"What blame—do you pretend—to lay upon me, as it is?" said the doctor not illhumouredly.
"There'll be no pretence about it—when I lay it on," said Mr. Linden.
"Enact Macduff—and lay on!" said the doctor smiling.
"Let it suffice you that I could if I would."
"The shadows of strokes suffice me!" said the doctor. "Am I a man of straw? Do you take me for Sir Andrew Aguecheck? 'horribly valiant' after his fashion. What have I done, man?" He stood, carelessly handsome an handsomely careless, before the couch, looking down upon Mr. Linden as if resolved to have something out of him.
A part of the description applied well to the face he was looking at—yet after a different fashion; and anything less careless than the look Mr. Linden bent upon him, could not be imagined. It was a look wherein again different feelings held each other in check,—the grave reproof, the sorrowful perception, the quick indignation—Dr. Harrison might detect them all; and yet more, the wistful desire that he were a different man. This it was that answered.
"What have you done, doctor?—you have very nearly given yourself full proof of those true things which you profess to disbelieve."
"How do you know that I disbelieve anything?" said the doctor, with a darkening yet an acute look;—"much more that I profess to disbelieve?"
"How do I know whether a ship carries a red or a blue light at her masthead?"
"You don't, if she carries no light at all; and I do not remember that
I ever professed myself in your hearing on either side of the 'things'
I suppose you mean."