Hard Cash Part 42

"Oh! oh! oh! oh! ugh!----ah!"

The Doctor got off the insensible body, and resumed his lecture calmly, like one who has disposed of some childish interruption. "And now to th' application of the Therey: If the poison can reduce the tin minutes'

interval to five minutes, this pas.h.i.+nt will die; and if I can get the tin minutes up t' half hour, this pas.h.i.+nt will live. Any way, jintlemen, we won't detain y' unreasonably: the case shall be at an end by one o'clock."

On hearing this considerate stipulation, up went three women's ap.r.o.ns to their eyes.

"Alack! poor James Maxley! he is at his last hour: it be just gone twelve, and a dies at one."

Sampson turned on the weepers. "Who says that, y' ijjits? I said the case would end at one: a case ends when the pas.h.i.+nt gets well or dies."

"Oh, that is good news for poor Susan Maxley; her man is to be well by one o'clock, Doctor says."

Sampson groaned, and gave in. He was strong, but not strong enough to make the populance suspend an opinion.

Yet, methinks it might be done: by chloroforming them.

The spasms came at longer intervals and less violent, and Maxley got so fond of the essence of Insensibility, that he asked to have some in his own hand to apply at the first warning of the horrible pains.

Sampson said, "Any fool can complete the cure;" and, by way of practical comment, left him in Mr. Osmond's charge; but with an understanding that the treatment should not be varied; that no laudanum should be given; but, in due course, a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, or two. "If he gets drunk, all the better; a little intoxication weakens the body's memory of the pain it has endured, and so expedites the cure. Now off we go to th' other."

"The body's memory!" said Mr. Osmond to himself: "what on earth does the quack mean?"

The driver _de jure_ of the fly was not quite drunk enough to lose his horse and vehicle without missing them. He was on the look out for the robber, and as Alfred came round the corner full pelt, darted at the reins with a husky remonstrance, and Alfred cut into him with the whip: an angry explanation--a guinea--and behold the driver sitting behind complacent and nodding.

Arrived at Albion Villa, Alfred asked Sampson submissively if he might come in and see the wife cured.

"Why, of course," said Sampson, not knowing the delicate position.

"Then ask me in before Mrs. Dodd," murmured Alfred coaxingly.

"Oo, ay," said the Doctor knowingly: "I see."

Mrs. Maxley was in the dining-room: she had got well of herself, but was crying bitterly, and the ladies would not let her go home yet; they feared the worst and that some one would blurt it out to her.

To this anxious trio entered Sampson radiant. "There, it's all right.

Come, little Maxley, ye needn't cry; he has got lots more mischief to do in the world yet; but, O wumman, it is lucky you came to me and not to any of the tinkering dox. No more cat and dog for you and him but for the Chronothairmal Therey. And you may bless my puppy's four bones too: he ran and stole a fly like a man, and drove hilter-skilter. Now, if I had got to your house two minutes later, your Jamie would have lairned the great secret ere this." He threw up the window. "Haw you! come away and receive the applause due from beauty t' ajeelity."

Alfred came in timidly, and was received with perfect benignity and self-possession by Mrs. Dodd, but Julia's face was dyed with blushes, and her eyes sparkled the eloquent praise she was ashamed to speak before them all. But such a face as her scarce needed the help of a voice at such a time. And indeed both the lovers' faces were a pretty sight and a study. How they stole loving glances, but tried to keep within bounds, and not steal more than three per minute! and how unconscious they endeavoured to look the intervening seconds! and what windows were the demure complacent visages they thought they were making shutters of! Innocent love has at least this advantage over melodramatic, that it can extract exquisite sweetness out of so small a thing. These sweethearts were not alone, could not open their hearts, must not even gaze too long; yet to be in the same room even on such terms was a taste of Heaven.

"But, dear heart!" said Mrs. Maxley, "ye don't tell me what he ailed.

Ma'am, if you had seen him you would have said he was taken for death."

"Pray what _is_ the complaint?" inquired Mrs. Dodd.

"Oh, didn't I tell ye? Poisoned."

This intelligence was conveyed with true scientific calmness, and received with feminine e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of horror. Mrs. Maxley was indignant into the bargain: "Don't ye go giving my house an ill name! We keeps no poison."

Sampson fixed his eyes sternly on her: "Wumman, ye know better: ye keep strychnine, for th' use and delectation of your domestic animal."

"Strychnine! I never heard tell of it. Is that Latin for a.r.s.enic?"

"Now isn't this lamentable? Why, a.r.s.enic is a mital; strychnine a vigitable. N'hist me! Your man was here seeking strychnine to poison his mouse; a harmless, domistic, necessary mouse. I told him mice were a part of Nature as much as Maxleys, and life as sweet t.i.t as tim: but he was dif to scientific and chrisehin preceps; so I told him to go to the Deevil: 'I will,' sis he, and went t' a docker. The two a.s.sa.s.sins have poisoned the poor beastie between 'em; and thin, been the greatest miser in the world, except one, he will have roasted his victim, and ate her on the sly, imprignated with strychnine. 'I'll steal a march on t'other miser,' sis he; and that's you: t' his brain flew the strychnine: his brain sint it to his spinal marrow: and we found my lorrd bent like a bow, and his jaw locked, and nearer knowin the great secret than any man in England will be this year to live: and sairves the a.s.sa.s.sinating old vagabin right."

