Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

It is positively terrible! to-day I have been married eleven months, and during that time my work has been at a dead standstill.

It is rather my poor darling’s misfortune than her fault. For one with a temperament of passionate concentration such as hers, a totally different up-bringing was called for. School, for instance, and plenty of cheerful, natural society afterwards; she should have mixed freely with girls of her own age, girls like Daisy. This might have balanced her tendency to dwell on one idea to the exclusion of all others.

Week after week, month after month, I have tried to wean her from the one theme—our mutual affection. I see, I feel more bitterly each hour that she is not in love with me, but with her love for me. I may wrong her affection: God forgive me if I do! But true love is unselfish. Even her love for her father was unselfish.

To-day I have determined to look into the matter. The resolve formed itself in my mind during our walk.

She has an embarrassing habit of multiplying wedding-days: I don’t know what else to call it. For instance, I had to keep the day week of our marriage in a semi-solemn way: in recalling all our sentiments during our betrothal, in reading our old letters, in rejoicing that we had met, etcetera. A charming idea, especially when supplemented by plans for our future management of the Pinewood, our poor people, the tenants and labourers. But, like other habits of inspection and classification, not good when treated with “vain repetitions.” That day fortnight, that day month, the function was not to be cavilled at. But when, the “day five weeks” after our marriage, she raised her eyes in that earnest way when she gave me my first cup of tea at breakfast, and said: “It is five weeks to-day since we were married——”

Well, I had planned to do some work—in fact, to begin my work again; and I said, as gently as I could:

“Yes, dear; and to-day we must give up mooning over the past, and begin to live real, sensible lives.”

I cannot blame myself for the words, nor for my way of saying them. But their effect upon her alarmed me. She became deadly pale, and looked at me as if at the very least I had threatened to kill her.

“Did you say ‘mooning over the past’?” she stammered.

I confessed that I did.

“What do you mean by ‘mooning’?” she asked, imploringly.

“What you are doing now,” I said bravely, for I felt I must begin to bring my darling down to earth a bit. (It was for all the world like pulling a string attached to the foot of some fluttering and unwilling bird.) “You have some romantic idea in your mind. You want to square my life and your life with it. It cannot be done. Life is not a poem in so many cantos. It is work; hard, dry, but honest work.”

“Did I ever say that it was not?” she said, reproachfully.

“No, dear. But——”

Then I explained, as carefully as I could, how essential it was that we should settle down; that while I continued to study, I should commence practising my profession; a thing as essential to a medical man as theoretical study.

“You are going to practise?” she asked, in evident horror.

“Certainly,” I said, firmly.

“Where? Here?” (This was at the Pinewood.)

“Scarcely here, I think,” I said. “In London.”

She said no more. For days after she was gentle, affectionate, but a very drooping lily indeed. Everything seemed an effort to her.

I persisted. Sir Roderick’s town house had been sold to pay off some mortgages on the Pinewood. So I saw my good friend Dr. Hildyard about a house. After discussion, he offered me a floor in his house (which he only used for business, having taken a country house near Finchley as his place of residence).

“By-and-by we may take it into our heads to be partners, Paull,” he said. “Then you will be on the premises.”

It was a brilliant prospect, and my poor girl rejoiced with me. In theory, it was delightful; in practice, impossible.

Day by day I would return to find the spectre of a wife, instead of the living, breathing entity I had married. I soon found out that although Lilia occupied each hour according to a plan we had drawn up together; although she managed her household cleverly, visited her people, taught in the school, and studied chemistry and physiology, as she wished, as she termed it, to be able at any moment to help me in minor matters if called upon, she seemed to rust, as it were, working and living alone.

At first I thought it was loneliness, and Daisy came and spent the last days of her single life with us, Herbert Pym coming occasionally. (An abominable prig, that!) But after a few weeks, my sister came to me with a serious face.

“I must speak to you, Hugh,” she said, with an evident struggle; “Herbert said it was my duty. My dear boy, do you know about Lilia?”

“Know?” I repeated, slightly nettled by Mr. Herbert’s Jack-in-office-ship. “Of course I know everything my wife says and does. I almost flatter myself she tells me her secret thoughts.”

“That is just it,” said my sister, who seemed quite unlike her usual bright self. “We cannot help seeing, Hugh, that if this sort of thing goes on, Lilia will ruin your life.”

“And pray why do we think so?” I asked.

“If you were to see her when you are away! She does what she sets herself to do. But in such a way! As soon as you are gone, she changes. She gets pale, and a sort of film comes over her eyes. She doesn’t really seem to understand what one says to her; and I can see that the poor people we go to see are beginning to think that you beat her, or something. The other day, old Dame Ashwell (that wonderful old woman who lives in the thatched cottage at the end of Swain’s Lane) looked quite disgustedly at me, and when she condescended to speak to me, was very dignified indeed; and yesterday, when I met her in the wood picking up fir-cones and determined to have it out with her, I found out that not only she but most of your people are noticing how miserable Lilia looks, and how different she was when the ‘old gentleman was alive,’ as they call it.”

