OUR NEW DOCTOR.
There was great excitement at Mudford when it was ascertained beyond a doubt that we were really going to have a New Doctor. Poor old Mole, who was bidding fair to shortly attain the proud position of “Oldest Inhabitant,” had at length found it useless to struggle longer with his infirmities, and had advertised his practice for sale to the best bidder. I don’t think he would ever have given in; but his old pony, which had carried him well and faithfully for more than twenty years, was gone at last, and he felt that he could never mount another. His hands were so crippled that he could not drive; and, besides, he had no horse and gig—nor would his practice pay for keeping one; and as for walking, the state of his poor old feet and legs rendered that quite out of the question. So he did the best thing he could do—sold his practice; and, in spite of the teetotallers, I verily believe that, if he had stopped at Mudford and spent the whole of his time, as he had previously spent nine-tenths of it, with his gin-and-water and pipe, in his own special corner at the White Hart, he would be there, as well as ever, at the present moment, and would be able to enjoy many a good growl, and tell many a prosy tale, for years to come yet. But, alas! he did not stop here. He left the old place altogether, and retired to his native village, to be killed with care and fidgets by three old maiden sisters. Poor old Mole! He had come into Mudford I don’t know how many years ago—for it was before even my time—a smart, buckish, good-looking young fellow, in top-boots and spotless white neckcloth; telling a good story, singing a good song, fond of the ladies, fond of his glass, fond of sport, and up to any hounds. But, dear me! it was all changed, except the neckcloth and the glass, which endured to the end; and he left the place a poor, testy, prosy, gouty old bachelor, with no one to care for or regard him, except the few who remembered what he had been, or who took the trouble to look for the genuine good qualities which lay beneath the prickly outer rind. But enough of Mole: for what have we to do with old friends in this world? When they go away or die, there’s an end of ’em. And our business is, to turn our attention to the new-comers, and try what we can get out of them in the way of money, custom, amusement, or whatever else they may be able to give us to our advantage. So farewell to poor old Mole, my dear old brother fogy; and attention for his successor!
As intimated, I am an old fogy. I have no business to attend to, no wife nor family to bother me, and but few means of passing away my time. In the mornings I wade through the papers at the Reading-room, and afterwards discuss their contents with others of my own stamp. I confess that the tradesmen and business people who run in for half an hour to glance at the news, get pretty considerably annoyed at being interrupted while reading, by our loud, and—as far as Rooks is concerned, the most wrong-headed fellow I ever knew—often stupid and illogical arguments: and they not unfrequently dare to tell us, without scruple, that the room is for reading in, and not for talking in. But I, for my part, take no notice of them; for is not my subscription as good as theirs? And is not the passing of my time of far more consequence to me than the getting through theirs is to them, who have a hundred other things to do, and who ought to be attending to their business instead of reading the papers in the mornings? Right or wrong, I do it; and I intend to keep doing it: and if Broad and Brown don’t like it, they may leave it—and a good thing for them, too; for I happen to know that Brown’s business is falling off considerably; and the new shop at the corner is certain to injure Broad: it is time for them to put their shoulders to the wheel, I can tell them! Well, so I get on until dinner, and then a glass of port and a snooze pass the time until tea. After that, there is my pipe and glass of grog at the White Hart, in the chair opposite to old Mole’s—now, alas! no longer sacred to his use, but occupied by any chance customer who may happen to drop in. Disagreeable to me the company is sometimes—noisy, uncongenial, disrespectful. Things in this world change for the worse every day. Heigho!
These are my principal employments, with an occasional whist-party of an evening. Bright oases in the desert of my life are these evenings when they do come; but, to my sorrow, they are few and far between. People sit so late and drink so much grog at these parties, that wives don’t like ’em. And, besides, there are really not above four people in the place who can play a rubber. As for taking a hand, with such a person as Jones or Johnson for a partner, I vow I would rather never touch a card again! And the worst of it is, the wretches actually think they know the game! I had Jones for a partner once, and lost 17s. 6d. by his confounded stupidity. Catch me placing myself twice in such a position! If I were absolute monarch of this country, I would make a law that any man who takes the money out of another’s pocket by such gross ignorance and stupidity, should be considered guilty of felony—just as the poor, overworked engine-driver, who once in his life makes a blunder by which somebody is killed, is found guilty of manslaughter!
Mudford is not a large nor a gay place; on the contrary, it is a particularly small and dull one: so that, with such a limited round of amusements as is available to me, it is no wonder, and not at all a thing to be ashamed of, that I should have been considerably interested in the question, what the New Doctor would be like. Of course, it was a matter of some importance to me whether he would talk like a reasonable man at the Reading-room in the mornings; and whether he would have thenousto listen to and appreciate my stories, when I am in the humour for telling them in the evenings. The people here, in this little out-of-the-way place, are so confoundedly narrow in their views and ideas, that they take no interest in anything outside their own little, paltry, peddling sphere of action; and I have really not had a listener for a very long time, except a chance commercial traveller now and then—not even poor old Mole, who was always for spinning his own prosy old yarns, that I was sick and tired of years and years ago. He could never see, poor old fellow, how people laughed at him about them! Then I was anxious as to whether the New Doctor would understand the treatment of my complaint, which I have suffered from for so many years, and which nobody knew anything about except old Mole: for, as for putting myself into the hands of that ignorant fellow Green, who can neither spell correctly nor write grammatically, or of that methodistical quack Higgins, I might as well go and order my coffin at once. Then, of course, it was a matter of importance to me whether he would be able to take a hand at whist like a Christian; and, above all, whether he would give a nice little snug card-party himself now and then; for, as I have already said, parties of that sort had become very scarce, owing to the late hours and the expense. I do not much wonder at it; for Stevens, and Jones, and Johnson, and Briggs, and one or two more I could mention, will never go home till morning, if they are winning; and when they are losing, they are never satisfied without their revenge: and the amount they do guzzle of an evening, at the expense of other people, is certainly most extraordinary. I gave a whist-party myself once; but I shan’t do it again in a hurry, for I know what it is. They drank enough to last me for a twelvemonth: and I was so annoyed about one thing and the other, that I could not play; or, I should rather say, I never held a hand for the evening; and I positively heard the scoundrels laughing at me as they left my door, and went down the street! No, I shan’t give another party in a hurry: men of my means, who have barely enough for their own little comforts and indulgences, can’t be expected to do it.
Altogether, then, it is evident that I had good reasons for feeling interested as to what sort of person the New Doctor would be; but I was not the only one to whom it was a subject of speculation. Curiosity is the mark of vulgar people, and vulgar enough they are in Mudford, in all conscience. And there were some, too, besides myself, who really had reasons for feeling interested in the subject. There was Simpkins, the indefatigable Secretary of the Rifle Corps, who was all alive at the idea of getting an effective member and annual subscriber; and Timmins, the equally indefatigable Secretary of the Literary Institution, who was sanguine that the New Doctor would give a lecture during the ensuing season, and who was actually holding back the syllabus from the press until he had seen him on the subject. Then there was Rooks, the only chess-player in the place, who, not having anybody to play with him, is always bragging of the game, and his skill thereat, and depreciating whist in an equal degree. He always seizes the ‘Illustrated London News’ directly it comes into the Reading-room, turns to the chess problems first of all, and stays half an hour poring over them, before he will look at the pictures himself or allow anybody else to do so. He pretended to be very anxious that the new-comer should be a chess-player; but I verily believe that his anxiety was all the other way, and that he most devoutly hoped to the contrary: for I don’t believe Rooks can play the game any more than I can. At all events, nobody ever heard of his playing; and when old Harding, the Collector of Excise, spent an evening here—a good player he is, as everybody knows—and, at my instigation, sent a very polite note to Rooks, inviting him to play a game at the White Hart, he never came near the place; and Boots brought back word that Mr Rooks was exceedingly sorry, but he was gone to bed very bad with a headache. I don’t believe he ever had a headache in his life!
