"Your affectionate
"M.K."
When Ronald Kilsyth was little more than four years old his nurses said he was "so odd;" a phrase which stuck by him through life. As a child his oddity consisted in his curious gravity and preoccupation, his insensibility to amusement, his dislike of companionship, his love of solitude, his old-fashioned thoughts and manner and habits. He had a dogged honesty which prevented him from using the smallest deception in any way, which prevented him from ever prevaricating or telling those small fibs which are made so much of in the child, but to which he looks back as trivial sins indeed when compared with the duplicity of his after-life,--which rendered him obnoxious even to the children whom he met as playfellows in the square-garden, and who found it impossible to get on with young Kilsyth on account of the rigidity of his morals, displeasing to them even at their tender years. When a delicious guetapens, made of string stretched from tree to tree, had been, with great consumption of time and trouble, prepared for the downfall of the old gardener; and when the youthful conspirators were all laid up in ambush behind the Portugal laurels, waiting to see the old man, plodding round with rake and leaf-basket in the early dusk of the autumnal evening, fall headlong over the snare,--it was provoking to see little Ronald Kilsyth, in his gray kilt, step out and go up to the old man and show him the pitfall, and assist him in removing it. The conspirators were highly incensed at this treachery, as they called it, and would have sent Ronald then and there to Coventry,--not that that would have distressed him much,--had it not been for his magnanimity in refusing, even when under pressure, to give up the names of those in the plot. But as in this, so in everything else; and the little frequenters of the square soon found Ronald Kilsyth "too good" for them, and were by no means anxious to secure his companionship in their sports.
At Eton, whither he was sent so soon as he arrived at the proper age, he very shortly obtained the same character. Pursuing the strict path of duty,--industrious, punctual, and regular, with very fair abilities, and scrupulously making the most of them,--he never lost an opportunity and never made a friend. All that was good of him his masters always said; but they stopped there; they never said anything that was kind. In school they could not help respecting him; out of school they would as soon have thought of making Ronald Kilsyth their companion as of taking Hind's Algebra for pleasant reading. And it was the same with his schoolfellows. They talked of his steadiness and of his hard-working with pride, as reflecting on themselves and the whole school. They speculated as to what he would do in the future, and how he would show that the stories that had been told about Eton were all lies, don't you know? and how Kilsyth would go up to Cambridge, and show them what the best public school--the only school for English gentlemen, you know--could do; and Floreat Etona, and all that kind of thing, old fellow. But Ronald Kilsyth, during the whole of his Eton pupilage, never had a chum--never knew what it was to share a confidence, add to a pleasure, or lighten a grief. Did he feel this? Perhaps more acutely than could have been imagined; but being, as he was, proud, shy, sensitive, and above all queer, he took care that no one knew what his feelings were, or whether he had any at all on the subject.
Queer! that was the word by which they called him at Eton, and which, after all, expressed his disposition better than any other. Strong-minded, clear-headed, generous, and brave, with an outer coating of pride, shyness, reserve, and a mixture of all which passed current for hauteur. With a strong contempt for nearly everything in which his contemporaries found pleasure,--save in the excess of exercise, as that he thoroughly understood and appreciated,--and with a wearying desire to find pleasure for himself; with an impulse to exertion and work, accountable to himself only on the score of duty, but having no definite end or aim; with a restless longing to make his escape from the thraldom of conventionality, and rush off and do something somewhere far away from the haunts of men. With all the morbidness of the hero of Locksley Hall, without the excuse of having been jilted, and without any of the experience of that sweetly modulated cynic, Ronald Kilsyth, obeying his father's wish, and thereby again following the paths of duty, was gazetted to the Life-Guards--the exact position for a young gentleman in his condition.
The donning of a scarlet tunic instead of a round jacket, and the substitution of a helmet for a pot-hat, made very little difference in Ronald. Several of his brother officers had known him personally at Eton, so that the character he had obtained there preceded him, inspiring a wholesome awe of him before he appeared on the scene; and he had not been two days in barracks before he was voted a prig and a bore. There was no sympathy between the dry, pedantic, rough young Scotsman and those jolly genial youths. His hard, dry, handsome clean-cut face, with its cold gray eyes, thin aquiline nose, and tight lips, cast a gloom over the cheery mess-table around which they sat; their jovial beaming smiles, and curling moustaches, and glittering shirt-studs reflected in the silver épergne, with its outposts of mounted sentries and its pleasant mingling of feasting and frays at the Temple of Mars and the London Tavern. His grim presence robbed many a pleasant story of its point, which indeed, in deference to him, had to be softened down or given with bated breath. The young fellows--no younger than him in years, but with, O, such an enormous gulf between them as regards the real elasticity and charm of youth--were afraid of him, and from fear sprung dislike. They had not much fear of their elders, these youths of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous modesty. They had a wholesome awe, tempering their hearty love, of Colonel Jefferson; but less on account of the strictness of his discipline and of a certain noli-me-tangere expression towards those whom he did not specially favour, than on account of his age; and as for the jolly old Major, who had been in the regiment for ever so many years,--for him they had neither fear nor respect; and when he was in command--which befell him during the cheerful interval between July and December--the lads did as they liked.
