Two Years Ago Volume I Part 22

"Claude, get Lord Scoutbush some iced soda-water."

"If you laugh at me, I'll never speak to you again."

"Or buy any of Claude's pictures?"

"Why do you torment me so? I'll go, I say,--leave town to-morrow,--only I can't with this horrid depot work! What shall I do?

It's too cruel of you, while Campbell is away in Ireland, too; and I have not a soul but you to ask advice of, for Valencia is as great a goose as I am;" and the poor little fellow buried his hands in his curls, and stared fiercely into the fire, as if to draw from thence omens of his love, by the spodomantic augury of the ancient Greeks; while Sabina tripped up and down the room, putting things to rights for the night, and enjoying his torments as a cat does those of the mouse between her paws; and yet not out of spite, but from pure and simple fun.

Sabina is one of those charming bodies who knows everybody's business, and manages it. She lives in a world of intrigue, but without a thought of intriguing for her own benefit. She has always a match to make, a disconsolate lover to comfort, a young artist to bring forward, a refugee to conceal, a spendthrift to get out of a sc.r.a.pe; and, like David in the mountains, "every one that is discontented, and every one that is in debt, gather themselves to her." The strangest people, on the strangest errands, run over each other in that cosy little nest of hers. Fine ladies with over-full hearts, and seedy gentlemen with over-empty pockets, jostle each other at her door; and she has a smile, and a repartee, and good, cunning, practical wisdom for each and every one of them, and then dismisses them to bill and coo with Claude, and laugh over everybody and everything. The only price which she demands for her services is, to be allowed to laugh; and if that be permitted, she will be as busy, and earnest, and tender, as Saint Elizabeth herself. "I have no children of my own,"

she says, "so I just make everybody my children, Claude included; and play with them, and laugh at them, and pet them, and help them out of their sc.r.a.pes, just as I should if they were in my own nursery." And so it befalls that she is every one's confidant; and though every one seems on the point of taking liberties with her, yet no one does: partly because they are in her power, and partly because, like an Eastern sultana, she carries a poniard, and can use it, though only in self-defence. So if great people, or small people either (who can give themselves airs as well as their betters), take her plain speaking unkindly, she just speaks a little more plainly, once for all, and goes off smiling to some one else; as a hummingbird, if a flower has no honey in it, whirs away, with a saucy flirt of its pretty little tail, to the next branch on the bush.

"I must know more of this American," said Scoutbush, at last.

"Well, he would be very improving company for you; and I know you like improving company."

"I mean--what has he to do with her?"

"That is just what I will not tell you. One thing I will tell you, though, for it may help to quench any vain hopes on your part; and that is, the reason which she gives for not marrying him."

"Well?"

"Because he is an idler."

"What would she say of me, then?" groaned Scoutbush.

"Very true; for, you must understand, this Mr. Stangrave is not what you or I should call an idle man. He has travelled over half the world and made the best use of his eyes. He has filled his house in New York, they say, with gems of art gathered from every country in Europe. He is a finished scholar; talks half-a-dozen different languages, sings, draws, writes poetry, reads hard every day, at every subject, from gardening to German metaphysics--altogether, one of the most highly cultivated men I know, and quite an Admirable Crichton in his way."

"Then why does she call him an idler?"

"Because, she says, he has no great purpose in life. She will marry no one who will not devote himself, and all he has, to some great, chivalrous, heroic enterprise; whose one object is to be of use, even if he has to sacrifice his life to it. She says that there must be such men still left in the world; and that if she finds one, him she will marry, and no one else."

"Why, there are none such to be found now-a-days, I thought?"

"You heard what she herself said on that very point."

There was a silence for a minute or two. Scout-bush had heard, and was pondering it in his heart. At last,--

"I am not cut out for a hero; so I suppose I must give her up. But I wish sometimes I could be of use, Mrs. Mellot: but what can a fellow do?"

"I thought there was an Irish tenantry to be looked after, my lord, and a Cornish tenantry too."

"That's what Campbell is always saying: but what more can I do than I do? As for those poor Paddies, I never ask them for rent; if I did, I should not get it; so there is no generosity in that. And as for the Aberalva people, they have got on very well without me for twenty years; and I don't know them, nor what they want; nor even if they do want anything, except fish enough, and I can't put more fish into the sea, Mrs. Mellot?"

"Try and be a good soldier, then," said she, laughing. "Why should not Lord Scoutbush emulate his ill.u.s.trious countryman, conquer at a second Waterloo, and die a duke?"

"I'm not cut out for a general, I am afraid; but if--I don't say if I could marry that woman--I suppose it would be a foolish thing--though I shall break my heart, I believe, if I do not. Oh, Mrs. Mellot, you cannot tell what a fool I have made myself about her; and I cannot help it! It's not her beauty merely; but there is something so n.o.ble in her face, like one of those Greek G.o.ddesses Claude talks of; and when she is acting, if she has to say anything grand, or generous--or--you know the sort of thing,--she brings it out with such a voice, and such a look, from the very bottom of her heart,--it makes me shudder; just as she did when she told that Yankee, that every one could be a hero, or a martyr, if he chose. Mrs. Mellot, I am sure she is one, or she could not look and speak as she does."