It was this talk with Daisy which determined me to give up all idea of practising my profession for the present; and the very day after Daisy left us (I would not allow Herbert the satisfaction of knowing that his interference had influenced me, so sure I am that he has a secret grudge against me because he thinks I was the means of ousting his brother Roderick)—the very day after I was well quit of my sister and her betrothed, I went to Dr. Hildyard and told him how matters stood.

He was more taken back and affected than I could understand. He was silent for awhile; then he said:

“You had better let me see your wife, Paull. She must not stand in your way in this fashion.”

For him to see Lilia while entirely in the dark as to the peculiarities of her past life would never do. But we made a compromise. Shortly he would take a holiday, and spend it at the Pinewood.

He came, he saw, and was conquered. As I had been for some days entirely at home, Lilia was in the most brilliant of humours. She treated our distinguished guest with all the consideration and respect which Sir Roderick had known so well how to lavish on his favourites; and to this was added a womanly tenderness and reverence under the influence of which Dr. Hildyard expanded and, as it were, blossomed out into a geniality I had not before known in him.

It seemed to me that he told my wife the whole story of his life. She was intensely interested, and made so many apt and pertinent remarks that I began to see more than ever that if I pursued my profession, and left her to herself and her hopeless mood, between the two stools I should probably fall to the ground. Thus, she was a perfect woman. Away from me, she was literally non est.

An embarrassing position. Dr. Hildyard decided me. We had the matter out the day he left us. He said, warmly:

“Paull, I confess that from what I heard of your wife, I came here prepared to find her one of three things: mad, a fool, or a victim to hysteria. From what I have seen and observed, I think her one of the sweetest women alive, but a perfect baby.”

I told him my growing fear that she was becoming too absorbed in my companionship, that it might in time become almost a monomania.

He smiled.

“I think that will cure itself,” he said, “by the homœopathic system. You will find two babies less trouble than one.”

I was interrupted after that last word (I was writing late, in the study) by quick footsteps down the staircase, and Lilia came in in her dressing-gown.

“I was dreadfully frightened!” she said. “I must have fallen asleep, although I thought I was awake, listening for you; and I woke up and you were not there! And the clock struck one!”

“And if it did?” I said, taking her on my knee, after shutting this book into a drawer. Her heart was beating, she was trembling. “Oh, Lilia!” I said. “I thought I had married a woman who would bravely face life at my side, not shrink and cower at shadows like a nervous horse.”

Then I talked seriously to her. Many husbands in my position would have been able to use the argument of maternal responsibility to urge her to be more matter-of-fact, less absurd in her fancifulness, and I said so.

“You dislike giving me pain, dear, I know,” I said. “And your horror of the poor little one God may give to us is a great pain to me. Other women rejoice at such a prospect.”

She drew herself away from my arm and looked fixedly at me.

“What other women do you mean?” she said.

“All women, at least most women,” was my answer. “Lilia, I cannot understand this feeling, or rather this want of feeling, in you. Tell me truly, frankly, darling, why do you hate the idea of a child—our child?”

She took my face between her hands and kissed me.

“Because,” she spoke passionately, “you may love it—would love it; and I cannot spare one thought, one word, one look of yours!”

I sighed, I could not help it. Then I reminded her of a great oak we had seen during an expedition with Dr. Hildyard into the adjacent county. We had paused to look at the giant, around whose spreading branches ivy had climbed and twisted until bough after bough was dying.

She had said:

“That ivy clings to the tree like I cling to you.”

“The ivy is choking the life out of the oak,” said I; “it is to be hoped you will not do the same by me.”

I said it, and she took it, jestingly. But, as I told her, if matters do not mend—if I cannot at least have freedom for study, or to go to town now and then on business and to look people up, my end may be the same as the oak’s.

She was all penitence, all promises; nor would she leave the study until I had given her my word that I would for the future go on my own way regardless of her feelings, which she would try to modify by degrees.

Before we retired for the night, I had promised to go to town to-day for some scientific works I particularly want, and to transact neglected business.

Only two days! It seems weeks—weeks of horror, anxiety—since I wrote those last words.

I went to town, got my books, saw Dr. Hildyard, etcetera, and returned by the seven o’clock train. Thomas was to meet me at the station with the dogcart. He was there. At first I noticed nothing unusual, but the instant I reached my seat he drove off at a tremendous rate.

“Gently, gently!” I cried. “What’s wrong with Firefly?”

“Nothing’s wrong with the hoss, sir,” he said, gruffly; “but we’ve had visitors to-day, and whether it’s them or not I don’t know, but the missus is upset, like.”

