The residence of Dr. Mayhew was about four miles distant from our village. It was a fine brick house, as old as the oaks which stood before it, conferring upon a few acres of grass land the right to be regarded as a park. The interior of the house was as substantial as the outside; both were as solid as the good doctor himself. He was a man of independent property, a member of the University of Oxford, and a great stickler for old observances. He received a fee from every man who was able to pay him for his services; and the poor might always receive at his door, at the cost of application only, medical advice and physic, and a few commodities much more acceptable than either. He kept a good establishment, in the most interesting portion of which dwelt three decaying creatures, the youngest fourscore years of age and more. They were an entail from his grandfather, and had faithfully served that ancestor for many years as coachman, housekeeper, and butler. The father of Dr. Mayhew had availed himself of their integrity and experience until Time robbed them of the latter, and rendered the former a useless ornament; and dying, he bequeathed them, with the house and lands, to their present friend and patron. There they sat in their own hall, royal servants every one, hanging to life by one small thread, which when it breaks for one must break for all. They had little interest in the present world, to which the daily visit of the doctor, and that alone, connected them. He never failed to pay it. Unconscious of all else, they never failed to look for it.
The village clock struck eleven as I walked up the avenue that conducted to the house. The day was intensely hot, and at that early hour the fierce fire of the sun had rendered the atmosphere sweltry and oppressive. I knocked many times before I could obtain admittance, and, at last, the door was opened by a ragged urchin about twelve years of age, looking more like the son of a thief or a gypsy than a juvenile member of the decent household.
"Is Dr. Mayhew at home?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know!" he answered surlily; "you had better come and see;" and therewith he turned upon his heel, and tramped heavily down the kitchen stairs. For a few seconds I remained where I was. At length, hearing no voices in the house, and finding that no one was likely to come to me, I followed him. At the bottom of the stairs was a long passage leading to the offices. It was very dark, or it was rendered so to me who had just left the glare of noonday. At the end of it, however, a small lamp glimmered, and under its feeble help I advanced. Arriving at its extremity, I was stopped by the hum of many voices that proceeded from a chamber on the right. Here I knocked immediately. The voice of Dr. Mayhew desired me to enter. The door was opened the moment afterwards, and then I beheld the doctor himself and every servant of the house assembled in a crowd. The little boy who had given me admission was in the group; and in the very centre of all, sitting upright in a chair, was the strangest apparition of a man that I have ever gazed upon, before or since. The object that attracted, and at the same time repelled, my notice, was a creature whose age no living man could possibly determine. He was at least six feet high, with raven hair, and a complexion sallow as the sear leaf. Look at his figure, then mark the absence of a single wrinkle, and you judge him for a youth. Observe again: look at the emaciated face; note the jet-black eye, deeply-sunken, and void of all fire and life; the crushed, the vacant, and forlorn expression; the aquiline nose, prominent as an eagle's, from which the parchment skin is drawn as rigidly as though it were a dead man's skin, bloodless and inert. The wear and tear, the buffeting and misery of seventy years are there. Seventy!—yea, twice seventy years of mortal agony and suffering could hardly leave a deeper impress. He is strangely clad. He is in rags. The remnants of fine clothes are dropping from his shrunken body. His hand is white and small. Upon the largest finger he wears a ring—once, no doubt, before his hand had shrivelled up—the property and ornament of the smallest. It is a sparkling diamond, and it glistens as his own black eye should, if it be true that he is old only in mental misery and pain. There is no sign of thought or feeling in his look. His eye falls on no one, but seems to pass beyond the lookers-on, and to rest on space. The company are far more agitated. A few minutes before my arrival the strange object had been found, with the boy whom I had first seen, wandering in the garden. He was apprehended for a thief, brought into the house, and not until Dr. Mayhew had been summoned, had it been suspected that the poor creature was an idiot. Commiseration then took the place of anger quickly, and all was anxiety and desire to know whence he had come, who he might be, and what his business was. He could not speak for himself, and the answers of the boy had been unsatisfactory and vague. When I entered the room, the doctor gave me a slight recognition, and proceeded at once to a further examination of the stripling.
"Where did you pick him up, Sir?" enquired the Doctor.
"Mother sent me out a-begging with him," answered the gypsy boy.
"Who is your mother?"
"Mabel."
"Mabel what?"
"Mabel nothing."