CHAPTER II.AN INITIAL LETTER.
Sir Roderick decidedly improved on acquaintance. During the next two days his health promised to return. He declined the offer of a private ward.
“I like to watch what goes on,” he said to Hugh. “Of course there is a good deal to see that is painful. But I may not have such an opportunity of realising certain conditions of human nature again.”
Then he descanted upon the different cases, upon the various characteristics of the maimed and injured men who were either inmates, or who were brought in, upon the method and patient quietude of the nurses, &c.
“You are a practised observer,” said Hugh. Upon which they began a conversation that partially showed Hugh there was a bond of sympathy between them. Both were dissatisfied with life generally, and with certain matters particularly. Both were prompted to study deeply, and ponder much on the great problems which have puzzled philosophers from Thales to Schopenhauer; and although Sir Roderick was a materialist and pessimist, and Hugh had taken refuge in a high ideal optimism which was to a certain extent original, they met on the common ground of mental disquietude.
Seen thus, Sir Roderick seemed another man. Weak though he still was, his eyes sparkled, his face was brightenedby an almost youthful animation. Hugh was about to end the interview, fearing overfatigue for his patient, when Sir Roderick stopped short. His countenance changed. His brother, Mr. Edmund Pym, came into the ward with the secretary of the hospital.
Edmund Pym was a short, wizened little man, with pinched features and blinking eyes, scant white hair and smooth shaven face. Greater opposites in personal appearance than these two brothers could hardly be.
He glanced at Hugh through his eye-glass, nodded, somewhat awkwardly asked the invalid how he was getting on, then stood fidgeting at the bedside.
Hugh offered him a chair, but Sir Roderick gave him such a look that he would have retired precipitately but for his patient’s apologetic—
“Pray don’t go, Mr. Paull, I want to speak to you. My brother cannot stay long.”
“No, I cannot stay long,” said Mr. Edmund, uncomfortably. “I only came in to see how you were getting on, and to tell you how sorry Mary and the girls are about this. Mary will come and see you, if you like?”
“But I don’t like,” interrupted Sir Roderick, pettishly. “Tell her—anything you please. I don’t mind Mary and the girls when I am well. But they can’t come here. If they do, I sha’n’t see them.”
Mr. Pym nervously assured his brother that “Mary and the girls” would not dream of doing anything to displease him. They were most anxious to show their solicitude and sympathy, that was all.
“Tell them that as long as they hold their tongues and don’t gossip about my infernal accident, they may do what they please,” said Sir Roderick, surlily. “And if they must chatter about it, tell them to pray for me.Yes, tell them that. They’ll think the black sheep is coming into the fold at last. It’ll please them, and won’t do me any harm.”
Mr. Edmund Pym was evidently embarrassed, and did not stay long. Hugh pitied him, and accompanying him to the end of the ward apologised for the irascibility of the patient, which was not only natural after the shock, but was, if anything, a favorable symptom, &c.
“Oh! I am accustomed to my brother, Mr. Paull,” he said, with a gentleness that touched the young house-surgeon. “He is naturally irritable. We take it for what it is worth. He has had a great deal of trouble in his life, and it has soured him. And he is quite a recluse. But he has a good heart, a wonderfully kind heart.”
Then he thanked Hugh for his attention to the patient and hurried off, evidently relieved that the visit was over.
“H’m!” muttered Hugh to himself, as he slowly returned to the patient. “H’m! It strikes me that my pessimistic friend is, like most pessimists, a bit of a Tartar.”
Sir Roderick welcomed him with a forced smile.
“I daresay you think me ungracious?” he said, his long, withered hand nervously fingering the bedclothes. “I’m not—at least, not exactly. I can put up with my brother when I’m well, but just now I can’t. The fact is, he is one of the most woman-ridden men on the face of the earth. His wife is a bigot and a snob, and brings up her daughters bigots and snobs. And they rule him. Rule him? They sit upon him. They drive him, like the old donkey he is. He was always the same. At school they called him Neddy, because he took everythingso meekly. It used to enrage me, youngster as I was. I used to say to him: ‘Man, why can’t you hold up your head?’ And I’ve gone on saying it to him all through life. If there’s one thing I despise, it’s a man who can’t hold up his head and defend himself.”
“Against the women?” suggested Hugh. He had seated himself in the chair he had offered Mr. Pym. His arms were folded. He saw that he must treat Sir Roderick boldly, if they were to be friends. And some inward feeling told him that Fate, or Providence, had brought them together—that at least they were to be well acquainted with each other, if nothing more. “I am afraid, sir, that you are a woman-hater.”
He half expected his patient to turn upon him somewhat after the manner in which he had snubbed his brother, in which case he would have left the old gentleman to himself, as far as conversation went, for the future. Instead, Sir Roderick smiled, and seemed gratified.
