Golden Doors

By Margaret S Haycraft

Dr. Philip Lindsay is intrigued when two young women move into Limes Cottage ‒ attractive Apolline Wantage and her sister Dr. Clare Wantage. Dr. Wantage is seeking fame in the medical world, and Apolline is seeking a wealthy husband. Dr. Lindsay’s housekeeper, Mrs. Garrity, is adamant that Philip must not marry, and does her best to make sure he stays single.
Philip Lindsay does not take to the new doctor. He is in no mood for argument or disputation, and had he sooner perceived the approach of Dr. Wantage in her grey print and black ribbons, he would have risked trespassing over private grounds to avoid her. Here she is, bearing down upon him, however, her curly head even higher than usual.
Is there room for two medical doctors in Abbeydown? Can the two find some common interest in their duties to the village residents, or will Apolline and Mrs. Garrity come between them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Tree Publishing
• Release date: Apr 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913950286

Book preview

About the Book

Dr. Philip Lindsay is intrigued when two young women move into Limes Cottage ‒ attractive Apolline Wantage and her sister Dr. Clare Wantage. Dr. Wantage is seeking fame in the medical world, and Apolline is seeking a wealthy husband. Dr. Lindsay’s housekeeper, Mrs. Garrity, is adamant that Philip must not marry, and does her best to make sure he stays single.

Philip Lindsay does not take to the new doctor. He is in no mood for argument or disputation, and had he sooner perceived the approach of Dr. Wantage in her grey print and black ribbons, he would have risked trespassing over private grounds to avoid her. Here she is, bearing down upon him, however, her curly head even higher than usual.

Is there room for two medical doctors in Abbeydown? Can the two find some common interest in their duties to the village residents, or will Apolline and Mrs. Garrity come between them?

Golden Doors

Margaret S. Haycraft

1855-1936

Abridged Edition

Original book first published 1888

This abridged edition ©White Tree Publishing 2021

eBook ISBN: 978-1-913950-28-6

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

Website: www.whitetreepublishing.com

Email: [e-mail]

Golden Doors is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Author biography

Publisher's Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

About White Tree Publishing

More Books by Margaret S. Haycraft and others

Margaret S. Haycraft Biography

There were many prolific Christian writers of fiction in the last part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth. The majority of their books were fairly heavy-handed moral tales and warnings to young people, rather than romances. Three writers spring to mind who wrote romantic fiction for adults ‒ Margaret S. Haycraft, Eliza Kerr, and Mrs. O. F. Walton, many of whose works are still popular today.

Margaret Scott Haycraft (1855-1936) initially wrote under her maiden name of Margaret MacRitchie. She was born in 1855, in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England. By 1909 she was living in Bournemouth, England, where she died June 29, 1936.

Margaret first book, By The Sad Sea Waves, was published in 1880 under her maiden name. The Golden Doors, this book, followed 16 titles later, the fourth of four books she published that year. Until The Golden Doors, her books were generally intended for younger readers. After 1888, Margaret wrote a mix of book for readers of all ages. At White Tree Publishing we feel that there will be little interest among our readers for Victorian children’s fiction, although many of these can be bought from sources like Abebooks.

Eliza Kerr wrote similar books, but with perhaps less emphasis on romance, but in a similar style to the books of Walton and Haycraft, and we welcome Eliza Kerr to our catalogue. We will be publishing more books from Margaret S. Haycraft and Eliza Kerr. The titles and release dates will be announced on our website.

Our White Tree Publishing editions from these three authors have been sensitively abridged and edited to make them much more acceptable to today's general readers, rather than publishing them unedited for students of Victorian prose. The characters and storyline are always left intact.

Victorian and early twentieth century books by Christian and secular writers can be over-sentimental, referring throughout, for example, to a mother as the dear, sweet mother, and a child as the darling little child. In our abridged editions overindulgent descriptions of people have been shortened to make a more robust story, but the characters and storylines are always unchanged.

A problem of Victorian writers is the tendency to insert intrusive comments concerning what is going to happen later in the story ‒ perhaps to encourage the reader to keep reading! Today we call them spoilers. They are usually along the lines of: Little did he/she know that.... These have been removed when they are uncalled for.

£1,000 in the late 1800s may not sound much, but in income value it is worth something like £120,000 pounds today (about US $150,000). We mention this in case the sums of money in this book sound insignificant!

Chris Wright

Editor

Publisher's Note

There are 15 chapters in this book. At the end are advertisements for similar fiction books by Margaret S. Haycraft and other authors, so this book may end earlier than expected! The last chapter is marked as such. We aim to make our eBooks free or for a nominal cost, and cannot invest in other forms of advertising. However, word of mouth by satisfied readers will also help get our books more widely known. When the book finishes, please go to our website and take a look at the other books we publish: Christian non-fiction, Christian fiction, and books for younger readers.

www.whitetreepublishing.com

Chapter 1

Newcomers at Limes Cottage

FOUR THIRTY p.m., and Garrity is absent from her post in the sunny kitchen, her elbow-chair vacant. Her Tabby is astonished as the feline coat is rubbed against the chair legs, missing the warmth of Garrity’s ample skirts. What can it mean?