But they could not get on with Ronald Kilsyth; and though they tolerated him quietly for the sake of his people, they never could be induced to regard him with anything like the fraternal good fellowship which they entertained towards each other. As it had been at Eton, so it was at Knightsbridge, at Windsor, in Albany-street, in all those charming quarters where the Household Cavalry spend their time for their own and their country's advantage. Ronald Kilsyth was respected by all, loved by none. Charley Jefferson himself, fascinated as he was by Ronald's devotion to the mysteries of drill and by all the young man's unswerving attention to his regimental duties--qualities which weighed immensely with the martinet Colonel--had been heard to confess, with a prolonged twirl at his grizzled moustache, that "Kilsyth was a d--d hard nut to crack,"--an enigmatic remark which, from so plain a speaker as the Colonel, meant volumes. The Major, whom Ronald, under strong provocation, had once designated a "tipsy old atheist," had, in the absence of his enemy and under the influence of two-thirds of a bottle of brandy, retorted in terms which were held to justify both Ronald's epithets; and the men had a very low opinion of him, who at the time of writing was senior lieutenant of the regiment. He had no sympathy with the men, no care for them; he would have liked to have made them more domestic, less inclined for the public-house and the music-hall; he would have subscribed to reading-rooms, to institutes, to anything for their mental improvement; but he never thought of giving them a kind word or an encouraging speech; and they much preferred Cornet Bosky--who cursed them roundly for their talking, for their silence, for their going too fast, for their going too slow, for their anything in fact, on those horrible mornings when he happened to be in charge of them exercising their horses, but who off duty always had a kindly word, an open purse at their service--to the senior Lieutenant, who never used a bad expression, and who, as they confessed, was, after the Colonel, the best soldier in the regiment.
It was like going into a different world to leave the smoky atmosphere, the wild disorder and reckless confusion of most of the other rooms in barracks, and go into Ronald Kilsyth's trim orderly apartment. Instead of tables ringed with stains of long-since-emptied tumblers, and littered with yellow-paper-covered French novels, torn playbills, old gloves, letters, unpaid bills, opera-glasses, pipes, shreds of tobacco, heaps of cigar-ash, rolls of comic songs, trophies from knock'em-downs at race-courses, empty soda-water bottles, scattered packs of cards, and suchlike examples of free living--to find perfect order and decorum; the walls covered with movable bookcases filled with valuable books, Raphael Morghen prints, proofs before letters after the best modern artists, and charming bits of water-colour sketches, instead of coloured daubs of French écuyères and lionnes of the Quartier Breda, photographs of Roman temple or Pompeian excavation, and Venetian glass and delicate eggshell china, and Chinese carving, and Indian beadwork. They used to look round at these things in wonder, the other young fellows of the regiment, when they penetrated into Ronald's room, and point to the pictures and ask who "that queer old party was," and depreciate the furniture by inquiring "what was that old rubbish?" They could not understand his friends either; men asked to the mess by them or seen in their rooms were generally well known in the Household Brigade, other officers in the Blues or the Foot Regiments, or idlers and dawdlers with nothing to do, men in the Treasury or Foreign Office, people whom they were safe to meet in society at least every other night in the season. But Ronald Kilsyth's guests were of a different stamp. Sometimes he brought Wrencher the novelist or Scumble the Royal Academician to dinner; and the fellows who knew the works of both made much of the guests and did them due honour; but when occasionally they had to receive Jack Flokes the journalist, who looked on washing as an original sin, or Dick Tinto the painter, who regarded a dirty brown velvet shooting-coat as the proper costume for the evening, or Klavierspieler the pianist, a fat dirty German in spectacles, who made a perfect Indian juggler of himself in trying to swallow his knife during dinner--they were scarcely so much gratified. Innate gentlemanliness and entire good-breeding made them receive the gentlemen with every outward sign of hospitality; but afterwards, round the solemn council fire in the little mess-room and midst deep clouds of tobacco-smoke, they delivered a verdict anything but complimentary either to guest or host.
