"You don"t love your aunt Lorrimer very much?"
"No, I don"t love her--I never said I did, did I?"
"No, but I mean, you don"t like her, you don"t care about her?"
"No," said mamma, languidly, and looking wonderingly at him with her large pretty eyes. "I don"t very much--I don"t quite know--I have an affection for her."
"You don"t love her, and you don"t even like her, but you have an affection for her," laughed papa.
"You are so teasing. I did not say that; what I mean is, she has a great many faults and oddities, and I don"t like them--but I have an affection for her. Why should it seem so odd to you that one should care for one"s relations? I do feel that for her, and there let it rest."
"Well, but it ought not to rest there--as you do like her."
"Why, dear--have you heard anything of her?"
"No; but there is one thing I should not object to hear about her just now."
"One thing? What do you mean, dear?"
"That she had died, and left us her money. I know what a brute I am, and how shocked you are; but I a.s.sure you we rather want it at this moment.
You write to her, don"t you?"
"N-not very often. Once since we saw her at Naples."
"Well, that certainly is not very often," he laughed. "But she writes to you. You thought she seemed rather to like us--I mean you?"
"Yes."
"She has no one else to care about that I know of. I don"t pretend to care about her--I think her an old fool."
"She isn"t that, dear," said mamma, quietly.
"I wish we knew where she is now. Seriously, you ought to write to her a little oftener, dear; I wish you would."
"I"ll write to her, certainly, as soon as I am a little more myself. I could not do it just to-day; I have not been very well, you know."
"Oh! my darling, I did not mean to hurry you. Of course, not till you feel perfectly well; don"t suppose I could be such a monster. But--I don"t want, of course, to pursue her--but there is a middle course between that and having to drop her. She really has no one else, poor old thing! to care about, or to care about her. Not that _I_ care about her, but you"re her kinswoman, and I don"t see why----"
At this moment the door opened, and there entered, with the air of an a.s.sumed intimacy and a certain welcome, a person whom I little expected to see there. I saw him with a shock. It was the man with the fine eyes and great forehead, the energetic gait and narrow shoulders. The grim, mean-looking, intelligent, agreeable man of fifty, Mr. Droqville.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE DOCTOR"S NEWS.
"Oh! how do you do, Doctor Droqville?" said mamma, with a very real welcome in looks and accent.
"How d"ye do, Droqville?" said my father, a little dryly, I fancied.
"Have you had your breakfast?" asked mamma.
"Two hours ago."
"We are very late here," said papa.
"I should prefer thinking I am very early, in my primitive quarters,"
answered Mr. Droqville.
"I had not an idea we should have found you in town, just now."
"In season or out of season, a physician should always be at his post.
I"m beginning to learn rather late there"s some truth in that old proverb about moss, you know, and rolling stones, and it costs even a bachelor something to keep body and soul together in this mercenary, tailoring, cutlet-eating world." At this moment he saw me, and made me a bow. "Miss Ware?" he said, a little inquiringly to mamma. "Yes, I knew perfectly it was the young lady I had seen at Malory. Some faces are not easily forgotten," he added, gallantly, with a glance at me. "I threatened to run away with her, but she was firm as fate," he smiled and went on; "and I paid a visit to our friend Carmel, you know."
"And how did you think he was?" she asked; and I listened with interest for the answer.
"He"s consumptive. He"s at this side of the Styx, it is true; but his foot is in the water, and Charon"s obolus is always between his finger and thumb. He"ll die young. He may live five years, it is true; but he is not likely to live two. And if he happens to take cold and begins to cough, he might not last four months."
"My wife has been complaining," said papa; "I wish you could do something for her. You still believe in Doctor Droqville? I think she half believes you have taken a degree in divinity as well as in medicine; if so, a miracle, now and then, would be quite in your way."
"But I a.s.sure you, Doctor Droqville, I never said any such thing. It was you who thought," she said to my father, "that Doctor Droqville was in orders."
Droqville laughed.
"But, Doctor Droqville, I think," said mamma, "you would have made a very good priest."
"There are good priests, madame, of various types; Madame de Genlis, for instance, commends an abbe of her acquaintance; he was a most respectable man, she says, and never ridiculed revealed religion but with moderation."
Papa laughed, but I could see that he did not like Doctor Droqville.
There was something dry, and a little suspicious in his manner, so slight that you could hardly define it, but which contrasted strikingly with the decision and _insouciance_ of Doctor Droqville"s talk.
"But, you know, you never do that, even with moderation; and you can argue so closely when you please."
"There, madame, you do me too much honour. I am the worst logician in the world. I wrote a part of an essay on Christian chivalry, and did pretty well, till I began to reason; the essay ended, and I was swallowed up in this argument--pray listen to it. To sacrifice your life for the lady you adore is a high degree of heroism; but to sacrifice your soul for her is the highest degree of heroism. But the highest degree of heroism is but another name for Christianity; and, therefore, to act thus can"t sacrifice your soul, and if it doesn"t you don"t practise a heroism, and therefore no Christianity, and, therefore, you do sacrifice your soul. But if you do sacrifice your soul, it is the highest heroism--therefore Christianity; and, therefore, you don"t sacrifice your soul, and so, _da capo_, it goes on for ever--and I can"t extricate myself. When I mean to make a boat, I make a net; and this argument that I invented to carry me some little way on my voyage to truth, not only won"t hold water, but has caught me by the foot, entangles, and drowns me. I never went on with my essay."
In this cynical trifling there was a contemptuous jocularity quite apparent to me, although mamma took it all in good faith, and said:
"It is very puzzling, but it can"t be true; and I should think it almost a duty to find out where it is wrong."
Papa laughed, and said:
"My dear, don"t you see that Doctor Droqville is mystifying us?"
I was rather glad, for I did not like it. I was vexed for mamma. Doctor Droqville"s talk seemed to me an insolence.
"It is quite true, I am no logician; I had better continue as I am. I make a tolerable physician; if I became a preacher, with my defective ratiocination, I should inevitably lose myself and my audience in a labyrinth. You make but a very short stay in town, I suppose?" he broke off suddenly. "It isn"t tempting, so many houses sealed--a city of the dead. One does not like, madame, as your Doctor Johnson said to Mrs.