Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866», sayfa 8

CHAPTER VI

In another fortnight we had another Physick in the family. His papa called him "a little dose," and his mamma a "pill," in contradistinction to her previous "Phil." Proving peaceful and reflective, he also soon earned for himself the title of "the infant Philosopher."

Mrs. Physick did not like the society of Mrs. Rocket, the nurse, whom the Doctor had chosen "on account of the absence of her conversational powers." Mrs. Physick was accordingly always trying to get me into her chamber to sit with her. Mrs. Rocket accordingly did not like me, and was always trying to get me out. Between these two contending powers above, and the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker below, I was neither solitary nor idle.

There was much to do, moreover, in answering the kind inquiries, and receiving and disposing of the whips, jellies, blanc-mangers, and other indigestible delicacies, sent in by anxious friends. These the grateful Doctor pronounced, in the privacy of domestic life, "poison for the patient, but not quite so bad for the attendants." Accordingly, we ate them together sociably, at almost every meal; after which we went up stairs and told "the patient" how good they were, while I presented her gruel, and he would ask her, with an earnest air of judicial and dispassionate investigation, whether that was not "nice." This conduct she declared most unfeeling and ungrateful in us both, and bound herself by many a vow to make us pay for it as soon as she had the ordering of our dinners again. So we all made merry together over the little cradle that was called "the pill-box." Its small tenant was from the first, as I have hinted, a virtuous child, cried little, slept much, and when awake rewarded our attentions by making such preposterous faces as rendered it a most grateful task to watch him. I soon, therefore, became much attached to him; and I enjoyed one at least of the chief elements of the happiness of the individual,—the happiness of those among whom the individual lives.

In the mean time my guardian sometimes discussed with me some other things besides the jellies. For instance, "Katy," said he at one of our tête-à-tête dinners, "you walk out every day, I suppose; or, at least, you ought. I wish you would call now and then, and take Nelly Fader with you. She can hardly be a very entertaining companion to you, I own, but it would be a charity; and, for your mother's daughter, that's enough."

"Certainly I will. By the way, speaking of her, what did you mean by what you said that day about female physicians?"

"I meant what I said," returned he, bluntly. "I meant just what I said. We need them, and we shall have them. It is an experiment that has got to be tried, and will be probably, within your lifetime, if not in mine. I don't want you to be one of them, though. You ought to be as much cleverer than yourself as you are now than Nelly Fader, in order to carry it through; and even then it might be the carrying of a cross through life,—a grievous, in the view of most men perhaps an ignominious cross, to the pioneers. Especially it will be so, if other good but uninformed and thoughtless women are going to cry out upon it, as you and Julia did the other day. Whether the experiment is to succeed or not depends, under Providence, very much on you and such as you. But if that sort of outcry is to be raised, it will probably have the effect of keeping out of the profession such women as, from their integrity, ability, culture, and breeding, could be ornaments to it, and leave us shallow and low-minded smatterers, that I wouldn't trust with the life of a canary-bird,—who will ask which is likely to be the most lucrative calling, medicine or millinery, and take their choice accordingly,—and, for want of better, poor dupes will employ them. If you can't bear female practitioners, you'll have to bear female quacktitioners." He paused and looked at me.

I knew how jealous he always was for the honor of his craft. He did not often come so near giving me a scolding; and I began to be afraid I might deserve one, though I could not see how. "I am sorry," said I; "I did not mean—I did not think—I did not know—"

"Precisely, kitten on the hearth," returned he, good-humoredly; "and as you are sorry, and as you are besides usually rather less unmeaning and unthinking and unknowing than most other chits of your age, I forgive you. Learn to think and know before you hiss or purr, and you will be wiser than most chits of any age or sex. But now, consider: you, such as you are, yourself little more than a child, have, in two or three short visits, roused, interested, and done that other poor child more good, and, I strongly suspect, inspired her with more confidence, than I—I trust as upright a person and as sincere a well-wisher—have been able to do in a score. And this you have been able to do, in great part, simply by virtue of your womanhood. It comes more natural to her, no doubt, to talk with you. Nelly's is a case in point, though by no manner of means so strong a case as others that I have in my mind. Now imagine another woman with your good-will and natural tact, vivacity, and sympathy; multiply these by double your age and intellect, and again by triple your experience and information; calculate from these data her powers of doing good in such cases, and then see whether, in helping to brand her and fetter her in the exercise of such powers, you may not 'haply be found to fight against God.'"

