Moreover, one of the Whitford surgeons had been called in by a few of the outlying families who had hitherto been patients of the Wards; and worse than all, Mrs. Rivers took her child up to London for three days in November, and it became known—through a chain of tongues—that it was for the enlargement of tonsils, on which Mr. Ward had operated a year before.
‘Old May was playing him false!’ was Henry’s cry. ‘His professions were humbug. He would endure no one who did not submit to his dictation; and he would bring in a stranger to ruin them all!’
Little did Henry know of Dr. May’s near approach to untruth in denying that he had a house to let to the opposition surgeon—of his attestations to his daughter that young Ward was a skilful operator—or of his vexation when she professed herself ready to undergo anything for his pleasure, but said that little Margaret’s health was another thing.
Yet even this might have been forgiven, but for that worst rub of all—Tom May’s manners. His politeness was intense—most punctilious and condescending in form—and yet provoking beyond measure to persons who, like Henry and Averil, had not playfulness enough to detect with certainty whether they were being made game of or not, nor whether his smoothly-uttered compliments were not innuendoes. Henry was certain of being despised, and naturally chafed against the prospect of the future connection between the two medical men of the town; and though Tom was gone back to Cambridge, it was the rankling remembrance of his supercilious looks that, more than any present offence or independence of spirit, made the young surgeon kick against direction from the physician. Here, too, Averil was of the same mind. She had heard Tom May observe that his sister Gertrude would play quite well enough for a lady; for the mission of a lady’s music was to put one to sleep at home, and cover conversation at a party; as to the rest—unprofessionals were a mistake!
After that, the civil speeches with which Tom would approach the piano only added insult to injury.
CHAPTER VIII
Ne’er readier at alarm-bell’s call, Thy burghers rose to man thy wall, Than now in danger shall be thine, Thy dauntless voluntary line.—Marmion
‘Drive fast, Will,’ said Dr. May, hastily stepping into his carriage in the early darkness of a December evening. ‘Five already, and he is to be there by 5.25.’
‘He’ was no other than Harry May, and ‘there’ was the station. With the tidings of the terrible fight of Peiho had come a letter from a messmate of Harry’s with an account of his serious wound in the chest, describing it as just short of immediately dangerous. Another letter had notified his amendment, and that he was invalided home, a few cheery words from Harry himself scrawled at the end showing that his power was far less than his good-wilclass="underline" and after two months’ waiting and suspense, a telegram had come from Plymouth, with the words, ‘Stoneborough, 5.25.’
In ignorance as to the state of the traveller, and expecting to find him in a condition requiring great care and watching, Dr. May had laid his injunctions on the eager family not to rush up to the station en masse to excite and overwhelm, but to leave the meeting there entirely to himself and his brougham. He had, therefore, been exceedingly annoyed that one of Henry Ward’s pieces of self-assertion had delayed him unnecessarily at a consultation; and when at last he had escaped, he spent most of his journey with his body half out of the window, hurrying Will Adams, and making noises of encouragement to the horse; or else in a strange tumult of sensation between hope and fear, pain and pleasure, suspense and thankfulness, the predominant feeling being vexation at not having provided against this contingency by sending Richard to the station.
After all the best efforts of the stout old chestnut, he and the train were simultaneously at the station, and the passengers were getting out on the opposite platform. The Doctor made a dash to cross in the rear of the train, but was caught and held fast by a porter with the angry exclamation, ‘She’s backing, sir;’ and there he stood in an agony, feeling all Harry’s blank disappointment, and the guilt of it besides, and straining his eyes through the narrow gaps between the blocks of carriages.
The train rushed on, and he was across the line the same instant, but the blank was his. Up and down the gas-lighted platform he looked in vain among the crowd, only his eye suddenly lit on a black case close to his feet, with the three letters MAY, and the next moment a huge chest appeared out of the darkness, bearing the same letters, and lifted on a truck by the joint strength of a green porter, and a pair of broad blue shoulders. Too ill to come on—telegraph, mail train—rushed through the poor Doctor’s brain as he stepped forward as if to interrogate the chest. The blue shoulders turned, a ruddy sun-burnt face lighted up, and the inarticulate exclamation on either side was of the most intense relief and satisfaction.
‘Where are the rest?’ said Harry, holding his father’s hand in no sick man’s grasp.
‘At home, I told them not to come up; I thought—’
‘Well, we’ll walk down together! I’ve got you all to myself. I thought you had missed my telegram. Hollo, Will, how d’ye do? what, this thing to drive down in?’
‘I thought you were an invalid, Harry,’ said Dr. May, with a laughing yet tearful ring in his agitated tone, as he packed himself and his son in.
‘Ay! I wished I could have let you know sooner how well I had got over it,’ said Harry, in the deep full voice of strong healthy manhood. ‘I am afraid you have been very anxious.’
‘We are used to it, my boy,’ said the Doctor huskily, stroking the great firm fingers that were lying lovingly on his knee, ‘and if it always ends in this way, it ought to do us more good than harm.’
‘It has not done harm, I hope,’ said Harry, catching him up quick. ‘Not to old Mary?’
‘No, Mary works things off, good girl. I flatter myself you will find us all in high preservation.’
‘All—all at home! That’s right.’
‘Yes, those infants from Maplewood and all. You are sure you are all right, Harry?’
‘As sure as my own feelings can make me, and the surgeon of the Dexter to back them,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t believe my lungs were touched after all, but you shall all sit upon me when you like—Tom and all. It was a greater escape than I looked for,’ he added, in a lower voice. ‘I did not think to have had another Christmas here.’
The silence lasted for the few moments till the carriage drew up behind the limes; the doors were thrown open, and the Doctor shouted to the timid anxious figure that alone was allowed to appear in the hall, ‘Come and lift him out, Mary.’
The drawing-room was a goodly sight that evening; and the Doctor, as he sat leaning back in weary happiness, might be well satisfied with the bright garland that still clustered round his hearth, though the age of almost all forbade their old title of Daisies. The only one who still asserted her right to that name was perched on the sailor’s knee, insisting on establishing that there was as much room for her there as there had been three years ago; though, as he had seated himself on a low footstool, her feet were sometimes on the ground, and moreover her throne was subject to sudden earthquakes, which made her, nothing loth, cling to his neck, draw his arm closer round her, and lean on his broad breast, proud that universal consent declared her his likeness in the family; and the two presenting a pleasant contrasting similarity—the open honest features, blue eyes, and smile, expressive of hearty good-will and simple happiness, were so entirely of the same mould in the plump, white-skinned, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired girl, and in the large, powerful, bronzed, ruddy sailor, with the thick mass of curls, at which Tom looked with hostility as fixed, though less declared, than that of his Eton days.