"Well,' he goes on, 'Mr Weaver did very wisely when he sponsored the match. Annie and I are birds of a feather, and neither of us can cast faults of parentage in the other's teeth. Together, we'll make a clean new home, and raise healthy children, and live in love and truth until death do us part.'
His words were so beautiful that I hugged him to me, and called him my poor lamb.
Chapter VIII
THE NURSERY
WHEN Dr Palmer married Annie Brookes on October 7th, 1847, he could count himself tolerably well off. His house, rented at only twenty-five pounds a year, was furnished with elegance; he had a handsome carriage for going his rounds, and although three or four surgeons were already practising in Rugeley, the town boasts four thousand five hundred inhabitants, and the outlying villages another couple of thousand. Consequently Dr Palmer did not lack for patients; indeed, he made quite a reputation, during the December Fair that year, from his skilful setting of broken bones, and soon had more work in hand than pleased him. Benjamin Thirlby was employed at this time by Dr Salt, Rugeley's leading surgeon, to make up medicines and dress wounds; and two years before this had opened the chemist's shop already mentioned in our sketch of the town. One day, according to the account most usually heard, Thirlby felt aggrieved because Dr Salt had reprimanded him sharply for an oversight in the matter of some prescription, and poured out his woes to Dr Palmer when he next visited the shop.
' Nay, Ben,' said Dr Palmer,' this trouble is soon remedied: why don't you cut your stick and come to me? I'll pay you better than Salt.'
'I'll come with all my heart,' cried Thirlby, still very angry. 'The nineteen years I worked for that ill-mannered old skinflint have been nineteen too many!'
Dr Palmer stretched out his hand for Thirlby's, to shake on the bargain; and Thirlby grasped it firmly.
Dr Salt, though often grumbling of his assistant's pigheadedness, never expected him to break his engagement, however harshly he might be scolded. But Mrs Thirlby now informed him —for Thirlby himself hid his shame under a mask of surliness, and turned to walk in the opposite direction whenever he saw Dr Salt approaching—that Dr Palmer had offered her husband twenty pounds a year more than his former wage. The news made Dr Salt very angry indeed. That a surgeon should entice away another's assistant is considered as grave a breach of professional etiquette, as when a gentleman steals his neighbour's French cook, or a minister of religion poaches for souls in a fellow-minister's congregation. Dr Salt, who was much respected locally, did not scruple to complain in public of Thirlby's ingratitude and Dr Palmer's ill-manners, and earned a deal of sympathy; Rugeley being a town where sharp practice has never been condoned as a good joke, as it so often is in Liverpool and London.
Miss Salt, Dr Salt's daughter and Annie Palmer's closest friend, when she called the next day as usual, explained how difficult her situation had become as a result of Thirlby's sudden change of employment.
' Oh, but my dear child,' cried Annie, 'I'm afraid you have been given quite the wrong notion. William told me all about Thirlby as soon as he came home. It appears that your father scolded Thirlby because he had forgotten to prepare some pills, and when he pleaded that the prescription was written so illegibly that it would have been dangerous to guess at its meaning, your father called him a bleary-eyed clodhopper and dismissed him on the spot. William, happening to pass by, found Mrs Thirlby in a flood of tears, and kindly told her not to despair—Thirlby should first make sure that the dismissal was final, and if so, come to work with himself. She sent Thirlby off to try at the surgery whether vour father might perhaps relent, but he soon returned, saying: ' Dr Salt swears that he never goes back on a dismissal. I'll come to you, Will, if I may." As you see, Will is not in the least to blame.'
Miss Salt naturally concluded that Thirlby had been lying to Dr Palmer. She told her father so, but he merely remarked 'Humph!', and never troubled to inquire into the matter; though when Dr Palmer offered him neither an apology nor an explanation, he cut him dead one morning in the Market Square.
Dr Salt did not forbid his family to continue their friendly relations with the Palmers. He knew that Miss Salt had been Annie Palmer's bridesmaid at the wedding and loved her dearly; and that his son Edwin thought highly of Dr Palmer. 'It takes all sorts to make a world,' he would say in sour tones that showed his ill opinion of a world so made; but he was kind enough not to involve his children in the quarrel.
Annie Palmer grieved to think that Dr Salt had taken an aversion to her beloved husband. She had inherited a tendency to melancholia from her father and, though hitherto the fits had been slight and short-lasting, some drunken talk she now overheard from the tap-room of The Talbot Arms Hotel across the street, about her husband's escapades at Stafford Infirmary, plunged her into a black misery. Yet Dr Palmer was tenderness itself, and did all in his power to cheer Annie up, attributing these moods to her condition; for she had found herself pregnant after three months of marriage. He bought her a chaise and a beautiful pair of ponies to drive about the country with, and she used to tell Miss Salt: 'I really can't explain these black fits, unless Will is right in saying that they're due to my baby, for you know I'm very happy indeed. I have all that heart could desire, or that money can buy. And to be a mother is a glorious thing!'
When at last he begged to be taken into Annie's confidence, it came out that guilt was gnawing at her conscience. By order of the Court of Chancery she had been separated from her mother, whom the Bible required that she should honour, and had never asked leave to be reunited with her. 'Mr Dawson and Dr Knight,' Annie told him, 'both spoke unkindly of my mother, and I dared not oppose them. Neither have I dared to mention the matter to you. But I should think very ill of myself if I didn't long wholeheartedly to see her again. I can't pretend that I have pleasant memories of her, but perhaps I was a difficult and disagreeable child. If so, I should like to do better now and make her love me again; as she must have done once. All mothers dote on their children until some little thing turns up to disappoint them. What if I died in childbirth? Would that not be God's punishment on me for not having insisted on visiting her while I yet could?'
It speaks exceedingly well for Dr Palmer that though he had heard the whole story of Colonel Brookes and Mary Ann Thornton from Mr Weaver, if from nobody else, he decided to humour his wife. Mrs Thornton, by this time a haggard and prematurely aged eccentric, still occupied the house behind St Mary's Church, Stafford, where Colonel Brookes had died and Annie had been born. She kept no servants, seldom appeared in the street except on her brief visits to shops, and lived among a swarm of cats with which she held prolonged and one-sided conversations about subjects certainly well above their heads.
Mrs Thornton would not at first open the front door to the elegant young couple who came calling in their chaise-and-pair; but when Annie had made herself known, through the keyhole, she unlocked the door hastily and, with tears coursing down her dirty cheeks, sobbed out: 'My little love . . . My own lost darling!'
Annie timidly asked her mother not to squeeze her quite so hard because she hoped, within a few months' time, to become a mother herself.
' At last I have something to live for!' Mrs Thornton exclaimed, raining alcoholic kisses on Annie's face. She promised to put the house in better order for a next visit which, she hoped, would take place as soon as possible. Dr Palmer showed great attention to the poor creature, even bringing himself to address her as 'Mamma'; and Annie returned home deeply grateful for his kindness and understanding.