What possessed him? That was what they could not understand. Nicest people in the world, sir! father, dear delightful jolly old fellow, give you his heart's blood if you wanted it--but you don't want it, so gives the best glass ofessed claret in London; and at home--at Kilsyth--'gad, you can't conceive it; no country-house to be named in the same breath with it. Perfect shooting and all that kind of thing, and thoroughly your own master, by Jove! do just as you like, I mean to say, and have everything you want, don't you know! Lady Muriel quite charming; holding her own, don't you know, with all the younger women in point of attractiveness and that sort of thing, and yet respected and looked up to, and the best mistress of a house possible. And Miss Kilsyth, Madeleine, deuced nice little girl; very pretty, and no nonsense about her; meant for some big fish! Well, yes, suppose so; but meantime extremely pleasant and chatty, and sings nice little songs and valses splendidly, and all that kind of thing. That was what they said of the Kilsyth ménage in the Household Brigade, in which pleasant joyous assemblage of gallant freethinkers it would have been difficult to point out one who would not have been delighted at an autumn visit to Kilsyth. Ah! what we believe and that we know! The humorous articles of the comic writers, the humorous sketches of the comic artists, lead us to think that the gentlemen officers of the regiments specially accredited for London service are, in the main, good-looking, handsome dolts, who pull their moustaches, eliminate the "r's" from their speech, and are but the nearest removes from the inmates of Hanwell Asylum. But a very small experience will serve to remove this impression, and will lead one to know that the reading and appreciation of character is nowhere more aptly read and more shrewdly hit upon than in the barrack-rooms of Knightsbridge or the Regent's Park.
People who knew, or thought they knew, Ronald Kilsyth, declared that he was solitary and oysterlike, self-contained, and caring for no one but himself. They were wrong. Ronald had strong home affections. He loved and reverenced his father more than any one in the world. He saw plainly enough the few shortcomings--the want of modern education, the excessive love of sport, the natural indolence of his disposition, and the intense desire to shirk all the responsibilities of his position, and to shift the discharge of them on to some one else. But equally he saw his father's warm-heartedness, honour, and chivalry; his unselfishness, his disposition to look upon the bright side of all that happened, his cheery bonhomie, and his unfailing good temper. Lady Muriel he regarded with feelings of the highest respect--respect which he had often tried to turn into affection, but had tried in vain. With a woman's quickness, Lady Muriel had seen at a glance, on her first entering the Kilsyth family, thamotivst her hardest task would be to win over her stepson, and she had laid herself out for that victory with really far more care and pains than she had taken to captivate his father. With great natural shrewdness, quickened by worldly experience, Lady Muriel very shortly made herself mistress of Ronald Kilsyth's character, and laid her plans accordingly. Never was shaft more truly shot, never was mine more ingeniously laid. Ronald Kilsyth, boy as he was at the time of his father's second marriage, had scarcely had three interviews with his stepmother before she found a corroboration of the fact which had so often whispered itself in his own bosom, that he, and he alone, was the guiding spirit of the family; that he had knowledge and experience beyond his years; and that if she, Lady Muriel, only got him, Ronald, to cooperate with her, everything would be smooth, and between them the felicity and well-being of all would be assured. It was a deft compliment, and it succeeded. From that time forth Ronald Kilsyth was Lady Muriel's most pliant instrument and doughtiest champion. In the circles in which during the earlier phases of his succeeding life he found himself, there were plenty to carp at his stepmother's conduct, to impugn her motives,--worst of all, to drop side hints of her integrity; but to all of these Ronald Kilsyth gave instant and immediate battle, never allowing the smallest insinuation which reflected upon her to pass unrebuked. He thought he knew his stepmother thoroughly: whether he did or not time must show; but at all events he thought highly enough of her to permit himself to be guided by her in some of the most important steps in his career.
And what were his feelings with regard to Madeleine? If you wanted to find the key to Ronald Kilsyth's character, it was there that you should have looked for it. Ronald loved Madeleine with all the love which such a heart as his was capable of feeling; but he watched over her with a strictness such as no duenna ever yet dreamed of Years ago, when they were very little children, there occurred an episode which Miss O'Grady--who was then Kilsyth's governess, and now happily married to Herr Ohm, a wine-merchant at Heidelberg--to this day narrates with the greatest delight. It was in Hamilton Gardens, where the Kilsyth children and a number of others were playing at Les Graces--a pleasing diversion then popular with youth--and little Lord Claud Barrington, in picking up and restoring her hoop to Madeleine, had taken advantage of the opportunity to kiss her hand. Ronald noticed the gallantry, and at once resented it, asking the youthful libertine how he dared to take such a liberty. "Well, but she liketh it!" said Lord Claud, ingenuously pointing to Madeleine, who was sucking and biting the end of her hoop-stick, by no means ill-pleased. "Very likely," said Ronald; "but these girls know nothing of such matters. I am my sister's guardian, and call upon you to apologise." Lord Claud, humiliated, said he was "wewy thorry;" and the three,--he, Ronald, and Madeleine,--had some bath-pipe and some cough-lozenges as a banquet in honour of the reconciliation.
