Chudleigh Wilmot was a strong man, and he possessed much of the pride and reticence which ordinarily accompany strength of character. Hitherto he can hardly be said to have suffered much in his life. Affliction had come to him, as it comes to every man born of woman; but it had come in the ordinary course of human life, unattended by exceptional circumstances, above all not intensified, not warped from its wholesome purposes by self-reproach. His life had been commonplace in its joys and in its griefs alike, and he had never suffered from any cause which was not as palpable, as apparent, to all who knew him as to himself. His had been the sorrows, chiefly his parents' death, which are rather gravely acknowledged and respected, than whispered about in corners with dubious head-shaking and suggestive shoulder-shrugging. So far the experience of the rising man had in it nothing distinctive, nothing peculiarly painful.
But there was an end of this now. A new phase of life had begun for Chudleigh Wilmot, when he recoiled, like one who has received a deadly thrust, and whose life-blood rushes forth in answer to it, from the announcement made to him by his servant. He realised the truth of the man's statement as the words passed his lips; he was not a man whose brain was ever slow to take any impression, and he knew in an instant and thoroughly understood that his wife was dead. A very few minutes more sufficed to show him all that was implied by that tremendous truth. His wife was dead; not of a sudden illness assailing the fortress of life and carrying it by one blow, but of an illness that had had time in which to do its deadly work. His wife was dead; had died alone, in the care of hirelings, while he had been away in attendance upon a stranger, one out of his own sphere, not even a regular patient, one for whom he had already neglected pressing duties--not so sacred indeed as that which he could now never fulfil or recall, but binding enough to have brought severe reflections upon him for their neglect. The thought of all this surged up within him, and overwhelmed him in a sea of trouble, while yet his face had not subsided from the look of horror with which he had heard his servant's awful announcement.
He turned abruptly into his consulting-room and shut the door between him and the man, who had attempted to follow him, but who now turned his attention to dismissing the cab and getting in his master's luggage, during which process he informed cabby of the state of affairs.
"I thought there were something up," remarked that individual, "when I see the two-pair front with the windows open and the blinds down, and all the house shut up; but he didn't notice it." An observation which the servant commented upon later, and drew certain conclusions from, considerably nearer the truth than Wilmot would have liked, had he had heart or leisure for any minor considerations. Presently Wilmot called the man; who entered the consulting-room, and found his master almost as pale as the corpse upstairs in "the two-pair front," where the windows were open and the blinds were down, but perfectly calm and quiet.
"Is there a nurse in the house?"
"Yes, sir; a nurse has been here since this day week, sir."
"Send her here--stay--has Dr. Whittaker been here to-day?"
"No, sir; he were here last night, a half an hour after my missus departed, sir; but he ain't been here since. He said he would come at one, sir, to see your answer to the telegraft, sir."
"Very well; send the nurse to me;" and Wilmot strode towards the darkened window, and leaned against the wire-blind which covered the lower compartment. He had not to wait long. Presently the man returned.
"If you please, sir, the nurse has gone home to fetch some clothes, and Susan is a-watchin' the body."
Chudleigh Wilmot started, and ground his teeth. It was perfectly true; the proper phrase had been used by this poor churl, who had no notion of fine susceptibilities and no intention of wounding them, who would not have remained away from his own wife if she had been ill, not to say dying, for the highest wages and the best perquisites to be had in any house in London, but to whom a corpse was a corpse, and that was all about it. The phrase did not make the dreadful truth a bit more dreadful or more true, but it made Wilmot wince and quiver.
"Is there no one else--upstairs?" he asked.
"No, sir. Mrs. Prendergast were here all night, sir, and she is coming again to meet Dr. Whittaker; but there's no one but Susan a-watchin' now, sir. We was waiting for orders from you."
Wilmot turned away from the man, and spoke without permitting him to see his face.
"Tell Susan to leave the room, if you please; I am going upstairs."
The man went away, and returned in a few minutes with a key, which he laid upon the table, and then silently withdrew. His master was still standing by the window, his face turned away. A considerable interval elapsed before the silent group of listeners, comprising all the servants of the establishment, upon the kitchen-stairs, heard the widower's slow and heavy step ascending the front staircase.
The sight which Chudleigh Wilmot had to see, the strife of feeling which he had to encounter, were none the less terrible to him that death was familiar to him in every shape, in every preliminary of anguish and fear, in all that distorts its repose and renders its features terrible. It is an error surely to suppose that the familiarity of the physician with suffering and death, with all the ills that render the pilgrimage of life burdensome and the earthy vesture repulsive, makes the experience of these things when brought home to him easier to bear. The sickness that defies his skill, the life that eludes his grasp, is as dark an enigma, as terrible a defeat to him as to the man who knows nothing about the dissolving frame but that it holds the being he loves and is doomed to lose.
If Chudleigh Wilmot had had a deadly, vindictive, and relentless enemy,--one of those creatures of romance, but incredible in real life, who gloat over the misery of a hated object, and would increase it by every fiendish device within their ingenuity and power,--that fabulous being might have been satisfied with the mental torture which he endured when he found himself within the room, so formally arranged, so faultlessly orderly, so terribly suggestive of the cessation of life, in which his dead wife lay. As he turned the key in the lock, for the first time a sense of unreality, of impossibility came over him, with a swift bewildering remembrance--rather a vision than a recollection--of the last time he had seen her. He saw her standing in the hall, in the low light of the autumn evening, her pretty fresh dinner-dress lifted daintily out of the way of the servant carrying his portmanteau to the cab; her head, with its coronet of dark hair, held up to receive her husband's careless kiss, as he followed the man to the door. He remembered how carelessly he had kissed her, and how--he had never thought of it before--she had not returned the caress. When had she kissed him last? This was a trifling thing, that he had never thought about till now--a question he could not answer, and had never asked till now; and in another moment he would be looking at her dead face!
The window-blinds fluttered in the faint autumn wind as Wilmot opened the door, then quickly closed and locked it; and the rustling sound added to the impressiveness of the great human silence. The hands of the stern woman who loved her had ordered all the surroundings of the dead tenderly and gracefully; and the tranquil form lay in its deep rest very fair and solemn, and not terrible to look upon, if that can ever be said of death, in its garments of linen and lace. The head was a little bent, the face turned gently to one side, and the long dark eyelashes lay on the cheek, which was hardly at all sunken, as if they might be lifted up again and the light of life seen under them. Death was indeed there, but the sign and the seal were not impressed upon the face yet for a little while. Wilmot looked upon the dead tearless and still for some minutes, and then a quick short shudder ran through him, and he replaced the covering which had concealed the features, and sat down by the bedside, hiding his face with his hands.
