Volume Two—Chapter Fourteen.
The Doctor Goes Abroad.
“Ait-choo!” sneezed the doctor one morning towards the end of October, when the weather was getting damp and misty, as he entered his comfortable breakfast parlour, where Deborah was sitting as usual before the fire darning her interminable stockings. I believe if you walked into that room at any hour of the day or night, you would always find her at the same task, darning stockings, and she always seemed to have the same stocking, a half grey and white one with plenty of holes about the heel, in her hand.
“Ait-choo!” sneezed the doctor again. “Bless my soul, Deb,” he exclaimed, “I believe I have taken a cold. Confound it! Just what I might expect from toddling up to The Poplars last night on such a wild goose chase.”
“Well, you know, Richard, you would go out, and you threw off that comforter I took the trouble to wrap round your neck.”
“A lot of molly coddling! But you’re a good soul, Deb. What an old catamaran that old woman is to be sure.”
“Do you mean Mrs Hartshorne, Richard?”
“Bless my soul, Deb! Of course; who else should I mean? She’s a regular old devil incarnate, and her temper, never very good, has got quite awful now. I wanted her to go according to Trump’s advice; he’s a sensible man, and told her to compromise that case. It will never stand in law, so Trump says; and it’s better to give that rascal Markworth half the money now than expose the whole family, and have to give up the whole lot by and bye. Half a loaf is better than no bread, I say, and I would rather have it so for that poor girl’s sake.”
“And she won’t do it, Richard?”
“The devil a scrap she says. Bless my soul, Deb! she won’t hear of a compromise; she says she will see that rascal hanged first before he gets a penny of her money—and she’s right, too, by Gad?”
“Oh! Richard, Richard!” said Pythias, warningly.
“Well, she did not use exactly that language, but she meant it. I tell you what I’ve a mind to do, Deb.”
“What, Richard? Nothing rash I hope!” observed Deborah, with anxiety: she always looked upon her brother as a gay young fellow, who might suddenly rush off and commit some escapade, so she consequently was constantly on the tenter hooks of suspense. You see the doctor had a partiality for the fair sex. He was always fancying himself in love with every pretty young lady he came across, and innumerable were the frights Deborah had had in consequence. The doctor in fact was always committing himself, and only his universal bonhomie saved him from breaches of promises without number. He would be sensible enough and hold his own with men, but with women he was a very child in their hands. Deborah looked upon everybody in petticoats as special tempters and snares set in the path of her brother. She thought he was irresistible: and it was therefore a wonder with all the chances he had had and the many very serious flirtations he had engaged in that he had not yet been caught. He had got over his partiality for Miss Kingscott, now that the charmer had gone away, not that I wish to accuse the doctor of heartless conduct, or of being a “gay deceiver.” But to be in love was a chronic epidemic with him, and as Miss Kingscott was gone, he was in duty and of necessity bound to take up with someone else, Deborah knew that the doctor had of late been very attentive to a certain pretty little widow who had come down to stop at Bigton, and had called in the services of Aesculapius for some trifling nervous ailment—who knows what might come of it? The doctor had escaped often but he might be caught at last! The pitcher that often is carried scatheless to the well is broken in the end; so she was now in terror that the doctor was going to declare in his well-known manner that this pretty little widow was “a dooced fine girl!” and state that he was going to marry her. “Women are so designing; the artful wretches!” Pythias thought, “especially widows!” and she waited in nervous expectation to hear what Damon had “a mind to do!”
The doctor was in a thinking fit. He twirled his hat in his hands; and then that not being sufficient to conduce to reflection, he pulled out his bandana pocket-handkerchief and began to twist it round his fingers in all sorts of fanciful shapes.
“I tell you what I’ve a mind to do, Deb. I’m hanged if I don’t go over to that foreign Frenchy place, and try and fetch Susan back myself! Tom has gone away, and I daresay he made a mull of it before, and the old woman won’t do anything. I promised poor Roger Hartshorne to look after his children, and I’m hanged if I don’t go over there and bring her back!”
Pythias was at once relieved in her mind. It was not that artful designing creature then that Damon had in her thoughts. “Indeed, Richard!” she said, “but it is a long journey, and do you think at your time of life you can stand it?” she, like most country people who have never stirred out of their native wilds, looked upon a journey to France as if it comprised the circumnavigation of the globe.
“Bosh, Deb! Why it’s only a hundred and fifty miles or so from here to Havre, and I’ll be back in a couple of days at most! It is right for me to go, and I can just manage now to get away for two or three days, for there’s nobody ill and nothing doing; and that coal merchant fellow Dobbins, who came down here to set up for surgeon, can mind my practice for me. I’ll go round and ask him this morning; he’ll jump at the offer.”
“Well, if you think you ought to go, you must I suppose; and it is better now than any other time.”