"I will not speak so again,—at least before I think and know. You have forgiven me. Now appoint me my penance."

"Do what more you can for Nelly, then. I can do little or nothing. In fact, my visits seem to embarrass and agitate her so much, that I am sometimes afraid they hurt her more than they help her. She suffers more in mind than body, I suspect. How, she will not tell me, and perhaps she cannot. It may be that she is sick from sorrow; or, on the other hand, her sorrow may be only an illusion of her sickness. It is all, from first to last, a mere miserable groping and working in the dark. In the mean time her constitution and character are forming for life. It is enough to make one's heart ache to look at the poor baby, and think what an unsatisfactory, profitless, miserable life that may be. I need not remind you, Katy, that all this is a little piece of Freemasonry between ourselves. You are one of the exceptional and abnormal human people before whom one can safely think aloud."

I went to Nelly that very afternoon, with some curiosity and with no unwillingness. I had already begun to like her better than the Doctor did, as I began to know her better. At first I had been somewhat at a loss as to her real disposition, between the constant civility of her manners, and the occasional sullenness of her manner. I was fast making up my mind that the civility was genuine; the sullenness, apparent only, the result of extreme shyness, despondency, and languor. As fast as she became more and more at her ease with me, just so fast did she become more and more engaging. She was chaotic enough, and like a different creature on different days; but I found her, though sometimes very childish, often sweet and never sour, unvaryingly patient towards her very trying aunt, and only too subservient to her.

On this particular afternoon, I spied her through the best-parlor window, sobbing dismally. When she heard and saw me, she tried to compose herself in vain; but the only account she had to give of her grief was, that "the mocking-bird sang so dreadfully, and the Doctor told Aunt Cumberland she [Nelly] was not going to die. There," added she, under her breath, "I didn't mean to say that!"

We had no chance to say more; for Mrs. Cumberland came in from her shopping, and inquired for some cap-ruffles, which she had given Nelly to make up for her. "She said she didn't feel well enough to go down town with me," said Mrs. Cumberland; "an' so I left her them to hem, 'cause the Doctor says she needs cheerful occupation; an' them are just the pootiest kind o' work for young ladies, an' ruther tryin' to old eyes."

This was unanswerable; and as I was obliged myself to go to some shops, and Nelly could not, with her swollen lids, I bade Mrs. Cumberland good by; but told her niece that I meant to call for her soon again, for the Doctor thought it would do both of us good to take a walk every day. She looked somewhat encouraged by this; and I hoped that the plan would have the twofold effect of making her think it would be ungracious to refuse to accompany me a second time, and of keeping her from crying lest she should again be caught at it.

When I reached home, I found it a home of strife. The pill was soon to be labelled. Dr. Physick wished to call it Julius; but nothing would do for his tyrannical wife but to have it bear his name.

"Thank you," said the Doctor, as I entered. "Aren't the sufferings of one generation under that dispensation enough for you? Do as you would be done by, Julia. How would you like yourself to be called Philemon?"

"I can't help that," persisted Mrs. Julia. "The name of Phil is a philter to me. Unless he bears it, I shall hate him."

"A likely story! What should you have done if he had been a girl?"

"Called him Phillis," answered the ready Julia, sturdily.

"Then what should you say to Philip, now?" interposed I in behalf of the helpless innocent,—(an interposition in return for which, ever after we have finished his medical education with a year in Paris, he ought in common gratitude to prescribe for me gratis, if I live to be as old and ill as Joyce Heth;—for Philip he was and is, and will be, I trust, for many a fine day,—the fine, honest, clever, useful fellow!)

"Here's your fee, Katy, for restoring my domestic supremacy—ahem! I hope Mrs. Physick did not hear," said the Doctor;—"domestic balance of power shall I say, my love,—or system of compromises?"

What "my love" desired him to say I cannot say, for I was deep in the note which he had disgorged for me from his not only omnivorous, but, alas! too often oblivious pocket. It was written on small-sized French paper, in a beautiful English hand, bore date, to my consternation, some days back, and ran as follows:—

"Barberry Beach, Monday, Sept.—th, 18—.

