Chapter Twenty-eight: Sir James Wilbrahim's life in danger while doctors differ

(Charles Huntingdon is in London, having spoken with Danielle d'Autun in prison)

     I was seated reading at my lodgings one spring morning of rain when a messenger arrived with a most urgent letter from Martin Clifford. Sir James Wilbrahim, he wrote, had suffered an apoplectic seizure, his life was in danger, and I must return home without delay. I set out immediately and was there in less than two days, though the weather continued bad and the roads were foul.

 

   When I arrived at the Priory, Clifford and Mrs Timmis between them told me what they had learned from the talk in the town:

    A messenger had arrived with a letter and old William the manservant had taken it to the library and delivered it to Sir James. He had then left the room, and some time later heard a great cry and a crash, and found Sir James lying on the floor, barely breathing. Miss Louisa, Tom the gardener and others had carried him to the parlour where they made up a bed. Doctor Stump was summoned and had bled Sir James, and the Rector had also come. That was all that was known for sure. Everyone naturally suspected that the letter might have caused Sir James’s collapse, but it had not been amongst them.

  The weather being somewhat improved, I rode Alexander to Stanegate and was met at the door by William, only to be told, politely but firmly, that I was not to be admitted. I enquired about the mysterious letter which was perhaps the cause of Sir James’s collapse: no, he did not know who the letter was from, but he presumed it was from some great lord, for the wax seal on the back bore a crest. His honour, he said, had not opened the letter immediately, but had directed him to leave it on the table. After his honour had been carried away, there were papers scattered over the library floor, but the letter had not been among them.

   His honour, he continued, had now recovered the power of speech, and his first action had been to call for his daughter to see him in private. They had had a brief conversation, following which Miss Louisa, weeping bitterly, had retired to her room. Her father had not spoken to her since. I next asked him if I might write to Louisa to express my sympathy and offer any help I could provide, but was told that this was impossible, for his honour’s instructions, conveyed by the Rector, were that she was not to receive either letters or visitors. William had tears in his own eyes as he spoke, which he vainly attempted to conceal. There seemed little I could do beyond requesting William to keep me informed of whatever might pass, and so I left, puzzled and apprehensive.

 

    Wishing to learn more, I next proceeded into Bereton to search out Doctor Stump. I had never consulted him myself, having had so far the great good fortune to suffer neither illness nor injury while living at the Priory, but I knew him by sight: a man of strange appearance that scarcely inspired confidence, for he was short and crouching in posture, his eyes were never still and his face bore a dark pustule above his right eyebrow. He had but two teeth in his mouth, and they were very yellow and very long, giving him a carnivorous appearance when he spoke. He smelt constantly of snuff, which stained his coat. 

  He worked, I discovered, from a small, dingy shop in a side street, situated, perhaps appropriately, next to a butcher. A sign proudly announced him as Theodore Stump: physician and apothecary. The window displayed bottles of coloured liquids, but their faded labels could barely be read through the dirty glass.

   An ancient female conducted me through to a back parlour, where I found Doctor Stump in conversation with another man who was the exact opposite in appearance, being tall and cadaverous, with a motionless face that was as white as chalk. He was dressed entirely in black, like a cleric. Had he been lying prostrate, I could have taken him for a corpse.

   Doctor Stump welcomed me to his home and hastened to introduce me to the other man, who it transpired was a most eminent physician from Mulchester, by name Doctor Lawton. Stump was unusually effusive in his manner, as if boastfully proud that a Member of Parliament should be paying him a visit.

  I explained that I was concerned about Sir James Wilbrahim’s state of health, and wished to know what could be done to cure him.

   “And you were quite right to come, sir,” said the visiting doctor, speaking in a voice so soft that I could barely hear him, “for we were indeed discussing his case as you entered. I shall allow my esteemed colleague here to state his opinion first.”

   Doctor Stump, evidently eager to impress both me and his visitor, now embarked on a lengthy discourse on the four humours. He attributed Sir James’s collapse to an excess of Black Bile in his blood, leading to an imbalance which needed to be remedied by bleeding; and should the symptoms persist, the treatment should be repeated until the correct balance had been restored. If he, the doctor, was unable to be present, then a number of leeches might suffice. In that eventuality, he said, a treatment favoured by some authorities was to counter the Black Bile with a Red Cure, which could include replacing the green bed-hangings with scarlet ones and feeding the patient only red food and drink. He also recommended a certain elixir that he could supply, involving snails and millipedes plus other secret ingredients, bruised to a paste and mixed with claret wine, which was certain to produce what he described as “a plentiful evacuation”.

