The Rector and The Doctor’s Family

drives about furiously in his drag from patient to patient; and wherever he goes, as plain, nay, far more distinctly than the actual prospect before him, he sees that sofa, that dusty slow-burning fire⁠—that pipe, with the little heap of ashes knocked out of it upon the table⁠—that wasted ruined life chafing him to desperation with its dismal content. It is very true that it would have been sadly imprudent of the young man to go to the little house in Grove Street a year ago, and tell Bessie Christian he was very fond of her, and that somehow for her love he would manage to provide for those old people whom that cheerful little woman toiled to maintain. It was a thing not to be done in any way you could contemplate it; and with a heartache the poor young doctor had turned his horse’s head away from Grove Street, and left Bessie to toil on in her poverty. Bessie had escaped all that nowadays; but who could have forewarned the poor doctor that his elder brother, once the hope of the family⁠—that clever Fred, whom all the others had been postponed to⁠—he who with his evil reputation had driven poor Edward out of his first practice, and sent him to begin life a second time at Carlingford⁠—was to drop listlessly in again, and lay a harder burden than a harmless old father-in-law upon the young man’s hands⁠—a burden which no grateful Bessie shared and sweetened? No wonder black Care sat at the young doctor’s back as he drove at that dangerous pace through the new, encumbered streets. He might have broken his neck over those heaps of brick and mortar, and it is doubtful whether he would have greatly cared.

When Dr. Rider went home that night, the first sight he saw when he pulled up at his own door was his brother’s large indolent shabby figure prowling up the street. In the temper he was then in, this was not likely to soothe him. It was not a much-frequented street, but the young doctor knew instinctively that his visitor had been away in the heart of the town at the booksellers’ shops buying cheap novels, and ordering them magnificently to be sent to Dr. Rider’s; and could guess the curious questions and large answers which had followed. He sprang to the ground with a painful suppressed indignation, intensified by many mingled feelings, and waited the arrival of the maudlin wanderer. Ah me! one might have had some consolation in the burden freely undertaken for love’s sake, and by love’s self shared and lightened: but this load of disgrace and ruin which nobody could take part of⁠—which it was misery so much as to think that anybody knew of⁠—the doctor’s fraternal sentiments, blunted by absence and injury, were not strong enough to bear that weight.

“So, Fred, you have been out,” said Dr. Rider, moodily, as he stood aside on his own threshold to let his brother pass in⁠—not with the courtesy of a host, but the precaution of a jailer, to see him safe before he himself entered and closed the door.

“Yes, you can’t expect a man to sit in the house forever,” said the prodigal, stumbling in to his brother’s favourite sitting-room, where everything was tidy and comfortable for the brief leisure of the hardworking man. The man who did no work threw himself heavily into the doctor’s easy-chair, and rolled his bemused eyes round upon his brother’s household gods. Those bookshelves with a bust at either corner, those red curtains drawn across the window, those prints on the walls⁠—all once so pleasant to the doctor’s eyes⁠—took a certain air of squalor and wretchedness tonight which sickened him to look at. The lamp flared wildly with an untrimmed wick, or at least Dr. Rider thought so; and threw a hideous profile of the intruder upon the wall behind him. The hearth was cold, with that chill, of sentiment rather than reality, naturally belonging to a summer night. Instead of a familiar place where rest and tranquillity awaited him, that room, the only vision of home which the poor young fellow possessed, hardened into four walls, and so many chairs and tables, in the doctor’s troubled eyes.

But it bore a different aspect in the eyes of his maudlin brother. Looking round with those bewildered orbs, all this appeared luxury to the wanderer. Mentally he appraised the prints over the mantel-shelf, and reckoned how much of his luxuries might be purchased out of them. That was all so much money wasted by the Croesus before him. What a mint of money the fellow must be making; and grudged a little comfort to his brother, his elder brother, the cleverest of the family! The dull exasperation of selfishness woke in the mind of the self-ruined man!

“You’re snug enough here,” he exclaimed, “though you shut me in upstairs to burrow out of sight. By Jove! as if I were not good enough to face your Carlingford patients. I’ve had a better practice in my day than ever you’ll see, my fine fellow, with your beggarly M.R.C.S. And you’d have me shut myself up in my garret into the bargain! You’re ashamed of me, forsooth! You can go spending money on that rubbish there, and can’t pay a tailor’s bill for your elder brother; and as for introducing me in this wretched hole of a place, and letting me pick up a little money for myself⁠—I, a man with twice the experience in the profession that you have⁠—”

“Fred, stop that,” cried the doctor⁠—“I’ve had about enough. Look here⁠—I can’t deny you shelter and what you call necessaries, because you’re my brother; but I won’t submit to be ruined a second time by any man. If I am ever to do any good in this world⁠—and whether I do any good or not,” he added fiercely, “I’ll not have my good name tarnished and my work interfered with again. I don’t care