The effect of her husband's letter on Mrs. Wilmot's mind, strengthened by the view taken of its contents by Henrietta Prendergast, was of the most serious and injurious nature. Hitherto the unhappiness which had possessed her had been negative--had been literally unhappiness, the absence of joy; but from the hour she read Wilmot's letter, and talked over it with her friend, all that was negative in her state of mind changed to the positive. Hitherto she had been jealous--jealous as only a woman of a thoroughly proud, sensitive, secretive, and sullen nature can be--of an abstraction. Her husband's profession was the bête noir of her existence, was the barrier between her and the happiness for which she vainly longed and pined. She had looked around her, and seen other women whose husbands were also working bees in the world's great hive; but their work did not absorb them to the exclusion of home interests, and the deadening of the sweet and blessed sympathies which lent happiness all its glow, and robbed sorrow of half its gloom. Her husband had never spoken an unkind word to her in his life, had never refused her a request, or denied her a pleasure; but he had never spoken a word to her which told her that the first place in his life was hers; he had never cared to anticipate a request or to share a pleasure. To a woman like Mabel Wilmot, in whose character there was a strong though wholly unsuspected element of romance, there was an inexhaustible source of suffering in these facts, combined with her husband's proverbial devotion to his profession. Not a clever woman, thoroughly conventional in all her ideas, without a notion of the possibility of altering the routine of her life to any pattern which might take her fancy, a dreamer, and incurably shy, especially with him, who never discerned that there was anything beneath the surface of her placid, equable, rather cold manner to be understood, she had ample materials within herself for misery; and she had always made the most of them.
An incalculable addition had been made to her store by Wilmot's letter, and Henrietta Prendergast's comments. Mabel wrote to Mr. Foljambe, under the observation and by the dictation of her friend, merely repeating the words of her husband's letter; and during that performance, and the ensuing conversation, she had felt sufficiently black and bitter to have satisfied any fiend who might have been waiting about for the chance of gratifying his malignity by the coming to grief of human affairs. But it was when she was left alone, when her friend had gone away, and she was in her solitary room--all the trivial occupations of the day at an end, and only the long hours of the night, often sleepless hours to her, to be faced--that she gave way to the intensity of the bitterness of her spirit; that she looked into and sounded the darkness and the depth of the gulf of sorrow which had opened before her feet.
That her husband sought and found all his happiness in the duties of his profession; that he had no consciousness, comprehension, or care for the disappointed feelings which occupied her wholly, had been hard enough to bear--how hard, the lonely woman who had borne the burden knew; but such a state of things, the state from which only a few hours divided her, was happy in comparison with that which now opened suddenly before her. He had neglected her for the profession he preferred; he was going to neglect his own interests, to depart from his accustomed law of life, to throw the best friend he had in the world over--for a woman: yes, a woman, a sick girl had done what she had failed to do: she had never swayed his judgment, or turned him aside from a purpose for a moment; and now he was changed by the touch of a more potent hand than hers, and there was an end of the old settled melancholy peacefulness of her life; active wretchedness had come in, and the repose, dear-bought in its deadness of disappointment and blight, was all gone.
Mabel Wilmot sat opposite the long glass in her room that night, and turned the branch-candles so as to throw a full light upon her face, at which she gazed steadily and long, frowning as she did so. It was a fair face, and the fresh bloom of youth was still upon it. It was a face in which a skilful observer might have read strange matters; but there were none curious to read the story in the face of the pretty wife of the prosperous rising man. Her eyes were soft and dark, well shaded by long lashes, and marked by finely-arched eyebrows; and there were none to see that there was frequent gloom and brooding in their darkness--a shadow from the gloominess of the soul within. She was fair rather than pale, and had abundant dark hair; and as she sat and gazed in the glass, she let its dusky masses loose, and caught them in her hands. The fair face was not pleasant to look upon; and so she seemed to think, for she muttered:
"She is very pretty, I suppose, and a great deal younger than I am; never looks sullen, and has no cause. And yet he's not a man I should have thought to have been beguiled by any woman. I never beguiled him, and I was pretty in my time, ay, and new too! And I have lived in his sight all these years, and he has never sacrificed an hour of time or thought to me. And now he leaves me without hesitation, though I am ill. I have not talked about it, to be sure; but what is his skill worth, if he did not see it in my face and hear it in my voice without being told! I was not a case--I was only his wife; and he never thought of looking, never thought of caring whether I was ill or well. I appear at breakfast, and I go out every day; that's quite enough for him. I wonder if he knew what I suspect, what I should once have said I hope, is the cause; but that is a long time ago. Would it have made any difference? I don't mean now; of course it would not now; nothing makes any difference to a man when once his heart is turned aside, and quite filled by another. I don't think I ever touched his heart; I know only too well I never filled it."
