Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

If I do not tell someone, or something, I shall go mad!

Oh! father, father, I loved you so; and what have you done to me?

You could not help dying and leaving me, I know that. The relentless progress of atoms, whose rules no one is clear-brained or unprejudiced enough to discover, determined your death.

But why, why did you degrade me so? I have been wandering in the dark among the pines, in the forlorn hope of meeting your spirit. I have been to the place in the churchyard where they buried you, to-day. I knew I could not see or hear you, but I thought my mind might feel your mind. I felt nothing—but that you—are—not.

You are not. Terrible, cruel thought! And I have not the courage to kill myself and be not, as well. This man you have given me to, without asking me, holds me, holds every bit of me—body, heart, what they call mind and soul—everything. I feel I must do his will, and that my own will is as not as you are.

I rage and chafe like a chained beast, and every moment I feel my chains are getting less galling—presently, oh, father, father! they will be pleasant, like your chains were—then I shall love them—then they will crush me, and I shall not be your Lilia any more, but a little piece of another identity.

It must have been your plan from the beginning. How you used to talk about him after that dreadful time in the hospital! You made him out a second “Hamlet,” only larger-minded, cleverer; but never said he was young and handsome. You must have purposely let me imagine him like your friends, that I might be surprised, that first time he came here. How well I remember one evening, when you and I were walking in the wood, and you were talking about him, and said he was coming!

“At last I shall see this ancient ‘Hamlet’ of yours,” I said, and asked you if there had been an “Ophelia” in his story.

“Scarcely time for that, yet,” you said, in a peculiar way of yours, that means I am all at sea—all in the dark about something. But I was not interested enough to think more about it.

Then came the day, when a graceful, dark, young, prince-like creature walked across the lawn, and when I saw him I felt all paralysed. I felt nothing, thought nothing. He stupefied me. I only seemed to wake up when he went away; no, some hours after he went back to London, and then my whole being seemed to give one great cry of despair, like it did when Mr. Mervyn told me of your accident and that you were in the hospital.

I did not know what that feeling of despair meant then. It only frightened me. I know what it meant, only too well, now. I despaired, because it is impossible that he can ever love me. And no one could see him and know him without feeling that life without his love is dry, purposeless—a living death.

Oh! why did you bring him here, and ask him to take me? Poor, dear father! I thought you could not be mistaken in any one, and you are certainly not mistaken in your estimate of him. But when you thought he could love me, how you exaggerated me, how your kind eyes saw your poor child in a false light!

I—his companion—his—wife! Impossible! The whole world would laugh, would stare! and I should be sick with shame, as I was to-day.

I told him, two days before, that he must go away. I begged him to go away. He did not. He thinks he ought to sacrifice himself. So he stayed for the “funeral,” as they call it. (Why not good Saxon burial?) Father, you never treated me wrongly till now. Now you have wronged your child. When you were dying, you did what you thought best for me. But—to-day—the shame of it!

Your brothers, Mr. Pym and Mr. Edmund Pym, came for the burial. Roderick did not come, it was said he was ill; but his brother Herbert, the clergyman, you used to laugh at to Roderick, and call the “family prig,” came. They followed your coffin through the pouring rain in carriages. I sat in my room alone—I could not even bear Mammy Mervyn with me—feeling cold and half-dead. While they were seeing your coffin put into the ground I was listening to the clatter of plates and dishes, and the footsteps of the servants laying the luncheon which those people were to eat when they came back. I heard the carriages coming back like carriages in a dream. Then Mammy Mervyn would come in with a cup of beef-tea. She took me in her arms and dropped tears on to me, which made me drink the beef-tea, as the less disagreeable of the two. She told me the will was to be read, and Mr. Moffatt said I must come down; and she made me put on that dreadful black gown, which you would dislike, I know, as much as I do. I went downstairs with her. She asked me if I thought I should “break down.” I said the truth: “Mammy, I feel there is nothing of me to break down.”

