"Dr. Wilmot, I believe? Will you oblige me by two minutes' conversation? You don't remember me? I am Mr. Caird. In this room, if you please."
Wilmot, thus inducted into the dining-room, bowed, and took the chair pointed out to him. He had not recognised Mr. Caird at the first glance in the dim little passage; but he knew him again now, albeit Mr. Caird's style of dress and general bearing were very different from what they had been in the old days. Mr. Caird had just come in, and brought a great quantity of tobacco-smoke in with him; and a decanter of brandy, an empty soda-water bottle, and a fizzing tumbler, were on the table before him.
"I beg your pardon for troubling you, Dr. Wilmot; but I didn't know you were expected, or I should of course have been here to meet you. The people in Brook-street manage all these matters in--well, to say the least of it, in a curious way. You have seen Mrs. Caird--what is your opinion of her?"
What Wilmot knew of this man was that he was courteous, gentlemanly, and good-tempered--all in his favour. He had heard the rumours current in society about Caird, but they had passed unheeded by him; men of Wilmot's calibre pay little attention to rumours. So he said, "Do you wish me to tell you my real opinion, Mr. Caird?"
"Your real, candid opinion."
Then Wilmot repeated what he had said to Kilsyth.
The young man looked at him earnestly for a moment; shook his head as though he had been struck a sudden, stunning blow; then muttered involuntarily, as it were, "Poor Maddy!"
Wilmot rose to go, but Caird stopped him. "One question more, Dr. Wilmot--how long may--may the end be deferred?"
"I should fear not more than a few--three or four--months."
When Wilmot was gone, Ramsay Caird, having lit a fresh cigar, said "Poor Maddy!" again; but this time he added, "since it was to be, it will be, about the time;" and for the next hour he occupied himself with arithmetical calculations in his pocketbook.
In years to come it was destined to be a marvel to Wilmot how he lived through the days and the weeks of that time. If they had not been so entirely filled with supreme suffering, with despairing effort--if there had been any interval, any relaxation from the immense task imposed upon him, he might have broken down under it. He might have said, "I will not stay here, and see this woman whom I love die in her youth, in her beauty, in the very springtide of her life. I will go away. I will not see it, at least; I who have not the right to shut out all others, and gather up the last days of her life into a treasury of remembrance, in which no other shall have a share. No man is called upon to suffer that which he can avoid. I will go!" But there was no time for Wilmot, no chance for him to reach such a conclusion, to take this supreme resolution of despair. The whole weight of the family trouble was thrown upon him; and he, in comparison with whose grief that of all the others, except Kilsyth's, was insignificant, was the one to whom all looked for support and hope. As for Ramsay Caird, he adopted the easy and plausible rôle of a sanguine man. He had the greatest possible respect for Dr. Wilmot's opinion, the utmost confidence in his ability; but the doctor's talent gave him the very best grounds for security. He was quite sure Wilmot would set Madeleine all right. She had youth on her side--and only just think how Wilmot had "pulled her through" at Kilsyth! And as nobody occupied themselves particularly with what Ramsay thought, he was permitted to indulge his incorrigible insouciance, and to render to Dr. Wilmot's talent the original homage of believing it superior to his judgment and his avowed conviction. For the rest, Ramsay professed himself, and with reason, to be the worst person in the world in a sickroom--no use, and "awfully frightened;" and accordingly he seldom made his appearance in Madeleine's room, after the daily visit of a few minutes, which was de rigueur, and during which he invariably received the same answer to his inquiries, that she was better--a statement which it suited him to receive as valid, and which he therefore did so receive. Wilmot saw very little of him; no part of the hardness of his task came to him from Madeleine's husband. It was at her father's hands that Wilmot suffered most, and most constantly. Kilsyth held two articles of faith in connection with Wilmot: the first, that he was infallible in judgment; the second, that he was inexhaustible in skill and resources. And now these articles of belief clashed, and Kilsyth was swayed about between them,--a prey now to helpless grief, again to groundless and unreasonable hope. Certainly Madeleine was very ill. Wilmot was right, no doubt; but then Wilmot would save her: he had saved her before, when she was also very ill. Then the poor father would have the difference between fever and consumption, in point of assured fatality, forced upon his attention, and an interval of despair would set in. But whether his mood was hope or despair, an effort to attain resignation, or a mere stupor of fear and grief, Wilmot had to witness, Wilmot had to combat them all. The old man clung to the doctor with piteous eagerness and tenacity on his way to begin the watch over his patient which he maintained daily for hours, as he had done in the old time at Kilsyth--time in reality so lately past, but seeming like an entire lifetime ago. When he left her to take the short and troubled sleep which fell upon her in the afternoon; in the evening, when he came again; at night, after he had administered the medicine which was to procure her a temporary reprieve from the cough, which her father could no longer endure to hear, Kilsyth would waylay him, beset him with questions, with entreaties--or, worse still, look speechless into his face with imploring haggard eyes.
