and, leaving his lady to her own devices, with her
maid and children, he got to the other side of the
street, where Nutter, with taciturn and black observation,
saw them busy pointing with cane and finger, and talking
briskly as they surveyed together Dick Fisher’s
and Tom Tresham’s tenements, and the Salmon
House; and then beheld them ascend the steps of Tresham’s
door, and overlook the wall on the other side toward
the river, and point this way and that along the near
bank, as it seemed to Nutter discussing detailed schemes
of alteration and improvement. Sturk actually
pulled out his pocket-book and pencil, and then Dangerfield
took the pencil, and made notes of what he read to
him, on the back of a letter; and Sturk looked eager
and elated, and Dangerfield frowned and looked impressed,
and nodded again and again. Diruit aedificat, mutat
quadrata rotundis, under his very nose—he
unconsulted! It was such an impertinence as Nutter
could ill-digest. It was a studied slight, something
like a public deposition, and Nutter’s jealous
soul seethed secretly in a hellbroth of rage and suspicion.
I mentioned that Mistress Sturk felt in that physician’s
arm the telegraphic thrill with which the brain will
occasionally send an invisible message of alarm from
the seat of government to the extremities; and as
this smallest of all small bits of domestic gossip
did innocently escape me, the idle and good-natured
reader will, I hope, let me say out my little say
upon the matter, in the next chapter.
CONCERNING THE TROUBLES AND THE SHAPES THAT BEGAN
TO GATHER ABOUT DOCTOR STURK.
It was just about that time that our friend, Dr. Sturk,
had two or three odd dreams that secretly acted disagreeably
upon his spirits. His liver he thought was a
little wrong, and there was certainly a little light
gout sporting about him. His favourite ‘pupton,’
at mess, disagreed with him; so did his claret, and
hot suppers as often as he tried them, and that was,
more or less, nearly every night in the week.
So he was, perhaps, right, in ascribing these his
visions to the humours, the spleen, the liver, and
the juices. Still they sat uncomfortably upon
his memory, and helped his spirits down, and made
him silent and testy, and more than usually formidable
to poor, little, quiet, hard-worked Mrs. Sturk.
Dreams! What talk can be idler? And yet
haven’t we seen grave people and gay listening
very contentedly at times to that wild and awful sort
of frivolity; and I think there is in most men’s
minds, sages or zanies, a secret misgiving that dreams
may have an office and a meaning, and are perhaps
more than a fortuitous concourse of symbols, in fact,
the language which good or evil spirits whisper over
the sleeping brain.