"Dear Miss Morne:—

"I have been wishing to see you again, all through this month, but scarcely expecting it till now; because I knew how full your heart and hands must be at home. Now, however, since I have had the pleasure of hearing from the Doctor that Mrs. Physick is nearly well, perhaps it will not be too much to hope that you will find an hour to spare for me some day this week. I have no engagements made; and if you can appoint a time to come to me, I shall be here and deny myself to other visitors. I should send my barouche for you; but one of the ponies has hurt its hoof, and the Doctor says that you confine yourself too closely to your household cares, and that you would be all the better for a walk.

"Another indulgence which I have been promising myself,—that of painting some illustrations for my brother's next work,—I find I must not only put off, but forego. It would be some consolation to me to be able to make it over to you, and believe that you found half as much enjoyment in it as I have, on former occasions. The usual terms, when he has paid for such work, have been … [here she named a liberal sum]; but of course, if you like to undertake it, you will feel at liberty to name your own; and I shall be, as I am,

"Very gratefully yours,

"Elizabeth Dudley.

"Miss Morne."

Between surprise, pleasure, and dismay at my apparent neglect, I exclaimed simply, "What shall I do!"

"In all dilemmas, consult your guardian," answered he; and I handed him the note by way of a Nemesis.

He read it aloud very honestly, date and all; and I had the satisfaction to hear his wife, who was fast getting him well in hand again, rebuke him.

"Whew!" whistled he with most appropriate contrition; "'Monday'! and it's Thursday now, and too late for to-day! I wish I mayn't have lost you the job, Katy. While the heart holds out, however, never give up the case! Put on your best bib and tucker when you get up to-morrow morning; and, as soon as you have got through ordering me an apple-dumpling, I will take you over there, and tell Miss Dudley who was to blame, and promise her, if she will forgive us, never to give her any assafœtida."

CHAPTER VII

I could scarcely sleep that night for eagerness and anticipation. Ever since the afternoon when the vision of Miss Dudley appeared, to startle me from my painting, in the little south parlor, she had been the foremost figure in my brightest day-dreams, as often as, with little Philip warm and slumberous on my knees, I could find time for day-dreams. Accordingly, I had been more than wishing—longing—to see her again; though I put off returning her visit, partly from real want of time, partly from uncertainty about what was the proper etiquette for me, and partly from the dread of dispelling some pleasant illusions, and finding that the Miss Dudley of my reveries belonged to the realm of my imagination rather than to that of my memory. I dreamed of her all that night, when I was not lying awake to think of her; and when, in the morning, I arose early to brush and brighten my somewhat faded black, the keen autumn air, instead of chilling me, seemed but to whet and sharpen my zest for my expedition.

Julia's toilet was not made when I heard the clatter of the recalcitrant De Quincey backing the chaise out of his beloved, but little be-lived in, stable. She sat up in bed, however, when I went in to kiss her, in spite of Mrs. Rocket, turned me round to the window to see whether I was looking my best, or, as she equivocally phrased it, "the best of which I was capable," told me, that I had got a little rouge the last time I was out, and must ask Miss Dudley whether it was not becoming, and hooked her forefingers into my naturally gekräuseltes hair, to pull it into what she always maintained to be the proper pose above my eyebrows.

Then down I ran, and off I went, through the town and along the road, between rocks and evergreens with here and there a gate among them that marked the entrance to the earthly paradise of some lucky gentleman.

"Sha'n't we be too early?" asked I, fidgeting, for my prosperity appeared to me, just now, too perfect to be permanent.

"No," said the Doctor. "They are early people at Barberry Beach,—not Sybarites in anything, so far as I can judge. It is near nine. Miss Dudley tells me I shall almost always find her visible by that time. If, not hearing from you, she has made other engagements, you know she is more likely to be at leisure now than later."

"She does not look well yet. What was the matter with her?"

"Angina pectoris. That is Greek to you, Katy. Pain in the heart, then."

"What made her have it?"

"That is a deep question in the most interesting of sciences,—that of the metamorphoses of diseases. Many men would answer it according to their many minds. To the best of my belief, the cause of Miss Dudley's having a pain in her heart lay in her great-grandfather's toe."