Then there was Rowe, who had been fool enough to buy a boat that was the worry and torment of his life, and that cost him just as much as a horse or a wife. It was always getting into scrapes and difficulties somehow: the oars would get lost; and the rudder would get broken; and the painter—whatever that may be—would get cut; and the boat would get capsized; and the boys were always taking her away, and making her in a mess, and never bringing her back again. Poor Rowe was always in trouble with her some way or other, and positively got no peace of his life for her. The fact is that Mudford is no place for a boat, and no one but a donkey would have brought one here; for I verily believe that we have only got the tide for one hour out of the twenty-four, and that only once a fortnight or so; and then it is always running up when you want to go down the river, and down when you want to go up; and it is always leaving you stuck upon banks and shoals, so that you have to wade out through the mud, which takes you up to your middle. At least, I judge so from what I see and hear; for catch me going out boating in this place, if you can! Well, Rowe thought that perhaps the New Doctor would go halves in his precious hobby, and would join him in rubbing all the skin off his hands in pulling that tub of his up and down against the tide. Then there was Driver, who is for ever boring one about subscriptions for the Cricket Club, which, as far as I can see, has no existence, except at the annual supper, at the close of what they are pleased to call their season; when members who have never handled a bat since they were schoolboys—if they did then—come and handle a knife and fork to perfection, and drink punch, and make speeches about the “fine manly English game,” until you would think that the glory and prosperity of the country depended entirely upon the prowess of the members of the Mudford Club; who talk most inexorably of the fines that shall be enforced, and most undauntedly of the matches that shall be played, in the next season; but who, of course, only talk more and do less with each succeeding year. Driver, then, was full of hopes that the new-comer would be a cricketer; that he would help him to worry all the people in the place for subscriptions, and would play single-wicket matches with him on the cricket evenings, when nobody else came near the ground.
And Grindley, again, was just as bad; indeed, I don’t know whether he wasn’t worse than any of them. He has got his house full of musical instruments of every sort and description, and can’t play as much as ‘God Save the Queen’ on any one of them. He is always talking of “staccatoes,” and “fugues,” and “musical intervals,” and “thorough bass,” and I don’t know what all, though his voice is like a cracked penny-trumpet, and he has no more idea of joining in a chorus than a jackass. He went about the town boring everybody by squeaking out with his voice that was enough to set your teeth on edge, “I say, won’t it be nice if the New Doctor should be musical?”
I suppose though, that after all nobody was so much interested about the new-comer as the young unmarried ladies,—except the middle-aged unmarried ladies, who were more interested still. I don’t blame them, poor creatures! for really it is very little chance they have of getting husbands at Mudford, except when strangers or visitors come to the place. There are some half-dozen families or so certainly, whose pureichoris so superior to the vulgar blood that runs, or stagnates, in the veins of the common inhabitants of Mudford, who do occasionally intermarry, once in ten or fifteen years or so, like the royal families of Europe, when a prince and princess of their illustrious houses happen to be of a marriageable age at the same time. The coincidence is of rare occurrence, but it does happen occasionally. And the boys and girls of the utterly plebeian class, of course, here as elsewhere, walk out together in the evenings, and on Sunday afternoons; and the young farmer lads in the neighbourhood, and the young masons, and all those, go courting to the servant-maids in the evenings, at the back-doors and in the back-kitchens; and they get married before they know what they are about. But with the middle classes it is different; and I don’t see that the poor girls have got a chance, except when some friend or relative at a distance will have them on a visit, or when a stranger happens to come into the town;—rare chances these. As for the young men of the place, who have been flirting with ’em, and kissing ’em, and seeing ’em flirted with and kissed by brother Jack and cousin Tom, and all the rest, ever since they were children, why, they would as soon think of seeing anything a fellow could fall in love with in their own sisters. (I speak, as every one will understand, of those who have no money; the few that have, of course, nobody can help loving, and they go off fast enough.) And so it happens that any fresh young man, coming into the town, is to these poor creatures quite a god-send: and though we know nothing else of the New Doctor, it had been ascertained, beyond a doubt, through old Mole, that he was young and unmarried.
Of course the young ladies did not make an old fellow like me a confidant of their hopes; but as I hobbled up or down the street, I could perceive that wherever two or three bonnets, or turban-hats, as I believe the vile things are called, were met together, there was a more than usually vivacious giggle, which showed me plainly enough what was the subject of conversation. On the days, too, when the Doctor began to be expected, about the time that the omnibus arrives in the afternoons, there were always several very neat boots and white stockings to be seen in the street; and those girls of Johnson’s—who never seem to have anything to do in their own house, though I know they keep but one servant, or rather slavey, and their mother is always up to her elbows in kitchen-work, so that she can find no time to read, or do anything else but talk, and is the most uninformed woman of my acquaintance—those girls took care to have some business with Mrs Cook, of the White Hart, about the forthcoming Rifle Corps Bazaar, and so have an excuse for being in her little private sitting-room, that looks out upon the street, at the time when the omnibus arrives. Poor old Mole! he could neither march nor lecture, row, nor play at chess or cricket: he had no more idea of music than a cow; his day for courting or getting married had long passed by; and he was fit for nothing but to make up gout pills, smoke his pipe, drink his gin-and-water, and tell his prosy old stories in his corner at the White Hart; and so all these people thought of course that they would be sure to have a change for the better in the New Doctor.
At length came the day which was definitely fixed for the Doctor’s coming. It had been put off several times for some reasons of his own, but now he was to come without fail. We knew it from Mole, who had received a letter from the New Doctor, whose name, I may as well mention here, was Smith,—if that can be called a name at all—saying that he should positively arrive on that day, and expressing a hope that Mole would wait, and introduce him to his patients. But Mole would not wait any longer, for he had given up his house, and was living at expenses at the hotel; so he went away to his sisters, the three old maids, and left Mr Smith to introduce himself in the best way he could.
It so happened that, on the day when the New Doctor was to arrive, I could not compose myself exactly to my usual after-dinner nap, all owing to that fool of a servant, who will never learn to send up a dinner properly; and so I took my stick, and clopped away down to the White Hart, to try whether a glass of gin-and-water would do me good; and it so happened, oddly enough, that I got down there just exactly at the time the omnibus usually arrives. For you must know that the old respectable coach, which lingered with us after it had disappeared from the rest of the world, is gone at length, and its place is usurped by one of those vile innovations, an omnibus—or ’bus, as it is called in the wretched jargon of the present day. I hate those sneaking low-lifed things more than I do the very railways themselves, which they are employed to attend on. And so, instead of the handsome stylish coach, that a gentleman might ride on without shame, with its dashing four-in-hand, we have got this dirty, shabby, yellow thing, with its unicorn team of skin and bone, a driver that old Jack Simons, the coachman, would not have had for a stable-helper, and an urchin for guard, who would be a disgrace to a dung-cart!
