Dr. Wainwright's Patient: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

"Very likely, my dear," said the Colonel; "he was a very impertinent and unmannerly person from--from those confoundedly troublesome slate-quarries and lead-mines in South Wales."

[CHAPTER XXVIII.]

DAISY'S LETTER.

Left to himself, without George Wainwright to listen to his complaints, to afford him consolation, or even to do him good by the administration of the rough tonic of his advice, Paul Derinzy had a very bad time of it. His attendance at the office was exceedingly irregular; and when he was there he was so preoccupied and distrait, that he would not look after his work; which accordingly, there being no George Wainwright to stay after hours and pull it up, went hopelessly into arrears. The good old chief, Mr. Courtney, always inclined to be kind and indulgent, and more especially disposed to civility since he had been to dine with Paul's people in Queen Anne Street (where he found the Captain "a devilish gentleman-like fellow, sir; far superior to the men of the present day, with a remarkable fund of anecdote"), had his patience and his temper very much tried by his young friend's peculiar proceedings; and between the two other occupants of the principal registrar's room, Mr. William Dunlop's life was pretty nearly harried out of him.

"If the arrival of my people in town were to render me as wretched as the arrival of P.D.'s people has rendered P.D.," observed Mr. Dunlop, in confidence to a brother-clerk, "I should begin to think it was not a bad thing being a norphan. I have often thought, Simmons, that I could have done the young-heir business in doublet and trunk-hose--no, that is, the spirit-stirring song of the 'Old English Gentleman'--the young-heir business, smiling from the top of the steps on the assembled tenantry, vide Frith, R.A., his picture of 'Coming of Age,' to be had cheap as an Art Union print. But if to become moped and melancholy, to decline to go odd man for b. and s., and to tell people who propose the speculation to 'go to the devil'--if that is to be the result of having people and being heir to a property in Dorsetshire, my notion is, that I would sooner serve her Majesty at two-forty, rising to three-fifty at yearly increments of twenty, and be free!"

There was no doubt that there were grounds for Mr. Dunlop's complaints. Paul not merely did not attend to his work, but his manner, which, from its brightness and courtesy, had in the old days won him troops of friends and rendered him everywhere sought for and popular, was now morose and forbidding. He seemed to be aware of this, and consequently went very little into society. To Queen Anne Street he only went when he was absolutely obliged; that is to say, when he felt that he could not decently remain away any longer; but even then his visits were very short, and his mother found him absent and preoccupied. He had, however, taken sufficient notice of what was passing around him to remark the maidenly delicacy, imbued with true feminine tact, with which Annette asked news of George Wainwright, and the hard struggle which she made to conceal her disbelief of the stories which he, Paul, invented to account for his friend's absence.

He had not seen Daisy for the last fortnight. When last they met it was arranged that they should meet as usual in the course of a few days. But two days after, Paul received a little note from her, saying that, owing to Madame Clarisse's absence, her trouble and responsibility were so great that she could not possibly leave the business to take care of itself for ever so short a time. She would let him know as soon as the possible slackness of work permitted her to make an appointment for meeting him in the gardens, and she was his affectionate D.

Paul did not like the tone of this letter. It was certainly much cooler than that of any of the little notes--there were but very few of them--which he had received from Daisy since the commencement of their acquaintance. He did not believe in the excuse one bit. Even in the height of the season she had always managed to get out and see him for a few minutes once or twice a week. Then, as to Madame Clarisse's absence and Daisy's consequent responsibility, did not the very fact of her being at the head of affairs prove that she was her own mistress, and able to dispose of her own time as she pleased?

There was something at the bottom of it all, Paul thought, which he had not yet fathomed. There was a change in her; that could not be denied--a strange inexplicable change. The girl he met on his return from the country, and who came to him listlessly, with an evident air of preoccupation, which she endeavoured to hide, and with an assumed air of pleasure at his return, which was so ill-assumed as to be very easily seen through, was a totally different being from the loving, teasing, half-coy, half-wayward girl whom he had left behind him.

Paul set himself to work to trace the commencement of this change, and after long cogitation decided that it must have been worked during his absence. What caused it, then? Certainly it arose from no fault of his. He could not charge himself in the slightest degree with neglect of her. He had written to her constantly, freely, and lovingly. He had gone away protesting against his enforced absence; his letters had been filled with joyous expectation of renewed delight at meeting her again; and when he had met her, the warmth of his passion for her, so far from being diminished one jot, had increased and expanded. So that the alteration of their position towards each other which had so evidently come about was her doing, and not his.