"O Doctor! what do you mean?"

"The gout."

"Well, that sounds very aristocratic and imposing; but, notwithstanding, I know you are laughing at me."

"No, I am not. It is no laughing matter."

"Why, is it dangerous?"

"Dangerous!" said he. "It is deadly. Why, Katy, I never shall dare to tell you anything again, if you are going to look so frightened! She did not when I told her."

"Does she know?"

"Yes, and makes no secret of it, and is not unlikely to mention it before you; so that you must accustom yourself to the idea, and be prepared to face it as she does."

"How came she to know?"

"She asked me. I gave up very early in my practice, for several reasons, the habit of lying to my patients. If they are cowards, or if, for any reason, I think the truth and the whole truth would shorten their days, I often tell them little or nothing; but I tell them nothing but the truth. She is not a person to be put off from knowing what she has a right to know."

"How did she take it?"

"Nobly and simply, without any affectation of indifference. As she put the question, I laid my hand on her pulse; and, as it went on pretty firmly, I went on too. When I had said all there was to say, she thanked me earnestly, and said, as sweetly as anything could possibly be said, that the information would add double weight to the cautions and other counsels I had given her, and told me that, if I ever came to be in a situation like hers, she trusted that I should find the comfort of being dealt with with candor and kindness like mine. After all, Katy, she may live yet many years, and die at last of something else; and that is about the best that can be prognosticated of you and me, my dear."

"'Tis true the young may die, but the old must," thought I. I was half comforted, and only half. Yet the pensive shadow of coming doom—or shall I not rather say the solemn dawn of approaching eternity?—seemed to lend a new and more unearthly charm to the lovely spiritual vision I cherished in my mind.

Presently, instead of passing a gate, the Doctor turned in at it, and drove smoothly up the gentle slope of a hard-rolled winding avenue lined with hemlocks. "Pretty, isn't it?" cried he. "O for the time when I shall retire upon my fortune, and leave my office to Phil the second! There, Katy! What do you think of that?"

What did I think? O, too much to be told, either then or now! From the dark trees one forward step of each of De Quincey's forefeet brought us out into a high amphitheatre, at the instant flooded with sunshine. A higher hill, wooded with evergreens and bossed with boulders, made a background behind it, on the right, for a large, low cottage of clear gray granite, with broad piazzas curtained with Virginia creepers and monthly honeysuckles, and cloistered on the south. In front of the cottage was a shaven lawn, rimmed with a hedge of graceful barberries, and lighted up by small circular spots of brown earth, teeming with salvia and other splendid autumn flowers. Beyond and on the left ran a long reach of rocky headlands, burning with golden-rod and wild-rose berries mingled with purple asters and white spiræa, and all along from below, but very near, spread out far and wide the inexpressible ocean. It was a rough, ridgy, sage-greenish, gray ocean, I remember, that morning, full of tumble and toss and long scalloped lines of spent foam, covered over with a dim, low half-dome of sky,—with seagulls flickering, and here and there a small, wild, ragged gypsy of a cloud, of a little darker gray, scudding lawlessly under,—and threw out in the strongest contrast the brilliant hues and sharp, clear outlines of the shore.

The Doctor sprang from the chaise, left me in it, and threw me the reins. I always wished he wouldn't, but he always would. The most I had to gain by pulling them, if De Quincey grew restless, was to make him back; and this was precisely what I least desired. My reasonable expostulations, however, could never obtain any more grace from him who should have been my guardian than a promise, if I would "make no fuss, and broken bones" came of it, that he would "mend me softly." Therefore I thought it most prudent not to expostulate; but my penance was this time a brief one. He had hardly entered the door when the tall, striking figure I recollected so well came dimly in view in one of the nearest bay-windows, tapped on the glass with one slender white-frilled hand, and nodded with a bright, glad smile; and back came the Doctor to help me out.

"It is all right, Katy. Miss Dudley wants you, and does not want me. If it rains, you can stay till I call for you. Otherwise, come back when you like. The first door to your left in the hall."