Who could put on paper the thoughts that swept over him then, and swept his mind away in their turmoil, and tossed him to and fro in a tempest of anguish which even the majestic tranquillity of death in presence was powerless to quell? Who could measure the punishment, the tremendous retribution of those hours, in which, if the world could have known anything about them, the world would have seen only the natural, the praiseworthy grief of bereavement? Who shall say through what purifying fires of self-knowledge and self-abasement the nature of the erring man passed in that dreadful vigil? And yet he did not know the truth. His conscience had been rudely awakened, but his comprehension had not yet been enlightened. He did not yet know the terrible depths of meaning which he had still to explore in the words which were the only articulate sounds that had formed themselves amid the chaos of his grief--"Too late; too late!" The failure in duty, the poverty, the niggardliness in love, the negligence, the dallying with right, in so far as his wife had been concerned, were all there, keeping him ghastly company, as he sat by the side of the dead; but the grimmest and the ghastliest phantoms which were to swarm around him were not yet evoked.
To do Chudleigh Wilmot justice, he had no notion that his wife had been unhappy. That he had never rightly understood her character or read her heart, was the soundest proof that he had not loved her; but he had never taken himself to task on that point, and had been quite satisfied to impute such symptoms of discontent as he could not fail to notice to her sullenness of temper, of which he considered himself wonderfully tolerant. So little did this wise, rising man understand women, that he actually believed that indifference to his wife's moods was a good-humoured sort of kindness she could not fail to appreciate. She had appreciated it only too truly. The source of much of the remorse and self-condemnation which tortured him now was to be traced to his own newly-awakened feelings, to the fresh and novel susceptibility which the experience of the past few weeks had aroused, and in which lay the germs of some terrible lessons for the man whose studies in all but the lore of the human heart had been so deep, whose knowledge of that had been so strangely shallow. And now no knowledge could avail. The harm, the wrong, the cruel ill that had been done, was gone before him to the judgment; and he must live to learn its extent, to feel its bitterness with every day of life, which could never avail to lessen or repair it.
When Dr. Whittaker arrived, he found Wilmot in his consulting-room, quite calm and steady, and prepared to receive his professional account of the "melancholy occurrence," on which he condoled with the bereaved husband after the most approved models. He did not attempt to disguise from Wilmot that he had been disagreeably surprised by his non-return under the circumstances. "Also," he added, "by your not sending me any instructions, though indeed at that stage nothing could have availed, I am convinced."
Wilmot received these observations with such unmistakable surprise that an explanation ensued, which elicited the fact that he had never received any letter from Dr. Whittaker, and indeed had had no intimation of his wife's illness, beyond that conveyed in a letter from herself a fortnight previous to her death, and in which she treated it as quite a trifling matter.
"Very extraordinary indeed," said Dr. Whittaker in a dry and unsatisfactory tone. "I can only repeat that I sent you the fullest possible report, and entreated you to return at once. I was particularly anxious, as Mrs. Wilmot confessed to me that you were unaware of her situation."
"I never had the letter," said Wilmot; "I never heard of or from you, beyond the memoranda enclosed in my wife's letters."
"Very extraordinary," repeated Dr. Whittaker still more drily than before. "She took the letter at her own particular request, saying she would direct it, that the sight of her handwriting on the envelope, she being unable to write more, might reassure you."
Wilmot coloured deeply and angrily under his brother physician's searching gaze. He had not looked for his wife's infrequent letters with any anxiety; he had had no quick, love-inspired apprehension to be assuaged by her womanly considerateness. He felt an uneasy sort of gladness that she had thought he had had such apprehension--better so, even now, when all mistakes were doomed to be everlasting,--or when they were quite cleared up. Which was it? He did not know; he did not like to think. All was over; all was too late.
"I never received any such letter," he said again; "and I am astonished you did not write again when you got no answer."
"I did not write again, because Mrs. Wilmot gave me so very decidedly to understand that you had told her you could not, under any circumstances, leave Kilsyth; and danger was not imminent until Monday, when I telegraphed, just too late to catch you."
No more was said upon the point; but on Wilmot's mind was left a painful and disagreeable impression that Dr. Whittaker had received his explanation with distrust. The colloquy between the two physicians lasted long; and Wilmot was further engaged for a long time in giving the necessary attention to the distressing details which claim a hearing just at the time when they most disturb and jar with the tone of feeling. A sense of shock and hurry--a difficulty of realising the event which had occurred, quite other than the stunned feeling of conviction which had come with the first reception of the intelligence--beset him, while the nameless evidences of death were constantly pressed upon his attention. He sat in his consulting-room, receiving messages and communications of every kind, hearing the subdued voices of the servants as they replied to inquiries, feeling as though he were living through a terrible feverish dream, conscious of all around him, and yet strangely, awfully conscious too of the dead white face upstairs growing, as he knew, more stiff and stark and awful as the hours, so crowded yet so lonely, so busy yet so dreary, flew, no, dragged--which was it?--along.
Many times that day, as Chudleigh Wilmot sat cold and grave, and, although deeply sad, more composed, more like himself than most men would have been in similar circumstances--a vision rose before his mind. It was a vision such as has come to many a mourner--a vision of what might have been. For it was not only his wife's death that the new-made widower had learned that day; he had learned that which had made her death doubly sad, far more untimely. The vision Chudleigh saw in his day-dream was of a fair young mother and her child, a happy wife in the summer-time of her beauty and her pride of motherhood--this was what might have been. What was, was a dead white face upstairs upon the bed, waiting for the coffin and the grave, and a blighted hope, a promise never to be fulfilled, which had never even been whispered between the living and the dead.
Mrs. Prendergast had been in the darkened house for many hours of that long day. Wilmot knew she was there; but she had sent him no message, and he had made no attempt to see her. He shrank from seeing her; and yet he wished to know all that she, and she alone, could tell him. If he had ever loved his wife sufficiently to be jealous of any other sharing or even usurping her confidence, to have resented that any other should have a more intimate knowledge of Mabel's sentiments and tastes, should have occupied her time and her attention more fully than he, Henrietta Prendergast's intimacy with her might have elicited such feeling. But Chudleigh Wilmot had not loved his wife enough for jealousy of the nobler, and was too much of a gentleman for jealousy of the baser kind. No such insidious element of ill ever had a place in his nature; and, except that he did not like Mrs. Prendergast, whom he considered a clever woman of a type more objectionable than common--and Wilmot was not an admirer of clever women generally--he never resented, or indeed noticed, the exceptional place she occupied among the number of his wife's friends. But there was something lurking in his thoughts to-day; there was some unfaced, some unquestioned misery at work within him, something beyond the tremendous shock he had received, the deep natural grief and calamity which enshrouded him, that made him shrink from seeing Henrietta until he should have had more time to get accustomed to the truth.