This to the man for whom the young life ebbing away, with terrific rapidity indeed, but with merciful ease on the whole, was the one treasure held by the earth, so rich for others, such a wilderness for him! Yes--her life! When he knew she was married, and thus parted from him for ever, he had thought the worst that could have come to him had come. But from the moment he had looked again into the innocent sweet blue eyes, and read, with the unerring glance of the practised physician, that death was looking out at him from them, he learned his error. Then too he learned how much, and with what manner of love, he loved Madeleine Kilsyth.
"Give her life, and not death, O gracious Disposer of both! and I am satisfied--and I am happy! Life, though I never see her face again; life, though she never hears my name spoken, or remembers me in her lightest thought; life, though it be to bless her husband, and to transmit her name to his children; life, though mine be wasted at the ends of the earth!" This was the cry of his soul, the utterance of the strong man's anguish. But he knew it was not to be; the physician's eye had been unerring indeed.
Lady Muriel bore herself on this, as on every other occasion, irreproachably. The first enunciation of the doctor's opinion had startled her. She did not love her stepdaughter, but of late she had been on more affectionate terms with her; and it was not possible that she could learn that she was doomed to an early death without terror and grief. Lady Muriel knew well how unspeakably dear to Kilsyth his daughter was; and apart from her keen womanly sympathies all enlisted for the fair young sufferer, she felt with agonising acuteness for her husband's suffering. The first meeting between Lady Muriel and Wilmot had been under agitating circumstances; and the appeal made to him by Kilsyth had at once established him on the old footing with them--a footing which had not existed previously in London, having been interrupted by Wilmot's domestic affliction, and the tacit but resolute opposition of Ronald. But even then, in that first interview, when emotion was permissible, when Dr. Wilmot was forced by his position to make a communication to the father and brother which even a stranger must necessarily have found painful, and though he imposed superhuman control over his feelings, Lady Muriel had seen the truth, or as much of the truth as one human being can ever see of the verities of the heart of another. She had received him gravely, but so that, had he eared to interpret her manner, it might have told him he was welcome in more than the sense of his value in this dread emergency; and it had been a sensible relief to Ronald to perceive that Lady Muriel had not suffered the pride and suspicion which had dictated her remonstrance to him to appear in any word or look of hers which Wilmot could perceive. But when Lady Muriel was alone she said to herself bitterly:
"He did love her, then; he does love her! He is awfully changed; and this has changed him--to her illness, not the fear of her death--the change is the work of months--but the loss of her. Her marriage--this has made his life valueless, this has made him what he is." Then she remained for a long time sunk in thought, her dark eyes shaded by her hand. At length she said, half aloud,
"She is not all to be pitied, even if this be indeed true and past remedy. She has been well beloved."
There was a whole history of solitude and vain aspiration in the words. Had not she too, Lady Muriel Kilsyth, been well beloved? True; but all the homage, all the devotion of an inferior nature could not satisfy hers. This woman would be content only with the love of a man her intellectual superior, her master in strength of purpose and of will. She had seen him; he had come; and he loved not her, but the simple girl with blue eyes and golden hair who was dying, and whom he would love faithfully when she should be dead. Lady Muriel did not deceive herself. She had the perfect comprehension of Wilmot which occult sympathy gives--she knew that he would never love another woman. She knew, when she recalled the ineffable mournfulness which sat upon his face, not the garment of an occasion, but the habitual expression which it had taken, that the hope which but for her might have been realised, had been the forlorn hope of his life. It was over now; and he was beaten by fate, by death, by Lady Muriel's will. He would lay down his arms; he would never struggle again.
Knowing this, Lady Muriel Kilsyth dreamed no more. The vision of a love which, pure and blameless, would have elevated, fortified, and sweetened her life, faded never to return. Her gentle stepdaughter, who would have been incapable of such a thought or such a wish, had she known how Lady Muriel had acted towards her, was at that moment amply avenged.
In vain she had laboured to effect this loveless marriage; in vain she had placed in the untrustworthy hands of Ramsay Caird the happiness and the fortune of her husband's beloved daughter; in vain had she been deaf to the truer, better promptings of her conscience, to the haunting thought of the responsibility which she had undertaken towards the girl, to the remembrance of Madeleine's dead mother, which sometimes came to her and troubled her sorely; in vain had she tempted that dread and inexorable law of retribution, which might fall upon the heads of her own children. How mad, how guilty, she had been! She saw it all now; she understood it all now. How could she, who had learned to comprehend, to appreciate Wilmot,--how could she have imagined for a moment that any sentiment once really entertained by him could be light and passing! She recognised, with respect at least, if with an abiding sense of humiliation, the truth, the strength, the eternal duration of Wilmot's love for Madeleine. Truly, many things, in addition to the beautiful young form, were destined to go down into the grave of Madeleine Kilsyth.
There was so much similarity between the thoughts of Lady Muriel and those of Chudleigh Wilmot, that he too, after that first visit, which had shown him the dying girl and revealed to him how he loved her, pondered also upon an unconscious vengeance fulfilled.
