Читать книгу Dr. Wainwright's Patient - Edmund Yates - Страница 3

Beachborough, where, in obedience to the strident voice of the railway porter--voice combining the hardness of the Dorset with the drawl of the Devon dialect--you, if you be so disposed, "Change for Sandington Cove and Waverley," is a very different place from what it was even ten years ago. To be sure the sea is there, and the beach, and the fishing-luggers with the red sails; but in everything else what changes! Now there is, as has been said, a railway-station, a forlorn little oasis of white planking in a desert of sandy heath, inhabited by a clerk--a London young man, who "went too fast" in the metropolis, and has been relegated to Beachborough as a good healthy place where there is no chance of temptation--and a porter, a native of the place, a muscular person great at wrestling, who is always inviting the male passers-by of his acquaintance to "come on," and supplying them, on their doing so, with a very ugly throw known as a "back-fall." There are not many passers-by, for the newly-formed road leads to no where in particular, and those who tramp through its winter slush, or struggle through its summer dust, are generally either tradesmen of the place anxious about overdue parcels, or servants, sent to make inquiries about the trains, from some of the houses on the Esplanade.

The Esplanade! Heavens! if old Miss Gollop, who lived at the Baths, and who used to supply very hot water and very damp towels, and the greatest number of draughts ever known to be got together into one small room, to the half-dozen county families to whom Beachborough was then known as a watering-place--if old Miss Gollop could revisit the glimpses of the moon, and by its light look upon the Esplanade, it would, I am certain, be impossible for that worthy old lady to recognise it as Mussared's Meadow, where she picked cowslips and sucked sorrel when she was a girl, and which was utterly untainted by the merest suspicion of brick and mortar when she died twenty years ago. She would not recognise it any more than in The Dingo Arms--that great white-faced establishment, with its suites of apartments, its coffee-room, wine-office, private bar, and great range of stabling, patronised by, and in its sanctum sanctorum bearing an heraldic emblazonment of the arms of, Sir Hercules Dingo Dingo, Bart., bloody hand, four-quartered shield and all--she would have recognised The Hoy, a tiny "public" where they used to sell the hardest beer and the most stomach-ache-provoking cider, and which in her day was the best tavern in the village. The white-faced terrace has sprung up in Mussared's Meadow; the Esplanade in front of it is a seawall and a delightful promenade for the Misses Gimp's young ladies, who are the admiration of Dingo Terrace, and who have deadly rivals in Madame de Flahault's demoiselles, whose piano-playing is at once the delight and the curse of Powler Square; the cliffs, once so gaunt and barren and forlorn, are dotted over with cottages and villakins, all green porch and plate-glass windows; the old barn-like church has had a fresh tower put on to him, and a fresh minister--one with his ecclesiastical millinery of the newest cut, and up to the latest thing in genuflexions--put into him; there is a Roman Catholic chapel close to the old Wesleyan meeting-house; and they have modernised and spoiled the picturesque tower where Captain Derinzy wore away a portion of his days. Great improvements, no doubt. Pavement and gas, and two policemen, and a railway, and a ritualistic incumbent, and shops with plate-glass windows, where you can get Holloway's pills and Horniman's teas, and all the things without which no gentleman's table is complete. But the events of my story happened ten years ago, when the inhabitants of Beachborough--shopkeepers, fisher-people, villagers, and lace-makers--were like one family, and loved and hated and reviled and back-bit each other as the members of one family only can.

We shall get a little insight into the village politics if we drop in for a few minutes at Mrs. Powler's long one-storied, thatched-roof cottage, standing by itself in the middle of the little High Street. Mrs. Powler is a rich and childless old widow, Powler deceased having done a little in the vending of home-manufactured lace, and a great deal in the importing, duty-free, of French lace and brandy. It was Powler's run when Bill Gollop, the black sheep of the Gollop family, was shot by the revenue-officer down by Wastewater Hole, a matter which Powler is scarcely thought to have compromised by giving a new organ to Bedminster church. However, he has been dead some years, and his widow is very rich and tolerably hospitable; and her little thatched cottage--she never lived in any other house--is the centre and focus of Beachborough gossip.

