Doctor Douglas is the delight of my eyes, and, like Falstaff, not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in me; and although it may not be Attic salt to all palates, it supplies a seasoning necessary to my hard fare. Douglas is a true and genuine North-Britain, large, muscular, and six feet at least in height. He is by no means a beau; nor is he a sloven, although he looks more like a London watchman than a physician. His dress is the result of system, raised probably upon his early modes of attire, and abhorrence of ligatures. Cold bathing and Bath-coating, a sort of cloth, such as your curricle wrapping-coat, are with him the essentials health and longevity; and he maintains, that with those, and Scotch barley, a man needs not either a carriage, a carpet, turtle soup, crutches, or an apothecary. He is a widower, Lucy, and has too great boys, whom he has rendered, as I am told by himself, fit for any climate, and taught to be contented with even barley-broth and a knapsack. A healthy countenance, and eyes which still sparkle with the vigour of his mind, would deceive you in his age, for he is more than three-score by his register; but the loss of two or three of his fore teeth, are mementos that his youth is past. These several defects and impediments have preserved me from the sin of inconstancy; for I was in danger of admiring, for the first time in my life that I can recollect, one of those figures which you would expect to find at the head of a banditti, in the scenery of a Salvator Rosa. After dinner Mr. Greenwood, observing him making his dessert of a piece of sea-biscuit, which he took from his pocket, could not help expressing his surprise, that he should hazard the loss of such teeth as he envied. "I have every grinder," replied he, "as sound as when Nature gave them me."—"Of this fact I needed no better evidence," answered Mr. Greenwood, "than the seeing you grind that flinty biscuit; but I conceive you might have been taught, by the loss of two or three of your fore teeth, to understand that yours, like your neighbour's, were perishable."—"Why does he not get them supplied?" cried Alice; "they make false teeth now, I am told, of a substance as white and as firm as his own."—"Why do you not plaister over that honest and honourable testimony of your having faced your enemy, Captain Flint?" asked he, with gravity. "The girls like a smooth, though empty front."—"Oh, that is pure malice!" replied Alice, "Captain Flint's scar is his glory, and was acquired in fighting for his country."—"Well, hussey," retorted he, "and mine was gained in buffetting with the stormy surge; and saving from its overwhelming fury twa bonnie lasses, I could not make more arms than I had, and one steered the float, the other grasped one of the sinking wretches, and my teeth I gave to the second; and shall I not wear my laurels in rememberance of my prowess, without cramming my mouth with sea-horse teeth and vile springs?"—"You are quite right, doctor," remarked I; "and what is more, they would, like every thing artificial about you, be disgraced by the gifts of Nature. You can bite close enough with the teeth you have, whilst a fool and a sea-rusk cost you so little to reduce them to dust." He laughed, and displayed from ear to ear, the snowy white and even teeth; not of Lucy Hardcastle's sort, because one would make four of her pearls, but yet as well adapted to the mouth they reside in. So much for the doctors teeth; now for his humour. Some one asked him whether he had lately seen a certain Sir Peregrine Lofley, a gentleman of consequence somewhere in the neighbourhood. "No," replied he, with a peculiar expression of contempt. "He has not had the cholic of late; and when he has, he will not apply to the Scotch quack for physic; he found mine unpalatable."—"How did that happen?" asked Mr. Greenwood; "when I last saw Sir Peregrine he told me you had saved his life, and that the London physicians were fit only to beat your pestle and mortar."