Mabel Wilmot was right. She had never filled her husband's heart. She had touched it though, for a time and after a light holiday kind of fashion, which had subsided when life began in earnest for them, and which he had laid aside and forgotten, as a boy might have abandoned and lost sight of the toys with which he had amused himself during a school vacation. And the girl had been deceived; had built silently in the inveterately undemonstrative recesses of her heart and fancy a fairy palace, destined to stand for ever empty. It had been swept and garnished; but the prince had never come to dwell there: he with busy feet had passed by on the other side, and she had nothing to do but to sit and mourn in the empty chambers. She had borne her grief valiantly until now; she had only known the passive side of it. But that was all over for ever; and the day that dawned after Wilmot's wife had received his letter found her a different woman from what she had been.
"Are you sure you are not ill, Mabel?" asked Mrs. Prendergast the day after their colloquy over the letter. "You are so black under the eyes, and your face is so pinched, I fancy you must be ill."
"Not more so than usual," said Mrs. Wilmot shortly.
"Than usual, my dear! What do you mean? Have you been feeling ill lately?"
"Yes, Henrietta, very ill."
"And have you been doing nothing for yourself? Have you not had advice?"
"You know I have not. You have seen me very nearly every day, and you know I have done nothing without your knowledge."
"But Wilmot?" said Mrs. Prendergast.
"O Wilmot! Much he knows and much he cares about me! Don't talk nonsense, Henrietta. If I were dying, he would not see it while I could keep on my feet, which, I certainly should do as long as I could."
"My dear Mabel," remonstrated Henrietta, "do you mean to tell me that, feeling very ill, you have actually suffered your husband to leave you? Is that right, Mabel? Is it right to yourself or fair to him?"
"Fair to him!" returned Mrs. Wilmot with a scornful emphasis. "The idea of anything I do being fair or unfair to him. I am so important to him, am I not? His life is so largely influenced by me? Really, Henrietta, I don't understand you."
"O yes, you do," said her friend; and she seated herself beside her, and took her feverish hands firmly in hers; "you understand me perfectly. What is the illness, Mabel? How do you suffer, and why are you concealing it?"
"I suffer always, and in all ways," said Mabel, twitching her hands impatiently from her friend's grasp, and averting her face, down which tears began slowly to trickle. "I have not been well for a long time; and would not one think that he might have seen it? He can be full of skill and perception in everyone's case but mine."
Henrietta Prendergast was troubled. She was a woman with an odd kind of conscience. So long as a fact did not come too forcibly before her, so long as a duty did not imperatively confront her, she would ignore it; but she would not do the absolutely, the undeniably wrong, nor leave the obviously and pressingly right undone. Here was a dilemma. She believed that Wilmot's ignorance of his wife's state of health was solely the result of her own studious avoidance of complaint, or of letting him see, during the short periods of every day that they were together, that she was suffering in any way. Any man whose perceptions were not quickened by the inspiration of love would be naturally deceived by the calm tranquillity of Mrs. Wilmot's manner, which, if occasionally sullen, was apparently influenced in that direction by trivial causes,--household annoyances, and so forth. And though Henrietta Prendergast had a grudge against Chudleigh Wilmot, which was all the stronger and the more lasting that it was utterly unreasonable, she could not turn a deaf ear to the promptings of her conscience, which told her she must speak the truth on his behalf now.
"I must say, Mabel," she began, "that I think it is your own fault that Wilmot has not perceived your state of health. You have carefully concealed it from him, and now you are angry at your own success. You must not continue to act thus, Mabel; you will destroy his happiness and your own."
"His happiness!" repeated Mrs. Wilmot with indescribable bitterness; "his happiness and mine! I know nothing about his happiness, or what he has found it in hitherto, and may find it in for the future. I only know that it has nothing to do with mine; and that I have no happiness, and never can have any now."
The sullen conviction in Mabel Wilmot's voice impressed her friend painfully, and kept her silent for a while. Then she said:
"You are unjust, Mabel. You have concealed your suffering and illness from me as effectually as from him."