Miss Dudley met me in the parlor-door, laughing. "I should have come out to make prize of you," said she, "but they say it is rather bleak this morning, and I am still under orders. I had almost given you up for this week; but the Doctor assures me that he has already been suitably dealt with and brought to repentance, and so there is no more to be said on that point, especially as you have happened to hit on the very time when I am most alone, and when, as I have been accustomed to be the busiest, I feel my present idleness the most. You drove here, after all. You are not tired? What should you say, first, to a walk with me?"

A staid-looking, exquisitely neat, elderly woman brought her bonnet, umbrella, gloves, and a large Scotch plaid shawl, in which she wrapped Miss Dudley, with much solicitude, and was so prettily thanked for her pains that I longed to have the wrapping up to do myself.

"I really do not think I needed to be muffled up quite so closely to-day," said my hostess, as she stepped lightly from the piazza to the sunlit gravel-walk; "but Bonner is ten years older than I, and feels the cold a good deal herself, and I do not like to make her anxious about me. She had a great fright, poor thing! when I was ill. Where shall we go, Miss Morne?—to the garden or the shore? I am not certain that those clouds mean to give us time for both."

Not knowing which she would prefer, I answered that I could hardly choose, unless she would be so kind as to tell me which was the most beautiful. To my joy, she said the shore. The path ran close to the edge of the cliffs; and below our very feet were the beach and the breakers. We both forgot ourselves at first, I think, in the sight and sound.

At length she turned, with a sudden movement, and looked me in the face. "I do believe, Miss Morne," said she, "that you are one of the fortunate people who have the power to enjoy this to the full. I trust that we may often still enjoy it here together."

"Shall I tell you how I enjoy it, ma'am?" I exclaimed, carried out of myself at sight of the enthusiasm that was tinging her delicate cheek and lighting up her eyes. "As we enjoy those things that it never comes into our heads to ask ourselves whether we like or not. Some things we have to ask ourselves, whether we like or not, before we know, and even after we are scarcely sure; and some things, such as the poor little 'Marchioness's' orange-peel and water, we have to 'make believe very hard' in order to like at all. But home when we have been away, and friends when we have been lonely, and water when we are thirsty, and the sea always!—we never ask ourselves if those are good,—we know." Then my face burnt. How it would burn in those girlish days!

And how foolish I felt, or had begun to feel, when Miss Dudley slowly answered, looking mercifully away from me and at the waves: "Very true, Miss Morne! You speak from your heart, and to mine."

The clouds were forbearing, and allowed us time afterwards for a visit to the gorgeous garden. We walked to the summer-house at the very end, from which a winding path began to climb the hill. There Miss Dudley paused. "My chamois days are over, for the present, at least," said she. "We must wait for my little nieces or nephew to escort you up there. Shall we go in?"

When we did so, I thought that the interior of the cottage was not much less grand, scarcely less beautiful, than what we had seen without. At that period most housekeepers held the hardly yet exploded heresy, not only that fresh air was a dangerous and unwholesome luxury, to be denied, as far as might be, to any but the strongest constitutions,² but that even sunshine within the doors was an inadmissible intrusion, alike untidy and superfluous. On these points this house set public opinion at defiance. It was set, of set purpose, at wrong angles to the points of the compass. Every wind of heaven could sweep it, at the pleasure of the inmates, through and through, and the piazzas were so arranged that there was not a single apartment in it into which the sun could not look, through one window or another, once at least in the twenty-four hours. The floors were tiled, ingrained, oiled, matted,—everything but carpeted, except that of the state drawing-room; and there the Wilton had a covering over it, removed, as I afterwards found, only on occasions of state. The whole atmosphere seemed full of health, purity, cheerfulness, warmth, and brightness. Brilliant flowers peeped in at the windows, and were set on the tables in vases, or hung in them from the walls. And there were pictures, and there were statues, but there too was Miss Dudley, paring a peach for me, for sociability's sake,—for she could not eat one herself, so soon after her breakfast; and, as I knew the time must be running away very fast,—hard that it will always run fastest when we are the happiest!—I seized my first opportunity to say that few things would give me greater pleasure than to furnish the illustrations she had mentioned, if I could but succeed in executing them as I ought.

"As to that, I will be your sponsor," returned she, gayly, "if you would like to begin them here. Your touch is very firm and true; and I will show you all our tricks of color. Here is my paint-box. Have you time to-day?"

