A True Princess

by Bernard Capes

A TRUE PRINCESS

BERNARD CAPES

DR. BRENT softly closed the door of the sick-room and, softly descending the stairs, turned into the library. A gentleman, much younger than he, tall, brisk, alert, with a disciplined gravity of deportment, rose to greet him on his entrance, and held out his hand.

"Well," said this person, "and what now?"

He glanced arrestingly at the clock on the mantelpiece as he spoke, as if every second ticked off were an unfulfilled opportunity.

The older doctor looked up at his congener with an expression rather wistfully envious. He seemed always to see in this professional élégant, as opposed to himself, the triumph of galvanism, so to speak, over backbone.

"Nowadays," he would think, "success goes to the honeyed phrase and the passionless tabloid. Rough-hewn science is out of date. It is time I walked off with my jalap and my calomel, and left the field to these gloved dispensers of cachets."

"Hannan," said he, "I have been constrained to ask you to this consultation."

He was bearded, blunt, thickset, and he wore gold-rimmed spectacles. In his bourrue-bienfaisance, in his honesty, and in his brusque insuavity towards such as would compel his sympathy without justification, he was the very type of the dogmatic family doctor—of the gruffly practical allopathist of the old school.

The younger man, quite pleasantly conscious of all that was implied in the infelicitous form of words—a chafing protest, to wit, against this enforced identification of a youthful empiric with an elderly savant—accepted the form with a complacent serenity, that implied in its turn a full recognition of the sentiments that dictated it. For he knew himself to have undesignedly withdrawn, in the space of some twenty odd months, by the simple method of confidence inspired of a self-confident personality, two-thirds of the game from the other's traditional preserves.

"I am always honoured to be associated with you," he said drily. "I am at your service for——" He consulted his watch significantly.

"As long as your engagements will permit—I know, I know. You may extend or abbreviate your examination to suit yourself. The case, I confess, puzzles me; but I am willing to acknowledge myself a professional anachronism in these days of psychomachy and neurosis and all the rest of the fashionable twaddle."

"Terms, my dear sir," said Hannan good-humouredly, "are just the shuttlecock bandied between one age and another. And while it flies the game goes on—up to eighteen hundred and ninety eight strokes, if you will. Vapours or nervous debility—what does it matter? The treatment does not alter. Shall we go upstairs?"

"A word first, if you please. I should like to admit to you, in plain justice, that this invitation to meet me is none of my suggestion. I am free to allow that, had my wishes been deferred to, I should have called in a practitioner more of my own age and understanding."

"I see. But as I cannot forgo the right to dissent, in case my judgment fails to jump with yours, perhaps it would be better even now to——"

"No!" said Dr. Brent, sharply.

He showed some concern in his face; possibly a little shame also.

"I have the fullest confidence in your capacity, of course," he went on hurriedly, "only——"

But there he stuck. He could not devise any form of explanation sufficiently polite and ambiguous to conceal his dread that this upstart might unpremeditatedly rob him of yet another of the few patients of prosperous quality that remained to him.

"Well," said Hannan, with easy condonation (he knew well enough where the shoe pinched), "let us get to work. The case, I understand, is that of the lady of the house."

"Exactly—of Miss Tighe-Lacy—at the particular request of whose brother, Lord Quellhorst, I have invited you to a consultation."

"Ah! I had the pleasure of meeting and exchanging a few words with his lordship last week."

"H'mph! At——"

"Just so. At Charleshope, during the festivities in connection with the coming of age of the Marquis of Dinmont's eldest son, Lord Skye."

Dr. Brent humoured a scarce audible grunt that was as pregnant of meaning as an Olympian nod. "Beggars on horseback!" it expressed. "Brain and grit were my recommendations to favour. Now, in these days of the apotheosis of the play-actor, any puppy of a 'walking-gentleman,' fresh from the schools, with the assurance to pretend to a new reading of his Materia Medica, may take his pick from a perfect Tom-Tiddler's ground of duchesses."