   Doctor Lawson shook his skull-like head firmly, with a frown on his face. “Your diagnosis is incorrect,” he pronounced in condemnation, his voice now rising to take on a harsh tone. “Even if your patient’s affliction had indeed resulted from an imbalance of the humours, then in my opinion he suffered from an excess of Red Choler, in which case your Red Cure would only make his affliction worse. And your elixir too contains red wine! Make it Moselle, sir: Moselle! Otherwise you will infallibly kill your unfortunate patient! No, sir: the unhappy gentleman has plainly suffered an attack of the flying gout.”

   When I asked him for the meaning of this strange term, he explained, in a most superior and patronising tone, that whereas the proper focus of gout was, of course, the feet, but in the case of Sir James the affliction appeared to have suddenly transferred to his brain; and for this he proposed a treatment of the application of hot mustard-plasters to the feet, in order to attract the gout back to its proper home.

  The expression on Doctor Stump’s face suggested that he strongly disagreed, but did not dare contradict his more eminent colleague. I said that for my part I agreed with Doctor Stump’s treatment, for good quantities of claret would at least put Sir James in good heart, whereas I believed that he did not like Moselle wine. I then asked whether, in furtherance of the Red Cure the room should perhaps be lined with red roses and poppies, gathered when Mars, the red planet, was in the ascendant?

   I had intended this comment to be light-hearted, but the learned Doctor Lawton took it with the utmost seriousness. He shook his head impatiently, dismissed the use of flowers as a mere superstition of the uneducated, and informed me, in the lofty tone of a schoolmaster addressing a recalcitrant pupil, that I, as a mere layman, was lamentably ignorant of the astrological sciences. His investigations, he said, had revealed that Sir James was under the influence of Saturn, and could not expect a full recovery until that planet appeared in the constellation of Virgo.

   “Mars has nothing to do with the matter, sir! Nothing at all!” He pronounced with contempt. His voice was like iron scraped over gravel. I felt I had nothing more to contribute to the discussion, and so we parted.  I was still without any ideas as to how I could help the good people of Stanegate, for it appeared unlikely that I would be admitted to the house.

 

                                      (The quack doctor, by Hogarth)

  

   However, two days later I was at work in the library on another cold and wet morning when Ellie the little servant girl appeared with surprising news.

  “Sir, there’s a strange girl arrived! She says her name’s Becky and that she’s Miss Wilbrahim’s maid; she’s in the kitchen. She must have walked here from town, and in this weather too: she’s all soaked! Mrs Timmis is out in the village, so I’ve sat her down in front of the fire, but she says she needs to speak to you urgent-like, in private.”

   I found it was indeed Becky, but she was far from being the pert lass I had encountered before: she was spattered all over with mud and was plainly exhausted and much distressed. I ordered Ellie to produce some mulled ale to warm her.

   “Oh, sir!” she cried, directly Ellie had left the room, “You’ve got to help us! I’ve run all the way here to show you this!”

   “What; all the way from Stanegate? And in the rain? But that’s more than five miles!”

   She nodded and searched in her clothing to find a sheet of paper, much crumpled and torn and now wet from the rain. She explained that she had found it in the coat that Sir James had been wearing when he collapsed, and knew from the wax seal that it must be from someone important.

   Ellie now returned with a mug of ale that she had warmed. As Becky sipped it, I carefully straightened out the paper. Enough of the seal remained to show it was a letter from Lord Teesdale.   

   “Have you read it?” I asked.

   “There were some words there I didn’t know.” I realised that Becky could scarcely read at all.

  “I haven’t shown it to no-one else; not even the mistress. I brought it straight to you. Oh sir, you must come! The mistress, she cries all the time, and she don’t hardly touch her food! And all of us in the house, we’re that frightened!”

   I read the letter. Some parts were now illegible, but I was able to guess these. It had probably been written by Lord Teesdale’s secretary, and the wording was very harsh.

 

   “The Rt. Hon. the Earl of Teesdale presents his compliments to Sir James Wilbrahim, Bart.

   “It has been reported to his lordship that, while she was in London, Sir James Wilbrahim’s daughter Miss Louisa Wilbrahim resided for several days at a house owned by a notorious bawd. His lordship is prepared to believe that the child was merely foolish rather than vicious, but wishes to state that it is surely obvious that, even if she is innocent of any wrongdoing, it is impossible that there could ever now be a match between Sir James Wilbrahim’s daughter and Lord Staines. All discussion of this matter is therefore at an end.”

