A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


Husband and wife embraced each other in a tumult of surprised
thankfulness. A few necessaries were thrown into a carpet-bag, and
Dr. Staines was soon whirled into Huntingdonshire. Having telegraphed
beforehand, he was met at the station by the earl's carriage and people,
and driven to the Hall. He was received by an old, silver-haired butler,
looking very sad, who conducted him to a boudoir; and then went and
tapped gently at the door of the patient's room. It was opened and shut
very softly, and Lady Cicely, dressed in black, and looking paler than
ever, came into the room.

"Dr. Staines, I think?"

He bowed.

"Thank you for coming so promptly. Dr. Barr is gone. I fear he
thinks--he thinks--O Dr. Staines--no sign of life but in his poor hands,
that keep moving night and day."

Staines looked very grave at that. Lady Cicely observed it, and, faint
at heart, could say no more, but led the way to the sick-room.

There in a spacious chamber, lighted by a grand oriel window and two
side windows, lay rank, title, wealth, and youth, stricken down in a
moment by a common accident. The sufferer's face was bloodless, his eyes
fixed, and no signs of life but in his thumbs, and they kept working
with strange regularity.

In the room were a nurse and the surgeon; the neighboring physician, who
had called in Dr. Barr, had just paid his visit and gone away.

Lady Cicely introduced Dr. Staines and Mr. White, and then Dr. Staines
stood and fixed his eyes on the patient in profound silence. Lady
Cicely scanned his countenance searchingly, and was struck with the
extraordinary power and intensity it assumed in examining the patient;
but the result was not encouraging. Dr. Staines looked grave and gloomy.

At last, without removing his eye from the recumbent figure, he said
quietly to Mr. White, "Thrown from his horse, sir."

"Horse fell on him, Dr. Staines."

"Any visible injuries?"

"Yes. Severe contusions, and a rib broken and pressed upon the lungs. I
replaced and set it. Will you see?"

"If you please."

He examined and felt the patient, and said it had been ably done.

Then he was silent and searching.

At last he spoke again. "The motion of the thumbs corresponds exactly
with his pulse."

"Is that so, sir?"

"It is. The case is without a parallel. How long has he been so?"

"Nearly a week."

"Impossible!"

"It is so, sir."

Lady Cicely confirmed this.

"All the better," said Dr. Staines upon reflection. "Well, sir," said
he, "the visible injuries having been ably relieved, I shall look
another way for the cause." Then, after another pause, "I must have his
head shaved."

Lady Cicely demurred a little to this; but Dr. Staines stood firm, and
his lordship's valet undertook the job.

Staines directed him where to begin; and when he had made a circular
tonsure on the top of the head, had it sponged with tepid water.

"I thought so," said he. "Here is the mischief;" and he pointed to a
very slight indentation on the left side of the pia mater. "Observe,"
said he, "there is no corresponding indentation on the other side.
Underneath this trifling depression a minute piece of bone is doubtless
pressing on the most sensitive part of the brain. He must be trephined."

Mr. White's eyes sparkled.

"You are an hospital surgeon, sir?"

"Yes, Dr. Staines. I have no fear of the operation."

"Then I hand the patient over to you. The case at present is entirely
surgical."

White was driven home, and soon returned with the requisite instruments.
The operation was neatly performed, and then Lady Cicely was called in.
She came trembling; her brother's fingers were still working, but not so
regularly.

"That is only HABIT," said Staines; "it will soon leave off, now the
cause is gone."

And, truly enough, in about five minutes the fingers became quiet. The
eyes became human next; and within half an hour after the operation the
earl gave a little sigh.

Lady Cicely clasped her hands, and uttered a little cry of delight.

"This will not do," said Staines, "I shall have you screaming when he
speaks."

"Oh, Dr. Staines! will he ever speak?"

"I think so, and very soon. So be on your guard."

This strange scene reached its climax soon after, by the earl saying,
quietly,--

"Are her knees broke, Tom?"

Lady Cicely uttered a little scream, but instantly suppressed it.

"No, my lord," said Staines, smartly; "only rubbed a bit. You can go to
sleep, my lord. I'll take care of the mare."

"All right," said his lordship; and composed himself to slumber.

Dr. Staines, at the earnest request of Lady Cicely, stayed all night;
and in course of the day advised her how to nurse the patient, since
both physician and surgeon had done with him.

