you know, Richard, it’s your own fault. You will drink that port wine, and you must take the consequences.”
“Bosh, Deb; don’t preach. Why, I only drank two glasses yesterday at lunch, and—”
“How about the bottle after dinner?”
“Well, you know, Pringle was here, and hospitality you know, Deb, hospitality you know—”
“Hospitality won’t preserve your health, Richard.”
“True Deb, quite true; but I couldn’t help it, and the gout’s getting better now, the pain’s nearly gone. Whew! there’s another twinge. Confound the gout, I say!”
Damon was a stout, florid, jolly-looking—there is no other word so expressive—man of forty-five or thereabouts; Pythias—some apology is due for her sex in carrying out the classical metaphor, although when you know her better you will acknowledge the propriety of the allusion—was some five years the elder, as she could look back with complacency or otherwise on her fiftieth birthday. She was tall and ungainly, and her face was so set and deficient of mobility that it looked as if it were carved out of mahogany, to which wood indeed its colour bore some resemblance. She evidently took after her male parent more than her mother, and her brother was right when he called her a “chip of the old block.”
Damon was genial and hearty; Pythias cold and formal, as befitted an austere virgin of her years; but both possessed the same kind heart, and you would rarely find such a good-natured pair, who were so fond of each other, and so considerate and charitable in every sense of the word, to those around them.
Doctor Jolly was emphatically one of the jolliest country-practitioners in the country, and had one of the best practices, and was better liked than any other disciple of Aesculapius in the county. For miles round the farmers and well-to-do, as well as poorer people, knew his pleasant weather-beaten face and hearty voice. He “was so sociable and pleasant-like,” as the country folk would say; and his well-known portly form—he rode about sixteen stone—and cheery “How de-do!” used to be eagerly welcomed when he came riding round on his thorough-bred heavy-weight hunter, with his two favourite little black and tan terriers, “Huz, and Buz his brother,” scudding at its heels.
He and his sister had lived together at Bigton for many years past. The doctor had succeeded his father, and he his father, as far back as lay within the memory of “the oldest inhabitant”—the practice with its connection having been kept in the family for nearly a century.
Bigton is a very quiet rising little watering place, situated some five or six miles from The Poplars and Hartwood village, at the mouth of the river, wherein Tom Hartshorne was catching his perch under the eyes of Miss Lizzie. Bigton is by no means an ostentatious sort of place: it lacks self-assertion, and is content to occupy a back seat, as it were, in the assembly of “Fashionable Resorts,” when, if it would but only put itself forward it might be bidden to “come up higher.”
It is really a pleasant little place, and has all the requirements to make it an agreeable retreat for the hot summer months, when one longs for the seaside with that intense ardour which only a Londoner knows. Bigton has a pier—a shabby little pier it must be confessed—a sort of esplanade, which is as long as that of its Brobdignagian rival, where George’s Pavilion, that hideous monstrosity, used once to attract admirers—an excellent beach of fine grey sand, and a splendid common, all covered with gorse and furze, whereon juveniles can play “the criquette,” as Monsieur Jeune France calls our national game. Beyond that, it has a splendid country around for jaunts and pic-nics; and, as for antiquities, why, is it not within a decent drive of one of the most historic old castles in the kingdom, a castle which has its ancient old keep still in preservation, and which was one of the few Royalist strongholds that held out successfully against the Puritan general and his myrmidon Roundheads?
Yet, with all these advantages, Bigton has not yet become a favourite with the multitude who annually adjourn to the seaside, and this neglect is not by any means complained of by the quiet few who wish to avoid the racket of a fashionable watering place, and come down here in order to have a quiet enjoyable holiday. The fact is, Bigton reckons for its standing more upon the support of its residents than on stray birds of passage; and, of these, it has a larger proportion perhaps than some of its better known and more highly cracked-up rivals. It has nice trim rows of terraces facing the sea, and plenty of comfortable detached houses which are generally let to people who stay for mouths, and even a year or two, instead of hiring for merely a six week’s occupation. Bigton is therefore busy all the year round, instead of having a season of three months, and being a necropolis for the rest of the year: indeed, the annual visitors who come down in summer do not alter the look of the place much: it is too respectable a town to bother itself about casual tourists or London holiday-makers. In the summer the landholders and great people of the surrounding country come from their inland homes, and take lodgings for the bathing: so Bigton is very exclusive and keeps entirely to its own set.
Among not only the residents—returning to our story—but also the regular visitors, Doctor Jolly was a general favourite, and the doctor supreme of the locality; and he was as good a surgeon and physician as he was a favourite. He was not the man to nurse a hypochondriacal patient by giving him various bottles of medicine containing coloured water, or pills “as before,” consisting of harmless dough. No, he would tell them to get out and take plenty of exercise and mayhap dip in the sea, and above all to get good food and plenty of it. No gruel and arrowroot from him. “All damned slops and dishwater,” he would say; but a mutton chop three times a day, and a glass or two of really good port wine. “Stop, I’ll send you over some of my own, and you may bet your boots that that’s prime stuff,” he would offer with a knowing wink of his eye, riding off to escape a denial.
He was a jolly, good-natured man, and such a really good minister to the ills of human nature, that he had it all his own way at Bigton, and almost throughout the entire county. His practice was so large, that he had to ride miles every day to do justice to his patients; and yet he would hire no assistant, except a mild, gentlemanly pupil, whom he kept to do the home business in his surgery.
