Middlemarch, Page 27

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  "He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise--that I could beat him while he railed at me.--" --Troilus and Cressida.

  But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that werequite peremptory. From those visits to unsanitary Houndsley streets insearch of Diamond, he had brought back not only a bad bargain inhorse-flesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment which for a dayor two had deemed mere depression and headache, but which got so muchworse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going intothe dining-room, he threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to hismother's anxious question, said, "I feel very ill: I think you mustsend for Wrench."

  Wrench came, but did not apprehend anything serious, spoke of a "slightderangement," and did not speak of coming again on the morrow. He hada due value for the Vincys' house, but the wariest men are apt to bedulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes go throughtheir business with the zest of the daily bell-ringer. Mr. Wrench wasa small, neat, bilious man, with a well-dressed wig: he had a laboriouspractice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; andhe was already rather late before setting out on a four-miles drive tomeet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, arural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in thatdirection. Great statesmen err, and why not small medical men? Mr.Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white parcels, which this timehad black and drastic contents. Their effect was not alleviating topoor Fred, who, however, unwilling as he said to believe that he was"in for an illness," rose at his usual easy hour the next morning andwent down-stairs meaning to breakfast, but succeeded in nothing but insitting and shivering by the fire. Mr. Wrench was again sent for, butwas gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling's changedlooks and general misery, began to cry and said she would send for Dr.Sprague.

  "Oh, nonsense, mother! It's nothing," said Fred, putting out his hotdry hand to her, "I shall soon be all right. I must have taken cold inthat nasty damp ride."

  "Mamma!" said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the dining-roomwindows looked on that highly respectable street called Lowick Gate),"there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one. If I were you Iwould call him in. He has cured Ellen Bulstrode. They say he curesevery one."

  Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinkingonly of Fred and not of medical etiquette. Lydgate was only two yardsoff on the other side of some iron palisading, and turned round at thesudden sound of the sash, before she called to him. In two minutes hewas in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enoughto show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what wasbecoming.

  Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insistedwith remarkable instinct on every point of minor importance, especiallyon what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again. Thatthere might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; butthe case was serious enough to make him dismiss that consideration: hewas convinced that Fred was in the pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever,and that he had taken just the wrong medicines. He must go to bedimmediately, must have a regular nurse, and various appliances andprecautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular. PoorMrs. Vincy's terror at these indications of danger found vent in suchwords as came most easily. She thought it "very ill usage on the partof Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preferenceto Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend. Why Mr.Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she could not forthe life of her understand. He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher's whenthey had the measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that heshould. And if anything should happen--"

  Here poor Mrs. Vincy's spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throatand good-humored face were sadly convulsed. This was in the hall outof Fred's hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawing-room door, andnow came forward anxiously. Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, saidthat the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising, and that thisform of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would goimmediately to the druggist's and have a prescription made up in orderto lose no time, but he would write to Mr. Wrench and tell him what hadbeen done.

  "But you must come again--you must go on attending Fred. I can't havemy boy left to anybody who may come or not. I bear nobody ill-will,thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he'd betterhave let me die--if--if--"

  "I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?" said Lydgate, reallybelieving that Wrench was not well prepared to deal wisely with a caseof this kind.

  "Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, coming to hermother's aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.

  When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did notcare if he never came into his house again. Lydgate should go on now,whether Wrench liked it or not. It was no joke to have fever in thehouse. Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to dinner onThursday. And Pritchard needn't get up any wine: brandy was the bestthing against infection. "I shall drink brandy," added Mr. Vincy,emphatically--as much as to say, this was not an occasion for firingwith blank-cartridges. "He's an uncommonly unfortunate lad, is Fred.He'd need have--some luck by-and-by to make up for all this--else Idon't know who'd have an eldest son."

  "Don't say so, Vincy," said the mother, with a quivering lip, "if youdon't want him to be taken from me."

  "It will worret you to death, Lucy; _that_ I can see," said Mr. Vincy,more mildly. "However, Wrench shall know what I think of the matter."(What Mr. Vincy thought confusedly was, that the fever might somehowhave been hindered if Wrench had shown the proper solicitude abouthis--the Mayor's--family.) "I'm the last man to give in to the cryabout new doctors, or new parsons either--whether they're Bulstrode'smen or not. But Wrench shall know what I think, take it as he will."

  Wrench did not take it at all well. Lydgate was as polite as he couldbe in his offhand way, but politeness in a man who has placed you at adisadvantage is only an additional exasperation, especially if hehappens to have been an object of dislike beforehand. Countrypractitioners used to be an irritable species, susceptible on the pointof honor; and Mr. Wrench was one of the most irritable among them. Hedid not refuse to meet Lydgate in the evening, but his temper wassomewhat tried on the occasion. He had to hear Mrs. Vincy say--

  "Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so?-- Togo away, and never to come again! And my boy might have been stretcheda corpse!"

  Mr. Vincy, who had been keeping up a sharp fire on the enemy Infection,and was a good deal heated in consequence, started up when he heardWrench come in, and went into the hall to let him know what he thought.

  "I'll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke," said the Mayor,who of late had had to rebuke offenders with an official air, and howbroadened himself by putting his thumbs in his armholes.-- "To letfever get unawares into a house like this. There are some things thatought to be actionable, and are not so-- that's my opinion."

  But irrational reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of beinginstructed, or rather the sense that a younger man, like Lydgate,inwardly considered him in need of instruction, for "in point of fact,"Mr. Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions,which would not wear. He swallowed his ire for the moment, but heafterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the case. The housemight be a good one, but Mr. Wrench was not going to truckle to anybodyon a professional matter. He reflected, with much probability on hisside, that Lydgate would by-and-by be caught tripping too, and that hisungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by hisprofessional brethren, would by-and-by recoil on himself. He threw outbiting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only of a quack, to gethimself a factitious reputation with credulous people. That cant aboutcures was never got up by sound practitioners.

  This was a poin
t on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench coulddesire. To be puffed by ignorance was not only humiliating, butperilous, and not more enviable than the reputation of theweather-prophet. He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidstwhich all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himselfas much as Mr. Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional openness.

  However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, andthe event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch. Somesaid, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy hadthreatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning herson. Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate's passing by wasprovidential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and thatBulstrode was in the right to bring him forward. Many people believedthat Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode;and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered herinformation in misleading fragments caught between the rows of herknitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural sonof Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions ofevangelical laymen.

  She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother,who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing--

  "I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should besorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate."

  "Why, mother," said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, "youknow very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He neverheard of Bulstrode before he came here."

  "That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden," saidthe old lady, with an air of precision.--"But as to Bulstrode--thereport may be true of some other son."