It is just about Mrs. Powler's supper-time, which is very early in the summer, and she has guests to supper. There is no linen in all Beachborough so white as Mrs. Powler's, no such real silver plate, no such good china or glass. The Beachborough glass generally consists of fat thick goblets on one stump-leg, or dumpy heavy wineglasses with a pattern known as "the pretty" halfway up their middle, which, like the decanters, are heavy and squat, and require a strong wrist to lift them. But Mrs. Powler had thin, blown, delicate glasses, and elegant goblets with curling snakes for their handles, and drinking-cups in amber and green colours, all of which were understood to have come from "abroad," and were prized by her and respected by her neighbours accordingly. There never was a bad lobster known in Beachborough; and it is probable that Mrs. Powler's were no better than her neighbours', but she certainly had a wondrous knack of showing them off to the best advantage, setting-off the milk-white of the inside and the deepred of the shell with layers of crisp curling parsley, as a modern belle sets off her complexion with artfully-arranged bits of tulle and blonde. Nor was her boiled beef to be matched within ten miles round. "I du 'low that other passons' biled beef to Mrs. Fowler's is sallt as brine and soft as butter," Mrs. Jupp would confess; and Mrs. Jupp was a notable housewife, and what the vulgar call "nuts" on her own cooking. There is a splendid proof of it on the table now, cold and firm and solid. Mr. Jupp has just helped himself to a slice, and it is his muttered praise that has called forth the tribute of general admiration from his better-half. Mr. Hallibut, the fish-factor and lace-dealer from Bedminster, is still occupied with the lobster; for he has a ten-mile drive home before him, and any fear of indigestion he laughs to scorn, knowing how he can "settle" that demon with two or three raw "nips" and one or two steaming tumblers of some of that famous brandy which the deceased Powler imported duty-free from abroad, and a bottle of which is always to be found for special friends in the old oak armoire, which stands under the Lord's-Prayer sampler which Mrs. Powler worked when she was a little girl.

Mrs. Powler is in the place of honour opposite the window. A little woman, with a dark-skinned deeply-lined face, and small sparkling black eyes, the fire in which remains undimmed by the seventy years through which they have looked upon the world, though their sight is somewhat failing. She wears a fierce black front, and a closely-fitting white lace cap over it, and an open raspberry-tart-like miniature of her deceased lord--a rather black and steelly-looking daguerreotype--gleams on her chest. Mrs. Powler likes her drinks, as she does not scruple to confess, and has been sipping from a small silver tankard of cider.

"Who was that just went passt the windor, Jupp?" she said, after a short period of tankard abstraction. "My eyes isn't what they was, and I du 'low I couldn't see, though I'm settin' right oppo-site like."

"Heart alive!" struck in Mrs. Jupp, after a moment's silence, and seeing it was perfectly impossible her better-half could sufficiently masticate the piece of cold beef on which he was engaged in anything like time for a reply--"heart alive! to hear you talk of your eyes, Mrs. Powler! Why, there's many a young gal would give anythin' for such a pair in her head, either for show or for use, either!"

"I should think so," said Mr. Jupp, who had by this time cleared his mouth and moistened his palate with the contents of the cider-tankard--"I should think so!" and Mr. Jupp, who was of a convivial turn, began to troll, "Eyes black--as sloes, and--bo-o-oo-som rounded----"

"Mr. Jupp," interrupted Mrs. Jupp, a tall, thin, horse-faced woman, with projecting buck-teeth, and three little sausage curls of iron-gray hair flattened down on either side her forehead, "reck'lect where you are, if you please, and keep your ditties to yourself."

"Well, niver mind my eyes," said Mrs. Powler; she desired to make peace, but she was a rich woman and in her own house, and consequently spoke in a dictatorial way--"niver mind my eyes, nor anything else for the matter of that, but tell who it was that went passt."

"It was the Captain, my dear madam, the Captain," replied Mr. Jupp, freshly attacking the cold beef, and consoling himself for his snubbing with his supper. "You had no great loss in not seeing him, ma'am: it was only the Captain."

"What! Prinsy, Drinsy, what's his name?" said Mr. Hallibut, taking a clean plate, and delicately clearing his lips and fingers from lobster remains on the corner of the tablecloth. "I'll trouble you, Jupp!--Is he still here?"

