Читать книгу The Challenge of Love - Victorian Romance Novel - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Both Dr. Threadgold and his wife were out when Miss Priscilla Perfrement’s maid rang the bell at Prospect House. John Wolfe was in the surgery, and he was called upon to speak with Miss Perfrement’s maid, a lean woman with haughty eyebrows and a negligible bust.

“Dr. Threadgold must come at once.”

“Dr. Threadgold is out.”

“Then he must be sent for.”

“Dr. Threadgold is out on a country round. He will not be back till dinner-time.”

The maid looked Wolfe over, summed him up after her fashion, and decided that he was not a raw boy.

“You’re the assistant?”

“I am.”

“Miss Perfrement has one of her heart attacks.”

“I’ll come at once.”

Miss Priscilla Perfrement lived in a narrow, red-brick house that was squeezed between two of the stouter mansions on Mulberry Green. No male thing intruded here. The neat, druggeted hall had no hat-stand, no cupboard as the pit of a man’s untidiness, no weather glass to be rapped and abused. The lamp was held by a nymph in plaster set tripping upon a pedestal of imitation marble. But the nymph had been defrauded of her nakedness. She wore a sort of white night-dress that was changed monthly and sent to the wash.

“Doctor, dear doctor, I’m dying!”

Where Death had stationed himself in the neat, stuffy, over-furnished room, was a matter of speculation. Wolfe saw a yellow-faced little woman in black alpaca, with grey side curls and a twittering face, propped against cushions in a plush-covered arm-chair. The heels of her shoes beat the carpet under the edge of her crinoline, and the crinoline itself had cocked itself forward with unseemly arrogance, giving glimpses of convulsed, white-stockinged legs.

“Dr. Threadgold is out, miss.”

“Oh, oh!”

“I’ve brought the assistant.”

Miss Perfrement jumped, and gave Wolfe a shocked stare. Her limbs twitched like the limbs of a choreic child.

“Oh dear, oh dear; Eliza, I’m dying!”

Wolfe looked at her very gravely, very judicially, and understood with what sort of sentimental sickness he had to do. Here was a good lady whose troubles had been so many pin-falls in the closeted selfishness of her little life, and who had been compelled to draw attention to herself by means of childish screams and tantrums. When Miss Perfrement felt unimportant and neglected, she had a “heart attack,” and her friends and neighbours would see Dr. Threadgold’s brougham rattling over the cobbles. These hysterical outbursts were essays in dissipation, and methods of attracting sympathy and notice.

Wolfe made a beginning.

“Will you let me see what I can do for you?”

“It’s my heart. I’m dying. Eliza, I’m dying. Where is Dr. Threadgold?”

Wolfe imprisoned Miss Perfrement’s wrist. She gave a rebellious squirm and then went rigid, but Wolfe was able to feel her pulse.

“Now, my dear madam!”

“Eliza, I’m dying!”

The gaunt maid came to Wolfe’s elbow.

“D’you think, sir, you understand Miss Perfrement’s case?”

“Kindly keep quiet a moment.”

Eliza stared and knitted up her black eyebrows, but Wolfe’s tone had smothered her officiousness. Dr. Threadgold was a very different sort of man. He was always polite to Miss Perfrement’s maid.

“How often does your mistress have these attacks?”

“Very often.”

“Thank you. Now, Miss Perfrement, I shall want to examine your chest. If you will let your maid unfasten your bodice.”

“Sir!”

Miss Perfrement stiffened.

“Sir, Dr. Threadgold never—Eliza, my smelling bottle.”

“Very well; I dare say I can manage without.”

Miss Perfrement’s maid stroked her mistress’s hair, and looked down at Wolfe with sceptical contempt. Dr. Threadgold could always manage matters without all this fussing. He had only to look at a patient, and to listen sympathetically to a vivid description of the symptoms in order to discover what was wrong.

Wolfe stood up and looked steadily at Miss Perfrement.

“I can assure you that there is no cause for alarm.”

“I’m dying. I know I’m dying! My heart’s turning over and over!”

“My dear madam—it is not. You are worrying yourself into a panic. Will you give your mistress a tumblerful of hot water, and send round for some medicine?”

The gaunt maid looked shocked. Hot water, indeed! A wail came from the arm-chair.

“Send for dear Dr. Threadgold, dear, good, clever, Dr. Threadgold!”

“You don’t realise, sir, how ill Miss Perfrement is.”

“I beg your pardon. I shall be obliged if you will follow my instructions.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind, sir. You ain’t grasping Miss Perfrement’s case.”

Wolfe looked at the woman, and then at her mistress. He was not tempted to dissemble the truth, and to give honey and humbug where asafœtida was needed. He and Miss Perfrement were better apart.

“I will send out and see if Dr. Threadgold can be found.”

“Do so, sir. I should think you had better, sir.”

And Wolfe took up his hat and left them.

Dr. Threadgold kept the midday meal waiting for more than an hour. He had been caught on the way home and hurried in to minister to Miss Priscilla Perfrement in her anguish. At the dinner-table Threadgold appeared perturbed and testy. He contradicted his wife without sweetening the contradiction, looked at Wolfe severely over the rims of his spectacles, and talked with pompous irritability on the responsibilities of public men. He glanced at Wolfe as they pushed back their chairs.

