Читать книгу One Maid's Mischief - Fenn George Manville - Страница 22

It cannot be denied that Mrs Bolter’s mature little heart had developed, with an intense love and admiration of her lord, a good deal of acidity, such as made her jealous, exacting, and tyrannical to a degree.

Let it not be supposed, however, that the doctor was unhappy. Quite the contrary; he seemed to enjoy his tyrant’s rule, and to go on peaceably enough, letting her dictate, order, and check him at her own sweet will.

“There’s no doubt about it,” chuckled the little doctor to himself, “she’s as jealous as Othello, and watches me like an – an – an – well – say eagle,” he said, quite at a loss for a simile. “I don’t mind, bless her! Shows how fond she has grown; and I suppose it must be worrying to the dear little woman to have first one and then another lady sending for me. I don’t wonder at her asking me what they wanted. I shouldn’t like it if gentlemen were always sending for her.”

Dr Bolter had been indulging in a similar strain to this, when, after making up a few quinine powders in his tiny surgery, he went into the room where his little wife was in conversation with her brother.

“Ah, Arthur!” said the doctor, “how are you getting on with folks?”

“Very pleasantly,” said the chaplain, smiling. “I find everybody kind and genial.”

“That’s right,” said the doctor, rubbing his hands and smiling at his wife, who frowned at him severely, and then let her pleasant face break up in dimples. “I want you both to enjoy the place. Don’t be afraid of visiting. They like it. Stir them up well, and make yourself quite at home with everybody. This isn’t England.”

“No,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling; “I find the difference.”

“I say, old boy,” continued the doctor, “I was in the fort yesterday, talking to some of the men. They say they like your preaching.”

“I am very glad, Harry,” said the chaplain, simply. “I was afraid that I was rather wandering sometimes in my discourse.”

“No, no; just what they like, old fellow! Simple and matter of fact. What they can understand. Going?”

“Yes; I am going across to see Mr Harley.”

“Ah! do. Good fellow, Harley! Don’t make any mistakes though, and step into the river instead of the sampan.”

“Is there any danger, Henry?” exclaimed Mrs Doctor, sharply.

“Not the least, my dear; only Arthur here is a little dreamy sometimes.”

“I’d go with him,” said Mrs Bolter decidedly, “only I want to talk to you, Henry.”

“Phee-ew!” whistled the doctor, softly, “here’s a breeze coming;” and he looked furtively at his wife to see what she meant.

She walked with her brother to the door, bade him be careful, and then returned.

“Now look here, Dr Bolter,” she said severely, “I am the last woman in the world to find fault, but I am your wife.”

“You are, my dear Mary, and the very, very best of wives!”

“That’s base flattery, sir,” said the little lady, who, however, looked pleased.

“Flattery? No! One never flatters one’s wife.”

“How do you know, sir?” cried Mrs Bolter, sharply.

“From what one reads, Mary. I never had a wife before; and I never flatter you.”

“No, sir, but you try something else; and I tell you I will not submit to be imposed upon!”

“I’m sure, my dear, I never impose upon you.”

“Indeed, sir; then what is this you propose doing? Why do you want to go away for three days?”

“Collecting, my dear.”

“Without Arthur? Now look here, Bolter, the very fact of your wanting to go collecting without Arthur, whom you always talk about as being a brother naturalist, looks suspicious.”

“Indeed, my dear, I do want to go collecting.”

“Collecting? Rubbish!”

“No, my dear, it is not. I’m afraid you will never realise the value of my specimens.”

“You are going collecting, then?” said Mrs Doctor.

“Yes, my dear.”

“Without Arthur?”

“Yes; he does not get on very well in the jungle; and he is rather awkward in a boat.”

“Then I shall go with you myself,” said the little lady, decidedly.

“You – you go with me, Mary,” he said, staring.

“Yes, certainly.”

“But the thorns, and mud, and heat, and mosquitoes, my dear?”

“If they will not hurt you, Henry, they will not hurt me,” said the little lady.

