No Name, Wilkie Collins [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

herself, and who told her he was Mr. Merrick, the doctor; she could sit up in bed, supported by pillows, wondering what had happened to her, and where she was; she could feel a growing curiosity about that quiet voice, which still asked after her, morning, noon, and night, on the other side of the door.

Another day’s delay⁠—and Mr. Merrick asked her if she was strong enough to see an old friend. A meek voice, behind him, articulating high in the air, said, “It’s only me.” The voice was followed by the prodigious bodily apparition of Mrs. Wragge, with her cap all awry, and one of her shoes in the next room. “Oh, look at her! look at her!” cried Mrs. Wragge, in an ecstasy, dropping on her knees at Magdalen’s bedside, with a thump that shook the house. “Bless her heart, she’s well enough to laugh at me already. ‘Cheer, boys, cheer⁠—!’ I beg your pardon, doctor, my conduct isn’t ladylike, I know. It’s my head, sir; it isn’t me. I must give vent somehow, or my head will burst!” No coherent sentence, in answer to any sort of question put to her, could be extracted that morning from Mrs. Wragge. She rose from one climax of verbal confusion to another⁠—and finished her visit under the bed, groping inscrutably for the second shoe.

The morrow came⁠—and Mr. Merrick promised that she should see another old friend on the next day. In the evening, when the inquiring voice asked after her, as usual, and when the door was opened a few inches to give the reply, she answered faintly for herself: “I am better, thank you.” There was a moment of silence⁠—and then, just as the door was shut again, the voice sank to a whisper, and said, fervently, “Thank God!” Who was he? She had asked them all, and no one would tell her. Who was he?

The next day came; and she heard her door opened softly. Brisk footsteps tripped into the room; a lithe little figure advanced to the bedside. Was it a dream again? No! There he was in his own evergreen reality, with the copious flow of language pouring smoothly from his lips; with the lambent dash of humor twinkling in his particolored eyes⁠—there he was, more audacious, more persuasive, more respectable than ever, in a suit of glossy black, with a speckless white cravat, and a rampant shirt frill⁠—the unblushing, the invincible, unchangeable Wragge!

“Not a word, my dear girl!” said the captain, seating himself comfortably at the bedside, in his old confidential way. “I am to do all the talking; and, I think you will own, a more competent man for the purpose could not possibly have been found. I am really delighted⁠—honestly delighted, if I may use such an apparently inappropriate word⁠—to see you again, and to see you getting well. I have often thought of you; I have often missed you; I have often said to myself⁠—never mind what! Clear the stage, and drop the curtain on the past. Dum vivimus, vivamus! Pardon the pedantry of a Latin quotation, my dear, and tell me how I look. Am I, or am I not, the picture of a prosperous man?”

Magdalen attempted to answer him. The captain’s deluge of words flowed over her again in a moment.

“Don’t exert yourself,” he said. “I’ll put all your questions for you. What have I been about? Why do I look so remarkably well off? And how in the world did I find my way to this house? My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from Moral Agriculture to Medical Agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public sympathy, now I prey on the public stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach⁠—look them both fairly in the face when you reach the wrong side of fifty, and you will agree with me that they come to much the same thing. However that may be, here I am⁠—incredible as it may appear⁠—a man with an income, at last. The founders of my fortune are three in number. Their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am now living⁠—on a pill. I made a little money (if you remember) by my friendly connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease (Requiescat in Pace!) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge’s from whom, as I told you, my wife had expectations. Very good. What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one fell swoop, in advertisements, and purchased my drugs and my pillboxes on credit. The result is now before you. Here I am, a Grand Financial Fact. Here I am, with my clothes positively paid for; with a balance at my banker’s; with my servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, flourishing, popular⁠—and all on a pill.”

Magdalen smiled. The captain’s face assumed an expression of mock gravity; he looked as if there was a serious side to the question, and as if he meant to put it next.

“It’s no laughing matter to the public, my dear,” he said. “They can’t get rid of me and my pill; they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in the whole range of human advertisement which I am not making to the unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last new novel, there I am, inside the boards of the book. Send for the last new song⁠—the instant you open the leaves, I drop out of it. Take a cab⁠—I fly in at the window in red. Buy a box of tooth-powder at the chemist’s⁠—I wrap it up for you in blue. Show yourself at the theater⁠—I flutter down on you in yellow. The mere titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few from last week’s issue. Proverbial Title: ‘A pill in time saves nine.’ Familiar Title: ‘Excuse me,