Chapter 5. Letter-Writing And Hysterics

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_ CHAPTER V. LETTER-WRITING AND HYSTERICS

The young doctor sat in his room writing. It was a pleasant room, looking upon the garden, and in style and furnishing altogether to the young doctor's taste. He liked the tall narrow mantel, with its delicate mouldings; he liked the white paint, and the high wainscoting against which, the old mahogany came out so well; and he liked the mahogany itself, which was in quaint and graceful shapes. The dimity curtains, too, with their ball and tassel fringe, were of such a fresh clear white. They had never been dirty, they never could be dirty, the young doctor thought; some things must always be fresh and clean; like that girl's dresses. He was sitting in his favourite chair; a chair that stimulated to effort or wooed to repose, according to the attitude one assumed in it. Geoffrey Strong felt a sort of ownership in this chair, for he had discovered the secret pocket in one arm; the tiny panel which, when pressed one day by his careless fingers, slipped aside, revealing a dark polished well, and in the well an ancient vinaigrette of green and gold glass. Sometimes Geoffrey would take out the vinaigrette and sniff its faded perfume, and it told him a new story every time. Now, however, it lay quiet in its nest, for Geoffrey was writing busily.

"You can't laugh any more at me and my old ladies, Jim. There's a new development, a young lady; niece, visitor here, and invalid visitor at that. Neurasthenia, overwork at college, the old story. When will young women learn that they are not young men? Malady in this case takes the form of aversion to the male sex in general, and G. S. in particular. Handsome, sullen creature, tawny hair, eyes no particular colour, but very brilliant; pupils much dilated. I won't bother you with symptoms while you are off on your vacation, but she has some interesting ones. The dear old ladies want me to prescribe for her, but she prefers to play with pills herself. Has a remarkable voice, deep notes now and again that thrill like the middle tones of a 'cello; or might, if they said anything but 'Please pass the butter!' If she were better tempered, I should be tempted to send for you; you are simply spoiling for some one to fall in love with, I can tell that from your last letter. The pretty brunette had not intellectuality enough, had she? My dear fellow, as if that had anything to do with it! You were not ready, that was all. You fall in love by clockwork once every year; and it is time now. If you should see the P. B. again to-morrow, you'd be lost directly. As for me--I should think you would be tired of asking. No, I am not in love. No, I feel no inclination whatever to become so. No, there is no 'charmer' (what vile expressions you use, James; go back to the English Department, and learn how to speak of Woman!) who interests me in the least (except pathologically, of course), except Miss Vesta Blyth, aged sixty. I am in love with her, I grant you; anybody would be, with eyes in his head. Don't I know that I would amount to twice as much if the society of women formed part of my life? Numskull, it _does_ form part of it, a very important part. In the first place, I have my patients. Body of me, my patients! Did I not sit a stricken hour with Mrs. Abigail Plummer yesterday afternoon? She 'feels a crawling in her pipes,'--I'll spare you Mrs. Plummer, but you must hear how Mrs. Cotton cured her lumbago. (I am still hunting rheumatic affections, yes, and always shall be.) She took a quart of rum, my Christian friend; she put into it a pound and a half of sulphur and three-quarters of a pound of cream tartar, and took 'a good swaller' three or four times a day. There's therapeutics for you, sir! Lady weighs three hundred pounds if she does an ounce, and has a colour like a baby's. Well, I could go on indefinitely. That's in the first place. In the second, I have here in this house society that is absolutely to my mind. Experience is life, you grant that. Therefore, the person of experience is the person who really lives. (Of course I admit exceptions.) Therefore, the society of a woman of sixty--an intelligent woman--is infinitely more to be desired than that of a callow girl with nothing but eyes and theories. It is profitable, it is delightful; and this with no hurrying of the heart, no upsetting of the nerves, none of the deplorable symptoms that I observe annually in my friend Mr. James Swift. That for the second place. There is a third. Jim, Jim, do you forget that I was brought up with 'six female cousins, and all of them girls?' They were virtuous young women, every one of them; one or two were good looking; four of them (including the plainest), have married, and I trust their husbands find them interesting. I did not, but I 'learned about women from them,' as the lynx-eyed schoolboy does learn. I divided them into three classes, sugary, vinegary, peppery; to-day I should be more professional; let us say saccharine, acidulated, irritant. These classes still seem to me to include the greater part of young womankind. Sorry to displease, but sich am de facts. And--yes, I still sing '_aber hierathen ist nie mein Sinn_!' Business? oh, so so! A country doctor doesn't make a fortune, but he learns a power, if he isn't an idiot. Now here is enough about me, in all conscience. When you write, tell me about yourself, and what the other fellows are doing. After all, that is--"