As I made my way down the street, it was easy to see, by the unusual number of people out, that something strange was expected. Peters, of course, was at the hotel door; but then he always is there when the ’bus arrives, for he fancies that he is great upon the subject of horses; and every day, like a fool, throws away threepence or fourpence, which I know he can ill afford, in drink for the driver, who knows nearly as little about horse-flesh as he does himself, in order that he may talk to him about the leader’s mouth, and the off wheeler’s shoulder, and Hobb’s colt, and that young mare of Timmins’s. He was there as a matter of course, and so was Paul, who is just as regular an attendant, and waits about every day to see who comes and who goes, and what parcels there are, and whom they are for, and how much there is to pay on them. These two never miss; but that old woman, Gabriel Mullins, was there also, waiting to see the “New Doctor,” that he might gogabble-gabbleabout him all over the place. And Muggins, whom no man ever saw, except on Sundays, with his coat or without his apron, was standing outside his shop-door, with his hands in his pockets, and that perpetual smirk upon his countenance, looking out for the ’bus. While Cox, the bookseller and stationer, who must, I am sure, live upon the smell of his wares, for nobody in Mudford, as far as I can see, ever reads or writes, was peering out between those eternal prints in his window, making belief that he was too busy, or too much above vulgar curiosity, to come and look out openly and honestly like Muggins. It takes me some time to get down to the White Hart, so that I had leisure to look about me; and I saw the two Miss MacClinkers, the Surveyor’s daughters, walking down the street, and finding an excuse for loitering in each dowdy shop window, every article in which they must know by heart, for they are in the street often enough, and can use their eyes well enough, I’m sure: there they were, with their outrageous crinolines, showing their anatomical-looking legs in a way that could not fail to attract the attention of any stranger coming up the street on the omnibus, whether doctor or not. The Miss Johnsons, you may be sure, were in Mrs Cook’s front parlour discussing the work for the bazaar, as they had been every afternoon for a week past. And I hope—for the sake of Miss Trimlett, the dressmaker opposite, who, though she has been engaged for the last twenty years, and could not want another lover, was looking out from behind the geraniums in the ground-floor window—that those young girls at the window above, her assistants and apprentices, worked by the piece, and not by the day; for it was one stitch and two minutes’ giggle, and another stitch and another two minutes’ giggle with them as long as I looked. And even old Miss Whittaker, who has been confined to her bed for the last three years with laziness and swollen legs, had sent over that extra sharp little girl of hers, to see whether the New Doctor was come.
I went into the White Hart parlour, sat down at my accustomed side of the fire, and had the glass of gin-and-water for which I had come. Wretched spirit they do keep there now, to be sure! and the water is never half boiling! It did not use to be so in old Cook’s time. There is some extraordinary fatality about it; but as I never require the fire-shovel, and am in constant want of the poker, the former is always placed close to my hands, and the latter on the opposite side of the fireplace, so that I cannot reach it without rising from my chair,—a work of time and difficulty to me, and involving the necessity of turning down Mrs Cook’s cat, which always gets upon my knee with my full consent. It is invariably the case, and of course there was no exception to the rule now; so I had to rise as usual to get the poker, and at the very moment when I was on my legs, the ’bus drove up to the door! Of course, I could not help looking out of window to see it then; and to my great joy—for I am delighted when idle curiosity is baffled—there was not a single passenger there, except little Philips, the commercial traveller, and fat Mrs Biggs, of Great Pigton. I am the best-natured man in the world, as a general rule; but I confess I was glad of this, and chuckled to myself, as I ordered another glass of grog on the strength of it.
Next morning, however, as I went down the street as usual, to look at the papers, everybody was all alive with the news, that the New Doctor had arrived, and in a most strange and unaccountable manner. The omnibus had not brought him, as we know; there was no other public conveyance; and no private nor posting carriage had entered the town during the night; for old Mrs Thomas, who was awake all night with the toothache, was ready to swear that no carriage had passed through the street; and the pikeman, who keeps the turnpike gate at the entrance of the village (the inhabitants of the place are so proud of it, that they would lynch me if they knew that I called it a village, but it really is little more), actually did swear—and he was examined and cross-examined enough on the subject—that the gate had been locked from twelve at night until seven the next morning, and he was certain that no carriage had passed through. But that the Doctor had really come there was no doubt, for one or two persons had seen him in the morning; and among the rest Miss Cringle, who lives opposite, and who had stated, in a note written to Mrs Jones, while she was taking her breakfast, that she had positively seen Mr Smith that morning, looking out of his first-floor window.
I ought to have stated before that the New Doctor had taken the house which old Mole had occupied; and that he had also bought his furniture as well as his patients. Very little there was of either of them; and very little bought them. Both purchases were very old and rickety; but though Mr Smith might possibly be able to dine off the tables, it was not likely that he would ever get much to put upon them out of the patients; for they never had anything but the gout, which is said to keep away every other disease; and they had each of them taken in a stock of about a peck of his celebrated gout-pills from old Mole, before he left the place. But Mole himself has told me that the new doctor, in his correspondence, scarcely made any inquiry about the practice or the furniture, but was most particular about the situation of the house, making it asine qua nonthat it should be in a quiet, retired situation. Mole’s description of the house appeared to suit him, and it was retired enough and quiet enough in all conscience; indeed, it would have found it difficult to be anything else in Mudford. It is a square detached house, situated in the very outskirts of the place, and not to be overlooked, except from Miss Cringle’s window, which commands a magnificent view of the front door.
The men in Mudford are sociable enough among themselves; but the women are the very deuce! I suppose you would hardly find any two in the place agreeing that they stand on precisely the same social level. Green the surgeon and apothecary, and Ferris the ironmonger and tinman, are as friendly as possible when they meet; and indeed, Ferris is by far better educated and better informed than Green, who is one of the most ignorant men I know. To tell the truth, I am afraid that Ferris is rather too much above his business, and that Potts, that conceited little monkey, who was his apprentice, and has now set up in opposition to him, will make him find it out before long. Well, Green and Ferris are friendly enough, as I said; but catch Mrs Green speaking to Mrs Ferris in the same way! Oh, dear, no! And White and Black, the two lawyers, though they are always on opposite sides, and sometimes make the most tremendous onslaughts on each other at the County Courts and Magistrates’ Meetings, are in reality, I believe, good friends enough all the time, and play into each other’s hands, and help each other to fleece their clients, like honest fellows. But Mrs Black considers herself and family immeasurably superior to little Mrs White; because that near customer, Sir Henry Burton, has them once a year to dinner, when the neighbouring gentry are gone to town, where he never goes himself, and gives them cape and marsala with their dinner, and half a decanter of port after it; and makes use of their house whenever he comes into town, putting his horses into their little stable, and his coachman into their little kitchen, and has his cold chicken and sherry in their little parlour, because he won’t go to the expense of stopping at the hotel. Because he does all this for them, and does not know the Whites, Mrs Black considers herself—and, I verily believe, is really and spitefully considered, in their inmost hearts, by the other ladies, Mrs White included (though they never own it)—to be the leader of fashion and society in Mudford: so she is far above little Mrs White, and speaks to her when she meets her in the street with a sweet condescending smile, for which I wonder that Mrs White does not slap her face then and there. Black and White will both go to Jones’s whist parties, and drink his grog with the utmost heartiness; but catch Mrs Black or Mrs White visiting at that house, or permitting their daughters to do so, even if they felt inclined, which they don’t! And I remember when that spoony thread-paper boy, young White, took it into his head to be sweet upon the eldest Miss Jones—who, I happen to know, was engaged at the same time to her cousin in Devonshire, where she was on a visit some time since; a very much better match for her than young White would be—his parents and sisters were indignant and outrageous about it; and sent him away out of the town with all speed, as if he had been a royal prince about to marry a servant-girl. But they need not have troubled themselves;—Miss Jones, as I have said, had met with a much better match in her cousin.