The room was dreadfully light. I could not make out which was which of the men in black standing about, till he came up to me and took my hand; and the touch of him fired up my life like a flaming match fires spirits of wine. Then I again saw—heard—thought—and suffered the anguish of your loss acutely. The lawyer, sitting at your table, in your chair, read your will, and the awful shame settled about me that I shall never be able to lift off myself, never!

You left all your money and property to him, with the condition that he married me. That was all. You never made any arrangement for anyone else, or for anything else, should he refuse, or I refuse.

If you could have heard the desecration of your name which followed!

Old Mr. Pym, Roderick’s father, that pinched old man like a sick weasel, got up and said he should oppose your will, which was evidently drawn up when you were of unsound mind.

At this I started up, and said that I should defend it. You had never been of unsound mind.

Mr. Mervyn proposed that discussions, if any, should be postponed.

I said, “Certainly.”

This conversation made me feel all anger.

Then Mr. Pym proposed a private interview with me.

I said: “Yes; will you please come into the drawing-room?”

We went. I drew up the blinds, then stood with my back to the light, facing him. He offered me a chair. I declined. No man who has accused you of having been of unsound mind shall be invited to seat himself in this, your, house if I can prevent it.

He stared at me, I stared at him. He began a speech, muddling the words and clearing his throat. Then he accused me of being in league with him—to have influenced you to disinherit Roderick.

I said: “Excuse me; but I fail to understand what my cousin Roderick has to do with the matter.”

He told me that you had made Roderick your heir in a previous will, and that you had intended us to marry.

I laughed. That made him very angry. He stamped about the room, said many things I could not understand; but finished off by saying that “everything was exactly as he expected,” which was plain enough.

I said what I felt, for I was really sorry for him. I said: “I am glad of that. It seems to me that what one expects so seldom happens.”

Just then Mrs. Mervyn came in, looking quite frightened. (How frightened—or rather timid—these believers in all sorts of unseen extraordinary things are!) He and she looked at each other; then he went out, and she came to me and said:

“My darling, this is dreadful for you, I am sure! But I know he meant it well.”

I said: “He!—who?”

“Your poor, dear father!” she said.

How dared she defend you, and to me!

I said: “My father was above ordinary men. He knew—he could see farther than we short-sighted mortals.”

She seemed a little chidden, and I was glad. Then she asked me if I would see—him.

“I can see, poor fellow! that he had no idea of this, he seems quite overwhelmed,” she said.

The white-hot shame of that scorched me. I stood there and—oh, father!—suffered an agony, to describe which there are no words—no words!

She called him “poor fellow!” Pityingly, she said “he had no idea of that, that he was quite overwhelmed.” Oh! my shame, my shame! And I never dreamt that I was good enough for him. I had never aspired, never should have aspired to being even his friend, much less his wife. Your goodness in overrating your child has covered her with a pall—a pall of shame—under which she will lie buried till the end of time—if, indeed, there should be such a thing as the end of time—which seems absurd.

I said, “To-morrow.” I would see him to-morrow. And I begged for solitude. I have had it—utter, complete.

For once, I must try and communicate with you, dear father, before I begin the new life you cannot blame me for living, for you willed it so.

Did you know that you were giving me to one whose thoughts, opinions, feelings are the very opposite of your own? This is the great, important question I am trying to put to you—in my mind—for it is no use to cry out to you, you cannot hear me. Oh! it is important, most important! For why should you have educated me so carefully in the common sense conformity of actualities, if you meant me to adopt the ordinary myths which he believes? He tells me you knew his opinions, that he concealed nothing from you. He cannot lie. So I am to think that you felt a secret dissatisfaction with your own explanations of the awful mysteries of human life and the universe, and preferred I should adopt the blind weaving of human fancies they call faith—religion. Can it be? Can it be? I cannot, cannot understand you.