“But they would hurt you, my dear. Of course I should like to have you, but it would be impossible! I shall only be away three days.”

“But the place is full of old stones and skins that smell atrociously, and wretched flies and beetles with pins stuck through their bodies, and I’m sure I can’t think why you want more.”

“For the learned societies in London, my dear. You forget that I am a corresponding member to several.”

“Oh, no, I don’t,” said Mrs Bolter. “I don’t forget that you make it an excuse for sitting up all night smoking and drinking cold whiskey and water, sir, because you have writing to do instead of coming to bed.”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear,” he said, “you would be a perfect woman if you only cared for science.”

“You never said a word to me, sir, about caring for science when I consented to come out with you to this dreadful, hot, damp place, where everything that does not turn mouldy is eaten by ants.”

“The damp and the ants are great nuisances, my dear,” said the doctor. “They have destroyed numbers of my best specimens.”

“They have destroyed my beautiful piano that I was foolish enough to bring out,” said Mrs Bolter. “Grey Stuart opened it yesterday, and the damp has melted the glue, and the ants have eaten up all the leather of the hammers. The wires are rusty, and the instrument is totally spoiled.”

“Never mind, my dear, so long as the climate does not affect your constitution,” said the doctor, cheerfully.

“Oh, by the way,” said Mrs Bolter, “that reminds me of two things. First of all, Bolter, I will not have you so fond of talking to the young ladies at the dinner parties to which we go. You remember what I said to you about your conduct with Miss Morrison?”

“Yes, my dear, perfectly,” said the doctor, with a sigh.

“Secondly, about medicine. Now, it is of no use for you to deny it, for I feel as sure as can be that you have been giving me some medicine on the sly these last few days.”

“Why, my darling!” cried the doctor.

“It is of no use for you to put on that injured expression, Henry, because I know; and mind this, I don’t accuse you of trying to poison me, but of trying experiments with new-fangled drugs, and I tell you I won’t have it.”

The doctor protested his innocence, but the lady was not convinced; and apparently under the impression that it would be as well to submit, he allowed her to go on till she reached the top of her bent, when she suddenly changed the topic.

“Ah, there was something else I wanted to say to you,” she said sharply. “How about Helen Perowne?”

This was too much for the doctor’s equanimity, and he gave the table a bang with his fist.

“I declare it’s too bad,” he exclaimed, wrathfully now. He had submitted to all that had been said before with a few protestations and shrugs of the shoulders, but now he fired up. “I have never hardly said a civil word to the girl in my life, for I protest that I utterly detest the handsome, heartless, coquettish creature. Of all the unjust women I ever met, Mary, you are about the worst.”

A casual observer would have set Mrs Doctor Bolter down as an extremely prejudiced, suspicious woman of a highly-jealous temperament; but then a casual observer would not have known her real nature.

If he had seen her now, as she sank back in her chair, and the pleasant dimples and puckers came into her face, he would have understood much better how it was that the doctor had persuaded her to leave her maiden state to come and share his lot.

For as the doctor turned redder in the face and then purple, she smiled and shook a little round white finger at him.

“A guilty conscience needs no accuser,” she said. “I never accused you, sir, of flirting with Helen Perowne; but as soon as I mentioned her name you began to defend yourself.”

“I don’t care,” cried the doctor, “I confess I have said complimentary and pleasant things to all the ladies of the station, both old and young; not that they think anything of it, for I’m only the doctor; while as to Helen Perowne, last time her father asked me to see and prescribe for her, and she began to make eyes at me, and put forth her blandishments – ”

“Oh, you confess that, sir?”

“Confess it?” cried the doctor, stoutly. “Why she does that to every man she sees! I believe if her father took her to Madame Tussaud’s – You remember my taking you to Madame Tussaud’s, my dear?”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mrs Bolter.

“Well, I honestly believe that if she were taken there she’d begin making eyes at the wax figures.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs Bolter, stiffly. “And so she began to make eyes at you!”

