"Perfect as regenerate man can well be," raved a lady artist, who, before he had been in Hampstead a week, had implored him to pose for a painting of early Scandinavian classicism. He wore a Vandyke beard—not because he liked it, but to avoid the casualties of his native clumsiness, which made shaving as farcical as Heidelberg duelling—and permitted its amber waves to roam caressingly close to his chin with a negligence that was the more graceful because unstudied.
At first, when it became known that young Dr Danby intended stepping into his father's practice, Hampstead resented it. Cabinet Councils of "tabbies," assembling over their postprandial Bohea, declared they would none of him. A retired Army doctor, forsooth! What would become of their nervous ailments, their specially feminine disorders? If they had the finger-ache, he would be bound to suggest amputation; if liver or neuralgia, he would insist on active employment—those were the only formulæ known to regimental sawbones, poor benighted things!
But when he came, when it saw the benign blue eyes and lordly physique of the new practitioner, the feline chorus changed its note, while neuralgia, migraine, and other indefinite and not unbecoming disorders became quite epidemical in his neighbourhood. Only a few daring persons ventured to harbour opinions in opposition to the vox populi, and those speedily argued themselves ignorant or prejudiced, or both.
There existed perhaps but one person of his acquaintance who was absolutely indifferent to the impression created in his new surroundings—the one and only person for whose goodwill Ralph Danby had ever cared. He had known her at Gibraltar, a laughing, rosy bride, brought out by the senior Major, a man almost double her years. But that seemed ages ago. The Major had been gathered to his fathers, and Mrs Cameron, with her baby girl, to the great regret of the regiment, had returned to the vicinity, if not to the care, of her parents in Maida Vale.
It was this departure, though it would have surprised him had he been told so, that inspired Ralph Danby with the notion that Army doctoring was a bore. He came to the conclusion that real work was all he wanted. What a field was open in metropolitan life with its suffering and pain for a man's labours—a man who was otherwise good for nothing! And then the reward—the smiles of the relieved—that existed always, when other satisfaction failed.
He realised he was down on his luck, but diagnosed no further, and sent in his papers. Farewell dinners followed, and the mess tried to carry him round the table at the risk of collective apoplexy (for he was a huge favourite in every sense of the word), then the Peninsula weighed anchor, and Gibraltar saw him no more.
It was some time, however, after taking over his new work that he ventured to call on Mrs Cameron. He respected her widowhood; he feared the renewal of his acquaintance might revive unhappy recollections; but he went at last.
He was pathetically nervous when introduced into the tiny drawing-room where Phœbe sat alone. But the moment he heard her rippling laughter he was reassured. The room was small, and Ralph was big and clumsy. In his advance one of those Algerian tables, so admirably constructed to bark the shins or bang the knees of unsuspecting mortals, gave way before him and scattered its bric-à-brac far and wide. This trifling incident served to put him on his old footing at once, and in fact to establish his identity, for Danby's reputation for wreckage had been universal as well as costly.
"At it again, you see, Mrs Cameron!" exclaimed he, as he hastened to right the impediment. "Allow me. I am so sorry. Allow me!" he gasped, while grovelling with her on the floor in search of some errant trinket which had rolled into space. She "laughed a merry laugh and said a sweet say" of forgiveness, while he noted a transient blush on her downy cheek. He was not a vain man, but he harboured a tiny wonder whether it had been born at sight of him or of the mere exertion of stooping.
"I have a practice quite near here," he volunteered aloud. "It was the stooping," decided the inward mentor regretfully.