"His name's Derinzy, Mr. Hollybut," said Mrs. Jupp--"De-rin-zy; it's a French name." Mrs. Jupp had been a lady's-maid once on a time, and prided herself on her manners and education.

"And mine's Hallibut, and not Hollybut, Mrs. Jupp," said the fish-factor jocosely; "and I'll trouble J-u double p--which I take it is an English name--for some of the inside fat--next the marrer-bone there!"

"Dear heart!" interrupted Mrs. Powler, feeling her position as hostess and richest of the company was being made scarcely sufficient of; "how you do jangle, all of you! Not but what," added the old lady, with singular inconsequence--"not but what I'm no scholard, and don't see the use of French names, while English is good enough for me."

"Ah, but some things is better French, as you and I, and one or two more of us could tell," said jocose Mr. Hallibut, feeling it was time for a "nip," and availing himself of the turn in the conversation to point with his elbow to the cellaret, where the special brandy was kept.

"Well, help yourself, and put the bottle on the table," said the old lady, somewhat mollified. "Ah, that was among the spoils of the brave, in the good old times when men was men!" she added, in a half-melancholy tone. She was accustomed to think and speak of her deceased husband as though he had been the boldest of buccaneers, the Captain Kyd of the Dorsetshire coast; whereas he, in his lifetime, was a worthy man in a Welsh wig, who never went to sea, or was present at the "running" of a keg.

"And so the Captain's still here," pursued Hallibut; "living in the same house, and doing much the same as usual, I suppose?"

"Jist exactly the same," replied Mr. Jupp. "Wandering about the village, molloncholly-like, and cussin' all creation."

"Mr. Jupp," broke in his better-half, "reck'lect where you are, if you please, and keep your profane swearin' to yourself."

"I wonder he don't go away," suggested Hallibut.

"He can't," said Mrs. Jupp solemnly.

"What! do you mean to say he's been running in debt here in Beachborough, or over in Bedminster?"

"He don't owe a brass farthing in either place," asserted Mrs. Powler; "if anybody ought to know, I ought;" and to do her justice she ought, for no one heard scandal sooner, or disseminated it more readily.

"Perhaps he hadn't the chance," said Mr. Jupp, stretching out his hand towards the tumbler.

"Mr. Jupp," said his wife, "what cause have you to say that? Was you ever kept waiting for the money for the meal or malt account? Is the rent paid regular for the bit of pastureland for Miss Annette's cow? Well, then, reck'lect where you are, if you please, and who you're speaking of."

"Well, but if he hates the place and cusses--I mean, does what Jupp said he did just now--what does he stop here for? Why don't he go away? He must have some reason."

"Of course he has, Mr. Hallibut," said Mrs. Jupp, with an air of dignity.

"Got the name all right this time, Mrs. Jupp; here's your health," said the jolly man, sipping his tumbler. "Well, what's the reason?"

"It's because of Miss Annette--she that we was speaking of just now."

"Oh, ah!" said Mr. Hallibut; "she's his daughter, isn't she?"

"Niece," said Mrs. Jupp.

"Oh!" said Mr. Hallibut doubtfully.

"You and I have seen the world, Hallibut," broke in Mr. Jupp, who had been paying his attentions to the French brandy. "We've heard of nieces before--priests' nieces and such-like, who----"

"Mr. Jupp, will you reck'lect where you are, if you please?--what I was goin' to say when thus interrupted, Mr. Hallibut, was, that it's on account of his niece Miss Annette that Captain Derinzy remains in this place. She's a dreadful in-val-lid, is Miss Annette, and this Dorsetsheer air suits her better than any other part of England. As to her not bein' his niece----"

"La, la, du be quiet, Harriet!" interrupted Mrs. Powler, who saw that unless she asserted herself with a dash she would be quite forgotten; "this everlastin' click-clackin', I du 'low it goes threw my head like a hot knife threw a pat of fresh butter. Av' course Miss Netty's the Captain's niece; Oh, I don't mind you men--special you, Jupp, sittin' grinnin' there like the mischief! I've lived long in the world, and in different sort of society from this; and I know what you mean fast enough, and I'm not one to pretend I don't, or to be squeamish about it."