Geoffrey came to the end of his paper, and paused to take a fresh sheet. Glancing up as he did so, he also glanced out of the window, to see what was going on in the garden. He always liked to keep in touch with the garden, and was on intimate terms with every bird and blossom in it. It was neither bird nor blossom that his eyes lighted on now. A young girl stood on the gravel-path, near his favourite syringa arbour. A hammock hung over her arm, and she carried a book and a pillow. She was looking about her, evidently trying to select a place to hang her hammock. Geoffrey considered her. She was dressed in clear white; her hair, of a tawny reddish yellow, hung in one heavy braid over her shoulder.

"Oh, yes, she is handsome," said Geoffrey, addressing the syringa-bush. "I never said she wasn't handsome. The question is, would she like me to hang that hammock for her, or would she consider it none of my business?"

At this moment the girl dropped the book; then the pillow slipped from her hands. She threw down the hammock with a petulant gesture and stood looking at the syringa-bush as if it were her mortal enemy. Geoffrey Strong laid down his pen.

A few minutes later he came sauntering leisurely around the corner. One would have said he had been spending an hour in the garden, and was now going in.

"Good morning, Miss Blyth! glorious day, isn't it? going to sling a hammock? let me do it, won't you?"

Vesta Blyth looked at him with sombre eyes. "I couldn't hold it!" she said, unwillingly. "There is no strength left in my hands."

"You are still tired, you see," said Geoffrey, cheerfully, as he picked up the hammock. "That's perfectly natural."

"It isn't natural!" said the girl, fiercely. "It's devilish!"

"This is a good place," said Geoffrey, paying no attention to her. "Combination of shade and sun, you see. Pillow at this end? There! how is that?"

"Thank you! it will do very well."

She stretched herself at full length in the hammock. Her movements were perfectly graceful, he noted; and he made a swift comparison with the way his cousins flounced or twittered or slumped into a hammock.

[Illustration: He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock rope.]

He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock-rope. He was conscious only of a friendly feeling of compassion for this fair young creature, built for vigour and an active life, now condemned for months, it might be years, of weariness and pain. Whether any unconscious keenness of scrutiny crept into his eyes or not, is not known; but as Vesta Blyth looked up and met their gaze, a wave of angry crimson rushed over her face and neck.

"Doctor Strong," she said, violently, her voice low and vibrating, as some women's are in passion, "I must request you _not_ to look at me!"

Geoffrey started, and coloured in his turn. "I beg your pardon!" he said. "I was not aware--I assure you I had no intention of being rude, Miss Blyth."

"You were not rude!" Vesta swept on. "I am rude; I am unreasonable, I am absurd. I can't help it. I will not be looked at professionally. Half the people in this village would welcome your professional glance as a beam from heaven, and bask in it, and drop every symptom as if it were a pearl, but I am not a 'case.' I am simply a human being, who asks nothing but to be let alone."

She stopped abruptly, her bosom heaving, her eyes like black agates with fire behind them, looking straight past him at the trees beyond. "If you wish to put me to the last humiliation," she added, hurriedly, "you may wait and have the satisfaction of seeing me cry; if not--"

But Geoffrey was gone, fleeing into the house with the sound of stormy sobs chasing him like Furies. He never stopped till he reached his own room, where he flung himself into his chair in most unprofessional agitation. The window was open--what a fool he was to leave windows open!--and the sound followed him; he could not shut it out. Dreadful sobs, choking, agonising; he felt, as if he saw it, the whole slender figure convulsed with them. Good heavens! the girl would be in convulsions if she went on at this rate.

Now the sobs died away into long moans, into quivering breaths; now they broke out again, insistent, terrible. Broken words among them, too.

"What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?"

Geoffrey, who had been trying to look over some papers, started up and paced the room hurriedly. "This--this is very curious!" he was trying to say to himself. "Hysteria pure and simple--very interesting-- I must note the duration of the paroxysms. Good God! can't somebody stop her? perfectly inhuman, to let a creature go on like that!"

