The feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs. Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need the supplement of quackery.
Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all, strengthening medicines.
"Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?" said the mild but stately dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively, when Mrs. Renfrew's attention was called away.
"It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too well-born not to be an amateur in medicine. "Everything depends on the constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bile--that's my view of the matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the mill.""Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce--reduce the disease, you know, if you are right, my dear. And I think what you say is reasonable.""Certainly it is reasonable. You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on the same soil. One of them grows more and more watery--""Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew--that is what I think.
Dropsy! There is no swelling yet--it is inward. I should say she ought to take drying medicines, shouldn't you?--or a dry hot-air bath.
Many things might be tried, of a drying nature.""Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter. "He does not want drying.""Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to nullify the pleasure of explanation.
"The bridegroom--Casaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since the engagement: the flame of passion, I suppose.""I should think he is far from having a good constitution,"said Lady Chettam, with a still deeper undertone. "And then his studies--so very dry, as you say.""Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned over for the occasion. Mark my words: in a year from this time that girl will hate him. She looks up to him as an oracle now, and by-and-by she will be at the other extreme. All flightiness!""How very shocking! I fear she is headstrong. But tell me--you know all about him--is there anything very bad? What is the truth?""The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic--nasty to take, and sure to disagree.""There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady Chettam, with so vivid a conception of the physic that she seemed to have learned something exact about Mr. Casaubon's disadvantages.
"However, James will hear nothing against Miss Brooke. He says she is the mirror of women still.""That is a generous make-believe of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia better, and she appreciates him. I hope you like my little Celia?""Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more docile, though not so fine a figure. But we were talking of physic.
Tell me about this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate. I am told he is wonderfully clever: he certainly looks it--a fine brow indeed.""He is a gentleman. I heard him talking to Humphrey. He talks well.""Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of Northumberland, really well connected. One does not expect it in a practitioner of that kind. For my own part, I like a medical man more on a footing with the servants; they are often all the cleverer. I assure you I found poor Hicks's judgment unfailing; I never knew him wrong.
He was coarse and butcher-like, but he knew my constitution.