Dr. Lindsay takes out his watch, and compares it with the substantial kitchen clock that has hung its weights on the wall as long as he can remember. On the one side is the adage, A place for everything, and everything in its place ‒ for the benefit of Tom, the Doctor’s lad ‒ and on the other side a sampler, worked by Priscilla Garrity at the age of eight years.

The sampler is representative of the infant Moses concealed in the ark, surrounded by figures from one to ten, the names of the Garrity household, a tea kettle, a row of apple trees, a cat and a bird, and various other specimens of the skill of the juvenile Priscilla’s needle.

Watch and clock alike make the time 4.30. Garrity is method itself, and for many a month and year the Doctor, if he happens to cross the yard at this time from his surgery, has found his housekeeper, counsellor, and universal guardian, with kitchens swept, tidied, and garnished, as befits the afternoon.

Dr. Lindsay stops to stroke the cat, which from certain episodes with Tom, is suspicious of all gentlemen, and retires behind the table with arched back and thickened tail. He has come in from a wearying round, and would have liked a cup of Garrity’s tea; but the Doctor is naturally good-tempered, and has learnt patience in the school of general practitioner in a large country town and parish doctor amid the poor.

He whistles meditatively, Alice, where art thou? and goes to the cupboard, familiar from his boyhood, to see what surprises in the way of biscuit or confectionery may wait this day.

Mrs. Garrity (called Mrs. by courtesy, for she has never been married, and has decided opinions as to the place of mankind in creation, always excepting Master Phil) hears the creak of her kitchen cupboard, and, suspicious of curiosity on the part of Tom, sweeps back along the passage from the little drawing room, where the furniture retires from view behind covers of brown Holland, arranged by her careful hands.

Oh, Master Phil, I’m that flustered I scarce know if I’m standing on my head or my feet. I believe the world’s turning upside down, what with all these new-fangled, unwomanish ways. And to think I’ve been staring out of window at them furniture vans, while you’re starving hungry, Master Phil; for what you ate at lunch wouldn’t feed a sparrow. But I’ll bring you in a cup of tea and something to eat along with it. And I do hope you’ll be in punctual for once to your dinner, sir, at seven o’clock. It’s nothing but ruination to good victuals to cook them for you, Master Phil. I do believe them tiresome creatures gets took ill on purpose when I’ve a bit of chicken for you or a nice steak and onions

Just a slice of your gingerbread, Garrity, says the Doctor, taking his place at the kitchen table, and holding out a hand of reconciliation to the still doubtful Tabby. I cannot wait for a cup of tea. I have to be at the infirmary by five.

Oh, of course you have, Master Phil. When did you ever get time to sit down to your victuals? Only last Friday, when the duck were done to a turn‒‒‒‒

Come now, Garrity, don’t be cross. Something very interesting must have taken place to take you away from your knitting! Did you say you were watching the furniture vans? Then I suppose it is true that Limes Cottage has been taken. I wonder what kind of people have taken it, and if there are plenty of children.

The l Grange, with its paddock, orchard, and general air of cosiness, belongs to Dr. Philip Lindsay. But his pay as a parish doctor is not extravagant, and his private patients, while liberal in their patronage, are much more tardy with their payments.

Being an open-handed young man, and touched with the feeling of other people’s burdens, Philip Lindsay is not rich, and could well bear to contemplate the increase of his income. As he looks up inquiringly at Garrity and demolishes his gingerbread, he is mentally balancing the needs of certain widows and orphans whose cases possess his heart, against the probabilities of a comfortable quarterly account in connection with measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, etc., at the newly-tenanted Limes Cottage.

Oh, Master Phil, says Garrity, in mingled grief and indignation, there’s bad news for you, my dear. Never did I think I should live to see the day when such doings should come to pass in Abbeydown. You might have knocked me down with a feather when that brazen faced idiot came tramping into my washhouse with his muddy boots, and said would I lend him, if you please, a box of lucifer matches to set their fire a-going. He said we was their nearest neighbours, and they wanted to get things straight before Dr. Wantage come down by train. I threw the matches at him, and bade him be off. He turned tail, scared out of his life, and serve him right too. ’Ain’t one doctor enough for the Abbeydown people?’ says I; and I give him a bit of my mind.

Dr. Lindsay is silent for a little while. He knows how little of his practice he can afford to lose, but there is not a trace of selfishness in the man’s nature, and he recognises the right of Dr. Wantage to settle in the neighbourhood if he chooses to do so.

Garrity, he says suddenly, I daresay this gentleman may not be a medical man at all. He may be LL.D. You know, Garrity, this gentleman may

It isn’t a gentleman at all, Master Phil, bursts out Garrity angrily. It’s a woman.

Oh! Dr. Lindsay is thoroughly taken aback, and in his consternation forgets to be amused at his housekeeper’s wrath.

"That there boastful idiot of a coachman ‒ for she’s got a conveyance, Master Phil. And if that boy Tom had any sense with a poor dumb animal, you might have set up your carriage, my dear, as has always been my wish for you. That there coachman got a gossiping with Tom, as was getting me in a bunch of onions; and if it don’t turn out that Limes Cottage have been