—"That opinion speaks the fool," answered he; "but neither the Scotch nor English physicians can cure him of a radical want of brains. You saw him three or four days after I had accomplished the same business which they had done more than once; the only difference consisted in the mode. This fellow," continued he, turning to Sir Murdock, "had, by his gluttony, produced a malady, which, without a miracle, might have killed him in twenty hours; and having heard of 'one Douglas,' who had saved a man from a mortification of the bowels, I was sent for. The danger of Sir Peregrine was not less imminent, but happily yielded to medicine. Perfectly knowing the cause of the malady, I became the friend of nature and of him; and for a few days longer than was absolutely necessary, kept him on a very spare diet. He had been terrified into docility, and, on enlarging his bill of fare, I honestly told him, that his health was in his own hands; that temperance would preserve it, and that excess in eating would shorten his life. From this well-meant caution he drew an inference perfectly useless. He would eat nothing that Doctor Douglas did not order; and during the course of a fortnight I received my fee, for directing his cook to boil his mutton and make his panada. I saw the machine was going on well; and, without farther concern, took his superfluous gold for advice and controul so beneficial to him. Not, however, classing him with my sick patients, I one morning omitted my visit. The following evening as I called on passing his door, I was questioned on the cause of my neglect. He had expected me in the morning. 'I had a great desire for a stewed carp for my dinner,' added he, with a disturbed air, 'but I did not dare to eat of it without your permission.'—'It is not my intention, my good Sir,' replied I, 'to play le docteur Pedro Rezio with you: with the constitution and appetite of le governeur Sancho Panca, all things are lawful with one sauce, moderation and exercise. Eat like a ploughman if it please you, on condition you work like one.' He graciously smiled, and said he would try what he could do when stronger. I now mentioned the melancholy accident which had engaged me the whole of the day. A man working on the roof-beams of a house had fallen; he had broken his thigh, and, as it was supposed, had fractured his head. It appeared that this unfortunate man had been Sir Peregrine's carpenter, but had incurred his sore displeasure by two offences equally unpardonable. The first was, refusing him his vote for the candidate he supported; the second, the man could read; and with this dangerous talent he had discovered, that he was not altogether a piece of elm or oak. 'And was it for this fellow, doctor, that Sir Peregrine Lofley was neglected?' said he, rising from an easy-chair, with much resentment; 'surely you must know that he is a notorious Jacobin! a rascal who reads newspapers and seditious tracts, at alehouses; and prates of magna-charta and the liberty of the press! He is the veriest dog in the neighbourhood a common nuisance! Surely you must have known this!'—'I was perfectly acquainted with the man's reputed character,' answered I, drily; 'but I was called upon to judge of his fractured skull, not of his political creed. It happens, however, fortunately for my hopes of saving his life, which is not unuseful to his wife and six children, that he has loved politics better than ale: the remarkable sobriety of his habits is much in his favour, and I hope to conquer the fever. You must not expect me to call to-morrow, I shall be engaged with him.'—'It will not suit me,' answered he, with evident haughtiness, 'to place my health in any man's hands, on whom I cannot depend for punctuality as well as judgment; and I should conceive that Doctor Douglas has had no reason to complain of my want of attention to his visits.' He offered his guinea: I declined it. 'This was a call en passant,' observed I, 'but it has led to an explanation of your expectations. These, Sir Peregrine, may, on certain occasions, be regarded by me, as not less incumbent on your medical attendant's observance, than they appear useless at this moment. All are men, without distinction, on my list of patients; the urgency of the case settles their precedence. You want not medical aid at present; nor do I want your guineas, in return 'for small talk and bowing,' although born on the other side of the Tweed.' I left him swelling with rage, and have never seen him since; and finding that I am neither a democrat, nor a nuisance, he calls me a pretending quack!'—'And yet,' observed the delighted Sir Murdock, 'the united suffrages of every university in Europe could not have better qualified a man for the purposes of healing the sick. Your remedies must be infallible, doctor, if you can prescribe to other diseases as well as you have done to pride and narrowness of spirit.'—'The patient was heartily welcome to it,' replied he, with invincible gravity. 'I am not an ill-natured man, Sir Murdock, and when a good action of this sort falls in my way I conceive it to be my duty to be useful. It is true that my nostrums, on such occasions, are like most of my unlicensed brethren's, more rough than infallible; but I am more generous than the common herd of venders of this class; I give my pill and bolus gratis to all who apply for them."