This odd watchfulness, never slumbering, always vigilant, perpetually unjust, and generally exigeant, characterised Ronald's relations with his sister up to the time of our story. When she first came out, his mental torture was extraordinary; he, so long banished from ball-rooms, accepted every invitation, and though he never danced, would invariably remain in the dancing-room, ensconced behind a pillar, lounging in a doorway, always in some position whence he could command his sister's movements, and throughout the evening never taking his eyes from her. His friends, or rather his acquaintances, who at first watched his rapt attention without having the smallest idea of its object, used to chaff him upon his devotion, and interrogate him as to whether it was the tall person with the teeth, the stout virgin with the shells in her hair, or the interesting party with the shoulders, who had won his young affection. Ronald stood this chaff well, confident in the fact that hitherto his sister had performed her part in that grand and ludicrous mystery termed "Society," and had escaped heart-whole. He began to realise the truth of the axiom about the constant dropping of water. So long as Madeleine had had sense to comprehend, he had instilled into her the absolute necessity of consulting him before she even permitted herself to have the smallest liking for any man. During the first two months of her first season she had confessed to him twice: once in the case of a middle-aged, well-preserved peer; and again when a thin, black-bearded attaché of the Brazilian embassy was in question. Ronald's immediate and unmistakable veto had been sufficient in both cases; and he was flattering himself that the rest of the season had passed without any further call on his self-assumed judicial functions.
Imagine, then, his state of mind at the receipt of Lady Muriel's letter! The assault had been made, the mine had been sprung, the enemy was in the citadel, and, worst of all, the enemy was masked and disguised, and the guardian of the fortress did not know who was his assailant, or what measures he should take to repel him!.
The hall-porter at Barnes's Club in St. James's-street, whose views of life during the last two months had been remarkably gloomy and desponding, began to revive and to feel himself again as the end of October drew on apace. He had had a dull time of it, that hall-porter, during August and September, sitting in his glazed box, cutting the newspapers which no one came to read, and staring at the hat-pegs which no one used. He had his manuscript book before him, but he did not inscribe ten names in it during the day; for nearly everybody was out of town; and the few members who per force remained,--gentlemen in the Whitehall offices, or officers in the Household Brigade,--found scaffolding and ladders in the hall of Barnes's, and the morning-room in the hands of the whitewashers, and the coffee-room closed, and the smokers relegated to the card-room, and such a general state of discomfort, that they shunned Barnes's, and went off to the other clubs to which they belonged. But with the end of October came a change. The men who had been shooting in the North, the men who had been travelling on the Continent, the men who had been yachting, and the men who had been lounging on the sea-coast, all came through town on their way to their other engagements; those who had no other engagements, and who had spent all their available money, settled down into their old way of life; all paid at least a flying visit to the club to see who was in town, and to learn any news that might be afloat.
It is a sharp bright afternoon, and the morning-room at Barnes's is so full that you might actually fancy it the season. Sir Coke Only's gray cab horse is, as usual, champing his bit just outside the door, and Lord Sumph's brougham is there, and Tommy Toshington's chestnut cob with the white face is being led up and down by the red-jacketed lad, who has probably been out of town too, as he has not been seen since Parliament broke up, and yet is there and to the fore directly he is wanted. Tommy Toshington himself, an apple-faced little man, who might be any age between sixteen and sixty, but who is considerably nearer the latter than the former, gathers his letters from the porter as he passes, looks through them quickly, shaking his head the while at two or three written on very blue paper and addressed in very formal writing, and proceeds to the morning-room. Everybody there, everybody knowing Tommy, universal chorus of welcome from all save three old gentlemen reading evening papers, two of whom don't know Tommy, and all of whom hate him.
"And where have you come from, Tommy?" says Lord Sumph, who is a charming nobleman, labouring under the slight eccentricity of occasionally imagining that he is a steam-engine, when he whistles and shrieks and puffs, and has to be secluded from observation until the fit is over.
"Last from East Standling, my lord," says Tommy; "and very pleasant it was."
"Must have been doosid pleasant, by all I hear," says Sir Thomas Buffem, K.C.B., and late of the Madras army. "Dook had the gout, hadn't he? and we all know how pleasant he is then!"
"That feller was there of course--what's his name?--Bawlindor the barrister," says Sir Coke Only. "Can't bear that feller, dev'lish low-bred feller, was a dancin'-master or something of that sort--can't bear low-bred fellers;" and Sir Coke, whose paternal grandfather had been a pedlar, and who himself combined the intellect of an Esquimaux with the manners of a Whitechapel butcher on a Saturday night, cleared his throat, and thumped his stick, and looked ferocious.
"Yes, Mr. Bawlindor was there," says Tommy Toshington, looking round with a queer twinkle in his little gray eyes; "and he was very pleasant, very pleasant indeed. I hardly know how the duchess would have got on without him. He said some doosid smart things, did Mr. Bawlindor."
"I hate a feller who says smart things," said Sir Coke Only; "making a buffoon of himself."
"Ha, ha!" said Duncan Forbes, joining the group--"the carrier is jealous of the tumbler; it's a mere question of pigeons."
