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Mad Barbara

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<div><h1>XXXII</h1></div> Little Dr. Hemstruther, in his rusty clothes, came out from my Lady Purcell’s house and entered the “chair” that was in waiting for him, telling the men to carry him to my Lord Gore’s, in St. James’s Street. He took snuff vigorously as the two chairmen swung along over the cobbles, patted his chest, and beat his hands together to keep them warm. His unwholesome face had a beaky, bird-like alertness, and he appeared cynically amused by something, for Dr. Hemstruther delighted in the quaint inconsistencies of human nature, and had a fanatical hatred of all altruism and the sentiment of religion. Like many sour old men, he was hugely pleased when he had discovered anything mean and scandalous. And yet he was to be trusted in the keeping of a secret, his cynical temper helping him to cover up the follies of those who filled his purse. He merely jeered and mocked at them in philosophic privacy, taking their money, and mocking his own self for being the creature of such hire. The chairmen stopped before the house in St. James’s Street, Dr. Hemstruther waiting in the chair till the house door opened, for a keen northwest wind was sweeping the street. Toddling in at last—a shrewd, meagre figure, his long nose poking forward between the curls of his huge wig—he was shown by the man Rogers into a little room at the back of the house where Stephen Gore kept his books and papers. Dr. Hemstruther was warming his hands at the fire when my lord came in to him, his florid cheerfulness struggling to shine through a cloud of anxiety and unrest. His suit of sky-blue satin, the lace ruffles at his wrists, the very rings upon his fingers, seemed part of a radiance that was wilfully assumed. A keen eye could detect a certain hollowness in the face, a bagginess beneath the eyes, some slackness of the muscles about the mouth. The silky gloss of his fine manner betrayed through the very beauty of its texture the darker moods and thoughts beneath. Dr. Hemstruther noted and commented on all this as he bowed his lean little body, and rubbed his hands for fear of chilblains; and Dr. Hemstruther despised my lord, though he covered up his sneers with subserviency and unction. For my Lady Purcell had fallen sick of the small-pox some days ago, and in her panic and distress of soul was sending my lord messages, which he—brave gentleman—put discreetly to one side. “Well, sir, what news to-day?” Dr. Hemstruther carried a very solemn face for the occasion. “Great peril, my lord—great peril.” “What! No better?” “A threatening of malignancy, my lord.” A flash of impatience escaped from Stephen Gore. “What is your experience worth, Dr. Hemstruther, if you cannot handle a woman with a fever? The greater part of our earthly wisdom is a mere matter of words.” He walked to the window and opened it. “Poor Nan Purcell, to have escaped so long with a clean skin! There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth and covering up of mirrors.” The petulance in his voice betrayed his resentment at the lack of improvement in her affairs. Her sickness was infinitely mischievous at such a moment, and inspired him with an uneasy and savage impatience. He flung down into a chair, with all his sweet loftiness in peril of toppling into a snarl of unseemly temper. Dr. Hemstruther appeared to be intent upon brushing some of the snuff from his coat. “The danger is not skin deep, sir,” he said. “You find yourself quite helpless, Dr. Hemstruther, eh? There, pardon my peevishness—” “I would not venture the weight of a feather either way, my lord. And she is a bad patient, mens turbida in corpore ægro.” He sniffed, smoothed his wig, and looked deferentially at his shoes. “My Lady Purcell is asking for you, my lord.” “Then she is conscious—of everything?” “Conscious to the quick, in spite of the heat of the fever. If I may be pardoned—” His eyes met my lord’s, and Stephen Gore was the more embarrassed of the two. “You think that I should do her good?” “More good, my lord—” “Than all your draughts and bleedings!” Dr. Hemstruther bowed, and hid a smile with the obeisance. “My Lord Gore might find some words to soothe the lady.” “But you forget, man, that—” He did not complete the sentence, for even his egotism stumbled at the confession of the instinct of cowardice and self-love. Dr. Hemstruther understood him, and mocked inwardly at the great man’s prudence. “There is some danger, my lord; but still I would advise—” “As a matter of policy?” “As a matter of policy.” Stephen Gore pushed back his chair and stood at his full height, as though he felt the need of feeling himself taller than this little crab of a man who knew so much, and whose authority was so obsequious and yet so strong. “Women have no patience, sir, and will scream ‘fire’ when a log falls on the hearth. I am up to my eyes in a rush of affairs to-day. And my friends will thank me if I breathe a pest into all their faces.” “To-morrow would serve, my lord.” “I may take your word for that? Good. Are there any cautions you would give me?” Dr. Hemstruther screwed his face into an expression of intense sagacity. “I will send you a powder to burn, my lord, and a mild draught to clear you. Sit by an open window, and have all the clothes you go in burned.” “My thanks. And now, sir, if you will pardon me, my leisure is not my own.” He unlocked a cabinet, took out a silk purse, and, crossing the room, held the purse out to the physician. “I am exerting myself in that little affair of yours, Dr. Hemstruther,” he said. “It is a pleasure to labor for one’s friends.” Both smiled faintly as they looked into each other’s eyes. Dr. Hemstruther put the purse away in an inner pocket and made one of his most courtly bows. “Your servant, my lord. I trust that I am mindful of all your interests.” And he went out sniffing, to wrinkle up his nose sardonically, like a grinning dog, so soon as he was out of Stephen Gore’s sight. But if Anne Purcell burned with a fever upon her bed, whimpering and calling continually on Mrs. Jael, who had taken a heavy bribe to bide beside her lady, my Lord Gore was in an equal fever of mind, the fever of a man who has many things to dread. He knew enough of the human heart to remember that the cords of silence char and slacken when Death holds the torch to the secrets of the past. A panic of penitence, the betrayal of others in the mad impulse to make amends, the emotions thirsting for the comfort of the confessional dew. And Stephen Gore was wise as to the gravity of a betrayal, for the man Grylls had ridden into Sussex, and Anne Purcell knew it, and the sealed order that he carried. Moreover, this blood-debt was not the only stain that darkened my lord’s consciousness. He was sunk to the chin in other and wider waters, where the breath from a hired creature’s lips might stir such a storm as should smother death into the mouths of many. He stood before the fire, staring into it, and turning the rings upon his fingers. For the moment it was all self with him: self, savage, querulous, impatient, driven to that height of fanaticism whence the sorrows and hopes of a man’s fellows seem infinitely small and insignificant. It was the mad, angry self that beats down and tramples on the life instincts of others, crying a savage sacrifice to the Moloch of the ego. And yet this man in the satin coat, so bland, so debonair, so generous on the surface, heard the low clamor of that underworld that every man carries in the deeps of consciousness. He suffered, yet would not countenance his suffering, hardening himself to escape from it with fierce strength and subtlety and anger. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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