Mabel! She had died in his absence, neglected by him, inflicting upon him an agonising doubt, almost a certainty, but at least a doubt never to be resolved in this world--a dread never to be set at rest. He did not believe that had he been with her he could have saved her; but no matter: he had stayed away; he had given to another the love, the care, the time, the skill that should have been hers, that were her right by every law human and divine. And now! The woman he had preferred to her, the woman by whose side he had lingered, the woman he loved, was dying, and he had come to her aid too late! He could see her, it was true; he might be with her; it was possible he might hear her last words--might see her draw her last breath; but she was lost to him, lost unwon, lost for ever, as Mabel had been! It was late in the night before Wilmot had sufficiently mastered these thoughts and the emotions which they aroused to be able to apply himself to studying the details of Madeleine's ease, and arranging his plan, not indeed of cure, but of alleviation.
Among the letters awaiting his attention there was one from Mrs. Prendergast. She requested him to call on her; she wished to consult him concerning the matter they had talked of. The following morning he wrote her a line saying he could not attend to anything for the present; and subsequently Henrietta learned from Mrs. Charlton, through Mrs. M'Diarmid, that Wilmot had consented to act as physician to Mrs. Caird, whom he pronounced to be in hopeless consumption.
Henrietta went home grave and pensive, thinking much of her dead friend, Mabel Wilmot.
Time had gone inexorably on since that day, laden every hour of it with grief to Wilmot, with immense and complicated responsibility, with the dread of the rapidly-approaching end. There had been hours--no, not hours, moments--when he almost persuaded himself that he might be wrong, that it was still time, that a warm climate might yet avail. But the delusion was only momentary; and he had told Madeleine's father and brother from the first that she was unfit for a journey, that the most merciful course was to let her die at home in peace, among the people and the things to whom and to which she was accustomed. He understood the attachment of an invalid to the inanimate objects around her; an attachment strongly developed in Madeleine, whose dressing-room, where she lay on the sofa all day, contained all her girlish treasures. She was always awake early in the morning, and anxious to be carried from her bed to her sofa, whence she would wistfully watch the door until it opened and admitted Wilmot. Then she would smile--such a happy smile too! Only a pale reflection in point of brightness, it is true, of the radiant smile of the past, but full of the old trust and happiness and peace. Her father came early too, and received the report of how she had passed the night, and controlled himself wonderfully, poor old man! for agitation and disquiet were very bad for his darling; and he was strengthened by Wilmot's example. It never occurred to Kilsyth to remember that Wilmot was "only the doctor," and therefore might well be calm; he never reasoned about Wilmot at all--he only felt and trusted. The world outside the sickroom went on as usual. Within it Madeleine Caird lay dying, not poetically, not of the fanciful extinction which consumption becomes in the hands of the poet and the romancer, but of the genuine, veritable, terrible disease, not to be robbed by wealth, or even by comfort or skill, of its terrors. Those who know what is meant when a person is said to be dying of consumption need no amplification of the awful significance of the phrase. Those who do not--may they remain in their ignorance!
And Madeleine? And the contending emotions, amid the varied suffering which surrounded her, and had all its origin in her, how was it with Madeleine? On the whole, it was well. A strange phrase to apply to a young woman, a young wife, an idolised daughter, who was dying thus, of a disease which kills more thoroughly, so to speak, than any other, doing its dread office with slowness, and marking its progress day by day. She knew she was dying, though sometimes she did not feel it very keenly; the idea did not come to her as relating to herself, but with a sort of outside meaning. This dulness would last for days, and then she would be struck by the truth again, and would realise it with all the strength of mind and body left to her. Realise it, not to be terrified by it, not to resist it, not to appeal against it, but to accept it, to acquiesce in it, to be satisfied and profoundly quiet. Madeleine's notions of God and eternity were vague, like those of most young people. She had been brought up in a careful observance of the forms of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and she had always had a certain devotional turn, which accompanies good taste and purity of mind in young girls. But she had never looked at life or death seriously, in the true sense, at all. Sentimentally she had considered both, extensively of course; had she not read all the poetry she could lay her hands on, and a vast number of essays? Of late a voice whose tones she had never before heard, still and small, had spoken to her--spoken much and solemnly in her girlish heart, and had taught her, in the silent suffering and doubt, the unseen struggle she had undergone, great things. She kept her own counsel; she listened, and was still; and the chain of earth fell from her fair soul while yet it held her fair form in its coil a little longer. Madeleine had looked into her life to find the meaning of her Creator in it. She had found it, and she was ready for the summons, which was not to tarry long.
One day, when she had told Wilmot that she was wonderfully easy, had had quite a good night, and had hardly coughed at all since morning, he was sitting by her sofa, and she, lying with her face turned towards him, had fallen into a light sleep. He drew a coverlet closely round her, and signed to the nurse that she might leave the room. Then he sat quite still, his face rigid, his hands clasped, looking at her; looking at the thin pale face, with the blazing spots of red upon the cheekbones, with the darkened eyelids, the sunken temples, the dry red lips, the damp, limp, golden hair. As in a phantasmagoria, the days at Kilsyth passed before him; the day of his arrival, the day the nurse had asked him whether the golden hair must be cut off, the day he had pronounced her out of danger. Outwardly calm and stern, what a storm of anguish he was tossed upon! Words and looks and little incidents--small things, but infinite to him--came up and tormented him. Then came a sense of unreality; it could not be, it was not the same Madeleine; this was not Kilsyth's beautiful daughter. His hands went up to his face, and a groan burst from his lips. The sound frightened him. He looked at her again; and as he looked, her eyes opened, and she began to speak. Then came the frightful, the inevitable cough. He lifted her upon his arm, kneeling by her side, and the paroxysm passed over. Then she looked at him very gently and sweetly, and said:
"Are we quite alone?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember one night at Kilsyth, when I was very ill, I asked you whether I was going to die?"
