Charley Kingston's Aunt. By Pen Oliver

Chapter I

I LEAVE HOME TO RESUME MY STUDENT LIFE AT THE HOSPITAL. I had now passed about a fortnight at home, in the house of my father, a clergyman administering a rural parish in the eastern part of the county of Suffolk. It was the " Easter Vacation " at my codege, in 1857, although the term expired in the end of March, almost three weeks before Easter Sunday, which fell on the 12 th of April in that year. The short period of rest had been very welcome after the long and laborious winter session which, as a medical student in my third year, I had devoted to really hard labour, partly A by reading, partly by working at all hours during night aud day in the wards of one of the large London hospitals, and in connection with a very active and crowded school. The fine weather of that spring season, which possibly some one of my7 readers may be able to remember, together with the breezes freshened and scented by the sea only a few mdes distant, afforded abundant means for recruiting strength to a healthy young fedow not yet twenty-two ; and I soon began to feel a conviction that work must be speedily resumed at this critical period of a medical student's career, if I was not to be out of the running in the college competition for honours, where a good place was necessary to me at any cost, and that for more than one good reason.

" Pater," said I, " you must let me go to morrow ; there are three weeks yet before May the first, when term begins, which I should be glad enough to spend here with you ad, but the fact is I must be wed advanced with my dissec tions before the summer conies, no easy matter unless I get back early and secure the means at once if possible." He was ready7 sorry to part with me — still more so were my mother and sister. I am the only boy ; and although never spoded I fancy, I have been wed looked after and cared for by that affectionate trio. And each one of us wed knew that I could not afford to lose time, for I had no prospects after the cost of my education had been defrayed. And although only a few y7ears ago considerable expectations had been entertained from a distant relative, an elderly woman, who had long lived with us as one of the famdy, unexpected circumstances had now rendered any such hope utterly devoid of foundation.

But even that dear trio, who had long made a true and happy home for me, had, it must be confessed, for some time past failed to include ad the objects in which my7 heart was deeply interested, notably one towards which very ardent aspirations had of late gone forth. Another, a more anxious and a more difficult leave-taking, was somehow or other to be accomplished before night, somewhere within the skirts of our little vidage. That was quite a different task ; it was surrounded by obstacles, and plans for over coming them had been matured some days before the announcement of my departure to my father. It is not my province here to say more of that meeting than this — namely, that it did come off, and that it brought more of heartache than of hap piness or of hope, certainly to one of the two parties concerned therein.

Of that one centre of supreme interest to my self just referred to, I must now say a few words. Some sixteen or seventeen years ago, a military officer who had retired after thirty years' service with the rank of colonel, came to settle in our parish. He took a smad house with garden and paddock, the latter joining the strip of glebe which skirted our own garden, and furnished a grass run for my father's pony. It was under stood that he had lately met with a calamity which had almost overwhelmed him — namely, the loss of a wife much younger than himself, and to whom he had been married only three or four y7ears, leaving him a widower with an only daughter. He lived a retired life with this little girl, to whom he devoted almost all his time and thoughts, and whom he educated with the aid of a nursery governess.

The father and the chdd might be seen in their rambles together from year's end to year's end, and among the very few persons he cared to associate with for the purpose of finding some society for himself, and a suitable playmate or two for his daughter, my father and his family ranked among the first. Katie Clavering was at the present date eighteen years of age. She had been a pretty and interesting girl, but she had recently developed the stage of early womanhood, unfolding a type of singular beauty. Some of her friends who met her only now and then were almost startled at the change ; those who saw her every day were of course less aware of it. She was herself absolutely unconscious of the transformation, and saw the same Katie in her glass to-day that she had seen the day before. I may sketch her for you, but her portraiture is beyond any art I have ever had the fortune to meet.

No brush, how ever facde or experienced ; no pen, however powerful, copious, or accomplished, has yet produced a first-rate female portrait. The firm hnes and marked character of man can now and then be fixed on canvas or traced on paper by a great artist. The subtle expression, the dehcate tints and unmeasurable contours of female beauty, have never yet been transferred to a flat surface of any kind. She was of full middle height, with a well formed figure inclining to be slender, but round and smooth in outline, apt for supple and graceful movement, the small compact head and oval face contributing to make her appear slightly tall. The features were half-crowned, half-framed by a mass of loosely-banded chesnut hair, which out of doors in sunlight shone like golden bronze, its deep brown in shadow giving full effect to the lovely complexion, light but warm, of the firmly rounded neck and shoulders.

