“Why, my dear lady, we have taken him to pretty nearly all the medical men in Worcester,” cried the captain. “He goes regularly to Dr. Hastings.”
“And what do the doctors say?”
“They think that the catastrophe of King’s unhappy death has seized upon the lad’s mind, and brought on a sort of hypochondriacal affection. One of them said it was what the French would call a maladie des nerfs. Dan seems so full of self-reproach, too.”
“What for?”
“Well, for not having made more of King when he was living. And also, I think, for having suffered himself to fall asleep that afternoon on the bench outside the Well: he says had he kept awake he might have been with King, and so saved him. But, as I tell Dan, there’s nothing to reproach himself with in that: he could not foresee that King would meet with the accident. The doctors say now that he must have change of air, and be got away altogether. They recommend the sea.”
“The sea! Do you mean sea-air?”
“No; the sea itself; a voyage: and Dan’s wild to go. A less complete change than that, they think, will be of little avail, for his illness borders almost—almost upon lunacy. I’m sure, what with one thing and another, we seem to be in for a peck of misfortunes,” added the captain, rumpling his hair helplessly.
“And shall you let him go to sea?”
“Well, I don’t know. I stood out against it at first. Never meant to send a son of mine to sea; that has always been my resolution. Look at what I had to starve upon for ever so many years—a lieutenant’s half-pay—and to keep my wife and bring up my children upon it! You can’t imagine it, Squire; it’s cruel. Dan’s too old for the navy, however; and, if he does go, it must be into the merchant service. I don’t like that, either; we regular sailors never do like it, we hold ourselves above it; but there’s a better chance of getting on in it and of making money.”
“I’m sure I am very sorry for it altogether,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “A sailor cannot have any comfort.”