"He"s better here," said Mrs. Derrick with a cool disposing of the subject. "What did you want to keep him up there for, doctor?"
"Only acted upon a vigorous principle of Mr. Linden"s nature, madam.--If I had ordered him to come, he would have stayed. May I see him?"
And Mrs. Derrick preceded the doctor up stairs, opened the door of the room and shut it after him. Mr. Linden was on the couch, but it was wheeled round by the side of the fire now, for the morning was cool. A little heap of unopened letters and post despatches lay before him, but the white paper in his hand seemed not to have come from the heap. As the doctor entered, this was folded up and transferred to the disabled hand for safe keeping.
Mr. Linden had that quality (much more common among women than among men) of looking well in undress; but let no one suppose that I mean the combination of carelessness and disorder which generally goes by that name, and which shews (most of all) undress of the mind. I mean simply that style of dress which Sam Weller might call "Ease afore Ceremony;"--in its delicate particularity, Mr. Linden"s undress might have graced a ball-room; and, as I have said, the dark brown wrapper with its wide sleeves was becoming. Dr. Harrison might easily see that his patient was not only different from most of the neighbourhood, but also from most people that he had seen anywhere; and that peculiar reposeful look was strongly indicative of power.
"Good morning!" said the doctor. "Do you expect me to behave well this morning?"
"Why no--" said Mr. Linden. "My experience hitherto has not led me to expect anything of the sort."
The doctor stood before the fire, looking down at him, smiling almost, yet with a keen eye, as at a man whose measure he had not yet succeeded in taking.
"What did you come down here for, without my leave? And how do you do?
For you see, I mean to behave well."
"I came down because I wanted to be at home," said Mr. Linden. "And I did not ask leave, because I meant to come whether or no. You see what a respect I have for your orders."
"Yes," said the doctor,--"that is a very ancient sort of respect. How do you do, Linden?"
"I suppose, well,--as to feeling, I should not care to go through the Olympic games, even in imagination; and the various sensations in my left arm make me occasionally wish they were in my right."
The doctor proceeded to an examination of the arm. It was found not to be taking the road to healing so readily as had been hoped.
"I am afraid it may be a somewhat tedious affair," said Dr. Harrison, as he renewed the bandages in the way they ought to be. "I wish I had hold of that fellow! This may take a little time to come to a harmonious disposition, Linden, and give you a little annoyance. And at the same time, it"s what you deserve!" said he, retaking his disengaged manner as he finished what he had to do. "I almost wish I could threaten you with a fever, or something serious; but I see you are as sound as that "axletree" our friend spoke of the other day. There it is! You have learned to do evil with impunity. For I confess this has nothing to do with the exercise of your lawless disposition yesterday.
Why didn"t you let me bring you, if you wanted to come? That old fellow can"t have anything drawn by horses, that goes easier than a harrow!"
"Let you bring me!" said Mr. Linden. "Would you have done it against your own orders?"
"Under your authority! which is equal to anything, you know."
"Well," said Mr. Linden, "will you take a seat under my authority, and then take the benefit of my fire? What is going on in the outer world?"
"I haven"t any idea!" said the doctor. "Pattaqua.s.set seems to me to be, socially, at one extreme pole of the axletree before-mentioned, and while I am here I feel no revolution of the great ma.s.s heaving beyond.
It takes away one"s breath, does Pattaqua.s.set."
"You are making it akin to "the music of the spheres,"" said Mr. Linden.
"Is that what you find in Pattaqua.s.set?" said the doctor. "Your ears must be pleasantly const.i.tuted--or more agreeably saluted than those of other mortals. The only music I know of here is Miss Derrick"s voice.
Does she feed upon roses, like the Persian bulbul?"
"I should suppose not--unless roses impart their colour in that way,"
said Mr. Linden, softly turning the folded paper from side to side.
"This is a nice place," said the doctor surveying the room--"and you look very comfortable. I should like to take your invitation and sit down--but I mustn"t. Won"t you try and put a good opinion of me into the head of Mrs Derrick?"
"What an extraordinary request!" said Mr. Linden, laughing a little.
"Pray what am I to understand by it? And why mustn"t you sit down?--here is something to rejoice your heart with a few of the aforesaid upheavings of Society;" and he handed the doctor an unopened foreign newspaper.
"Absolutely irresistible!" said the doctor, and he broke the cover, took a chair and sat down before the fire; where for awhile to all appearance he also made himself "comfortable"; and certainly turned and returned and ran over the paper in an artistic manner.
"After all," said he, "it"s a bore! this alternation of knocking each other down which the nations of the earth practise,--and the societies,--and the men! It"s a pugilistic world we live in, Linden.
It"s a bore to keep up with them,--for one must know who"s atop--both in Europe and in Pattaqua.s.set--where you are just now the king of men"s mouths--And all the while it don"t a pin signify, except to the one who is atop;--I beg your pardon!"
"How long must I, being "atop," lie here? All this week?"
"What will you do if I say more than that?"
"Why I"ll listen respectfully. Do you know I like to see you sitting there?--Here is another paper for you."
The doctor looked at him with an odd, frankly inquisitive smile; but he only took the paper to play with it.
"I wonder if I may ask a roundabout favour from you?"
"You may ask anything--" said Mr. Linden. "I would rather have it in a straight-forward form."
"Can"t," said the doctor, "because it is crooked. I suppose at this hour every lady in Pattaqua.s.set expects that her friends will not call her away from her affairs; and I stupidly forgot to deliver my message when I had a moment"s chance this morning. Now as it is possible you may see this--if she cannot be called the silver-footed Thetis, she is certainly the silver-tongued--you would know how to address her?"
"Thetis!--probably, when I see her."
"I may presume you will know her when you see her,--and that brings me to my point. I have got some good microscopic preparations which I am to have the pleasure of exhibiting to-night to some friends of my sister. Now it would greatly add to her pleasure and mine, if this mortal Polyhymnia will consent to be of the number--and this is what I was going to ask you, if you please, to communicate to her or to her mother, in whose good graces, as I told you," said the doctor with a funny smile, "I don"t think I have the honour to stand high. Sophy would have written this morning, but I gave her no chance. I will call for Miss Derrick this evening if she will allow me."
Mr. Linden took out his pencil and made a note of the facts.
"First," he said, "I am to communicate, then you are to call, after that to exhibit. Do you call that crooked?--why it"s as straight as the road from here to your house."
Dr. Harrison looked--and for a minute did not anything else.
"For your arm, Linden," he said then getting up from his chair, and a smile of doubtful comicality moving his lip a little--"we shall know better about it in two or three weeks; but certainly I think you must be content to stay at home for double those--that"s undoubted."
Mr. Linden gave the doctor a quick glance, but the smile which followed was "undoubted" in another way.
"When two opposing forces meet at right angles, doctor," he said, "you know what happens to the object. Not contented inertia."
"Contented! no, very likely,--not when it is _this_ object. But you will find a third force will establish the inertia."
"What is your third force?"
"The necessity of the case," said the doctor seriously.
But to that Mr. Linden made no reply. The conversation had been kept up not only against weakness but against pain, and he lay very still and colourless for a long time after the doctor closed the door.
Meanwhile Faith, busy at her brown moreen, made her mother"s job of mending seem like embroidery; but by degrees Mrs. Derrick"s face became thoughtful, and she said, rather emphatically,
"Child, have you been up to see Mr. Linden to-day?"
Faith"s hammer dropped, and her hands too.