A House in Bloomsbury. Маргарет Олифант
frightened about, as he rose up quickly and with unconscious use and wont placed a chair in the best light, where he should be able to read the simple little alphabet of her constitution and thoughts.
“Oh, doctor, sir! I hope you don’t mind me coming to disturb you, though I know as it’s late and past hours.”
“A doctor has no hours. Come in,” he said.
Then there was a pause. The agitated young face disappeared, leaving Dr. Roland only a side view of her shoulder and figure in profile, and a whispering ensued. “I cannot—I cannot! I ain’t fit,” in a hoarse tone, and then the young woman’s eager pleading. “Oh, Alfred dear, for my sake!”
“Come in, whoever it is,” said Dr. Roland, with authority. “A doctor has no hours, but either people in the house have, and you mustn’t stay outside.”
Then there was a little dragging on the part of the wife, a little resistance on the part of the husband; and finally Mrs. Hesketh appeared, more flushed than ever, grasping the sleeve of a rather unwholesome-looking young man, very pink all over and moist, with furtive eyes, and hair standing on end. He had a fluttered clandestine look, as if afraid to be seen, as he came into the full light of the lamp, and looked suspiciously around him, as if to find out whether anything dangerous was there.
“It is my ’usband, sir,” said Mrs. Hesketh. “It’s Alfred. He’s been off his food and off his sleep for I don’t know how long, and I’m not happy about him. I thought perhaps you might give him a something that would put him all straight.”
“Off his food and off his sleep? Perhaps he hasn’t been off his drink also?” said the doctor, giving a touch to the shade of the lamp.
“I knew,” said the young man, in the same partially hoarse voice, “as that is what would be said.”
“And a gentleman like you ought to know better,” said the indignant wife. “Drink is what he never touches, if it isn’t a ’alf pint to his supper, and that only to please me.”
“Then it’s something else, and not drink,” said the doctor. “Sit down, and let me have a look at you.” He took into his cool grasp a somewhat tremulous damp hand, which had been hanging down by the patient’s side, limp yet agitated, like a thing he had no use for. “Tell me something about him,” said Dr. Roland. “In a shop? Baxter’s?—yes, I know the place. What you call shopman,—no, assistant,—young gentleman at the counter?”
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Hesketh, with pride; “book-keeper, sir—sits up in his desk in the middle of the costume department, and–”
“Ah, I see,” said the doctor quickly. He gave the limp wrist, in which the pulse had suddenly given a great jump, a grip with his cool hand. “Control yourself,” he said quietly. “Nerves all in a whirl, system breaking down—can you take a holiday?”
“Oh, yes,” said the young man in a sort of bravado, “of course I can take a holiday! and an express ticket for the workhouse after it. How are we to live if I go taking holidays? We can’t afford no holidays,” he said in his gruff voice.
“There are worse places than the workhouse,” said the doctor, with meaning. “Take this, and to-morrow I’ll give you a note to send to your master. The first thing you want is a good night’s sleep.”
“Oh, that is the truth, however you know it,” cried Mrs. Hesketh. “He hasn’t had a night’s sleep, nor me neither, not for a month back.”
“I’ll see that he has one to-night,” said Dr. Roland, drawing back the curtain of his surgery and opening the folding-doors.
“I won’t take no opiates, doctor,” said the young man, with dumb defiance in his sleepy eyes.
“You won’t take any opiates? And why, if I may ask?” the doctor said, selecting a bottle from the shelf.
“Not a drop of your nasty sleepy stuff, that makes fellows dream and talk nonsense in their sleep—oh, not for me!”
“You are afraid, then, of talking nonsense in your sleep? We must get rid of the nonsense, not of the sleep,” said the doctor. “I don’t say that this is an opiate, but you have got to swallow it, my fine fellow, whether or not.”
“No,” said the young man, setting his lips firmly together.
“Drink!” cried Dr. Roland, fully roused. “Come, I’ll have no childish, wry faces. Why, you’re a man—with a wife—and not a naughty boy!”
“It’s not my doing coming here. She brought me, and I’ll see her far enough–”
“Hold your tongue you young ass, and take your physic! She’s a capital woman, and has done exactly as she ought to have done. No nonsense, I tell you! Sleep to-night, and then to-morrow you’ll go and set yourself right with the shop.”
“Sir!” cried the young man, with a gasp. His pulse gave a jump under the strong cool grip in which Dr. Roland had again taken it, and he fixed a frightened imploring gaze upon the doctor’s face.
“Oh, doctor!” cried the poor wife, “there’s nothing to set right with the shop. They think all the world of Alfred there.”
“They’ll think all the more of him,” said Dr. Roland, “after he has had a good night’s sleep. There, take him off to bed; and at ten o’clock to-morrow morning I expect to see him here.”
“Oh, doctor, is it anything bad? Oh, sir, can’t you make him all right?” she cried, standing with clasped hands, listening to the hurried yet wavering step with which her husband went upstairs.
“I’ll tell you to-morrow morning,” Dr. Roland said.
When the door was closed he went and sat down again by his fire; but the calm of his mind, the pleasure of his cigar, the excitement of his newspaper, had gone. Truth to tell, the excitement of this new question pleased him more than all these things together. “Has he done it, or is he only going to do it?” he asked himself. Could the thing be set right, or could it never be set right? He sat there for perhaps an hour, working out the question in both directions, considering the case in every light. It was a long time since he had met with anything so interesting. He only came to himself when he became conscious that the fire was burning very low, and the chill of the night creeping into the air. Then Dr. Roland rose again, compounded a drink for himself of a different quality from that which he had given to his patient, and selected out of his bookcase a yellow novel. But after a while he pitched the book from him, and pushed away the glass, and resumed his meditations. What was grog, and what was Gaboriau, in comparison with a problem like this?
CHAPTER VI
The house in Bloomsbury was, however, much more deeply troubled and excited than it would have been by anything affecting Alfred Hesketh, when it was known next morning that Mr. Mannering had been taken ill in the night, and was now unable to leave his bed. The doctor had been sent for early—alas! it was not Dr. Roland—and the whole household was disturbed. Such a thing had not been known for nearly a dozen years past, as that Mr. Mannering should not walk downstairs exactly at a quarter before ten, and close the door behind him, forming a sort of fourth chime to the three-quarters as they sounded from the church clock. The house was put out for the day by this failure in the regularity of its life and movement; all the more that it was very soon known that this prop of the establishment was very ill, that “the fever” ran very high, and that even his life was in danger. Nobody made much remark in these circumstances upon the disappearance of the humble little people on the upper floor, who, after much coming and going between their habitation and that of Dr. Roland downstairs, made a hurried departure, providentially, Mrs. Simcox said—thus leaving a little available room for the nurse who by this time had taken possession of the Mannering establishment, reducing Dora to the position which she had never occupied, of a child, and taking the management of everything. Two of these persons, indeed, had been ordered in by the doctor—a nurse for the day, and a nurse for the night, who filled the house with that air of redundant health and cheerfulness which seem to belong to nurses, one or other of them being always met on the stairs going out for her constitutional,