Мэри Элизабет Брэддон
The Doctor's Wife: A Novel

"I think it is the most beautiful poetry that was ever written," she said.

"Better than Byron's?" asked Mr. Lansdell; "I thought most young ladies made Byron their favourite."

"Oh yes, I love Byron. But then he makes one so unhappy, because one feels that he was so unhappy when he wrote. Fancy his writing the 'Giaour' late at night, after being out at parties where everybody adored him; and if he hadn't written it, he would have gone mad," said Mrs. Gilbert, opening her eyes very wide. "Reading Shelley's poetry seems like being amongst birds and flowers and blue rippling water and summer. It always seems summer in his poetry. Oh, I don't know which I like best."

Was all this affectation, or was it only simple childish reality? Mr. Lansdell was so much given to that dreadful disease, disbelief, that he was slow to accept even the evidence of those eloquent blushes, the earnestness in those wonderful eyes, which could scarcely be assumed at will, however skilled in the light comedy of every-day life Mrs. Gilbert might be. The dogs, who had no misanthropical tendencies, had made friends with Izzie already, and had grouped themselves about her, and laid their big paws and cold wet noses on her knee.

"Shall I take them away?" asked Mr. Lansdell. "I am afraid they will annoy you."

"Oh no, indeed; I am so fond of dogs."

She bent over them and caressed them with her ungloved hands, and dropped Shelley again, and was ashamed of her awkwardness. Would Edith Dombey have been perpetually dropping things? She bent over a big black retriever till her lips touched his forehead, and he was emboldened to flap his great slimy tongue over her face in token of his affection. His dog! Yes, it had come to that already. Mr. Lansdell was that awful being, the mysterious "Lui" of a thousand romances. Roland had been standing upon the bridge all this time; but the bridge was very narrow, and as a labouring man came across at this moment with a reaping-hook across his shoulder, Mr. Lansdell had no choice except to go away, or else sit down on the bench under the tree. So he sat down at a respectful distance from Mrs. Gilbert, and picked up Shelley again; and I think if it had not been for the diversion afforded by the dogs, Isabel would have been likely to drop over into the brawling mill-stream in the intensity of her confusion.

He was there by her side, a real living hero and poet, and her weak sentimental little heart swelled with romantic rapture; and yet she felt that she ought to go away and leave him. Another woman might have looked at her watch, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, and gathered up her books and parasol, and departed with a sweeping curtsey and a dignified adieu to Mr. Lansdell. But Isabel was planted to the spot, held by some fearful but delicious charm, – a magic and a mystic spell, – with which the plashing of the water, and the slow creaking of the mill-wheel, and a faint fluttering of leaves and flowers, the drowzy buzz of multitudinous insects, the thrilling song of Shelley's own skylark in the blue heavens high above her head, blended in one sweet confusion.

I acknowledge that all this was very hard upon the honest-hearted parish doctor, who was at this moment sitting in the faint atmosphere of a cottage chamber, applying fresh layers of cotton wool to the poor tortured arm of a Sunday-school pupil, who had been all but burnt to death in the previous week. But then, if a man chooses to marry a girl because her eyes are black and large and beautiful, he must be contented with the supreme advantage he derives from the special attribute for which he has chosen her: and so long as she does not become a victim to cataract, or aggravated inflammation of the eyelids, or chronic ophthalmia, he has no right to complain of his bargain. If he selects his wife from amongst other women because she is true-hearted and high-minded and trustworthy, he has ample right to be angry with her whenever she ceases to be any one of these things.

Mr. Lansdell and his dogs lingered for some considerable time under the shadow of the big oak. The dogs were rather impatient, and gave expression to their feelings by sundry yawns that were like half-stifled howls, and by eager pantings, and sudden and purposeless leaps, and short broken-off yelps or snaps; but Roland Lansdell was in no hurry to leave the region of Thurston's Crag. Mrs. Gilbert was not stupid, after all; she was something better than a pretty waxen image, animated by limited machinery. That pretty head was tilled with a quaint confusion of ideas, half-formed childish fancies, which charmed and amused this elegant loiterer, who had lived in a world where all the women were clever and accomplished, and able to express all they thought, and a good deal more than they thought, with the clear precision and self-possession of creatures who were thoroughly convinced of the infallibility of their own judgment. Yes, Mr. Lansdell was amused by Isabel's talk; and he led her on very gently, till her shyness vanished, and she dared to look up at his face as she spoke to him; and he attuned his own talk to the key of hers, and wandered with her in the Valhalla of her heroes, from Eugene Aram to Napoleon Buonaparte. But in the midst of all this she looked all in a hurry at the little silver watch that George had given her, and found that it was past three.