When the night had fallen, he heard the light tread of women's feet in the hall and a gentle whispering. Then the street-door was softly shut, and carriage-wheels rolled away. The gas had been lighted in Wilmot's room, but he had turned it almost out, and was sitting in the dim light, when a knock at the door aroused his attention. The intruder was the "Susan" already mentioned. Mrs. Wilmot had not boasted an "own maid;" but this girl, one of the housemaids, had been in fact her personal attendant. She came timidly towards her master, her eyes red and her face pale with grief and watching.
"Well, what is it now?" said Wilmot impatiently. He was weary of disturbance; he wanted to be securely alone, and to think it out.
"Mrs. Prendergast desired me to give you this, sir," the girl replied, handing him a small packet, "and to say she wants to see you, sir, to-morrow--respecting some messages from missus."
He took the parcel from her, and Susan left the room. Before she reached the stairs, her master called her back. "Susan," he said, "where's the seal-ring your mistress always wore? This parcel contains her keys and her wedding-ring; where is the seal-ring? Has it been left on her hand?"
"No, sir," said Susan; "and I can't think where it can have got to. Missus hasn't wore it, sir, not this fortnight; and I have looked everywhere for it. You'll find all her things quite right, sir, except that ring; and Mrs. Prendergast, she knows nothing about it neither; for I called her my own self to take off missus's wedding-ring, as it was missus's own wish as she should do it, and she missed the seal-ring there and then, sir, and couldn't account for it no more than me."
"Very well, Susan, it can't be helped," replied Wilmot; and Susan again left him.
He sat long, looking at the golden circlet as it lay in the broad palm of his hand. It had never meant so much to him before; and even yet he was far from knowing all it had meant to her from whose dead hand it had been taken. At last, and with some difficulty, he placed the ring upon the little finger of his left hand, saying as he did so, "I must find the other, and always wear them both.".
When Chudleigh Wilmot arose on the following morning, with the semi-stupefied feeling of a man on whom a great calamity has just fallen, not the least painful portion of the task, not the least difficult part of the endurance that lay before him was the inevitable interview with his dead wife's friend. Mrs. Prendergast had requested that he would receive her early. This he learned from the servant who answered his bell; and he had directed that she should be admitted as soon as she arrived. He loitered about his room; he dallied with the time; he dared not face the cold silent house, the servants, who looked at him with natural curiosity, and, as he thought, avoidance. If the case had not been his own, Wilmot would have remembered that the spectacle of a new-made widow or widower always has attractions for the curiosity of the vulgar: strong, if the grief in the case be very violent; and stronger, if it be mild or non-existent. Wilmot was awfully shocked by his wife's death, terribly remorseful for his own absence, and perhaps for another reason--at which, however, he had not yet had the hardihood to look--almost stunned by the terrible sense, the conviction of the irrevocable ill of the past, the utterly irreparable nature of the wrong that had been done. But all these warring feelings did not constitute grief. Its supreme agony, its utter sadness, its unspeakable weariness were wanting in the strife which shook and rent him. The thought of the dead face had terror and regret for him; but not the dreadful yearning of separation, not the mysterious wrenching asunder of body and spirit, almost as powerful as that of death itself, which comes with the sentence of parting, which makes the possibility of living on so incomprehensible and so cruel to the true mourner. Not the fact itself, so much as the attendant circumstances, caused Wilmot to suffer, as he undoubtedly did suffer. He knew in his heart that had there been no self-reproach involved in this calamity, he would not have felt it as he felt it now; and in the knowledge there was denial of the reality of grief.
No such thought as "How am I to live without her?" the natural utterance of bereavement, arose in Wilmot's heart; though neither did he profane his wife's memory or do dishonour to his own higher nature by even the most passing reference to the object which had so fatally engrossed him. The strong hand of death had curbed that passion for the present, and his thoughts turned to Kilsyth only with remorse and regret. But the wife who had had no absorbing share in his life could not by her death make a blank in it of wide extent or long duration.
He was still lingering in his room, when he was told that Mrs. Prendergast had arrived and was in the drawing-room. The closely-drawn blinds rendered the room so dark that he could not distinguish Henrietta's features, still further obscured by a heavy black veil. She did not rise, and she made no attempt to take his hand, which he extended to her in silence, the result of agitation. She bowed to him formally, and was the first to speak. Her voice was low and her words were hurried, though she tried hard to be calm.
"I was with your wife during her illness and at her death, Dr. Wilmot," she said; "and I am here now not to offer you ill-timed condolences, but to fulfil a trust."
Her tone surprised Wilmot, and affected him disagreeably. There had never been any disagreement between himself and Mrs. Prendergast; he was not a man likely to interfere or quarrel with his wife's friends; and as he was wholly unconscious of the projects she had entertained towards him, he had not any suspicion of hidden malice on her part. Emotion he was prepared for--would indeed have welcomed; he was ready also for blame and reproaches, in which he would have joined heartily, against himself; but the calm, cold, rooted anger in this woman's voice he was not prepared for. If such a thing had been possible--the thought flashed lightning-like across his mind before she had concluded her sentence--he might have had in her an enemy, biding her time, and now at length finding it.
He did not speak, and she continued:
"I presume you have heard from Dr. Whittaker the particulars of Mabel's illness, its cause, and the means used to avert--what has not been averted?--"
"I have," briefly replied the listener.
"Then I need not enter into that--beyond this: a portion of my trust is to tell you that Dr. Whittaker is not to blame."
"I have not blamed him, Mrs. Prendergast."
"That is well. When Mabel knew, or thought, I fear hoped, that her life was in danger, her strongest desire was that you should be kept in ignorance of the fact."
"Good God! why?" exclaimed Wilmot.
"I think you must know why better than I can tell you," replied Henrietta pitilessly. "But, at all events, such was the case. Dr. Whittaker wrote to you, but she suppressed the letter. She gave it to me on the night she died. Here it is."
Chudleigh Wilmot took the letter from her hand silently. Astonishment and distress overwhelmed him.
