Two Years Ago, Volume I

But most fretting of all was the discovery that Lucia knew—if not all about his original name—still enough to keep him in dread lest she should learn more.

It was now twelve months and more that this new terror had leapt up and stared in his face. He had left a letter about—a thing which he was apt to do—in which the Whitbury lawyer made some allusions to his little property; and he was sure that Lucia had seen it; the hated name of Briggs certainly she had not seen; for Elsley had torn it out the moment he opened the letter: but she had seen enough, as he soon found, to be certain that he had, at some time or other, passed under a different name.

If Lucia had been a more thoughtful or high-minded woman, she would have gone straight to her husband, and quietly and lovingly asked him to tell her all: but, in her left-handed Irish fashion, she kept the secret to herself, and thought it a very good joke to have him in her power, and to be able to torment him about that letter when he got out of temper. It never occurred, however, to her that his present name was the feigned one. She fancied that he had, in some youthful escapade, assumed the name to which the lawyer alluded. So the next time he was cross, she tried laughingly the effect of her newly-discovered spell; and was horror-struck at the storm which she evoked. In a voice of thunder, Elsley commanded her never to mention the subject again; and showed such signs of terror and remorse, that she obeyed him from that day forth, except when now and then she lost her temper as completely, too, as he. Little she thought, in her heedlessness, what a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, ever deepening and spreading, she had put between his heart and hers.

But if Elsley had dreaded her knowledge of his story, he dreaded ten times more Tom's knowledge of it. What if Thurnall should tell Lucia? What if Lucia should make a confidant of Thurnall? Women told their doctors everything; and Lucia, he knew too well, had cause to complain of him. Perhaps, thought he, maddened into wild suspicion by the sense of his own wrong-doing, she might complain of him; she might combine with Thurnall against him—for what purpose he knew not: but the wildest imaginations flashed across him, as he hurried desperately home, intending as soon as he got there to forbid Lucia's ever calling in his dreaded enemy. No, Thurnall should never cross his door again! On that one point he was determined, but on nothing else.

However, his intention was never fulfilled. For long before he reached home he began to feel himself thoroughly ill. His was a temperament upon which mental anxiety acts rapidly and severely; and the burning sun, and his rapid walk, combined with rage and terror to give him such a "turn" that, as he hurried down the lane, he found himself reeling like a drunken man. He had just time to hurry through the garden, and into his study, when pulse and sense failed him, and he rolled over on the sofa in a dead faint.

Lucia had seen him come in, and heard him fall, and rushed in. The poor little thing was at her wits' end, and thought that he had had nothing less than a coup-de-soleil. And when he recovered from his faintness, he began to be so horribly ill, that Clara, who had been called in to help, had some grounds for the degrading hypothesis (for which Lucia all but boxed her ears) that "Master had got away into the woods, and gone eating toadstools, or some such poisonous stuff;" for he lay a full half-hour on the sofa, death-cold, and almost pulseless; moaning, shuddering, hiding his face in his hands, and refusing cordials, medicines, and, above all, a doctor's visit.

However, this could not be allowed to last. Without Elsley's knowledge, a messenger was despatched for Thurnall, and luckily met him in the lane; for he was returning to the town in the footsteps of his victim.

Elsley's horror was complete, when the door opened, and Lucia brought in none other than his tormentor.

"My dearest Elsley, I have sent for Mr. Thurnall. I knew you would not let me, if I told you; but you see I have done it, and now you must really speak to him."

Elsley's first impulse was to motion them both away angrily; but the thought that he was in Thurnall's power stopped him. He must not show his disgust. What if Lucia were to ask its cause, even to guess it? for to his fears even that seemed possible. A fresh misery! Just because he shrank so intensely from the man, he must endure him!

"There is nothing the matter with me," said he languidly.

"I should be the best judge of that, after what Mrs. Vavasour has just told me," said Tom, in his most professional and civil voice; and slipped, catlike, into a seat beside the unresisting poet.

