Chapter X: Confidential with the Doctor

"Far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much."
DRYDEN.

"I shall die if I don't talk."
REYNOLDS.

"THE world's in a queer state, Dr. Ingram," Mrs. Kennedy remarked one January afternoon. "Uncomfortable, don't you know?"

She spoke in a contemplative tone, lounging forward, while a loose tail of hair obtruded itself from beneath a not too tidy cap, and her placid gaze was riveted on the Doctor's face. He had been summoned to prescribe for Dicky something which should counteract a too unrestricted course of Christmas plum-cake and "sweeties." The Kennedy children were not trained to habits of self-control in minor matters.

It was three o'clock, and the Doctor had a long list of visits still to pay; yet he could not at once escape. Mrs. Kennedy, though minus the possession of a "glittering eye," like that of the Ancient Mariner, held him with such eyes as she had, refusing to see his anxiety to be off.

"Generally is!" responded her companion.

He was in appearance not at all the stereotyped doctor of novels. He was neither little nor bustling; and he did not jerk out a succession of medical phrases, to mystify the invalid's relations. Professionally, indeed, he was given to saying a very small amount—some complained, a too small amount—and what he did utter was rarely couched in learned language. Of medium height, not too substantial, yet not thin, he had reserved manners, which covered a gentle and sympathetic disposition. His prevailing expression was serious, but a substratum of humour occasionally reached the surface, through superimposed strata of a more solid kind.

Mrs. Kennedy's chief confidante was the Doctor's oldest daughter, Mabel; but she had not the least objection to confide in the Doctor himself, when opportunity offered.

"Uncomfortable, don't you think?" she repeated meditatively. "Everything going cranky, you know. And something ought to be done."

"To set the world right?"

"Well, but I mean, of course, our particular world. Dulveriford, don't you know? I'm not talking about all sorts of out of the world Tropics of Capricorns and longitudes and things," said Mrs. Kennedy, with a vague recollection of Dicky's last geography lesson before Christmas.

"Feejee Islanders are all very well—I dare say they'll learn by-and-by quite to shine in society, don't you know?—Now they've left off eating everybody. And as for Madagascar, and Zulu-Land, and that other place—what is the name?—Alaska—I should be as glad as anything, if they could just have all the beads and blankets they want, poor dear things! We have our working party once a fortnight, you know—what Mabel calls 'The Timbuctoo Thimble'—and then, of course, we think about those sort of creatures. At least, we try to, I'm sure, though we do sometimes talk about Mrs. Villiers' last new bonnet, don't you know?"

"And we read reports about them—quite properly! Because my husband doesn't think we ought to read a story. I think it might make folks work a little faster; but you know you never can get a man to see what he doesn't see, when he won't see it!—And he says it isn't suitable. And to be sure we're not working for fictitious savages! But then everybody yawns, and everybody else catches it and yawns too; and nobody can do a nice hem when they're yawning, so we have to stop reading and do a little talk instead . . . Still, you know, all that can't be like home affairs!"

"And though I'm not so very desperately fond of Jean Trevelyan in a general way—She's got a shut-up sort of manner, you know, and all that—! And of course her father and my husband are on different lines. I don't know why they shouldn't be, either—" reflectively—"but I suppose it isn't in man-nature to think that anybody or another line can possibly be right. And so—don't you see?—That's how it is! But Jean really is a nice girl, I'm sure—and all these weeks I've been so awfully sorry for the poor dear! I haven't liked to go and bother her through the worst of the time—but now he's getting a little bit of a scrap better, I thought I would just ask you—privately, don't you know?—If I could be of any sort of use?"

Dr. Ingram's listening face relaxed slightly. Then this was not all pure chatter.

"Of course, Jean has her own friends," pursued Mrs. Kennedy, allowing no space for an answer. "Any number of them. There's Mrs. Trevelyan—only she has been shut-up for a month with influenza. And there's Mrs. Villiers—but I shouldn't think she knew hardly as much about nursing as my Dicky. She always looks as if she was meant to be draperied like a Greek statue, don't you know?—With her hands nicely arranged, so as to show off the wrists. That funny creature, Miss Moggridge, has been backwards and forwards every day, I'm told, but—What did you say? Oh, it doesn't matter what I say to you, Dr. Ingram! You're like Mabel! You never make mischief. And everybody thinks Miss Moggridge queer."

"I'm afraid—" said Dr. Ingram, looking at the clock.