"She bade me tell you that she laid her life down gladly; that she had nothing to leave, nothing to regret; that she was glad she had succeeded in keeping you in ignorance of her danger--for she knew, for the sake of your reputation, you would have left even Miss Kilsyth to be here at her death. But she preferred your absence; she distinctly bade me tell you so. She left no dying charge to you but this, that you should allow me to see her coffin closed on the second day after her death, and that you should wear her wedding-ring. I sent it to you last night, Dr. Wilmot. I hope you got it safely."
"I did; it is here on my finger," answered Wilmot; "but, for God's sake, Mrs. Prendergast, tell me what all this means. Why did my wife charge you with such a message for me; how have I deserved it? Why did she, how should she, so young, and to all appearance not unhappy, wish to die, and to die in my absence? Did she persevere in that wish, or was it only a whim of her illness, which, had there been any one to remonstrate with her, would have yielded later?"
"It was no whim, Dr. Wilmot. A wretched truth, I grant you, but a truth, and persisted in. So long as consciousness remained, she never changed in that."
A dark and angry look came into Wilmot's face, and he raised his voice as he asked the next question:
"Do you mean to explain this extraordinary circumstance, Mrs. Prendergast? Are you going to give me the clue to this mystery? My wife and I always lived on good terms; we parted on the same. No man or woman living can say with truth that I ever was unkind to her, or that she had cause given her by me to wish her life at an end, to welcome death. I believe the communication you have just made to me is utterly without example. I never heard, I don't believe anyone ever heard of such a thing. I ask you to explain it, if you can."
"You speak as though you asked, or desired me to account for it too," said Henrietta, in a cold and cutting tone, which rebuked the vehemence of his manner, and revealed the intense, unsleeping egotism of her disposition. "I could do so, I daresay; but I cannot see the profitableness of such a discussion between you and me. It is too late now; nothing can undo the wrong, no matter what it was, or how far it extended. It is all over, and I have nothing more to do than to carry out the last wishes of my dear friend. Have I your permission to do so?" she asked, in the most formal possible tone, as she rose and stood opposite him.
Wilmot put his hands up to his face, and walked hurriedly about the room. Then he came suddenly towards Henrietta, and said with intense feeling:
"I beg your pardon; I did not mean to speak roughly: but I am bewildered by all this. I am sure you must feel for me; you must understand how utterly I am unable to comprehend what has occurred. To come home and receive such a shock as the news of my wife's death, was surely enough in itself to try me severely. And now to hear what you tell me, and tell me too so calmly, as if you did not understand what it means, and what it must be to me to hear it! You were with her, her chosen friend. I think you knew her better than anyone in the world."
"And if I did," said Henrietta,--all her assumed calm gone, and her manner now as vehement as his own,--"if I did, is not that an answer to all you ask me? If I am to explain her motives, to lay bare her thoughts, to tell her sorrows, to you, her husband, is that not your answer? Surely you have it in that fact! They are not true husband and true wife who have closer friends. You never loved her, and you never knew or cared what her life was; and so, when she was leaving it, she kept you aloof from her."
Wilmot made no sound in reply. He stood quite still, and looked at her. His eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and she had raised her veil. He could see her face now. Her pale cheeks, paler than usual in her grief and passion, her deep angry sorrowful eyes, and her trembling lips, made her look almost terrible, as she stood there and told him out the truth.
"No," she went on, "you did not know her, and you were satisfied not to know her; you went complacently on your way, and never thought whether hers was lonely and wearisome. You never were unkind to her, you say; no, I daresay you never were. She had all the advantages to which your wife was entitled, and she did you and them due honour. Why, even I, who did, as you say, know her best, had suspected only recently, and learned fully only since her illness began, all she suffered; no, not all--that one heart can never pour into another--but I have only read the story of her life lately, and you have never read it at all. You were a physician, and you did not see that your own wife, a dweller under your own roof, whose life was lived in your sight, had a mortal disease."
"What do you mean?" he said; "she had no such thing."
"She had!" Henrietta repeated impetuously; "she had a broken heart. You never ill-treated her--true; you never neglected her--true,--until she was dying, that is to say;--but did you ever love her, Dr. Wilmot? Did you ever consider her as other or more than an appendage of your position, an ornament in your house, a condition of your social success and respectability? What were her thoughts, her hopes, her disappointments to you? Did you ever make her your real companion, the true sharer of your life? Did you ever return the love, the worship which she gave you? Did you ever pity her jealous nature; did you ever interpret it by any love or sensitiveness of your own, and abstain from wounding it? Did you know, did you care, whether she suffered when you shut yourself up in your devotion to a pursuit in which she had no share? All women have to bear that, no doubt, and are fools if they quarrel with the bread-winner's devotion to his work. Yes; but all women have not her silent, brooding, jealous, sullen nature; all women are not so little frivolous as she was; all women, Dr. Wilmot, do not love their husbands as Mabel loved you."
She paused in the torrent of her words, and then he spoke.
"All this is new and terrible to me; as new as it is terrible. Mrs. Prendergast, do me the justice to believe that."
"It is not for me to do you justice or injustice," she made answer; "your punishment must come from your own heart, or you must go unpunished."
"But"--he almost pleaded with her--"Mabel never blamed me, never tried to keep me more with her; rarely indeed expressed a wish of any kind. I declare, before God, I never dreamed, it never occurred to me to suspect that she was unhappy."
"No," she said; "and Mabel knew that. She interested you so little, you cared so little for her, that you never looked below the surface of her life; and her pride kept that surface fair and smooth. She would have died before she would have complained,--she has died, in fact, and made no sign."
"Yes," said Wilmot suddenly and bitterly; "but she has left me this legacy, brought me by your hands, of miserable regret and vain repentance. She has insured the destruction of my peace of mind; she has taken care that mine shall be no ordinary grief, sent by God and to be dispelled by time; she has added bitterness to the bitter, and put me utterly in the wrong by her unwarrantable concealment and reticence."
"How truly manlike your feelings are, Dr. Wilmot! She has hurt your pride, and you can't forgive her even in death! She has put you in the wrong,--and all her own wrongs, so silently borne, sink into nothing in comparison!"
"I deny it!" Wilmot said vehemently; "she had no wrongs,--no woman of her acquaintance had a better husband. What did I ever deny her?"
"Only your love, only a wife's true place in your life, only all she longed for, only all she died for lack of."
"All this is absurd," he said. "If she really had these romantic notions, why did she conceal them? Have I nothing to complain of in this? Was she just to me, or candid with me?"
