I have had to pay.”
“Humph! that’s strange,” said the doctor, looking curiously at his visitor.
“Strange?—it’s fearful!” cried the young man passionately. “It is getting to be a curse to me, and I cannot shake off the horrible feeling that I am losing my mind—that I am going wrong. And if this be the case, I cannot bear it, especially just now, when—”
He checked himself, and gazed piteously at the man to whom he had come for help.
“Be cool, boy. Supposing it is as you say, it is only a trifle, perhaps; but it seems to me that there is a great deal of imagination in it.”
“Oh no—oh no! I fear I am going, slowly but surely, out of my mind.”
“Because you forget things after a certain time, eh? Stuff! Don’t be foolish. Why, you never used to think that your brain was going wrong when you were a schoolboy, and every word of the lesson that you knew perfectly and said verbatim to a schoolfellow dropped out of your mind.”
“No.”
“Of course you did not; and as to going mad, why, my dear boy, have you any idea what a lunatic is?”
“I cannot say that I have.”
“Well, then, you shall have,” said the doctor; “and that will do you more good than all my talking. You shall see for yourself what a diseased mind really is, and that will strengthen you mentally, and show you how ill-advised are your fancies.”
“But, doctor, I should not like to be a witness of the sufferings of others.”
“Nonsense, my boy. There, pray don’t imagine, because I live at Highgate, and am licenced to have so many insane patients under my care, that you are going to see horrible creatures dressed in straw and grovelling in cells. My dear John, I am going to ask you to a mad dinner-party.”
“A mad dinner-party?”
“Well, there, to come and dine with my sister, myself, and our patients. No people hung in chains or straw. Perfectly quiet gentlemen, my dear fellow, but each troubled with a craze. You would not know that they had anything wrong if they did not break out now and then upon the particular subject. Come to-night at seven sharp.”
The doctor glanced at his watch, rose, and held out his hand; and though John Huish hesitated, the doctor’s eyes seemed to force him to say that he would be there, and he began to feel for his purse.
“Look here, sir,” said the doctor, stopping him: “if you are feeling for fees, don’t insult your father’s old friend by trying to offer him one. There, till seven—say half-past six—and I’ll give you a glass of burgundy, my boy, that shall make you forget all these imaginations.”
“Thank you, doctor—”
“Not another word, sir, but au revoir.”
“Au revoir,” said Huish; and he was shown out, to go back to his chambers thinking about his ailment—and Gertrude, while the doctor began to muse.
“Strange that I should take so much interest in that boy. Heigho! Some years now since I went fly-fishing, and fished his father out of the pit.”
Volume One—Chapter Six.
Aunt Philippa on Matrimony.
“Will you speak, Isabella, or shall I?”
“If you please, Philippa, will you?” said her sister with frigid politeness.
The Honourable Miss Dymcox motioned to her nieces to seat themselves, and they sat down.
Then there was a sharp premonitory “Hem!” and a long pause, during which the thoughts of the young ladies went astray.
“I wonder what that officer’s name is,” thought Clotilde, “and whether that good-looking boy is his squire?”
Rather a romantic notion this, by the way, and it gave Marcus Glen in the young lady’s ideas the position of knight; but it was excusable, for her life had been secluded in the extreme.
“What a very handsome man that dark officer was that we nearly met! but I don’t like his looks,” mused Marie; and then, as Ruth was thinking that she would rather be getting on with some of the needlework that fell to her share than listening to her aunt’s lecture—one of the periodical discourses it was their fate to hear—there was another sharp “Hem!”
“Marriage,” said the Honourable Miss Dymcox, “is an institution that has existed from the earliest ages of the world.”
Had a bomb-shell suddenly fallen into the chilly, meanly-furnished drawing-room, where every second article seemed to wear a brown-holland pinafore, and the frame of the old-fashioned mirror was tightly draped in yellow canvas, the young ladies could not have looked more astonished.
In their virgin innocency the word “marriage” had been tabooed to them, and consequently was never mentioned, being a subject held to be unholy for the young people’s ears.
Certainly there were times when the wedding of some lady they knew was canvassed; but it was with extreme delicacy, and not in the downright fashion of Miss Philippa’s present speech.
“Ages of the world,” assented the Honourable Isabella, opening a pale drab fan, and using it gently, as if the subject made her warm.
“And,” continued Miss Philippa, “I think it right to speak to you children, now that you are verging upon womanhood, because it is possible that some day or another you might either of you receive a proposal.”
“That sun-browned officer with the heavy moustache,” thought Clotilde, whose cheeks began to glow. “She thinks he may try to be introduced. Oh, I wish he may!”
“When your poor—I say it with tears, Isabella.”
“Yes, sister, with tears,” assented that lady.
“I am addressing you, Clotilde and Marie,” continued Miss Philippa. “You, Ruth, of course cannot be answerable for the stroke of fate which placed you in our hands, an adopted child.”
“An adopted child,” said Miss Isabella, closing her fan, for the moral atmosphere seemed cooler.
“When your poor mother, your poor, weak mamma, children, wantonly and recklessly, and in opposition to the wishes of all her relatives, insisted upon marrying Mr. Julian Riversley, who was never even acknowledged by any member of our family—”
“I remember papa as being very handsome, and with dark hair,” said Marie.
“Marie!” exclaimed the Honourable Misses Dymcox in a breath. “I am surprised at you!”
“Tray be silent, child,” added Miss Philippa.