"Do you attempt to compare the cases?" said Mrs. Wilmot with a degree of passion extremely unusual to her. "I deny that they admit of comparison. However, there is an end of the subject; let us talk of something else. If I am not better in a day or so, I can do as Mr. Foljambe has had to do: I can call in Whittaker, or somebody else. It does not matter. Let us turn to some more agreeable topic." And the friends talked of something else. They lunched together, and they went out driving; they did some very consolatory shopping, and paid a number of afternoon calls. But Henrietta Prendergast watched her friend closely and unremittingly; and came to the conclusion that she was really ill, and also that it was imperatively right her husband should be informed of the fact. Henrietta dined at Charles-street; and when the two women were alone in the evening, and the confidence-producing tea-tray had been removed, she tried to introduce the interdicted subject. Ordinarily she was anything but a timid woman, anything but likely to be turned from her purpose; but there was something new in Mabel's manner, a sad intensity and abstraction, which puzzled and distressed her, and she had never in her life felt it so hard to say the things she had determined to say.
Argument and persuasion Mrs. Wilmot took very ill; and at length her friend told her, in an accent of resolution, that she had made up her mind as to her own course of action.
"It is wrong to leave Wilmot in ignorance, Mabel," she said; "wrong to him and wrong to you. If only a little of all you have acknowledged to me were the matter with you, it would still be wrong to conceal it from him. If you will not tell him, I will. If you will not promise me to write to him tonight, I will write to him to-morrow. Mind, Mabel, I mean what I say; and I will keep my word."
Mrs. Wilmot had been leaning, almost lying, back in a deep easy-chair, when her friend spoke. She raised herself slowly while she was speaking, her dark eyes fixed upon her, and when she had finished, caught her by the wrist.
"If you do this thing, Henrietta, I most solemnly declare to you that I will never speak to you or see you again. In this, in all that concerns my husband and myself, I claim, I insist upon perfect freedom of action. No human being--on my side at least--shall come between him and me. I am thoroughly in earnest in this, Henrietta. Now choose between him and me."
"Choose between him and you! What can you mean, Mabel?"
"I know what I mean, Henrietta, and I am determined in this. When you know all, you will see that only I can speak to him; and that I must speak, not write."
"Then you will speak?"
"Yes, I will speak. I suppose he will return in a few days; and then I will speak."
Then Mabel Wilmot told her friend intelligence which surprised her very much, and they stayed together until late; and when they parted Mrs. Prendergast looked very thoughtful and serious.
"This will make things either better or worse," she said to herself that night. "If he returns soon, and receives the news well, all may go on well afterwards; but if he stays away for this girl's sake much longer, I don't think even the child will do any good."
Many times within the next few days, in thinking of her friend, Mrs. Prendergast said, "There's a desperation about her that I never saw before, and that I don't like."
The days passed over, and Wilmot's patients were obliged either to content themselves with the attendance of the insinuating Whittaker, or to exercise their own judgment and call in some other physician of their own choice. There was no doubt that the delay was injuring Wilmot. He might have had his week's holiday, and passed it with Sir Saville Rowe, and welcome; but he was not at Sir Saville's, and the week had long been over. As for Mr. Foljambe, his indignation was extreme.
"Hang it!" he observed, "if Chudleigh can't come back when he might, why does he pretend to keep up a London practice? And to send me Whittaker too; a fellow I hate like--like colchicum. I suppose I can choose my doctor for myself, can't I?"
Thus the worthy and irascible old gentleman, who was more attached to Chudleigh Wilmot than to any other living being, would discourse to droppers-in concerning his absent favourite; and as the droppers-in to the invalid room of the rich banker were numerous, and of the class to whom Wilmot was especially well known, the old gentleman's talk led to somewhat wide and varied speculation on the causes and inducements of his absence. Mr. Foljambe had ascertained all the particulars which Wilmot had given his wife; and Kilsyth of Kilsyth was soon a familiar phrase in connection with the rising man. Everybody knew where he was, and "all about it;" and when the unctuous and deprecating Whittaker talked of the "specially interesting case" which was detaining Wilmot, glances of unequivocal intelligence, but of somewhat equivocal meaning, were interchanged among his hearers; and guesses were made that Miss Kilsyth was a "doosed nice" girl, or her stepmother Lady Muriel,--"young enough to be Kilsyth's daughter, you know, and never lets him forget it, by Jove,"--was a "doosed fine" woman. "The Kilsyths" began to be famous among Wilmot's clientèle and the old banker's familiars; the Peerage, lying on his bookshelves, and hitherto serenely undisturbed, with its covering of dust, was frequently in demand; and young Lothbury, of Lombard, Lothbury, & Co., made quite a sensation when he informed a select circle of Mr. Foljambe's visitors that he knew Ronald Kilsyth very well--was in his club in fact.
"Old Kilsyth's son," he explained; "a very good fellow in his way, and quite the gentleman, as he ought to be of course, but a queer-tempered one, and a bit of a prig."
"Have you written to your husband, Mabel?" said Mrs. Prendergast with solemn anxiety, when the third week of Wilmot's absence was drawing to a close, and his wife's illness had increased day by day, so that now it was a common topic of conversation among their acquaintance.