"What encouragement did you give her? Do you think a proud, shy, silent woman like Mabel was likely to lay her heart open to so cold and careless a glance as yours? No; she loved you as few women can love; but if she had much love, so she had much pride and jealousy; and all three had power with her."
"Jealousy!" said Wilmot in an angry tone; "in God's name, of whom did she contrive to be jealous."
"Her jealousy was not of a mean kind," said Henrietta. "Ever since your marriage it had nourished itself, so far as I understood the matter, upon your devotion to your profession, upon the complacent ease with which you set her claims aside for those which so thoroughly engrossed you, that you had no heart, no eyes, no attention for her. Of late--" she paused.
"Well?" said Wilmot;--"of late?"
"Of late," repeated Henrietta, speaking now with some more reserve of manner, "she believed you devoted--to a degree which conquered your devotion to your profession and to the interests of your own advancement--to the patient who detained you at Kilsyth."
"What madness! what utter folly!" said Wilmot; but his face turned deeply red, and he felt in his heart that the arrow had struck home.
"Perhaps so," said Henrietta, and her voice resumed the cutting tone from which all through this painful interview Wilmot had shrunk. "But Mabel was not more reasonable or less so than other jealous women. You had never neglected your business for her, remember, or been turned aside by any sentimental attraction from your course of professional duty. Friendship, gratitude, and interest alike required you to attend to Mr. Foljambe's summons. You did not come, and people talked. Mr. Foljambe himself spoke of the attractions of Kilsyth, and joked, after his inconsiderate manner."
"In her presence?" said Wilmot incautiously.
"Yes, in her presence," said Henrietta, who perfectly appreciated the slip he had made. "She knew some people who knew the Kilsyths, and she heard the remarks that were made. I daresay she imagined more than she heard. No matter. Nothing matters any more. She was not sorry to die when her time came; she would not have you troubled,--that is all. And now I will leave you. I am going to her."
The last sentence had a dreadful effect on Wilmot. In the agitation, the surprise, the pain of this interview, he had almost forgotten time; the present reality had nearly escaped him. He had been rapt away into a world of feeling, of passion; he had been absorbed in the sense of a discovery, and of something which seemed like an impossible injustice. With Henrietta's words it all vanished, and he remembered, with a start, that his wife lay dead upstairs. They were not talking of a life long extinguished, which in former years might have been made happier by him, but of one which had ended only a few hours ago; a life whose forsaken tenement was still untouched by "decay's effacing fingers." With all this new knowledge fresh upon him, with all this bewildering conviction of irreparable wrong, he might look upon the calm young face again. Not as he had looked upon it yesterday; not with the deep sorrow and the irresistible though unjustified compassion with which death in youth is always regarded, but with an exceeding and heart-rending bitterness, in comparison with which even that repentant grief was mild and merciful. The fixedness, the blank, the silence, would be far more dreadful, far more reproachful now, when he knew that he had never understood, never appreciated her--had unwittingly tortured her; now when he knew that, in all her youth and beauty, she had been glad to die. Glad to die! The words had a tremendous, an unbearable meaning for him. If even the last month could have been unlived! If only he had not had that to reproach himself with, to justify her! In vain, in vain. In that one moment of unspeakable suffering Wilmot felt that his punishment, however grave his offence, was greater than he could bear.
He turned away from Henrietta with the air of a man to whom another word would be intolerable, and sat down wearily. She stood still, looking at him, as if awaiting an answer or a dismissal.
At length she said, "Have you forgotten, Dr. Wilmot, that I asked your permission to carry out Mabel's wish?"
"No," he said drearily, "I remember. Of course do as you like; I should say, as she directed. I suppose the object of her request was, that I should see her no more, in death either. Well, well--it is fortunate that did not succeed too." He spoke in a patient, broken tone, which touched Henrietta's heart. But her perverted notion of truth and loyalty to the dead held her back from showing any sign of softening. Just as she was leaving the room he said:
"Such a course is very unusual, is it not?"
"I believe so," she replied; "but the servants know it was her desire."
Then Henrietta Prendergast went away; and presently he heard a slight sound in that awful room overhead, and he knew she had taken her place beside the dead. He felt, as he sat for hours of that day quite alone, like a banished man. His wife was doubly dead to him now. All his married life had grown on a sudden unreal; and when he thought of the still white face which he was to see once, and only once more, for ever, it was with a strange sense of dread and avoidance, and not with the tender sorrow which, even amid the shock and self-reproach of yesterday, had come to his relief.
Somehow, he could not have told how, with the inevitable interruptions, the wretched necessary business of such a time, the hours of that day passed over Chudleigh Wilmot's head, and the night came. He had looked his last upon his wife, had taken his solemn leave of the death-chamber. She lay now in her coffin, sealed, hidden from sight for evermore, and there was nothing now but the long dreary waiting. In its turn that too passed, and in due time the funeral day; and Chudleigh Wilmot was quite alone in his silent house, and had only to look back into the past. Forward into the future he did not dare, he had not heart to look. A kind of blank, the reaction from intense excitement, had set in with him, and for the first time in his life his physical strength flagged. The claims of his business began to press upon him; people sent for him, respectfully and hesitatingly, but with some confidence that he would come, nevertheless. And Wilmot went; and was received with condoling looks, which he affected not to see, and compassionating tones, of which he took no notice.
He had no more to do with the past--he had buried it; his sole desire was that others should aid him in this apparent oblivion; how far from real it was, he alone could have told. He had written to Kilsyth a few indispensable lines, and had had a formal report of Madeleine's health, which he had conscientiously tried to range with other professional documents, and lay by with them. It was certainly a dark and dreary time, endless in length, and so hopeless, so final, that it seemed to have no outlet; a time than which Chudleigh Wilmot believed life could never bring him a darker. But trouble was new to him. He learned more about it later on in his day.
When a fortnight had elapsed after Wilmot's return to London, and the tumult of his mind had subsided, though the bitterness of his feelings was not yet allayed, he chanced one morning to require a paper, which he knew was to be found in a certain cabinet which filled a niche in the wall of his consulting-room. The cabinet in question was one he rarely opened; and the moment he attempted to turn the key, he felt confident that the lock had been tampered with. The conviction was singularly unpleasant; for the cabinet was a repository of private papers, deeds, letters, and professional notes. It also contained several poisons, which Wilmot kept there in what he supposed to be inviolable security. Closer inspection confirmed his suspicions. The lock had been opened by the simple process of breaking it; and the doors, merely laid together, had caught on a jagged piece of metal, and thus presented the slight obstacle they had offered. With a mere shake they unclosed.
