Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

“Incredible! Preposterous!”

That was Dr. Paull’s mental attitude: he could not understand how that hour, or more, had slipped away in the princess’ boudoir.

His annoyance, and his difficulty in accounting for his absence from his post, made him half-forgetful of the princess’ expressed determination to see him every day. Next morning, when Sir David Forwood was announced, he had no idea of his old friend’s errand.

“No one ill, I hope?” he said, with concern; he left his consulting-room to join his visitor in the dingy old drawing-room, a melancholy apartment. He was fond of the Forwood children, one or two of whom were weakly.

“No,” said Sir David, who looked as he felt, uncomfortable. “Really I am ashamed to come on such an errand to a man like you, Paull. But you must blame my wife and Lady Boisville, rather than myself. Lady Boisville gives a concert to-night in honour of the young French prince, and she has set her heart on your being there. She actually came herself about it, and the two ladies packed me off to secure you. I am afraid you will have to come, Paull, or I shall never be forgiven.”

Dr. Paull smiled. He remembered. His new patient evidently understood how to carry out her whims.

“I am pledged to go, or I certainly would not. These things are not at all in my line,” he said.

“Pledged to go?” Sir David looked astonished. “Lady Boisville must have been mistaken, then. She said it was an afterthought of hers, and was so afraid you would be offended at being asked so late in the day.”

“I knew nothing of the entertainment; still, I am pledged to go,” said Hugh, amused at Sir David’s innocence. “I will be there.”

Then Sir David departed, perplexed, as he would not have been had his wife been a society intrigante.

Going into the dining-room to luncheon, Hugh was startled to see Mrs. Mervyn, without her bonnet and shawl.

“Good heavens!” he said, startled. What brings you to town?”

“You, of course,” said Mrs. Mervyn, amused. “How do you think the Pinewood is to be restored, and all that, without some one working pretty hard? Ralph and I have our work cut out for us this next week, I can tell you. Ralph arranged for my staying here. I won’t be in your way, I promise you.”

“As if that were possible,” said Hugh, affectionately. He was always glad to see poor Lilia’s “mammy.” Her round placid face and kind eyes were dear to him. But as he presided at the luncheon table, and talked to her and to Ralph, who appeared in the seventh heaven with delight and importance, he hardly knew what they said, or how he answered them, except that the words carpets, curtains, furniture, were frequently repeated. He was wondering how he should explain his absence that evening to “mammy,” who regarded him as an incorrigible recluse.

“I fear I must seem rude, and leave you to-night for an hour or two,” he said, as they rose from table.

“Patients make doctors’ laws,” said Mrs. Mervyn, sagely. “I know that.”

“But this is a private concert at Lady Boisville’s,” said Hugh, uneasily. “Nothing to do with business. In an evil hour I promised to go.”

“My dear, I am so glad that you are coming out of your shell,” said Mrs. Mervyn, warmly. “And that reminds me. When am I to be ready to play hostess at the Pinewood? It is necessary that I should know, to have everything in order.”

Hugh looked at her in consternation. He had forgotten his wild, fleeting ideas that day at the Pinewood. Evidently Mrs. Mervyn had not.

“Oh! I have not thought any more about that,” he said.

“Then I am glad I have reminded you,” said “mammy.” “And really you men of science are so unpractical in ordinary life, that the best thing one can do with you, I think, is to help you a bit. I suppose you mean to ask your friends for the partridge shooting? There are plenty of birds about; and old Cæsar has been taking pains with them since he knew for certain you were coming down.”

Before they parted, Hugh was aware that this was before him: he was to entertain the princess at the Pinewood. It was his own fault. When he had persuaded himself that day in the country that he was planning to entertain Sir David Forwood and his wife, he was deceiving himself.

“I wanted her there,” he told himself, in consternation. “What influence has that girl over me, and how in Heaven’s name did she get it?”

He felt like some ponderous fly may feel entangled in the fine web of a seemingly insignificant spider. That delicate creature! How came it that he, a strong man, was subject to her will, or rather, her caprice?

“It must not be,” he told himself, sternly; “although, of course, I must fulfil my promise. I must see her, when and how she plans for these few days. But after that, no more.”

His determination seemed to him so strong, that he grew quite cheerful, and after a pleasant chat with Mrs. Mervyn during and after dinner, he sent her to the opera with Ralph and dressed for Lady Boisville’s concert quite as if these new doings had been his rule of life.