"No," returned Mabel, "I have not. I have told you I will not write, but speak to him; and I am resolved."
"But Whittaker? Surely he does not know your husband is ignorant of your state?"
"O, dear no," returned Mrs. Wilmot, with a smile by no means pleasant to see. "He is the jolliest and simplest of men in all matters of this kind. Mrs. Whittaker wouldn't, in fact couldn't, have a finger ache unknown to him; and he never suspects that things are different with me."
"Mabel," said her friend, "you do very, very wrong; but I will not interfere or argue with you. Only, remember, I believe much will depend on your reception of him."
"Don't be alarmed, Henrietta," said Mabel Wilmot. "I promise you, unhesitatingly, that Wilmot will not be dissatisfied with the reception he shall have from me.".
It was a good thing for Kilsyth that he had a soft, sweet, affectionate being like Madeleine on whom he could vent the fund of affection stored in his warm heart, and who could appreciate and return it. In the autumn of life, when the sad strange feeling first comes upon us, that we have seen the best of our allotted time, and that the remainder of our pilgrimage must be existence rather than life; when the ears which tingled at the faintest whisper of love know that they will never again hear the soft liquid language once so marvellously sweet to them; when the heart which bounded at the merest promptings of ambition beats with unmoved placidity even as we recognise the victories of our juniors in the race; when we see the hopes and cares and wishes which we have so long cherished one by one losing their sap and strength and verdure, one by one losing their hold on our being, and borne whirling away, lifeless and shrivelled, on the sighing wind of time,--we need be grateful indeed if we have anything so cheering and promiseful as a daughter's affection. It is the old excitement that has given a zest to life for so many years; administered in a very mild form indeed, but still there. The boys are well enough, fine gentlemanly fellows, making their way in the world, well spoken of, well esteemed, doing credit to the parent stock, and taking--ay, there's the deuce of it!--taking the place which we have vacated, and making us feel that we have vacated it. Their mere presence in the world brings to us the consciousness which arose dimly years ago, but which is very bright and impossible to blink now, that we no longer belong to the present, to the generation by which the levers of the world are grasped and moved; that we are tolerated gently and genially indeed, with outward respect and with a certain amount of real affection; but that we are in effect rococo and bygone, and that our old-world notions are to be kindly listened to, not warmly adopted. Ulysses is all very well; in fact, was a noted chieftain in his day, went through his wanderings with great pluck and spirit, had his adventures, dear old boy. You recollect that story about the Gräfin von Calypso, and that scandalous story which was published in the Ogygian Satirist? But it is Telemachus who is the cynosure of Ithaca nowadays, whom we watch, and on whom we wait. But with a girl it is a very different matter. To her her father--until he is supplanted by her husband--still stands on the old heroic pedestal where, through her mother's interpretation, she saw him long since in the early days of her childhood; in her eyes "age has not withered him, nor custom staled his infinite variety;" all his fine qualities, which she was taught to love,--and how easily she learned the lesson!--have but mellowed and improved with years. Her brothers, much as she may love them, are but faint copies of that great original; their virtues and good qualities are but reflected lights of his--his the be-all and end-all of her existence; and the love between him and her is of the purest and most touching kind. No tinge of jealousy at being supplanted by her sullies that great love with which he regards her, and which is free from every taint of earthiness; towards her arises a chastened remembrance of the old love felt towards her mother, with the thousand softened influences which the old memories invest it with, combined with that other utterly indescribable affection of parent to child, which is one of the happiest and holiest mysteries of life.
So the love between Kilsyth and his girl was the happiness of his existence, the one gentle bond of union between him and the outer world. For so large-hearted a man, he had few intimate relations with life; looking on at it benevolently, rather than taking part even in what it had to offer of gentleness and affection. This was perhaps because he was so thoroughly, what is called "old-fashioned." Lady Muriel he honoured, respected, and gloried in. On the few occasions when he was compelled to show himself in London society, he went through his duty as though enjoying it as much as the most foppish Osric at the court; supported chiefly by the universal admiration which his wife excited, and not a little by the remembrance that another month would see him freed from all this confounded nonsense, and up to his waist in a salmon stream. There could be no terms of praise too warm for "my lady," who was in his eyes equally a miracle of talent and loveliness, to whom he always deferred in the largest as in the smallest matters of life; but it was Madeleine
"who had power
To soothe the sportsman in his softer hour."
It was Madeleine who had his deepest, fondest love--a love without alloy; pure, selfless, and eternal.