This circumstance puzzled Wilmot exceedingly. He made a careful examination of the contents of the cabinet. All was precisely as he had left it; not a paper missing or disturbed.
"Who can have been at the cabinet?" he thought, "and with what motive?--Nothing has been taken; nothing, so far as I can discover, has been touched. Mere curiosity would hardly tempt anyone to run such a risk; and no one knew that there was anything of value here. Stay," he reflected; "one person knew it. She knew it; she knew that I kept private papers here. No doubt it was she who opened the cabinet. But with what motive? What can she possibly have wanted which she could have hoped to find here?"
No answer to this query presented itself to Wilmot's mind. He thought and thought over it, painfully recurring to all Mrs. Prendergast had told him, and trying to help himself to a solution of this mystery by the aid of those which had preceded it. For some time he thought in vain; at length the idea struck him that the jealous woman, restless and miserable in her unhappy curiosity--he could understand now what she had felt, he could pity her now--had opened the cabinet to seek for letters from some fancied rival in his affections. Nothing but his belief in the perversion of mind which comes of the indulgence of such a passion as jealousy could have led Wilmot to suspect his wife of such an act for a moment. But he was a wise man, now that it was too late, in that lore which he had never studied while he might have read the book, and he recognised the transforming power of jealousy. Yes, that was it doubtless; she had sought here for the material wherewith to feed the flame that had tortured her.
Chudleigh Wilmot took the paper he wanted from the place where it had lain, and was about to close the doors of the cabinet once more--restoring them, until he could have the lock repaired, to their deceptive appearance of security--when his attention was caught by a dark-coloured spot, about the size of a shilling, upon the topmost sheet of a packet of papers which lay beside a small mahogany case containing the before-mentioned poisons. He took the packet out and examined it. The spot was there, and extended to every paper in the packet. A sudden flush and expression of vague alarm crossed Wilmot's face. He took up the case and examined the exterior. A dark mark, the stain of some glutinous fluid, ran down the side of the box next which the papers had lain. For a moment he held the case in his hands, and literally dared not open it. Then in sickening fear he did so, and found its contents apparently undisturbed. The box was divided into ten little compartments, in each of which stood a tiny bottle, glass-stoppered and covered with a leaden capsule. To the neck of each was appended a little leaden seal, the mark of the French chemist from whom Wilmot had purchased the deadly drugs. He took the bottles out one by one, examined their seals, and held them up to the light. All safe for nine out of the number; but as he touched the tenth, the capsule with the leaden seal attached to it fell off, and Wilmot discovered, with ineffable horror, that the bottle, which had contained one of the deadliest poisons known to science, was half empty.
He set down the case, and reeled against the corner of the mantelshelf near him, like a drunken man. He could not face the idea that had taken possession of him; he could not collect his thoughts. He gasped as though water were surging round him. Once more he took up the bottle and looked at it. It was only too true; one half the contents was missing. He closed the case, and pushed it back into its place. It struck against something on the shelf of the cabinet. He felt for the object, and drew out his wife's seal-ring!
And now Chudleigh Wilmot knew what was the terror that had seized him. It was no longer vague; it stood before him clear, defined, unconquerable; and he groaned:
"My God! she destroyed herself!".
Chudleigh Wilmot had not seen Mrs. Prendergast since the day on which his wife's funeral had taken place; and it was with equal surprise and satisfaction that she received a brief but kindly-worded note from him, requesting her to permit him to call upon her.
"I wonder what it's all about," she thought, as she wrote with deliberation and care a gracious answer in the affirmative. Mrs. Prendergast had been thinking too since her friend's death, and her cogitations had had some practical results. It was true that Mabel Darlington had not been happy with Wilmot; but Mrs. Prendergast, thinking it all over, was not indisposed to the opinion that it was a good deal her own fault, and to entertain the very natural feminine conviction that things would have been quite otherwise had she been in Mabel's place. Why should she not--of course in due time, and with a proper observance of all the social decencies--hope to fill that place now? She was a practical, not a sentimental woman; but when the idea occurred to her very strongly, she certainly did find pleasure in remembering that Mabel Wilmot had been very much attached to her, and would perhaps have liked the notion of her being her successor as well as any woman ever really likes any suggestion of the kind, that is to say, resignedly, and with an "it-might-be-worse" reservation.
Henrietta Prendergast had cherished a very sound dislike to Chudleigh Wilmot for some time; but it was, though quite real--while the fact that he had chosen another than herself, though she had been so ready and willing to be chosen, was constantly impressed upon her remembrance--not of a lasting nature. Besides, she had had the satisfaction of making him understand very distinctly that the choice he had made had not been a wise one; and ever since her feelings towards him had been undergoing a considerable modification.
How much ground had Mabel had for her jealously of Miss Kilsyth? What truth was there in the suspicions they had both entertained respecting the influence which his young patient had exercised over Wilmot?'. She had no means of determining these questions. It would have been impossible for her, had she been a woman capable of such a meanness, to have watched Wilmot during the interval which had elapsed since his wife's death. His numerous professional duties, the constant demands upon his time, all rendered her attaining any distinct knowledge of his proceedings impossible; and beyond the announcement in the Morning Post that Kilsyth of Kilsyth and his family had arrived in town, she knew nothing whatever concerning them. Henrietta Prendergast had, on the whole, been considerably occupied with the idea of Chudleigh Wilmot when his note reached her, and she prepared to receive him with feelings which resembled those of long-past days rather than those which had actuated her of late.
It was late in the afternoon when the expected visitor made his appearance, and Henrietta had already begun to feel piqued and angry at the delay. His note indicated a pressing wish to see her--she had answered it promptly. What had made him so dilatory about availing himself of her permission?
The first look she caught of Wilmot's face convinced her that the motive of his visit was a grave one. He was pale and sedate, even to a fixed seriousness far beyond that which had fallen upon him after the shock of Mabel's death, and a painful devouring anxiety might be read in the troubled haggard expression of his deep-set dark eyes. He entered at once upon the matter which had induced him to ask Mrs. Prendergast for an interview; and though her manner was emphatically gracious, and designed to show him that she desired to maintain their former relations intact, he took no notice of her courtesy. This was a mistake. All women are quick to take cognisance of a slight, and Henrietta was no slower than the rest of her sex. He showed her much too plainly that he had an object in seeking her presence entirely unconnected with herself. It was not wise; but the shock of the discovery which he had made had shaken Wilmot's nerves and overthrown his judgment for the time. He briefly informed Mrs. Prendergast that he came for the purpose of asking her to recapitulate all the circumstances of his wife's illness and death; to entreat her to tax her memory to the utmost, to recall everything, however trivial, bearing upon the progress of the malady, and in particular every detail bearing upon her state of mind.