   So it was by this means that Sir James had discovered the truth about his daughter’s adventure in London! No wonder he was struck down with apoplexy! I wondered how word of it had come to Lord Teesdale’s ears. He made no reference to his Countess’s part in Louisa’s rescue, but he would have been informed of it, and would surely have made some further enquiries. Who then might have revealed details about Mother Rawton?  Could it have come from Churchill, in an unguarded moment? Or Boswell, who loved gossip? Or perhaps Mother Rawton herself, out of sheer mischief and desire for revenge?

   “And did your mistress tell you the full story?” I asked Becky.

   “Not until yesterday, she didn’t, sir. But when the master told her as how he knew the truth, and sent her to her room, and she was left crying her eyes out; then she told me. And now the Rector’s there all the time, spreading his poison in the master’s ears! He makes out that it was your fault, and it was you what lured her down to London, and that he’ll watch over her now that the master’s ill. Please come up there now, sir! You’ll find a way of speaking to the master, and telling him as how Miss Louisa isn’t in no way to blame: that you will, sir! And tell him not to take no notice of what that wicked Rector says! Otherwise I don’t know what might happen! We trust you, sir: all of us do!”  The poor girl began to cry herself.

   “But you must know that I have been refused admission to the house!”

   “Just come with me, sir; please! We’ll find a way of getting you in, that we will; and then you’ll tell the master the truth!”

   How could I resist such an appeal? I raised Becky to her feet and assured her that of course I would come with her. Then I called Henry and ordered the trap to be ready for immediate use, with him to drive us. While we waited she told me what had occurred at Stanegate.

   “I was sweeping the hall, and the door to the master’s room, it wasn’t fully closed so I couldn’t help but hear what was going on in there. I hope you don’t think I was snooping, sir; that’s not my way; but I l do love the young mistress, we all of us do. The master’s voice is very quiet since his illness, but the Rector, he’s got a loud voice. He was talking to the master about the young mistress, and I didn’t like what he was saying at all, that I didn’t. He said she'd become a most wilful girl  since she first met you, for you'd encouraged her to be disobedient, and that in Mulchester she had run away for no reason, and it wasn’t the first time she’d behaved like that, for he'd found out how it was you and Mr Clifford that brought us home from the fireworks last year, and so he blamed all the nonsense she’d learnt from the young men (meaning you and Lord Staines, begging your pardon, sir) for making her want to run away to London, and that it was you as invited her to go there!”

   “But that’s not true!” I interposed, “She ran away to London to meet Lord Staines, though I doubt if he actually invited her. He didn’t love her at all, you know!”

   Becky continued with her narrative. “And then the master says that he feared that what she had done would be the talk of London by now, and she had brought disgrace on the family; and Mr Bunbridge says that the best that can be done is that she’s kept under close guard and never let out until it’s all been forgotten; and that he promised to look after her while the master was ill.”

   Becky then described how Bunbridge had demanded kisses in return for passing on letters. I said that I knew of it too, but that I understood that he had soon desisted.

   “That’s true, sir, but that’s because he took to kissing me instead! He said he’d beat me if I told anyone! He tries it on with all the young girls. You should hear the stories they tell about him in the town!”

 

     The rain slackened and eventually ceased. When we reached Stanegate we did not drive up to the main entrance, but instead left the trap some distance away, instructing Henry to wait till my return; and then walked round to a narrow gate leading to the servants’ entrance. Becky went inside to check that no-one was about and returned to summon me in. We tiptoed up some narrow backstairs to Louisa’s apartment.

    I had not met Louisa since our return from London, and she was much changed: her sorrows had rendered her face thinner and her cheeks were stained with tears. She took my hand and said how glad she was that I had come. I asked about her father, but this led to more tears.

 “It is all my fault!” she sobbed, “I would rather have remained forever unknown at Mother Rawton’s place, than cause him such pain! What if he should die?” She then wept uncontrollably while Becky hugged her. I explained that I intended to go to Sir James and tell him the truth. Louisa was reluctant to agree, fearing that any more shocks might be fatal to his health, but after much whispering, Becky persuaded her and, having established that the coast was still clear, led me quietly down to where I would find Sir James in the parlour, for he was not yet strong enough to reach his bedroom even with assistance. But what should I say to him? And what if I found the Rector there?