Wives and Daughters (15 page)

‘He must live like the others. I can’t have the pestle and mortar carried into the drawing-room, and the place smelling of aloes.’

‘Must my boy make pills himself, then?’ asked the major ruefully.

‘To be sure. The youngest apprentice always does. It’s not hard work. He’ll have the comfort of thinking he won’t have to swallow them himself. And he’ll have the run of the pomfret cakes, and the conserve of hips, and on Sundays he shall have a taste of tamarinds
³
to reward him for his weekly labour at pill-making.’

Major Coxe was not quite sure whether Mr. Gibson was not laughing at him in his sleeve; but things were so far arranged, and the real advantages were so great, that he thought it was best to take no notice, but even to submit to the indignity of pill-making. He was consoled for all these rubs by Mr. Gibson’s manner at last when the supreme moment of final parting arrived. The doctor did not say much; but there was something of real sympathy in his manner that spoke straight to the father’s heart, and an implied ‘You have trusted me with your boy, and I have accepted the trust in full,’ in each of the few last words.

Mr. Gibson knew his business and human nature too well to distinguish young Coxe by any overt mark of favouritism; but he could not help showing the lad occasionally that he regarded him with especial interest as the son of a friend. Besides this claim upon his regard, there was something about the young man himself that pleased Mr. Gibson. He was rash and impulsive, apt to speak, hitting the nail on the head sometimes with unconscious cleverness, at other times making gross and startling blunders. Mr. Gibson used to tell him that his motto would always be ‘kill or cure,’ and to this Mr. Coxe once made answer that he thought it was the best motto a doctor could have; for if he could not cure the patient, it was surely best to get him out of his misery quietly, and at once. Mr. Wynne looked up in surprise, and observed that he should be afraid that such putting out of misery might be looked upon as homicide by some people. Mr. Gibson said, in a dry tone, that for his part he should not mind the imputation of homicide, but that it would not do to make away with profitable patients in so speedy a manner; and that he thought that as long as they were willing and able to pay two-and-sixpence for the doctor’s visit, it was his duty to keep them alive; of course, when they became paupers the case was different. Mr. Wynne pondered over this speech; Mr. Coxe only laughed. At last Mr. Wynne said,—

‘But you go every morning, sir, before breakfast, to see old Nancy Grant, and you’ve ordered her this medicine, sir, which is about the most costly in Corbyn’s bill?’

‘Have you not found how difficult it is for men to live up to their precepts? You’ve a great deal to learn yet, Mr. Wynne!’ said Mr. Gibson, leaving the surgery as he spoke.

‘I never can make the governor out,’ said Mr. Wynne, in a tone of utter despair. ‘What are you laughing at, Coxey?’

‘Oh! I’m thinking how blest you are in having parents who have instilled moral principles into your youthful bosom. You’d go and be poisoning all the paupers off if you hadn’t been told that murder was a crime by your mother; you’d be thinking you were doing as you were bid, and quote old Gibson’s words when you came to be tried. “Please, my lord judge, they were not able to pay for my visits, and so I followed the rules of the profession as taught me by Mr. Gibson, the great surgeon at Hollingford, and poisoned the paupers.” ’

‘I can’t bear that scoffing way of his.’

‘And I like it. If it wasn’t for the governor’s fun, and the tamarinds, and something else that I know of, I would run off to India. I hate stifling towns, and sick people, and the smell of drugs, and the stink of pills on my hands;—faugh!’

O
ne day, for some reason or other, Mr. Gibson came home unexpectedly He was crossing the hall, having come in by the garden-door—the garden communicated with the stable-yard, where he had left his horse—when the kitchen door opened, and the girl who was underling in the establishment came quickly into the hall with a note in her hand, and made as if she was taking it upstairs; but on seeing her master she gave a little start, and turned back as if to hide herself in the kitchen. If she had not made this movement, so conscious of guilt, Mr. Gibson, who was anything but suspicious, would never have taken any notice of her. As it was, he stepped quickly forwards, opened the kitchen door, and called out ‘Bethia’ so sharply that she could not delay coming forwards.

