The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866

On this particular afternoon, I spied her through the best-parlor window, sobbing dismally. When she heard and saw me, she tried to compose herself in vain; but the only account she had to give of her grief was, that "the mocking-bird sang so dreadfully, and the Doctor told Aunt Cumberland she [Nelly] was not going to die. There," added she, under her breath, "I didn't mean to say that!"

We had no chance to say more; for Mrs. Cumberland came in from her shopping, and inquired for some cap-ruffles, which she had given Nelly to make up for her. "She said she didn't feel well enough to go down town with me," said Mrs. Cumberland; "an' so I left her them to hem, 'cause the Doctor says she needs cheerful occupation; an' them are just the pootiest kind o' work for young ladies, an' ruther tryin' to old eyes."

This was unanswerable; and as I was obliged myself to go to some shops, and Nelly could not, with her swollen lids, I bade Mrs. Cumberland good by; but told her niece that I meant to call for her soon again, for the Doctor thought it would do both of us good to take a walk every day. She looked somewhat encouraged by this; and I hoped that the plan would have the twofold effect of making her think it would be ungracious to refuse to accompany me a second time, and of keeping her from crying lest she should again be caught at it.

When I reached home, I found it a home of strife. The pill was soon to be labelled. Dr. Physick wished to call it Julius; but nothing would do for his tyrannical wife but to have it bear his name.

"Thank you," said the Doctor, as I entered. "Aren't the sufferings of one generation under that dispensation enough for you? Do as you would be done by, Julia. How would you like yourself to be called Philemon?"

"I can't help that," persisted Mrs. Julia. "The name of Phil is a philter to me. Unless he bears it, I shall hate him."

"A likely story! What should you have done if he had been a girl?"

"Called him Phillis," answered the ready Julia, sturdily.

"Then what should you say to Philip, now?" interposed I in behalf of the helpless innocent,—(an interposition in return for which, ever after we have finished his medical education with a year in Paris, he ought in common gratitude to prescribe for me gratis, if I live to be as old and ill as Joyce Heth;—for Philip he was and is, and will be, I trust, for many a fine day,—the fine, honest, clever, useful fellow!)

"Here's your fee, Katy, for restoring my domestic supremacy—ahem! I hope Mrs. Physick did not hear," said the Doctor;—"domestic balance of power shall I say, my love,—or system of compromises?"

What "my love" desired him to say I cannot say, for I was deep in the note which he had disgorged for me from his not only omnivorous, but, alas! too often oblivious pocket. It was written on small-sized French paper, in a beautiful English hand, bore date, to my consternation, some days back, and ran as follows:—

    "Barberry Beach, Monday, Sept.—th, 18—.

"Dear Miss Morne:—

"I have been wishing to see you again, all through this month, but scarcely expecting it till now; because I knew how full your heart and hands must be at home. Now, however, since I have had the pleasure of hearing from the Doctor that Mrs. Physick is nearly well, perhaps it will not be too much to hope that you will find an hour to spare for me some day this week. I have no engagements made; and if you can appoint a time to come to me, I shall be here and deny myself to other visitors. I should send my barouche for you; but one of the ponies has hurt its hoof, and the Doctor says that you confine yourself too closely to your household cares, and that you would be all the better for a walk.

"Another indulgence which I have been promising myself,—that of painting some illustrations for my brother's next work,—I find I must not only put off, but forego. It would be some consolation to me to be able to make it over to you, and believe that you found half as much enjoyment in it as I have, on former occasions. The usual terms, when he has paid for such work, have been … [here she named a liberal sum]; but of course, if you like to undertake it, you will feel at liberty to name your own; and I shall be, as I am,

"Very gratefully yours,

    "Elizabeth Dudley.

"Miss Morne."

Between surprise, pleasure, and dismay at my apparent neglect, I exclaimed simply, "What shall I do!"

"In all dilemmas, consult your guardian," answered he; and I handed him the note by way of a Nemesis.

He read it aloud very honestly, date and all; and I had the satisfaction to hear his wife, who was fast getting him well in hand again, rebuke him.

"Whew!" whistled he with most appropriate contrition; "'Monday'! and it's Thursday now, and too late for to-day! I wish I mayn't have lost you the job, Katy. While the heart holds out, however, never give up the case! Put on your best bib and tucker when you get up to-morrow morning; and, as soon as you have got through ordering me an apple-dumpling, I will take you over there, and tell Miss Dudley who was to blame, and promise her, if she will forgive us, never to give her any assafœtida."

CHAPTER VII

I could scarcely sleep that night for eagerness and anticipation. Ever since the afternoon when the vision of Miss Dudley appeared, to startle me from my painting, in the little south parlor, she had been the foremost figure in my brightest day-dreams, as often as, with little Philip warm and slumberous on my knees, I could find time for day-dreams. Accordingly, I had been more than wishing—longing—to see her again; though I put off returning her visit, partly from real want of time, partly from uncertainty about what was the proper etiquette for me, and partly from the dread of dispelling some pleasant illusions, and finding that the Miss Dudley of my reveries belonged to the realm of my imagination rather than to that of my memory. I dreamed of her all that night, when I was not lying awake to think of her; and when, in the morning, I arose early to brush and brighten my somewhat faded black, the keen autumn air, instead of chilling me, seemed but to whet and sharpen my zest for my expedition.

Julia's toilet was not made when I heard the clatter of the recalcitrant De Quincey backing the chaise out of his beloved, but little be-lived in, stable. She sat up in bed, however, when I went in to kiss her, in spite of Mrs. Rocket, turned me round to the window to see whether I was looking my best, or, as she equivocally phrased it, "the best of which I was capable," told me, that I had got a little rouge the last time I was out, and must ask Miss Dudley whether it was not becoming, and hooked her forefingers into my naturally gekräuseltes hair, to pull it into what she always maintained to be the proper pose above my eyebrows.

