Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1793 page)

At the close of the next day’s journey, Mr. Thomas Idle’s ankle became much swollen and inflamed.  There are reasons which will presently explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact direction in which that journey lay, or the place in which it ended.  It was a long day’s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads, and a long day’s getting out and going on before the horses, and fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of Mr. Goodchild, who in the fatigues of such labours congratulated himself on attaining a high point of idleness.  It was at a little town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the night — a very little town, with the purple and brown moor close upon its one street; a curious little ancient market-cross set up in the midst of it; and the town itself looking much as if it were a collection of great stones piled on end by the Druids long ago, which a few recluse people had since hollowed out for habitations.

‘Is there a doctor here?’ asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination of Mr. Idle’s ankle, with the aid of a candle.

‘Ey, my word!’ said the landlady, glancing doubtfully at the ankle for herself; ‘there’s Doctor Speddie.’

‘Is he a good Doctor?’

‘Ey!’ said the landlady, ‘I ca’ him so.  A’ cooms efther nae doctor that I ken.  Mair nor which, a’s just THE doctor heer.’

‘Do you think he is at home?’

Her reply was, ‘Gang awa’, Jock, and bring him.’

Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in splashing the carpet, set off promptly.  A very few minutes had elapsed when he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door before him and bursting it open with his head.

‘Gently, Jock, gently,’ said the Doctor as he advanced with a quiet step.  ‘Gentlemen, a good evening.  I am sorry that my presence is required here.  A slight accident, I hope?  A slip and a fall?  Yes, yes, yes.  Carrock, indeed?  Hah!  Does that pain you, sir?  No doubt, it does.  It is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has been badly strained.  Time and rest, sir!  They are often the recipe in greater cases,’ with a slight sigh, ‘and often the recipe in small.  I can send a lotion to relieve you, but we must leave the cure to time and rest.’

This he said, holding Idle’s foot on his knee between his two hands, as he sat over against him.  He had touched it tenderly and skilfully in explanation of what he said, and, when his careful examination was completed, softly returned it to its former horizontal position on a chair.

He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but afterwards fluently.  He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old gentleman, with an appearance at first sight of being hard-featured; but, at a second glance, the mild expression of his face and some particular touches of sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected this impression and assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak hill-weather, as the true cause of that appearance.  He stooped very little, though past seventy and very grey.  His dress was more like that of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain black suit, and a plain white neck-kerchief tied behind like a band.  His black was the worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat, and his linen was a little frayed at the hems and edges.  He might have been poor — it was likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot — or he might have been a little self-forgetful and eccentric.  Any one could have seen directly, that he had neither wife nor child at home.  He had a scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate humanity towards others which claimed a gentle consideration for himself.  Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was examining the limb, and as he laid it down.  Mr. Goodchild wishes to add that he considers it a very good likeness.

It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor Speddie was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle’s, and had, when a young man, passed some years in Thomas Idle’s birthplace on the other side of England.  Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr. Goodchild’s apprenticeship, also happened to be well known to him.  The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of the meeting would of themselves have established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he would send his assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor’s leave, he would accompany him, and bring it back.  (Having done nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, Francis began to fear that he was not in a state of idleness.)

Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis Goodchild, ‘as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few more minutes of Mr. Goodchild’s society than he could otherwise have hoped for,’ and they went out together into the village street.  The rain had nearly ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind from the north-east, and stars were shining from the peaceful heights beyond them.

Doctor Speddie’s house was the last house in the place.  Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and lonesome.  The wind moaned in a low, dull, shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless creature that knew the winter was coming.  It was exceedingly wild and solitary.  ‘Roses,’ said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; ‘but they get cut to pieces.’

The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side.  The door of one of these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word of welcome to his guest.  It, too, was a low room, half surgery and half parlour, with shelves of books and bottles against the walls, which were of a very dark hue.  There was a fire in the grate, the night being damp and chill.  Leaning against the chimney-piece looking down into it, stood the Doctor’s Assistant.

A man of a most remarkable appearance.  Much older than Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that was nothing.  What was startling in him was his remarkable paleness.  His large black eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his figure, were at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor.  There was no vestige of colour in the man.  When he turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had looked round at him.

‘Mr. Lorn,’ said the Doctor.  ‘Mr. Goodchild.’

The Assistant, in a distraught way — as if he had forgotten something — as if he had forgotten everything, even to his own name and himself — acknowledged the visitor’s presence, and stepped further back into the shadow of the wall behind him.  But, he was so pale that his face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and really could not be hidden so.

‘Mr. Goodchild’s friend has met with accident, Lorn,’ said Doctor Speddie.  ‘We want the lotion for a bad sprain.’

A pause.

‘My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night.  The lotion for a bad sprain.’

‘Ah! yes!  Directly.’

He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles.  But, though he stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards them, Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from the man.  When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing him, with some trouble in his face.  ‘He is absent,’ explained the Doctor, in a low voice.  ‘Always absent.  Very absent.’

‘Is he ill?’

‘No, not ill.’

‘Unhappy?’

‘I have my suspicions that he was,’ assented the Doctor, ‘once.’

Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied these words with a benignant and protecting glance at their subject, in which there was much of the expression with which an attached father might have looked at a heavily afflicted son.  Yet, that they were not father and son must have been plain to most eyes.  The Assistant, on the other hand, turning presently to ask the Doctor some question, looked at him with a wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and sustainment in life.

It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what was before him.  Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes and thoughts reverted to the Assistant.  The Doctor soon perceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity, said:

‘Lorn!’

‘My dear Doctor.’

‘Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?  You will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild can.’

‘With pleasure.’

The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.

‘Lorn!’ said the Doctor, calling after him.

He returned.

‘Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.  Don’t hurry.  Excuse my calling you back.’

‘It is not,’ said the Assistant, with his former smile, ‘the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.’  With those words he went away.

‘Mr. Goodchild,’ said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his former troubled expression of face, ‘I have seen that your attention has been concentrated on my friend.’

‘He fascinates me.  I must apologise to you, but he has quite bewildered and mastered me.’

‘I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,’ said the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild’s, ‘become in the course of time very heavy.  I will tell you something.  You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious names.  I know I may trust you.  I am the more inclined to confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by the current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early life.  Will you please to draw a little nearer?’

Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus: speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind, though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.

When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.  He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go.  His father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him.  Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the great business after his father’s death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his father’s lifetime.  Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently indignant when he found that his son took after him.  This may be true or not.  I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.

Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would go to the races.  He did not reach the town till towards the close of the evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel.  Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it.  In the race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors.  As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.  Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful.  He tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer.  No accommodation for the night of any sort was left.  All the bright golden sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.

To a young fellow of Arthur’s temperament, the novelty of being turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing piece of experience.  He went on, with his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the town.  By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon going to rain.