"I remember," he said, with a desperate effort to keep down a sob.
"And I told you I was very glad when you said, 'No.' Do you remember?"
"Yes--I remember."
She paused and looked at him; her blue eyes were as steady as they were bright. "If I asked you, but I don't--I don't"--she put out her wasted hand. He took the thin fingers in his, and trembled at their touch--"because I know--but if I did, you would not make me the same answer now."
He did not speak, he did not look at her; but her eyes pertinaciously sought his, and he was forced to meet them. She smiled again, and her fingers clasped themselves round his.
"You will always be papa's friend," she said. "Poor papa--he will miss me very much; the girls are too young as yet. And Ronald--I have something to say to you about Ronald. Sit here, close to me, in papa's chair, and listen."
He changed his seat in obedience to her, and listened; his head bent down, and her golden hair almost touching his shoulder.
"Something came between Ronald and me for a little while," she said, her low voice, which had hardly lost its sweetness at all, thrilling the listener with inexpressible pain. "I cannot tell what exactly; but it is all over now, and he is--as he used to be--the best and kindest of brothers. But there is someone--not papa; I am not talking of poor papa now--better and kinder still. Do you know whom I mean?" The sweet steady blue eyes looked at him quite innocent and unabashed. "I Mean you."
"Me!" he said, looking up hastily; "me!"
"Yes; best and kindest of all to me. And when Ronald will not have me any longer, I want you to promise me to be his friend too. They say he is hard in his disposition and his ways; he never was to me, but once for a little while; and I should like him to see you often, and be with you much, that he may be reminded of me. As long as he remembers me he will not be hard to anyone; and he will remember me whenever he sees you."
Thus the sister interpreted the brother's late repentance, and endeavoured to render it a source of blessing to the two men whom she loved.
"When you left Kilsyth," she said, "and came here, and when I heard the dreadful affliction that had befallen you, it made me very unhappy. It seemed, somehow, awful to me that sorrow should have come to you through me."
"It did not," he replied. "Don't think so; don't say so! Did anyone tell you so? It would have come all the same--"
"It would not," she said solemnly; "it would not. If I never felt it before, I must have come to feel it now, that I caused unconsciously a dreadful misfortune. You are here with me; you make suffering, you make death, light and easy to me. And you were away from her when she was dying who had a right to look for you by her side. I hope she has forgiven me where all is forgiven."
There was silence between them for a while. Wilmot's agony was quite beyond description, and almost beyond even his power of self-control. Madeleine was quite calm; but the bright red spots had faded away from her cheekbones, and she was deadly pale. His eyes were fixed upon her face--eagerly, despairingly, as though he would have fixed it before them for ever, a white phantom to beset, of his free will, all his future life. Another racking fit of coughing came on, and then, when it had subsided, Madeleine fell again into one of the sudden short sleeps which had become habitual to her, and which told Wilmot so plainly of the progress of exhaustion. It was only of a few minutes' duration; and when she again awoke, her cheeks had the red spots on them once more. He watched her more and more eagerly, to see if she would resume the tone in which she had been speaking, and which, while it tortured him to listen to it, he had not the courage to interrupt or interdict. There was a little, a very little more excitement in the voice and in the eyes as she said,
"You are not going to be a doctor any more, they tell me, now that you are a rich man."
"No," he said, in a low but bitter tone. "I am done with doctoring. All my skill and knowledge have availed me nothing, and they are nothing to me any more."
"Nothing! And why?"
"O Madeleine," he said,--and as he spoke he fell on his knees beside the sofa on which she lay--"how can you ask me? What have they done for me? They have not saved you. I asked nothing else--no other reward for all my years of labour and study and poverty and insignificance--nothing but this. Even at Kilsyth, when you had the fever, I asked nothing else. I got it then, for they did save you. Yes, thank God; they did save you then for a little time! But now, now--" And, forgetful of the agitation of his patient, forgetful of everything in this supreme agony, Chudleigh Wilmot hid his face in the coverlet of the sofa and wept--wept the burning and distracting tears it is so dreadful to see a man shed. Madeleine raised herself up, and tried to lift his head in her feeble, wasted hands. Then he recovered himself with a tremendous effort, and was calm.
"I must tell you," he said, "having said what you have heard. Madeleine, there is no sin, no shame in what I am going to tell you. I will tell it to your father and your brother yet; I would tell it to your husband, Madeleine. When I went away from England, I took a vision with me. It was, that I might return some time and ask for your love. It faded, Madeleine; but I claim, as the one solitary consolation which life can ever bring me, to tell you this: you are the only woman I have ever loved."
Madeleine looked at him still; the colour rose higher and brighter on her wasted cheeks; the light blazed up in her blue eyes.
"Did you love me," she said, "because you saved my life?"
"I don't know, child. I loved you--I loved you! That is all I know. I know I ought not to say it now; but I must, I must!"