“No, Hamlet, my friend,” he said, with a sort of pleased chuckle, leaning back against his pillows. “You must excuse my calling you Hamlet, but with your serious speculative nature, the name seems to fit you exactly. No, I am no woman-hater. I know we can’t do without them. But I object to them out of their proper place, as I object to cats out of the kitchen, or mastiffs and Newfoundlands in the drawing-room. The drudge woman and the ornamental woman are necessary evils. When strictly kept under, they serve their purpose. But bowed down to and worshipped as my unfortunate brother fetishes his womankind, they are only fit for extermination—as if they were so many rats.” He spoke viciously. Then turning to Hugh, he said: “I supposeyou consider me a barbarian? Like the rest, you adore a petticoat—eh?”
“No,” said Hugh. “But I can’t say I am with you in the extermination idea; I have not known any domineering women. My mother was soft, gentle—more a helpmeet than a companion to my father, who is a very studious man. She was his right hand. His is not a mind to require a second self. My sisters are like her.”
“I understand,” said Sir Roderick, in a depreciatory tone. “Good specimens of the domestic genus. But what about the lady-love, the ideal realised, the creature apart—eh?”
“I have so many, you see, Sir Roderick,” said Hugh. “Silent lassies, who only speak when spoken to, and wait patiently side by side for days, even weeks, till I throw the handkerchief. Their petticoats are half-calf—morocco—cloth, lettered—”
“Oh! your books,” said the old man. “Ah! well, your turn will come, your turn will come! And the longer you wait the worse it’ll be.”
“May your words not come true,” said Hugh, as he went off, amused, yet—when he thought of the portrait in the locket, and of the telegram sent to “L. Pym”—somewhat puzzled.
During the time that Sir Roderick remained in the hospital—between three and four days—the subject of the fair sex was mutually tabooed by doctor and patient. They had interesting conversations, and Sir Roderick expressing a wish to see Hugh’s treatise, the evening before the old gentleman left the hospital he supped in the house-surgeon’s room, and Hugh read him portions of the work, which he was pleased greatly to approve.
“You must come and see me in the country,” hesaid, when, after writing a check for a handsome donation to the hospital fund, and insisting upon Hugh’s acceptance of a ruby ring he had ordered to be sent from his town house, he was taking leave of those of the staff who had been good Samaritans to him in his weakness. “You must come and stay. They think me an unsociable old brute, do my neighbors and people round about. But they wouldn’t care for me if they knew me. We have nothing in common. My friends are men of about my own age, with similar tastes. I hope you and I will be friends. Although I am nearly old enough to be your grandfather—minds like yours don’t count by years.”
Hugh answered that he was grateful, obliged—hoped they would be friends, certainly, etcetera. But as Sir Roderick leaned forward and nodded gravely to him from his brougham window when the carriage drove off, he felt a strange sensation—was it an uneasy feeling of aversion for this peculiar patient who had occupied his time and his thoughts these few days? Was he relieved by his departure? He could not tell. The ruby ring on his finger almost annoyed him. He locked it away in his desk, and tried to lock away the recollection of Sir Roderick with it.
Then he went about his work with a strange oppression of mind and weariness of body. It was an operating day. A most interesting—in fact, a thrilling operation took place in the theatre—one which set all the students and surgical nurses talking. But at the most critical moment he seemed to see Sir Roderick’s face and to hear that short, cynical laugh. He felt as if he were haunted.
As the days and weeks went on, the sensationlessened. But when the post came in he generally remembered Sir Roderick. At least, for the first few weeks after the accident he looked for the large, crooked scrawl he had noticed on the cheque, among his correspondence. When no letter, no news came of the strange old man, he began to think of their short acquaintance as of one of those purposeless episodes which occur in the lives of most medical men.
As spring blossomed into summer, he began to forget. When he had his short holiday, and was once more in his childhood’s home among the fields and woods, with flowers scenting the summer air and the birds singing all around, the remembrance of the weird old Rembrandt face on the pillow in the hospital ward came back into his mind as might some curious dream. Alas! it would have been better for Hugh Paull if indeed it could have been but a dream.
Kilby was a picturesque village among the Derbyshire hills. A stream ran through the smiling little valley. It meandered through the rectory grounds. There was no regular village street. There were groups of cottages clustering together about the old inn, and around the church. The rectory was a grey stone, gabled house, in grounds that the Reverend John Paull had enlarged and improved each year since he “read himself in” twenty-seven years ago. In front of the house was a large, square lawn, with spreading beeches and straight conifers on either side. Opposite, a yew hedge divided the lawn from the beautiful flower garden with the masses of bloom bordering the winding paths. Then came the river, famous for its succulent trout, and beyond, grassy banks, a row of elms, and the sloping hills.
Although Hugh missed the genial presence of his sweet-faced little mother, his father seemed determined to be cheery during his visit, and his sisters Maud and Daisy had made up their minds to be bright in their brother’s presence, so only indulged in their inevitable fits of grief in private.
“Do not let—Hugh—miss me,” had been their mother’s constant exhortation during her last brief illness. “He is such a gloomy boy. Pray be cheerful with him.”
Mrs. Paull herself had lived cheerfully; and as she had lived, so she died—with a smile of encouragement to those around her on her lips. To her, life was merely one scene in the eternal drama of the human soul.
