“Mrs. Dixon assured me you were staggering from one side of the street to the other. You quite frightened her, she said. Then she asked me if I recommended her to take one or two ounces of spirit at bedtime for the palpitation; and of course I told her two would be better. I have my living to make here, you know. And upon my word, I think she wants it; she’s always gurgling inside like a waterworks. I wonder how old Dixon can stand it.”
“I like ‘ounces of spirit,’” said Lucian. “That’s taking it medicinally, I suppose. I’ve often heard of ladies who have to ‘take it medicinally’; and that’s how it’s done?”
“That’s it. ‘Dr Burrows won’t listen to me’: ‘I tell him how I dislike the taste of spirits, but he says they are absolutely necessary for my constitution’: ‘my medical man insists on something at bedtime’; that’s the style.”
Lucian laughed gently; all these people had become indifferent to him; he could no longer feel savage indignation at their little hypocrisies and malignancies. Their voices uttering calumny, and morality, and futility had become like the thin shrill angry note of a gnat on a summer evening; he had his own thoughts and his own life, and he passed on without heeding.
“You come down to Caermaen pretty often, don’t you?” said the doctor.
“I’ve seen you two or three times in the last fortnight.”
“Yes, I enjoy the walk.”
“Well, look me up whenever you like, you know. I am often in just at this time, and a chat with a human being isn’t bad, now and then. It’s a change for me; I’m often afraid I shall lose my patients.”
The doctor had the weakness of these terrible puns, dragged headlong into the conversation. He sometimes exhibited them before Mrs. Gervase, who would smile in a faint and dignified manner, and say:
“Ah, I see. Very amusing indeed. We had an old coachmen once who was very clever, I believe, at that sort of thing, but Mr. Gervase was obliged to send him away, the laughter of the other domestics was so very boisterous.”
Lucian laughed, not boisterously, but good-humouredly, at the doctor’s joke. He liked Burrows, feeling that he was a man and not an automatic gabbling machine.