"Hush!" she said; "and don't shiver there, and don't cry. It is not for such as you to do either!" He resumed his seat; she gave him her hand again, and lay still looking at him--looking at him with her blue eyes full of the inexplicably awful look which comes into the eyes of the dying. After a while she smiled.
"I am very glad you told me," she said. "People said you never cared for the patient, only for the case; but since you have been here I have known that was not true. It is better as it is. If your vision had come true, I must have died all the same, and then it would have been harder. It is easier now."
Another fit of coughing--a frightful paroxysm this time. Wilmot rang for the nurse, and Kilsyth and Lady Muriel entered the room with her.
* * * * *
Several hours later Madeleine was lying in the same place, still, tranquil, and at ease. She had had a long interval of respite from the cough, and was cheerful, even bright. Her father was there, and Ronald; Lady Muriel also, but sitting at some distance from her, and looking very sad.
When the time came at which Madeleine was to be removed to her bed, Ronald and Wilmot took leave; the first for the night, the second to return an hour later, and give final instructions to the nurse.
Wilmot's left hand hung down by his side as he stood near her, and Madeleine touched a ring upon his little finger.
"What is the motto on that ring?" she asked.
"The untranslateable French phrase, which I always think is like a shrug in words: Quand même," he replied.
The ring was the seal-ring which his wife had been used to wear. It struck him with a new and piercing pain, amid all the pains of this dreadful day, that Madeleine should have noticed it, and reminded him of it then.
"Quand même," she said softly. "Notwithstanding, even so--ah, it can't be said in English, but it means the same in every tongue." He bent over her, no one was near, her eyes met his; she said, "I am very happy--very happy, Quand même!"
* * * * *
Wilmot went home and sat down to think--to think over the words he had spoken and heard. He was overpowered with the fatigue, the excitement, the emotion of the day. A thousand confused images floated before his weary eyes; the room seemed full of phantoms. Was this illness? Could it be possible? No, that must not be; he could not be ill; he had not time. After--yes, after, illness--anything! but not yet. He called for wine and bread, and ate and drank. His thoughts became clearer, and arranged themselves; then he became absorbed in reflection. He had told his servant he should require the carriage in an hour, and, hearing a noise in the hall, he started up, thinking the time had come. He opened his study-door, and called--
"Is that the brougham, Stephen?"
"No, sir," said the man, presenting himself with an air of having something important to say.
"What is it, then?" said Wilmot impatiently. "A messenger from Brook-street, sir; Captain Kilsyth's man, sir."
Wilmot went out into the hall. The man was there, looking pale and frightened.
"What is it, Martin? what is it?"
"Captain Kilsyth sent me, sir, to let you know that Mrs. Caird is dead, sir,--a few minutes after you left, sir. Went off like a lamb. They didn't know it, sir; till the nurse came to lift her into bed."
Yes, she was dead; had died with a smile upon her lips; had died at peace and charity with all; had died knowing that the man whom she had looked up to and reverenced, had loved with all the pure and guileless love of her young heart, had loved her also, and had so loved her that he had suffered in silence, and only spoken when the confession could bring no remorse to her, even no longing regret for what might have been. Even no longing regret? No! "Happy, quand même," were the last words that ever passed her lips; "happy, quand même,"--she had been something to him after all! In the few short and fleeting hours which she had passed between hearing Chudleigh Wilmot's confession, wrung from his heart by the great agony which possessed him, she had pondered over the words which he had spoken with inexpressible delight. What can we tell, we creatures moulded in coarser clay, creatures of baser passions, soiled in the perpetual contact with earth, its mean fears and gross aspirations, if aspirations they may be called,--what can we tell of the feelings of a young girl like this? Death, which we contemplate as the King of Terrors, threatening us with his uplifted dart, and destined to drag us away from the stage of life, bright with its tawdry tinsel, and its garish splendour, came to her in softer and more kindly guise. For months she had been expecting the advent of the "shadow cloaked from head to foot," in whose gentle embrace she knew that she must shortly find herself. Those around her, her loving, doating father, Lady Muriel, Ronald, softened by the silent contemplation of her gradually-decreasing strength, the daily ebbing of physical force, the daily loosening of even the slight hold on life which she possessed, visible even to his unpractised eyes,--none of these had the smallest idea that the frail delicate creature, round whose couch they stood day by day with forced smiles and feigned hope, knew better than any of them, better even than he whose professional skill had never been brought into such play, how swiftly the current of her life was bearing her on to the great rapids of Eternity. And if before she had heard those burning words, intensified by the agony shown in the choking voice in which they found their utterance, she had been able calmly and not unwillingly to contemplate her fate, how much greater had been her resignation, how much more readily did she accept the fiat when she learned that the one love of her life had been returned; and that, despite of all that had come between them, despite the interposition of the dread barrier which had apparently so effectually separated them from each other, the man who had been to her far beyond all others, had singled her out as the object of his adoration!