It follows from all this, that, unless we hope to get something out of them, or think that we shall be honoured by their acquaintance, we in Mudford are not very prompt in showing attention to strangers. The men might call perhaps; but they have something else to do, and would rather, when possible, leave that kind of thing to the women; and, before long, they have met the new-comer so often in the Reading-room or at the White Hart, and have become so friendly with him, that a formal call, after all that, appears an absurdity: besides, they feel uncomfortable and out of their element sitting about in people’s drawing-rooms, holding their hats and twiddling their gloves in their hands; having no topic of conversation of common interest with thecallees; and feeling that the usual hour for their own dinner is come, and that they are keeping the people of the house in the fidgets, from the thought thattheirsis going cold in the little back sitting-room, whence they have been roused by that tremendous flourish of the knocker. The women don’t feel this sort of thing when they are the callers; but they take such a long time in considering whether the new people are eligible people or not (always provided, as before intimated, that it is not immediately evident that anything is to be got out of them in the way of profit or honour), that before they have made up their minds, the affair frequently gets out of date altogether, and the call is never made after all.
Now when I speak of becoming intimate soon with new-comers at the Reading-room or at the White Hart, I am speaking generally, and not of our New Doctor in particular; for, on the contrary, he was scarcely ever seen for the first week or two. And yet people didn’t call the more for this. Miss Cringle told me, indeed, that nobody had been to the house except Simpkins, the before-mentioned indefatigable Secretary of the Rifle Corps; and Timmins, the also-before-mentioned equally indefatigable Secretary of the Literary Institution; Rowe, Driver, and Grindley: no ladies, of course, for it was well known that Mr Smith was a bachelor, and so the ladies could not be expected to go. I believe these gentlemen were all somewhat disappointed; for though the New Doctor gave moderate subscriptions where they were asked for, and became an honorary member of the Rifle Corps, and a first-class member of the Institution, he wouldn’t promise to go to drill, nor to give a lecture, nor to go boating, nor cricketing, and told Grindley that he didn’t know a jig from the old hundredth psalm.
I did not call myself, for these things are out of my line, and nobody expects them from me; and, besides, those who did call did not seem to take much by their motion, for Mr Smith was generally “not at home,” and most of those gentlemen I have mentioned had to lie in wait for him, after all, in the street. Miss Cringle says, nevertheless, that she is sure the Doctor had not gone out when they called, and she is likely to know; for, poor creature! she was confined to the house with a dreadful cold, and sat all day long at the window, whence, as has been said, a very fine view of Mr Smith’s front door could be obtained. It must have been very tiresome for her, poor thing! to sit there so many hours; and I am sure it is an honour to human nature, and speaks volumes for the kindness of woman’s heart, that though there was really nothing entertaining nor agreeable in Miss Cringle, the young ladies of Mudford, knowing that she had nothing to amuse her except her knitting, should have devoted so much time to her during this period of her indisposition. Indeed, those kind creatures, the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers—who, I know, at other times were in the habit of calling her a “spiteful old cat,” a name, I own, not altogether undeserved,—now that pain and anguish wrung her brow, were such indefatigable ministering angels that they kept her company from morning till night, until, as Miss Cringle told me herself, she was absolutely obliged to say to them that she would rather have their room than their company; and to throw out a very broad hint that she was perfectly aware that they didn’t come to see her, but to look out for the New Doctor! a hint which, however undeserved, did not fail to keep them away from the house for the future.
As I have said, the New Doctor was not seen out much at first; and as Mole was not there to introduce him to his patients, and there were uncommonly few patients to introduce him to, if he had been; and as scarcely anybody called on him, and he was seldom at home to those who did call, and he rarely came out, it was some time before people in general had an opportunity of making his acquaintance; indeed, I think it must have been quite three weeks before I saw him myself, except from Miss Cringle’s window. But of course I heard plenty about him. The men who had seen him did not, as a general rule, appear to think very highly of him; they said he was close and reserved, and a rum sort of fellow, and that he wouldn’t do for Mudford, and all that sort of thing. The verdict of the ladies was at first more favourable. They said he was certainly not handsome exactly, but was verydistingué-looking and gentlemanlike indeed; the two Miss MacClinkers talked a great deal of his gentlemanly manners, because he had lifted his hat to them in passing, when they met him unexpectedly in the narrow passage that leads from the street down to Slocum’s Backs (how he could pass such expansive crinolines at all, in such a narrow way, is a mystery to me): and, to tell the truth, I am pained to confess that it is somewhat unusual to see a man lift his hat to a lady in Mudford; a bob of the head, like that of the nodding china figure of a mandarin, being the usual salutation.
The first time I saw Mr Smith to speak to was one evening in the bar of the White Hart. I happened to be there chatting with Mrs Cook, the landlady, when he stepped in to have a glass of ale. Mrs Cook, having the great natural and social advantages of being fat, jolly, a widow, and a landlady, was, of course, always on friendly terms with everybody, and Mr Smith chatted away with her as I had never heard of his doing with any one else. She could clearly make bold to introduce me, and did so accordingly, and the New Doctor and I then and there struck up an acquaintance. I used to be considered to have some little conversational powers, before I got stuck in the mud in this hole; and I flatter myself that I rather amused the New Doctor with some details of the place and the people, for he laughed, and had a second glass of ale, and asked me to take something; and the young lady in the bar sniggered and giggled, and Mrs Cook kept on lifting up her hands, and shaking her fat with laughing, and exclaiming, “Oh, fie, sir! now that is really too bad!” I may as well mention here that Mr Smith was a young man of dark complexion and gentlemanly manner, with a well-trimmed beard and mustache, who spoke like a man of education, and dressed like a gentleman—rather rare things in the village of Mudford. And,aproposto this, it was remarked that he always dressed in precisely the same way; there was never the slightest variety in his costume—always the same suit of black, the same black necktie, and the same scrupulously clean linen and glossy hat. Altogether, I was pleased with the New Doctor: there was certainly nothing brutal nor sensual in his appearance, and he did not look at all like a man who would——. But I must not anticipate.
I do not know how, or whence, or when the rumour first took its rise, but not long after Mr Smith’s arrival it began to be whispered about that there was something very queer, to say the least, about him. The mysterious manner of his arrival probably first gave rise to this rumour, and afterwards there were many things to increase the impression it had made. As I have said, Mr Smith at first rarely came out; and he never seemed to try or wish to get a patient. Indeed, when those two wild scamps, young Bones and young Skinner, going home late as usual, knocked him up about one o’clock in the morning, and said that he must go at once to Mr Cheeks of Little Pigton, some four miles off across the moors, who was very ill, he told them very blandly and courteously that he had no horse, and was just going to bed, and that they had better call Mr Green or Mr Higgins. I must say, I think that Green and Higgins need not have been so bitter against him, nor have called him “quack” so often as they did, especially as Green never passed the Hall in his life, and only got through the college by the skin of his teeth; and what Higgins’s qualifications are, except impudence, I believe nobody ever knew. As a matter of course, they are at daggers-drawn between themselves, as medical men in small towns always are, and say all sorts of disparaging things of each other,—for which nobody can blame them, as there is truth on both sides—but they certainly had no right to speak of Mr Smith as they did; at all events, at first, before those matters which I am about to relate were openly talked of.