"What do you mean, Sir Duncan? I don't understand you," said Sir Coke angrily.
"Don't suppose you do--never gave you credit for anything of the sort.--How are you, all you fellows? What were the smart things that Bawlindor said, Tommy?"
"Well, I don't know; perhaps you wouldn't think 'em smart, Duncan, because you're a devilish clever chap yourself, and--"
"Yes, yes, we know all about that; but tell us some smart things that Bawlindor said--tell us one."
"Well, you know Tottenham? you know he gives awful heavy dinners? He was bragging about them one day at luncheon at East Standling, and Bawlindor said, 'There's one thing, my lord, I always envy when I'm dining with you.' 'What's that?' says Tottenham. "I envy your gas,' says Bawlindor, 'and it escapes.'"
"Ye-es! that was not bad for Bawlindor. I hate the brute though; I daresay he stole it from somebody else. Well, how are you all, and what's the news?"
"You ought to be able to tell us that," said Lord Sumph. "We're only just back in town, and you've been here all the time, haven't you, in the Tower or somewhere?"
"Not I; I'm only just back too."
"And where have you come from?"
"Last from Kilsyth."
"Devil you have!" growled Sir Thomas Buffem, edging away. "They've had jungle-fever--not jungle, scarlet-fever there, haven't they?"
"O, ah, Duncan," said Clement Walkinshaw of the Foreign Office, "tell us all about that! It was awful, wasn't it? Towcester cut and run, didn't he? Mrs. Severn said he turned pea-green, and sent such a stunning caricature of him to her sister, who was staying at Claverton! We stuck it up in the smoking-room, and had no end fun about it."
"I'm glad you were so much amused. It wasn't no end fun for Miss Kilsyth, however, as she was nearly losing her life."
"Was she, by Jove!" said Walkinshaw, who was a "beauty boy," examining himself in the glass, and smoothing his little moustaches,--"was she, by Jove! What! our dear little Maddy?"
"Our dear little Maddy," said Duncan Forbes calmly, "if you are on sufficient terms of intimacy with the young lady to speak of her in that manner in a public room. I call her Miss Kilsyth; but then we were only brought up together as children, whereas you had the advantage of having been introduced to her last season, I think, Walkinshaw."
"That was a hot 'un for that d--d little despatch-box!" said Sir Thomas Buffem, as Walkinshaw walked off discomfited. "Serve him quite right--conceited little brute!"
"Well, but what was it, Duncan?" asked Lord Sumph. "It wasn't only the gal, heaps of people were down with it, eh?--regular hospital, and that kind of thing? I saw the Northallertons on their way south, and the duchess said it was awfully bad up there."
"The duchess is a--very nice person," said Forbes, checking himself, "and, like Sir Thomas here, an old soldier."
"But it was a great go, though, Duncan,--infection and all that, eh?" asked Captain Hetherington, who had joined the talkers. "There's no such thing as getting Poole's people to make you a coat; the whole resources of the establishment are concentrated on building a new rig-out for Towcester, who has sacrificed his entire get-up, and had his hair cut close, and taken no end of Turkish baths, for fear of being refused admittance at places where he was going to stay."
"All I can say is, then--is, that it's a capital thing for Towcester's man, or whoever gets his wardrobe," said Forbes; "Charley Jefferson might have made a good thing by buying his tunics, only there's a slight difference in their size--he wouldn't have feared the infection."
"No, not in that way perhaps," said Hetherington. "Charley's like the Yankee in Dickens's book, 'fever-proof and likewise ague;' but he can be got at, we all know. How about the widow? She bolted too, didn't she?"
"She did--more shame for her. No! the fact was, that at Kilsyth----"
"Cave canem!" said Tommy Toshington, holding up a monitory finger--"Cave canem, as we used to say at school. Here's Ronald Kilsyth just come into the room and making towards us!"
You can get a good view of Ronald Kilsyth now as he advances up the room. Rather under than over the middle height, with very broad shoulders betokening great muscular strength, and square limbs. His head is large, and his thick brown hair is brushed off his broad forehead, and hangs almost to his coat-collar. He has a well-moulded but rather a stern face, with bushy eyebrows, piercing gray eyes, and close thin lips. He is dressed plainly but in good taste, and his whole appearance is perfectly gentlemanlike. It would have been as hard to have mistaken Ronald for a snob as to have passed him by without notice; and there was something about him that infallibly attracted attention, and made those who saw him for the first time wonder who he was. It would have been quite impossible to divine his profession from his appearance; neither in look or bearing was there the smallest trace of the plunger. He might have been taken for a deep-thinking Chancery barrister, had it not been for his moustache; or, more likely still, a shrewd long-headed engineer, a man of facts and figures and calculation; but never a dragoon. He had been the innocent cause of extreme disappointment to many young ladies in various parts of the country where he had stayed--quiet unsophisticated girls, whose visits to London had been very rare, and who knew nothing of its society, and who hearing that a Life-Guards' officer was coming to dinner, expected to see a gigantic creature, all cuirass and jack-boots, an enlarged and ornamental edition of the sentries in front of the Horse-Guards. Ronald Kilsyth in his plain evening dress was a great blow to them; in byegone days his moustache would have been some consolation; but now the young farmers in the neighbourhood, the sporting surgeon, and all the volunteers wore moustaches; and though in subsequent conversation they found Ronald very pleasant, he neither drawled, nor lisped, nor made love to them; all of which proceedings they had believed to be necessary attributes of his branch of the military profession.