In those few last earthly hours the "what might have been" had passed through her mind, and passed away again, leaving behind it no trace of anguish or remorse. Not only to Wilmot had the time since their first acquaintance at Kilsyth passed in review in phantasmagoric semblance; Madeleine had often gone through such scenes in the short drama, recollecting every detail, remembering much which had been overlooked even in his rapid summary. "What might have been!" Even suppose the dearest, the only real aspiration of her heart had been accomplished, and sire had become Chudleigh Wilmot's wife, would not the inevitable end have had additional distress and misery to both of them? The inevitable end! for she must have died--she knew that; not for one instant did she imagine that any combination of circumstances different from what had actually occurred could have averted or postponed the fulfilment of the dread decree. Her married life had not been specially happy; then should she not have less regret in leaving it? Would not the pangs of parting be robbed of half their bitterness by the knowledge that her husband left behind would not sink under the blow? What might have been? Ah, Wilmot would feel her loss acutely, she knew that; the one outburst of grief, of passionate tenderness and heartfelt agony which had escaped him had told her that; but he would feel it less than if what might have been had been, and she had been taken away from him in the early days of their love and happiness.
A notion that such thoughts as these might have filled the mind of her for whom they mourned occurred to each of those by whom the dead girl was really loved, not indeed at once nor simultaneously, but at divers times, as they pondered over the blank which her loss had left in their lives. Among this number Mr. Ramsay Caird was not to be reckoned. The solemn announcement which, at his own request, Dr. Wilmot had made to him as to the impossibility of his wife's recovery and the probable short duration of her illness had had very little effect on the young man. What were the motives which prompted him were known to himself alone; but the insouciance, to use the mildest term for it, which had prompted him during the whole of his short married life seemed in no way diminished even by the dread news which had been communicated to him. He acknowledged that he had seen Dr. Wilmot, and had asked him his opinion; that that opinion had been very serious, and to some persons would have been alarming, but that he was not easily alarmed, and that he was utterly and entirely incredulous in the present instance. Madeleine had a bad cough, and was naturally delicate on her chest, and that sort of thing; she did not wrap up enough when she went out, and sat in draughts: but as to the way in which they all went on about her--well, they would find that he was right, and then they would be sorry they had listened to any such nonsense. He said this to Lady Muriel; for both Kilsyth and Ronald shrunk from any communication with him. Bitterest among all the bitter feelings which oppressed these two men, so different in mind and spirit, but with their love centred on the same object, was the thought that they had given up the guardianship of their treasure to one who was utterly unworthy of it, and, as one of them at least confessed to himself with keen remorse, had blighted two lives by unreasoning and short-sighted pride.
So, while his young wife had been gradually declining, Ramsay Caird had made very little alteration in the mode of life which he had thought fit to pursue since the earliest days of his marriage. Relying principally on the fact, which he was constantly urging, that he was of "no use," he absented himself more and more from his home; and when "doing duty" there, as he phrased it, strove in no way to hide the dislike with which he regarded the irksome task. Companionship was necessary to Ramsay Caird, and was not to be obtained, he found, among the class with whom since his arrival in London and his domestication in Brook-street he had been accustomed to associate. The men who had been pleasantly familiar with him in those days stood aloof, and seemed by no means anxious to continue the acquaintance. They had come, soon after his marriage, and dined in the little red-flocked tank in Squab-street, but that was principally for Madeleine's sake; and when rumours as to the newly-founded ménage grew rife, and more especially after Tommy Toshington's delightful story of seeing Caird at Madame Favorita's door had got wind, the men generally agreed that he was a bad lot, and fought as shy of him as was compatible with common politeness. For it is to be noted that the loose-living Benedick, the married man who glories in his own escapades and talks with unctuous smack of his dissipations, is generally shunned by those men of his own set, who are by no means strait-laced, and forced to seek his company in a lower grade.
Ramsay Caird began to be bored and oppressed by his wife's illness, and by the constant presence of her father and brother at his house. It is true that he never saw these unwelcome visitors--on both sides any meeting was studiously avoided--but he could not help knowing of their being constantly with the invalid; and his own conscience, as much of it as he had ever possessed, did not fail to tell him what must be their indubitable opinion of him and his conduct. The companions too with whom he had taken up--for Ramsay Caird was essentially gregarious, and especially during the last few months had found the impossibility of living without excitement--the new companions with whom he consorted, and who were principally half-sporting, half-military, whole raffish adventurers, always well dressed, and retaining a certain hold on society, where they once had been well received,--these men encouraged Caird in his dislike to his home, and assisted him in the invention of plausible excuses to get away from it. The fact that he had "gone on to the turf," which he had at first taken every precaution to prevent his connections in Brook-street from becoming acquainted with, and which, when some kind common friend had told them of it, struck Kilsyth with silent horror, and aroused much burning and outspoken indignation in Ronald, was now put forward on every occasion, just as though it had been a legitimate business on which he was employed. "Meetings" were constantly taking place all over the country at which his attendance was indispensable, and he was soon well known as one of the regular frequenters of the betting-ring. On his return the servants in Squab-street could generally tell what had been the result of his betting speculations; but only to them and to one other person did he ever show his temper. And that one other person was Lady Muriel--the proud Lady Muriel--who in all matters between her husband and this man, who by her instrumentality had become the husband of her husband's daughter, had to be the go-between; to her it was left to soften his irregularities and gloss them over as best she might, and she alone possessed his confidence. To be the confidante of a gambler and the apologist for a debauchee was scarcely what Lady Muriel had expected when she gave her pledge to dying Stewart Caird, and when she intrigued and manoeuvred so successfully in gaining her stepdaughter's hand for Ramsay.
