Hard Cash

"A female physician, child? There is no such thing. No; a.s.surance is becoming a characteristic of our s.e.x; but we have not yet intruded ourselves into the learned professions, thank Heaven."

"Excuse me, mamma, there are one or two; for the newspapers say so."

"'Well, dear, there are none in this country, happily."

"'What, not in London?"

"No."

"Then what _is_ the use of such a great overgrown place, all smoke, if there is nothing in it you cannot find in the country? Let us go back to Barkington this very day, this minute, this instant; oh, pray, pray."

"And so you shall--to-morrow. But you must pity your poor mother's anxiety, and see Dr. Chalmers first."

"Oh, mamma, not another surgeon! He frightened me; he hurt me. I never heard of such a thing; oh, please not another surgeon."

"It is not a surgeon, dear; it is the Court Physician."

The Court Physician detected "a somewhat morbid condition of the great nervous centres." To an inquiry whether there was heart-disease, he replied, "Pooh!" On being told Sir William had announced heart-disease, he said, "Ah! _that alters the case entirely._" He maintained, however, that it must be trifling, and would go no further, the nervous system once restored to its healthy tone. "O Jupiter, aid us! Blue pill and Seidhitz powder."

Dr. Kenyon found the mucous membrane was irritated and required soothing. "O Jupiter, &c."

Mrs. Dodd returned home consoled and confused; Julia listless and apathetic. Tea was ordered, with two or three kinds of bread, thinnest slices of meat, and a little blane mange, &c., their favourite repast after a journey; and whilst the tea was drawing, Mrs. Dodd looked over the card-tray and enumerated the visitors that had called during their absence. "Dr. Short-- Mr. Osmond--Mrs. Hetherington--Mr. Alfred Hardie--Lady Dewry--Mrs. and Miss Bosanquet. What a pity Edward was not at home, dear; Mr. Alfred Hardie's visit must have been to him."

"Oh, of course, mamma."

"A very manly young gentleman."

"'Oh, yes. No. He is so rude."

"Is he? Ah! he was ill just then, and pain irritates gentlemen; they are not accustomed to it, poor Things."

"That is like you, dear mamma; making excuses for one." Julia added faintly, "But he is so impetuous."

"I have a daughter who reconciles me to impetuosity. And he _must_ have a good heart, he was so kind to my boy."

Julia looked down smiling; but presently seemed to be seized with a spirit of contradiction: she began to pick poor Alfred to pieces; he was this, that, and the other; and then so bold, she might say impudent.

Mrs. Dodd replied calmly that he was very kind to her boy.

"Oh, mamma, you cannot approve all the words he spoke."

"It is not worth while to remember all the words young gentlemen speak now-a-days. He was very kind to my boy, I remember that."

The tea was now ready, and Mrs. Dodd sat down, and patted a chair, with a smile of invitation for Julia to come and sit beside her. But Julia said, "In one minute, dear," and left the room.

When she came back, she fluttered up to her mother and kissed her vehemently, then sat down radiant. "Ah!" said Mrs. Dodd, "why, you are looking yourself once more. How do you feel now? Better?"

"How do I feel? Let me see: The world seems one e-nor-mous flower-garden, and Me the b.u.t.terfly it all belongs to." She spake, and to confirm her words the airy thing went waltzing, sailing, and fluttering round the room, and sipping mamma every now and then on the wing.

In this buoyancy she remained some twenty-four hours; and then came clouds and chills, which, in their turn, gave way to exultation, duly followed by depression. Her spirits were so uncertain, that things too minute to justify narration turned the scale either way: a

One drizzly afternoon they were sitting silent and saddish in the drawing-room, Mrs. Dodd correcting the mechanical errors in a drawing of Julia's, and admiring the rare dash and figure, and Julia doggedly studying Dr. Whately's Logic, with now and then a sigh, when suddenly a trumpet seemed to articulate in the little hall: "Mestress Doedd at home?"

The lady rose from her seat, and said with a smile of pleasure, "I hear a voice."

The door opened, and in darted a grey-headed man, with handsome but strongly marked features, laughing and shouting like a schoolboy broke loose. He cried out, "Ah! I've found y' out at last." Mrs. Dodd glided to meet him, and put out both her hands, the palms downwards, with the prettiest air of ladylike cordiality; he shook them heartily. "The vagabins said y' had left the town; but y' had only flitted from the quay to the subbubs; 'twas a pas.h.i.+nt put me on the scint of ye. And how are y' all these years? an' how's Sawmill?"