"Oh, I must go, if you please," she said; "I have been out ever since eleven o'clock, and we dine at half-past four."

"Let me carry your books a little way for you, then," said Mr. Lansdell.

"But are you going that way?"

"Yes, that is the very way I am going."

The dogs were all excitement at the prospect of a move; they barked and careered about Isabel, and rushed off as if they were going to run ten miles at a stretch, and then wheeled round with alarming suddenness and flew back to Mrs. Gilbert and their master.

The nearest way to Graybridge lay across all that swelling sea of lovely meadow-land, and there were a good many stiles to be crossed and gates to be opened and shut, so the walk occupied some time; and Mr. Lansdell must have had business to transact in the immediate neighbourhood of Graybridge, for he walked all the way through those delicious meadows, and only parted with Isabel at a gate that opened into the high-road near the entrance of the town.

"I suppose you often stroll as far as Thurston's Crag?" Mr. Lansdell said.

"Oh yes, very often. It isn't too long a walk, and it is so pretty."

"It is pretty. Mordred is quite as near to you, though, and I think that you would like the garden at Mordred; there are ruins, you know, and it's altogether very romantic. I will give you and Mr. Gilbert a key, if you would like to come there sometimes. Oh, by the bye, I hope you haven't forgotten your promise to come to luncheon and see the pictures, and all that sort of thing."

No, Isabel had not forgotten; her face flushed suddenly at the thought of this rapturous vista opening before her. She was to see him again, once more, in his own house, and then – and then it would be November, and he would go away, and she would never see him again. No, Isabel had not forgotten; but until this moment all recollection of that invitation to the Priory had been blotted out of Mr. Lansdell's mind. It flashed back upon him quite suddenly now, and he felt that he had been unduly neglectful of these nice simple-hearted Gilberts, in whom his dear good Raymond was so much interested.

"I dare say you are fond of pictures?" he said, interrogatively.

"Oh yes, I am very, very fond of them."

This was quite true. She was fond of everything that was beautiful, – ready to admire everything with ignorant childish enthusiasm, – pictures, and flowers, and fountains, and moonlit landscapes, and wonderful foreign cities, and everything upon this earth that was romantic, and different from her own life.

"Then will you ask Mr. Gilbert to accept an unceremonious invitation, and to bring you to the Priory to luncheon, – say next Tuesday, as that will give me time to invite my cousin Gwendoline, and your old friend Mr. Raymond, and the two little girls who are so fond of you?"

Isabel murmured something to the effect that she would be very happy, and she was sure her husband would be very happy. She thought that no creature in the world could be otherwise than enraptured by such an invitation: and then she began to think of what she would wear, and to remember that there were greasy streaks and patches upon her brown silk wedding-dress, which was the best and richest garment her wardrobe contained. Oh, if George would only give her a pale pearly-coloured silk that she had seen in a shop-window at Murlington, and a black silk mantle, and white bonnet, and pearly gloves and boots and parasol to match the dress! There were people in the world rich enough to have all these things, she thought, – thrice-blessed creatures, who always walked in silk attire.

Mr. Lansdell begged her to write him a line to say if Tuesday would suit Mr. Gilbert. They were at the last gate by this time, and he lifted his hat with one hand while he held out the other to Isabel. She touched it very lightly, with fingers that trembled a little at the thrilling contact. Her gloves were rolled up in a little ball in her pocket. She was at an age when gloves are rather a nuisance than otherwise; it is only when women come to years of discretion that they are learned as to the conflicting merits of Houbigant and Piver.

"Good-bye. I shall see Gwendoline this afternoon; and I shall rely upon you for Tuesday. Hi, Frollo, Quasimodo, Caspar!"

He was gone, with his dogs and a cloud of dust about his heels. Even the dust imparted a kind of grandeur to him. He seemed a being who appeared and disappeared in a cloud, after the manner of some African genii.

Graybridge church clock chimed the half-hour after four, and Mrs. Gilbert hurried home, and went into the common parlour, where dinner was laid, with her face a little flushed, and her dress dusty. George was there already, whistling very loudly, and whittling a stick with a big knobby-handled clasp-knife.