I have sought your spirit everywhere—by your grave, in your favourite haunts, in your room. I have knelt and grovelled, imploring you to give me one sign, to comfort me with a passing breath. No! no! I have felt nothing—but a blank—a silence—death!...

Still, you, or what remains of you, may be dimly impressed with my burning, fiery thoughts; so I concentrate them and write them down. If Thought in Matter can communicate with disembodied Thought, the moment may come when you will in some way become acquainted with these sentences.

So I will tell you how the fulfilling of your will has come about.

I could not sleep last night—no, not last night, the night after your burial. In the morning—(fancy, that was only yesterday morning, though it seems so far away it might have been fifty years ago!)—I had no courage left. I could not see him. I sent Mammy Mervyn to tell him so. When she came back I asked her what he said. She answered, “Nothing.” I said: “He must have said something.” She said: “No. He bowed his head, and answered some question James had just asked him.”

Somehow, this silence rebuked me, and I felt I was not behaving with due respect to your chosen heir, for that is what he really is. So all day long I tried to nerve myself for what I had to do, which was to tell him I could not accept the sacrifice of himself, but that I was ready and glad to place myself in the position of his younger sister, as you had placed him in the position of an eldest—indeed, an only son. This would be very hard to say truthfully, feeling, as I do, that to be his own wife is the greatest happiness that any living woman on the face of this earth can possibly attain. When evening came, I could not face him. I felt worn out. I sent him a little note, telling him I would see him to-morrow morning (this morning); and locking myself into my room, went to bed and tried to sleep.

Sleep was impossible. The night was chill, I knew, though I was hot. The moonlight would not be shut out. I heard the quarters chime, the hours strike, the noises in the house cease one by one, till the last door up above shut softly, and the house had its night hush on, which, when you and I were reading together late, you used to call its “nightcap.” Only that last night that we were trying to find out something of the separate will-power, commonly called “the human soul,” you said, “We must wait till the house has put on its nightcap;” and when the hush came, you laid down your long pipe, and with that peculiar smile which meant work, you said, “Come along!”

Then, as I lay tossing, eleven struck, and a thought came to me as a lightning flash.

There is an old notion that midnight or thereabouts is the time when disembodied spirit-essence can manifest itself in some way; and, as you have often seriously said to me, there is always at least a spark of fire underlying the dense smoke of these popular fallacies.

I had not tried to find you in the dead of night yet! I got up, put on a winter dressing-gown, wrapped my head in a veil, and, going softly downstairs, went out into the pinewood.

There I roamed and wandered, straining my thoughts, fixing them upon you—yearning, longing for you. The moonlight streamed calmly down; the dark night sky was clear and peaceful; the pines stood solemn and still, like giant, black-clad sentinels guarding your grave. But you—oh, father, father!—you were not.

Now and then an owl hooted, or one of those screeching night-birds flew out of covert. But these natural noises only deepened the stern silence of the sleeping world. My wretched body, my miserable senses, were the barrier between us. Embodied, we shall never meet again. Oh, father! that thought maddened me; I could not bear the separation any longer.

I looked up. (Why do we always look up?) That cold, solitary eye of the night—the moon—glared banefully at me. To me its chill disdain meant: “Fool, why stand there drivelling? If you will have him again, die.”

The thought steadied me. I would die. Yes; but how, when?

Those poor Mervyns! A rush of pity for dear, good Mammy and her worthy husband made me turn away from the idea, wrung with pain. They had been so tender and good to me always. What a repayment—to grieve their kind hearts!

Overcome, I made my way to the triangle-lawn, and sat down in a corner of the stone bench under the laurels to collect my thoughts. Then came the most startling event of my whole life.

I had hardly been there a minute, when a figure glided in by the path through the shrubs by which I had come—the figure of a man.

It stood motionless in the shadow. At first, with a throb of triumph, I thought it was you. I was springing up to rush to you when it made a step forward. I saw a white face in the moonlight: the face of a thin man with grey hair, all tossed about above his forehead—a face I seemed to know, but did not know.

