“We must have satire, pungent, biting satire; Such is the vile condition of our nature.
Such our depraved and vicious appetites,
No other food will suit our palsied taste.”
Camoens, by H. S. G. Tucker.
At the corner of the street a baker’s boy and a gentleman’s page were standing together, laughing at something which the latter held in his hand, and which his companion was perusing over his shoulder.
“Now, ain’t that good?” exclaimed he of the bread-basket, showing his teeth from ear to ear.
Bardon caught a glimpse of what they were reading. “My lads,” he cried, “I’ll pay you for that; give the magazine to me,” and he held out the price for the Number.
“It’s my master’s,” said the page, as if awakened to a sudden sense of the responsibility connected with green cloth and gilt buttons; and rolling up the coveted Number, he hurried on his way to make up for the time which he had lost.
The doctor stopped and reflected. “Mrs. Clayton, the major’s blind widow, she is likely to take[163] in the —— Magazine. I have not called on the old dame for years, but shell not take a visit amiss. I think that the house with green blinds is hers, and I am certain to find her at home.”
Dr. Bardon was not disappointed this time. The blind old lady, who lived a dull and solitary life, was charmed to welcome an old acquaintance, and her visitor was yet more pleased to behold the desired periodical on the table half covered by the supplement of yesterday’s Times.
After the first greetings were over, and inquiries after his “sweet child Caroline,” (for the lady’s memory was not particularly clear as to the name or age of Cecilia,) the doctor seated himself by the blind lady, laughing loud to cover the rustle as he drew the Magazine from under the paper, and then impatiently turned over the leaves. His object was to read the article; Mrs. Clayton’s was to obtain a medical opinion gratis upon the maladies with which she was, or fancied herself to be troubled. She proceeded, therefore, quite uninterrupted by her supposed auditor, with a long story of rheumatism and relaxed throat, the various remedies which she had tried for these evils, and the dubious success of each application; the eager reader giving an occasional grunt of assent, to save appearances, until the invalid paused in her narration.
“Indeed, doctor, I’m beginning to think that the air of Pelton don’t agree with me; I begin to feel myself—
[164]
“Hanging between earth and sky, like the fabled coffin of Mahomet!” muttered the doctor, who in his interest in what he was perusing, had almost forgotten the presence of her whose faint, complaining voice sounded like a trickling rill in his ear.
“What is he saying about coffins and hanging?” thought the poor invalid. “It is very shocking to suggest such horrible ideas to a nervous creature like me!”
As the doctor did not seem disposed to add to his incomprehensible communication, Mrs. Clayton proceeded on with her melancholy story.
“Last winter my cough was so bad, that Mrs. Graham (you know Mrs. Graham, her daughter married a Bagot), she recommended me to take cochlico lozenges. I sent up all the way to London, there’s only one shop there that sells them, in one particular street, and I got a parcel of them down by the post. But I assure you, doctor, that they did me no good. I think that I must have caught a chill by venturing out in March; you know what the east winds are, doctor; I really had not a wink of sleep at night,—I actually thought my cough would have torn me to pieces.”
At this point the reader burst into an irrepressible chuckle of delight, and as he closed the Magazine exclaimed, “Capital! capital!” to the no small amazement of the sufferer. Her lengthened silence of surprise made Bardon,—whose hand was now on[165] the supplement of the Times, aware that it was necessary to say something; and as he had a vague idea that her talk had been a series of complaints, he cried, hap-hazard, as his eye ran on the list of deaths, “Very bad! very bad! I’m certain that you indulge in green tea!”—
“Oh! well, I sometimes—”
“Can it be!” muttered Bardon, gazing with stern interest at one of the names which appeared in the gloomy column.
“Do you think, doctor, that there is much harm?”
“Death!” exclaimed Timon Bardon to himself.
“Surely you don’t mean it,”—cried the old lady, and the doctor was again recalled by her voice to what was passing around him.
“If you drink green tea,” he cried, starting from his seat and pushing the paper to the other end of the table, “I won’t answer for your living out the year!” and with a very brief good-bye, Timon hurried away, leaving the poor lady to complain to her next visitor, that Dr. Bardon was so brusque and so odd that he was just like an east wind in March, and that she was not in the least surprised that his practice was not extensive, as if he did not kill his patients with his medicine, he was likely to do so with his manner!............