CHAPTER XXV.
the doctor's news.
h! how do you do, Doctor Droqville?" said mamma, with a very real welcome in looks and accent.
"How d'ye do, Droqville?" said my father, a little dryly, I fancied.
"Have you had your breakfast?" asked mamma.
"Two hours ago."
"We are very late here," said papa.
"I should prefer thinking I am very early, in my primitive quarters," answered Mr. Droqville.
"I had not an idea we should have found you in town, just now."
"In season or out of season, a physician should always be at his post. I'm beginning to learn rather late there's some truth in that old proverb about moss, you know, and rolling stones, and it costs even a bachelor something to keep body and soul together in this mercenary, tailoring, cutlet-eating world." At this moment he saw me, and made me a bow. "Miss Ware?" he said, a little inquiringly to mamma. "Yes, I knew perfectly it was the young lady I had seen at Malory. Some faces are not easily forgotten," he added, gallantly, with a glance at me. "I threatened to run away with her, but she was firm as fate," he smiled and went on; "and I paid a visit to our friend Carmel, you know."
"And how did you think he was?" she asked; and I listened with interest for the answer.
"He's consumptive. He's at this side of the Styx, it is true; but his foot is in the water, and Charon's obolus is always between his finger and thumb. He'll die young. He may live five years, it is true; but he is not likely to live two. And if he happens to take cold and begins to cough, he might not last four months."
"My wife has been complaining," said papa; "I wish you could do something for her. You still believe in Doctor Droqville? I think she half believes you have taken a degree in divinity as well as in medicine; if so, a miracle, now and then, would be quite in your way."
"But I assure you, Doctor Droqville, I never said any such thing. It was you who thought," she said to my father, "that Doctor Droqville was in orders."
Droqville laughed.
"But, Doctor Droqville, I think," said mamma, "you would have made a very good priest."
"There are good priests, madame, of various types; Madame de Genlis, for instance, commends an abbé of her acquaintance; he was a most respectable man, she says, and never ridiculed revealed religion but with moderation."
Papa laughed, but I could see that he did not like Doctor Droqville. There was something dry, and a little suspicious in his manner, so slight that you could hardly define it, but which contrasted strikingly with the decision and insouciance of Doctor Droqville's talk.
"But, you know, you never do that, even with moderation; and you can argue so closely when you please."
"There, madame, you do me too much honour. I am the worst logician in the world. I wrote a part of an essay on Christian chivalry, and did pretty well, till I began to reason; the essay ended, and I was swallowed up in this argument—pray listen to it. To sacrifice your life for the lady you adore is a high degree of heroism; but to sacrifice your soul for her is the highest degree of heroism. But the highest degree of heroism is but another name for Christianity; and, therefore, to act thus can't sacrifice your soul, and if it doesn't you don't practise a heroism, and therefore no Christianity, and, therefore, you do sacrifice your soul. But if you do sacrifice your soul, it is the highest heroism—therefore Christianity; and, therefore, you don't sacrifice your soul, and so, da capo, it goes on for ever—and I can't extricate myself. When I mean to make a boat, I make a net; and this argument that I invented to carry me some little way on my voyage to truth, not only won't hold water, but has caught me by the foot, entangles, and drowns me. I never went on with my essay."
In this cynical trifling there was a contemptuous jocularity quite apparent to me, although mamma took it all in good faith, and said:
"It is very puzzling, but it can't be true; and I should think it almost a duty to find out where it is wrong."
Papa laughed, and said:
"My dear, don't you see that Doctor Droqville is mystifying us?"
I was rather glad, for I did not like it. I was vexed for mamma. Doctor Droqville's talk seemed to me an insolence.
"It is quite true, I am no logician; I had better continue as I am. I make a tolerable physician; if I became a preacher, with my defective ratiocination, I should inevitably lose myself and my audience in a labyrinth. You make but a very short stay in town, I suppose?" he broke off suddenly. "It isn't tempting, so many houses sealed—a city of the dead. One does not like, madame, as your Doctor Johnson said to Mrs. Thrale, to come down to vacuity."
"Well, it is only a visit of two or three days. My daughter Ethel is coming out next spring, and she came up to meet us here. I wish her to have a few weeks with masters, and there are more things to be thought of than you would suppose. Do you think there is anything a country miss would do well to read up that we might have forgotten?"
"Read? read? Oh! yes, two things."
"What are they?"
"If she has a sound knowledge of the heathen mythology, and a smattering of the Bible, she'll do very well."
"But she won't talk about the Bible," laughed papa; "people who like it, read it to themselves."
"Very true," said Doctor Droqville, "you never mention it; but, quite unconsciously, you are perpetually alluding to it. Nothing strikes a stranger more, if he understands your language as I do. You had a note from Lady Lorrimer?"
"No," said mamma.