‘Give me that note,’ he said. She hesitated a little.

‘It’s for Miss Molly,’ she stammered out.

‘Give it to me!’ he repeated more quickly than before. She looked as if she would cry; but still she kept the note tight held behind her back.

‘He said as I was to give it into her own hands; and I promised as I would, faithful.’

‘Cook, go and find Miss Molly. Tell her to come here at once.’

He fixed Bethia with his eyes. It was of no use trying to escape: she might have thrown it into the fire, but she had not presence of mind enough. She stood immovable, only her eyes looked any way rather than encounter her master’s steady gaze. ‘Molly, my dear!’

‘Papa! I did not know you were at home,’ said innocent, wondering Molly.

‘Bethia, keep your word. Here is Miss Molly; give her the note.’

‘Indeed, miss, I couldn’t help it!’

Molly took the note, but before she could open it, her father said,—‘That’s all, my dear; you need not read it. Give it to me. Tell those who sent you, Bethia, that all letters for Miss Molly must pass through my hands. Now be off with you, goosey, and go back to where you came from.’

‘Papa, I shall make you tell me who my correspondent is.’

‘We’ll see about that, by and by.’

She went a little reluctantly, with ungratified curiosity, upstairs to Miss Eyre, who was still her daily companion, if not her governess. He turned into the empty dining-room, shut the door, broke the seal of the note, and began to read it. It was a flaming love-letter from Mr. Coxe; who professed himself unable to go on seeing her day after day without speaking to her of the passion she had inspired—an ‘eternal passion,’ he called it; on reading which Mr. Gibson laughed a little. Would she not look kindly at him? would she not think of him whose only thought was of her? and so on, with a very proper admixture of violent compliments to her beauty. She was fair, not pale; her eyes were lodestars, her dimples marks of Cupid’s finger, &c.

Mr. Gibson finished reading it; and began to think about it in his own mind. ‘Who would have thought the lad had been so poetical? but, to be sure, there’s a
Shakespeare
in the surgery library: I’ll take it away and
put Johnson’s Dictionary
instead. One comfort is the conviction of her perfect innocence—ignorance, I should rather say—for it is easy to see it’s the first “confession of his love,” as he calls it. But it’s an awful worry—to begin with lovers so early. Why, she’s only just seventeen,—not seventeen, indeed, till July; not for six weeks yet. Sixteen and three-quarters! Why, she’s quite a baby. To be sure—poor Jeanie was not so old, and how I did love her!’ (Mrs. Gibson’s name was Mary, so he must have been referring to some one else.) Then his thoughts wandered back to other days, though he still held the open note in his hand. By and by his eyes fell upon it again, and his mind came back to bear upon the present time. ‘I’ll not be hard upon him. I’ll give him a hint; he is quite sharp enough to take it. Poor laddie! if I send him away, which would be the wisest course, I do believe he’s got no home to go to.’

After a little more consideration in the same strain, Mr. Gibson went and sat down at the writing-table and wrote the following formula: —

 

 

 

(‘That “master” will touch him to the quick,’ said Mr. Gibson to himself as he wrote the word.)

Mr. Gibson smiled a little sadly as he re-read his words. ‘Poor Jeanie,’ he said aloud. And then he chose out an envelope, enclosed the fervid love-letter and the above prescription; sealed it with his own sharply-cut seal-ring, R.G., in old English letters, and then paused over the address.

‘He’ll not like Master Coxe outside; no need to put him to unnecessary shame.’ So the direction on the envelope was—

 

Then Mr. Gibson applied himself to the professional business which had brought him home so opportunely and unexpectedly, and afterwards he went back through the garden to the stables; and just as he had mounted his horse, he said to the stable-man,—‘Oh! by the way, here’s a letter for Mr. Coxe. Don’t send it through the women; take it round yourself to the surgery-door, and do it at once.’

