Few words had passed between them. Once when she had been feeding to him some gruel, he had kissed her hand and murmured: “My angel,” in tones which stirred every fiber in her heart, and set them quivering. She had not answered him. She could not. If she had, such a torrent of burning words would have escaped her, that in his weak state might have proved disastrous. To kill him now would be to kill herself, so she veiled her eyes when obliged to approach him, and her calm, low voice, and rather cold features, told not of the storm-tossed soul within the fragile frame.
Mary had been allowed in for a few moments each day, but her incessant chattering wearied Andrew. He loved his child. The sight of her glad face brought him new life. Her kisses were like strong wine, yet in a short time he tired of her, and was glad when the door closed upon her, and he was once more left alone with his waking dreams, wherein Victoria, “his angel,” was always the central figure.
Despite Victoria’s entreaties the doctor had gone back to his cheerless bachelor quarters which he shared with a younger colleague who had taken the doctor’s patients during Andrew’s illness. Back to a landlady who resembled a feather pillow tied tightly around the middle; a landlady who wore a false front many shades darker than the back hair; who sniffed when she poured his tea, sniffed when she passed him an article of food, and who had a very annoying habit of inquiring after each and every patient by name, and of enumerating their several ailments for the benefit of the other boarders who did not know, and who did not care to know, but who bore the infliction with martyr-like stoicism. From what source she gathered her information was a mystery to the doctor who was most reticent in all things pertaining to his profession. He would have left her establishment long ago only it was “Hobson’s choice” with him. There was none other. She was sole monarch over the stomachs of all the homeless men in Fort Henry, and if any dared to grumble at the food placed before him she could afford to toss her head and tell him, “if he didn’t like it he knew what he could do,” which was just what the hapless individual did not know. The doctor never grumbled over the culinary arrangements. He was never known to perpetrate but one joke on the good woman, which, although hugely enjoyed by those who heard it, fell far short of the mark shot at.
One day the doctor came to his dinner with a ravenous appetite. He had been in the saddle since daybreak without a mouthful. A brown substance was set before him which he eyed rather suspiciously. At last hunger conquered suspicion, and he took a mouthful. He chewed and chewed, and finally with a gulp which brought the tears to his eyes, he swallowed it. The few who had suffered before him were watching silently.
“What do you call this dish?” he gravely asked his landlady.
“Fried sole,” she replied, busy with the cups and saucers.
“Ah?” he exclaimed, quickly. “What shoemaker do you deal with? I must know him.”
A general laugh followed his query. Only the landlady maintained her gravity. She had heard nothing to laugh at. “I most generally trade at the sign of the boot,” she said, casting a withering look around the table, but which changed to a smile as she looked at the doctor. “I never had cause to complain, although I will say that my last congress gaiters ain’t goin’ to wear near so good as t’others, but on the whole I’d advise you to go there, doctor. They’ll treat you well, especially if you have corns.”
The doctor looked helplessly at his companions and then collapsed. His first and only joke had been a failure. “Requiescat in pace,” he murmured, which quotation caused another outbreak among the diners, but they were quickly frowned down by the austere mistress. She had no affinity between fried soles and her shoemaker, but she did look with approving eyes at the doctor, who had noticed her feet enough to ask what shoemaker she employed. “He was a dear man, and near her own age; could it be possible he was thinking of matrimony, and with her? Well, if so, he should be rewarded. She had saved a tidy little sum since Samuel died,” (Samuel being the dear departed, of course), “and it should be all his, every cent. He should see how generous she could be. The dear, good man.”
After this she watched over his going out and coming in with almost wisely solicitude. She managed by hook or by crook to know who were his patients, and what their ailments. It necessitated a reckless expenditure of coppers among the street gamin, but it might pay her in the end, so she thought. He could not very well ignore her, when he found how anxiously she studied his every interest. She even went so far as to purloin several medical works from his study in his absence, so as to read up against the time when she might have to entertain him whole evenings in her parlor, which until now had been sacred to Sundays and “other high days,” as she called them. No boarder’s profane foot had ever desecrated the jaundiced carpet, whose flaring green and yellow figures, if made in our day and time, would have driven Oscar Wilde much wilder. The stiff, horsehair chairs were miracles in their way. It required courage and a certain amount of finesse on the part of a would-be occupant, ere he dared entrust himself to their embrace—a cold, slippery embrace, not at all reassuring. Even a huge oil painting of the dear, departed Samuel, taken in Highland costume, could not lend a festive aspect to the room. In all things but the carpet it was decidedly funereal. Into this “cheerful” retreat she ushered the doctor the night of his return from “The Five Gables.” She had literally killed the fatted calf in honor of his return. The supper-table groaned beneath the unwonted weight of so many delicacies heaped upon it. The widow was resplendent in a new false front which curled. She had given several shin-plasters for those curls, “something quite new,” the shopkeeper told her, “and recently adopted by the Queen of England.” It was not without some misgivings that she indulged in this reckless piece of extravagance, but there was much at stake. Those curls might be the means of a proposal. “Mrs. Dr. Arthur Harrison.” The name was magical. Without so much as a sigh she counted out the necessary amount, and the curls were hers.