(This I declare to you that I saw, with these living eyes, and never, never will I believe that I was deceived. Never!)

At first I shivered—yes, with fright. I was afraid of that man, whose face was familiar and strange at one and the same time.

Then I suddenly remembered something you said to me when I was a child, and Rob the pony ran away and I stuck on. When you came up and found us all right you said, sharply, “Were you frightened?” Then, after I answered “No,” you said, “That’s right. If you were frightened at anything, I should disown you.”

You shall never disown me for cowardice! So I conquered the nonsensical tremor, and went across towards the man. As I got near, I saw it was he—your Hamlet.

He looked frightened, horrified—I think, shocked. He stared at me without speaking while I could have counted twelve; then he said, quite harshly:

“Is this the first time you have been here at this hour?”

Before I could think I naturally said “Yes,” and told him why I had come.

“This is most extraordinary,” he said, staring strangely at me.

He was not like himself: he seemed dazed. I felt less shy of him.

“I came here for two reasons,” I said. “I was too unhappy to sleep, and I thought that if my father’s spirit is hovering about anywhere I might find it—him—here.”

Just then the church clock rang out so loudly that I started, and laid my hand on his arm. He smiled, and took my hand.

“Even the great philosopher, Miss Pym, is superstitious enough to believe in ghosts and to be frightened when the clock strikes twelve,” he said, in a familiar teasing way.

“I was not frightened; I was only startled,” I said.

“Come, we must go back to the house at once; I am answerable for you,” he said in an authoritative way.

“Answerable? May I ask to whom?” I said, as coldly as I could, though I began to feel a strange joy—yes, joy just after my despair, therefore all the keener by contrast. Oh, my father, what a paltry nature is mine to love another when I have but just lost you! “There is no one that has any power over me, no one who can or will ask or care what has become of me,” I said, as he did not speak for some moments.

“There is,” he said.

“That is absurd; there is not,” I asseverated.

“There is,” he said,—“Almighty God!”

He drew my hand through his arm, and we walked silently towards the house. I was wondering why I had shuddered at his sudden mention of the Deity; I was frightened to realise that his influence had even greater power over me than I thought.

“You are my sacred charge,” he said, in the same serious voice. What a voice he has—so deep, yet so mellow! “Do what you may, I shall watch over you till I die.”

“If you can find me,” I cried; for the battle to resist him against a strong inclination I felt to tell him I was his slave, to do as he pleased with, was exciting me to wildness. “Perhaps I shall die or disappear!”

“If I thought one thing, I should be the one to disappear; at least, you should never be troubled with the sight of me again,” he said, stopping when we came to an open place in the road, dropping my hand, and turning so that he could see my face plainly in the moonlight. “And I must really now, once for all, ask you to answer me a plain question, with truth, absolute truth. It is my duty to ask, and your duty to reply.”

“Well?” I said, nerving myself as if for some process of torture, dreading, fearing I should give away suddenly, and shame myself for ever, beyond repair, beyond recall.

“It is a plain question, and I only want a plain Yes or No,” he went on. “Can you love me as a husband?”

I stood still, I gasped. Terror! I had to tell the truth, and that truth was horrible. Suddenly I bethought me how to be true both to myself and to him.

“It must be plain Yes or plain No?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then, No!” I cried, emphatically.

He thrust his hands into his pockets, drew a deep sigh, and stared at me. His face was in the shadow: I could not see it; but I felt his eyes fixed upon me.

“Thank you for your frankness,” he said, just when the silence was getting unendurable, and I dreaded giving way and flinging myself at his knees, or something equally disgraceful. Oh, the hard, hard fight it was to keep cool, silent! “Then the dream is over,” he went on, more to himself than to me, beginning to walk along the road again. “I might have known it without asking you, child; but it is best to kill a delusion right out, at once.”

“What delusion?” I asked.

