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Chapter One.
The Curate Grows Suspicious; and Takes his Stick
“Do what, miss?” said Dally Watlock. “That! There, you did it again.”
“La, miss; I on’y thought my face might be a bit smudgy, and I wiped it.”
“Don’t tell me a falsehood, Dally. I know what it means. You felt guilty, and your face burned.”
“La, miss; I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then I’ll tell you, Dally. You are growing too light and free, and your conduct is far from becoming, or what it should be for a maid-servant at the Rectory. If girls are so foolish they must not be surprised at young men – gentlemen – taking such liberties. Now go. And mind this: if it ever occurs again, I shall acquaint my brother.”
“Well, I couldn’t help it, miss. I didn’t ask Mr Tom Candlish to kiss me.”
“Silence! How dare you? Leave the room.”
“I was a-going to, miss. He popped out from behind the hedge just as Billy Wilkins had given me the letters, and he says, ‘Give this note to Miss Leo, Dally,’ he says, ‘and mind no one else sees.’”
“I told you to leave the room, girl.”
“Well, miss, I’m a-going, ain’t I? And then, before I could help it, he put his arm round me and said my cheeks were like apples.”
“Will – you – leave – the – room?”
“Yes, miss, of course I will; and then he kissed me just as Billy Wilkins looked back, and now he’ll go and tell Joe Chegg, and he’ll scold me too. I’m a miserable girl.”
Red-cheeked, ruddy-lipped Dally Watlock – christened Delia as a compromise for Delilah – covered her round face with her apron, and began to sob and try to pump up a few tears to her bright dark eyes, as her young mistress seized her by the shoulders, and literally forced her out of the room, when Dally went sobbing down the passage and through the baize door before she dropped her apron and began to laugh.
“She’s as jealous as jel!” cried the girl. “It made her look quite yellow. Deal she’s got to talk about, too. Tell master! She daren’t! The minx! I could tell too. Who cares for her – tallow-face? Thinks she’s precious good-looking; but she ain’t everybody, after all. Master Joe Chegg, too, had better mind. I don’t care if he does know now.”
Then as if the spot burned, or as if a natural instinct taught her that the kiss imprinted upon her cheek was not as cleanly as it should have been, or as one of the honest salutes of the aforesaid Joe Chegg, Dally Watlock lifted her neat white apron, and wiped the place again.
“How dare he kiss her?” said Leo Salis, frowning, as she laid the post letters beside her brother’s place at the breakfast-table, and then stood with the note in her hand. “I’ll punish him for this!”
She hastily tore open the note, which was written in a good, manly hand, but contained in ten lines four specimens of faulty spelling, and a “you was” which looked as big as a blot.
The note was brief and contained a pressing invitation to meet the writer in Red Cliff Wood that morning, as soon after breakfast as she could.
“I won’t go,” she said passionately. “I’ll punish him!”
Then, as if feeling that she would punish herself, the girl stood thinking, and then hastily crushed the note in her hand and walked to the window, to be apparently studying the pretty Warwickshire landscape as her brother and sister entered the room.
“Morning, Leo, dear,” said Mary Salis, the elder of the two; a fair English girl, grey-eyed, with high forehead and dark-brown, wavy hair, her type of countenance, allowing for feminine softness, being wonderfully like that of the robust, manly-looking clergyman who entered with his hand resting upon her shoulder.
“Morning, Mary,” said Leo quietly; and her handsome dark, almost Spanish, features seemed perfectly calm and inanimate as she returned her sister’s salute; and then, in a half weary way, rather distantly held up her cheek for her brother to kiss.
“Get out!” said the latter boisterously, as he caught the handsome girl by the shoulders, and tried to look in her eyes which avoided his. “No nonsense, Leo, my dear. No grumps. Give me a good, honest kiss. Lips – lips – lips.”
She raised her face in obedience to the emphatic demand, and then extricated herself from the two strong hands, to take her place at the table; while her sister, who seemed nervous and anxious, and kept glancing from one to the other, went to the head of the table, and began to make the tea.
“You and I must not be on two sides, Leo, my dear,” said the brother, smiling, but with a troubled look on his face, which seemed the reflection of that in the eyes of the elder sister. “I’m like a grandfather to you, my darling, and what I say and advise is for the best.”