And many persons who were not young ladies in the country were disappointed in Ronald Kilsyth, more especially old friends of his father, who expected to find his son resembling him. Ronald inherited his father's love of honour, truth, and candour, his keen sense of right and wrong, his manliness and his courage; but there the likeness between the men ceased. Kilsyth's warmth of heart, warmth of temper, and largeness of soul were not reflected by Ronald, who never lost his self-control, who never gave anybody credit for more than they deserved, and who--save perhaps for his sister Madeleine, and his love for her was of a very stern and Spartan character--had never entertained any particularly warm feelings for any human being.
Ronald Kilsyth is not popular at Barnes's, being decidedly an unclubbable man. The members, if ever they speak of him at all, want to know what he joined for. He belonged to the Rag, didn't he, and some other club, where he could sit mumchance over his mutton, or stare at the lads from Aldershott drinking five-guinea Heidzeck champagne. What did he want among this sociable set? He always looked straight down his nose when Guffoon came up with a sad story, and he never cared about any scandal that was foreign. But he was not disliked, at least openly. It was considered that he was a doosid clever fellow, with a doosid sharp tongue of his own; and at Barnes's, as at other clubs, they are generally polite to fellows with doosid sharp tongues. And his father was a very good fellow, and gave very good dinners during the season, and Kilsyth was a very pleasant house to stop at in the autumn; so that, for these various reasons, Ronald Kilsyth, albeit in himself unpopular at Barnes's, was never suffered to hear of his unpopularity.
Not that if he had, it would have troubled him one jot. No man in the world was more careless of what people thought of him, so long as he had the approval of his own conscience; and by dint of a long course of self-schooling and the presence of a certain amount of self-satisfaction, he could generally count upon that. He could not tell himself why he had joined Barnes's Club, unless it was that Duncan Forbes was a member, and had asked him to join; and he liked Duncan Forbes in his way, and wanted some place where he could be pretty certain of finding him when in town. There were few points of resemblance between Ronald Kilsyth and Duncan Forbes; but perhaps their very dissimilarity was the bond of the union, such as it was, that existed between them. Ronald knew Duncan to be weak, but believed him, and rightly, to be thorough. Duncan Forbes would assume a languid haw-hawism, an almost idiotic rapidity, a freezing hauteur to any one he did not know and did not care for, for the merest caprice; but he would stand or fall by a friend, and not Charley Jefferson himself would be firmer and truer under trial. Ronald knew this; and knowing it, was not disposed to be hard on his friend's less stable qualities--was rather amused indeed "by Duncan's nonsense," as he phrased it, and showed more inclination for his society than that of any other of his acquaintance.
The group of talkers in the window opened as Ronald approached, and he shook hands with its various members; Tommy Toshington, who always had something pleasant to say to anybody out of whom there was any possibility of his ever getting anything, complimenting him on his appearance.
"Look as fresh as paint, Ronald, my boy--fresh as paint, by Jove! Where have you been to pick up such a colour and to get yourself into such focus, eh?"
"The marine breezes of Knightsbridge have contributed to my complexion, Toshington, and the vigorous exercise of walking four miles a day on the London flags has brought me into my present splendid condition."
"What! not been away from town at all?" asked Sir Coke Only, who would almost as soon have acknowledged his poor relations as confessed to having been in London in September.
"Not at all. In the first place, I was on duty, and could not get away; not that I think I should have moved under any circumstances. London is always good enough for me."
"But not when it's quite empty," said Lord Sumph.
"It can't be quite empty with two millions and a half of people in it, Sumph," said Ronald.
"O, ah, cads and tradesmen, and all that sort of thing,--devilish worthy people in their way, of course; but I mean people that one knows."
"I know several of those 'devilish worthy people,' Sumph," said Ronald, with a smile; "and besides, country-house life is not much in my way."
"Don't meet those d?-d radical fellows that he thinks so much of, there," growled Sir Thomas Buffem to Sir Coke Only.
"No, nor those painters and people that my boy says this chap's always bringing to mess," replied Sir Coke.
"There, he's gone away with Duncan now," said Toshington, "and they'll be happy. They're too clever, those two are, for us old fellows! Not that you're an old fellow, Sumph, my boy."
"You're old enough for several, ain't you, Tommy?" said Lord Sumph; "and I'm old enough to play you a game of billiards before dinner, and give you fifteen; so come along."