Henrietta listened to him with profound astonishment. Previously he had shunned all such details. When she had met him, prepared to supply them, he had asked her no questions; he had been apparently satisfied with the medical report made to him by Dr. Whittaker; he had been almost indifferent to such minor facts as she had stated; and the painful revelation which she had made to him had not been followed up by any close questioning on his part. And now, when all was at an end, when the grave had closed over the sad domestic story, as over all the tragedies of human life, hidden or displayed, the grave must close,--now he came to her with this preoccupied brooding face and manner to ask her these vain and painful questions. Thus she was newly associated with dark and dismal images in his mind, and this was precisely what Henrietta had no desire to be. She answered him, therefore, in her coldest tone (and no woman knew how to ice her answers better than she did), that the subject was extremely painful to her for many reasons. Was it absolutely necessary to revive it? Wilmot said it was, and expressed no consideration for her feelings nor regret for the necessity of wounding them.
"Well, then, Dr. Wilmot," said Henrietta, "as I presume you wish to question me in some particular direction, though I am quite at a loss to understand why, you are at liberty to do so."
Wilmot then commenced an interrogatory, which, as it proceeded, filled Henrietta with amazement. Had he any theory of his wife's illness and death incompatible with the facts as she had seen and understood them? Did he suspect Dr. Whittaker of ignorance and mismanagement in the case? Even supposing he did, what would it avail him now to convince himself that such suspicion was well founded? All was inevitable, all was irreparable now. While these thoughts were busy in her brain, she was answering question after question put to her by Wilmot in a cold voice, and with her steady neutral-tinted eyes fixed in pitiless scrutiny upon him. He asked her in particular about the period at which Mabel had suppressed Dr. Whittaker's letter to him. Had she been particularly unhappy just then; had the "unfortunate notion she had conceived about--about Miss Kilsyth, been in her mind before, or just at that time?"
This question Mrs. Prendergast could not, or would not, answer very distinctly. She did not remember exactly when Mabel had heard so much about Miss Kilsyth; she did not know what day it was on which Dr. Whittaker had written. Wilmot produced the letter, and pointed out the date. Still Mrs. Prendergast's memory refused to aid her reliably. She really did not know; she could not answer this. Could she remember whether Mabel had ever left her room after that letter had been written? or whether she had been confined to her room when she had received his (Wilmot's) letter from Kilsyth; the letter which Mrs. Prendergast had said had distressed her so much, had brought about the confidence between Mabel and herself relative to the feelings of the former, and had led Mabel to say that she had no desire to live? Wilmot awaited the reply to these questions in a state of suspense not far removed from agony. He could not indeed permit himself to cherish a hope that the dreadful idea he entertained was unfounded; but in the answer awful confirmation or the germ of hope must lie.
Henrietta replied, after a few moments' thoughtful silence. She could remember the circumstances, though not the precise date. Mabel had left her room on the day on which she had received Wilmot's letter; she had been in the drawing-rooms, and even in the consulting-room on that day. It was on the night that she had told Mrs. Prendergast all, and had expressed her desire to die, her conviction that she could not recover. Henrietta was not certain whether that day was the same as that on which Dr. Whittaker's letter was written, but she was perfectly clear on the point on which Wilmot appeared to lay so much stress; she knew it was the day after his last letter from Kilsyth had reached her.
The intense suffering displayed in every line of Wilmot's face as she made this statement touched Henrietta as much as it puzzled her. Had she mistaken this man? Had he really deep feelings, strong susceptibilities? Had the shock of his wife's death been far otherwise felt than she had believed, and was he now groping after every detail, in order to feed the vain flame of love and memory? Such a supposition accorded very ill with all she knew and all she imagined of Chudleigh Wilmot; but she could find no other within her not infertile brain.
"What became of my letter to her?" Wilmot asked her abruptly.
"It is in her coffin, together with every other you ever wrote her. I placed them there at her own request. She had them tied up in a packet,--the others I mean; but she gave me that one separately."
"Why?" asked Wilmot in a hoarse whisper.
"Why!" repeated Henrietta. "I don't know. It was only a few hours before she died. She hardly spoke at all after, but she told me quite distinctly then that I was to give you her wedding-ring, and to place those letters in her coffin. 'I could not destroy those,' she said, touching the packet in my hand; 'and this,' she drew it from under her pillow as she spoke, 'I want to be placed with me too. It is my justification.'"
"My justification!" repeated Wilmot. "What did she mean? What did you understand that she meant by that?"
"I did not think much about it. The poor thing was near her end then, and I thought little of it; though of course I did what she desired."
"Yes, yes, I understand," said Wilmot. "But her justification--justification in what--for what?"
"In her gloomy and miserable ideas of course, and, above all, in her desire to die. She believed that your letter contained the proof of all she feared and suffered from, and so justified her longing to escape from further neglect and sorrow."
"You did not suspect that it had any further meaning?"
Henrietta stared at him in silence. "I beg your pardon," he said; "my mind is confused by anxiety. I am afraid, Mrs. Prendergast, there may have been features in this case not rightly understood. Could it be that Whittaker was deceived?"
"I think not--I cannot believe that there was any error. Dr. Whittaker never expressed any anxiety on that point, any uncertainty, any wish to divide the responsibility, except with yourself. I understood him to say that he had gone into the case very fully with you, and that you were satisfied everything had been done within the resources of medicine."
"Yes, he did. I don't blame him; I don't blame anyone but myself. But, Mrs. Prendergast, that is not the point. What I want to get at is this: did she--my wife I mean--did she hide anything from Whittaker's knowledge?"
"Anything? In her physical state do you mean? Of her mental sufferings no one but myself ever had the smallest indication. Will you wrong her dead as well as living?" said Henrietta angrily.
"No," he answered, "I will not,--I trust I will not, and do not. I meant, did she tell Whittaker all about her illness? Did she conceal any symptoms from him? Did she suffer more or otherwise than he knew of?"
"Frankly, I think she did, Dr. Wilmot. She was extremely, almost painfully patient; I would much rather have seen her less so. She answered his questions and mine, but she said nothing except in answer to questioning. She suffered, I am convinced, infinitely more than she allowed to appear; and especially on the night of her death, just before the stupor set in, she was in great agony."