He said the patient's brain might be irritable for some days, and no
women in silk dresses or crinoline, or creaking shoes, must enter the
room. He told her the nurse was evidently a clumsy woman, and would
be letting things fall. She had better get some old soldier used to
nursing. "And don't whisper in the room," said he; "nothing irritates
them worse; and don't let anybody play a piano within hearing; but in a
day or two you may try him with slow and continuous music on the flute
or violin if you like. Don't touch his bed suddenly; don't sit on it or
lean on it. Dole sunlight into his room by degrees; and when he can bear
it, drench him with it. Never mind what the old school tell you. About
these things they know a good deal less than nothing."

Lady Cicely received all this like an oracle.

The cure was telegraphed to Dr. Barr, and he was requested to settle the
fee. He was not the man to undersell the profession, and was jealous
of nobody, having a large practice, and a very wealthy wife. So he
telegraphed back--"Fifty guineas, and a guinea a mile from London."

So, as Christopher Staines sat at an early breakfast, with the carriage
waiting to take him to the train, two notes were brought him on a
salver.

They were both directed by Lady Cicely Treherne. One of them contained a
few kind and feeling words of gratitude and esteem; the other, a check,
drawn by the earl's steward, for one hundred and thirty guineas.

He bowled up to London, and told it all to Rosa. She sparkled with
pride, affection, and joy.

"Now, who says you are not a genius?" she cried. "A hundred and thirty
guineas for one fee! Now, if you love your wife as she loves you--you
will set up a brougham."




CHAPTER VIII.


Doctor Staines begged leave to distinguish; he had not said he would
set up a carriage at the first one hundred guinea fee, but only that he
would not set up one before. There are misguided people who would call
this logic: but Rosa said it was equivocating, and urged him so warmly
that at last he burst out, "Who can go on forever saying 'No,' to
the only creature he loves?"--and caved. In forty-eight hours more a
brougham waited at Mrs. Staines's door. The servant engaged to drive
it was Andrew Pearman, a bachelor, and, hitherto, an under-groom. He
readily consented to be coachman, and to do certain domestic work as
well. So Mrs. Staines had a man-servant as well as a carriage.

Ere long, three or four patients called, or wrote, one after the other.
These Rosa set down to brougham, and crowed; she even crowed to Lady
Cicely Treherne, to whose influence, and not to brougham's, every one of
these patients was owing. Lady Cicely kissed her, and demurely enjoyed
the poor soul's self-satisfaction.

Staines himself, while he drove to or from these patients, felt more
sanguine, and buoyed as he was by the consciousness of ability, began to
hope he had turned the corner.

He sent an account of Lord Ayscough's case to a medical magazine: and so
full is the world of flunkeyism, that this article, though he withheld
the name, retaining only the title, got the literary wedge in for him
at once: and in due course he became a paid contributor to two medical
organs, and used to study and write more, and indent the little stone
yard less than heretofore.

It was about this time circumstances made him acquainted with Phoebe
Dale. Her intermediate history I will dispose of in fewer words than it
deserves. Her ruin, Mr. Reginald Falcon, was dismissed from his club,
for marking high cards on the back with his nail. This stopped his
remaining resource--borrowing: so he got more and more out at elbows,
till at last he came down to hanging about billiard-rooms, and making a
little money by concealing his game; from that, however, he rose to be a
marker.

Having culminated to that, he wrote and proposed marriage to Miss Dale,
in a charming letter: she showed it to her father with pride.

Now, if his vanity, his disloyalty, his falsehood, his ingratitude,
and his other virtues had not stood in the way, he would have done this
three years ago, and been jumped at.

But the offer came too late; not for Phoebe--she would have taken him in
a moment--but for her friends. A baited hook is one thing, a bare hook
is another. Farmer Dale had long discovered where Phoebe's money went:
he said not a word to her; but went up to town like a shot; found Falcon
out, and told him he mustn't think to eat his daughter's bread. She
should marry a man that could make a decent livelihood; and if she
was to run away with HIM, why they'd starve together. The farmer was
resolute, and spoke very loud, like one that expects opposition, and
comes prepared to quarrel. Instead of that, this artful rogue addressed
him with deep respect and an affected veneration, that quite puzzled
the old man; acquiesced in every word, expressed contrition for his past
misdeeds, and told the farmer he had quite determined to labor with his
hands. "You know, farmer," said he, "I am not the only gentleman who has
come to that in the present day. Now, all my friends that have seen my
sketches, assure me I am a born painter; and a painter I'll be--for love
of Phoebe."

The farmer made a wry face. "Painter! that is a sorry sort of a trade."

"You are mistaken. It's the best trade going. There are gentlemen making
their thousands a year by it."