One of the first things that people began to remark about the New Doctor was, that scarcely anybody was admitted to his house; and never, under any circumstances, unless he was there himself to receive them. Directly inside the front door of the house was a lobby, and on the right-hand side as you entered was a small room, and on the left hand side another; the former being fitted up as a surgery, and the latter as a sitting-room: into one of these rooms all visitors who entered the house at all were ushered; and the very first thing Mr Smith did after his arrival was to get a carpenter to put up a strong thick door in the middle of the lobby, directly beyond the entrance to these rooms, so as to cut them off entirely from the remainder of the building. The next step was just as strange: he had the masons, and built up the wall around the garden and courtlage at the back of the house at least two feet higher, in places where it was not already sufficiently lofty, so that no one, without climbing to the top of the wall, could possibly overlook the garden and back of the house. The gate which stood at the entrance to the back door, too, was always kept locked, and was furnished with a bell, so that anybody having business with the old servant or housekeeper that he had brought with him had to ring and be reconnoitred before being admitted. Strange precautions these of our New Doctor, and, you may be sure, not made the less of among the busy tongues of Mudford.
Another very remarkable thing about him was his most extraordinary absence of mind, or forgetfulness, or whatever it may have been. He would be quite friendly with people to-day—and he could be very agreeable if he chose—and to-morrow he would pass them in the street as if he had never seen them before. To be sure, he said he was near-sighted—and I ought to have mentioned that he always wore spectacles—but people can’t be expected to believe all they are told in this world; and it was known that he could see a long way off when he liked: and, besides, a defect of vision would not, at all events, account for defects in hearing, speaking, and thinking. You might tell him a thing to-day, and to-morrow he would appear to have forgotten all about it: you would have to tell it all over again, and then, very likely, his comments on it were totally different from what they had been on the previous day. And, strangest inconsistency of all, the next day again, perhaps, he would maintain his first opinion, as if he had never departed from it! When people made remarks to him about this, he would say with a laugh, “Ah, you must pardon me. I do forget strangely sometimes, but I am soveryabsent!” He was certainly the strangest man! “Nil erat unquam sic impar sibi.”
An instance of this strange absence of mind, or whatever it was, occurred with regard to myself, directly after making his acquaintance, as before related. On the following day I met him full butt in the street, and he would actually have passed on without taking the slightest notice of me, if I had not stopped him and held him by the button-hole.
“Mr Smith!” I exclaimed, “you have not forgotten me already, surely!”
“Why—a—really,” he said, looking puzzled; “excuse me, pray; my memory issobad. Where had I the pleasure of meeting you?”
“Why, last evening,” I replied, “at the White Hart. Don’t you recollect? We had a glass together.”
“Ah, to be sure,” said he, “in the smoking-room, was it not? Really, I beg your pardon.”
“No, sir,” said I, with some indignation, “it was not in the smoking-room. We were in the bar, and Mrs Cook was present.”
“So it was,” said he; “I recollect perfectly now. In the bar, and Mrs Cook was present. What do you say to a glass of ale now?”
But I was too much offended for this, and left him with a somewhat haughty salute. Now—will it be believed—I met him again on the very next day, and he positively crossed the street to speak to me!
“Ah, my dear sir,” said he, “I am delighted to meet you! I have been looking out for you ever since we met in the bar of the White Hart, and you told me such amusing stories of our neighbours.”
“So!” I said; “your memory is better to-day, is it? Why, yesterday you had forgotten all about me!”
He burst into a hearty laugh. “What! my dear sir,” he said, “I was in one of my absent fits yesterday, was I? You really must not think anything of it. It is natural to me, and I cannot help it for the life of me.”
But I did think of it a little, nevertheless; for I like to know how to find people, and have no fancy for being treated with that sort of caprice.
I said that the New Doctor was never very popular with the men, but that the verdict of the women was more favourable. Before long, however, he became more unpopular than ever—and with the ladies most of all; and that not only on account of the peculiarities I have described, and of the rumours I have hinted at—which spread more and more every day, and which I shall have to speak of presently—but also for other reasons which I had better mention here, before going to more serious matters.
First, then, Mr Smith, whom almost nobody had called on, and whom scarcely anybody had asked to his house, or introduced to his family, was within a short time after his arrival invited to five pic-nics; one up the river, three down, and one in Twiddleham Park—and to not one of them did he go. Now, not to go to a pic-nic to which you are invited at Mudford, is to give the greatest offence to those who do go, especially if you happen to be a stranger and a bachelor: and that for these reasons.
Of course, if you do not go, there is one gentleman the less to escort the ladies, who, not having so much to attend to at home, or having a greater partiality for the pastime, are always in a great majority over the gentlemen at these parties. And if you should happen to be a marrying man, and a tolerably eligible match, the loss is, of course, so much the greater. This reason evidently affects principally marriageable young ladies, and those who are interested in getting them off their hands; but there is another reason which appeals to the hearts and feelings of everybody. It is this:—In these parties the ladies provide the eatables, and the gentlemen bring the drinkables, and club together to pay the costs of conveyance and other miscellaneous charges. Now, if one gentleman be subtracted from the total number going—a very small number generally, for reasons which will now be thoroughly understood—it follows that the remainder will necessarily have to pay more per head for conveyance, &c., and will also have to provide more each in the way of wine, spirit, bottled ale, and other liquids necessary to the success of pic-nics; or else that each individual will have less to drink. Human nature revolts at such an alternative; and we find it intelligible enough, that to refuse to go to a pic-nic at Mudford, should be considered by those who do go to be adding injury to insult.
But there was a reason greater even than this for the falling off of the New Doctor in the estimation of the young ladies, until even the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers, who had thrown themselves at his head in every way which was open to them when he first came, had now nothing too bad to say of him. And that was, that he dared—he actually dared—how shall I tell it!—he dared to fall in love with a young lady who was a stranger and sojourner in the place, while there were so many native virgins ready and willing to be fallen in love with! Need I, after this, describe the bitterness with which he was spoken of by all the female portion of Mudford society! It was really most audacious conduct! To think that neither the Miss Johnsons, nor the Miss MacClinkers, nor the Misses Ferris, nor the Miss Skinners, nor any among the marriageable young ladies of Mudford, would suit his taste, and that he must pitch upon that little Laura Playfair from London, who had now come down on her second visit to her cousins, the Skinners! And yet, highly as I disapprove of the Doctor’s behaviour, I cannot help saying that Miss Playfair was a very nice and very superior girl, and that, had I been a young man myself, I should——. But never mind; I won’t have the bad taste to draw comparisons on such subjects, but will only go on to say that Laura had not been two days in the place before the wretch Smith saw her, and procured an introduction to her and to the three Miss Skinners at the same time. Those three sisters immediately put their innocent heads together, and absolutely prevailed on their mamma, who is as stingy as the grave, to give a party, and invite Mr Smith to it! It is well known that young doctors in country towns must marry, if they wish to get into practice; and those shrewd and benevolent young ladies fondly hoped that one of them might be destined to make Mr Smith’s fortune, and to partake of it. Think of their feelings when it became most manifest that the wretch was paying the greatest attention to Miss Playfair, to whom the same was evidently not unacceptable! The indignation of the other young ladies of the place was scarcely less; but then, to be sure, they had considerable consolation in the thought of what a snubbing those forward girls the Skinners had received. I am afraid, from what I have heard, that the Skinners’s hearts were turned from Laura from that time forth; but they did not dare openly to break with her, for the Playfairs were rather rich people, and kept their carriage (a one-horse phaeton, I believe), and occasionally invited the Miss Skinners to Bayswater; and Laura had one brother a clergyman, and another in the army; and the Skinners had always been fond of talking largely in Mudford about their connections; so, of course, they still kept up appearances as well as they could; but I know that Miss Playfair had intended to stay much longer than she did stay; and I have no doubt that it was owing to this affair of Mr Smith that her visit was brought to an untimely close.
