Maxley shuddered. "The unreasonablest beasts, sir, you ever saw or heard tell on: mostly snakes and dragons. Can't stoop my head to do no work for them, sir. Bless your heart, if I was to leave you gentlemen now, and go and dig for five minutes in my garden, they would come about me as thick as slugs on cabbage. Why 'twas but yester'en I tried to hoe a bit, and up come the fearfullest great fiery sarpint: scared me so I heaved my hoe and laid on un' properly: presently I seemed to come out of a sort of a kind of a red mist into the clear: and there laid my poor missus's favourite hen; I had been and killed her for a sarpint!" He sighed, then, after a moment's pause, lowered his voice to a whisper: "Now suppose Iwas to go and take some poor Christian for one of these gre-at bloody dragons I do see at odd times, I might do him a mischief, you know, and not mean him no harm neither. Oh, dooee take and have me locked up, gentlemen, dooee now: tellee I ain't fit to be about, my poor head is so mazed.""Well, well," said Mr. Hardie, "I'll give you an order for the Union.""What, make a pauper of me?""I cannot help it," said the magistrate: "it is the routine; and it was settled at a meeting of the bench last month that we must adhere to the rule as strictly as possible; the asylum is so full: and you know, Maxley, it is not as if you were dangerous.""That I be, sir: I don't know what I'm a looking at or a doing. Would Iha' gone and killed my poor Susan's hen if I hadn't a been beside myself?
and she in her grave, poor dear: no, not for untold gold: and I be fond of that too--used to be, however: but now I don't seem to care for money nor nothing else." And his head dropped.
Look here, Maxley, old fellow," said Alfred sarcastically, "you must go to the workhouse, and stay there till you hoe a pauper; take him for a crocodile and kill him; then you will get into an asylum whether the Barkington magistrates like it or not: that is the _routine,_ I believe;and as reasonable as most routine."Dr. Wycherley admired Alfred for this, and whispered Mr. Osmond, "How subtly they reason."Mr. Hardie did not deign to answer his son, who indeed had spoken at him, and not to him.
As for poor Maxley, he was in sad and sober earnest, and could not relish nor even take in Alfred's irony. He lifted his head and looked Mr. Hardie in the face.
"You be a hard man," said he, trembling with emotion. "You robbed me and my missus of our all; you ha' broke her heart, and turned my head, and if I was to come and kill _you,_ 'twould only be clearing scores. 'Stead of that, I comes to you like a lamb, and says give me your name on a bit of paper, and put me out of harm's way. 'No,' says you, 'go to the workhouse!' Be _you_ in the workhouse--you that owes me nine hundred pounds and my dead missus?" With this he went into a rage, took a packet out of his pocket, and flung L. 900 of Mr. Hardie's paper at Mr. Hardie's head before any one could stop him.
But Alfred saw his game, stepped forward, and caught it with one hand, and with the dexterity of a wicket-keeper, within a foot of his father's nose. "How's that, Umpire?" said he: then, a little sternly, "Don't do that again, Mr. Maxley, or I shall have to give you a hiding--to keep up appearances. He then put the notes in his pocket, and said quietly, _"I_shall give you your money for these before the year ends.""You won't be quite so mad as that, I hope," remonstrated his father. But he made no reply: they very seldom answered one another now.
"Oh," said Dr. Wycherley, inspecting him like a human curiosity, "nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae.""Nec parvum sine mixtura stultitiae," retorted Alfred in a moment and met his offensive gaze with a point-blank look of supercilious disdain.
Then having shut him up, he turned to Osmond: "Come," said he, "prescribe for this poor fellow, who asks for a hospital, so Routine gives him a workhouse. Come, you know there is no limit to your skill and good nature: you cured Spot of the worms, cure poor old Maxley of his snakes:
oblige me."
"That I will, Mr. Alfred," said Osmond heartily: and wrote a prescription on a leaf of his memorandum-book, remarking that though a simple purgative, it had made short work of a great many serpents and dragons, and not a few spectres and hobgoblins into the bargain.
The young gentleman thanked him graciously, and said kindly to Maxley, "Get that made up--here's a guinea--and I'll send somebody to see how you are to-morrow."The poor man took the guinea, and the prescription, and his head drooped again, and he slouched away.
Dr. Wycherley remarked significantly that his conduct was worth imitating by _all persons similarly situated:_ and concluded oracularly:
"Prophylaxis is preferable to therapeusis.""Or, as _Porson_ would say, 'Prevention is better than cure.'"With this parting blow the Oxonian suddenly sauntered away, unconscious, it seemed, of the existence of his companions.
"I never saw a plainer case of Incubation," remarked Dr. Wycherley with vast benevolence of manner.
"Maxley's?"
"Oh, no; that is parochial. It is your profoundly interesting son Ialluded to. Did you notice his supercilious departure? _And his morbid celerity of repartee?_"Mr. Hardie replied with some little hesitation, "Yes; and, excuse me, Ithought he had rather the best of the battle with you.""Indubitably so," replied Dr. Wycherley: "they always do: at least such is my experience. If ever I break a lance of wit with an incubator! Icalculate with confidence on being unhorsed with abnormal rapidity, and rare, indeed, are the instances in which my anticipations are not promptly and fully realised. By a similar rule of progression the incubator is seldom a match for the confirmed maniac, either in the light play of sarcasm, the coruscations of wit or the severer encounters of dialectical ratiocination.""Dear, dear, dear! Then how is one to know a genius from a madman?"inquired Jane.
