Love among the Ruins by Warwick Deeping

Author:Warwick Deeping
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620133279
Publisher: Duke Classics

Part III

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XXII

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Aurelius, physician of Gilderoy, flourished on the fatness of a fortunate reputation. He was a rubicund soul, clean and pleasant, with a neatly-trimmed beard, and a brow that seemed to dome a very various and abundant wisdom. He combined a sprightly humour and an enlivening presence with the reverent solemnity necessary to his profession.

As for the ladies of Gilderoy, they reverenced Master Aurelius with a loyalty that became perhaps less remarkable the more one considered the character of the worthy charlatan. Aurelius was an Æsculap in court clothing. He was ignorant, but as no one realised the fact, the soul of Hippocrates would have been wasted in his body. Discretion was his crowning virtue. He was so sage, so intelligent, so full of a simple understanding for the ways of women, that the frail creatures could not love him enough. The confidences granted to a priest were nothing compared to the truths that were unmasked to his tactful ken. The physician is the priest of the body, a privileged person, suffered to enter the bed-chamber before the solemn rites of the toilet have been performed. He sees many strange truths, beholds fine and wonderful transfigurations, presides over the confessional of the flesh. And Aurelius never whispered of these mysteries; never displayed astonishment; always discovered extraordinary justification for the quaintest inconsistencies, the most romantic failings. He carried a sweet and sympathetic air of propriety about with him, like a perfume that exhaled a most comfortable odour of religion. His salves were delectable to a degree, his unguents and cosmetics remarkable productions. Dames took his potions in lieu of Malmsey, his powders in place of sweetmeats. Never did a more pleasant, a more tactful old hypocrite pander to the failings of an unregenerate world.

Aurelius stood in his laboratory one June morning, balancing a money-bag in his chubby pink palm. He seemed tickled by some subtlety of thought, and wonderfully well pleased with his own good-humour. He smiled, locked the money-bag in a drawer that stood in a confidential cupboard, and, taking his cap and walking-staff, repaired to the street. Pacing the narrow pavement like a veritable potentate, pretentious as any peacock, yet mightily amiable from the superb self-satisfaction that roared in him like a furnace, he acknowledged the greetings of passers-by with the elevation of a hand, a solemn movement of the head. It was well to seem unutterably serious when under the eyes of the mob. Only educated folk can properly understand levity in a sage.

In the Erminois, a stately highway that ran northwards from the cathedral, he halted before a mansion whose windows were rich with scutcheons and proud blazonry. Aurelius prospered with the rich. The atmosphere of the mean quarters was like a miasma to him; he loved sunlight and high places where he might bask like a lizard. He passed by a great gateway into the inner court, and was admitted into the house with that ready deference that speaks of familiarity and respect.

Aurelius climbed the broad stairway, and sailed like a stately carrack into my lady's chamber.

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