"I wish I could give you a special diploma, Douglas, for prescribing your physic to those who do not ask for it," observed the mild Greenwood; "you might find plenty of patients, who, not thinking 'they need a physician,' become incurable by neglect."—"Is not that your fault," asked he, smiling; "you are too tender and compassionate. The diet you prescribe of self-knowledge and self-discipline, will not do for all constitutions. Some need caustics and the probe, and with such patients will Douglas exercise his functions without interfering in your trade." The good doctor had, however, as I thought, been rather too tender of a foible of his own. His national prejudices had not been pruned. "Scotland was the genial soil of philosophy, courage, and honour." The conversation took, from some assertions of this sort, an argumentative form. Malcolm with delight listened to his father's eloquence. Stimulated by his opponents, Mr. Greenwood and the captain, and supporting Douglas's arguments, he forgot the past; and brought forth his long-concealed stories of knowledge, with an animation which marked the acuteness of his mind and the strength of his memory.
Wherefore is it, my dear Lucy, that so many are found who, in the pride of reason, appear to forget the feeble tenure on which depends their boasted privileges; their justly prized prerogatives? The pulsation of an artery more or less rapid than suits our fragile frame, may, in a moment suspend, and, for a time, annihilate those faculties that distinguish us from the brute that perishes. Are we not liable to diseases, to accidents, to sorrows, which no human skill can remedy, no human prudence can prevent, and which, in a moment, may reduce us to idiots, or render us as ferocious and dangerous as beasts of prey? Suspend, but for a moment, the agency of that Being in "whom we live and move," and what are we? Surely there needed not the awful interdiction of eternal truth, to teach us, that "Pride was not made for man." Our own weakness, our own feebleness, might have sufficed to point out the lesson! You are fortunately released from a train of thoughts more useful to myself than needful to one who "bears her faculties so meekly." I am summoned to the card-table; Lady Maclairn requested me so earnestly to make up a rubber for poor Lucretia, that I cannot refuse her. There are sceptics to be found who deny that there is constancy in love. It would save much cavilling if these ingenious people would use proper terms. No one, I presume, would contradict them in their assertion, that people cannot eat with such an appetite, or drink when not thirsty, as if they were hungry or thirsty; but leaving such to their ignorance, I will start a new subject of argument, for I will maintain that one cannot always hate. No, Lucy, irreconcilable hatred, like a raging fever, must either kill the patient or wear itself out. My cheek no longer flushes on seeing Miss Flint; nothing rises in my throat when I ask her how she passed the night. Are not these gracious signs, Lucy, that I am becoming truly your sister? You shake your dear head. Well, "Rome was not built in a day," says the proverb; and after all, can I help that people should reap that which they have sowed? Would you wish me to give to Miss Flint the tribute due to suffering virtue? and to think, with Mrs. Allen, that the wicked are more to be commiserated than the good? If you do you must give me time, and in justice commend these dawnings of virtue; for I have, in consequence of my charity, been two days writing this, instead of one. Love me, Lucy; be sure to love me with all my faults. Nothing you can do for my benefit will so soon correct them.
I am impatient to hear what you think of "My lilley of the valley!" There! it is breathed! Take the dear blessing amongst you! and, oh! that I could add: take with it your
Rachel Cowley.
CHAP. IX.
During an interval of three or four weeks, the period during which Captain Flint was on his excursion to Heathcot, no occurrences of importance to this history appear in Miss Cowley's letters to her friend. It is my duty to supply this chasm by detailing a few particulars relative to Mr. Horace Hardcastle's situation and pursuits, these being so immediately connected with the thread of the narrative as to claim attention.
The young nobleman, his friend, with whom he went abroad, continued gradually to yield to the slow, but fatal malady which had so long menaced the hopes of his family. Intervals of comparative ease, with that flow of spirits which commonly attends this disease, and which was further sustained by his patience and principles, had, from time to time, beguiled him in the course of his unprofitable search after health. He became weary of the sea, and disgusted by the confinement of a ship's cabin; and he expressed much reluctance to quitting Lisbon, where he had wintered. His friends about him strongly recommended to him a retreat from the heat of the summer, which was within their reach, and the accustomed resort of the society to which he was attached and endeared. Doctor Innes, his tutor, convinced of the inutility of the many cruises he had patiently submitted to undertake, and the necessity of amusing his mind, immediately secured, in this delightful asylum, a convenient house for his reception, to which the family repaired in the early months of the summer.