These feelings understood, it may be imagined Kilsyth had the warmest feelings of gratitude and regard towards Dr. Wilmot for having, as everyone in the house believed, and as was really the fact, saved the girl's life, partly by his skill, principally by his untiring watchfulness and devotion to her at the most critical period of her illness. In such a man as Kilsyth these feelings could not remain long unexpressed; so that within a couple of days of the interview between Lady Muriel and Dr. Wilmot, Kilsyth took an opportunity of meeting the doctor as he was taking his usual stretch on the terrace, and accosting him.
"Good-morning, Dr. Wilmot; still keeping to the terrace as strictly as though you were on parole?"
"Good-morning to you. I'm a sanitarian, and get as much fresh air as I can with as little labour. This terrace seems to me the only level walking ground within eyeshot; and there's no more preposterous mistake than overdoing exercise. Too much muscularity and gymnastics are amongst the besetting evils of the present day, depend upon it."
"Very likely; but I'm not of the present day, and therefore not likely to overdo it myself, or to tempt you into overdoing it. But still I want you to extend your constitutional this morning round to the left; there's a path that skirts the craig--a made path in the rock itself, merely broad enough for two of us to walk, and which has the double advantage that it gives us peeps of some of the best scenery hereabouts; and it is so little frequented, that it will give us every chance of uninterrupted conversation. And I want to talk to you about Madeleine."
Whatever might have been Chudleigh Wilmot's previous notions as to the pleasure derivable from an extended walk with the old gentleman, the last word decided him; and they started off at once.
"I won't pretend to conceal from you, Dr. Wilmot," said Kilsyth, after they had proceeded some quarter of a mile, talking on indifferent subjects, and stopping now and then to admire some point in the scenery,--"I won't pretend to conceal from you, that ever since your arrival here I have had misgivings as to the manner in which you were first summoned. I--"
"Pray don't think of that, sir."
"I don't--any more than, I am sure, you do. My Madeleine, who is dearer to me than life, was, I knew, in danger. I heard of your being in what one might almost call the vicinity from Duncan Forbes; and without thought or hesitation I at once telegraphed to you to come on here."
"Thereby giving me the pleasantest holiday I ever enjoyed in my life, and enabling me to start away, as I was on the point of doing, with the agreeable reflection that I have been of some comfort to some most kind and charming people."
"I am delighted to hear you say those friendly words, Dr. Wilmot; but I am not convinced even now. So far as--as the honorarium is concerned, I hope you will allow me to make that up to you; so that you shall have no reminder in your banker's book that you have not been in full London practice; and as to the feeling beyond the honorarium, I can only say that you have earned my lifelong gratitude, and that I should be only too glad for any manner of showing it."
Wilmot waited a minute before he said, "My dear sir, if there is anything I hate, it is conventionality; and I am horribly afraid of being betrayed into a set speech just now. With regard to the latter part of your remarks your gratitude for any service I may have been to you cannot be surpassed by mine for my introduction to my charming patient and your delightful family circle. With regard to what you were pleased to say about the honorarium, you must be good enough to do as I shall do--forget you ever touched upon the subject. You don't know our professional etiquette, my dear sir--that when a man is on a holiday he does no work. Nothing on earth would induce me to take a fee from you. You must look upon anything I have done as a labour of love on my part; and I should lose all the pleasure of my visit if I thought that that visit had not been paid as a friend rather than as a professional man."
Kilsyth must have changed a great deal from his former self if these words had not touched his warm generous heart. Tears stood in his bright blue eyes as he wrung Chudleigh Wilmot's hand, and said, "You're a fine fellow, Doctor; a great fellow altogether. I'm an old man now, and may say this to you without offence. Be it as you will. God knows, no man ever left this house carrying with him so deep a debt of its owner's gratitude as will hang round you. Now as to Madeleine. You're off, you say, and I can't gainsay your departure; for I know you've been detained here far too long for the pursuance of your own proper practice, which is awaiting you in London; and I feel certain you would not go if you felt that by your going you would expose her to any danger of a relapse. But I confess I should like to hear from your own lips just your own candid opinion about her."
Now or never, Chudleigh Wilmot! No excuse of miscomprehension! You have examined yourself, probed the inmost depths of your conscience in how many midnight vigils, in how many solitary walks! You know exactly the state of your feelings towards this young girl; and it is for you to determine whether you will renounce her for ever, or continue to tread that pleasant path of companionship--so bright and alluring in its present, so dark and hopeless in its future--along which you have recently been straying. Professional and humanitarian considerations? Are you influenced by them alone, when you reply--
"My dear sir, you ask me rather a difficult question. Were I speaking of your daughter's recovery from the disease under which she has been labouring, I should say with the utmost candour that she has so far recovered as to be comparatively well. But I should not be discharging my professional duty--above all, I should not be worthy of that trust which you have reposed in my professional skill, and of the friendship with which you have been so good as to honour me--if I disguised from you that during my constant attendance on Miss Kilsyth, and during the examinations which I have from time to time made of her system, I have discovered that--that she has another point of weakness totally disconnected from that for which I have been treating her."
