A Simpleton Part 22

"I might as well not be married at all as be a doctor's wife. You are never seen out with me, not even to church. Do behave like a Christian, and come to church with me now."

Dr. Staines shook his head.

"Why, I wouldn't miss church for all the world. Any excitement is better than always moping. Come over the water with me. The time Jane and I went, the clergyman read a paper that Mr. Brown had fallen down in a fit. There was such a rush directly, and I'm sure fifty ladies went out--fancy, all Mrs. Browns! Wasn't that fun?"

"Fun? I don't see it. Well, Rosa, your mind is evidently better adapted to diversion than mine is. Go you to church, love, and I'll continue my studies."

"Then all I can say is, I wish I was back in my father's house. Husband!

friend! companion!--I have none."

Then she burst out crying violently; and, being shocked at what she had said, and at the agony it had brought into her husband's face, she went off into hysterics; and as his heart would not let him bellow at her, or empty a bucket on her as he would on another patient, she had a good long bout of them: and got her way, for she broke up his studies for that day, at all events.

Even after the hysterics were got under, she continued to moan and sigh very prettily, with her lovely, languid head pillowed on her husband's arm; in a word, though the hysterics were real, yet this innocent young person had the presence of mind to postpone entire convalescence, and lay herself out to be petted all day. But fate willed it otherwise: while she was sighing and moaning, came to the door a scurrying of feet, and then a sharp, persistent ringing that meant something. The moaner c.o.c.ked eye and ear, and said, in her every-day voice, which, coming so suddenly, sounded very droll, "What is that, I wonder?"

Jane hurried to the street-door, and Rosa recovered by magic; and, preferring gossip to hysterics, in an almost gleeful whisper, ordered Christopher to open the door of the study. The Bijou was so small that the following dialogue rang in their ears:--

A boy in b.u.t.tons gasped out, "Oh, if you please, will you ast the doctor to come round directly; there's a haccident."

"La, bless me!" said Jane, and never budged.

"Yes, miss. It's our missus's little girl fallen right off an i-chair, and cut her head dreadful, and smothered in blood."

"La, to be sure!" And she waited steadily for more.

"Ay, and missus she fainted right off; and I've been to the regler doctor, which he's out; and Sarah, the housemaid, said I had better come here; you was only just set up, she said; you wouldn't have so much to do, says she."

"That is all SHE knows," said Jane. "Why, our master--they pulls him in pieces which is to have him fust."

"What an awful liar! Oh, you good girl!" whispered Dr. Staines and Rosa in one breath.

"Ah, well," said b.u.t.tons, "any way, Sarah says she knows you are clever, 'cos her little girl as lives with her mother, and calls Sarah aunt, has bin to your 'spensary with ringworm, and you cured her right off."

"Ay, and a good many more," said Jane, loftily. She was a housemaid of imagination; and while Staines was putting some lint and an instrument case into his pocket, she proceeded to relate a number of miraculous cures. Dr. Staines interrupted them by suddenly emerging, and inviting b.u.t.tons to take him to the house.

Mrs. Staines was so pleased with Jane for cracking up the doctor, that she gave her five shillings; and, after that, used to talk to her a great deal more than to the cook, which judicious conduct presently set all three by the ears.

b.u.t.tons took the doctor to a fine house in the same street, and told him his mistress's name on the way--Mrs. Lucas. He was taken up to the nursery, and found Mrs. Lucas seated, crying and lamenting, and a woman holding a little girl of about seven, whose brow had been cut open by the fender, on which she had fallen from a chair; it looked very ugly, and was even now bleeding.

Dr. Staines lost no time; he examined the wound keenly, and then said kindly to Mrs. Lucas, "I am happy to tell you it is not serious." He then asked for a large basin and some tepid water, and bathed it so softly and soothingly that the child soon became composed; and the mother discovered the artist at once. He compressed the wound, and explained to Mrs. Lucas that the princ.i.p.al thing really was to avoid an ugly scar. "There is no danger," said he. He then bound the wound neatly up, and had the girl put to bed. "You will not wake her at any particular hour, nurse. Let her sleep. Have a little strong beef-tea ready, and give it her at any hour, night or day, she asks for it. But do not force it on her, or you will do her more harm than good. She had better sleep before she eats."

Mrs. Lucas begged him to come every morning; and, as he was going, she shook hands with him, and the soft palm deposited a hard substance wrapped in paper. He took it with professional gravity and seeming unconsciousness; but, once outside the house, went home on wings. He ran up to the drawing-room, and found his wife seated, and playing at reading. He threw himself on his knees, and the fee into her lap; and, while she unfolded the paper with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of pleasure, he said, "Darling, the first real patient--the first real fee. It is yours to buy the new bonnet."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" said she, with her eyes glistening. "But I'm afraid one can't get a bonnet fit to wear--for a guinea."

Dr. Staines visited his little patient every day, and received his guinea. Mrs. Lucas also called him in for her own little ailments, and they were the best possible kind of ailments: for, being imaginary, there was no limit to them.