The slight smile upon his face, as he rode out of the gates, died away as soon as he found himself in the solitude of the lanes. He slackened his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he considered, to have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in the same house with two young men, even if she only met them at meal-times, and all the intercourse they had with each other was merely the utterance of such words as, ‘May I help you to potatoes?’ or, as Mr. Wynne would persevere in saying, ‘May I assist you to potatoes?’ —a form of speech which grated daily more and more upon Mr. Gibson’s ears. Yet Mr. Coxe, the offender in this affair which had just occurred, had to remain for three years more as a pupil in Mr. Gibson’s family. He should be the very last of the race. Still there were three years to be got over; and if this stupid passionate calf-love of his lasted, what was to be done? Sooner or later Molly would become aware of it. The contingencies of the affair were so excessively disagreeable to contemplate that Mr. Gibson determined to dismiss the subject from his mind by a good strong effort. He put his horse to a gallop, and found that the violent shaking over the lanes—paved as they were with round stones, which had been dislocated by the wear and tear of a hundred years—was the very best thing for the spirits, if not for the bones. He made a long round that afternoon, and came back to his home imagining that the worst was over, and that Mr. Coxe would have taken the hint conveyed in the prescription. All that would be needed was to find a safe place for the unfortunate Bethia, who had displayed such a daring aptitude for intrigue. But Mr. Gibson reckoned without his host. It was the habit of the young men to come in to tea with the family in the dining-room, to swallow two cups, munch their bread and toast, and then disappear. This night Mr. Gibson watched their countenances furtively from under his long eyelashes, while he tried against his wont to keep up a
dégagé
manner, and a brisk conversation on general subjects. He saw that Mr. Wynne was on the point of breaking out into laughter, and that red-haired, red-faced Mr. Coxe was redder and fiercer than ever, while his whole aspect and ways betrayed indignation and anger.

‘He will have it, will he?’ thought Mr. Gibson to himself; and he girded up his loins for the battle. He did not follow Molly and Miss Eyre into the drawing-room as he usually did. He remained where he was, pretending to read the newspaper, while Bethia, her face swelled up with crying, and with an aggrieved and offended aspect, removed the tea-things. Not five minutes after the room was cleared, came the expected tap at the door. ‘May I speak to you, sir?’ said the invisible Mr. Coxe, from outside.

‘To be sure. Come in, Mr. Coxe. I was rather wanting to talk to you about that bill of Corbyn’s. Pray sit down.’

‘It is about nothing of that kind, sir, that I wanted—that I wished—. No, thank you—I would rather not sit down.’ He, accordingly, stood in offended dignity. ‘It is about that letter, sir—that letter with the insulting prescription, sir.’

‘Insulting prescription! I am surprised at such a word being applied to any prescription of mine—though, to be sure, patients are sometimes offended at being told the nature of their illnesses; and, I dare say, they may take offence at the medicines which their cases require.’

‘I did not ask you to prescribe for me.’

‘Oh, no! Then you were the Master Coxe who sent the note through Bethia! Let me tell you it has cost her her place, and was a very silly letter into the bargain.’

‘It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir, to intercept it, and to open it, and to read words never addressed to you, sir.’

‘No!’ said Mr. Gibson, with a slight twinkle in his eye and a curl on his lips, not unnoticed by the indignant Mr. Coxe. ‘I believe I was once considered tolerably good-looking, and I dare say I was as great a coxcomb as any one at twenty; but I don’t think that even then I should quite have believed that all those pretty compliments were addressed to myself.’

‘It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir,’ repeated Mr. Coxe, stammering over his words—he was going on to say something more, when Mr. Gibson broke in,—

‘And let me tell you, young man,’ replied Mr. Gibson, with a sudden sternness in his voice, ‘that what you have done is only excusable in consideration of your youth and extreme ignorance of what are considered the laws of domestic honour. I receive you into my house as a member of the family—you induce one of my servants—corrupting her with a bribe, I have no doubt—’

‘Indeed, sir! I never gave her a penny.’

‘Then you ought to have done. You should always pay those who do your dirty work.’

‘Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe,’ muttered Mr. Coxe.

Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on—‘Inducing one of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my daughter—a mere child.’

‘Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen! I heard you say so only the other day,’ said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty. Again Mr. Gibson ignored the remark.