The brown eyes, lying tranquil under a deep fringe of dark curving lashes, not largely7, nor perhaps always quite equally opened when at rest, disclosed ample expanse of liquid depth, with violet hues when aroused and stirred by feeling, one brow arching slightly higher than the other, and giving a piquancy to the expression never failing to attract, and never forgotten by her admirers. A straight well-chiselled nose ; short curved upper lip, full and projecting, rested on its firm round companion below, each joining the otlier at a deeply recessed angle, and opening not too scantdy to show the perfect teeth within ; the chin rather small, marked in form, not prominent, but not retreating. Can you imagine her ? I, who can so completely recad her at that period of her life, have thus placed her image before myself, but cannot know how far I have succeeded, or rather how much I have failed in suggesting some notion of it to my reader.

Such at any rate to the outward eye was the girl between whom and myself a chddish friendship had ripened, almost without our knowing it, into a warmer sentiment — one which imperiously dominated my whole being, one to which I had some reason to hope she was not indifferent. My impulsive, ardent passion recognized no obstacles as insurmountable. She owed her first adegiance to her father, and I felt that she would loyady maintain it. To return to our history. On the morning but one after that on which my story opens, I was seated at breakfast in my London rooms. The meal was above the average in pomt of quality, owing its butter and new-laid eggs to my mother's thoughtful care. The famdy means were moderate, not considerable ; our pure and cheap country produce was everyway welcome, and I had brought up a hamper of it.

My rooms were, as all hard-working students' should be, close to the college and hospital, so that no occurrence of importance at the latter place, whenever it might happen, could be missed by me. An occasional "tip" to the porter ensured my being sent for when ever any unusual emergency had taken place — a sudden influx of injured people after a railway or other accident, and the like — whether I were officially connected, by dressership, with the department of the hospital which, by rotation, was so fortunate as to receive it, or not. Of course, to ensure facility of approach and of movement, and to avoid disturbing the other inmates of the house, my rooms were on the ground floor, and I was accessible from the out side by signal, a pebble launched against the window pane. For this purpose, a little bed room in front, and a quiet sitting-room com municating with it behind, amply sufficed — an accommodation which cost a rent of twelve shillings weekly, including the services of a dirty little maid-of-all-work, and such cooking as breakfast and tea demanded.

Coals and lights were extra. Once more I was in possession of my latch-key, seated in my den — an apartment of ten feet square. I have my needful books arranged on shelves almost ad within reach of my one arm-chair ; a wed-prepared skud, " in seven sections," for study at my elbow, Quain's plates with which to verify anatomical descriptions on the table, a box or two of instruments and my stethoscope on the mantelpiece, and lastly a good student's microscope and its belongings under a glass bed jar within the single ray, mostly of dusty or foggy hght, which slants clown by a back area into the one window of my snuggery ; and I am ready to buckle to for any amount of work, hard, it is true, but always so fud of interest and of novelty. But this slight sketch of my interior would be incomplete without reference, not merely to the three or four works of art which my land lady, the wife of a clerk in a large furniture estab lishment in a neighbouring thoroughfare, has hung on the wad, and which serve to mitigate by so much covering the enormous flaring pattern of the paper, but to a little water-colour sketch or two by my sister, from scenes in the neighbourhood of home, which I have attached by drawing pins ; whde one fahit effort of my own to pro duce in pen and ink the head of that young girl, the only souvenir thereof I have dared to acquire, holds the place of honour among these familiar treasures of my own.

My breakfast finished, I sallied forth to the hospital, nodding familiarly to the porter in the entrance hall, and demanding whether Allison, the house surgeon, was stdl in his private room, or had commenced his round of the wards, which, during the session, it was his duty to enter, ac companied by the staff of dressers, at ten o'clock precisely every morning. In the vacation most officers are less punctual, so mounting to the second storey, I knocked at the door of his private room and entered. A good-natured bright face, with clear eye and keen glance, regarded me closely for a moment, above the line of the morning paper, which instantly dropped as its owner greeted me. ' Charley Kingston, of all men ! why, what on earth has brought you here so soon ? Right glad to see you though" — rising, and shaking me by the hand.