Meanwhile Ronald Kilsyth and Duncan Forbes had walked away to the far end of the room, which happened to be deserted at the time; and seating themselves on an ottoman, were soon engaged in earnest conversation.
"What on earth made you remain in town, Ronald?" asked Duncan. "I heard what you said to those fellows; but I know well enough that you could have got leave if you had wished. Why did you not come up to Kilsyth?"
"Principally because there was no particular inducement for me to do so, Duncan."
"You always were polite, Ronald--"
"Ah, you were there! No, no; you know perfectly well what I mean, Duncan. With you and the governor and Madeleine I'm always perfectly happy; and her ladyship is very friendly, and we get on very well together. But then I like you all quietly and by yourselves; I'm selfish enough to want the entire enjoyment of your society. And the life at Kilsyth would not have suited me at all."
"Well, I don't know; it was very jolly--"
"Yes, of course it was, and--By the way, Duncan, tell me all about it; who were there, and what you did."
"O, heaps of people there--the Northallertons, and the Thurlows, and--"
"Yes, yes; but what men--younger men, I mean?"
"Let me see; there was Towcester--"
"No, not he; her ladyship would not have thought him objectionable, whatever I might."
"What? what the deuce are you muttering, Ronald?"
"I beg your pardon, Duncan--thinking aloud only; it's a horrible habit I've fallen into. Well, who besides Towcester?"
"O, Severn, and Roderick Douglas, and Charley Jefferson--"
"Ah, Charley Jefferson; he's just the same, of course?"
"O yes, he's as jolly as ever."
"Yes; but I mean, is he as devoted as he was to Lady Fairfax?"
"O, worse; most desperate case of--no, by the way, though, I forgot; I think he has cooled off--"
"Cooled off! since when?"
"Since your sister's illness."
"Since my sister's illness! Why, what could that have to do with them?"
"Well, you see, some of the people in the house got frightened at the notion of infection and that kind of thing, and bolted off. Lady Fairfax was one of the first to rush away; and Charley, who is loyalty itself in everything, as you know, was deucedly annoyed about it. My lady had been leading him a pretty dance for a few days previously, playing off little Towcester against him, and--"
"Ah, yes. No doubt Charley was right, quite right. And that was all about him, eh? And so the people were frightened at poor Madeleine's illness, were they?"
"Gad, they were, and not without reason too. The poor child was awfully bad; and indeed, if it had not been for Wilmot, I much doubt whether she would have pulled through."
"Hadn't been for Wilmot? Wilmot! O, yes, the London doctor who was staying somewhere, near, and who was telegraphed for. Tell me about Dr. Wilmot--a clever man, isn't he?"
"Clever! He's wonderful! Keen, clear-headed fellow; sees his way through a brick wall in a minute. Not that at Kilsyth he did not do as much by his devotion to his patient as by his skill."
"Devotion? O, he was devoted to his patient, eh?" said Ronald, biting his nails.
"Never saw such a thing in all your life. Went in a regular perisher," said Duncan Forbes, dropping his hands to emphasise his words. "Put himself in regular quarantine; cut himself off from all communication with anybody else, and shut himself up in the room with his patient for days together. It's the sort of thing you read of in poems, and that kind of thing, don't you know, but very seldom meet with in real life. If Wilmot had been a young man, and your sister had had any chance of making him like her, I should have said it was a case of smite. But Wilmot is an old married man; and these doctors don't indulge much in being captivated, specially by patients in fevers, I should think!"
"No; of course not, of course not. Now, this Wilmot--what's he like?"
"Well, he's rather a striking-looking man; looks very earnest, and speaks with a very effectively modulated voice."
"Ah! And he's gentlemanly, eh?"
"O, perfectly gentlemanly. No mistake in that."
"And he was wonderfully devoted to Madeleine, eh? Very kind of him, I'm sure. Shut himself up in her room, and--What did Lady Muriel think of him, by the way?"
"I scarcely know. I never heard her say; and yet I gathered somehow that Lady Muriel was not so much impressed in the doctor's favour as the rest of us."
"That's curious, for there are few keener readers of character than Lady Muriel. And the doctor was not a favourite of hers?"
"Well, no; I should say not. But the rest of the party were so strongly in his favour that we looked with some suspicion on all who did not shout as loudly as ourselves."
"And Madeleine, was she equally enthusiastic?"
"Poor Miss Kilsyth, she was not well enough to have much enthusiasm on any subject, even on her doctor. Gratitude is, I imagine, the strongest sentiment one is capable of after a long and severe illness."
"Exactly--yes--I should suppose so. And what aged man is Dr. Wilmot?"
"O, what we should have called some years ago very old, but what we now look upon as the commencement of middle age--just approaching forty, I should think."
"He is married, you say?"