“Is your mistress ill?” I cried, startled, dreading I knew not what.

“I dunno, sir,” was all I could get out of Thomas for some minutes, until I was really angry, when he blurted out that “one of them Pyms—the old ’un, he thought,” had come and had had a long interview with my wife, since which no one had seen her or had been able to find her.

Distracted, I had poor Firefly driven home at racing speed, and searched, first the house, then the grounds, with lanterns.

No result. I feared calling her name, for the cottagers might hear, and there would be fresh talk such as that Daisy repeated to me.

May I never, never have to go through such a time again! I was getting mad with anxiety and fear when something seemed to say to me—not in my ear, but in my mind:

“Her father’s grave.”

With a flash of hope, I bade the men who accompanied me stay where they were; and taking a lantern went on into the churchyard alone.

The lantern sent a flicker upon a black heap on the grass: Lilia, asleep—or dead?

Her dress was wet to the touch, drenched with dew. Feeling half crazy with dread, I gently shook her.

She started, and staring with dazed eyes, sat up, rubbed her eyes (thank God! she had only been asleep, but that was bad enough!). Then she said, “Oh, dear!” looked at me, first with sharp inquiry, then with a smile, and held out her hands to be lifted up.

“How could you?” I said, as she clung to me.

“My uncle Pym came and said cruel things; said your inhuman treatment of me was the talk of the countryside: that I owed it to myself to leave you and go and live with him; and when I told him what I thought of him, got in a fearful rage, told me I was a fool and a dupe, and I should rue it, and went away,” she said, in her direct, childish manner. “Then I felt very bad—so lonely—and came here. I could not help crying, and I expect I cried myself to sleep. But I am not sorry!” she added, triumphantly, “for you look so ill, that I see you have really cared; that you really do love me!”

If I had not been so thankful to find and hold my darling to my heart once more, this would have been exasperating.

“Lilia, your absurd want of faith will be your ruin,” I told her. “Do you know that since our first meeting my experience of you has taught me that Faith is not only necessary to people’s happiness, but to their soundness in mind and body?”

Then I cautioned her to be careful what she said and did before those men—there would be talk enough of to-day’s incidents as it was,—and we went back to the house.

But the shock of that malignant old man’s visit had its natural result. Before morning my darling was suffering greatly. As soon as the telegraph-office was open I wired to Dr. Taylor (the specialist to whom Dr. Hildyard had introduced me, and who had promised to come to us if necessary). By midday he came. Towards evening a pale, delicate little boy was taken to his mother to be kissed. She was quite revived by the fact that he was a boy.

“You may say I am selfish! I am,” she said, wistfully, to me afterwards. “But if it had been a girl, and you had loved her like my father loved me, what room would there have been in your heart for me?”

The little one is a week old to-day. It is very sweet to see mother and son together. I could sit and look at them by the hour. But “Life is real, life is earnest!” as the great author of that incomparable “Psalm of Life” says; and all the more that the boy has come upon the scene, I must be “up and doing, with a heart for any fate!”

Any fate! what fate can I fear, with those two precious ones to love and work for?

Can I, this wretched, hopeless wreck, groping in a thick darkness, where not the faintest gleam of hope tells me what I am, where I am, how I am to bear my life—can I be the fool who wrote that last entry?

Fool, fool! I boasted of a to-morrow. If ever any eyes see this—man or woman,—I solemnly warn you, never, NEVER, whatever happens, however you may have been blessed, look upon to-morrow with anything approaching to the feeling (was it confidence or presumption?) with which I wrote those last words.

It was all sunshine that day; next day the storm was down upon me with a vengeance.

My darling was lying on the sofa (it was a sultry afternoon) by the window. We were looking over a map together, discussing where we should all go for change of air as soon as she might travel, when suddenly she asked me “if I would mind shutting the window.”

“I think the wind must have changed,” she said, pulling her little shawl together over her shoulders; “I feel quite cold.”

She could not possibly have had a chill; the air itself was like that which comes from a heated oven. However, I closed the window. I had hardly done so when she was seized with shivering.

I called Nurse, who is a kind, but highly-experienced woman. I called her in fear. I saw her look swiftly at Lilia, then at me.

Then I knew. We both pretended to Lilia to think nothing of the rigours which shook her and turned her lips blue over her chattering teeth; but I stole my opportunity, rushed downstairs, sent off a telegram to Dr. Taylor, despatched a messenger for the Mervyns. I could not face this alone: I turned coward. I “groaned in my anguish, and the thorn fastened in me.”

And when I went back—the pity of it—Nurse struggling to lift the pale, suffering darling into bed, and baby crying piteously in the next room; while she said piteously to me, “He might be quiet till I get warm, mightn’t he?”

Poor infant! if he were quiet till his mother got warm, he would never cry again.