“Do you wish to send me back to my room, Hartley?” said the girl, half rising.
“Name of a little fiddler in France, no!” cried Hartley Salis. “There – mum! I’ve done, dear. Breakfast! I’m as hungry as two curates this morning. What is it, Dally?”
“Ammonegs, sir,” said the little maid, who entered with a covered dish.
“Didn’t know Ammon ever laid ’em,” muttered the curate, with a dry look at his sisters. “Now then: letters. Let me see.”
He proceeded to open his letters, and read and partook of his breakfast at the same time, making comments the while for the benefit of his sisters, when he thought the news would please.
“Humph! May!” he said aloud; and then skimmed the ill-written, crabbed lines in silence.
“Hang him!” he said to himself. “What mischief-making wretch inspired that?” and he re-read the letter. “‘Not becoming of the sister of a clergyman to be seen so often in the hunting-field – better be engaged over parish work – excites a good deal of remark – hope shall not have to make this painful allusion again’ – Humph!”
The curate’s face was full of the lines of perplexity, and rapidly doubling up the letter, he swallowed half a cup of tea at a gulp, much hotter than was good for him, and quite sufficiently so to cause pain.
“Phew! More milk, Mary, dear.”
A long white hand raised the milk-jug quickly, and the earnest grey eyes which belonged sought the curate’s as he held out his cup.
“Any bad news, Hartley, dear?”
“Bad news? No, no, dear, only one of May’s old worries. The old boy’s got gout again.”
“Has he, dear?”
“Well, he doesn’t say so, but it breathes in that style. He feels it his duty to stir me up now and then, and he generally does it with a sharp stick.”
He glanced as he spoke at Leo, who sipped her tea and read a novel, without apparently heeding what was going on.
“It’s a great shame, Hartley, working so hard in the parish as you do,” said Mary quietly; “while he – ”
“Oh, silence! thou reviler of those in high clerical places,” cried the curate merrily, as he inserted his knife in the envelope fold of another missive, and slit it open. “Here’s a letter from North.”
The face of Mary Salis was perfectly composed, but there was a flash from her eyes and an eager look of inquiry as the letter was opened.
“Ha! Busy as a bee! Conferences; lectures. Going to be present at a great operation. Nasty wretch! How he does glory in great operations!”
“It is his love of his profession,” said Mary quietly.
“Too enthusiastic,” said the curate. “Why doesn’t he, a man with his income, make himself happy by doing what good he can to his patients, and have his game of chess here when his work is done?”
“It is his desire to do good to his patients which makes him so earnest about scientific matters, dear,” said Mary, smiling at her brother.
“Very kind of you to do battle for him, my child; but Horace North works far too hard, and he’ll end by going mad.”
“Or becoming one of the ornaments of his profession,” said Mary, smiling.
“Ornaments be hanged! One of the useful corners, if you like.”
“Does he say when he is coming home?” said Mary quietly.
“Yes; day after to-morrow. Good news for Mrs Berens.”
The curate burst into a hearty laugh, and a very, very faint flush of colour came into Mary’s cheek.
“Saw her yesterday, and with a face as innocent of guile as could be she told me that she was very poorly, and should not feel safe to live long in a village where there was no medical man. Glad old Horace is coming back, though. What have we here? Oh, I see. Letter about the horse – no, it’s a mare.”
Leo put down her book and listened attentively now.
“Hah! Yes! North was right. The fellow will take ten pounds less for her, after all.”
“Ah!”
There was a faint sigh, expressive of gratification, and the curate looked up.
“Are you satisfied, Leo?” he said gravely.
“Yes.”
“It goes against the grain,” he said, laying his hand involuntarily upon the letter he had that morning received from the rector.
“Don’t say that, Hartley,” cried Leo, with her face now full of animation. “We can afford the horse, and it was absolutely disgraceful to appear on poor old Grey Joe.”
“Grey Joe was a good safe horse, and I never felt nervous when you were mounted. Splendid fellow in harness too.”
“Yes, admirable!” cried Leo. “And now you can keep him always for the chaise. It will be so much better.”
The curate shook his head.
“No,” he said; “poor old Joe will have to so, and I wish him a wood master.”
“Poor old Joe!” said Mary, sighing, as she thought of many pleasant drives.
