The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume I. Lever Charles James
in a tone studiously low and whispered. “Get that shadow in something deeper, Syd, and you ‘ll have more effect in the distance.”
“What is that I hear about effect and distance?” sighed out my Lady. “You surely are not drawing?”
“Only sketching; making a hurried note of that wheel, and the quaint old-fashioned house beside it,” said Sydney, diffidently.
“What a refinement of cruelty! The detestable noise of that mill kept me awake all night, and you mean to perpetuate the remembrance by a picture. Pray, be a good child and throw it out of the window.”
Sydney looked up in her brother’s face, where already a crimson flush of anger was gathering, but before she could reply he spoke for her. “The drawing is for me, Lady Onslow. You ‘ll. excuse me if I do not consent to the fate you propose for it.”
“Let me look at it,” said she, languidly; and the young girl arose and presented the drawing to her. “How droll!” said she, laughing; “I suppose it is peculiar to Germany that water can run up hill.”
“The shadow will correct that,” said Sydney, smiling; “and when the foreground is darker.” A violent slam of the door cut short the explanation. It was George Onslow, who, too indignant at the practised impertinence toward his sister, dashed out of the room in a passion.
“How underbred your brother will persist in being, my love,” said she, calmly; “that vile trick of slamming a door, they learn, I ‘m told, in the Guards’ Club. I ‘m sure I always thought it was confined to the melodrames one sees at the Porte St. Martin.”
At this moment a servant appeared at the door. “Colonel Haggerstone’s compliments, my Lady, and begs to know how Sir Stafford is to-day.”
“Something better,” replied she, curtly; and as the man disappeared, she added, “Whose compliments did he say?”
“I did not hear the name; it sounded like Haggerstone.”
“Impossible, child; we know of no such person. What hour is it?”
“A few minutes past two.”
“Oh dear! I fancied it had been four or five or six,” sighed she, drearily. “The amiable doctor has not made his report to-day of your papa, and he went to see him immediately after breakfast.”
“He told George that there was no amendment,” said Sydney, gravely.
“He told George! Then he did not deign to tell me.”
“You were not here at the moment. It was as he passed through the room hurriedly.”
“I conclude that I was in my dressing-room. But it is only in keeping with Mr. Grounsell’s studied disrespect, a line of conduct I grieve to see him supported in by members of this family.”
“Mr. Alfred Jekyl, my Lady,” said a servant, “with inquiry for Sir Stafford.”
“You appear to know best, my dear, how your papa is. Pray answer thai inquiry.”
“Sir Stafford is not better,” said Sydney to the servant.
“Who can all these people be, my dear?” said Lady Hester, with more animation of manner than she had yet exhibited. “Jekyl is a name one knows. There are Northamptonshire Jekyls, and, if I mistake not, it was a Jekyl married Lady Olivia Drossmore, was it not? Oh, what a fool I am to ask you, who never know anything of family or connection! And yet I ‘m certain I ‘ve told you over and over the importance the actual necessity of this knowledge. If you only bestowed upon Burke a tithe of the patience and time I have seen you devote to Lyell, you ‘d not commit the shocking mistake you fell into t’ other day of discussing the Duchess of Dartley’s character with Lord Brandford, from whom she was divorced. Now you ‘d never offend quartz and sandstone by miscalling their affinities. But here comes the doctor.”
If Dr. Grounsell had been intended by nature to outrage all ultra-refined notions regarding personal appearance, he could not possibly have been more cunningly fashioned. Somewhat below the middle size, and squarely formed, his legs did not occupy more than a third of his height; his head was preternaturally large, and seemed even larger from a crop of curly yellowish hair, whose flaring ochre only rescued it from the imputation of being a wig. His hands and feet were enormous, requiring a muscular effort to move them that made all his gestures grotesque and uncouth. In addition to these native graces, his clothes were always made much too large for him, from his avowed dislike to the over-tightening and squeezing of modern fashion.
As his whole life had been passed in the superintendence of a great military hospital in the East, wherein all his conversations with his brethren were maintained in technicalities, he had never converted the professional jargon into a popular currency, but used the terms of art upon all occasions, regardless of the inability of the unmedical world to understand him.
“Well, sir, what is your report to-day?” said Lady Onslow, assuming her very stateliest of manners.
“Better, and worse, madam. The arthritis relieved, the cardiac symptoms more imminent.’
“Please to bear in mind, sir, that I have not studied at Apothecaries’ Hall.”
“Nor I, madam; but at Edinburgh and Aberdeen, in the faculties of medicine and surgery,” said Grounsell, drawing down his waistcoat, and arranging himself in what he considered an order of battle.
“Is papa better, doctor?” said Sydney, mildly.
“The articular affection is certainly alleviated, but there is mischief here,” said Grounsell, placing his hand over his heart; “fibrous tissues, my dear Miss Onslow, fibrous tissues are ticklish affairs.”
“Is this advice to be construed in a moral rather than a medical sense?” said Lady Onslow, with a malicious smile.
“Either or both,” replied the doctor. “The heart will always be highly susceptible of nervous influence.”
“But papa” broke in Sydney, eagerly.
“Is suffering under metastasis migratory gout, it may be termed changing from articular to large organic structures.”
“And, of course, you are giving him the old poisons that were in use fifty years ago?”
“What do you mean, madam?” said Grounsell, sternly.
“That shocking thing that drives people mad colocynth, or colchicum, or something like that. You know what I mean?”
“Happily for me, madam, I can guess it.”
“And are you still as obstinate as ever about the globules?”
“The homoeopathic humbug?”
“If you are polite enough so to designate what I put the most implicit trust in. But I warn you, sir, I mean to exert my just and rightful influence with Sir Stafford; and in case a very great change does not appear to-morrow, I shall insist upon his trying the aconite.”
“If you do, madam, the insurance offices shall hear of it!” said Grounsell, with a sternness that made the threat most significant.
“I ‘ll send for that man from Heidelberg at once, Sydney,” said Lady Hester, as, pale with passion, she seated herself at her writing-table.
“Take care what you do, madam,” said Grounsell, approaching where she sat, and speaking in a low and solemn voice. “Let not any feeling of displeasure with me induce you to an act of rashness or imprudence. My old friend’s state is critical; it may at any moment become dangerous. I am convinced that what I am doing offers the most reasonable hope of serving him. Take care lest you weaken his confidence in me, when he may not be prepared to repose it in another.”
“Here, Sydney, you write German; and it is possible he may not read French. This is his name, I got it in Paris Graeffnell. Tell him to come at once in fact, let Francois take a carriage for him.”
Sydney Onslow looked at her mother and then at the doctor. At the latter her glance was almost imploring, but he never noticed it, turning abruptly toward the window without uttering a word.
“Can