Lady Boisville’s house was well known. Its tapestries, picture-gallery, and new French ball-room were much talked of in society. When Dr. Paull arrived, the picture-gallery was already nearly filled by a brilliant crowd who were seated or standing about in groups, awaiting the young French prince. Hugh took up his position in the background. He had been forced into this gathering, he determined to remain a spectator of the interesting living picture as much as possible. At first it seemed as if his intention would be fulfilled. The concert began. Celebrated Italian singers warbled delicious music. The ladies smiled and fluttered their fans. The men conversed in snatches between the pieces, while the Boisville ancestors frowned darkly or smiled blankly from among the celebrated black canvases of the old Dutch painters or the gay Canalettis for which the Boisville collection was famous. One or two men he knew, the most celebrated portrait painter of the day, two of the foremost members of the Cabinet, and the physician dearest to reigning royalty, came up and talked with him. All seemed surprised to see him. One of the statesmen, a man of constitutional vigour and renowned for his honest joviality, told him he was taking a step in the right direction.

“You preach at your patients not to shut themselves up,” he said. “But hitherto you have not followed your own prescription.”

Just after that the portrait painter came up to him.

“I have just seen the loveliest woman in the world,” he said, enthusiastically; “and Lady Boisville tells me you are her doctor. Lucky fellow!”

And forthwith he questioned Hugh with what Dr. Paull considered execrable taste, until at last he made some excuse and came out of his corner to avoid the man.

Then he saw Mercedes, an exquisite picture in some silvery gossamer stuff, with pearls round her girlish throat and a long trail of lilies from her beautiful shoulder to the hem of her dress. Her large eyes were travelling restlessly from face to face, her lips were apart, she was nervously playing with her fan, yet the French prince was talking to her, and in the knot of people around them were some of the celebrities of the day. Their eyes met, her face lit up with pleasure, his heart seemed to swell with some emotion. He was touched, yet was angry with himself for being so.

“I suppose I must speak to her,” he told himself; “but that must suffice. After that, I go home.”

He waited until the French prince moved away, then went up to her and asked her how she was.

“Very well, now,” she said. “Not before, for you had not come.”

“I have been here all the evening,” said Hugh, as coolly as he could, for her sweet face lifted to his actually stirred his steady pulses, and he rebelled against these new, involuntary sensations. “I must go, now. Good-bye! I am glad you are looking so well.”

“You will stay? Just a little while?” she pleaded.

“I am sorry that I cannot possibly do so,” he said. “My time is not my own.”

Her blank look of disappointment startled him. What was this violent fancy of hers for him? Was he wise, was he, indeed, doing right to encourage it? He began to fear that he had taken some dangerous step on that flowery way to destruction that he had hitherto succeeded in avoiding.

Still, as he argued to himself walking home under the calm night sky, why should he think there was anything approaching to danger in the kindly feeling this young, beautiful creature entertained for him?

“I am absurdly vain to think of such a thing,” he told himself with a scornful laugh. “I, more than middle-aged, white-haired, awkward, stupid in women’s society, she can only feel a mixture of pity and confidence. How absurd it is of me to make a mountain out of a molehill!”

He went to bed with a heavy heart, accusing himself of ingratitude to the princess.

“I ought to feel flattered at it all, I suppose,” he said when he awoke, his spirits oppressed with the feeling of something going wrong in his life. Instead of this, he felt utterly wretched.

Had he expected to hear from Mercedes? He did not know. He only knew that he turned over his letters with a sense of disappointment, and although he talked with Mrs. Mervyn about the opera, and listened to her and to Ralph’s hints of some pleasant surprise in store for him in the arrangements at the Pinewood, he could not have given an account of the conversation afterwards had his life depended upon it. He had hard work to concentrate his energies upon his work that day. When he returned home he found a letter—a letter with the Andriocchi arms on the flap of the envelope, with his name in that graceful, sloping writing.

It lay among many others on his library table. If he had really doubted the girl’s power over his emotions, the eagerness with which he pounced upon it would have told him the truth.

Before he read it he locked the door. Another desperate symptom, had he been reflecting on his own case. But he was not. He had but one feeling, intense relief. He had been fearing he had offended her, and he had not done so.

He opened the envelope. The enclosed sheet of notepaper contained but a few words:

“I release you from your promise. Farewell.

The date; her address; those few words. No more.

In his present frame of mind, it was a shock. At first he paced the room, his old habit when perturbed. Then after gloomy self-chidings, during which he thought of himself as an inhuman bear who had trampled on the generous nature of one of the sweetest women God had ever created—he stopped short, consoled by a new thought.

“What did I do, or say?” he asked himself. “I only made excuses to get away from a fashionable entertainment. I did not slight her personally. She is a child! She has jumped to some conclusion or another—I must write at once and disabuse her of it, whatever it is.”