“Grey Joe! Go!” said Leo, with her lips apart. “Then what will you do for the chaise?”
“Use the new mare.”
Leo looked at him with speechless indignation.
“Put the new mare in the chaise?” she faltered.
“Yes, my dear. The man says she goes well in harness.”
“Oh, Hartley,” cried Leo, flushing now with indignation, “that would be too absurd!”
“Why, my dear?”
“You get me a mount because it is so unpleasant to go to the meet on an old chaise-horse, and then talk of putting my hunter in the chaise.”
“Grey Joe was not good enough for the purpose,” said the curate gravely, “and at your earnest wish, my dear Leo, I have pinched in several ways that my sister, who is so fond of hunting, may not be ashamed before her friends.”
“Pinched!”
“Yes, my dear, pinched myself and Mary. Our consols money only gives three per cent., and it is hard work to make both ends meet. You have your mount, and I cannot afford to keep two horses, so Grey Joe must go. We must have the use of a horse in the chaise, so the mare will have to run in harness sometimes.”
Leo rose from her chair with her eyes flashing and cheek aflame.
“I declare it’s insufferable,” she cried, with a stamp of the foot. “Oh, I am so sick of this life of beggary and pinching! All through this season I have been disgraced by that wretched old horse, and now when people who know me – Oh, I cannot bear to speak of it!”
“My dear sister!”
“It’s cruel – it’s abominable. If it had been Mary, she could have had what she pleased.”
“My dear Leo,” began Mary, looking up at her in a troubled way.
“Hold your tongue! You make mischief enough as it is. You always side with Hartley, who has no more feeling than a stone.”
“But, my dear child,” began the curate.
“Child! Yes; that’s how you treat me – like a child. You check me in every way. I suppose you’ll want to make me a nun, and keep me shut up always in this dreary hole. You check me in everything, and Mary helps you.”
Mary looked up at her brother now, for he had slowly risen from his seat, and she knew the meaning of the stern aspect of his countenance.
“I had hoped, Leo,” he said, “that you would have accepted my decision about that to which you have thought it wise to allude.”
“I am driven to it,” cried the girl passionately.
“No: I try to lead,” said the curate, “as a father might lead. I shall be sorry when the time comes for you to quit our pleasant old home, but if a good man and true comes and says, ‘I love your sister; give her me to wife’ – ”
“If you cannot speak plain English, pray hold your tongue,” cried Leo scornfully.
“I should hold out my hands to him, and greet him as a new brother, Leo,” said the curate solemnly; “but when I find that my young, innocent sister is being made the toy of a worthless, degraded – ”
“How dare you?” cried Leo, flashing out in her rage, while Mary went to her side, and laid her hand upon the trembling arm half raised.
“I dare,” said the curate gravely, “because I have right upon my side. I think – and Mary joins me in so thinking – ”
“Of course!” said Leo scornfully. “That Thomas Candlish is no fit companion for my sister. I have told you so, and to cease all further communication. I have told him so; forbidden him the house; and he has accepted my judgment.”
“Mr Candlish is a gentleman,” cried Leo fiercely.
“People call him so, and his brother by the same name, because of the old family property; but if they are gentlemen, thank Heaven I am a poor curate!”
“Your conduct – ”
“Hush!” said the curate firmly. “We will say no more about this, Leo, my dear. You are angry without cause. I have acceded to your request for a fresh horse, so as to indulge you in your love of hunting, and at more cost than you imagine. I shall always be glad to do anything that I can to make my sisters happy; but I must be judge and master here, though I fear I am often very weak.”
“It is insufferable,” cried Leo indignantly; and she raised quite a little whirlwind as she swept out of the room.
The curate sighed, and sank back in his chair with his brow knit, till he felt a soft arm encircle his neck and a rounded cheek rest against his temple.
“Ah!” he exclaimed; “that’s better;” and he passed his arm round the graceful form. “This is very sad, Mary. But, there; we will not brood over it; difficulties often settle themselves.”
“Yes, Hartley.”
“But that Candlish business must not go on.”
“No, Hartley. It is impossible.”
She kissed his forehead, and the breakfast was finished in silence – supposed to be finished. It had really ended when Leo Salis quitted the room.