"I can't endure the woman, for my part. She's got such a way of setting herself upon a turret, as if nobody else in the world ever had a kind thought. Every one's narrow, and bitter, and wicked, and disagreeable, except Miss Moggridge. And the way she abuses good people who don't think like her—! Well, of course they're narrow, poor dears—and how can they help it? I suppose they were made so; or at least they've grown into it. Some people are born wide, and some are born narrow. And I don't really see, for my part, that it's a bit prettier or more Christian, for the broad-minded folks to abuse the narrow because they're not broad, don't you know, than it is for the narrow to abuse the broad, because they're not narrow, don't you see? Of course, nobody ever calls themselves narrow. They only say, they're all right, and everybody else is wrong who doesn't think like them. And that's what Miss Moggridge does—so where's the difference? . . . But I didn't mean to get upon Miss Moggridge. I wanted to ask you about Mr. Trevelyan."

Dr. Ingram hated to be questioned about his patients. He immediately stood up.

"You're not going yet, you know," asserted Mrs. Kennedy, keeping her seat. "My mind's all in a scrummage, and I want putting straight. And I want to know first about Jean . . . Of course, it's horrid for her, because she had to do what brought on this illness. At least she thought she had to do it. Yes, of course I've heard all about that—everybody has heard it, and they all say it's just like Jean. Anybody else wouldn't have called him. I wouldn't—not for any mortal man living! Now do tell me—is Mr. Trevelyan going on well, and could I do anything?"

"You can call and ask Jean yourself. She is much over-taxed."

"I should think so—all these weeks of nursing! She won't care to see me, not a scrap! So what's the good of my going? Jean never did like me, and I don't see why she should. It isn't opinions. People can like one another, without thinking just identically the same about every single thing that ever was heard of. But we don't suit somehow! Only if I could be of any use? You can ask her for me. I shan't go unless I'm sent for."

After this positive assertion, nobody at all acquainted with Mrs. Kennedy need have been surprised that within half-an-hour she was on her way to Dulveriford Rectory.

Jean came to see her when summoned. Her father was asleep, she said; and one of the maids would keep watch for a few minutes. Had Mrs. Kennedy come on business? Jean looked pale and thin, with the stress of long nursing and suspense, through her father's complicated and dangerous illness. She had an air of rigid composure, as she rang for tea, and sat down to answer Mrs. Kennedy's questions.

Yes; her father was better; really better, and on the whole out of danger. At least Dr. Ingram hoped so. Recovery would be slow, of course; it could not be otherwise; and great care would be needed. There must be no thought of work at present—probably not for months. Dr. Ingram talked of a year's rest. The strain had been kept up far too long. Nothing was settled yet, but Dr. Ingram wished him very much to go for a voyage—perhaps to the Cape, or perhaps to Australia.

"My dear, I'm most dreadfully sorry! But you would go with him, of course?"

"No; it would cost too much. One has not to think of oneself," said Jean with a forced smile. "If it is necessary for him—Yes; I suppose we shall have to get a locum tenens. He could not start for another three or four weeks; and Mr. Marson, who is helping now, can stay a little longer . . . Oh, there is no difficulty about me. Jem Trevelyan and his mother will take me in . . . Yes, my father knows—and of course he will do what is right. I am only so thankful that he is better. It might have been—!"

Jean counted her own self-command inviolable; but she was not prepared to be taken into a large sympathetic embrace; to have motherly kisses on her cheek; and to hear a motherly voice saying, "You poor dear child! I am, so sorry."

Jean broke into one irresistible sob, and a few hot tears fell in quick succession; but she struggled back to composure, and gently released herself—not without a sense of comfort.

"Thank you very much: you are very good," she said. "But of course I do not mean to be selfish. If he will only come home strong, it will be all right. May I give you a cup of tea? I am afraid I ought to go upstairs soon."

"I never quite knew before what nice feeling there is in Jean," murmured Mrs. Kennedy as she trudged homeward. "Really, she isn't half so stiff and shut-up when one gets to know her; and she does seem so fond of her father. Perhaps even he isn't always so starched as he seems sometimes!—"

At almost the same moment, a somewhat similar thought passed through Jean's mind: "How much pleasanter Mrs. Kennedy is than I have always fancied!"

But neither could hear the other.

Passing through Dutton, Mrs. Kennedy turned aside near the Post-Office, into a side street, where was a greengrocer's, opposite a red house. Mrs. Kennedy had taken to patronising this greengrocer of late from economical motives. She gave an order for the morrow, and walked out in time to see an active figure run up the steps of the red house, turn the handle of the front door, and enter.