The word "note," I think, struck papa as implying that she was nearer than letter-writing distance, and he glanced quickly at Doctor Droqville.
"And where is Lady Lorrimer now?" asked papa.
"That is what I came to tell you. She is at Mivart's. I told her you were in town, and I fancied you would have had a note from her; but I thought I might as well look in and tell you."
"She's quite well, I hope?" said mamma.
"Now did you ever, Mrs. Ware, in all your life, see her quite well? I never did. She would lose all pleasure in life, if she thought she wasn't leaving it. She arrived last night, and summoned me to her at ten this morning. I felt her pulse. It was horribly regular. She had slept well, and breakfasted well, but that was all. In short, I found her suffering under her usual chronic attack of good health, and, as the case was not to be trifled with, I ordered her instantly some medicine which could not possibly produce any effect whatever; and in that critical state I left her, with a promise to look in again in the afternoon to ascertain that the more robust symptoms were not gaining ground, and in the interval I came to see you and tell you all about it."
"I suppose, then, I should find her in her bed?" said mamma.
"No; I rather think she has postponed dying till after dinner—she ordered a very good one—and means to expire in her sitting-room, where you'll find her. And you have not been very well?"
"Remember the story he has just told you of your aunt Lorrimer, and take care he doesn't tell her the same story of you," said papa, laughing.
"I wish I could," said Doctor Droqville; "few things would please me better. That pain in the nerves of the head is a very real torment."
So he and mamma talked over her head-aches in an undertone for some minutes; and while this was going on there came in a note for mamma. The servant was was waiting for an answer in the hall.
"Shall I read it?" said papa, holding it up by the corner. "It is Lady Lorrimer's, I'm sure."
"Do, dear," said mamma, and she continued her confidences in Doctor Droqville's ear.
Papa smiled a little satirically as he read it. He threw it across the table, saying:
"You can read it, Ethel; it concerns you rather."
I was very curious. The hand was youthful and pretty, considering Lady Lorrimer's years. It was a whimpering, apathetic, selfish little note. She was miserable, she said, and had quite made up her mind that she could not exist in London smoke. She had sent for the doctor.
She continued: "I shall make an effort to see you, if you can look in about three, for a few minutes. Have you any of your children with you? If they are very quiet I should like to see them. It would amuse me. It is an age since I saw your little people, and I really forget their ages, and even their names. Say if I am to expect you at three. I have told the servant to wait."
People who live in the country fancy themselves of more importance than they really are. I was mortified, and almost shocked at the cool sentences about "the little people," etc.
"Well, you promise to be very quiet, won't you? You won't pull the cat's tail, or light paper in the fire, or roar for plum-cake?" said papa.
"I don't think she wants to see us. I don't think she cares the least about us. Perhaps mamma won't go," I said, resentfully, hoping that she would not pay that homage to the insolent old woman.
Doctor Droqville stood up, having written a prescription.
"Well, I'm off; and I think this will do you a world of good. Can I do any commission for you about town; I shall be in every possible direction in the next three hours?"
No, there was nothing; and this man, whom I somehow liked less than ever, although he rather amused me, vanished, and we saw his cab drive by the window.
"Well, here's her note. You'll go to see her, I suppose?" said papa.
"Certainly; I have a great affection for my aunt. She was very kind to me when there was no one else to care about me."
Mamma spoke with more animation than I believed her capable of—I thought I even saw tears in her eyes. It struck me that she did not like papa's tone in speaking about her. The same thing probably struck him.
"You are quite right, darling, as you always are in a matter of feeling, and you'll take Ethel, won't you?"
"Yes, I should like her to come."
"And you know, if she should ask you, don't tell her I'm a bit better off than I really am. I have had some awful losses lately. I don't like bothering you about business, and it was no fault or negligence of mine; but I really—it is of very great importance she should not do anything less that she intended for you, or anything whimsical or unjust. I give you my honour there isn't a guinea to spare now, it would be a positive cruelty."
Mamma looked at him, but she was by this time so accustomed to alarms of that kind that they did not make a very deep impression upon her.
"I don't think she's likely to talk about such matters, dear," said mamma; "but if she should make any inquiries, I shall certainly tell her the truth."
I remembered Lady Lorrimer long ago at Malory. It was a figure seen in the haze of infancy, and remembered through the distance of many years. I recollect coming down the stairs, the nursery-maid holding me by the hand, and seeing a carriage and servants in the court before the door. I remember, as part of the same dream, sitting in the lap of a strange lady in the drawing-room, who left a vague impression of having been richly dressed, who talked to me in a sweet, gentle voice, and gave me toys, and whom I always knew to have been Lady Lorrimer. How much of this I actually saw, and how much was picked up with the vivid power of reproducing pictures from description that belongs to children, I cannot say; but I always heard of Aunt Lorrimer afterwards with interest, and now at length I was about to see her. Her note had disappointed me, still I was curious.