"Yes," said Wilmot hurriedly. "Was Whittaker there? Did he know it?"
"He was not there; he had been sent for a little while before, when she was tranquil; and she was quite insensible when he returned in about three hours. He told you, of course, that we had had good hope of her during the day,--in fact, up to the evening?"
"Yes, he said there had been a rally, but it had not lasted. Did she know that there was hope?"
"She did," said Henrietta slowly and reluctantly. "You ask me very painful questions, Dr. Wilmot,--painful to me in the extreme; and I am sure my answers must be acutely distressing to you. I cannot understand your motive."
"No," he said, "I am sure you cannot; neither can I explain it. But indeed I am compelled to put these questions; I cannot spare either you or myself. You say she knew there was hope of her recovery on the day before her death; and yet while the rally lasted,--before the suffering of which you speak set in,--she gave you those solemn charges which you fulfilled?"
"Yes," said Henrietta--and her voice was soft now and her eyes were full of tears--"she did. She did not trust the rally. She told me, with such a dreadful smile, that it would not avail to keep her from her rest. She was right. From the moment she grew worse the progress of death was awfully rapid."
"What medicine did you give her during the brief improvement?"
"Only some restorative drops. Dr. Whittaker gave them to her himself several times, and when he left I gave them to her."
"Did she ever take this medicine of her own accord? Was she strong enough in the interval of improvement to take medicine, or to move without assistance?"
Again Henrietta looked at him for a little while before she replied:
"If you are afraid, Dr. Wilmot, that any mistake was made about the medicine, dismiss such a fear. There was no other medicine in the room but the bottle containing the drops; and now your strange question reminds me that she did take them once unassisted."
Wilmot rose and came towards her. "How? when?" he said eagerly. "How could she do so in her weak state?"
"The bottle was on the table, close by her bed. Only one dose was left. She had asked me to raise the window-blind; and I was doing so, when she stretched out her arm and took the bottle off the table. When I turned round she was drinking the last drops, and the next moment she dropped the bottle on the floor, and it was broken."
"Was she fainting, then?"
"O no," said Henrietta, "she was quite sensible, until the pain came on. Indeed I remember that she told me to keep away from the bed until the broken glass had been swept up."
"Was that done?"
"Yes, I did it myself at once."
"One more question, Mrs. Prendergast," said Wilmot, who had put a strong constraint upon himself, and spoke calmly now. "When did she charge you to have her coffin closed within two days of her death? Was it within the interval during which her recovery seemed possible?"
"It was," answered Henrietta,--"it was when she told me that the rally was deceitful, and was not to keep her from her rest. Then I undertook to carry out her wish."
"Did she give any reason for having formed it?"
"She did--the reason you surmised when I first told you of it. I need not repeat it."
"I would wish you to do so--pray let me hear the exact words she said."
"Well, then, they were these. 'You will promise me to see it done, Henrietta. He cannot get home, even supposing he could leave at once, when he hears that I am dead, until late on the second day.' I told her it was an awful thing that she should wish you not to see her again, and she said, 'No, no, it is not. If he thinks of my face at all, I want him to see it in his memory as it was when I thought he liked to look at it. I could not bear him to remember it black and disfigured.' Those were her exact words, Dr. Wilmot; and like all the rest she said, they proved to me how much she loved you."
Wilmot made no answer, and neither spoke for some minutes. Then Wilmot extended his hand, which Henrietta took with some cordiality, and said, "I thank you very much, Mrs. Prendergast, for the patience with which you have heard me and answered me. I have no explanation to give you. I shall never forget your kindness to my wife, and I hope we shall always be good friends."
He pressed her hand warmly as he spoke; and before Henrietta could reply, he left her to cogitations as vain and unsatisfactory as they were absorbing and unceasing.
Chudleigh Wilmot went direct to his own house after his interview with Henrietta, and gave himself up to the emotions which possessed him. Not a shadow of doubt did he now entertain that his wife had destroyed herself. In the skill and ingenuity with which he invested the act, in his active fancy, which had read the story from the unconscious narrative of Henrietta, he recognised a touch of insanity, which his experience taught him was not very rare in cases similar to that of his wife. To a certain extent he was relieved by the conviction that when she had done the irrevocable deed she was not in her right mind. But what had led to it? what had been the predisposing causes? His conscience, awakened too late, his heart, softened too late, gave him a stern and searching answer. Her life had been unhappy, and she had made her escape from it. He was as much to blame as if he had voluntarily and actively made her wretched. He saw this now by the light of that keener susceptibility, that higher understanding, which had been kindled within him. It had been kindled by the magic touch of love. Another woman had made him see into his wife's heart, and understand her life. What was he to do now? how was it to be with him in the future? He hardly dared to think. Sometimes his mind dwelt on the possibility that it might not be as he believed it was, and the only means of resolving his doubts suggested itself. He might have Mabel's body exhumed, and then the truth would be known. But he shrank with horror from the thought, as from a dishonour to her memory. If he took such a step, it must be accounted for; and could he, would he dare to cast such a slur upon the woman who, if she had done this deed, had resorted to it because, as his wife, she was miserable? Had he any right, supposing it was all a dreadful delusion that she had meddled with his poisons for some trivial motive, however inexplicable,--had he any right to solve his own doubts at such a price as their exposure to cold official eyes? No--a resolute negative was the reply of his heart to these questions; and he made up his mind that his punishment must be lifelong irremediable doubt, to be borne with such courage as he could summon, but never to be escaped from or left behind.
Utter sickness of heart fell upon him and a great weariness. From the past he turned away with vain terrible regret; to the future he dared not look. The present he loathed. He must leave that house, he thought impatiently--he could not bear the sight of it. It had none of the dear and sorrowful sacredness which makes one cling to the home of the loved and lost; it was hateful to him; for there the life his indifference, his want of comprehension had blighted, had been terminated--he shuddered as he thought by what means. And then he thought he would leave England; he could not see Madeleine Kilsyth again; or if he had to do so, he could not see her often. To think of her, in her innocent youth and beauty, as one to be loved, or wooed, or won--if even in his most distant dreams such a possibility were approached by a man whose life had such a story in it, such a dreadful truth, setting him apart from other men--was almost sacrilegious. No, he would go away. Fate had dealt him a tremendous blow; he could not stand against it; he must yield to it for the present, at all events. Under the influence of the terrible truth which he was forced to confront, all his ambition, all his energy seemed suddenly to have deserted the rising man.