"Well, for your diagnosis," he said. "The case, I repeat, hips me. I know nothing of the lady's constitution. She comes, as you are probably aware, of a very old county family; but has only latterly settled here, in Twycross."

"Spinster?"

"Miss Tighe-Lacy, my dear sir. I need not tell you, Hannan, that it is of some importance to me to retain what little old-fashioned credit is yet associated professionally with my name."

The younger man nodded comprehendingly.

"Poor decent old beggar," he was thinking. "His anxiety, not to be ousted by a tyro, makes him appear unnaturally churlish."

Aloud, he said: "To the entire fruits of my opinion, Dr. Brent, you are, of course, welcome."

"Then," said the other, "let us go and see if you can unravel a problemless problem."

The Honorable Prudence Tighe-Lacy lay propped upon pillows in her very comfortable bed. Her eyes were closed; her face was flushed and a little swollen; her lank grizzled hair dropped about her shoulders.

By the bedside, wedged back into an easy chair, sat her brother—a gentleman whose expression gave earnest that his years were well in advance of his intellect. Both his face and the patient's had a contour which, viewed in profile, suggested that of a particularly supercilious llama carved in wood and in bas-relief.

With the entrance of the doctors, Lord Quellhorst rose, vouchsafed a little oblique bow to the new-comer, and, walking to the fireplace, lifted his coat-tails to the glow, and stood loftily expectant. Hannan noticed, with some surprise, that a picture that hung on the wall above his lordship's head had been turned, apparently that its back should present itself to the gaze of the invalid opposite.

The confident young practitioner produced his stethoscope, approached the bed, and made his examination. The patient demurred to nothing; but she uttered no word. To all enquiry she but shook her head, with closed eyes, like royalty deprecating a petition. She bestowed her pulse as if it were an order; she put out her tongue with a mechanical resignation that implied publicity to be the chief penalty of greatness.

Presently Hannan, rising, signified that he was done. Lord Quellhorst preceded the two, stepping statelily from the room. On the landing outside he faced round and bowed once more to the younger man.

"Some remarks, sir, offered by you to my consideration, when I had the pleasure to meet you at Charleshope, led me to a high estimate of your capacities. Finding your reputation to justify my opinion, I requested Dr. Brent to invite you to this consultation."

Hannan bowed in his turn.

"Miss Tighe-Lacy is in a critical state?" asked the lord, as much with his eyelids as with his lips.

"I should prefer, sir, to exchange views with my colleague before stating an opinion."

"Do so by all means. My sister's library is at your service. I will preface your deliberations with the single statement only, Mr. Hannan, that the patient has had a shock. Her sensibilities, if I may so express it, are bruised and abraded in a manner peculiarly difficult to salve. That she is susceptible beyond the understanding of coarser natures it is, perhaps, needless to insist; yet I am free to acknowledge that in this instance she would appear to justify her lineage at an excessive valuation—the price of her life, in fact. If you can suggest any method of diverting the morbid current of her ideas into a healthier channel you will put me under a considerable obligation. But Dr. Brent will acquaint you of the details of this—what I can only call unhappy self-sacrifice to a scruple of caste."

He dismissed the two with yet another little bow and a wave of his hand, and re-entered the sick-room.

Hannan descended the stairs, feeling as if he walked in his sleep—semi-conscious of an inexplicable ludicrousness. Arrived in the library, he carefully shut the door and turned to face his colleague.

"In the first place, Dr. Brent, why is that picture turned to the wall?"

"It is of the lady's father, sir—a portrait. She cannot bear to look on it. She feels she has disgraced her family."

"Now, tell me. What is the answer to this conundrum?"

"I ask you that, Hannan."

"The patient is suffering from a reasonably bad cold; nothing more."

Dr. Brent's eyes flickered behind their glasses. He took an impulsive step forward.

"That is your diagnosis," he said, "deliberate and comprehensive?"