He was looking straight into the old man's eyes as he said this--eyes which dropped at the utterance of the words, then raised themselves again, dull, heavy-lidded, with all the normal light and life extinguished in them.
"I heard something of this from Muriel, from Lady Muriel, from my wife," muttered Kilsyth; "but I should like to know from you the exact meaning of your words. Don't be afraid of distressing me, Doctor," he added, after a short pause; "I have had in my time to listen to a sentence as hard--almost as hard"--his voice faltered here--"as any you could pronounce; and I have borne up against it with tolerable courage. So speak."
"I have no hard, at least no absolute, sentence to pronounce, my dear sir; nothing that does not admit of much mitigation, properly taken and properly treated. Miss Kilsyth is not a hoyden, you know; not one of those buxom young women who, according to French notions, are to be found in every English family--"
"No, no!" interrupted the old gentleman a little querulously.
"On the contrary, Miss Kilsyth's frame is delicate, and her constitution not particularly strong. Indeed, in the course of my investigation during her recent illness, I discovered that her left lung was not quite so healthy as it might be."
"Her lungs! Ah, good heavens! I always feared that would be the weak spot."
"Are any of her family so predisposed?"
"One brother died of rapid consumption."
"Ay, indeed! Well, well, there's nothing of that kind to be apprehended here,--at least there are no urgent symptoms. But it is only due to you and to myself to tell you that the lungs are Miss Kilsyth's weak point, and that every care should be exercised to ward off the disease which at present, I am happy to say, is only looming in the distance."
"And what should be the first step, Dr. Wilmot?"
"Removal to a softer climate. You have a London house, I know; when do you generally make a move south?"
"Lady Muriel and the children usually go south in October,--about five weeks from hence,--and I go down to an old friend in Yorkshire for a month's cover-shooting. But this is an exceptional year, and anything you advise shall be done."
"My advice is very simple; it is, that you so far make an alteration in your usual programme as to put Miss Kilsyth into a more congenial climate at once. This air is beginning now to be moist and raw in the mornings and evenings, and at its best is now unfit for anyone with delicate lungs."
"Would London do?"
"London would be a great improvement on Kilsyth--though of course it's treason to say so."
"Then to London she shall go at once; and I hope you will allow me the pleasure of anticipating that my daughter, when there, will have the advantage of your constant supervision."
"Anything I can do for Miss Kilsyth shall be done, you may depend on it, my dear sir. And now I want to say good-bye to you, and to you alone. I have a perfect horror of adieux, and dare not face them with women. So you will make my farewell to Lady Muriel, thanking her for all the kindness and hospitality; and--and you will tell Miss Kilsyth--that I shall hope to see her soon in London; and--so God bless you, my dear sir, au revoir on the flags of Pall-Mall."
Half an hour afterwards he was gone. He had made all his arrangements, ordered his horses, and slipped away while all the party was engaged, and almost before his absence from the luncheon-table was remarked. He knew that the road by which he would be driven was not overlooked by the dining-room where the convives would be assembled; but he knew well enough that it was commanded by one particular window, and to that window he looked up with flashing eyes and beating heart. He caught a momentary glimpse of a pale face surrounded by a nimbus of golden hair; a pale face on which was an expression of sorrowful surprise, and which, as he raised his hat, shrunk back out of sight, without having given him the smallest sign of recognition. That look haunted Chudleigh Wilmot for days and days; and while at first it distressed him, on reflection brought him no little comfort, thinking, as he did, that had Madeleine had no interest in him, her expression of face would have been simply conventional, and she would have nodded and bowed as to any ordinary acquaintance. So he fed his mind on that look, and on certain kindly little speeches which she had made to him from time to time during her illness; and when he wanted a more tangible reminiscence of her, he took from his pocketbook a blue ribbon with which she had knotted her hair during the earlier days of her convalescence, and which, when she fell asleep, he had picked from the ground and carefully preserved.
Bad symptoms these, Chudleigh Wilmot; very bad symptoms indeed! Bad and easily read; for there shall be no gawky lad of seventeen years of age, fresh from the country, to join your class at St. Vitus's, who, hearing them described, shall not be able to name the virulent disease from which you are suffering.