“Of course I ought, and I will to, by Gad!” The doctor being a man of resolution, although he often did make hasty resolves, quickly settled his departure; and to the intense astonishment of everybody went away from Bigton for a week as he said, although he only intended to be away two days at the most, the whilom coal merchant Dobbins driving about in the doctor’s chaise, which he seldom used himself unless the gout was very bad indeed, and making the most of his short resign until Aesculapius proper should come back to his own again.
Doctor Jolly had never stirred out of his native town, save of course on short excursions into the surrounding neighbourhood, for nearly a quarter of a century; not for twenty-five years, ever since the time when he went to London to walk the boards of Guy’s Hospital, in order to acquire his medical education; and naturally such an expedition as the present was quite an era in his life.
But the doctor did not make “any bones” about it, as the popular expression runs. He packed up his traps in a small portmanteau; and after a very affecting farewell with Deborah, who fell upon his neck and embraced him, as if she were never going to see him again, telling him, “Take care of yourself, Richard! Do take care of yourself!” to which he responded in his cheery voice, “God bless my soul! Deb, of course I will. God bless you!” he rubbed his eyes, which were glistening, with his horny fist, and blowing his nose vigorously with his bandana, the doctor went off on his travels.
He made his way safely to Havre, and got over all right with the exception of being fearfully sea-sick on the passage. Oh! the blessing of being thin! Fat men suffer the tortures of the direst days of the Inquisition when attacked by the fell mal du mer! while the Misters Slenders escaped scatheless.
He had some little difficulty with the gendarmes of the custom house and the hotel touts, the latter of whom struggled for the possession of his manly form; but he finally escaped after being taken summarily to a caravanserai, where he left his luggage, and shortly afterwards set about finding the abode of Susan and Markworth.
By some mistake or other he got carried off to the railway station, and was taken some miles on the road to Paris. A fellow countryman, however, convinced him of his mistake, and showed him how to get back again to Havre. By the time he got back, however, evening had set in, and he experienced the greatest difficulty in finding the direction of the Rue Montmartre, for, even after finding the direction in which it lay, he was still at fault. How he blessed the “frog eating race” as he called them.
As the doctor’s knowledge of French was somewhat limited,—indeed, he only knew the word oui which he pronounced “Ooo”—he found some difficulty in finding his way. However, by dint of continually bawling out in an extra stentorian voice “Roo Mount Martha,” as he called it, to every passer-by whom he met, he at length reached the street of which he was in search.
It was some time before he got to the right number, as he would persist in asking, of course in English, for “Number-o’-seven,” instead of numéro sept. But in due course he arrived at the logement of La Mère Cliquelle.
The door was opened by the husband of that good lady—it is curious how some men lose their individuality on getting married; they become mere nonentities—how often you hear a man described as Mrs So-and-So’s husband. The doctor, thinking that by speaking his words very distinctly, and in a loud tone of voice, he could make any Frenchman understand English, acted on that plan.
“Is—Susan? Bless my soul! What the dooce am I thinking of?” interrupted the doctor to himself. He commenced anew. “Is—Missis—Mark—worth—in?”
“Hein?” grunted the Frenchman, interrogatively.
The doctor repeated his question, only this time asking for “madam” instead of “mistress.”
The Gaul’s face brightened, and he looked more intelligent. “Ah-h! Yase! yase, yase, yase!” he said, nodding his head violently, “de madame? de Inglismans, hay?”
“Yes, yes! quite right,” ejaculated the doctor. “I say you are quite right,” bawling out the words at the top of his voice. “Confound these stupid French frogs,” he muttered to himself; “why, they can’t understand plain English! Is—she—you—know—who in?” And seeing that the Gaul liked to nod, he nodded his head until he grew quite apoplectic in the face.
“Non,” said the Mère Cliquelle’s husband. “Ze Inglisman’s is go—vat you call it, eh? Ah, yase, is go oot.”
“Oh! she’s gone out, is she?”
“Ah-h! Yase! yase, yase!” nodded the M.C.’s husband.
“Do—you—know—when—she—will—come—back?”
The Frenchman looked puzzled for a moment, but with a foreigner’s intuitive cleverness be guessed at the gist of the question. “Ah, yase! you vant to know son retour? Cee go walk mit monsieur. Cee go joost now à huit heures, and cee will retour byanby, à neuf heures, noine clock. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf”—he said, counting on his fingers—“o’cloke!”
“Ooo!” said the doctor, giving a satisfied nod, “I understand, she will be back again at nine o’clock,” holding up nine of his fingers in proof. “I—am—much—obliged—to—you,—I—will—come back again—at nine!”
“Ah-h, yase! Dat is raite. You will retour?”
“Yes, I’ll come back again!” said the doctor, as he walked away, after both had bowed politely to each other, and the Gaul had entreated him to accept a hundred thousand assurances of his extreme subserviency.
“Confound those stoopid foreigners!” muttered the doctor, as he walked up the street in the direction of Ingouville, to pass the time. “Confound those stoopid foreigners! Why, that fellow could have said all that in half the time in English.”