It was about an hour later that as the Reverend Hartley Salis was hard at work over his sermon, striving his best to keep out college lore, and to write in language that the Duke’s Hampton villagers could easily understand, that he came to the sentence following —
“Now a man’s duty, my friends – and a woman’s” – he added parenthetically.
“Now, what shall I tell them a man’s duty is – and a woman’s?”
That required thought, and he laid down his pen, rose, and walked to the study window, to look out on the pleasant landscape; beautiful still, though not in the most goodly time of year.
“Obedience!” he cried angrily, for just passing out of the little rustic gate at the bottom of the Rectory grounds he saw his sister Leo.
She was in hat and cloak. Her movements were rapid, and the furtive look she darted back told tales.
“No,” said the curate; “it would be spying. I cannot.”
“It is your duty,” something seemed to whisper to him.
“Perhaps I am contemptibly mean and suspicious,” he muttered. “I hope I am. If it is so, I’ll – No, no, no, Hartley, my son! Recollect what you are. Such as the bishop should be, such must you be – no brawler – no striker. No: it must be a favourable opportunity for a quiet chat with Leo, for we cannot go on like this, poor child.”
He went into the hall, took down his hat, reached a stout cudgel-like stick which his hand gripped firmly, as his nerves tingled, while his left hand clenched, and felt as if it were grasping some one by the collar.
“A scoundrel!” he muttered.
“Going out, dear?”
“Ah, Mary! You there! You go about like a mouse. Yes, I’ve just got to ‘a man’s duty is’ in my sermon, and can’t get any farther, so I’ll go as far as Red Cliff Wood and back for a refresher.”
He nodded and went out.
“Poor Mary!” he muttered; “she must not know; but if I had stayed a minute longer she would have found me out. Now, Master Tom Candlish, if you are there, I’ll – ”
He gave himself a sharp slap on the mouth.
“Steady! Man, man, man! how you do forget your cloth! But if Tom Candlish – Pish! Steady, man! Let’s go and see.”
Mary Salis stood in the deep old mullioned window, gazing after him.
“Hartley never leaves and speaks like that unless there is something wrong,” she said to herself. “If that wretched man has persuaded Leo – she has just gone out – without a word. Oh, no, no! she would not do such a thing as that. How I do picture troubles where there are none!”
She stood watching until her brother disappeared, and then went back into the dining-room, telling herself that it was folly, but her heart refused to be convinced, and set up a low, heavy, ominous throb.
Chapter Two.
Dr North Gets in Hot Water
“Yah!”
A virtuous mob’s war-cry. The favourite ejaculation of the unwashed scoundrels who are always ready to redress grievances and hunt down their fellow-creatures for the crimes they glory in themselves – when they can commit them safely.
There is always a large floating contingent ready for this duty, and also – to use their own expression – “to have a go at any think;” and upon several occasions they had had “a go” at the lecture-room of St. Sector’s Hospital, Florsbury, the consequence of such “goes” being that the neighbouring glaziers had a large job; but the authorities preferred to content themselves with keeping out the wind and water, and left the exterior unpainted, showing the stone dents, chipped paint, and batterings of the insensate crew of virtuous beings who revel in destruction whenever they have a chance.
The “Yahoos” had their own theory about St. Sector’s, and allowed themselves to smoulder for a time, but every now and then they burst forth into eruption, and then the consequences were not pleasant to behold.
Lecture night at St. Sector’s, and a goodly gathering present to witness an operation performed by one of the greatest surgical savants of the day. There were medical students present, but some of the cleverest surgeons of London and the country had made a point of being there to see the operation and learn how to combat a terrible disease which, up to that date, had been considered certain death to the unfortunate being who contracted that ill.
The old savant had thought, had experimented, and had given years of his life to studying that evil, and now, having proclaimed the result of his discoveries, and coming as the announcement did from a man of such weight in the profession, a strong band of the lights of surgical science had gathered together to witness the experiment; and also hear a paper read by a young surgeon from the country – Dr Horace North.
Precedence was given to the paper, and a keen, intelligent, handsome young man of thirty stepped up to the lecturer’s table with a roll of papers in his hand. He looked rather pale, and there was a slight twitching at the corners of his lips as he bowed to his audience, after a few words of introduction from the grey-haired chairman of the evening. Then the buzz of conversation, which had ceased for a few moments, began again.