The ingenious reader must have remarked that I have several times hinted at sundry dark and mysterious rumours about our New Doctor, which do not seem to harmonise with the kind of events that I have been narrating; but it must be understood that these rumours at first obtained no very serious notice from any except the lower classes; and some short time—a few weeks, perhaps—passed away between the little matters I have narrated, and the general prevalence of the dark suspicions which followed.
Here I see that I must attempt a somewhat more detailed account of the Doctor’s house than I have hitherto given. It is a square detached building, situated in the outskirts of the place, facing the road, and having no garden-railing or other space of any sort in front of it. What it appears, however, to want in privacy here, is made up for by the retirement to be obtained at the back of the house, which, it will be remembered, had been cut off from the front by the heavy door which the Doctor had erected in the middle of the lobby, and which he kept constantly locked, himself carrying the key always about him. The front of the house is continued, so to speak, by two high walls, that, together with the house itself, form the front of a long parallelogram, of which the sides and back are also high walls of masonry. The area within consists of a small paved court, and of a large garden, of which neither old Mole nor his successor took any care, and which is, and was, a perfect wilderness of rank luxuriant weeds, of moss-covered apple-trees, and of gooseberry and currant bushes on which the fruit never ripens. The walls are covered with ivy instead of fruit-trees, diversified here and there by a piece of new masonry, where the Doctor had them raised higher; and the whole place is dark, gloomy, cold, and tree-shaded.
The rumours about the Doctor, which at first were vague, and confined to the lower and more credulous order of persons, after a time began to be talked of among all classes; and it is wonderful, after they once began to be openly spoken of, how rapidly they spread, and how generally they were believed. It was said, then, that strange sounds were occasionally to be heard proceeding from the New Doctor’s house. A hoarse strange voice was sometimes heard speaking rapidly and threateningly for a time, and then was suddenly hushed; and it was said that occasionally a shrill wild shriek of agony or terror might be heard issuing from the recesses of the building. And those two young villains, Higgs’s boys, who will never come to any good, I fear, when they stole a ladder one night, and got over the back wall of the Doctor’s garden—to find their ball, they said, but, I believe, to steal the few apples that were on the trees—were so frightened by the strange ghostly lights that were flitting about in the windows of the house, that they ran off in the utmost terror and affright, leaving the ladder, and Bob’s, the youngest boy’s, cap behind them. I and some others did not pay much attention to these stories, although it was impossible to help believing some part of them—and, indeed, I had myself, on more than one occasion, heard from Miss Cringle’s room strange sounds proceeding from the Doctor’s house;—but amongst children and the ignorant they made an immense impression; so that, after a time, the little boys and girls would run away, screaming with terror, when the New Doctor approached; and even amongst grown persons there were more than chose to own it, who would as soon go a mile out of their way as pass his house alone after dark.
But there was soon a story out about the New Doctor, which appealed to the feelings of all, educated as well as ignorant. Miss Cringle, who had got into such a state of nervous excitement about him and his house, that she was obliged to have a woman to sleep with her, got out of bed one night about twelve o’clock, went to the window, and saw—what, I believe, no one would have credited on her unsupported testimony (not because people would have been indisposed to believeit, but because they would have been sure to disbelieveher). She called Mrs Rourke, the woman who slept with her, to her side; and they saw——They both swore it was true, and I suppose there can be no doubt about it now:—they both saw a light in one of the Doctor’s first-floor windows—a most rare thing on that side of the house—and plainly, distinctly thrown upon the blind was the shadow of a woman, evidently young and handsome, and utterly unlike the old housekeeper, doing up her hair for the night; and in such a state of deshabille that it was evident she was just going to bed! Presently passed also across the blind the shadow of a man—of the New Doctor; and in a moment, as if he had instantly perceived the imprudence of the woman in placing the candle where it was, the light was moved, the shadows vanished, and no more was seen.
Here was a discovery! Not a wink did Miss Cringle sleep that night, and no sleep did she permit to Mrs Rourke: indeed, it was as much as the latter could do, to persuade her not to send at once and knock up her friends in the middle of the night, that they might know without delay what she had seen. But next morning, before the shutters were down from all the shop windows, the news was over the place. The servant-girls brought the story in with the milk; the postman was double his proper time in going his rounds, owing to his loitering about so long—a vice to which he is rather prone—to discuss the news. My landlady could not wait until I got down-stairs; but brought up my shaving-water with her own hands, in order that she might tell me the story, from outside the door, before I got out of bed; and Miss Cringle had such alevéeon that day as made her the most important person in Mudford. Indeed, I verily believe that all the women in the place went to see her, except the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers, who have never forgiven to the present day the deadly offence Miss Cringle gave them.
It may be imagined how great was the indignation throughout Mudford; and no one can say that it was without sufficient cause. To think of this young bachelor Doctor coming amongst us, being admitted to our Institution, and even asked to lecture there; getting introduced to our wives and daughters, and meeting with kindness and hospitality at our hands (this was what people said; the reader will judge, from what he has read, how much attention and hospitality had really been shown him); going about looking us in the face, as if he had been an honest man, and all the while being guilty of such flagrant misconduct as this! It was really too bad! And then, to think of his conduct to Miss Playfair! There could be no mistake about that; for it was now a positive, declared engagement. This was worse than all; and I own that I myself felt desperately indignant with Mr Smith. The Miss Skinners, of course, told the young lady all about it, and were excessively kind in their expressions of sympathy: so anxious, indeed, were all the young ladies to condole with her, that I am informed she had nearly as many callers during the day as Miss Cringle; but the ungrateful girl made no reply to what the Miss Skinners told her, shut herself up in her own room for the whole of the day, positively refusing to see one of her visitors, and only stepped out in the evening to post some letters with her own hand. So great was the commotion in the place, that there was some talk at the Literary Institution of expelling the Doctor; but on the Secretary’s stating that the low state of the funds would prevent the returning his subscription, the idea was abandoned for the time. After all, he didn’t trouble us with his company there often, so it didn’t much matter. There was even some talk, I believe, of breaking his windows; but we had a very stern and inflexible Inspector of the County Police force stationed at Mudford, who, hearing of this project, at once gave it to be understood that he should not allow his private feelings to interfere with his duty; and that whoever was guilty of any unlawful or riotous act, should be immediately put in the lock-up: so that method of administering justice was at once abandoned.
I suppose there is no such thing as perfect unanimity in this world—I am sure there is not in the world of Mudford;—and there were not wanting persons who said that Miss Cringle was cracked, and in all probability Mrs Rourke was drunk. But so great was the prejudice against the New Doctor, that even those who professed this opinion were ready to own that if Miss Cringle and Mrs Rourke had not seen what they said they had, there was no doubt that theymighthave seen it, or something worse; so that the Doctor’s reputation did not gain much by their advocacy. And I must say here, in justice to those two ladies, that if any persons doubted their story at first, they could not in their hearts doubt it long, for the Doctor did not even attempt to deny it. Most people cut him without a word; but some few, and among them myself, told him what was said, and thus gave him an opportunity of contradicting the story; but he would only shrug his shoulders and turn away his head, neither owning nor denying it.