“Catch me!” he would say, “having a fellow to cut me out with all the pretty girls and old ladies! No, sir, as long as I can cross a horse, no other sawbones shall rule here but myself. I’m hanged if they shall, sir?”
One or two other medical men had tried rashly to set up to him in opposition at Bigton; but never getting anyone who was ill to patronise them, they had to give up at length in disgust. One, indeed, still hung on, as he had bought a house and could not sell it; but he had to take to the coal trade to support his family. Not that Doctor Jolly grudged him a living, for no matter what he said, he would cheerfully have lent his brother practitioner a helping hand; but then no one would let anyone else visit them in Bigton but our Damon, so the poor—Othello’s-occupation’s-gone-M.D. had to buy and sell chaldrons of the best Wallsend and Seaborne, and fed his family in that way.
Dr Jolly’s house was one of the best and nicest kept mansions in Bigton, for the doctor loved to live well, as he could afford it; and his sister Deborah was one of the most valuable housewives that could be cited. It was a long, low, old-fashioned house, with a splendid garden and paddock adjoining, for the doctor’s horses, of which he kept three—he used to follow the harriers in the time of the old squire, Roger Hartshorne—but he was getting too heavy for that now, besides having too much to do. Now he was devoted to poultry and pet deer, pet hares, pet dogs, pet animals of all kinds, even cats, and had all his out-houses, yards, and paddocks filled with his various adopted nurslings.
It was a wonder, considering his disposition, that he had remained a bachelor so long; but then he had his sister Deborah to take care of him, and as he would say, “Bless my soul, man, what more do I want?” His old friends who had known him for years would hint at a disappointment in early life; but I don’t think care sat heavily on the doctor’s brow, as it does on some of us, for he lived well, and enjoyed life as he found it, and did not seem inclined to give up his present life for all the unknown sea of troubles into which matrimony might plunge him. Perhaps he saw too much and too many of the gentler sex to hazard a selection, but the probable reason was that he was too comfortable as he was. He and his sister pulled along capitally as Damon and Pythias, as they had in fact done all their lives; both were freely outspoken to each other; and if Deborah had the pre-eminence within, the doctor was master out of doors.
The doctor relished good cheer, and gave capital dinner parties, as he was the most hospitable man in the county. He had had one the evening before, and hence his slight attack of the gout; its invariable consequence this morning. He said he had inherited the aristocratic infliction from his sire, along with a good digestion and his practice; but perhaps Pythias, or Deborah, was not far wrong in ascribing it to his love of good living and partiality for port. The gout made him swear a little, but he did not really mean anything by it: if all our oaths were as harmless as his, the recording angel who watches over that special failing of human nature would have a sinecure.
“Confound the gout, Deb!” he exclaimed, as that sharp twinge caught him in his left foot, and made him writhe with ill-concealed agony. “Confound the gout! I’ll drink no more of that infernal port! that is,” he added, shortly afterwards, as the pain subsided, “not beyond a glass or two at lunch; and perhaps a bottle after dinner, eh, Deb? Ho! ho! ho!” And he laughed his jolly cheery laugh, as he took his feet out of the tub of water, in which they had been hitherto reposing; and, drawing on his boots with difficulty, prepared himself for setting out on his morning round of visits.
“Better now, Richard?” enquired Pythias, as he stood up fully caparisoned in the matter of his lower extremities.
“Yes, Deb, all right now; the plaguey thing has gone away for the present, and won’t trouble me again till next time. My ‘off stepper’ is somewhat sore still, but it’ll be as sound as sixpence by the time I get back.”
“Are you going far, Richard?”
“Well, I think I’ll pay a call at the dowager’s, and all about Hartwood; and as I shan’t be back in time for lunch, I’ll drop in and feed at Pringle’s—uncommon pretty little girl his sister is. Bless my soul! Deb, she’s enough to make one think of marrying, although I suspect that sly dog Tom Hartshorne’s after her—we old fellows have got no chance.”
“Take care, Richard. She would probably jump to have you. I know what girls are! But how is that poor girl Susan Hartshorne getting on?”
“Really, Deb, do you know I think she has been looking much brighter lately. I have observed this within the last week or so—there is a decided change for the better. She has lost nearly all that frightened look she used to have; and I would not be surprised if she eventually recovered her mind. It’s a sad pity, Deb, bless my soul! a sad pity! She was a nice child—confound that old woman! and she’s now such an interesting-looking girl—a sad pity that old hag frightened her senses away.”
“What do you think is the reason of this change in her?” asked Deborah.
“Well, I can hardly tell, Deb; you see, Tom has been down, and there’s that friend of his, too—don’t like him—and she has seen more company than usual—all these things may have something to do with it; but I think that the improvement is all due to that new governess, Miss Kingscott—by Jove! she is a fine girl if you like, a—”
“Take care, Richard, take care!” she said, as Doctor Jolly went out of the room, after poking about vainly in every direction for his gloves.
He mounted his horse which the groom held at the door, and as he rode away, he murmured to himself, “Dooced fine girl! I wouldn’t be surprised if the artful jade caught me after all!” And off he cantered down the street, bowing affably, and waving his hand with a cordial “How-de-do!” to everyone he met, for he knew everybody, on his way to Hartwood.