"If that isn't Sir Cyril himself!" ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy under her breath. "And as much at home as if—! Something is in the air—that's certain! Poor dear Miss Devereux."

Of course Mrs. Kennedy knew all about the Lucases, since family secrets were apt to ooze out in Dutton. She wisely kept her own counsel, however, when she went home, and said nothing—even to her husband. Through sheer forgetfulness and absence of mind, he was apt to repeat things which had no business to be repeated; and his wife had learned through dire experience that silence is sometimes the better form of discretion. Whether her reticence would have survived a tête-à-tête with Mabel Ingram may be doubted; but Mabel was from home. So Mrs. Kennedy conjectured, and was mute.

She had made no mistake. It really was Sir Cyril Devereux, who had run up the stone steps, and had entered lightly without ringing.

He had been to the red house very often of late, oftener than he realised. During the short period of convalescence after his accident, he had paid many and lengthy calls on the Lucases. Then came the break of his last term at Oxford. And before Christmas, he returned home "for good," a gentleman at large, with a comfortable property and plenty of interests, but no definite line of work in life.

The property was large enough to require attention, but by no means so extensive as to absorb the whole of a young man's energies. Many beside Lady Lucas had earnestly advised Sybella to provide some definite line for Cyril, during at least the earlier years of his manhood; but she had refused to see the need.

"He could take up anything he liked," she said; "but he would, have plenty of money. For her part, she didn't see why he need slave; and she was sure his health would not stand hard work; and he might just as well live comfortably at home with her! He could find plenty to do in Dulveriford."

Cyril had not opposed this view of the question. He was vaguely desirous to make a "career" for himself somehow; but he had not decided on the manner of that career. He seemed to have no special bent beyond a general love of art, and literature; and since, from a money point of view, there was no hurry, he resolved to wait. Something would turn up, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, his friends found consolation in the fact that at least he was not disposed to idleness. He read a fair amount, studied popular questions, looked into business matters, went in for abundance of pedestrian and equestrian exercise, and contrived on the whole to fill up his time creditably. Sometimes he talked of setting up a hunter, and sometimes he planned writing a book; but he had no great passion either for hunting or penmanship. Sybella's horror of guns had hitherto rather stood in the way of shooting, except when he was away from home. Her horror of cigars was less inconvenient, since, though not much addicted to smoking as a habit, he could always retreat to his den, when desirous to escape from her talk or her temper.

In a general way, Cyril would have spent many a spare hour at Dulveriford Rectory; but on his return before Christmas, he found Jean still so entirely occupied in attendance on her father, as to be rarely visible. As he could not have Jean, he went in for Emmie Lucas.

He did not yet know his own mind about the two girls—though not from any lack of self-watching—and he was drifting fast to a position where he would be likely to act as if he did know it.

Emmie's dark face, small and rosy and sweet, was gaining more and more a hold upon him. She was not aware of the fact herself, being very young, unversed in the ways of the world, and kitten-like in simplicity. She would chat and laugh with Sir Cyril, as easily as if she had been his sister, delighted always to see him, because her father had so few friends. But naturally, Cyril did not ascribe this delight to thoughtfulness for her father—though he still kept up the little fiction of coming perpetually to call upon Captain Lucas. If Captain Lucas were out or busy, it was a matter of course that he should stay for a talk with the ladies.

As already intimated, Cyril did not drift unknowingly. He was too much given to self-analysing not to see whither his barque floated. Sometimes he grew uneasy, and thought he would not call on the Lucases for a few days; which "few days" seldom extended themselves beyond two nights. Sometimes he felt a desperate inclination to break through everything, to get utterly away from Dulveriford for a year or two years.

Why not? He had no binding duties at home; or anywhere else, unfortunately. He had pottered abut a good deal in Swiss and German hotels with Miss Devereux; but a wide world unexplored lay beyond. Why not take a more extended tour—say to the Antipodes—in search of a vocation, or at least to see what the effect of separation might be on himself and others? There was money enough; and "aunt Sybella" could remain in charge at the Brow.

But these were evening and night thoughts chiefly. He said nothing about them in the daytime.

Indeed, he seldom spoke of his friends, the Lucases, before Miss Devereux; and she had as yet not the slightest idea how far things had gone. Cyril had quite made up his mind to do nothing hasty; to be drawn into no rash or ill-considered step. He would see his way, clear as daylight, before he would commit himself. Satisfied with this resolution, he went on calling at the red house.