I don’t think the New Doctor could have led a very pleasant life just at this time; and there seemed less chance than ever of his getting into practice at Mudford. Miss Play fair was gone, and the few acquaintances he had made all dropped off. Scarcely anybody spoke to him; and, indeed, he now rarely came out until evening; when, as we knew from Miss Cringle, he would walk up and down the road for about an hour; come back at the end of that time to his house, stay in a few minutes, and then go out again for another walk in the same place. It must not be supposed, however, that nobody at all employed him. Two or three people had sent for him; and I don’t know that I shouldn’t have done so myself, notwithstanding all, if I had been unwell; for self is the great thing in such cases, and employ Green or Higgins I never can nor will: and those who had been the New Doctor’s patients all spoke highly of his attention and ability. This, however, did not influence our opinion of him in the least, as it is well known that the most diabolical of all possible personages can behave like a gentleman when expedient to do so.
Several months had now elapsed since the New Doctor came to Mudford. Miss Playfair, as I have just mentioned, was gone: indeed, she did not remain long after Miss Cringle’s dreadful discovery. One of the letters which she had posted herself on the following day was, as we ascertained from the postmaster, for her father,—no doubt informing him of her intention to come home at once. The other was to Mr Smith himself:—of course, its contents were not known to us, but it was generally supposed that it upbraided him with his conduct, and bade him an eternal farewell. In two days more she had left Mudford for London.
The stories about the Doctor did not fall off either in quantity or in quality, as the novelty of the affair died away. Perhaps they would have done so in time, but the time was not yet long enough; and, so far, scarcely a day elapsed but some new report of a startling character was brought out about him—some of these rumours being, I believe, not without truth in them; others being absurd, shocking, and incredible. Even had I space or time, I could not bring myself to narrate one tithe of the tales about him and the unhallowed doings in his house that passed current among the vulgar. But I must relate two events which were nearly bringing him into serious collision with the laws of his country.
Dreaded as the New Doctor’s house was, there were some of the more daring spirits in Mudford in whom curiosity was stronger than fear; and these often went out at night, by twos and threes, and climbing by some means to the top of the wall around the Doctor’s garden, watched there by the hour together, in hope of getting materials for some fresh story with which to horrify the inhabitants on the next day.
One very dark night, that daring young scamp, Flibbert, the blacksmith’s son—the only one in the place, I believe, who would have had the courage to do it—went there alone, and placed himself on watch at the top of the wall; and not long after, he came running home to his father, pale, breathless, and horror-struck. He said that he had not been long at his post when the Doctor came forth from his back door, accompanied by his old housekeeper, who held a lantern in her hand, while the Doctor carried a pick and a spade. They went to a corner in the garden among the apple-trees, and there the old woman held the light, while the doctor set to work to dig a small grave! He took some time about it, not being very expert in the use of the tools; and all the while the boy remained on the wall, close to them, afraid to move, and scarcely daring to breathe. When it was finished, the Doctor returned to the house, the old woman still remaining with the lantern near the grave, and presently came forth again, bringing under his arm a rough deal box or small coffin. He brought the coffin to the edge of the grave, and was just about to put it in, when the boy’s hold on the wall having become somewhat relaxed, he made a slight movement to get into a better position. The Doctor heard the sound, and called out sharply, “Who is there?” The boy made no reply, but, dropping at once to the ground outside the wall, ran home as fast as he could go, and told his father what he had witnessed.
Flibbert at first thought of putting the matter into the hands of the police; but on second thoughts, having some vague notions about obtaining a reward for the discovery, he determined to go and make a search himself in the place where his son had seen the grave. Accordingly on the next night, accompanied by his son and a neighbour, he went to the Doctor’s garden, and, getting over the wall by means of a ladder, proceeded to the spot indicated by the boy. It was plain enough, at first sight, that the earth in that place had been recently disturbed; but not all their digging could discover anything in the shape of a box or coffin. They filled in the earth again, and were about to make a search in other parts of the garden, when a pale, spectral light, proceeding they knew not whence, shone forth about them, making them look to each other so pale, so ghastly, so horrible, that they fled in the utmost terror from the spot, and returned to it no more.
It may be imagined what were the comments of the people of Mudford on this story, the truth of which no one could doubt. Flibbert reported it to the Inspector of Police, who reported it to the Superintendent, who reported it to the Chief Constable; but that gentleman did not think they could interfere in the matter without further evidence, and only gave orders that the police should keep a watchful eye on Mr Smith, and take particular notice of his actions.
They say, “Give a dog a bad name, and hang him;” and I suppose that at this time the New Doctor would have been by common consent, with or without evidence, considered guilty of any crimes that might have been committed at Mudford. But shortly after the event just narrated, he really had a very narrow escape indeed from being sent to jail for a most serious offence.
We had a cattle-market at Mudford shortly after the affair of the garden, and in the evening old Jobbs the farmer was walking home to his house, a short distance out of the town, having in his pocket about a hundred pounds in gold and notes which he had received for some cattle sold in the market. He confesses that he was rather tipsy, but swears that he was quite sufficiently himself to know what he was about. That night he was knocked down close to his own gate, and robbed of all the money he had about him; and the suspicions that the New Doctor was the perpetrator of the deed were so strong, that the magistrates issued a warrant for his apprehension.
Of course, such an event as the examination of our notorious Doctor before the magistrates, called together all the people in the place who could possibly leave their houses; and the number of persons who tried to get into the magistrates’ small office, would have more than filled the long room at the White Hart. I was fortunate enough to get a place, and will state the evidence given as briefly as I can.
John Jobbs swore that he was going home on foot about half-past nine o’clock on the evening after the cattle-market, having in his pocket about a hundred pounds, which he had received for some oxen. He had been drinking several glasses of grog, and was rather “overtook,” but knew very well what he was about. About half-way between Mudford and his house, his foot slipped and he fell; and, not being exactly sober, could not get up again as readily as usual. At that time a person came by, and helped him to rise. He knew Mr Smith, the New Doctor, very well by sight, and swore that he was the man. Mr Smith offered to see him home, but witness, knowing his infamous character, refused, and at the same time seized the opportunity to give him a bit of his mind in tolerably strong language. Finding, however, that he had hurt himself by his fall, and was unable to walk alone, he at length consented, and the Doctor took him by the arm, put him as far as his own gate, continuing to receive bits of his mind all the way, and there said “Good-night,” and left him, or pretended to leave him. Directly after, however, while Jobbs was standing in the same place, considering how best to steady himself so as to escape a scolding from his wife, he heard somebody behind him, and immediately was knocked down by a severe blow on the head, which rendered him insensible; and when he recovered, he found that he had been robbed of all the money in his pocket. Jobbs’s statement was corroborated by his wife, who deposed to his having come in without his money, and with the mark of a severe blow on the head. When he arrived, she looked at the clock, and saw that it was half-past ten. The man who keeps the turnpike gate just out of Mudford, swore that he saw Mr Jobbs going home under as much as he could carry; and that Jobbs was followed shortly after by the prisoner, whom he knew quite well, as he often walked that way. He was certain that prisoner was the man.
I believe that the magistrates would have committed the Doctor; but at this juncture Mr Burns, a very respectable old man, forced his way into the office with his son; and both volunteering their testimony, swore that Mrs Burns had been taken suddenly and alarmingly ill on the evening in question; that they had sent for Mr Green and Mr Higgins, both of whom were out of town; and that then, believing Mrs Burns to be in a most critical state, they had sent in desperation for Mr Smith. The Doctor arrived at their house, they both swore, at nine o’clock, and remained there, not being overwhelmed, as he said, with practice, until twelve, when the patient had fallen into a quiet sleep. Both Mr Burns and his son swore so positively as to the time, and that the Doctor had never left the house from nine until twelve, that the magistrates could not but consider thealibisufficiently proved, and the prisoner was discharged.
