“The heat of the sun in harvest time and the cold and wet of winter.”
One of the guests, affecting great gravity, joined in the conversation.
“So that in this healthy district, sir, people are ill all the year round?”
The doctor raised his little grey eyes to the speaker’s face, looked at him, hesitated, and seemed either to check or to seek a reply. Madame de Moncar kindly came to his relief.
“I know,” she said, “that you are here the guardian genius of all who suffer.”
“Oh, you are too good,” replied the old man, apparently much engrossed with the slice of pasty upon his plate. Then the gay party left Dr Barnaby to himself, and the conversation flowed in its previous channel. If any notice was taken of the peaceable old man, it was in the form of some slight sarcasm, which, mingled with other discourse, would pass, it was thought, unperceived by its object. Not that these young men and women were generally otherwise than polite and kind-hearted; but upon that day the journey, the breakfast, the merriment and slight excitement that had attended all the events of the morning, had brought on a sort of heedless gaiety and communicative mockery, which rendered them pitiless to the victim whom chance had thrown in their way. The doctor continued quietly to eat, without looking up, or uttering a word, or seeming to hear one; they voted him deaf and dumb, and he was no restraint upon the conversation.
When the guests rose from table, Dr Barnaby took a step or two backwards, and allowed each man to select the lady he wished to take into the drawing-room. One of Madame de Moncar’s friends remaining without a cavalier, the village doctor timidly advanced, and offered her his hand—not his arm. His fingers scarcely touched hers as he proceeded, his body slightly bent in sign of respect, with measured steps towards the drawing-room. Fresh smiles greeted his entrance, but not a cloud appeared upon the placid countenance of the old man, who was now declared blind, as well as deaf and dumb. Quitting his companion, Dr Barnaby selected the smallest, humblest-looking chair in the room, placed it in a corner, at some distance from everybody else, put his stick between his knees, crossed his hands upon the knob, and rested his chin upon his hands. In this meditative attitude he remained silent, and from time to time his eyes closed, as if a gentle slumber, which he neither invoked nor repelled, were stealing over him.
“Madame de Moncar!” cried one of the guests, “I presume it is not your intention to inhabit this ruin in a desert?”
“Certainly I have no such project. But here are lofty trees and wild woods. M. de Moncar may very likely be tempted to pass a few weeks here in the shooting season.”