"Not in our parts, there bain't. Stop a bit. What be ye going to paint,
sir? Housen, or folk?"

"Oh, hang it, not houses. Figures, landscapes."

"Well, ye might just make shift to live at it, I suppose, with here and
there a signboard. They are the best paid, our way: but, Lord bless ye,
THEY wants headpiece. Well, sir, let me see your work. Then we'll talk
further."

"I'll go to work this afternoon," said Falcon eagerly; then with
affected surprise, "Bless me; I forgot. I have no palette, no canvas, no
colors. You couldn't lend me a couple of sovereigns to buy them, could
you?"

"Ay, sir; I could. But I woan't. I'll lend ye the things, though, if you
have a mind to go with me and buy 'em."

Falcon agreed, with a lofty smile; and the purchases were made.

Mr. Falcon painted a landscape or two out of his imagination. The
dealers to whom he took them declined them; one advised the gentleman
painter to color tea-boards. "That's your line," said he.

"The world has no taste," said the gentleman painter: "but it has got
lots of vanity: I'll paint portraits."

He did; and formidable ones: his portraits were amazingly like the
people, and yet unlike men and women, especially about the face. One
thing, he didn't trouble with lights and shades, but went slap at the
features.

His brush would never have kept him; but he carried an instrument, in
the use of which he was really an artist, viz., his tongue. By wheedling
and underselling--for he only charged a pound for the painted canvas--he
contrived to live; then he aspired to dress as well as live. With this
second object in view, he hit upon a characteristic expedient.

He used to prowl about, and when he saw a young woman sweeping the
afternoon streets with a long silk train, and, in short, dressed to ride
in the park, yet parading the streets, he would take his hat off to
her, with an air of profound respect, and ask permission to take her
portrait. Generally he met a prompt rebuff; but if the fair was so
unlucky as to hesitate a single moment, he told her a melting tale; he
had once driven his four-in-hand; but by indorsing his friends' bills,
was reduced to painting likeness, admirable likenesses in oil, only a
guinea each.

His piteous tale provoked more gibes than pity, but as he had no shame,
the rebuffs went for nothing: he actually did get a few sitters by his
audacity: and some of the sitters actually took the pictures, and paid
for them; others declined them with fury as soon as they were finished.
These he took back with a piteous sigh, that sometimes extracted half
a crown. Then he painted over the rejected one and let it dry; so that
sometimes a paid portrait would present a beauty enthroned on the debris
of two or three rivals, and that is where few beauties would object to
sit.

All this time he wrote nice letters to Phoebe, and adopted the tone
of the struggling artist, and the true lover, who wins his bride by
patience, perseverance, and indomitable industry; a babbled of "Self
Help."

Meantime, Phoebe was not idle: an excellent business woman, she took
immediate advantage of a new station that was built near the farm, to
send up milk, butter, and eggs to London. Being genuine, they sold like
wildfire. Observing that, she extended her operations, by buying of
other farmers, and forwarding to London: and then, having of course an
eye to her struggling artist, she told her father she must have a shop
in London, and somebody in it she could depend upon.

"With all my heart, wench," said he; "but it must not be thou. I can't
spare thee."

"May I have Dick, father?"

"Dick! he is rather young."

"But he is very quick, father, and minds every word I tell him."

"Ay, he is as fond of thee as ever a cow was of a calf. Well, you can
try him."

So the love-sick woman of business set up a little shop, and put her
brother Dick in it, and all to see more of her struggling artist. She
stayed several days, to open the little shop, and start the business.
She advertised pure milk, and challenged scientific analysis of
everything she sold. This came of her being a reader; she knew, by the
journals, that we live in a sinful and adulterating generation, and
anything pure must be a godsend to the poor poisoned public.

Now, Dr. Staines, though known to the profession as a diagnost, was also
an analyst, and this challenge brought him down on Phoebe Dale. He
told her he was a physician, and in search of pure food for his own
family--would she really submit the milk to analysis?

Phoebe smiled an honest country smile, and said, "Surely, sir." She gave
him every facility, and he applied those simple tests which are commonly
used in France, though hardly known in England.

He found it perfectly pure, and told her so; and gazed at Phoebe for a
moment, as a phenomenon.

She smiled again at that, her broad country smile. "That is a wonder in
London, I dare say. It's my belief half the children that die here are
perished with watered milk. Well, sir, we shan't have that on our souls,
father and I; he is a farmer in Essex. This comes a many miles, this
milk."