Three days before Madeleine's death Ramsay Caird announced to Lady Muriel, whom he stopped as she was about to ascend the stairs to the invalid's room, that he wanted to speak to her, and, on joining him in the red-flocked tank, told her that he was about to start that night for Paris. There were races at Chantilly in which he was very much interested, having a large sum at stake, and it was absolutely necessary that he should be on the spot to watch and avail himself of the fluctuations in the betting-ring. Then, for the first time during their acquaintance, Lady Muriel spoke out to her quondam protégé. The long-repressed emotions under which she was suffering seemed to have given her eloquence; she drew a vivid picture of "what might have been" if Ramsay's conduct had been different, and lashed his present life and pursuits, the company he kept, and the general degradation into which he had fallen, with an unsparing tongue. She implored him to give up his intended journey, assuring him that he either would not or could not understand the extreme danger of his wife's position, pointing out to him what scandal must necessarily arise from his absenting himself at such a time, and telling him that his past conduct during his married life, already sufficiently commented upon by the world, might to a certain extent be condoned by his doing his duty and devoting himself to his home for the future. Ramsay listened impatiently, as men of his stamp always listen to such advice, and then he in his turn spoke out. He said that he would be his own master, that he would brook no interference with his plans, that already he was a mere cipher in his own house, which was invaded and occupied by other people at their own pleasure, and that he would stand it no longer; then, after this outburst, he moderated his tone, apologised to Lady Muriel for his violence, and told her that, though the importance of his business arrangements and the largeness of his venture made it absolutely necessary for him to go to Paris on this occasion, yet it should be the last; he would do as her ladyship wished him, as he felt he ought to do, and his enemies should find that he was not so black as by some persons he had been painted.
So Ramsay Caird and a select circle of British turfites took their departure by that night's mail, and enjoyed themselves very much, smoking, drinking, and playing cards whenever it was practicable on the journey. Most of them were men whose acquaintance Caird had made some time previously; but amongst them there was a Frenchman, a M. Leroux, whom Ramsay had never previously seen, although the little gentleman said he had frequently been in England, and seemed perfectly conversant with the English language, manners, and customs. He was a lively, vivacious, gasconading little fellow; and any temporary depression of spirits which Ramsay Caird may have felt after his interview with Lady Muriel quite vanished under the influence of M. Leroux's conversation. He and M. Leroux seemed to have taken a mutual liking to each other; they went together to the races, where Caird won a large sum of money, Leroux not being quite so fortunate; and on their return to Paris, Ramsay declined to join his English friends, and dined with Leroux and some very agreeable Frenchmen to whom Leroux had introduced him at the races. The dinner was excellent; and after they had done full justice to it, and to the wines which accompanied it, they all adjourned so some neighbouring rooms belonging to one of their number, where cards and dice were speedily introduced. Again Ramsay Caird's luck stood by him. Malheureux en amour, he was destined to be heureux en jeu on this occasion at least. Nothing could alter or diminish his flow of success; no matter what he played, lansquenet, baccarat, hazard, he won largely at them all; and when at a very late hour he left the rooms in company with Leroux and two of his friends, his pockets were filled with notes and gold. They were quite empty when they were examined about noon the next day by the attendants at the Morgue, whither Ramsay Caird's dead body, found in the Seine with a deep gash in its breast, had been conveyed.
M. Leroux and his friends did not come so well out of this little affair as they had expected. They knew that Ramsay was a stranger in Paris, known only to the English sporting-men in whose company he had arrived there, and who had probably returned to England. But they did not make allowance for the fact that of all cities Paris has a charm for the "English division," who, if they have won any money, linger for a few days amongst its pleasures, one of which undoubtedly is a frequent visit to the Morgue. By one of these late lingerers, no less a person than Captain Severn, the body of Ramsay Caird was seen and recognised; inquiries were at once set on foot; the waiter at the restaurant, the concierge at the house where the play had taken place, were examined, and gave their evidence. M. Leroux and his two friends were apprehended; one of the friends turned traitor (his share of the spoil had been too small), and Leroux and the other, being found guilty of murder under extenuating circumstances, were sentenced to the galleys for life.
The news of this catastrophe was conveyed to the Kilsyth family in a letter addressed by Captain Severn to Ronald, which letter lay unopened in Brook-street for several days. Ronald Kilsyth was far too much crushed and broken by the blow, which, for all their long expectation of its advent, had yet fallen suddenly upon them at the last, to attend to anything unconnected, as he imagined, with the dead. He had indeed carelessly glanced at the cover of this letter, with several others; but the handwriting was unfamiliar to him, and he put it aside, to be opened at a later opportunity. It was not until two or three days afterwards, when Ramsay Caird had been sought in vain, and when Lady Muriel had confessed that he had confided to her his intention of going to Paris, that Ronald recollected the letter in the strange handwriting with the Paris postmark. He sent for the letter, and read it through without the smallest sign of emotion. He was a hard man, Ronald Kilsyth, and the softening effect of his sister's illness only included her and those who were fond of her. Ronald knew well enough that Ramsay Caird did not come within this category, and he felt no pity for his fate.
