“It was as speedily as I could procure it from the cellar below.”
“And that strong wine, given in the nick of time, reassembled Nature’s scattered forces, and rekindled the flame of life. Upon my soul, sweet young lady, I believe thou hast saved him! All the drugs in Bucklersbury could do no more. And now tell me what symptoms you have noted since you have watched by his bed; and tell me further if you have strength to continue his nurse, with such precautions as I shall dictate, and such help as I can send you in the shape of a stout, honest, serving-wench of mine, and a man to guard the lower part of your house, and fetch and carry for you?”
“I will do everything you bid me, with all my heart, and with such skill as I can command.”
“Those delicate fingers were formed to minister to the sick. And you will not shrink from loathsome offices—from the application of cataplasms, from cleansing foul sores? Those blains and boils upon that poor body will need care for many days to come.”
“I will shrink from nothing that may be needful for his benefit. I should love to go on nursing him, were it only for my sister’s sake. How sorry she would feel to be so far from him, could she but know of his sickness!”
“Yes, I believe Lady Fareham would be sorry,” answered the physician, with a dry little laugh; “though there are not many married ladies about Rowley’s court of whom I would diagnose as much. Not Lady Denham, for instance, that handsome, unprincipled houri, married to a septuagenarian poet, who would rather lock her up in a garret than see her shine at Whitehall; or Lady Castlemaine, whose husband has been uncivil enough to show discontent at a peerage that was not of his own earning; or a dozen others I could name, were not such scandals as these Hebrew to thine innocent ear.”
“Nay, sir, my sister has written of Court scandals in many of her letters, and it has grieved me to think her lot should be cast among people of whose reckless doings she tells me with a lively wit that makes sin seem something less than sin.”
“There is no such word as ‘sin’ in Charles Stuart’s Court, my dear young lady. It is harder to achieve bad repute nowadays than it was once to be thought a saint. Existence in this town is a succession of bagatelles. Men’s lives and women’s reputations drift down to the bottomless pit upon a rivulet of epigrams and chansons. You have heard of that Dance of Death, which was one of the nervous diseases of the fifteenth century—a malady which, after beginning with one lively caperer, would infect a whole townspeople, and send an entire population curvetting and prancing, until death stopped them. I sometimes think, when I watch the follies at Whitehall, that those graceful dancers, sliding upon pointed toe through a coranto, amid a blaze of candles and star-shine of diamonds, are capering along the same fatal road by which St. Vitus lured his votaries to the grave. And then I look at Rowley’s licentious eye and cynical lip, and think to myself, ‘This man’s father perished on the scaffold; this man’s lovely ancestress paid the penalty of her manifold treacheries after sixteen years’ imprisonment; this man has passed through the jaws of death, has left his country a fugitive and a pauper, has returned as if by a miracle, carried back to a throne upon the hearts of his people; and behold him now—saunterer, sybarite, sensualist—strolling through life without one noble aim or one virtuous instinct; a King who traffics in the pride and honour of his country, and would sell her most precious possessions, level her strongest defences, if his cousin and patron t’other side the Channel would but bid high enough.’ But a plague on my tongue, dear lady, that it must always be wagging. Not one word more, save for instructions.”
Dr. Hodgkin loved talking even better than he loved a fee, and he allowed himself a physician’s licence to be prosy; but he now proceeded to give minute directions for the treatment of the patient—the poultices and stoups and lotions which were to reduce the external indications of the contagion, the medicines which were to be given at intervals during the night. Medicine in those days left very little to Nature, and if patients perished it was seldom for want of drugs and medicaments.
“The servant I send you will bring meat and all needful herbs for making a strong broth, with which you will feed the patient once an hour. There are many who hold with the boiling of gold in such a broth, but I will not enter upon the merits of aurum potabile as a fortifiant. I take it that in this case you will find beef and mutton serve your turn. I shall send you from my own larder as much beef as will suffice for to-night’s use; and to-morrow your servant must go to the place where the country people sell their goods, butchers’ meat, poultry, and garden-stuff; for the butchers’ shops of London are nearly all closed, and people scent contagion in any intercourse with their fellow-citizens. You will have, therefore, to look to the country people for your supplies; but of all this my own man will give you information. So now, good night, sweet young lady. It is on the stroke of nine. Before eleven you shall have those who will help and protect you. Meanwhile you had best go downstairs with me, and lock and bolt the great door leading into the garden, which I found ajar.”