"You must know it as well as I do."

Dr. Brent seized the other's hand excitedly, wrung and dropped it, and recovered his self-possession.

"Of course I did," he said; and then added contradictorily enough: "You have relieved my mind immensely. I did not know, Hannan, but that my skill, not to say my common-sense, was deserting me."

"You are over-sensitive. But there is probably some hereditary aberration here."

"None that I know of. Breeding-in, sir, with an emphasis on the breeding—that is all."

"Quite so. Well, you are to acquaint me of the details."

"They are simplicity itself. Miss Tighe-Lacy lent her under-housemaid to these very festivities at Charleshope you were speaking of. There the girl managed to catch a bad cold, which in the result she has passed on to her mistress."

"Well?"

"That is the whole case."

"What!"

"It is the whole case, I say. You may find it difficult to believe, Hannan. I, with all my thirty years' experience of the immeasurable consequentialness of county families, have never till now, I think, realised the complete meaning of the odi profanum vulgus et arceo. It is vainglory sublimated. Now, positively this woman is dying because she has caught cold of an under-housemaid whose name is Huggins."

"Dr. Brent! Dr, Brent!"

"Oh! my dear sir, this is only, I can assure you, an eminent example of a common supercilious complaint. I could mention instances, almost as flagrant, that have come under my observation."

"You could?"

"Certainly. There was Mrs. Auchmuty, who, after cherry-pie, would have her particular stones cremated, that that which her lips had caressed should suffer burial in no vulgar dustbin. There was Miss Power, whose wenches wore gloves to make her bed of a morning. There was Sir Joseph Quirk—a collateral descendant of some Lancastrian sovereign—who was fully persuaded he could touch for the 'King's Evil,' and who would hold you the webs of his fingers to the light to show the blue blood within."

"But this——"

"Hannan, you have no conception, I see, of the fathomless depths of county humour. It makes me the more surprised to consider your (thoroughly deserved) success in a place like this. And now—what is to be done?"

"I am at a loss. If it had only been a butler. But, an under-housemaid!"

"Ay—there's the rub! She's 'mixed her ancient blood with shame,' you see."

"There's no means of precipitating a catarrh, and drawing off the base residuum?"

"Impossible."

"I'm—upon my word, Dr. Brent, you'll have to devise your own way out of the quandary."

"H'mph!"

"Can't you extemporise a pedigree for Miss Huggins—phlebotomise her into an inkpot, and trace her a beautiful blue-blooded genealogical tree on a dish-clout?"

"It's no joking matter—to me, at least, Mr. Hannan. The patient is deliberately expiating her contamination by the sacrifice of her life. By humouring her, I shall, with little doubt, lose a conspicuous patient and further weaken an already undermined reputation."

The inference seemed so personal that Hannan was embarrassed for an answer. While he was searching his brains for one a knock sounded on the door.

"Come in!" he cried, quite heartily in his relief at the interruption.

There entered a servant girl carrying a scuttle of coal. It was dismal proof of a present disorganisation of the proprieties that such a task should have fallen to an under-housemaid.

"Ah!" said Dr. Brent, "here is the delinquent herself."

"Eh!" cried Hannan, facing round.

"So all this trouble is brought about by your unconscionable assumption of a right to spread infection, Mary-Jane?" said he.

The girl looked like crying.

"I dever see sich goids-od," she whimpered. "As if I hadn't the right to sneeze in a free cudtry!"

She deposited her burden with an aggrieved bang, so that half the coals rolled out upon the floor. She had evidently been taken to task for the enormity to that degree that she had been harried to desperation.

"I'd like to leave at once," she said, kneeling down and returning the knobs with a clatter; "but Mrs. 'Arris she says it's like lettin' loose upod the world a rampid serpient. It's not much warmid at 'arths I've 'ad. I didn't want nobody to take my code. If they've got it they've been thieved it out of be. You mide jest as well charge a body for havid its pogged pigged."