"She is one!" said Sabina; "a heroine, and a martyr too."

"If I could,--that was what I was going to say,--if I could but win that woman's respect--as I live, I ask no more; only to be sure she didn't despise me. I'd do--I don't know what I wouldn't do. I'd--I'd study the art of war: I know there are books about it. I'd get out to the East, away from this depot work; and if there is no fighting there, as every one says there will not be, I'd go into a marching regiment, and see service. I'd,--hang it, if they'd have me,--I'd even go to the senior department at Sandhurst, and read mathematics!"

Sabina kept her countenance (though with difficulty) at this magnificent bathos; for she saw that the little man was really in earnest; and that the looks and words of the strange actress had awakened in him something far deeper and n.o.bler than the mere sensual pa.s.sion of a boy.

"Ah, if I had but gone out to Varna with the rest! I thought myself a lucky fellow to be left here."

"Do you know that it is getting very late?"

So Frederick Lord Scoutbush went home to his rooms: and there sat for three hours and more with his feet on the fender, rejecting the entreaties of Mr. Bowie, his servant, either to have something, or to go to bed; yea, he forgot even to smoke, by which Mr. Bowie "jaloused"

that he was. .h.i.t very hard indeed: but made no remark, being a Scotchman, and of a cautious temperament.

However, from that night Scoutbush was a changed man, and tried to be so. He read of nothing but sieges and stockades, brigade evolutions, and conical bullets; he drilled his men till he was an abomination in their eyes, and a weariness to their flesh; only every evening he went to the theatre, watched La Cordifiamma with a heavy heart, and then went home to bed; for the little man had good sense enough to ask Sabina for no more interviews with her. So in all things he acquitted himself as a model officer, and excited the admiration and respect of Serjeant Major MacArthur, who began fishing at Bowie to discover the cause of this strange metamorphosis in the rackety little Irishman.

"Your master seems to be qualifying himself for the adjutant's post, Mr. Bowie. I'm jalousing he's fired with martial ardour since the war broke out."

To which Bowie, being a brother Scot, answered Scottice, by a crafty paralogism.

"I've always held it as my opeeeenion, that his lordship is a youth of very good parts, if he was only compelled to employ them."

CHAPTER VIII.

TAKING ROOT.

Whosoever enjoys the sight of an honest man doing his work well, would have enjoyed the sight of Tom Thurnall for the next two months.

In-doors all the morning, and out of doors all the afternoon, was that shrewd and good-natured visage, calling up an answering smile on every face, and leaving every heart a little lighter than he found it.

Puzzling enough it was, alike to Heale and to Headley, how Tom contrived, as if by magic, to gain every one's good word--their own included. For Frank, in spite of Tom's questionable opinions, had already made all but a confidant of the Doctor; and Heale, in spite of envy and suspicion, could not deny that the young man was a very valuable young man, if he wasn't given so much to those new-fangled notions of the profession.

By which term Heale indicated the, to him, astounding fact, that Tom charged the patients as little, instead of as much as possible, and applying to medicine the principles of an enlightened political economy, tried to increase the demand by cheapening the supply.

"Which is revolutionary doctrine, sir," said Heale to Lieutenant Jones, over the brandy-and-water, "and just like what the Cobden and Bright lot used to talk, and have been the ruin of British agriculture, though don't say I said so, because of my Lord Minchampstead. But, conceive my feelings, sir, as the father of a family, who have my bread to earn, this very morning.--In comes old Dame Penaluna (which is good pay I know, and has two hundred and more out on a merchant brig) for something; and what was my feelings, sir, to hear this young party deliver himself--'Well, ma'am,' says he, as I am a living man, 'I can cure you, if you like, with a dozen bottles of lotion, at eighteenpence a-piece; but if you'll take my advice, you'll buy two pennyworth of alum down street, do what I tell you with it, and cure yourself.' It's robbery, sir, I say, all these out-of-the-way cheap dodges, which arn't in the pharmacopoeia, half of them; it's unprofessional, sir--quackery."

"Tell you what, Doctor, robbery or none, I'll go to him to-morrow, d'ye see, if I live as long, for this old ailment of mine. I never told you of it, old pill and potion, for fear of a swinging bill: but just grinned and bore it, d'ye see."

"There it is again," cries Heale in despair. "He'll ruin me."

"No, he won't, and you know it."

"What d'ye think he served me last week? A young chap comes in, consumptive, he said, and I dare say he's right--he is uncommonly 'cute about what he calls diagnosis. Says he, 'You ought to try Carrageen moss. It's an old drug, but it's a good one.' There was a drawer full of it to his hand; had been lying there any time this ten years: I go to open it; but what was my feelings when he goes on, as cool as a cuc.u.mber--'And there's bushels of it here,' says he, 'on every rock; so if you'll come down with me at low tide this afternoon, I'll show you the trade, and tell you how to boil it.' I thought I should have knocked him down."

"But you didn't," said Jones, laughing in every muscle of his body.

"Tell you what, Doctor, you've got a treasure; he's just getting back your custom, d'ye see, and when he's done that, he'll lay on the bills sharp enough. Why, I hear he's up at Mrs. Vavasour's every day."

"And not ten shillings' worth of medicine sent up to the house any week."

"He charges for his visits, I suppose."