He sat down, and wrote:—

“Dear Princess,—It grieves me to find that you have lost confidence in me as your medical adviser, because I have given much consideration to your case. Allow me to assure you that if you permit me a further trial, you will be satisfied with the result. At the same time, if you conclude that you are better without my advice, I sincerely hope you will allow me to talk over your next medical adviser with you, as the selection is a matter of importance to your health.

“Whether this is too warm, or too cold—whatever it is, it shall go,” he said to himself decidedly, as he rang the bell.

“When did this letter come?” he asked of Jones, who came in response to his summons.

“That, sir? Oh, the princess! The fair, foreign gentleman brought it. He wanted to see you, sir. He came about two.”

“Which gentleman?” asked Hugh—nettled to find that the letter had been recognised.

“The count, sir; not the prince.”

“Send this by a hansom at once,” he directed. “And send round to the stables. I want the brougham directly after dinner.”

He had given this order, spurred by a feeling he had not hitherto known: he wished to conceal his movements from his own servants. Hitherto, they might have known all that he did, and spoke, and thought, for all he cared.

Now, the idea of his patient the princess being commented upon by any one of his household, even by Ralph, was unbearable to him. He had ordered his carriage to elude remark. No sooner had he done so, than he wondered what he should do with it—where he should go.

“I will take mammy to the theatre,” he suddenly thought.

Upstairs he bounded—she was not in the drawing-room. Once more he rushed up the stairs three steps at a time and bounced up against Mrs. Mervyn.

“My dear boy!” Mrs. Mervyn was astonished, but not disconcerted.

It did her good to see the long disconsolate widower “alive again,” as she said afterwards to her husband.

“I came to see if you would come to the theatre, to-night,” he said, in a low voice. “Don’t say anything before the servants—but after dinner, we three can just go and see anything good that you would care to see.”

Mrs. Mervyn was enchanted.

“All the same, I would just as soon spend a quiet evening with you and Ralph,” she said. “You must not fatigue yourself on my account, dear.”

“Don’t be alarmed! I am purely selfish!” he said, going off disgusted with himself.

What had happened to him? He was unstrung—his emotions were in revolt. He felt as if he could not sit quietly at home that evening, waiting for a reply to his note. He must have change of scene, excitement, to balance him. If mammy could only know! Poor “mammy!”

Perhaps “mammy” knew more than he thought. Mrs. Mervyn, finding him changed, had certainly been on the watch these days. She had discovered no clue to the feminine influence which, woman-like, she believed to be the root of Dr. Paull’s alternate high spirits and absence of mind—still, she believed that the feminine influence was there, and that in time she would “know everything.”

Poor “mammy!”

Meanwhile, she enjoyed herself that evening, as she, Dr. Paull, and Ralph sat together in a box to see a new piece, a serious comedy with both humorous and pathetic interest which was having a steady “run” at one of the principal theatres. Hugh exerted himself to be amusing, or, at least, to pay the undivided attention to Lilia’s dearest friend which he considered her due; and Mrs. Mervyn thought, more than once during the performance, “If there really is some love affair, it is going on favorably.”

So hoped Hugh. At least, so he hoped of this new acquaintance which he mentally designated his and Mercedes’ “friendship.” He believed his letter had “made it all right” between him and his offended patient.

But the next day passed, and the day after that, and no answer came.

Then Mrs. Mervyn departed, with the promise that he would send her full particulars of his house party at the Pinewood next month. She assured him at parting that everything would be ready for next month in a few days.

Good soul!—she journeyed home somewhat heavy-hearted on the subject of Hugh, of whom she was genuinely fond. When he returned from the bookstall with the newspapers he had bought to beguile her homeward journey, she noticed that he was deadly pale and looked very ill.

“He has been overfatiguing himself for me,” she dismally thought as the fields and hedges seemed to fly by the compartment in which she sat alone. “Poor, dear boy! I have been very thoughtless.”

She might have spared herself her misgivings. The cause of Dr. Paull’s pallor was a short paragraph in a society column his eyes rested upon as he brought her the papers:

“The Prince and Princess Andriocchi, who have been making a brief stay in the Metropolis, intend to take their departure for Madrid to-day. For the future they will reside in the well-known palace of the Duke and Duchess of Saldanhés, the parents of the princess, where an extensive suite of apartments has been magnificently re-decorated for their reception. One of the objects of the Prince Andriocchi’s recent visit to the Palazzo Andriocchi, in Florence, is said to have been the organisation for the removal of the most celebrated among the many renowned works of art accumulated by his ancestors to his new abode in the Spanish capital.”

So Mercedes had left him—without one word!