"Why, Izzie," he said, "what have you been doing with yourself?"

"Oh, George!" exclaimed Mrs. Gilbert, in a tone of mingled triumph and rapture, "I have met Mr. Lansdell, and he was so polite, and he stopped and talked to me ever so long; and we're to go there on Tuesday, and Lady Gwendoline Pomphrey is to be there to meet us, – only think of that!"

"Where?" cried George.

"Why, at Mordred Priory, of course. We're to go to luncheon: and, oh, George, remember you must never call it 'lunch.' And I'm to write and say if you'll go; but of course you will go, George."

"Humph!" muttered Mr. Gilbert, reflectively; "Tuesday's an awkward day, rather. But still, as you say, Izzie, it's a splendid connection, and a man oughtn't to throw away such a chance of extending his practice. Yes, I think I'll manage it, my dear. You may write to say we'll go."

And this was all; no rapture, no spark of enthusiasm. To tell the truth, the surgeon was hungry, and wanted his dinner. It came in presently, smelling very savoury, – but, oh, so vulgar! It was Irish stew, – a horrible, plebeian dinner, such as Hibernian labourers might devour after a day's bricklaying. Isabel ate very little, and picked out all the bits of onion and put them aside on her plate. Come what might, she would never, never eat onions again. That degradation, at least, it was in her own power to avoid.

After dinner, while George was busy in the surgery, Mrs. Gilbert set to work to compose her letter to Mr. Lansdell. She was to write to him – to him! It was to be only a ceremonious letter, very brief and commonplace: "Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert present their compliments to Mr. Lansdell, and will be happy to," &c., &c. But even such a letter as this was a critical composition. In that sublime region in which Mr. Lansdell lived, there might be certain words and phrases that were indispensable, – there might be some arbitrary mode of expression, not to know which would argue yourself unknown. Isabel looked into "Dombey," but there was no help for her there. She would have been very glad if she could have found "Mrs. Grainger presents her compliments to Mr. Dombey," or "Miss F. Dombey has the pleasure to inform Mr. Gay – " or something of that kind, anywhere amongst those familiar pages. However, she was obliged to write her letter as best she might, on a sheet of paper that was very thick and slippery, and strongly impregnated with patchouli; and she sealed the envelope with a profile of Lord Byron imprinted upon white wax, the only stick that was to be had in Graybridge, and to find which good-natured Mr. Jeffson scoured the town, while Isabel was writing her letter.

Roland Lansdell, ^Esqre.,

Mordred Priory.

To write such an address was in itself a pleasure. It was dark by the time Mrs. Gilbert had finished her letter, and then she began to think of her dress, – her dress for Tuesday, – the Tuesday which was henceforth to stand out from amongst all the other days in her life.

Would George give her a new silk dress? No; that was impossible. He would give her a sovereign, and she might "do up" the old one. She was fain to be content and thankful for so much; and she went up-stairs with a candle, and came down presently with two or three dresses on her arm. Among them there was a white muslin, a good deal the worse for wear, but prettier than the silk; a soft transparent fabric, and with lace about it. Mrs. Gilbert determined upon wearing this dress; and early the next morning she went out and consulted with a little dressmaker, and brought the young woman home with her, and sat down with her in the sunny parlour to unpick and refashion and improve this white muslin robe. She told the dressmaker that she was going on a visit to Mordred Priory, and by nightfall almost everybody in Graybridge knew that Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert had received an invitation from Mr. Lansdell.

CHAPTER XV.
ROLAND SAYS, "AMEN."

Isabel had met Mr. Lansdell on Thursday; and by Saturday night all her preparations were made, and the white dress, and a white muslin mantle to match it, were in the hands of Mrs. Jeffson, who was to get them up in the highest style of clear-starching. The sovereign had done a great deal. Isabel had bought a new riband for her straw hat and a pair of pale straw-coloured gloves, and all manner of small matters necessary to the female toilet upon gala occasions. And now that everything was done, the time between Saturday night and Tuesday lay all before them, – a dreary blank, that must be endured somehow or other. I should be ashamed to say how very little of the Rector's sermon Isabel heard on Sunday morning. She was thinking of Mordred Priory all the time she was in church, and the beautiful things that Mr. Lansdell would say to her, and the replies that she would make. She imagined it all, as was her habit to do.