" Getting anxious about work ; the old story, so much to do, and so little time to do it in. The truth is I want to dissect as soon as I can ; are there any bodies going, think you ? But first of aU, is there anything particular in your wards here ?" I added. " Well, not badly off ; gradually getting up a few useful cases to begin with for the chief's first operating day when the session opens, and to lec ture on. Go round with me ; I shall start soon. No dresser has come yet, it is only ten minutes past ; and two of the four are away in the country, so you may lend a hand if you will." " With aU my heart ; nothhig will suit me better." The resident house surgeon of a London hospital, it should be explained, is generady a young man whose career of study at the codege and hospital has been passed with more than usual credit.

He has probably7 obtained a scholarship or a medal or two in competitive examination for honours on those scientific subjects the elements of which must be mastered by every qualified medical man ; and he has usually taken one of the degrees which are necessary to render him a legal practitioner of his profession. He is rarely more than five-and-twenty years of age, and having been able during a term of four or five years thus to lay a good foundation of theoretical knowledge, he wisely elects to devote further time, such as few indeed can afford, to the prac tical observation of disease or injury7 in the wards of the hospital. If the study and management of internal disease chiefly attract him, he is a house physician, and is exclusively attached to the medical wards, which he watches under the direct supervision of one of the leading physicians of the day, with whom he has the advantage of being dady7 brought into more or less intimate relations.

If injuries and operations are more interesting, he takes charge in like manner under some distin guished surgeon of a surgical ward, and receives the appointment during a certain term, varying from six to twelve months, as house surgeon, which necessarily carries with it residence, board, and constant duty within the walls of the institution. And, if possible, a thoroughly earnest man, with abundant leisure, will endeavour to hold both ap pointments in turn. We held some brief chat on surgical topics in teresting him most at the moment, dlustrations of which were abundant in such an officer's room, crowded as it always is with hospital papers and case books, portions of fracture apparatus and cases of instruments, glasses of secretions, contents of cysts, &c, for chemical and microscopical examination, preparations of disease just removed by operation or from autopsy demanding inspection and description, &c, together with apparatus for making all the necessary examinations referred to.

A room appropriately furnished with Spartan sim plicity, but comprising a single sofa and easy-chair for the weary7 officer to rest in, or even to sleep on at night when an important or anxious case renders retreat to bed undesirable or impossible. Allison tended his patients with enthusiasm and devotion, sacrificing ad considerations in order to achieve a success for them, for himself, and for his chief, the great operating surgeon, whose lieutenant he was ; and in this respect he was only a fair type of the young fedows who fill these offices, and who learn, in accepting large responsibilities for the first time, how absolutely the demands of duty to the post override all other considerations. The dressers came, and we spent two pleasant hours in the routine of the wards ; then, before parting, Allison and I agreed to dine together at a student's restaurant hard by at 7 o'clock.

I descended to the entrance hall of the hospital. Here is always to be found, especially shortly before the opening of the new session, a crowd of announcements of ad kinds, inviting the attention of old and new students to matters respec tively concerning them. I searched among them for any notice from the demonstrator of anatomy, and I found one as follows : — " Gentlemen requiring early7 opportunities of dissecting are requested to put their names down at the demonstrator's room on and after Eriday next, April 10, 1857, at one o'clock precisely." The date of to-day. I was just in time ; two men besides myself only attended, and our names were duly entered. It should be stated that a body designed for anatomical dissection, the pro ceedings of which are prolonged and minute, and conducted strictly under the eye of the professor of anatomy or of his trained substitutes, is divided for the purpose into certain definite "parts," each of which is appropriated exclusively by at least one dissector, and becomes his property for the time; two, however, may share a "part" together, and divide the labour.

The "part" which I required was the head and neck ; it is that which of ad others requires the greatest care, and some little skill on the part of the student, and demands the greatest expenditure of time and labour. Six weeks at least of very hard work only just suffice to complete the task ; and it is never attempted by a first year's man, or ought not to be. However, there was no subject avadable at present ; and these prehminary arrangements were necessarily made whde awaiting the advent of one. Complete and thoroughly understood as the conditions are under which that most neces sary element to sound medical instruction, viz., the supply of human bodies, is furnished, few persons outside the pale of the profession, perhaps, have ever considered the subject otherwise than with a feeling of profound repugnance, and with a half suppressed wish that no such practice as dissection existed.

