Dr. Wainwright's Patient: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

Decline the situation! Dr. Wainwright had never heard of such a thing, never in the whole course of his professional experience. Decline the situation! Had Mrs. Stothard understood him correctly about the terms? Yes! And she talked of declining the situation after that! And for a permanency, too. And he had thought it would have been exactly the thing to suit her. Well, if she would not accept, she must not decline--at once, that was to say. She must think over it; she must indeed.

She did; and accepted it. Partly out of a desire for revenge. She had a long, long pondering over the past; and all the bitterness of bygone years had revived in her heart. She thought that something--luck she called it (she was little given to ascribe things to Providence)--had placed her enemies in her hands, and that she might use her power over the man who had given her up, and over the daughter of the man who had compelled him to do so. Partly for money. The salary proposed was very large, and her daughter's education was expensive, and the girl would soon have to be apprenticed to a house of business where a heavy premium must be paid. So she accepted. There was no doubt about her getting the place. Dr. Wainwright's recommendation was all-sufficient, and Mrs. Derinzy was only too anxious to secure her services. Captain Derinzy had forgotten all about Stothard the stonemason, and the two hundred pounds which had been paid to him, even if he ever knew of the transaction. He did not recognise the name, and for the first few minutes after he saw her he did not recognise in the hard-featured, cold, impassive, middle-aged woman his bright boyish love of so many years before. When he did recognise her he started, and seemed as though he would have spoken; but she made him a slight sign, and he waited for an opportunity of their being alone. When that came, it was Mrs. Stothard who spoke. She told him there was no necessity for ever referring to the past, it was all forgotten by them both; they would never be brought in contact; she knew the position she held in his house, and she should fulfil it; it was better on all accounts that Mrs. Derinzy should be kept in ignorance of their former acquaintance--did he not think so? He did; and as he left her he grinned quietly.

"What the doose did she think?" he said to himself. "Gad! not likely that I should want to renew the acquaintance of an old horse-godmother like that. What a pretty gal she was, too! and how changed! by George, so that her own mother wouldn't know her! Wonder whether I'm as much changed as all that? Often look in the glass and wonder. Different in a man: he don't wear a cap, and that kind of thing; and my hair's lasted wonderful, considerin'. Martha Hall, eh? and those dam things--text things--that she used to paint in those colours--got some of 'em still, I think, somewhere in my old bullock-trunk; saw 'em the other day. Martha Hall!--Oh Lord!"

So Mrs. Stothard accepted office with the Derinzys, and was with them when, shortly afterwards, they gave up the house at Brompton where they had lived so long, and removed to Beachborough. The change affected Mrs. Stothard but very little; it mattered scarcely at all to her where she was, her time was very much employed in her duties, and what little leisure she found she passed in reading, or in writing to her daughter. She knew perfectly well that she was the subject of an immense amount of curiosity in Beachborough village, and of talk at the village tea-tables; but it did not trouble her one whit. She knew that she was said to be a poor relation of the Derinzy family, and she did not discourage the idea. Thinking over the past, and what might have been, she found a kind of grim humour in the combination which suited her thoroughly. They might say what they liked, she thought, so long as her money was regularly paid, and so long as she found herself able to carry out the one scheme of her life--that of making a good marriage for her daughter Fanny.

Fanny then, under the name of Miss Stafford, was apprenticed to Madame Clarisse, the great court milliner, in London, and lived, when she was at home--and that was not often, poor child! for she slaved like a horse--in one little room in a house in South Molton Street, a lodging-house kept by an old sister-nurse of Mrs. Stothard's at St. Vitus's, a most respectable motherly woman, who would look after Fanny, and would at once let her mother know if there was "anything wrong." Not that there was any chance of that. Fanny Stafford acted up too strictly to her mother's teaching, and remembered too well the doctrine which had been inculcated in her girlhood, ever to make that mistake. She had been told that to marry a man considerably above her in pecuniary and social position was her mission in life; to that end she might use all her charms, all her arts; but that end must be marriage--nothing less. This she understood, and daily experience made her more and more impressed with the wisdom of her mother's determination. She had not much heart, she thought; she did not think she had any passion; and she knew that she had keen discrimination and accurate perception of character; so she thought she ought to succeed. Mrs. Stothard was acquainted with the peculiarities of her daughter's character, and thought so too.

At the very time when Captain Derinzy was lying stretched out on the headland overlooking Beachborough Bay, and making those cynical remarks on the place and its population, Mrs. Stothard was preparing to read a letter from her daughter Fanny. It had arrived in the morning; but Mrs. Stothard had been very busy all day, and it was not until the evening that she found time to read it. Her occupation had confined her to the house, so that now, being for a few minutes free, she was glad to escape into the grounds. She chose that portion of the flower-garden which was farthest removed from the side of the house which she principally inhabited; and as she paced up and down the soft turf path between two rows of espaliers, she took the letter from her pocket and commenced to read it. It was written in a small delicate hand, and Mrs. Stothard had to hold it close to her eyes in the fading light. She read as follows:

"London, Sunday.

MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will have been expecting to hear from me for some time, and, indeed, you ought to have had a letter, but the truth is I am so tired and sleepy when I get back here that I am glad to go straight to bed. We are just now in the height of the season, and are so busy that I scarcely ever have time to sit down. I told you, I think, that I was likely to be in the showroom this season. I was right. Madame asked me if I should like to be there, and when I said 'Yes,' she seemed pleased; and I have been there since April. I think I have made myself even more useful than she expected; for many of the customers know me now, and ask to see me in preference to Madame herself. I suppose she does not quite like that, but it is not my fault. I know I am neat and handy, and that there is no one in the house with so much education or so much manner, and these are both points which are noticed by customers. Nevertheless, I think I am winning my way into Madame's good graces; for when she goes out--and she is now out a great deal, at the French plays, at the Opera, and in private society; you have no notion what an immense amount of reception goes on amongst the French coiffeurs and modistes in London--she invariably leaves me to see the parcels sent off and the business of the day wound up. She has no forewoman, as I have told you, and I think I might aspire to that important post with reasonable hope of success if I wished it, but I don't.

"No, dear mother; it would give me no pleasure to have my name on as big a brass plate as Madame Clarisse's, on as handsome a door in as eligible a situation. I should derive no satisfaction even if I could combine her connection with Madame Augustine's, her great rival. (Augustine's clientèle is richer than ours, I think, but we have by far the best people.) I long sometimes, when I see a wretched old creature nodding under a wreath when she ought to be concealing her bald pate or her gray hairs under an honest mob-cap, or when I am helping a stout middle-aged matron to struggle into a gown of a style and pattern suitable for her youngest daughter, to throw all my chances of success in business to the winds, and tell the people then under my hands plainly and openly what I think of them. I cannot stand--or rather I could not, were it for a permanence; I can well enough for a time--this wretched ko-tooing existence, this perpetual grinning and curtsying and false-compliment paying, this utter abnegation of one's own opinion, one's own feelings, one's own self! You must not be surprised at these expressions, dear mother, recollecting how you have had me brought up, and how you yourself have always inculcated in me a strong desire to better my position, and by a good marriage to raise myself into a class superior to this.

"Mother, I think I'm going to do it. I think that I have a chance of freeing myself from this servitude, which is galling to me, and of winning a station in life such as you yourself would be proud to see me holding. You remember how you used to talk to me about this when I was much younger, and how I used then to laugh at your earnestness, and tell you your hopes and aspirations were but dreams? I declare now I think there is some chance of their being realised.