He communicated the news to his father more as a matter of form than anything else; for the shock of his beloved child's death had almost deprived Kilsyth of his reason. Like Rachel, he refused to be comforted, and would sit hour after hour in one position on his chair, his eyes fixed on vacancy, his chin resting on his breast, his hands idly clasped before him. Nothing seemed to rouse him,--not even the news which had been conveyed to Ronald in Captain Severn's letter. He comprehended it, for he said "Poor Ramsay!" once, and once only; then heaved a deep sigh, and never alluded to his dead son-in-law again. His thoughts were filled with reminiscences of his lost darling, and he had none to bestow on anyone else. "My poor Maddy!" "My bonnie lass!" "My own childie!"--he would sit and repeat these phrases over and over again; then steal away down to the house where all that was left of her still lay, and remain on his knees by the coffin, until Ronald would come and half forcibly lead him away. He left London immediately after the funeral, and never could be persuaded to return to it. After a while, the fresh mountain air, to which he had been so accustomed, and away from which he was never well, had some of its old restorative effect, and Kilsyth recovered most of his physical strength and some of his old pleasure in field sports; but his zest for life was gone, and the gullies mourned the alteration in the chief whom they loved so much.
The death of Ramsay Caird under such horrible circumstances was a crushing blow to Lady Muriel. This, then, was the end of all her schemes and plots; this the result of so much mental agony and remorse endured by herself--of so much grief and cruel injustice inflicted by her on others. She had kept the promise she had made to Stewart Caird on his deathbed, two lives had been sacrificed, two loves had been blighted--but she had kept her promise. For the first time in her life "my lady's" courage failed her; and her conscience showed her how recklessly she had availed herself of the means to gain her ends. For the first time in her life she dreaded meeting the glances of the world. More than all men she dreaded Ronald Kilsyth, knowing as she did full well how she had used him for her own purposes, and with what lamentable results. She had been seriously affected by Madeleine's death--like many worldly people, never knowing how much she had loved the girl until she lost her; and now the fact of Ramsay's murder under such discreditable circumstances--a story which had been made public in the newspapers, where the world could glean the undeniable truth that the murdered man had left what was actually his wife's deathbed to attend some races--seemed to overwhelm her The young men who visited at the house had been in the habit of expressing to each other great admiration of Lady Muriel's "pluck"--that quality did not desert her even at her worst. She made head against her troubles, and never gave in; but those intimate enemies who saw her before she left London with her husband declared Lady Muriel to be "quite broken" and a "thorough wreck."
And Chudleigh Wilmot? He lived, of course; lived, and ate and drank, and pursued very much his usual course of life. Well, no; not quite his usual course of life. The effect of the death of the one woman whom in his lifetime he had loved was to him much as are the gunshot wounds of which we sometimes hear officers and army surgeons tell; wounds where the hit man feels a slight concussion at the moment, and does not know until a short time afterwards that he is stunned, paralysed for ever. While Wilmot had been watching the insidious progress of Madeleine's disease, his mental misery at times was most acute; every variation in her was apparent to his practised eye; and day by day he saw the destroyer creeping stealthily onward in his attack, without the smallest power to resist him. When the bitter tidings of her death were brought by Ronald's servant, the words fell upon Chudleigh Wilmot's ear and smote him as if a sharp cut from a whip had fallen upon him. She whom he had loved so devotedly, so hopelessly, so selflessly, was dead--he realised that. He knew that he should never see the light in her blue eyes, never hear the sweet soft tones of her voice again. He was thankful that, under the impulse of his grief, he had spoken to her out of his overcharged heart and told her how he loved her. He dared not have done it before, he dared not under any other circumstances have confessed the passion for her that had so long been the motive-power of his life; but then--"Happy, quand même!" Her last words--she never had spoken after that--her last words were addressed to him, and told him of her happiness.
It was not until after the funeral that Wilmot experienced the full effect of the blow, experienced it in the dead dull blankness which seemed for the second time to have fallen upon his life. He had had something of the kind before, but nothing equal in intensity to what he now suffered. He felt as though the light had died out, and that henceforward he was to walk in darkness, without care, without hope, without interest in any mortal thing. Previously he had found some relief in hard study; now he found it impossible to fix his attention on his hooks. The awful sense of something impending was perpetually upon him; the more awful sense of something wanting in his life never left him. The only time that a ray of comfort broke in upon him was when Ronald Kilsyth would come and sit with him, and they would talk of the dead girl for hours together, as Madeleine had predicted they would do. They are very much together now, these two men; Ronald has risen in the service, and he and Wilmot are engaged in ameliorating the condition of the common soldiers and their families, It was a work in which Madeleine at one time took much interest; and this was sufficient to recommend it to Wilmot, who at once took it up.
He is a middle-aged man now, with a grizzled head and a worn grave face. He has wealth and fame, and might have any position; but the world can offer him nothing that arouses in him the slightest interest, unless it be associated with the memory of his lost love.