Dr. Wells seldom spoke without making a little oration. He was wont to say that he took his own time about everything because, the time being his own, he knew he had plenty of it, and no one else had the right to call him to account for his expenditure of it. That he frequently forced others to spend a great deal of their own time, in listening to him wind away from exordium to peroration, was a point he did not take into his consideration. He was a fine specimen of a fine type, namely the country doctor of the old school who was constantly to be seen in all weathers carrying hope and pills, human affection and gray powders, camomile and cheer, into anxious homes, and caring far less about his fee than about the patient’s relief. He was short and stocky—a deep-chested, stout, sound, and roll-shaped body, every hard layer of fat-protected gristle daring weather and disease to come on and see what would happen to them. Nature had formed him to be a country physician; for country folk put their faith only in doctors who are never ill themselves. A doctor’s health is a country superstition.
It is the sadder, therefore, to be obliged to relate that Dr. Wells—and his wife, also, for she was, in this temptation, even weaker morally than himself—had become addicted to dyspepsia. There was not a thing the matter with their interior mechanisms, really, but some strain of notoriety-love had led him and his spouse to affect this delicacy of constitution in order to remind people perpetually that he was a cousin of Dr. Mayhew Pipp of London who had discovered a remedy for the burning aftermath of the sin of gluttony—a pellet that extinguished the fires of the inferno within. It must also be stated that this pose was losing for Dr. Wells some of that confidence in his immunity without which no medicine man can treat persons to their profit or his own—in the country.
He took off his light topcoat, hat, and thin, white silk scarf, [of the old school, he believed in bundling up for driving, at night, regardless of the weather,] and laid them on a bamboo seat on the verandah. His outer coverings removed, there emerged an apple-rosy, rotund face, with white hair, moustache, and whiskers about it, every hirsute atom crisp and electrical with health. The very man, one would say, to enter a sick room; for the patient would inevitably cry: “No matter what it is, give me the dose you take!”
“And where is Mrs. Wells?” Mrs. Lee inquired, as the doctor came down, leaving the ladies still unwinding their wraps, with Mrs. Mearely’s aid.
“Ah! in bed. Yes, the dear soul. In bed. Another dyspeptic attack. But she insisted on my coming without her. She knows that whist is my weakness, and, being glad that I have no worse vices, she encourages it. It is most satisfactory, my dear lady, to indulge in vices approved of by one’s wife.” Smiling, he seated himself beside her.
“Well! There is our dear Mrs. Lee!” Mrs. Witherby sailed down upon her. “What a surprise! I had no idea we should find you here!”
What more she might have said, in this vein, was curbed by a supercilious glance from her niece, who bent to kiss Mrs. Lee’s left cheek as soon as her aunt had completed her osculations on the other one. Mrs. Witherby knew that Mabel was in a dangerous humour; and she recalled that, at times, on far less provocation, Miss Crewe had succeeded in conveying to an assembly her doubts of her aunt’s truthfulness. Avoiding danger, therefore, she drew away from the settee and seated herself at the table.
“Cards!” she cooed. “Isn’t that delightful? And a new pack, too! How thoughtful of you, dear Mrs. Mearely, to get us a new pack. The others were really rather spoiled. Men are so rough in their handling of cards.”
Mrs. Witherby was, like Dr. Wells, less an individual than a type. She was symbolic of efficiency, as the village understood the term. That is, never having been obliged to do anything herself to satisfy others, she felt completely competent to give anyone directions about any task whatsoever. She knew how she wanted things done, and had a rooted conviction that she was the only person in the community whose pleasure or approval mattered in the least. She was rather overwhelming in appearance, being of more than medium height, and decidedly more than medium breadth. Furthermore, she wore both those anatomical protuberances cited by the ancient Hebraic scribes as perilous next-door neighbours for a humble and a contrite heart—namely, the proud bosom and the high stomach.
Her two chins reposed between the upper folds of her fichu, for she held her head haughtily with chins in, brow high, eyebrows elevated, eyes alert and ready to snap with indignation at the stupidity and impropriety constantly affronting them, and mouth slightly open, prepared to exclaim the scathing contempt surging within her for anyone and everyone whose views on any subject differed from Emma Crewe Witherby’s.