He asked question on question: but Elsley gave such unsatisfactory answers, that Lucia had to detail everything afresh for him, with—"You know, Mr. Thurnall, he is always overtasking his brain, and will never confess himself ill,"—and all a woman's anxious comments.

Rogue Tom knew all the while well enough what was the cause: but he saw, too, that Elsley was very ill. He felt that he must have the matter out at once; and, by a side glance, sent the obedient Lucia out of the room to get a table-spoonful of brandy.

"Now, my dear sir, that we are alone," began he blandly.

"Now, sir!" answered Vavasour, springing off the sofa, his whole pent-up wrath exploding in hissing steam, the moment the safety-valve was lifted. "Now, sir! What—what is the meaning of this insolence, this intrusion?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour," answered Tom, rising, in a tone of bland and stolid surprise.

"What do you want here, with your mummery and medicine, when you know the cause of my malady well enough already? Go, sir! and leave me to myself."

"My dear sir," said Tom firmly, "you seem to have forgotten what passed between us this morning."

"Will you insult me beyond endurance?" cried Elsley.

"I told you that, as long as you chose, you were Elsley Vavasour, and I the country doctor. We have met in that character. Why not sustain it? You are really ill; and if I know the cause, I am all the more likely to know the cure."

"Cure?"

"Why not? Believe me, it is in your power to become a much happier man, simply by becoming a healthier one."

"Impertinence!"

"Pish! What can I gain by being impertinent, sir? I know very well that you have received a severe shock; but I know equally well, that if you were as you ought to be, you would not feel it in this way. When one sees a man in the state of prostration in which you are, common sense tells one that the body must have been neglected, for the mind to gain such power over it."

Elsley replied with a grunt; but Tom went on, bland and imperturbable.

"Believe me, it may be a very materialist view of things: but fact is fact—the corpus sanum is father to the mens sana—tonics and exercise make the ills of life look marvellously smaller. You have the frame of a strong and active man; and all you want to make you light-hearted and cheerful, is to develop what nature has given you."

"It is too late," said Elsley, pleased, as most men are, by being told that they might be strong and active.

"Not in the least. Three months would strengthen your muscles, open your chest again, settle your digestion, and make you as fresh as a lark, and able to sing like one. Believe me, the poetry would be the better for it, as well as the stomach. Now, positively, I shall begin questioning you."

So Elsley was won to detail the symptoms of internal malaise, which he was only too much in the habit of watching himself; but there were some among them which Tom could not quite account for on the ground of mere effeminate habits. A thought struck him.

"You sleep ill, I suppose?" said he carelessly.

"Very ill."

"Did you ever try opiates?"

"No—yes—that is, sometimes."

"Ah!" said Tom, more carelessly still, for he wished to hide, by all means, the importance of the confession. "Well, they give relief for a time: but they are dangerous things—disorder the digestion, and have their revenge on the nerves next morning, as spitefully as brandy itself. Much better try a glass of strong ale or porter just before going to bed. I've known it give sleep, even in consumption—try it, and exercise. You shoot?"

"No."

"Pity; there ought to be noble cocking in these woods. However, the season's past. You fish?"

"No."

"Pity again. I hear Alva is full of trout. Why not try sailing? Nothing oxygenates the lungs like a sail, and your friends the fishermen would be delighted to have you as super-cargo. They are always full of your stories to them, and your picking their brains for old legends and adventures."

"They are noble fellows, and I want no better company; but, unfortunately, I am always sea-sick."

"Ah! wholesome, but unpleasant: you are fond of gardening?"

"Very; but stooping makes my head swim."

"True, and I don't want you to stoop. I hope to see you soon as erect as a Guardsman. Why not try walks?"

"Abominable bores—lonely, aimless—"

"Well, perhaps you're right. I never knew but three men who took long constitutionals on principle, and two of them were cracked. But why not try a companion; and persuade that curate, who needs just the same medicine as you, to accompany you? I don't know a more gentleman-like, agreeable, well-informed man than he is."