“The delusion that you, or, for the matter of that, any woman, could care to be the wife of a man so totally devoid of interest and charm as myself,” he said, bitterly. “Thank heaven! it will never come in my way to ask any woman that question again.”

His self-depreciation astonished me. Surely he must know what he is! Then I remembered, dear father, how people who are born with great gifts do not recognise the fact because it is so natural to them. Indeed, you once told me, when that wonderful man M—— condescended to talk to me about the beetles he had discovered, that these men of genius cannot understand how it is everyone else has not powers similar to their own.

“Do you know that you are telling lies without knowing it?” I said.

“I am—— What did you say?” he said, evidently startled, stopping short and once more staring at me.

“When you say you are devoid of charm and interest you are telling a monstrous lie,” I cried. “If you don’t know that every woman who sees and talks to you must think you a god among men, it is time you did know it; for it is much better for women you should not be with them. You make them dissatisfied with their people. Don’t misunderstand me! You did not make me dissatisfied with my father: he, too, was perfect. But after seeing you that time you came and stayed, everyone else seemed coarse and common; and Roderick—oh, poor Roderick!—I was very unkind to him. I did not want him at all.”

Once more he stopped.

“Do you mean all this?” he said. “Good God! Why, of course you do! I forgot how innocent, how ignorant you are! What shall I do with you?”

We stood staring at one another like cats before they begin to fight.

“Do with me?” I said, thinking as I spoke; for I felt very sorry for him, burdened with me. “Take my advice, my first advice: have nothing to do with me. Go away, and forget my father and me as soon as you can.”

“But why should I? No, no; that is not the question,” he said, sternly, like you used to speak sometimes. “Lilia, be sensible! If you think far more of me than I deserve, why cannot you consent to be my wife?”

“You never asked me!” I said.

“I have done nothing else but ask you!” he cried.

“You are mistaken,” I said, and with truth. “You did not ask me to be your wife; you asked me if I could love you as a husband.”

“And you said ‘No.’ Such a No!”

“I meant it.”

“You are the greatest puzzle I have ever come across,” he said, almost angrily. “I know you mean to speak the truth. But one moment you tell me decidedly, in a manner that admits of no doubt, no hope, that you cannot love me as a husband, and the next you say extravagant things about me—that I am a god among men—things which would be insults from any lips but yours. What am I to think? Both cannot be true.”

“Both things are true,” I said. “I cannot love you as, for instance, Mrs. Mervyn loves her husband. She doesn’t mind much where he is. She is quite contented to stay with me while he is at the Vicarage. But the woman who marries you will weary her heart out all the time you are away from her; or, perhaps, you might find a girl who would not. I can only speak for myself. If you love yourself, and I suppose you do—everyone does, more or less—save yourself from me! I cannot love you unselfishly. I should be a burden to you; you would get to hate me.”

He took my hands, then took me in his arms—like you used to, father, when you said “Good-night”—and he said to me:

“I should prefer to risk hating you, then. Lilia, let us talk sense. You are mine—doubly mine, as your father’s dying gift—I am yours. Only listen to my advice as you listened to his, and we shall be happy in life and death.”

Already, under his influence, I began to see things in a different light. What a fool I am! Oh, dear father, what a great, grand thing your patience with me has been!

We have talked over everything. He is resolved to let no consideration interfere with his working out of whatever talent he has. So for six months or so, until he has passed certain important examinations, he will work hard in London, and I shall see but little of him. Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn will live here; and for the present the Vicarage will be shut up.

This, my dear father, is how your will—that our lives should be united—will be carried out. I will work on faithfully to improve myself, as far as I can be improved. May the end of these months of probation find me more worthy of the great honour of being your daughter and his wife!

Note in another handwriting: “This ended her diary.”

Extract from the first column of The Times, in the June following the dates of above extracts:

“On the 24th inst., at the Parish Church of the Pinewood, F——, Surrey, Hugh Paull, M. D. Lond., M. R. C. S., etc., to Lilia, only child of the late Sir Roderick Pym, Knt.”