He felt that he had a task before him, that of stopping a gap in front of which an eager crowd were ready to clamour for the treat they had come to hear. Dr Horace North was nothing to them, and the young students voted his paper a bore.
He began to read in a calm, clear voice, expounding his views, and the buzz of voices increased as first one and then another page was read and turned over, scarcely a word being heard.
He stopped and poured out a glass of water, and the carafe was heard to clatter against the glass as the lecturer’s hand trembled.
This was the signal for a titter, which was repeated by some thoughtless student, as the reading was resumed without the water being tasted.
Then five minutes of painful reading ensued, with the buzz of voices increasing.
There was a sudden stoppage, and all were attentive.
For, with an angry gesture, the young doctor rolled up his papers, threw them aside, and took a step forward.
“Gentlemen,” he cried, in a voice which rang through the theatre, “I am addressing you who in the conceit of youth believe that there is little more to learn, and who have treated my reading with such contempt.”
“Hear, hear!” cried the old chairman.
Those two encouraging words touched the speaker, and, with a dramatic earnestness of manner, he exclaimed:
“I have not much to say, but it is the result of years of study, and that you shall hear.”
Then, for the space of half-an-hour, in fluent, forcible language, he poured forth the result of his observations and belief that they, the followers of the noble science of surgery, had a great discovery before them waiting to be made, one which it was the duty of all to endeavour to drag forth from the dark depths in which Nature hid away her treasures.
He declared that death should only follow upon old age, when the fruit was quite ripe, and ready to fall from the tree of life. He left it to the followers of medicine to attack and conquer disease, so that plague and pestilence should no longer carry off their hecatombs of victims, and addressed the surgeon alone, telling him that in case of accident or after operation, no man of health or vigour should be allowed to die.
There was a half laugh here, and a sneer or two.
“I repeat it,” cried the speaker. “No such man should be allowed to die.” Previous to his accident he was in robust health, and his apparent death was only, as it were, a trance, into which he fell while Nature busily commenced her work of restoration, the building-up again of the injured tissues. How the sustaining of the patient while Nature worked her cure was to be carried out, it was the duty of them all to discover, and for one he vowed that he would not rest till the discovery was made.
In the case of drowning it was often but suspended animation. In the case of accident and apparent death, it would be the same. Death by shock, he maintained, was a blot upon the science of the present day. Those who died by shock merely slept. Such body was in full health and vigour, and Nature would repair all damages by the aid of man; and he was convinced that the time would come when surgeons would save a hundred lives where they now saved one.
The speaker sat down amidst a whirlwind of applause, for his manner, his thorough belief, and his earnestness carried away his audience; and the result would have been a most exciting discussion but for the intervention of the chairman, who pointed to the clock, and at once introduced the great surgeon, while a murmur ran through the theatre as a large table was wheeled into the centre of the building from behind a curtain, and those present knew what the draping of the table concealed.
A burst of applause greeted the grave, grey-headed surgeon; and as it ceased, he expressed, in a few well-selected words, the pleasure he had felt in listening to Dr Horace North, to whose theory he expressed himself ready to pin his faith.
“And I say this, gentlemen, for the reason that I am here to-night – to point out to you how great a stride can be made in surgery – how much we have yet to learn.”
Then, explaining in a calm, clear voice as he went on, he turned back his sleeves, and selected a long, keen blade from a velvet-lined case, signed to his assistants, and the subject upon which he was to operate lay there grim, cold, and ghastly.
No: not ghastly to the earnest men who saw in it the martyr immolated to the saving of thousands, as, with deft fingers and unerring skill, the great surgeon made his incisions; and exemplifying step by step each act and its reasons, he performed his wonderful experiment to the last stroke; and then, having finished, was about to draw back when there was a volley of stones upon door and window, and, amid the creaking of woodwork and the tinkling of falling glass, came the yelling of the virtuous mob – “Yah!”
And directly afterwards – “Body-snatchers! Yah!” For a moment there was a stillness, as if the audience in the lecture theatre had been paralysed; then there was a general stampede towards the door, and a burst of rage, excitement, and dread, as a voice loudly announced that the mob had scaled the wall and were in the yard – a tremendous volley of stones and brickbats endorsing the announcement.