Two or three minutes later, the hall-door of Sturk’s mansion opened wide, and the figure of the renowned doctor from Dublin, lighted up with a candle from behind, and with the link from before, glided swiftly down the steps, and disappeared into the coach with a sharp clang of the door. Up jumps the footman, and gives his link a great whirl about his head. The maid stands on the step with her hand before the flaring candle. ‘The Turk’s Head, in Werburgh Street,’ shouts the footman, and smack goes the coachman’s whip, and the clang and rattle begin.
‘That’s Alderman Blunkett — he’s dying,’ said the major, by way of gloss on the footman’s text; and away went the carriage with thundering wheels, and trailing sparks behind it, as if the wild huntsman had furnished its fleet and shadowy team.
‘He has ten guineas in his pocket for that — a guinea a minute, by Jove, coining, no less,’ said the major, whose pipe was out, and he thinking of going in to replenish it. ‘We’ll have Toole here presently, depend upon it.’
He had hardly spoken when Toole, in a halo of candle-light, emerged from Sturk’s hall-door. With one foot on the steps, the doctor paused to give a parting direction about chicken-broth and white-wine whey.
These last injunctions on the door-steps had begun, perhaps in a willingness to let folk see and even hear that the visit was professional; and along with the lowering and awfully serious countenance with which they were delivered, had grown into a habit, so that, as now, he practised them even in solitude and darkness.
Then Toole was seen to approach the Phoenix, in full blow, his cane under his arm. With his full-dressed wig on, he was always grand and ?sculapian, and reserved withal, and walked with a measured tread, and a sad and important countenance, which somehow made him look more chubby; and he was a good deal more formal with his friends at the inn-door, and took snuff before he answered them. But this only lasted some eight or ten minutes after a consultation or momentous visit, and would melt away insensibly in the glow of the club-parlour, sometimes reviving for a minute, when the little mirror that sloped forward from the wall, showed him a passing portrait of his grand wig and toggery. And it was pleasant to observe how the old fellows unconsciously deferred to this temporary self-assertion, and would call him, not Tom, nor Toole, but ‘doctor,’ or ‘Doctor Toole,’ when the fit was upon him.
And Devereux, in his day, won two or three wagers by naming the doctor with whom Toole had been closeted, reading the secret in the countenance and by-play of their crony. When it had been with tall, cold, stately Dr. Pell, Toole was ceremonious and deliberate, and oppressively polite. On the other hand, when he had been shut up with brusque, half-savage, energetic Doctor Rogerson, Tom was laconic, decisive, and insupportably ill-bred, till, as we have said, the mirage melted away, and he gradually acquiesced in his identity. Then, little by little, the irrepressible gossip, jocularity, and ballad minstrelsy were heard again, his little eyes danced, and his waggish smiles glowed once more, ruddy as a setting sun, through the nectarian vapours of the punch-bowl. The ghosts of Pell and Rogerson fled to their cold dismal shades, and little Tom Toole was his old self again for a month to come.
‘Your most obedient, gentlemen — your most obedient,’ said Toole, bowing and taking their hands graciously in the hall —‘a darkish evening, gentlemen.’
‘And how does your patient, doctor?’ enquired Major O’Neil.
