The Challenge of Love. Victorian Romance Novel
may be wanted down at Navestock. I have let Dr. Threadgold in for the surgery work, as it is.”
“It won’t hurt him.”
“No, I must go—Jess.”
She gave him a quick look and said no more, but she watched him ride across the paddock.
Wolfe felt that the black mass of Tarling Moor was behind him, and he saw the lights of Navestock shining in the valley. These lights had a quick and powerful effect upon him, blinking their message up out of the darkness, and recalling grimmer moments of responsibility and effort. For so many hours Wolfe had been a great, playful child, half-boy, half-man. Jess had called to him with the voice of her youth. Her infinite freshness and her laughter had made him laugh with her, and forget. He had felt the sunlight upon the open moor, and those queer moments of solemnity that had turned the eyes of a child into the eyes of a woman.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Both Dr. Threadgold and his wife were out when Miss Priscilla Perfrement’s maid rang the bell at Prospect House. John Wolfe was in the surgery, and he was called upon to speak with Miss Perfrement’s maid, a lean woman with haughty eyebrows and a negligible bust.
“Dr. Threadgold must come at once.”
“Dr. Threadgold is out.”
“Then he must be sent for.”
“Dr. Threadgold is out on a country round. He will not be back till dinner-time.”
The maid looked Wolfe over, summed him up after her fashion, and decided that he was not a raw boy.
“You’re the assistant?”
“I am.”
“Miss Perfrement has one of her heart attacks.”
“I’ll come at once.”
Miss Priscilla Perfrement lived in a narrow, red-brick house that was squeezed between two of the stouter mansions on Mulberry Green. No male thing intruded here. The neat, druggeted hall had no hat-stand, no cupboard as the pit of a man’s untidiness, no weather glass to be rapped and abused. The lamp was held by a nymph in plaster set tripping upon a pedestal of imitation marble. But the nymph had been defrauded of her nakedness. She wore a sort of white night-dress that was changed monthly and sent to the wash.
“Doctor, dear doctor, I’m dying!”
Where Death had stationed himself in the neat, stuffy, over-furnished room, was a matter of speculation. Wolfe saw a yellow-faced little woman in black alpaca, with grey side curls and a twittering face, propped against cushions in a plush-covered arm-chair. The heels of her shoes beat the carpet under the edge of her crinoline, and the crinoline itself had cocked itself forward with unseemly arrogance, giving glimpses of convulsed, white-stockinged legs.
“Dr. Threadgold is out, miss.”
“Oh, oh!”
“I’ve brought the assistant.”
Miss Perfrement jumped, and gave Wolfe a shocked stare. Her limbs twitched like the limbs of a choreic child.
“Oh dear, oh dear; Eliza, I’m dying!”
Wolfe looked at her very gravely, very judicially, and understood with what sort of sentimental sickness he had to do. Here was a good lady whose troubles had been so many pin-falls in the closeted selfishness of her little life, and who had been compelled to draw attention to herself by means of childish screams and tantrums. When Miss Perfrement felt unimportant and neglected, she had a “heart attack,” and her friends and neighbours would see Dr. Threadgold’s brougham rattling over the cobbles. These hysterical outbursts were essays in dissipation, and methods of attracting sympathy and notice.
Wolfe made a beginning.
“Will you let me see what I can do for you?”
“It’s my heart. I’m dying. Eliza, I’m dying. Where is Dr. Threadgold?”
Wolfe imprisoned Miss Perfrement’s wrist. She gave a rebellious squirm and then went rigid, but Wolfe was able to feel her pulse.
“Now, my dear madam!”
“Eliza, I’m dying!”
The gaunt maid came to Wolfe’s elbow.
“D’you think, sir, you understand Miss Perfrement’s case?”
“Kindly keep quiet a moment.”
Eliza stared and knitted up her black eyebrows, but Wolfe’s tone had smothered her officiousness. Dr. Threadgold was a very different sort of man. He was always polite to Miss Perfrement’s maid.
“How often does your mistress have these attacks?”
“Very often.”
“Thank you. Now, Miss Perfrement, I shall want to examine your chest. If you will let your maid unfasten your bodice.”
“Sir!”
Miss Perfrement stiffened.
“Sir, Dr. Threadgold never—Eliza, my smelling bottle.”
“Very well; I dare say I can manage without.”
Miss Perfrement’s maid stroked her mistress’s hair, and looked down at Wolfe with sceptical contempt. Dr. Threadgold could always manage matters without all this fussing. He had only to look at a patient, and to listen sympathetically to a vivid description of the symptoms in order to discover what was wrong.
Wolfe stood up and looked steadily at Miss Perfrement.
“I can assure you that there is no cause for alarm.”
“I’m dying. I know I’m dying! My heart’s turning over and over!”
“My dear madam—it is not. You are worrying yourself into a panic. Will you give your mistress a tumblerful of hot water, and send round for some medicine?”
The gaunt maid looked shocked. Hot water, indeed! A wail came from the arm-chair.
“Send for dear Dr. Threadgold, dear, good, clever, Dr. Threadgold!”
“You don’t realise, sir, how ill Miss Perfrement is.”
“I beg your pardon. I shall be obliged if you will follow my instructions.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind, sir. You ain’t grasping Miss Perfrement’s case.”
Wolfe looked at the woman, and then at her mistress. He was not tempted to dissemble the truth, and to give honey and humbug where asafœtida was needed. He and Miss Perfrement were better apart.
“I will send out and see if Dr. Threadgold can be found.”
“Do so, sir. I should think you had better, sir.”
And Wolfe took up his hat and left them.
Dr. Threadgold kept the midday meal waiting for more than an hour. He had been caught on the way home and hurried in to minister to Miss Priscilla Perfrement in her anguish. At the dinner-table Threadgold appeared perturbed and testy. He contradicted his wife without sweetening the contradiction, looked at Wolfe severely over the rims of his spectacles, and talked with pompous irritability on the responsibilities of public men. He glanced at Wolfe as they pushed back their chairs.
“For what we have received may the Lord make us truly thankful. My dear, tell the cook not to send up onions. Mr. Wolfe, I have a few words to say to you in the consulting-room.”
Wolfe went, following the twinkle of his employer’s stout little legs. Threadgold was solemn and sententious. He was slightly afraid of Wolfe, and his nervousness made him prance.
“What did you say,