"Heaven forgive you, Doctor," said Mrs. Maxley, half mechanically.

"For curin a murrderer? Not likely."

Mrs. Maxley, who had shown signs of singular uneasiness during Sampson's explanation, now rose, and said in a very peculiar tone she must go home directly.

Mrs. Dodd seemed to enter into her feelings, and made her go in the fly, taking care to pay the fare and the driver out of her own purse. As the woman got into the fly, Sampson gave her a piece of friendly and practical advice. "Nixt time he has a mind to breakfast on strychnine, you tell me; and I'll put a pinch of a.r.s.enic in the salt-cellar, and cure him safe as the bank. But this time he'd have been did and stiff long before such a slow ajint as a.r.s.enic could get a hold on um."

They sat down to luncheon, but neither Alfred nor Julia fed much, except upon sweet stolen looks; and soon the active Sampson jumped up, and invited Alfred to go round his patients. Alfred could not decline, but made his adieux with regret so tender and undisguised, that Julia's sweet eyes filled, and her soft hand instinctively pressed his at parting to console him. She blushed at herself afterwards, but at the time she was thinking only of him.

Maxley and his wife came up in the evening with a fee. They had put their heads together, and proffered one guinea. "Man and wife be one flesh, you know, Doctor," said the rustic miser.

Sampson, whose natural choler was constantly checked by his humour, declined this profuse proposal. "Here's vanity!" said he. "Now do you really think your two lives are worth a guinea? Why, it's 252 pence!

1008 farthings!"

The pair affected disappointment--vilely.

At all events, he must accept this basket of gudgeons Maxley had brought along. Being poisoned was quite out of Maxley's daily routine, and had so unsettled him, that he had got up, and gone fis.h.i.+ng--to the amazement of the parish.

Sampson inspected the basket. "Why, they are only fish," said he; _"I was in hopes they were pas.h.i.+nts._" He accepted the gudgeons, and inquired how Maxley got poisoned. It came out that Mrs. Maxley, seeing her husband set apart a portion of his Welsh rabbit, had "grizzled," and asked what that was for; and being told "for the mouse," and to "mind her own business," had grizzled still more, and furtively conveyed a portion back into the pan for her master's own use. She had been quaking dismally all the afternoon at what she had done, but finding Maxley--hard but just--did not attack her for an involuntary fault, she now brazened it out, and said, "Men didn't ought to have poison in the house unbeknown to their wives. Jem had got no more than he worked for," &c. But, like a woman, she vowed vengeance on the mouse: whereupon Maxley threatened her with the marital correction of neck-twisting if she laid a finger on it.

"My eyes be open now to what a poor creature do feel as dies poisoned.

Let her a be: there's room in our place for her and we."

Next day he met Alfred, and thanked him with warmth, almost with emotion. "There ain't many in Barkington as ever done me a good turn, Master Alfred; you be one on 'em: you comes after the Captain in my book now."

Alfred suggested that his claims were humble compared with Sampson's.

"No, no," said Maxley, going down to his whisper, and looking, monstrous wise: "Doctor didn't go out of his business for me: you did."

The sage miser's grat.i.tude had not time to die a natural death before circ.u.mstances occurred to test it. On the morning of that eventful day which concluded my last chapter, he received a letter from Canada. His wife was out with eggs; so he caught little Rose Sutton, that had more than once spelled an epistle for him; and she read it out in a loud and reckless whine: "'At -- noon -- this -- very -- daie -- Muster --Hardie's a-g-e-n-t, aguent -- d-i-s dis, h-o-n -- honour_ed_ --dis-honour_ed_--a--bill; and sayed.'" Here she made a full stop. Then on to the next verse.

"'There -- were no -- more -- a.s.ses.'"

"Mercy on us! but it can't be a.s.ses, wench: drive your spe-ad into't again."

"'A-s-s-e-t-s. a.s.sets.'"

"Ah! Go an! go an!"

"'Now -- Fatther -- if -- you -- leave -- a s-h-i-l-l-i-n-g, s.h.i.+lling --at --Hardie's -- after -- this -- b-l-a-m-e, ble-am -- your -- self --not-- me -- for -- this -- is -- the -- waie -- the r-o-g-u-e-s, rogews -- all-- bre-ak -- they -- go -- at -- a-- d-i-s-t-a-n-c-e, distance --first-- and -- then -- at -- h-o-m-e, whuoame. -- Dear -- fatther' --Lawk o' daisy, what ails you, Daddy Maxley? You be as white as a Sunday smock. Be you poisoned again, if _you_ please?"

"Worse than that--worse!" groaned Maxhey, trembling all over.

"Hus.h.!.+--hold your tongue! Give me that letter! Don't you never tell n.o.body nothing of what you have been a reading to me, and I'll--I'll--It's only Jem's fun: he is allus running his rigs--that's a good wench now, and I'll give ye a halfpenny."