Let it then be briefly stated that the practice is most carefully regulated, that those bodies only to which no claim whatever is made by any friends are thus applied, and that they are equally distributed among the schools of London according to their respective wants, by an officer appointed for the purpose by Government. Fur thermore, all possible security is afforded that each body is, subsequently to dissection, decently buried with religious rites. The dissecting rooms are kept in admirable order, and are jealously guarded from public intrusion, although probably very few lay persons would be hardy enough to make an uninvited attempt to visit the interior ; whde among the students occupied there, no undue license of any kind is permitted to take place therein. It should be added that spacious budd ings, wed ventdated and regularly disinfected, have now taken the place of those low, out-of-the way, half-lighted vaults in which, fifty years ago, this course of study was followed under conditions which were loathsome and unwholesome to a needless degree. These remarks are not only desirable for the information of the general reader, but are necessary in relation to the development of my story.

Chapter II

A STUDENT'S DINNER AT " THE LARDER." The afternoon was devoted to study in my den, where Alhson caded for me on our way to the Devonshire Larder, a well-known and favourite haunt of the students belonging to the medical side of the codege. His dining quarters, as house surgeon, were, of course, the officers' table of the hospital, at which some eight or ten met dady, including the matron and secretary7 of the institution, but on this special occasion he was my guest. Dinner is, for a hard-working student with slender means, and there were many7 such, not a necessary part of his dady life, but only an occasional luxury. Tea in his own rooms, fortified by a sausage, a slice of ham, or even a chop, is made to suffice by men who read much and give little time to exercise, and answers better than a heavy i; meal with beer, when the evening is to be devoted to work.

A few steps brought us into a busy street, where a familiar door, opening direct upon a narrow staircase, admitted us to the first floor, originally consisting of two rooms, now thrown into one, and crowded with smad tables accom modating two guests each and four. We selected a vacant one of the former kind in a quiet corner, and were soon recognized and welcomed by Mary, the one waiter of the room, who was popularly believed to know at sight every man of the hundred clients who, when in town, habituady dined there from our place alone, as well as his gastronomic peculiarities, but not a single man by name. Mary was a short, stout, good-natured, happily by no means good-looking country girl, freckled, round faced, and scantdy furnished with hair in tiny ringlets, wardy peeping out beneath the margin of a muslin cap.

Never flurried or ill tempered, but always active, and labouring steadily to perform the task of waiting on a crowd of hungry persons, in number nearly double that which ought to have been allotted to her, she almost succeeded in satisfying every one, and somehow contrived to escape blame to herself for the frequent shortcomings of the service. Now, however, it was vacation time, and Mary was enjoying a state of ease and freedom from distraction never to be witnessed in term. The menu at the " Devonshire " was a simple matter ; there were always two hot meats, sometimes three, whereof the plate — and a very good adowance it was — cost sixpence. There were potatoes and one green vegetable, either being optional, at one . penny the portion ; bread was a penny, a glass of beer or of porter was a penny, and Mary's own fee was another.

If you did not object to risk the reputation of indulgence in gourmandise, or in luxurious refinement, or if you were very young and pretentious, and imagined it to be a glorious thing to exhibit publicly your reckless indifference to pecuniary expenditure, you might select one of two puddings or a tart at threepence, and even order a savoury " bout " in the shape of cheese to fodow. But such banquets as these were for most of us the type "of Sunday dinners, that is when no invitation from some exalted friend in or out of town had rendered us for the moment sublimely indifferent to all eating-house temptations. Mary had time to stand at ease, with one hand resting on her rounded hip, and smilingly approve of our unexpected return to town, and compli ment at least one of us on country looks, her face instantly resuming its business aspect as she added briskly, " Roast ribs beef just up, sir, shall I bring you a plate each ?

" We assented, and left ourselves unreservedly in her hands for the rest, intimating that the repast was to be exceptionally liberal, ab ovo usque ad malum. " And now," said Allison, who, I need scarcely here say, was an old friend and confidant, " tell me what you are going to do — what are your plans for the future ?" I replied deliberately, because I had been for some time carefully considering them, " I must, if possible, first get through the Codege of Sur geons ; then I must do the ' second M.B.' next summer, here, of course. If I could bring in with that scheme four or five months of the autumn or winter at Paris, or better still, at Vienna, I should be very glad ; but I am almost afraid those horses won't pull together." " No," said Allison ; " the French and German Clbarley Kingston's Aunt. 21 work won't advance the M.B. examination, and that will take ad the strength you can give it.