When Lady Muriel heard the result of her husband's colloquy with the Doctor, she was variously affected. She had anticipated that Chudleigh Wilmot would take the first opportunity of making his escape from Kilsyth, where his presence was no longer professionally needed, while his patients in London were urgent for his return. Nor was she surprised when her husband told her that Dr. Wilmot had, when interrogated, declared that the air of Kilsyth was far too sharp for Madeleine in her then condition, and that it was peremptorily necessary that she should be moved south, say to London, at once. Only one remark did she make on this point: "Did Madeleine's removal to London--I mean did the selection of London spring from you, Alick, or Dr. Wilmot?"
"From me, dear--at least I asked whether London would do; and he said, at all events London would be infinitely preferable to Kilsyth; and so knowing that we should have the advantage of his taking charge of Madeleine, I thought it would be best for us to get away to Rutland-gate as soon as possible."
To which Lady Muriel replied, "You were quite right; but it will take at least a week before all our preparations will be complete for leaving this place and starting south."
Lady Muriel Kilsyth did not join any of the expeditions which were made up after luncheon that day; the rest of the company went away to roaring linns or to heather-covered mountains; walked, rode, drove; made the purple hills resound with laughter excited by London stories, and flirted with additional vigour, though perhaps without the subtlety imparted by the experience of the season. But Lady Muriel went away to her own room, and gave herself up to thought. She had great belief in the efficacy of "thinking out" anything that might be on her mind, and she resorted to the practice on this occasion. Her course was by no means clear or straightforward, but a little thorough application to the subject would soon show her the way. Let her look at it in all its bearings, and slur over no salient point. This man, this Dr. Wilmot--well, he was wondrously fascinating, that she must allow! His eyes, his earnestness of manner, his gravity, and the way in which he slid from grave to gay topics, as his face lit up, and his voice--ah, that voice, so mellow, so rich, so clear, and yet so soft, and capable of such exquisite modulation! The remembrance of that face, only so recently known, has stopped the current of Lady Muriel's thoughts: she sits there in the low-backed chair, her chin resting on her breast, her hands clasped idly before her, her eyes vaguely looking on the fitfully flaming logs upon the hearth. Wondrously fascinating; in his mere earnestness so different from the men, young and old, amongst whom her life was passed; by whom, if thought were possible to them, it was held as something to be ashamed of, while frivolity resulting in vice ruled their lives, and frivolity garnished with slang governed their conversation. Wondrously fascinating; in the modesty with which he exercised the great talent he possessed, and the possession of which alone would have turned the head of a weaker man; in his brilliant energy and calm strength; in his unwitting superiority to all around him, and the manner in which, apparently unconsciously and without the smallest display, he took his place in the front rank, and, no matter who might be present, drew rapt attention and listening ears to himself. So much for him. Now for herself. And Lady Muriel rose from the soft snuggery of her cushioned chair, and folded her arms across her breast, and began pacing the room with hurried steps. This man had established an influence over her? Agreed. What was worse, established his influence without intending it, without absolutely wishing it? Agreed again. Lady Muriel was far too clever a woman to shirk any item or gloss over any replies to her cross-examination of herself. And was she, who had hitherto steered her way through life, avoiding all the rocks and shoals and quicksands on which she had seen so much happiness wrecked, so much hope ingulfed--was she now to drift on for the same perilous voyage, without rudder or compass, without even a knowledge whether the haven would be open to her? Not she. For her husband's, for her own sake, for her own and her children's credit, she would hold the course she had held, and play the part she had played. A shudder ran through her as she pictured to herself the delight with which the thousand-and-one tongues of London scandal would whisper and chuckle over the merest hint that their prophecy of years since was beginning to be fulfilled--how the faintest breath of suspicion with which a name could be coupled would fly over the five miles of territory where Fashion reigns. She stopped before the glass, put her hand to her heart, and saw herself pale and trembling at the mere idea.
And yet to be loved! Only for once in her life to know that she loved and was loved again, not by a man whom she could tolerate, but by one whom she could look up to and worship. Not reverence--that was not the word; she reverenced Kilsyth--but whose intellect she could respect, whose self she could worship. O, only for once in her life to experience that feeling which she had read so much about and heard so much of; to feel that she was loved heart and soul and body; loved with wild passion and calm devotion--for such a man as this was capable of both feelings simultaneously--loved for herself alone, independently of all advantages of state and position; loved by the most lovable man in the world; Loved! the word itself was tabooed amongst the women with whom she lived, as being too strong and expressive. They 'liked' certain men in a calm, easy, laissez-aller kind of way at the height of their passion; then married them, with proper amount of bishop, bridesmaid, and wedding present, all duly celebrated in the fashionable journal; and then "gave up to parties what was meant for mankind." Ah, the difference between such an existence and that passed as this man's wife! cheering him in his work, taking part in his worries, lightening his difficulties, always ready with a smiling face and bright eyes to welcome him home, and--Jealous? Not she! there would be no such feeling with her in such a case. Jealous! And as the thought rose in her mind, simultaneously appeared the blue eyes and the golden hair of her stepdaughter.