Staines looked in her face, with kindly approval marked on his own
eloquent features. She blushed a little at so fixed a regard. Then he
asked her if she would supply him with milk, butter, and eggs.

"Why, if you mean sell you them, yes, sir, with pleasure. But for
sending them home to you in this big town, as some do, I can't; for
there's only brother Dick and me: it is an experiment like."

"Very well," said Staines: "I will send for them."

"Thank you kindly, sir. I hope you won't be offended, sir; but we only
sell for ready money."

"All the better: my order at home is, no bills."

When he was gone, Phoebe, assuming vast experience, though this was only
her third day, told Dick that was one of the right sort: "and oh, Dick,"
said she, "did you notice his eye?"

"Not particklar, sister."

"There now; the boy is blind. Why, 'twas like a jewel. Such an eye I
never saw in a man's head, nor a woman's neither."

Staines told his wife about Phoebe and her brother, and spoke of her
with a certain admiration that raised Rosa's curiosity, and even that
sort of vague jealousy that fires at bare praise. "I should like to see
this phenomenon," said she. "You shall," said he. "I have to call on
Mrs. Manly. She lives near. I will drop you at the little shop, and come
back for you."

He did so, and that gave Rosa a quarter of an hour to make her
purchases. When he came back he found her conversing with Phoebe, as
if they were old friends, and Dick glaring at his wife with awe and
admiration. He could hardly get her away.

She was far more extravagant in her praises than Dr. Staines had been.
"What a good creature!" said she. "And how clever! To think of her
setting up a shop like that all by herself; for her Dick is only
seventeen."

Dr. Staines recommended the little shop wherever he went, and even
extended its operations. He asked Phoebe to get her own wheat ground
at home, and send the flour up in bushel bags. "These assassins, the
bakers," said he, "are putting copper into the flour now, as well as
alum. Pure flour is worth a fancy price to any family. With that we
can make the bread of life. What you buy in the shops is the bread of
death."

Dick was a good, sharp boy, devoted to his sister. He stuck to the shop
in London, and handed the money to Phoebe, when she came for it. She
worked for it in Essex, and extended her country connection for supply
as the retail business increased.

Staines wrote an article on pure food, and incidentally mentioned the
shop as a place where flour, milk, and butter were to be had pure. This
article was published in the Lancet, and caused quite a run upon the
little shop. By and by Phoebe enlarged it, for which there were great
capabilities, and made herself a pretty little parlor, and there she and
Dick sat to Falcon for their portraits; here, too, she hung his rejected
landscapes. They were fair in her eyes; what matter whether they
were like nature? his hand had painted them. She knew, from him, that
everybody else had rejected them. With all the more pride and love did
she have them framed in gold, and hung up with the portraits in her
little sanctum.

For a few months Phoebe Dale was as happy as she deserved to be. Her
lover was working, and faithful to her--at least she saw no reason to
doubt it. He came to see her every evening, and seemed devoted to her:
would sit quietly with her, or walk with her, or take her to a play, or
a music-hall--at her expense.

She now lived in a quiet elysium, with a bright and rapturous dream
of the future; for she saw she had hit on a good vein of business, and
should soon be independent, and able to indulge herself with a husband,
and ask no man's leave.

She sent to Essex for a dairymaid, and set her to churn milk into
butter, coram populo, at a certain hour every morning. This made a new
sensation. At other times the woman was employed to deliver milk and
cream to a few favored customers.

Mrs. Staines dropped in now and then, and chatted with her. Her sweet
face and her naivete won Phoebe's heart; and one day, as happiness is
apt to be communicative, she let out to her, in reply to a feeler or two
as to whether she was quite alone, that she was engaged to be married to
a gentleman. "But he is not rich, ma'am," said Phoebe plaintively; "he
has had trouble: obliged to work for his living, like me; he painted
these pictures, EVERY ONE OF THEM. If it was not making too free, and
you could spare a guinea--he charges no more for the picture, only you
must go to the expense of the frame."

"Of course I will," said Rosa warmly. "I'll sit for it here, any day you
like."

Now, Rosa said this, out of her ever ready kindness, not to wound
Phoebe: but having made the promise, she kept clear of the place for
some days, hoping Phoebe would forget all about it. Meantime she sent
her husband to buy.