She sniffed with her poor red little nose. Her eyes swam with indignant water. Apart from these disadvantages, she was a surprisingly pretty girl.

Hannan perused her features with some retrospective interest.

"Mary-Jane," said he.

"By dame's Susad. You mide dow thad."

"I think I saw you, Susan, during the festivities at Charleshope, It was in a marquee, where you were washing up plates and dishes, all by yourself behind a screen, Susan. I happened to blunder upon the spot; or else I was attracted by a sound—I forget which."

The girl wiggled her shoulders.

"Oh! I see you," she said defiantly. "It was nothid to do with be if you cub where you waserd invited."

And with the delivery of this enigmatical passado, Susan, treating the young doctor to a rather contumacious glance as she passed, hurried out of the room.

"Dr. Brent," said Hannan immediately, "I think I see daylight!"

"Eh!" cried the other, amazed; "not through Susan Huggins?"

"Precisely through her—more homœo-pathico, I will explain."

He made some rapid suggestions, with an amused smile on his face. Brent's eyes opened till his spectacles looked a mere glaze to their surface.

"By Jove," he muttered, "I believe there may be something in this."

Hannan stepped back and took out his watch.

"Try it," he said, "try it. Who was the girl that rolled one cheese down a hill to fetch back another? Number two folly may draw up the first. I make you a present of the suggestion."

"You are not going?"

"Yes. The credit shall be all yours; and I couldn't well interview Lord Quellhorst without unconsciously appropriating some part of it. Say, if you like, that I thoroughly endorse your very original proposition as to treatment, and that beyond this I am unable to advise upon the case."

"But——!"

Dr. Brent's further protests were put a period to by the slamming of the hall door.

"I suppose," he muttered, "the fellow fights shy of being associated with me in so ridiculous a business."

Now, that was ungrateful, to say the very least of it.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

"I am happy to tell your lordship that the patient is mending rapidly."

"Well, Dr. Brent, well."

"Once comfortable in the assurance that Susan had taken her cold in the first instance of Lord Skye——"

"You tell me the young man was discovered kissing the girl in a marquee?"

"That is so. No doubt it was a reprehensible act so to forget what was due to his position, but——"

"It was a rather amusing freak of condescension, certainly," said Lord Quellhorst loftily. He had nothing but high discouragement for this criticising of the great by the petty.

"And the Earl of Skye was himself suffering from a cold, which he gave to the young woman?" said he; and added: "Well, she, at least, has nothing to complain of. It is, in a measure, a transfusing of the dross of nobility. This young person becomes a medium of exchange, a sort of spiritual foster-sister, both to the Earl and to Miss Tighe-Lacy. It entirely alters the case, of course; and it does the patient much credit that she consents to see it in that light, and to throw off her distemper."

"I should advise a confinement to her room for some few days."

"I agree with you. This cold must not be lightly appropriated by some inconsiderable proletarian. It must be kept from the servants, who are only too ready, as a rule—shall I say to deck themselves in the plumes of the peacock? And, as to the young woman, we must consider how best to mark our sense of her—transubstantiation, shall we call it? She gains the position, you will understand, of a kind of atmospheric bastard; and as such she must be permitted certain privileges."

"Which she will appreciate, no doubt."

"I trust so. But, for yourself, Dr. Brent—I cannot sufficiently applaud this most fortunate application of your skill and penetration to a distressing problem, or sufficiently censure the young man, your consultative lieutenant, who had the assurance to shirk so grave a responsibility as that entailed in the distinguished scruples of a lady of high quality."

"Mr. Hannan," said Dr, Brent firmly, "is a young man of respectable qualifications. But his practice does not, perhaps, justify him in attempting to deal with questions of this delicate and abstruse nature."

"No," said his lordship emphatically, "and, I confess, my judgment was astray when I suggested him to you. This unaccountable and contemptuous withdrawal of himself at the crisis!—why, sir, it seems calculated to imply that he thought us a pack of fools!"