“For what we have received may the Lord make us truly thankful. My dear, tell the cook not to send up onions. Mr. Wolfe, I have a few words to say to you in the consulting-room.”

Wolfe went, following the twinkle of his employer’s stout little legs. Threadgold was solemn and sententious. He was slightly afraid of Wolfe, and his nervousness made him prance.

“What did you say, sir, to Miss Perfrement this morning? You seemed to have treated her with extreme brusqueness. She was greatly upset.”

“I told her the truth.”

“What do you mean by the truth? Do you know that Miss Perfrement is subject to heart attacks?”

“It was not a heart attack this morning, sir. And yet her maid told me it was typical.”

“Indeed, indeed. And what do you suggest?”

“Miss Perfrement appears to be a lady who likes little scenes and has a rather foolish thirst for sympathy.”

Dr. Threadgold’s white waistcoat was like a great, round, scandalised countenance.

“Do you mean to say, Mr. Wolfe, that you told Miss Perfrement she was a fool!”

“I told her that there was no cause for alarm. And she did not appear satisfied.”

“No!”

“I suppose——Oh, well, I think you had better warn me, sir, against such cases.”

Threadgold strutted irritably across the room.

“Mr. Wolfe, sir, when shall I teach you tact! Tact is the one thing that a doctor must cultivate. It is one of the essentials.”

“I quite understand you.”

“I must insist upon your using proper discretion. And by the way, there is another matter about which I wish to speak. We are using more drugs than usual. I see that two large orders have gone out to Murchison and Company in the last three months. We have never used anything like the quantity before.”

Wolfe stood like a watchful, silent spirit that busies itself with observing petty things.

“I have given what was necessary, sir.”

“No doubt. But I see you have a liking for the more expensive preparations. Probably you are ignorant of the relative cost, and you have dispensed away gallons of tinctures. It is unnecessary extravagance. In most cases the simple preparations are just as efficacious, and I can’t afford to pour expensive medicines down the throats of paup—of half the town.”

“I have only given what I considered right. I suppose, sir, you don’t want me to withhold the proper drugs?”

Threadgold flared up.

“Mr. Wolfe, sir, you misunderstand me. I am a gentleman and a Christian. But sheer waste, the needless using of expensive preparations!”

“I will try to exert my tact, sir.”

Threadgold glanced at him, and suddenly became deflated like a child’s balloon pricked with a pin.

“We will say no more, Mr. Wolfe, we will say no more. You have a very clumsy touch, sir. You will have to lighten it in order to succeed in general practice.”

Wolfe had the curiosity to look up Miss Perfrement’s record in the day-book and account ledger. He found a great number of entries. They occurred with valuable regularity, like the entry “Dined out” in the diary of a precise old bachelor.

Miss	Perfrement.
	Attendance.
	Mist. Antispas. VIII.
Miss	Perfrement’s maid.
	Advice.
	Pil. Cal. Sac. Haust. Mag. Sulph.
Miss	Perfrement’s dog.
	Advice.
	Unguent. Sulph.
Miss	Perfrement.
	Att.
	Mist. Aqua Sac. VIII.

Such were these entries, and Wolfe smiled over them—placebos, sugared waters, and sulphur for the lady’s pug. The account ledger showed that Dr. Threadgold’s exchequer profited heavily by Miss Perfrement’s “heart.” She was a valuable patient, and worth humouring. Wolfe closed the ledger with a slam.

Wolfe had many things to worry him when he made his way to George Lane on the afternoon of the day of his visit to Miss Perfrement. George Lane ran close to Turrell’s brewery, and at the back of the lane were the brewery stables, where the great, black dray horses had their quarters. Piled against the low brick wall that closed the back yards of George Lane lay the refuse from Turrell’s stables. It was allowed to accumulate there for months at a time.

As Burgess the cobbler said to Wolfe:

“It’s treating us like pigs, sir. You can’t get away from the smell—nohow. It’s in your food; it goes to bed with you, and you get up with it in the morning.”

Wolfe had suggested an appeal to Mr. Turrell.

“Speak to him! What’s the use, sir! Ain’t we his tenants?”

“Well he ought to clear it out.”

“Clear me out first, sir. Turrell won’t put up with a grumbler.”

It happened that Wolfe walked straight into Jasper Turrell at the corner of Malt Lane. The battle of Virgin’s Court had been fought a week ago, but Wolfe stopped and nailed his man.

“Mr. Turrell, may I have a word with you?”

“Twenty, sir, if you want to apologise.”

“It’s about that stable-yard of yours at the back of George Lane.”

“Oh, is it!”

“I don’t suppose, sir, you know the conditions there.”

Turrell drew in a breath, and his cheeks showed hollows.

“Look here, sir, what do you mean?”

“I mean, sir, that that yard of yours——”

“Upon my word, it is absolutely preposterous—a young fellow coming into a town like this, and trying to teach all of us our business. Dr. Threadgold is the responsible person here. Remember that, sir, and take yourself a little less seriously.”

His eyes threatened Wolfe, and Wolfe looked at him curiously.

“It is to your interest, sir, as much as to anybody else’s.”

“Oh, is it? Well, you leave it at that. See?”