And on this summer Sunday, this blessed day of quiet and repose, when there was no sound of the sickle in the corn-fields, and only the slow drip, drip, drip of the waterdrops from the motionless mill-wheel at Thurston's Crag, Roland Lansdell lounged all day in the library at Mordred Priory, reading a little, writing a little, smoking and pondering a great deal. What should he do with himself? That was the grand question which this young man found himself very often called upon to decide. He would stop at Mordred till he was tired of Mordred, and then he would go to Paris; and when he was weary of that brilliant city, whose best delights familiarity had rendered indifferent to him, he would go Rhine-ward, over all the old ground again, amongst all the old people. Ten years is a very long time when you have fifteen thousand a year and nothing particular to do with yourself or your money. Roland Lansdell had used up all the delights of civilized Europe; and the pleasures that seemed so freshly effervescent to other men were to him as champagne that has grown flat and vapid in the unemptied glasses on a deserted banquet-table.

He sat to-day in the great window of the library – a deeply-embayed Tudor window, jutting out upon a broad stone terrace, along whose balustrade a peacock stalked slowly in the sunshine. There were books on either side of the window; solid ranges of soberly-bound volumes, that reached from floor to ceiling on every side of the room; for the Lansdells had been a studious and book-learned race time out of mind, and the library at Mordred was worthy of its name.

There was only one picture – a portrait by Rembrandt, framed in a massive border of carved oak – above the high chimney-piece; a grave grand face, with solemn eyes that followed you wherever you went; a splendid earnest face, with the forehead mysteriously shadowed by the broad brim of a steeple-crowned hat.

In the dark melancholy of that sombre countenance there was some vague resemblance to the face of the young man lounging in the sunny window this afternoon, smoking and pondering, and looking up now and then to call to the peacock on the balustrade.

Beyond that balustrade there was a fair domain, bounded far away by a battlemented wall; a lofty ivy-mantled wall, propped every here and there with mighty buttresses; a wall that had been built in the days when William of Normandy enriched his faithful followers with the fairest lands of his newly-conquered realm. Beyond that grand old boundary arose the square turret of the village church, coeval with the oldest part of Mordred Priory. The bells were swinging in the turret now, and the sound of them floated towards Roland Lansdell as he lounged in the open window.

"Only thirty years of age," he thought; "and how long it seems since I sat on my mother's knee in the shadowy, sleepy old pew yonder, and heard the vicar's voice humming under the sounding-board above our heads! Thirty years – thirty profitless, tiresome years; and there is not a reaper in the fields, or a shock-headed country lad that earns sixpence a day by whooping to the birds amongst the corn, that is not of more use to his fellow-creatures than I am. I suppose though, at the worst, I'm good for trade. And I try my best not to do any harm – Heaven knows I don't want to do any harm."

It must have been a strange transition of ideas that at this moment led Mr. Lansdell to think of that chance meeting with the doctor's dark-eyed wife under the dense foliage of Lord Thurston's oak.

"She's a pretty creature," he thought; "a pretty, inexperienced, shy little creature. Just the sort of woman that a hardened profligate or a roué would try to pervert and entangle. There's something really bewitching in all that enthusiastic talk about Byron and Shelley. 'What a pity he was drowned!' and 'Oh, if he had only fought for Greece, and been victorious, like Leonidas, you know,' – poor little thing! I wonder how much she knows about Leonidas? – 'how splendid that would have been! but, oh, to think that he should have a fever – a fever just such as kills common people – and die, just when he had proved himself so great and noble!' It's the newest thing to find all these silly school-girl fancies confusing the brain of a woman who ought to be the most practical person in Graybridge, – a parish surgeon's wife, who should not, according to the fitness of things, have an idea above coarse charity flannels and camomile-tea and gruel. How she will open her eyes when she sees this room; and all the books in it! Poor little thing! I shall never forget what a pretty picture she made sitting under the oak, with the greenish grey of the great knotted trunk behind her, and the blue water in the foreground."

And then Mr. Lansdell's ideas, which seemed especially irrelevant this afternoon, broke off abruptly. "I hope I may never do any harm," he thought. "I am not a good man or a useful man; but I don't think I have ever done much harm."

He lit another cigar, and strolled out upon the terrace, and from the terrace to the great quadrangular stable-yard. Upon one side of the quadrangle there was a cool arched way that had once been a cloister; and I regret to say that the stone cells in which the monks of Mordred had once spent their slow quiet days and meditative nights now did duty as loose-boxes for Mr. Lansdell's hunters. Openings had been knocked through the dividing walls; for horses are more socially-disposed creatures than monks, and are apt to pine and sicken if entirely deprived of companionship with their kind. Roland went into three or four of the boxes, and looked at the horses, and sighed for the time when the hunting season should commence and Midlandshire might be tolerable.

