Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/199

 184 we have to keep sacred from the world, however innocent in itself it may be—were all cast to the winds. Mr. Carlton forgot the past and the present in the future; and certain vague aspirings lying at the bottom of his heart were allowed to take a more tangible form than they had ever taken before. When the spirit is excited it imbues things with its own hues: they are apt to be very brilliant ones.

“I seem like a god to them,” he laughed, alluding to the extravagant homage recently paid him by the townsfolk. “Jove on Olympus never had a warmer ovation. I have become what I never intended—a man of note in the place. Any foolish charge against me—psha! they’d buffet the fellow bringing it. Nevertheless, I shall leave you to your sorrow, my good natives of South Wennock; and I know not why I have stopped with you so long. For how many years have I said to myself at waking, morning after morning, that another month should see me take my farewell of the place! and here I am still. Is it, that some invisible chain binds me to it—a chain that I cannot break? Why else do I stop? Or is it that some latent voice of caution—tush! I don’t care for those thoughts to-night.”

He broke off, rubbed his brow with his cambric handkerchief, nodded a salutation in response to one given him by a passer-by, and resumed his musings.

“My talents were not made to be hid under a bushel—and what else is it; a general practitioner in a paltry country town! I came here but as a stepping-stone, never intending to remain; and but for circumstances, to which we are all obliged to be slaves, I should not have remained. I think I have been a fool to stop so long, but I’ll leave it now. London is the field for me, and I shall go to it and take my degree. My reputation will follow me; I shall make use of these county aristocrats to recommend me; I shall try for her Majesty’s knightly sword upon my shoulder—'Rise up, Sir Lewis.’ I may be enrolled, in time, amidst the baronetage of the United Kingdom, and then my lady cannot carp at inequality of rank. A proud set, the Chesneys, and my wife the proudest. Yes, I will remove to London, and I may get on to the very highest rank permitted to men of physic. May get on! I will get on; for Lewis Carlton to will a thing is to do it. Look at Stephen Grey! was there ever such luck in this world? And if he could go triumphantly on, as he has done, without influential friends to back him, what may I not look to do? I am not sorry that luck has attended Stephen; nay, I am glad that it should be so. I have no enmity to him; I’d speed him on, myself, if I could. I wish him right well anywhere but in South Wennock— and that he’ll never come back to. But I hate his son. I should like to wring his neck. So long, however, as the insolent jackanapes behaves himself and does not cross my path—why, who are you?”

The last question was addressed to a female, and an exceedingly broad female, who stood in the shade of Mr. Carlton’s gate, dropping curtsies, just as he was about to turn into it.

“If it wasn’t for the night, sir, you’d know me well enough,” was the response. “Pepperfly, at your service, sir.”

“Oh, Nurse Pepperfly,” returned the surgeon, blandly; for somehow he always was bland to Mrs. Pepperfly. “You should stand further forward, and let your good-looking face be seen.”

“Well, now, you will have your joke, sir, remarked the nurse. “Says I to the folks wherever I goes, ‘If you want a pleasant, safe, good-hearted gentleman, as can bring you through this vale of sicknesses, just you send for Doctor Carlton.’ And I am only proud, sir, when I happens to be in conjunction with you, that’s all; which is not the happy case to-night, though I’m here, sir, to ask you to pay a visit perfessionally.”

“Where to?” asked Mr. Carlton. “What case is it?”

“It’s not a case of life and death, where you need run your legs off in a race again time,” luminously proceeded Mrs. Pepperfly. “Whether you goes to-morrow morning, or whether you goes to-morrow a'ternoon, it’ll come to the same, sir, as may be agreeable.”

“But where’s it to?” repeated Mr. Carlton, for the lady had stopped.

“It’s where I’ve been a-staying, sir, for the last few days; a private visit I’ve been on, and not perfessional, and she’s Mrs. Smith. I’m fetched out to-night, sir, to Mrs. Knagg, Knagg’s wife the broker’s, and Mrs. Smith says to me, ‘Call in at Dr. Carlton’s as you passes, and make my dooty to him, and say I’ve heered of his skill, and ask him to step in at his leisure to-morrow to prescribe for my child'—which a white swelling it is in its knee, sir, and t’other in the grave, as may be said, for ‘twont be long out of it; and me the last few days as I’ve been there, a worrying of her to let me come for Dr. Carlton.”

There were sundry embellishments in the above speech, which, in strict regard to truth, might have been omitted. Mr. Carlton, a shrewd man, took them for as much as they were worth. The name Smith had suggested to him but one woman of that name as likely to have had the lady before him on a visit.