Besides, you will please to remember that you have to do more than merely pass it : we look to you to take honours and support the credit of the old place." " My dear Allison," said I, " I want time, and time is money. I never knew as I do now how true that saying is ! Lucky to be j7ou who can go on as long as you like, and never need think of the cost. You can't have a big man in medi cine now, whatever his genius may be, who hasn't got the staying power which easy circumstances give ; it wants five years at least now to lay a foundation, and three were more than enough in our fathers' time." " Yes, old boy7," said my friend in a lower tone, " but it would not matter so much to you even now if it wasn't for that little complication of yours How is she ? You have met, of course ? " " The ' complication,' as you are pleased to call my httle angel — here's her health in a bumper of that excedent Bass !"

(We were indulging wddly to-day.) Here's another to you both !" said Allison. " The ' complication,' I say, so far from being a drawback or a check to my progress, is a constant incitement to a keener struggle. Anxious I often am, and depressed with deadly doubts, but a thought of her — and am I ever without them ? — never fails to stimulate me to go in and win if possible." " Highly poetical, my dear boy; and being so won't advance matters much ; stdl there is more truth in it than in much sentiment of that kind. But to put it practically, what does the old man say V " What, Colonel Clavering ! Good heavens, you don't suppose I have walked up to the guns yet ? And I would almost as soon march right to the muzzle of any gun I ever saw as face that old warrior with a demand for his daughter."

" But you must, if you are in earnest." " Am I not in earnest ? Well, we met three times during my fortnight in Suffolk, the last time the best — yes, and the worst ! — only the day before yesterday. She will never leave him ; he married late in life ; she is the only child ; he is seventy, and these two have been alone, comrades almost, ever since her mother's death so many years ago. The girl is everything to him, and he is very much to her. I can't say she is wrong ; but he is hearty, and may live to eighty. Why should he not to ninety, for the matter of that, or to a hundred ! Such things are done." " You did not meet three times without trying to see a way out of it ? " said Allison. " Trying, yres, but with small result. You see if I had a fortune there might be a way open. Thus, the old boy naturally does not find the keen air of the eastern counties exactly essential to his health at times, and there are charms about that ancient warrior's retreat in Pad Mad, ' The Senior United,' to which he is not insensible.

Now I only want to be able to take a good position as a London consulting man at the West End, with ample means, and I might face those guns I dread so much with a proposition like this : ' Give me your treasure, and come and live with us in London till you are a hundred or more, if it's any amusement to you, or, what is of more consequence, if it's a pleasure to Kate.' That is all I want. It isn't much, is it ? Alas ! if it doesn't come off until that dream is realized !" " I see," said my friend slowly, lighting a cigar ; "a question of ways and means chiefly. It is a complication, and a grave one, say what you will, for a man who has planned his life for a career, and is bound to have one if he goes straight, my dear Kingston. I wish you would take my view of these love matters — look on them as incompatible with an existence which must be entirely devoted during a long time to our art, and adjourn them sine die.

You know that for seven years I have not read a single book, not even a Review article — a brief dady glance at the newspaper has only been indulged — which has not formed a part of my professional study, a rule I shall obtain inviolate for three years longer. Our student life must be one of faithful devotion to a jealous mistress, who permits no real, earnest love-making with the daughters of men. A passing tribute to their charms is, of course, another matter." " You may be right in theory, Allison, but all the talk in the world won't bring us into accord on this subject. You see, Kate and I have grown up boy and girl almost together ; and only since I left the old place to come up here, and went back to it again after a year of absence, did I discover for the first time what a glorious crea ture she had become.

And, unhappily, it would appear that the Colonel himself has suddenly grown alive to the fact that she was a prize to be coveted and by possibility removed, and was not a pretty fixture in his house, and inseparable therefrom; and henceforth the old boy became as stiff and cold to me as if I had somehow or other mortady offended him." " And no doubt he had sufficient reason." " Probably7 the change in our relations would have been less marked had it not been for what we cad at home ' our famdy misfortune.' I don't know whether I ever told you that up to not so very long ago we ad beheved in an old aunt — wed, if she wasn't aunt she was something, nobody exactly knew what — who had hved with us for years, nursed us as babies, and belonged to us, as we thought, as wed as all that was hers, which no doubt was something very considerable.