Then down I ran, and off I went, through the town and along the road, between rocks and evergreens with here and there a gate among them that marked the entrance to the earthly paradise of some lucky gentleman.

"Sha'n't we be too early?" asked I, fidgeting, for my prosperity appeared to me, just now, too perfect to be permanent.

"No," said the Doctor. "They are early people at Barberry Beach,—not Sybarites in anything, so far as I can judge. It is near nine. Miss Dudley tells me I shall almost always find her visible by that time. If, not hearing from you, she has made other engagements, you know she is more likely to be at leisure now than later."

"She does not look well yet. What was the matter with her?"

"Angina pectoris. That is Greek to you, Katy. Pain in the heart, then."

"What made her have it?"

"That is a deep question in the most interesting of sciences,—that of the metamorphoses of diseases. Many men would answer it according to their many minds. To the best of my belief, the cause of Miss Dudley's having a pain in her heart lay in her great-grandfather's toe."

"O Doctor! what do you mean?"

"The gout."

"Well, that sounds very aristocratic and imposing; but, notwithstanding, I know you are laughing at me."

"No, I am not. It is no laughing matter."

"Why, is it dangerous?"

"Dangerous!" said he. "It is deadly. Why, Katy, I never shall dare to tell you anything again, if you are going to look so frightened! She did not when I told her."

"Does she know?"

"Yes, and makes no secret of it, and is not unlikely to mention it before you; so that you must accustom yourself to the idea, and be prepared to face it as she does."

"How came she to know?"

"She asked me. I gave up very early in my practice, for several reasons, the habit of lying to my patients. If they are cowards, or if, for any reason, I think the truth and the whole truth would shorten their days, I often tell them little or nothing; but I tell them nothing but the truth. She is not a person to be put off from knowing what she has a right to know."

"How did she take it?"

"Nobly and simply, without any affectation of indifference. As she put the question, I laid my hand on her pulse; and, as it went on pretty firmly, I went on too. When I had said all there was to say, she thanked me earnestly, and said, as sweetly as anything could possibly be said, that the information would add double weight to the cautions and other counsels I had given her, and told me that, if I ever came to be in a situation like hers, she trusted that I should find the comfort of being dealt with with candor and kindness like mine. After all, Katy, she may live yet many years, and die at last of something else; and that is about the best that can be prognosticated of you and me, my dear."

"'Tis true the young may die, but the old must," thought I. I was half comforted, and only half. Yet the pensive shadow of coming doom—or shall I not rather say the solemn dawn of approaching eternity?—seemed to lend a new and more unearthly charm to the lovely spiritual vision I cherished in my mind.

Presently, instead of passing a gate, the Doctor turned in at it, and drove smoothly up the gentle slope of a hard-rolled winding avenue lined with hemlocks. "Pretty, isn't it?" cried he. "O for the time when I shall retire upon my fortune, and leave my office to Phil the second! There, Katy! What do you think of that?"

What did I think? O, too much to be told, either then or now! From the dark trees one forward step of each of De Quincey's forefeet brought us out into a high amphitheatre, at the instant flooded with sunshine. A higher hill, wooded with evergreens and bossed with boulders, made a background behind it, on the right, for a large, low cottage of clear gray granite, with broad piazzas curtained with Virginia creepers and monthly honeysuckles, and cloistered on the south. In front of the cottage was a shaven lawn, rimmed with a hedge of graceful barberries, and lighted up by small circular spots of brown earth, teeming with salvia and other splendid autumn flowers. Beyond and on the left ran a long reach of rocky headlands, burning with golden-rod and wild-rose berries mingled with purple asters and white spiræa, and all along from below, but very near, spread out far and wide the inexpressible ocean. It was a rough, ridgy, sage-greenish, gray ocean, I remember, that morning, full of tumble and toss and long scalloped lines of spent foam, covered over with a dim, low half-dome of sky,—with seagulls flickering, and here and there a small, wild, ragged gypsy of a cloud, of a little darker gray, scudding lawlessly under,—and threw out in the strongest contrast the brilliant hues and sharp, clear outlines of the shore.

The Doctor sprang from the chaise, left me in it, and threw me the reins. I always wished he wouldn't, but he always would. The most I had to gain by pulling them, if De Quincey grew restless, was to make him back; and this was precisely what I least desired. My reasonable expostulations, however, could never obtain any more grace from him who should have been my guardian than a promise, if I would "make no fuss, and broken bones" came of it, that he would "mend me softly." Therefore I thought it most prudent not to expostulate; but my penance was this time a brief one. He had hardly entered the door when the tall, striking figure I recollected so well came dimly in view in one of the nearest bay-windows, tapped on the glass with one slender white-frilled hand, and nodded with a bright, glad smile; and back came the Doctor to help me out.

"It is all right, Katy. Miss Dudley wants you, and does not want me. If it rains, you can stay till I call for you. Otherwise, come back when you like. The first door to your left in the hall."

Miss Dudley met me in the parlor-door, laughing. "I should have come out to make prize of you," said she, "but they say it is rather bleak this morning, and I am still under orders. I had almost given you up for this week; but the Doctor assures me that he has already been suitably dealt with and brought to repentance, and so there is no more to be said on that point, especially as you have happened to hit on the very time when I am most alone, and when, as I have been accustomed to be the busiest, I feel my present idleness the most. You drove here, after all. You are not tired? What should you say, first, to a walk with me?"