This was certainly a very narrow escape for our New Doctor; and though the magistrates discharged him, the intelligent reader will not doubt that he was fully convicted in the minds of the public of Mudford; each individual of that great body having his or her own reason to give, more or less probable, and more or less charitable, for the evidence of Mr Burns and his son. Some believed that they had been mistaken as to time; others that they had perjured themselves; and many among the lower orders never doubted that the New Doctor had the power of being in two places at once, when to be so suited his purpose. For my part, I believed that Jobbs and the pikeman had been mistaken as to identity; but in this opinion I think I got no supporters. If anything could have increased the popular indignation against the Doctor, it would have been his escape in this manner from the hands of justice after having been so very nearly caught; and I am sorry to say that, on the evening after his discharge, he, Mr Burns, senior, and Mr Burns, junior, were burnt together in effigy.
Events with regard to the New Doctor had been following thick upon each other; and very soon after this robbery business occurred the most extraordinary event of all.
One morning I found waiting for me on my breakfast-table the following note:—
“Mr Smith presents his compliments to Mr So-and-so, and would feel greatly obliged by his company to-morrow morning at twelve, to take a glass of wine, and listen to a communication which Mr Smith wishes to make.”
I was perfectly electrified when I read this note; and before I had finished my breakfast, Jones, Johnson, and Ferris dropped in, each to show me a similar invitation, to inquire whether I had got one, and to tell me that, as far as was known, some seven or eight of them had been issued altogether. I believe the first impulse of all of us was to return an indignant refusal; but after some discussion and consultation with others, the desire to hear the promised communication eventually determined us on going,—though I believe that an invitation to take wine with a condemned criminal in Newgate, and hear his confession, would have had a less startling effect.
Next day came, and we walked up to the door together to the number of eight. We knocked and were admitted by the old servant; and for the first known time since the New Doctor had been in the place, the door erected in the lobby stood open, and we were ushered into a room at the back of the house, where he himself was waiting to receive us. The room was plainly furnished—indeed it was old Mole’s old furniture; but everything was tastefully arranged, and there were several pieces of lady’s work lying about, which told plainly enough of the presence of a woman.
At the Doctor’s invitation we took our seats; but, as had been previously concerted, we all refused to take any wine until we had heard the promised communication.
“Well then, gentlemen,” he said, “we will commence with this robbery affair, though it is the last, as far as I know, in point of date.”
And, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he showed us the confession of a criminal convicted of highway robbery at the assizes of a neighbouring county, which stated that he (the convict) was the man who had robbed the old farmer after the cattle-market at Mudford.
“So you see, gentlemen,” the Doctor said, “I am innocent of that crime at all events, and this paper has come to me most opportunely, so that I might convince you. And now for something else. I know well enough that there have been reports of a very black character in circulation about me; and among the rest, that I, a bachelor, have a lady closely shut up in this house. Is it not so?”
We all said that it was so, and that we should like to have it explained.
“Then, gentlemen,” said he, “please to understand that the lady in question is my wife, and that she was so before I came to Mudford.”
“Then, sir,” we all exclaimed with one voice, “how do you account for your conduct to Miss Playfair?”
“Wait a moment, gentlemen,” he said; “to explain that matter I must fetch something from the next room. I will be back again directly.”
He left the room, and we gazed on each other with looks of blank astonishment; but before we could say a word, he returned and resumed his seat.
Finding that he did not speak for some time, we began to grow impatient, and asked him for his promised explanation.
“Explanation?” said he, as if he had forgotten all about it. “What explanation, pray?”
“Why, your explanation about Miss Playfair!”
“Gentlemen,” he said, in the coolest manner possible, “I have nothing to say about Miss Playfair, except that she is a very charming and estimable young lady, and that I hope soon to make her my wife.”
“Your wife!” we exclaimed. “Why, you have a wife already in this very house!”
He looked from one to the other with an appearance of the greatest bewilderment; and then said, with the utmost coolness,
“O dear, no, gentlemen! You are mistaken, I assure you. I have no wife, and never had such a thing in my life.”
“Why, you told us but a minute since that the woman who has been in this house for we don’t know how long was your wife!”
“I beg your pardon,” he replied. “I never said anything of the sort. I have no wife, and never had one since I was born!”
We all started to our feet, exclaiming, “This is unbearable; we didn’t come here to be insulted!” and were about to leave the room and the house; but with a merry laugh the Doctor exclaimed—
“Stop, gentlemen! Stop a moment, I pray; and excuse my joking with you. The farce has lasted long enough.” And he touched the bell.
Immediately the door opened, and the New Doctor entered!
Yes, the New Doctor entered; and yet the New Doctor had been in the room before, and was there still. We looked from one to the other in the utmost astonishment. There were two New Doctors! but just exactly alike; the same features, the same figure, the same quality of voice, the same cut of beard and mustache, and the same style of dress, down to the minutest particular!
“Gentlemen,” continued the one who had been in the room before, “this is my brother, Henry Smith, the married man. I am Herbert Smith, the bachelor; and as you are now, I believe, satisfied that I did not rob old Jobbs, I may as well own at once that thealibiby which I escaped was founded on a mistake. It was I who put the old farmer home to his gate, as a charitable action, and there left him, little thinking he was going to be so attacked immediately after by that scoundrel; and it was my brother who attended on Mrs Burns in her illness. It was the first time, I believe, that we ever ventured out at the same time in Mudford; but such a call was not to be disobeyed; and it was well for me that it happened as it did.”
It may be supposed how much we were all astonished: but having heard and seen so much, we were prepared for almost anything; and we thought that we might now venture to take a glass of wine. We did so, and the wine, being very good, warmed our hearts, so that we felt more favourably disposed towards the Doctor, or Doctors, than a short time before we should have thought possible.
“Now, gentlemen,” continued the one who had last spoken, “as we are about immediately to leave Mudford—for which Mudford, I fancy, will not mourn excessively—and should not wish to leave behind us a character altogether infamous, we have asked you, as being the most respectable and intelligent men in the place” (here we all bowed, and took another glass of wine), “to meet us here to-day, in order to hear a short explanation of this curious affair, which has given rise to such dreadful stories about us.
“My brother and I are orphans, and were brought up to the medical profession by an old uncle, very rich, very eccentric, and with an excessive fondness for money, which has gone on increasing rapidly with every successive year of his life. We are twin brothers; we were educated together, we passed through our professional studies at the same time, and a short time ago we lived near each other in London, neither of us having any fixed idea of where we should ultimately settle. Shortly before we came here, my brother got married, and at about the same time he got into debt. He had taken a number of shares in a speculation which has since proved a success; but before that happy time, a bank, in which he had deposited his money, broke: he lost all, and, being unable to pay up the calls, his shares in the speculation referred to were also forfeited. These disasters threw him deeply into debt; and our uncle, who was most obstinate when he had once made up his mind, and absolutely miserly in some matters, not only refused to assist him, but said that, if he disgraced the family by going to prison, he would not leave a farthing of his fortune to him or to me. We knew that he was quite capable of carrying out this threat, and were at our wits’ end what to do; for my brother’s creditors were so vindictive and watchful, that for him to escape to the Continent appeared out of the question, when Miss Playfair, to whom I had just become engaged——”