I had time, and no excuse; though, in falling so suddenly into the midst of painting-lessons from Miss Dudley, I really felt as if I was having greatness thrust upon me in a manner to take my breath away. If I had only had a little more time to think about it, my touch might have been truer for the nonce. Her paint-box was so handsomely furnished, too, and so daintily ordered, that I scarcely dared touch it. She gave me a little respite, however, by rubbing the colors for me,—colors, some of them, that, for their costliness, I could not allow myself at all at home,—and selected for me two such exquisite brushes from her store! Then she lay down beside me on a "couch of Ind," smiled as I laid her plaid over her feet, and watched me at the work. How that brought my poor Fanny back to me! But my new mistress went on unwearyingly, teaching and encouraging me, and, if I was more than satisfied with her, did not on her part show that she was less than satisfied with me. The clock struck twelve before I dreamed of its taking upon itself to offer such an untimely interruption.

"Now I am nicely rested," said she, soon after; "and I am afraid you must begin to be nicely tired. Do you not?"

"No, indeed; I seldom do till nine o'clock at night."

"Then we will indulge ourselves here still a little longer. But hark! Are not there my little people back from school?"

The expression common to those who love children stole into her face. Young voices were drawing nearer.

"Come to my arms, O lovely cherub!" said one that had a boyish sound in it, paternally.

"Look out and see them," whispered Miss Dudley to me.

I peeped through the blinds. A handsome and very graceful olive-hued boy, apparently about fourteen years old, with a form like that of the Mercury upborne by a zephyr, eyes like stars, lashes like star-beams, and an expression that would have made him a good study for a picture of Puck, half leaning, half sitting, on the stone balustrade, was tenderly dandling in his arms a huge, vulgar-looking, gray, striped stable-cat, that rolled and writhed therein in transports of comfort and affection.

"But, indeed, Paul," remonstrated another voice, tout comme un serin, "Pet ought to be whipped instead of hugged! Lily says so."

"Tiger Lily? What a cruel girl! O, my Pettitoes! how can she say so?"

"Why," answered another girlish voice, a little firmer, but hardly less sweet, than the first, "only think! While we were all in school, he watched his opportunity and killed the robin that lives in the crab-apple-tree. The gardener says he heard it cry, and ran with his hoe; and there was this wicked, horrid, grim, great Pet galloping as fast as he could gallop to the stable, with its poor little beak sticking out at one side of his grinning mouth, and its tail at the other!"

"Why, Pettitoes! how very inconsiderate! You won't serve it so another time, will you? Though how a robin can have the face to squeak when he catches it himself at noon, after cramming himself with worms the whole morning, is more than I can see!"

"O no, Paul! He was singing most sweetly! I heard him; and so did Rose."

"And so did I. He was singing through his nose as bad as Deacon Piper, because he had a worm in his mouth. He couldn't leave off gobbling one single minute,—not even to practise his music."

"Let us go out," said Miss Dudley.

We did so. Paul's retreating back was all that was to be seen of the boy, with Pet's peaceful chin pillowed upon his shoulder, as, borne off in triumph, he looked calmly back at Lily, who stood shaking her small, chiselled ivory finger at him. Rose was still beside her, with her arm around her waist, as if in propitiation.

Two twelve-year-old twins, in twin blue gingham frocks,—they were much addicted to blue and pink ginghams,—they had that indefinable look of blood which belonged to their kin, which is sometimes, to be sure, to be found in families that have no great-grandfathers, after they have been well-fed, well-read, and well-bred for a generation or two, but to which they had an uncommonly good right, as their pedigree—so I afterwards found—ran straight back to the Norman Conquest, without a single "probably" in it. They were, for their age, tall and slender, with yet more springy buoyancy than their aunt in pose and movement. Strangers were always mistaking them for each other. That day I could scarcely tell them apart, though afterwards I wondered at it. Rose was the very prettiest child I ever saw, and Lily pretty nearly the most beautiful person.

Lily was already the tallest. Her thick and wavy hair was blonde cendrée, and all her features were perfectly Grecian. Her eyes were of a very dark blue, that turned into nothing but clear radiance when she was opposed or in any way excited. Her complexion was healthful, but would be described as soft and warm, rather than brilliant. Her whole fair little face was about as firm and spirited as a fair girlish face could be.