"Thank you. I can choose my acquaintances for myself."

"You touchy ass!" said Thurnall to himself. "If we were in the blessed state of nature now, wouldn't I give you ten minutes' double thonging, and then set you to work, as the runaway nigger did his master, Bird o' freedom Sawin, till you'd learnt a thing or two." But blandly still he went on.

"Try the dumb-bells then. Nothing like them for opening your chest. And do get a high desk made, and stand to your writing instead of sitting." And Tom actually made Vavasour promise to do both, and bade him farewell with—

"Now, I'll send you up a little tonic; and trouble you with no more visits till you send for me. I shall see by one glance at your face whether you are following my prescriptions. And, I say, I wouldn't meddle with those opiates any more; try good malt and hops instead."

"Those who drink beer, think beer," said Elsley, smiling; for he was getting more hopeful of himself, and his terrors were vanishing beneath Tom's skilful management.

"And those who drink water, think water. The Elizabethans—Sidney and Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,—and you would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth: Believe me, to write well, you must live well. If you take it out of your brain, you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try it for yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband, covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill as he really was, and so nursed and petted him, that he felt himself, for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her for a moment. Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels you might make us all!

"So," said Tom, as he went home, "he has found his way to the elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale? It's no concern of mine: but as a professional man, I must stop that. You will certainly be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands."

Tom went straight home, showed the blacksmith how to make a pair of dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the next morning with directions to be used for half an hour morning and evening.

And something—whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or wholesome fear of the terrible doctor—kept Elsley for the next month in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.

Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley. She succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that he had something to learn from the other. Elsley improved daily in health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful doctor who had been cast on shore in their world's end; and received from her after a while this, amid much more—for fancy is not exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady's letter.

"—I am so ashamed. I ought to have told you of that doctor a fortnight ago; but, rattle-pate as I am, I forgot all about it. Do you know, he is Sabina Mellot's dearest friend; and she begged me to recommend him to you; but I put it off, and then it slipped my memory, like everything else good. She has told me the most wonderful stories of his courage and goodness; and conceive—she and her husband were taken prisoners with him by the savages in the South Seas, and going to be eaten, she says: but he helped them to escape in a canoe—such a story—and lived with them for three months on the most beautiful desert island—it is all like a fairy tale. I'll tell it you when I come, darling—which I shall do in a fortnight, and we shall be all so happy. I have such a box ready for you and the chicks, which I shall bring with me; and some pretty things from Scoutbush beside, who is very low, poor fellow, I cannot conceive what about: but wonderfully tender about you. I fancy he must be in love; for he stood up the other day about you to my aunt, quite solemnly, with, 'Let her alone, my lady. She's not the first whom love has made a fool of, and she won't be the last: and I believe that some of the moves which look most foolish, turn out best after all. Live and let live; everybody knows his own business best; anything is better than marriage without real affection.' Conceive my astonishment at hearing the dear little fellow turn sage in that way!

"By the way, I have had to quote his own advice against him; for I have refused Lord Chalkclere after all. I told him (C. not S.) that he was much too good for me: far too perfect and complete a person; that I preferred a husband whom I could break in for myself, even though he gave me a little trouble. Scoutbush was cross at first; but he said afterwards that it was just like Baby Blake (the wretch always calls me Baby Blake now, after that dreadful girl in Lever's Novel); and I told him frankly that it was, if he meant that I had sooner break in a thorough-bred for myself, even though I had a fall or two in the process, than jog along on the most finished little pony on earth, who would never go out of an amble. Lord Chalk may be very finished, and learned, and excellent, and so forth: but, ma chère, I want, not a white rabbit (of which he always reminds me), but a hero, even though he be a naughty one. I always fancy people must be very little if they can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them, they would take somewhat longer to grow. Lord Chalk would do very well to bind in Russian leather, and put on one's library shelves, to be consulted when one forgot a date; but really even your Ulysses of a doctor—provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and don't leave out his h's—would be more to the taste of your naughtiest of sisters."