"He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy1 satisfaction! would it were otherwise--that I could beat him while he railed at me.--" --Troilus and Cressida.
But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that were quite peremptory2. From those visits to unsanitary Houndsley streets in search of Diamond, he had brought back not only a bad bargain in horse-flesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment3 which for a day or two had deemed mere4 depression and headache, but which got so much worse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going into the dining-room, he threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to his mother's anxious question, said, "I feel very ill: I think you must send for Wrench5."
Wrench came, but did not apprehend6 anything serious, spoke7 of a "slight derangement," and did not speak of coming again on the morrow. He had a due value for the Vincys' house, but the wariest8 men are apt to be dulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes go through their business with the zest9 of the daily bell-ringer. Mr. Wrench was a small, neat, bilious10 man, with a well-dressed wig11: he had a laborious12 practice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; and he was already rather late before setting out on a four-miles drive to meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a rural practitioner13, having increased Middlemarch practice in that direction. Great statesmen err14, and why not small medical men? Mr. Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white parcels, which this time had black and drastic contents. Their effect was not alleviating15 to poor Fred, who, however, unwilling16 as he said to believe that he was "in for an illness," rose at his usual easy hour the next morning and went down-stairs meaning to breakfast, but succeeded in nothing but in sitting and shivering by the fire. Mr. Wrench was again sent for, but was gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling's changed looks and general misery17, began to cry and said she would send for Dr. Sprague.
"Oh, nonsense, mother! It's nothing," said Fred, putting out his hot dry hand to her, "I shall soon be all right. I must have taken cold in that nasty damp ride."
"Mamma!" said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the dining-room windows looked on that highly respectable street called Lowick Gate), "there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one. If I were you I would call him in. He has cured Ellen Bulstrode. They say he cures every one."
Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinking only of Fred and not of medical etiquette18. Lydgate was only two yards off on the other side of some iron palisading, and turned round at the sudden sound of the sash, before she called to him. In two minutes he was in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enough to show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was becoming.
Lydgate had to hear a narrative19 in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insisted with remarkable20 instinct on every point of minor21 importance, especially on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again. That there might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; but the ease was serious enough to make him dismiss that consideration: he was convinced that Fred was in the pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever, and that he had taken just the wrong medicines. He must go to bed immediately, must have a regular nurse, and various appliances and precautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular. Poor Mrs. Vincy's terror at these indications of danger found vent22 in such words as came most easily. She thought it "very ill usage on the part of Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference to Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend. Why Mr. Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she could not for the life of her understand. He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher's when they had the measles23, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he should. And if anything should happen--"
Here poor Mrs. Vincy's spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat and good-humored face were sadly convulsed. This was in the hall out of Fred's hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawing-room door, and now came forward anxiously. Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, said that the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising, and that this form of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would go immediately to the druggist's and have a prescription24 made up in order to lose no time, but he would write to Mr. Wrench and tell him what had been done.
"But you must come again--you must go on attending Fred. I can't have my boy left to anybody who may come or not. I bear nobody ill-will, thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he'd better have let me die--if--if--"
"I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?" said Lydgate, really believing that Wrench was not well prepared to deal wisely with a case of this kind.
"Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, coming to her mother's aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.
When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did not care if he never came into his house again. Lydgate should go on now, whether Wrench liked it or not. It was no joke to have fever in the house. Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to dinner on Thursday. And Pritchard needn't get up any wine: brandy was the best thing against infection. "I shall drink brandy," added Mr. Vincy, emphatically--as much as to say, this was not an occasion for firing with blank-cartridges. "He's an uncommonly25 unfortunate lad, is Fred. He'd need have--some luck by-and-by to make up for all this--else I don't know who'd have an eldest26 son."
"Don't say so, Vincy," said the mother, with a quivering lip, "if you don't want him to be taken from me."
"It will worret you to death, Lucy; _that_ I can see," said Mr. Vincy, more mildly. "However, Wrench shall know what I think of the matter." (What Mr. Vincy thought confusedly was, that the fever might somehow have been hindered if Wrench had shown the proper solicitude27 about his-- the Mayor's--family.) "I'm the last man to give in to the cry about new doctors, or new parsons either--whether they're Bulstrode's men or not. But Wrench shall know what I think, take it as he will."
Wrench did not take it at all well. Lydgate was as polite as he could be in his offhand28 way, but politeness in a man who has placed you at a disadvantage is only an additional exasperation29, especially if he happens to have been an object of dislike beforehand. Country practitioners30 used to be an irritable31 species, susceptible32 on the point of honor; and Mr. Wrench was one of the most irritable among them. He did not refuse to meet Lydgate in the evening, but his temper was somewhat tried on the occasion. He had to hear Mrs. Vincy say--
"Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so?-- To go away, and never to come again! And my boy might have been stretched a corpse33!"
Mr. Vincy, who had been keeping up a sharp fire on the enemy Infection, and was a good deal heated in consequence, started up when he heard Wrench come in, and went into the hall to let him know what he thought.
"I'll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke," said the Mayor, who of late had had to rebuke34 offenders35 with an official air, and how broadened himself by putting his thumbs in his armholes.-- "To let fever get unawares into a house like this. There are some things that ought to be actionable, and are not so-- that's my opinion."
But irrational36 reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of being instructed, or rather the sense that a younger man, like Lydgate, inwardly considered him in need of instruction, for "in point of fact," Mr. Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions, which would not wear. He swallowed his ire for the moment, but he afterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the case. The house might be a good one, but Mr. Wrench was not going to truckle to anybody on a professional matter. He reflected, with much probability on his side, that Lydgate would by-and-by be caught tripping too, and that his ungentlemanly attempts to discredit37 the sale of drugs by his professional brethren, would by-and-by recoil38 on himself. He threw out biting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only of a quack39, to get himself a factitious reputation with credulous40 people. That cant41 about cures was never got up by sound practitioners.
This was a point on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could desire. To be puffed42 by ignorance was not only humiliating, but perilous43, and not more enviable than the reputation of the weather-prophet. He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidst which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himself as much as Mr. Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional openness.
However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and the event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch. Some said, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her son. Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate's passing by was providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward. Many people believed that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode; and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify44 her suspicions of evangelical laymen45.
She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother, who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing--
"I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate."
"Why, mother," said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, "you know very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He never heard of Bulstrode before he came here."
"That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden," said the old lady, with an air of precision.--"But as to Bulstrode-- the report may be true of some other son."
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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peremptory
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| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
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ailment
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| n.疾病，小病 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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wrench
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| v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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wariest
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| 谨慎的，小心翼翼的( wary的最高级 ) | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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bilious
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| adj.胆汁过多的；易怒的 | |
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wig
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| n.假发 | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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practitioner
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| n.实践者，从事者；(医生或律师等)开业者 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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alleviating
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| 减轻，缓解，缓和( alleviate的现在分词 ) | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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practitioners
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| n.习艺者，实习者( practitioner的名词复数 )；从业者（尤指医师） | |
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irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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offenders
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| n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 )；犯规者；罪犯；妨害…的人（或事物） | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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quack
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| n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子 | |
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credulous
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| adj.轻信的，易信的 | |
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cant
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| n.斜穿，黑话，猛扔 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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laymen
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| 门外汉，外行人( layman的名词复数 )； 普通教徒（有别于神职人员） | |
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