The Lost Girl Part 70

"No, an' I dunna. I drink a drop o' beer, if that's what you ca'

touchin' alcohol. An' I'm none th' wuss for it, tha sees."

"You've heard what I've told you."

"Ah, I have."

"And if you go on with the beer, you may go on with curing yourself.

_I_ shan't attend you. You know I mean what I say, Mrs.

Larrick"--this to the wife.

"I do, doctor. And I know it's true what you say. An' I'm at him night an' day about it--"

"Oh well, if he will hear no reason, he must suffer for it. He mustn't think _I'm_ going to be running after him, if he disobeys my orders." And the doctor stalked off, and the woman began to complain.

None the less the women had their complaints against Dr. Mitch.e.l.l.

If ever Alvina entered a clean house on a wet day, she was sure to hear the housewife chuntering.

"Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor's not been yet. And he's bound to come now I've just cleaned up, trapesin' wi' his gret feet. He's got the biggest understandin's of any man i' Lancaster.

My husband says they're the best pair o' pasties i' th' kingdom. An'

he does make such a mess, for he never stops to wipe his feet on th'

mat, marches straight up your clean stairs--"

"Why don't you tell him to wipe his feet?" said Alvina.

"Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He'd jump down my throat with both feet afore I'd opened my mouth. He's not to be spoken to, he isn't. He's my-lord, he is. You mustn't look, or you're done for."

Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them, and having a heart over and above.

Sometimes he was given a good hit--though nearly always by a man. It happened he was in a workman's house when the man was at dinner.

"Canna yer gi'e a man summat better nor this 'ere pap, Missis?" said the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.

"Oh go on," cried the wife. "I hadna time for owt else." Dr.

Mitch.e.l.l was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.

"Rice pudding!" he exclaimed largely. "You couldn't have anything more wholesome and nouris.h.i.+ng. I have a rice pudding every day of my life--every day of my life, I do."

The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache copiously with it. He did not answer.

"Do you doctor!" cried the woman. "And never no different."

"Never," said the doctor.

"Fancy that! You're that fond of them?"

"I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my stomach is as weak as a baby's."

The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.

"Mine _isna_, tha sees," he said, "so pap's no use. 'S watter ter me. I want ter feel as I've had summat: a bit o' suetty dumplin' an'

a pint o' hale, summat ter fill th' hole up. An' tha'd be th' same if tha did my work."

"If I did your work," sneered the doctor. "Why I do ten times the work that any one of you does. It's just the work that has ruined my digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night's rest. When do you think _I_ can sit at table and digest my dinner? I have to be off looking after people like you--"

"Eh, tha can ta'e th' t.i.tty-bottle wi' thee," said the labourer.

But Dr. Mitch.e.l.l was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a black rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly amused.

The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her.

But luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew it. She smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared nor even admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him: the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and his stomach as weak as a baby's, and his mouthing imperiousness and his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be more c.o.c.ksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one hand to be so largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the labourers with their awful long moustaches that got full of food.

And he was a little too loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good taste.

As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen to be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a _gentleman_, he is bound to be a little less than a _man_. But if he is gnawed with anxiety lest he may _not_ be a gentleman, he is only pitiable.

There is a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his manner, a.s.sert that he is _now_ a gentleman, he shows himself a clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitch.e.l.l fell into this third category, of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often tolerate ninnies and _poseurs_. She smiled to herself when she saw his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she saw him at a sale, buying the grandest pieces of antique furniture.

She smiled when he talked of going up to Scotland, for grouse shooting, or of s.n.a.t.c.hing an hour on Sunday morning, for golf. And she talked him over, with quiet, delicate malice, with the matron.

He was no favourite at the hospital.

Gradually Dr. Mitch.e.l.l's manner changed towards her. From his imperious condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This did not suit him. Dr. Mitch.e.l.l had no equals: he had only the vast stratum of inferiors, towards whom he exercised his quite profitable beneficence--it brought him in about two thousand a year: and then his superiors, people who had been born with money. It was the tradesmen and professionals who had started at the bottom and clambered to the motor-car footing, who distressed him. And therefore, whilst he treated Alvina on this uneasy tradesman footing, he felt himself in a false position.

She kept her att.i.tude of quiet amus.e.m.e.nt, and little by little he sank. From being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now like a big fish poking its nose above water and making eyes at her.

He treated her with rather presuming deference.

"You look tired this morning," he barked at her one hot day.

"I think it's thunder," she said.

"Thunder! Work, you mean," and he gave a slight smile. "I'm going to drive you back."

"Oh no, thanks, don't trouble! I've got to call on the way."

"Where have you got to call?"

She told him.

"Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I'll wait for you. Now take your cloak."

She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.

As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cuc.u.mbers. He stopped the car and leaned towards the man.

"Take that barrow-load of poison and _bury_ it!" he shouted, in his strong voice. The busy street hesitated.

"What's that, mister?" replied the mystified hawker.

Dr. Mitch.e.l.l pointed to the green pile of cuc.u.mbers.

"Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it," he called, "before you do anybody any more harm with it."