This was a hard hit at Mrs. Jupp, who took it accordingly, and said:

"Well, but, Mrs. Powler, if Jupp were not brought up sudden, as it were----"

"Like enough, my dear, like enough; but when you're as old as I am, you'll find it's very hard to have to give up chat for fear of these kind of things, unless indeed there's young girls present, and then--well, of course!" said Mrs. Powler, with a sigh. "But, Lord, you're all wrong about why Captain Derinzy stops at Beachborough."

"Do you know why it is, Mrs. Powler?" asked Mr. Hallibut, feigning intense interest, under cover of which he mixed himself a second tumbler of brandy-and-water.

"Well, I think I do," said the old lady.

"Tell us, by all means," said the fish-factor, looking at his hostess very hard, and dropping two lumps of sugar into his tumbler.

"Well, Harriet's right so far--there's no doubt about Miss Annette being the Captain's niece; at least, there's no question of her being his daughter, as you two owdacious men--and, Jupp, you ought to know better, having been churchwarden, and your name in gold letters in front of the organ-loft, on account of the church being warmed by the hot pipes, which only made a steam and a smell, and no heat at all--as you two owdacious men hinted at. Lor' bless you, you don't know Mrs. Derinzy."

"That's what I tell 'em, Mrs. Powler," chorused Mrs. Jupp; "they don't know the Captain's wife. Why, she's as proud as proud; and he daren't say his soul's his own, let alone introducin' anyone into the house that she didn't know all about, or wish to have there."

"But still you don't know what makes them stay here," said Mrs. Powler, not at all influenced by her friend's partisanship, and determined to press her point home upon her audience.

"Well, if it isn't Miss Netty's illness, I don't," said Mrs. Jupp slowly, and with manifest reluctance at having to acknowledge herself beaten.

"Then I'll tell you," said the old lady triumphantly, smoothing her dress, looking slowly round, and pausing before she spoke. "You know Mrs. Stothard?"

"Miss Annette's servant--yes," said Mrs. Jupp.

"Servant--pouf!" said Mrs. Powler, snapping her fingers, and thereby awaking Mr. Jupp, who had just dropped asleep, and was dreaming that he was in his mill, and dared not stretch out his legs for fear of getting them entangled in the machinery. "Who ever saw her do any servant's work; did you?"

"N-no; I can't say I ever did," replied Mrs. Jupp; "but then, I have never been to the house."

"What does that matter?" asked the old lady, rather illogically; "no one ever did. No one ever saw her do a stroke of servant's work in the house: mend clothes, wash linen, darn stockings, make beds. Dear heart alive! she's no servant."

"What is she then?" asked Mrs. Jupp eagerly.

"A poor relation!" hissed Mrs. Powler, bending over the table; "a poor relation, my dear, of either his or hers, with something about her that prevents them shaking her off, and obliges them to keep her quiet."

"Do you think so--really think so?"

"I'm sure of it, my dear--certain sure."

"Lord, I remember," said Mrs. Jupp, with a sudden affectation of a mincing manner, and a lofty carriage of her head; "I remember once seeing something of the sort at the play-house: but then the poor relation was a man, a man who always went about in a large cloak, and appeared in places where he was least expected and most unwelcome. It was in Covent Garden Theatre."

"Covent Garden Theatre," said Jupp, suddenly waking up. "I remember, in the saloon----"

"Mr. Jupp, reck'lect where you are, if you please, and spare the company your reminiscences."

Here Mr. Hallibut, who, finding himself bored by the conversation about people of whom he knew nothing, had quietly betaken himself to drink, and had got through three tumblers of brandy-and-water unobserved, remarked that, as he had a long drive before him, he thought it was time for him to go; and, after making his adieux, departed to find the ostler at The Hoy, who had his rough old pony in charge. Mrs. Jupp put on her bonnet, and after a word of promise to look in next morning and hear the remainder of her hostess's suspicions about Mrs. Stothard, roused up Mr. Jupp, who, balancing himself on frail and trembling legs, which he still believed to be endangered by the proximity of his mill's machinery, staggered out into the open air, where he was bid to reck'lect himself if he pleased, and to walk steadily, so that the coastguard then passing might not see he was drunk.