That must be nipped in the bud at once! There was nothing on Dr. Wilmot's part--probably there might be nothing on either side; but sentimental friendship of that kind generally had atrociously bad results; and Madeleine was a very impressionable girl, and now, as Kilsyth had determined, was to be constantly thrown with Wilmot, to be under his charge during her stay in London, and therefore likely to have all her thoughts and actions influenced by him. Such a combination of circumstances would be necessary hazardous, and might be fatal, if prompt measures were not taken for disposing of Madeleine previously. This could only be done by making Ramsay Caird declare himself. Why that young man had never prospered in his suit was inexplicable to Lady Muriel; he was not so good-looking as poor Stewart certainly--not one-tenth part so intense--having an excellent constitution, and looking at life through glasses of the most roseate hue; but Madeleine was young and inexperienced and docile--at least comparatively docile even to Lady Muriel, who, as she knew perfectly well, possessed very little of the girl's love; and it was through her affection that she must be touched. Who could touch her? Not her father: he was too much devoted to her to enter into the matter; at least in the proper spirit. Who else then? Ah, Lady Muriel smiled as a happy thought passed through her mind. Ronald, Madeleine's brother,--he was the person to exercise influence in a right and proper way over his sister; and to him she would write at once.
That night the butler took two letters from the post-box in Lady Muriel's handwriting; one of them was addressed to Ramsay Caird, in George-street, Edinburgh, and ran thus:
"Kilsyth."
"My Dear Ramsay,--For reasons which I have already sufficiently explained to you, you will, I think, be disposed to admit that my interest in you and your career is unquestionable, and you will be ready to take any step which I may strongly urge upon you. In this conviction, I feel sure that you will unhesitatingly adopt the suggestion which I now make, and start for London at the very earliest opportunity. You will be surprised at this recommendation, and at the manner in which I press it; but, believe me, I do not act without much reflection, and without thorough conviction of the step I am taking, and which I am desirous you should take. I have so often talked the matter over with you, that there is no necessity for me to enter upon it now, even if there were no danger in my so doing. It will be sufficient to say that we all go to London in a week's time, and that it is specially desirable that you should be there at the same time; otherwise you may find the ground mined beneath your feet. When you arrive in town, I wish you to call upon Captain Kilsyth at Knightsbridge Barracks. You will find him particularly clear-headed, and thoroughly conversant with the ways of the world; and I should advise you to be guided by him in everything, but specially in the matter in question. Let me have a line to say you are on the point of starting; and believe me
"Your sincere friend,
"Muriel Kilsyth."
The other letter was addressed to "Captain Kilsyth; First Life-guards, Knightsbridge Barracks, London."
"(Confidential.)
Kilsyth.
">My dear Ronald,--You have heard from your father of Madeleine's illness and convalescence. She is rapidly recovering her strength, and will be her old self physically very shortly.
"You smile as you see that the word 'physically' is underlined; but this is not, believe me, one of those 'unmeaning woman's dashes' which I have so often heard you unequivocally condemn. I underlined the word specially, because I think that Madeleine's recovery will be, so far as she is concerned, physical, and physical only.
"Not that I mean in the least that her reason has been affected, otherwise than it always is most transiently in the access of fever; but that I think that the occasion which you and I have so often talked of has come, and come in a most undeniable manner. In a word, Madeleine has lost her heart, if I am not much mistaken, and lost it in a quarter where she herself, poor child, can hope for no return of her affection, and where, even if such return were possible, it would only bring misery on her, and him, and degradation to us all.
"We are coming to London at once, and therein lies simultaneously the danger to Madeleine and my hope of rescuing her from it, principally through your aid. You will see that it is impossible to enter upon this subject at length in a letter; but I could not let you be in ignorance of what I know will possess an acute and painful interest for you. Of course I have not hinted a word of this to your father, so that you will be equally reticent in any of your communications with him. You shall hear the day we expect to arrive in town, and I hope to see you in Brook-street on the next morning.
"You will recollect all I said to you about Ramsay Caird. He will probably call on you very shortly after you receive this letter. Bear in mind the cue I gave you, when we last parted, about this young man, and act up to it: he is a little weak, a little hesitating; but I am more convinced than ever of the advisability of pursuing the course I then indicated. God bless you!