“I sat by his mother one midsummer day,
And she looked me through and through
As I spoke of her lad who was far away,
For she guessed that I loved him too!”
Maggie’s Secret.
“Lizzie, pull that pillow more under my head, will you, dear? I think, too, my feet are getting cold; I wish you would throw that shawl over me.”
The speaker was our old acquaintance the dowager; but wonderfully changed both in appearance and voice since we last saw and heard her; and the young lady addressed in that affectionate and trusting manner was our own little Lizzie, the young incumbent’s sister, the beloved of Master Tom.
Fancy her being now on such terms of intimacy with Tom’s mother! But it is a fact. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis: this is the age of miracles, and we must not be surprised at anything that happens in our daily life when so many startling changes in science and art are worked out every day in the world around us.
I don’t know how the first advance was made from the parsonage to The Poplars, but the worthy old doctor managed it all. That man, I venture to say, sir, or madam, who may be reading these lines, was most unhesitatingly one whom we used to term in schoolboy phraseology, a trump. He was a trump most certainly, even although all the other suits at cards be of fair and equable measure! A trump of trumps, a rara avis, even amongst a horde of good fellows, and I affectionate him much, as our foreign friends put it.
The doctor had already told Miss Lizzie that he would be glad to make use of her services as soon as the old lady was a little more sensible, and Lizzie had gladly consented to be made use of when the proper time should arrive.
Doctor Jolly, from the experiences of the past, when he had so satisfactorily played the go-between in Tom and Lizzie’s young loves, was pretty well aware of the state of things between those two young persons. His own nature being an ardent one, and having often—to Deb’s intense misgivings and alarm—cultivated the tender passion himself, he was quite competent to sympathise with all lovers whose course of true love might not, through the stern opposition of unfeeling parents and worldly relations, run smooth. He could do this quite apart from his good nature, which would have forced him to befriend any one in trouble. But when he naturally liked a sighing lover like Master Tom, and had such a paternal interest in him, and when Miss Lizzie—the object beloved—was one of his own especial pets, one cannot wonder that the doctor threw himself into the breach with all the ardour of his ardent nature and good nature combined. He determined that he would befriend this young couple to the best of his ability. Although Fate had unkindly nipped all his little affaires du coeur in the bud, and destroyed all his tender Platonisms, he would have the satisfaction, at least, of seeing others happy.
Accordingly, our friend Aesculapius having played go-between, subsequently became the trusted confidant to both the lovers. Tom, before his departure for the land of the Queen of Sheba’s descendants, had breathed out his heartburnings, his rage, his morbid determination, sighing furiously all the while, like Shakespeare’s typical furnace; and after Tom’s Hegira, Lizzie, with many little tender protestations and pearly sacrifices, had also unfolded her troubles to him. It was not for a long time, however, that Lizzie did this—not until the little heart had been wrung by keeping its trouble to itself for a very long, long time; but she need not have held back her confidence from the doctor—he knew all about it, and even if Tom had not told him of the ruthless separation which Fate had brought about, he could have easily guessed it from Andromeda’s martyr-like face.
The dowager’s illness now enabled Doctor Jolly to befriend Lizzie, and consequently Tom also, much more efficiently than he might otherwise have been able to do.