Ramsay had been introduced to Miss Newton, and had constituted himself honorary surgeon and medical adviser to that lady and all her humble friends. He had been invited to the tea-parties in Wedgewood Street, and had interested himself in the young woman called Marian, and in her probable identity with the lodge-keeper’s missing daughter, for which reason he had a keen desire to make the lodge-keeper’s acquaintance.
“From your account of the lady she must be a piece of human adamant,” he said. “I like to tackle that kind of individual. I’ve met a few of them, and I’m happy to say that if I haven’t been able to melt them I’ve generally succeeded in making them smart. I should enjoy exhibiting my moral aquafortis in the case of this lady. I shall get you to accompany me in a morning call upon her while we are at Cheriton.”
“My dear Cuthbert, I would sooner call, uninvited and without credentials, upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don’t forget how she froze me when I tried to be friendly with her last New Year’s Day. She was more biting than the north-east wind that was curdling the ponds in the Park.”
“A fig for her bitingness. Do you suppose I mind? If you won’t take me to her, I shall go by myself. A character of that kind has an irresistible fascination for me. I would go a hundred miles any day to see a bitter, bad woman.”
“She is bitter enough, but she may not be bad. She may be only a creature who mistakes fanaticism for religion, who has so misread her Bible that she thinks it her bounden duty to shut her heart against a beloved child rather than to forgive a sinner. I believe she is to be pitied rather than blamed, odious as she may seem.”
“Very likely. A hard heart, or an obstinate temper, is a disease like other diseases. One ought to be sorry for the sufferer. But this woman has a strong character, anyhow, for good or evil, and I delight in studying character. The average man and woman is so colourless that there is infinite relief in the study of any temperament which touches the extreme. Think how delightful it would be to meet such a man as Iago or Othello—picture to yourself the pleasure of watching the gradual unfolding of such a mind as Iachimo’s, and consider how keen would be one’s interest in getting to the bottom of a woman like that poisoning stepmother of Imogen’s whose name Shakespeare does not take the trouble to record. So this is the lodge—charming Early English cottage—real rustic English, not Bedford Parkish—half-timbered, thatched gables, dormers like eyes under bushy eyebrows, walls four feet thick, lattices two hundred years old. It might be the very cottage in which Grandmamma Wolf waited for the dear, plump little girl, with chubby cheeks shining like the butter in her basket, and with lips as sweet as her honey. Poor little girl!”
The servant-maid ran down the steps to open the gate, and as the wheels stopped an upper casement swung suddenly open, and a woman’s face appeared in the golden light—a pale, wan face, whose most noticeable expression was a look of infinite weariness—
“Anæmic,” said Cuthbert, as they drove in at the gate. “Decidedly anæmic. I should suspect that woman——”
“Of what?”
“Of being a vegetarian,” answered Cuthbert, gravely. “But I’ll call to-morrow, and find out all about her.”