Then did Mrs. Staines turn jealous of her husband. "They never ask me,"

said she; "and I am moped to death."

"It is hard," said Christopher, sadly. "But have a little patience.

Society will come to you long before practice comes to me."

About two o'clock one afternoon a carriage and pair drove up, and a gorgeous footman delivered a card--"Lady Cicely Treherne."

Of course Mrs. Staines was at home, and only withheld by propriety from bounding into the pa.s.sage to meet her school-fellow. However, she composed herself in the drawing-room, and presently the door was opened, and a very tall young woman, richly but not gayly dressed, drifted into the room, and stood there a statue of composure.

Rosa had risen to fly to her; but the reverence a girl of eighteen strikes into a child of twelve hung about her still, and she came timidly forward, blushing and sparkling, a curious contrast in color and mind to her visitor; for Lady Cicely was Languor in person--her hair whitey-brown, her face a fine oval, but almost colorless; her eyes a pale gray, her neck and hands incomparably white and beautiful--a lymphatic young lady, a live antidote to emotion. However, Rosa's beauty, timidity, and undisguised affectionateness were something so different from what she was used to in the world of fashion, that she actually smiled, and held out both her hands a little way. Rosa seized them, and pressed them; they left her; and remained pa.s.sive and limp.

"O Lady Cicely," said Rosa, "how kind of you to come."

"How kind of you to send to me," was the polite, but perfectly cool reply. "But how you are gwown, and--may I say impwoved?--You la pet.i.te Lusignan! It is incwedible," lisped her ladyship, very calmly.

"I was only a child," said Rosa. "You were always so beautiful and tall, and kind to a little monkey like me. Oh, pray sit down, Lady Cicely, and talk of old times."

She drew her gently to the sofa, and they sat down hand in hand; but Lady Cicely's high-bred reserve made her a very poor gossip about anything that touched herself and her family; so Rosa, though no egotist, was drawn into talking about herself more than she would have done had she deliberately planned the conversation. But here was an old school-fellow, and a singularly polite listener, and so out came her love, her genuine happiness, her particular griefs, and especially the crowning grievance, no society, moped to death, etc.

Lady Cicely could hardly understand the sentiment in a woman who so evidently loved her husband. "Society!" said she, after due reflection, "why, it is a boa." (And here I may as well explain that Lady Cicely spoke certain words falsely, and others affectedly; and as for the letter r, she could say it if she made a hearty effort, but was generally too lazy to throw her leg over it.) "Society! I'm dwenched to death with it. If I could only catch fiah like other women, and love somebody, I would much rather have a tete-a-tete with him than go teawing about all day and all night, from one unintwisting cwowd to another. To be sure," said she, puzzling the matter out, "you are a beauty, and would be more looked at."

"The idea! and--oh no! no! it is not that. But even in the country we had always some society."

"Well, dyar, believe me, with your appeawance, you can have as much society as you please; but it will boa you to death, as it does me, and then you will long to be left quiet with a sensible man who loves you."

Said Rosa, "When shall I have another tete-a-tete with YOU, I wonder?

Oh, it has been such a comfort to me. Bless you for coming. There--I wrote to Cecilia, and Emily, and Mrs. Bosanquet that is now, and all my sworn friends, and to think of you being the one to come--you that never kissed me but once, and an earl's daughter into the bargain."

"Ha! ha! ha!"--Lady Cicely actually laughed for once in a way, and did not feel the effort. "As for kissing," said she, "if I fall shawt, fawgive me. I was nevaa vewy demonst.w.a.tive."

"No; and I have had a lesson. That Florence Cole--Florence Whiting that was, you know--was always kissing me, and she has turned out a traitor.

I'll tell you all about her." And she did.

Lady Cicely thought Mrs. Staines a little too unreserved in her conversation; but was so charmed with her sweetness and freshness that she kept up the acquaintance, and called on her twice a week during the season. At first she wondered that her visits were not returned; but Rosa let out that she was ashamed to call on foot in Grosvenor Square.

Lady Cicely shrugged her beautiful shoulders a little at that; but she continued to do the visiting, and to enjoy the simple, innocent rapture with which she was received.

This lady's p.r.o.nunciation of many words was false or affected. She said "good murning" for "good morning," and turned other vowels to diphthongs, and played two or three pranks with her "r's." But we cannot be all imperfection: with her p.r.o.nunciation her folly came to a full stop. I really believe she lisped less nonsense and bad taste in a year than some of us articulate in a day. To be sure, folly is generally uttered in a hurry, and she was too deplorably lazy to speak fast on any occasion whatever.

One day Mrs. Staines took her up-stairs, and showed her from the back window her husband pacing the yard, waiting for patients. Lady Cicely folded her arms, and contemplated him at first with a sort of zoological curiosity. Gentleman pacing back yard, like hyena, she had never seen before.

At last she opened her mouth in a whisper, "What is he doing?"

"Waiting for patients."

"Oh! Waiting--for--patients?"

"For patients that never come, and never will come."

"Cuwious! How little I know of life."