"I want occupation," he thought, "physical wear and tear, and all that sort of thing. I let my mind run upon all manner of absurd things for want of occupation."

He yawned and threw away his cigar, and strode across the yard towards the open window of a harness-room, at which a man was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, and with a Sunday paper before him.

"You may bring the Diver round in half-an-hour, Christie," said Mr. Lansdell; "I shall ride over to Conventford this afternoon."

"Yes, sir."

Roland Lansdell did ride to Conventford; galloping his hardest into Waverly, to the scandal of the sober townspeople, who looked up from their tea-tables half-scared at the sound of the clattering hoofs upon the uneven pavement; and then dawdling at a foot-pace all along the avenue which extends in unbroken beauty from Waverly to Conventford. The streets of this latter town were crowded with gaily-dressed factory-girls, and the bells from three separate spires were clanging loudly in the summer air. Mr. Lansdell rode very slowly, thinking of "all manner of absurd things" as he went along; and he entered Mr. Raymond's pretty drawing-room at Oakbank just in time to catch that gentleman drinking tea with the orphans.

Of course Roland had forgotten that his friend dined at an early hour on Sundays, and he had come to dine; but it wasn't of the least consequence, he would have some tea; yes, and cold beef, by all means, if there was cold beef.

A side-table was laid for him, and a great sirloin was brought in. But Mr. Lansdell did not make much havoc with the joint. He and Mr. Raymond had a good deal to say to each other: and Mr. Lansdell took very kindly to the orphans, and asked them a good many questions about their studies and their present governess, who was a native of Conventford, and had gone out that evening to drink tea with her friends: and then, somehow or other, the conversation rambled on to their late governess, Isabel Sleaford, and the orphans had a great deal to say about her. She was so nice, and she told them such pretty things: "Eugene Aram" and the "Giaour" – how wicked Black Hassan was to tie his poor "sister" up in a sack and drown her, because he didn't wish her to marry the Giaour! Miss Sleaford had modified the romantic story in deference to the tender ages of her pupils. Yes, the young ladies said, they loved Miss Sleaford dearly. She was so nice; and sometimes, at night, when they begged her very, very hard, she would ACT (the orphans uttered this last word in an awfully distinct whisper); and, oh, that was beautiful! She would do Hamlet and the Ghost: when she stood one way, with a black cloak over her shoulder, she was Hamlet; when she stood the other way, with a mahogany ruler in her hand, she was the Ghost. And she acted the Ghost so beautifully, that sometimes they were frightened, and wouldn't go outside the schoolroom-door without a candle, and somebody's hand to hold – tight.

And then Mr. Raymond laughed, and told Roland what he thought of Isabel, phrenologically and otherwise.

"Poor little thing! I think there must be something sad about the story of her early life," he said; "for she so evidently shrinks from all allusion to it. It's the old story, I suppose, – an unkind step-mother and an uncomfortable home. Under these circumstances, I was very glad to see her married to a well-disposed, honest-hearted young man."

"She was very fond of Mr. Gilbert, I suppose, – very much in love with him?" said Roland, after a little pause.

"In love with him! not a bit of it. She was very fond of him, I dare say – not in the sentimental manner in which she discourses about her poets and her heroes; but she has every reason to be fond of him as a faithful protector and a good friend."

Mr. Raymond looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon the face of his young kinsman. But it was dusk by this time; and in the dim light of the room Charles Raymond could not see the expression of Roland's face; he could only see the attitude of his head, which drooped a little forward, supported by his hand.

"I lent my voice to the bringing about of Isabel Gilbert's marriage," Mr. Raymond said, slowly; "and God grant that no man may ever be base enough or cruel enough to interpose himself between these two!"

"Amen!" answered Roland Lansdell, in a deep solemn voice.

And then he walked to the window and looked out into the twilit garden, above which the faint summer moon had newly arisen.

"If I could have believed in that splendid fable of a future life, that grand compensating balance for all the sorrows and mistakes of this lower world, what a good man I might have been!" he thought, as he stood there looking out, with his arm resting upon the broad wooden sash, and his head upon his arm.