I sent Nurse to quiet him, and waited on her myself. I did everything, I hazarded everything I dared, to bring about a reaction. But presently she complained of her chest.

“I feel as if they had taken one of those hideous flat stones off a grave and laid it on my chest,” she said, gazing at me with eyes that looked bluer and more staring than those dear grey eyes had ever looked. “What is it? Is there anything wrong with my heart, Hugh! Tell me, is it my heart?” (with alarm).

“Stuff!” I said. “I let you sit up too long, and you are chilly, that’s all.”

Then I began, watching her stealthily, to talk as easily as I could.

Her features were paling into an ugly yellow, her eyes were sinking, and her nose looked pinched. Nurse, coming to the bed with a cheerful “Well, dear, are you all right now?” gave me a look that, knowing well enough what was happening, stabbed my very soul.

“Rather quick, don’t you think so?” she managed to whisper to me.

She need not have whispered. I knew my wife was sinking away from me as fast as any human being has ever sunk from time into eternity.

And how—how was she going?

“What is making that buzzing noise? I can’t hear you two,” she said presently. “And, Hugh, raise me, or I shall choke!”

She was gasping. I raised her. She did not feel cold now. Nurse was fanning her.

No hope for anyone to come! I felt desperate. Just then she said, “You fan me; Nurse—baby.” So Nurse gave me the fan and went away. The dying must be obeyed.

As I held her—a dead weight—on one arm and fanned her with my disengaged hand, she looked up at me with a terrible look—the most hopeless, yet defiant and angered, look I have ever seen in human eyes. I once saw it in a celebrated picture of “Lucifer at His Condemnation,” and, remembering this, it was hell to see it in my wife’s eyes now.

“I must know,” she said, in her altered voice. “Is this death?”

“It may be,” I faltered. I dared not withhold the awful truth.

She smiled—a sneering, derisive smile.

“And you still believe in a good God?” she said.

“More than ever!” I said, my very life in my words. “Darling, how could I live and see you like this if God did not hold me, help me? I should be like a dead thing—helpless—and you know I am holding you up. I am calm, I can talk, by the mercy of God——”

“Hush!” she said, violently, with a tremendous effort raising herself (she was gradually slipping down, hold her how I might). “Do not say any more about that. Tell me, how long have I——”

“My darling, I have sent for Dr. Taylor; we must not give up hope,” I said. In my agony of despair the words mocked me like so many separate and distinct lies. “He may do something. Why should you die? You are so young——”

“I asked you, how long?” she repeated. “I have something to say.”

“Days—I mean hours,” I stammered, lying hard and fast in my misery.

She feebly shook her head.

“No, no!” she said; “perhaps in a minute. I want you to promise your dying wife something. Will you—whatever I ask?”

“Anything! anything!” I said. “Your will is my will now!”

“Anything?” she repeated.

Drops, those last cold drops, were on her brow.

“I swear—anything,” I said, recklessly.

“Ah!” she laughed.

Yes, let me remember that, in her hour of agony, I pleased her so—that once more, for the last time, I heard that sweet little joyous laugh.

“Well,” she said, “as soon as I am dead, go downstairs. In the right-hand drawer of my father’s writing-table you will find a small revolver. I have kept it loaded. Shoot yourself! We shall then be as much together as we are now. You will?”

It was an awful struggle—her dying eyes gazing into mine. At last I said:

“I—will.”

“Now I don’t hate this God of yours quite so much,” she began, when suddenly her face was convulsed, a rattle came in her throat, her eyes glazed.

Minutes passed—half-an-hour; then (she had been dead a quarter-of-an-hour) I left her body, her beautiful young lifeless body, to Nurse, after kissing those dear lips for the last time, and I went to fulfil my promise.

I locked the library door, and, opening the drawer, found not only a revolver, but a case of pistols. The revolver seemed to me untrustworthy, so I cleaned one of the pistols, and loaded it. Did I feel remorse, anxiety, as to my future? I did not. I felt absolutely apathetic, commonplace, as a body, I imagine, might feel without its soul, if its life could continue under those conditions.

I had just completed the loading to my satisfaction when there was a knock at the door.

“I will come presently,” I said.

“Please, let me in,” said Mrs. Mervyn. “Baby fell off the sofa and is hurt. I have brought him.”

Her child! For an instant the room whirled; then an agony of grief welled up within me. The poor, innocent child!—our child!

Senselessly, I staggered to the door, opened it, and took the babe from Mrs. Mervyn. He was not much hurt—a wound on the head of but slight importance.

Turning to reassure Mrs. Mervyn, I saw her gazing at the pistols as if she were petrified.

“You meant this?” she said to me, her face aflame like the face of the accusing Angel. “What a love God must have had for you, for you to have been saved!”

Walking to me, she took baby’s hand and laid it on mine.

“He has saved you,” she said. “Oh, never, never forget it!”