In about a fortnight she called again, primed with evasions if she
should be asked to sit; but nothing of the kind was proposed. Phoebe was
dealing when she went in. The customers disposed of, she said to Mrs.
Staines, "Oh, ma'am, I am glad you are come. I have something I should
like to show you." She took her into the parlor, and made her sit down:
then she opened a drawer, and took out a very small substance that
looked like a tear of ground glass, and put it on the table before
her. "There, ma'am," said she, "that is all he has had for painting a
friend's picture."

"Oh! what a shame."

"His friend was going abroad--to Natal; to his uncle that farms out
there, and does very well; it is a first-rate part, if you take out a
little stock with you, and some money; so my one gave him credit, and
when the letter came with that postmark, he counted on a five-pound
note; but the letter only said he had got no money yet, but sent him
something as a keepsake: and there was this little stone. Poor fellow!
he flung it down in a passion; he was so disappointed."

Phoebe's great gray eyes filled; and Rosa gave a little coo of sympathy
that was very womanly and lovable.

Phoebe leaned her cheek on her hand, and said thoughtfully, "I picked it
up, and brought it away; for, after all--don't you think, ma'am, it is
very strange that a friend should send it all that way, if it was worth
nothing at all?"

"It is impossible. He could not be so heartless."

"And do you know, ma'am, when I take it up in my fingers, it doesn't
feel like a thing that was worth nothing."

"No more it does: it makes my fingers tremble. May I take it home, and
show it my husband? he is a great physician and knows everything."

"I am sure I should be obliged to you, ma'am."

Rosa drove home, on purpose to show it to Christopher. She ran into
his study: "Oh, Christopher, please look at that. You know that good
creature we have our flour and milk and things of. She is engaged, and
he is a painter. Oh, such daubs! He painted a friend, and the friend
sent that home all the way from Natal, and he dashed it down, and SHE
picked it up, and what is it? ground glass, or a pebble, or what?"

"Humph!--by its shape, and the great--brilliancy--and refraction of
light, on this angle, where the stone has got polished by rubbing
against other stones, in the course of ages, I'm inclined to think it
is--a diamond."

"A diamond!" shrieked Rosa. "No wonder my fingers trembled. Oh, can
it be? Oh, you good, cold-blooded Christie!--Poor things!--Come along,
Diamond! Oh you beauty! Oh you duck!"

"Don't be in such a hurry. I only said I thought it was a diamond. Let
me weigh it against water, and then I shall KNOW."

He took it to his little laboratory, and returned in a few minutes, and
said, "Yes. It is just three times and a half heavier than water. It is
a diamond."

"Are you positive?"

"I'll stake my existence."

"What is it worth?"

"My dear, I'm not a jeweller: but it is very large and pear-shaped,
and I see no flaw: I don't think you could buy it for less than three
hundred pounds."

"Three hundred pounds! It is worth three hundred pounds."

"Or sell it for more than a hundred and fifty pounds."

"A hundred and fifty! It is worth a hundred and fifty pounds."

"Why, my dear, one would think you had invented 'the diamond.' Show me
how to crystallize carbon, and I will share your enthusiasm."

"Oh, I leave you to carbonize crystal. I prefer to gladden hearts: and I
will do it this minute, with my diamond."

"Do, dear; and I will take that opportunity to finish my article on
Adulteration."

Rosa drove off to Phoebe Dale.

Now Phoebe was drinking tea with Reginald Falcon, in her little parlor.
"Who is that, I wonder?" said she, when the carriage drew up.

Reginald drew back a corner of the gauze curtain which had been drawn
across the little glass door leading from the shop.

"It is a lady, and a beautiful--Oh! let me get out." And he rushed out
at the door leading to the kitchen, not to be recognized.

This set Phoebe all in a flutter, and the next moment Mrs. Staines
tapped at the little door, then opened it, and peeped. "Good news! may I
come in?"

"Surely," said Phoebe, still troubled and confused by Reginald's strange
agitation.

"There! It is a diamond!" screamed Rosa. "My husband knew it directly.
He knows everything. If ever you are ill, go to him and nobody else--by
the refraction, and the angle, and its being three times and a half as
heavy as water. It is worth three hundred pounds to buy, and a hundred
and fifty pounds to sell."

"Oh!"

"So don't you go throwing it away, as he did. (In a whisper.) Two
teacups? Was that him? I have driven him away. I am so sorry. I'll go;
and then you can tell him. Poor fellow!"

"Oh, ma'am, don't go yet," said Phoebe, trembling. "I haven't half
thanked you."

"Oh, bother thanks. Kiss me; that is the way."

"May I?"

"You may, and must. There--and there--and there. Oh dear, what nice
things good luck and happiness are, and how sweet to bring them for
once."