He was at the door, with some vague idea of alarming the house, when a soft knock was heard on the other side. He flung the door open, and startled Miss Vesta so that she gave a little cry of dismay, and retreated to the head of the stairs. "Pray excuse me, Doctor Strong," she said. "I see that you are occupied; I pray you to excuse me!"

"No, no!" said Geoffrey, hurriedly. "I am not--it's nothing at all. What can I do for you, Miss Vesta? Do come in, please!"

"My niece," said the little lady, with a troubled look, "is in a highly nervous condition to-day, Doctor Strong. She is--weeping. My sister thought you might have--" she paused, as Miss Phoebe's crisp and decided tones came up over the stairs.

"Little Vesta has got into a crying-spell, Doctor Strong. I want a little valerian for her, please. I will go down and give it to her myself, if you will hand it to my sister."

"In one moment, Miss Blyth," called Geoffrey, in his most composed and professional tones. Then, seizing Miss Vesta's hand, he almost dragged her into the room, and shut the door.

"Don't let her go!" he said, hurriedly, as he sought and poured out the valerian. "Take it yourself, please, Miss Vesta, please! Miss Blyth will--that is, she is less gentle than you; if your niece is in such a condition as--as you say, you are the one to soothe her. Will you go? Please do."

"Dear Doctor Strong," said Miss Vesta, panting a little, "are you--I fear you are unwell yourself. You alarm me, my dear young friend."

"I am a brute," said Geoffrey; "a clumsy, unfeeling brute!" He kissed her little white wrinkled hand; then, still holding it, paused to listen. The voice came up again from the place of torture.

"What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?"

He pressed the glass in Miss Vesta's hand. "There! there! a teaspoonful at once, please; but you will be better than medicine. Tell Miss Blyth--tell her I want very much to speak to her, please! Ask if she could come up here now, this moment, just for two or three minutes. And you'll go down yourself, won't you, Miss Vesta-- dear Miss Vesta?"

He was so absorbed in listening he did not hear the creaking of Miss Phoebe's morocco shoes on the stairs; and when she appeared before him, flushed and slightly out of breath, he stared at the good lady as if he had never seen her before.

"You wished to see me, Doctor Strong?" Miss Phoebe began. She was half pleased, half ruffled, at being summoned in this imperious way.

"Yes--oh, yes," answered Geoffrey, vaguely. "Come in, please, Miss Blyth. Won't you sit down--no, I wouldn't sit near the window, it's damp to-day (it was not in the least damp). Sit here, in my chair. Did you know there was a secret pocket in this chair? Very curious thing!"

"I was aware of it," said Miss Phoebe, with dignity. "Was that what you wished to say to me, Doctor Strong?"

"No--oh, no (thank Heaven, she has stopped! that angel is with her). I--I am ashamed to trouble you, Miss Blyth, but you said you would be so very good as to look over my shirts some day, and see if they are worth putting on new collars and cuffs. It's really an imposition; any time will do, if you are busy now. I only thought, hearing your voice--"

"There is no time like the present," said Miss Phoebe, in her most gracious tone. "It will be a pleasure, I assure you, Doctor Strong, to look over any portions of your wardrobe, and give you such advice as I can. I always made my honoured father's shirts after my dear mother's death, so I am, perhaps, not wholly unfitted for this congenial task. Ah, machine-made!"

"Beg pardon!" said Geoffrey, who had been listening to something else.

"These shirts were made with the aid of the sewing-machine, I perceive," said Miss Phoebe. "No--oh, no, it is nothing unusual. Very few persons, I believe, make shirts entirely by hand in these days. I always set the same number of stitches in my father's shirts, five thousand and sixty. He always said that no machine larger than a cambric needle should touch his linen."

"Then--you don't think they are worth new collars?" said Geoffrey, abstractedly.

"Did I convey that impression?" said Miss Phoebe, with mild surprise. "I had no such intention, Doctor Strong. I think that a skilful person, with some knowledge of needlework, could make these garments (though machine-made) last some months yet. You see, Doctor Strong, if she takes this--"

It was a neat and well-sustained little oration that Miss Phoebe delivered, emphasising her remarks with the cuff of a shirt; but it was lost on Geoffrey Strong. He was listening to another voice that came quavering up from the garden below, a sweet high voice, like a wavering thread of silver. No more sobs; and Miss Vesta was singing; the sweetest song, Geoffrey thought, that he had ever heard. _

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