After this little interruption, the strictly professional conversation
was resumed, and the doctor ended by directing him to stay quiet that
day, and not to walk out out until he had seen him again next morning.
The doctor then began to mix the ingredients of his liniment. The young
man in the silk dressing-gown limped to the window, and leaned his arm
upon the sash, looking out, and the doctor observed him, in his
ruminations, smiling darkly on the ivy that nodded from the opposite
wall, as if he saw a confederate eyeing him from its shadow.
"He didn't think I was looking at him," said the doctor; "but I have
great faith in a man's smile when he thinks he is all to himself; and
that smile I did not like; it was, in my mind, enough to damn him."
All this, when his interview was over, the doctor came round and told
us. He was by no means pleased with his patient, and being a religious
man, of a quick temper, would very likely have declined the office of
physician in this particular case, if he had not thought, judging by his
"properties," which were in a certain style that impressed Doctor
Mervyn, and his air, and his refined features, and a sort of
indescribable superiority which both irritated and awed the doctor, that
he might be a "swell."
He went the length, notwithstanding, of calling him, in his conversation
with us, an "inhuman puppy," but he remarked that there were certain
duties which no Christian could shirk, among which that of visiting the
sick held, of course, in the doctor's mind, due rank.
CHAPTER XIII.
MEETING IN THE GARDEN.
I was a little shy, as country misses are; and, curious as I was, rather
relieved when I heard that the shipwrecked stranger had been ordered to
keep his quarters strictly, for that day at least. So, by-and-by, as
Laura Grey had a letter to write, I put on my hat, and not caring to
walk towards the town, and not daring to take the Penruthyn Road, I ran
out to the garden. The garden of Malory is one of those monastic
enclosures whose fruit-trees have long grown into venerable timber;
whose walls are stained by time, and mantled in some places with ivy;
where everything has been allowed, time out of mind, to have its own
way; where walks are grass-grown, and weeds choke the intervals between
old standard pear, and cherry, and apple-trees, and only a little plot
of ground is kept in cultivation by a dawdling, desultory man, who
carries in his daily basket of vegetables to the cook. There was a
really good Ribston-pippin or two in this untidy, but not unpicturesque
garden; and these trees were, I need scarcely tell you, a favourite
resort of ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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