“That she did, the jade,” said the doctor, chuckling, “and – and – ha, ha, ha – ho, ho, ho! don’t – ha, ha, ha! – say a word about it, my dear – there was nothing the matter with her but young girl’s whimsical fancies; and she made me so cross with her fads and languishing airs, and then by making such a dead set at me, that I – ha, ha, ha – ho, ho, ho – ”

“Bolter,” exclaimed Mrs B, “if you confess to me that you kissed her I’ll have a divorce – I’ll go straight back to England?”

“Kiss her? Not I! – ho, ho, ho! – I gave her such a dose; and I kept her extremely poorly for about a week. She – she hates me like she does physic. Oh, dear me!”

The doctor wiped his eyes, burst into another fit of laughing, and then, after another wipe at his eyes, his face smoothed down and he grew composed.

“Then it’s a pity you don’t give her another dose of medicine,” said his lady, “and prevent her doing so much mischief as she is doing here.”

“But really, my dear, you have no right to accuse me of being extra polite to Helen Perowne.”

“I did not, and I was not about to accuse you of being extra polite to Helen Perowne —extra polite, as you call it, sir; but I was about to connect her name with that of other gentlemen, and not with that of my husband.”

“Oh! come, that’s a comfort,” said the doctor. “What is it then about Helen Perowne?”

“I don’t like the way in which she is going on,” said Mrs Doctor, “and I am quite sure that no good will come of it. I don’t think there is any real harm in the girl.”

“Harm? No, I don’t think there is,” said Dr Bolter. “She’s very handsome, and she has been spoiled by flattery.”

“Administered by foolish men like someone we know,” said the lady.

“H’m! yes – well, perhaps so; but really she is too bad. The fellows seem to run mad after her.”

“Did you see her talking to the Rajah last night?”

“Yes, I saw her; and then poor Hilton began to singe his wings in the candle, and next week she will have somebody else. I know what I’d do if I had to prescribe for her.”

“And what might that be, sir?”

“I’d prescribe a husband, such a one as Harley – a firm, strong-minded, middle-aged man, who would keep a tight hand at the rein and bring her to her senses. I daresay she’d make a man a good wife, after all.”

“Perhaps so,” said Mrs Doctor, pursing up her lips; “but meantime, as you are not called upon to prescribe, what is to be done?”

“To be done? Why, nothing.”

“Oh! but something must be done, Bolter. You ought to speak to Mr Perowne.”

“And be called an idiot for my pains. No, thank you, my dear. In all such delicate matters as these a lady’s hand – I should say, tongue – is the instrument to set matters right. Now, I should say the proper thing would be for a quiet, sensible, clever, middle-aged lady – may I speak of you as a middle-aged lady, my dear – ”

“Don’t be stupid, Henry. I’m forty-four, as you well know, and I never pretended to be younger.”

“No, of course not. You fired forty years at me in a platoon when I proposed, like the dear, sensible old darling you are.”

“Tut! Hush! Silence, sir! No more of that, please.”

“All right, my dear. Well, as I was saying, suppose you have a quiet talk to the girl yourself.”

Mrs Bolter knitted her brows and looked very thoughtful.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It might do good, or it might not. I will think about it.”

“And about my going away for three days, my dear.”

“Oh, one moment, Henry,” said Mrs Doctor. “There was something else I wished to ascertain.”

“What, another something else?” groaned the doctor.

“Yes, another something else, sir. You promised me, that if you could not quite check that terrible habit of yours of talking about Ophir and King Solomon, that you would modify it.”

“Yes, my dear,” said the doctor, giving his ear a rub, and accompanying it by a submissive look.

“I heard you last night exciting the ridicule of all the gentlemen by your pertinacious declarations regarding that mythical idea.”

“Don’t say ridicule, my dear.”

“But I do say ridicule, Henry, and I object to having my husband laughed at by ignorant people – he being a very clever man. So be careful in the future. Now you may go.”

“For three days, my dear?”

“Yes; and pray take care of yourself.”

“I will, my darling,” he cried, in delight; and he was about to embrace the lady warmly, when a step was heard in the veranda, and a voice exclaiming:

“May I come in?”