"Sawmill! What is that?"

"It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill?"

"Dear no! Have you forgotten?--David."

"Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where is he?"

Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but expect----

"Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em oncannall! Halloa! why, this will be the little girl grown up int' a wumman while ye look round."

"Yes, may good friend; and her mother's darling."

"And she's a bonny la.s.s, I can tell ye. But no freend to the Dockers, I see."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Dodd sadly, "looks are deceitful; she is under medical advice at this very----"

"Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes it." And he burst into a ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face elongated. "Lord sake, mad'm," said he impressively, "mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily a.s.s called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old a.s.sa.s.sin called Short, as long as a maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister Pomonee, the vagabins."

Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and exchanged speaking glances with Julia. "However," she said calmly, "I _have_ consulted Mr. Osmond and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon." And she felt invulnerable behind her phalanx of learning and reputation.

"Good Hivens!" roared the visitor, "what a gauntlet o' gabies for one girl to run; and come out alive! And the picter of health. My faith, Miss Floree, y' are tougher than ye look."

"My daughter's name is Julia," observed Mrs. Dodd, a little haughtily; but instantly recovering herself, she said, "This is Dr. Sampson, love--an old friend of your mother's."

"And th' Author an' Invintor of th' great Chronothairmal Therey o'

Midicine, th' Unity Perriodicity an' Remittency of all disease," put in the visitor, with such prodigious swiftness of elocution that the words went tumbling over one another like railway carriages out on pleasure, and the sentence was a pile of loud, indistinct syllables.

Julia's lovely eyes dilated at this clishmaclaver, and she bowed coldly. Dr. Sampson had revealed in this short interview nearly all the characteristics of voice, speech, and manner, she had been taught from infancy to shun: boisterous, gesticulatory, idiomatic; and had taken the discourse out of her mamma's mouth twice. Now Albion Villa was a Red Indian hut in one respect: here n.o.body interrupted.

Mrs. Dodd had little personal egotism, but she had a mother's, and could not spare this opportunity of adding another Doctor to her collection: so she said hurriedly, "Will you permit me to show you what your learned confreres have prescribed her?" Julia sighed aloud, and deprecated the subject with earnest furtive signs; Mrs. Dodd would not see them. Now, Dr. Sampson was himself afflicted with what I shall venture to call a mental ailment; to wit, a furious intolerance of other men's opinions; he had not even patience to hear them. "Mai--dear--mad'm," said he hastily, "when you've told me their names, that's enough. Short treats her for liver, Sir William goes in for lung disease or heart, Chalmers sis it's the nairves, and Kinyon the mookis membrin; and _I_ say they are fools and lyres all four."

"Julia!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Dodd, "this is very extraordinary."

"No, it is not extraordinary," cried Dr. Sampson defiantly; "nothing is extraordinary. D'ye think I've known these shallow men thirty years, and not plumbed 'um?"

"Shallow, my good friend? Excuse me! they are the ablest men in your own branch of your own learned profession."

"Th' ablest! Oh, you mean the money-makingest: now listen me! our lairned Profession is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of beer. What rises to the top?" Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself furiously, "THE Sc.u.m."

This blast blown, he moderated a little. "Look see!" said he, "up to three or four thousand a year, a Docker is often an honest man, and sometimes knows something of midicine; not much, because it is not taught anywhere. But if he is making over five thousand, he must be a rogue or else a fool: either he has booed an' booed, an' cript an' crawled, int' wholesale collusion with th' apothecary an' the accoucheur--the two jockeys that drive John Bull's faemily coach--and they are sucking the pas.h.i.+nt togither, like a leash o' leeches: or else he has turned spicialist; has tacked his name to some poplar disorder, real or imaginary; it needn't exist to be poplar. Now, those four you have been to are spicialists, and that means monomaniues--their buddies exspatiate in West-ind squares, but their souls dwell in a n'alley, ivery man jack of 'em: Aberford's in Stomich Alley, Chalmers's in Nairve Court, Short's niver stirs out o' Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in Kidney Close, Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin Mews, and Hibbard's in Lung Pa.s.sage. Look see! nixt time y' are out of sorts, stid o' consultin'