"Yes; so we all understood. O yes, I heard him once mention his wife to Lady Muriel.--I say, Ronald, what an unconscionable lot of questions you are asking about Wilmot; one would think that--"
"Gentleman waiting to speak to you, sir," said a servant, handing a card to Ronald; "says he won't detain you a moment, sir."
Ronald took the card, and read on it "DR. WILMOT."
"I will come to the gentleman at once," said he; and the servant went away.
"Who is it? Anyone I know?" asked Duncan Forbes.
"He is a stranger to me," said Ronald, blinking the question.
He found Dr. Wilmot in that wretched little waiting-room about the size of a warm bath, and having for its furniture a chair, a table, and a map of England, which is dedicated at Barnes's to the reception of "strangers." The gas was low, and the Doctor was heavily wrapped up, and had a shawl round the lower part of his face; but Ronald made him out to be a gentlemanly-looking man, and specially noticed his keen flashing eyes. The Doctor was sorry to disturb Captain Kilsyth, but his father had sent up to him just before he started a parcel which he wished delivered personally to the Captain; so he had brought it on his way from the Great Northern, by which he had just arrived. It was some law-deed, about the safety of which Kilsyth was a little particular. It would have been delivered two days since, but, passing through Edinburgh, the Doctor had found his old friend Sir Saville Rowe staying at the same hotel, and had suffered himself to be persuaded to accompany him to see the new experiments in anaesthetics which Simpson had just made, and which-- Ah! but the Captain did not care for medical details. The Captain was very sorry that he had not a better room to ask the Doctor into; but the regulations at Barnes's about strangers were antediluvian and absurd. He should take an early opportunity of thanking Dr. Wilmot for his exceeding kindness in going to Kilsyth, and for the skill and attention which he had bestowed on Miss Kilsyth. The Doctor apparently to Ronald, even in the dull gas-light, with a heightened colour disclaimed everything, asserting that he had merely done his duty. Exchange of bows and of very cold hand-shakes, the Doctor jumping into the cab at the door, Ronald turning back into the hall, muttering, "That's the man! Taking what Duncan Forbes said, and that fellow's look when I named Madeleine--taking them together, that's the man that Lady Muriel meant. That's the man, for a thousand pounds!"
In the cab Dr. Wilmot is thinking about Ronald. A blunt rough customer rather, but with a wonderful look of his sister about him; not traceable to any feature in particular, but in the general expression. His sister!--now a memory and a dream--with the bit of blue ribbon as the sole tangible reminiscence of her. She is among her friends now; and probably at this moment some one is sitting close by her, close as he used to sit, and he is forgotten already, or but thought of as--Not a pleasant manner, Captain Kilsyth's. Studiously polite, no doubt, but with an undercurrent of badly-veiled suspicion and reserve. What could that mean? Dr. Wilmot knew that his conduct towards the Kilsyth family, so far at least as its outward expression was concerned, had merited nothing but gratitude from every member of it. Why, then, was the young man embarrassed and suspicious? Could he--pshaw! how could he by any possible means have become aware of the Doctor's secret feelings towards Miss Kilsyth--feelings so secret that they had never been breathed in words to mortal? Perfectly absurd! It is conscience that makes cowards of us all; and the Doctor decides that it is conscience which has made him pervert Captain Kilsyth's naturally cold manner so ridiculously.
Well, it is all over now! He is just back again at his old life, and he must give up the day-dreams of the past month and fall back into his professional habits. Looking out of the cab window at the long monotonous row of dirty-brown houses, at the sloppy street, at the pushing crowds on the foot-pavement, listening to the never-ceasing roar of wheels, he can hardly believe that he has only just returned from mountain, and heather, and distance, and fresh air, and comparative solitude! Back again! The reception at home from "ten till one," the old ladies' pulses and the old gentlemen's tongues, the wearied listening to the symptoms, the stethoscopical examination and the prescription-writing; then the afternoon visits, with the repetition of all the morning's details; the hospital lecture; the dull cold formal dinner with Mabel; and the evening's reading and writing,--without one bright spot in the entire daily round, without one cheering hope, one--
A smell of tan!--the street in front of his door strewed with tan! Some one ill close by. What is this strange sickness that comes over him--this sinking at his heart--this clamminess of his brow and hands? The cab has scarcely stopped before he has jumped out, and has knocked at the door. Not his usual sharp decisive knock, but feebly and hesitatingly. He notices this himself, and is wondering about it, when the door opens, and his servant, always solemn, but now preternaturally grave, appears.
"Glad to see you at last, sir," says the man, "though you're too late!"
"Too late!" echoes Wilmot vacantly; "too late!--what for?"
"For God's sake, sir," says the man, startled out of his ordinary quietude; "you got the telegram?"
"Telegram! no--what telegram? What did it say? What has happened?"
"Mrs. Wilmot, sir!--she's gone, sir!--died yesterday morning at eight o'clock!".