When the rector chose the words, “She is not dead, but sleepeth,” to be engraven on the stone at the head of her grave, he felt indeed that his Maggie was not, could not be dead. Dead? Sometimes he believed they were nearer and dearer to each other now than when for the first time he took his love into his arms and kissed her lips.
Thus it was hardly a house of mourning into which Hugh came. As soon as he became accustomed to the empty chair, the absence of the kindly voice, and the sombre garments of his sisters and the maids, he successfully fought low spirits.
The ordeal of the first visit to his mother’s grave over, he also struggled to be unselfish, and not to add to his father’s and sisters’ grief by a mournful presence. So he walked about the parish with the rector as usual, drove his sisters in the pony-chaise, and fished with them in the old haunts of the capricious trout, which sometimessuddenly and unaccountably changed their favourite lurking-places, and as suddenly and unaccountably returned to them again.
In the evenings, when the Rector glanced through the papers and the girls worked by the light of the shaded lamps, he told them stories of the hospital: the strange beings that came under his notice, the hard, cruel tales of some of their lives.
About a week after his arrival, he was reminded of Sir Roderick. In the weekly journal,Speculative Thought, there was a letter on some subject that bore upon certain theories he held in regard to animal magnetism. It was signed “R. Pym.” At dinner he inquired of his father whether he had noticed it. He had not. So, after dinner Hugh read it aloud.
“Why, I should have thought you had written that,” said his father. “That is a pet theory of yours, is it not?”
“The old thief!” said Hugh, half to himself, but with an amused smile. “At least, I have no right to say that. It is written by Sir Roderick Pym. Of that I have little or no doubt. We had a discussion on the subject. He defended the opposite view. Now, he is on my side. That is what I can’t make out.”
“You brought him round to your way of thinking, I suppose,” said the rector, with a satisfied glance at his son. “You certainly have the gift of persuasion. Many a time, in our walks and talks, you have staggered me. I have felt that your hypotheses were uncalled for and preposterous. But for the life of me I could not advance anything solid in the way of refutation.”
“You certainly haven’t got the gift of persuasion, papa,” said the fair-haired, round-faced Daisy. “Gileswas drunk again last night. Mary Giles has a black eye to-day. I am sure I thought your sermon on Sunday week would do something. But old Brown went to the Arms just the same all last week, Mrs. Brown told me. I said, quite aghast: ‘What! after papa’s sermon?’ And she said: ‘Lawk, miss, Brown do go to church, I know, but he allers settles hisself for a good sleep while the sermon’s a-goin’ on.’”
“One man, single-handed, is powerless against alcohol,” said the rector, helplessly. “I’ve fought it these seven-and-twenty years, and haven’t scored a point. If they will drink, they will drink—an earthquake would not stop them.”
The conversation drifted away from Sir Roderick Pym. But next morning it drifted back again.
“There is a letter for you, Hugh; such a curious-looking letter,” said Maud, a tall, dark, handsome girl, who was pouring out the tea and coffee when her brother came down to breakfast. “A most original handwriting. You must tell me whose it is. I have been reading up graphology lately, and there seems to me a great deal of sense in it. At least, my friends’ handwritings correspond wonderfully with what I know of their characters.”
“I warn you, Maud is getting quite a dangerous person,” said Daisy, with wide-open eyes. “I found her reading one of your medical books the other day, Hugh.”
But Hugh did not hear, or heed her. He was turning over the square, grey envelope, with a big black P stamped on the flap. The first communication from Sir Roderick after ten weeks’ silence. There was no mistaking the large, crooked scrawl. The stamp wasstuck on corner-ways. After turning over the closed letter once more, he replaced it by his plate and began his breakfast. He could not bring himself to open that letter in the presence of his sisters. Why, he could not have told.
“You are not going to open your letter?” asked Daisy, wonderingly, as she took her brother’s egg out of the egg-boiler.
He was saved the reply by the entrance of his father. After breakfast, he escaped into the garden; and there, by the river, among the flowers and in the sunshine, the first link of the terrible life-chain which was to crush his heart was forged. He opened the letter. If he could have guessed, have known, would he have cast it from him into the stream to be carried away—out of his reach and ken, for ever? In after days he asked himself this with untold bitterness of soul, but no answer came.
The contents of the envelope, which had been redirected and forwarded by the secretary of the hospital, were simple enough.
Sir Roderick wrote, dating from the Pinewood, near F——, Surrey, as follows:—
“My good young Friend,—It must be about time for you to claim a holiday. Let it be spent here. You will like the place; that it will be congenial I feel sure. Let me know day and hour, and the carriage will meet you at F—— Station.
“Yours,Roderick Pym.”
Hugh read it twice, thrice. At first, he had (so he thought) been full of self-gratulation that he had so complete an excuse to decline the invitation as this, that his furlough from hospital, spent in his own home, wasnearly at an end. But, as he paced the garden walk, he wondered whether, in reality, he had won over Sir Roderick to his views upon the subject of that letter to the weekly journalSpeculative Thought, or whether the baronet had written it in one of his sardonic humours as a sort of grim jest. He would like to know. Perhaps Sir Roderick had been laughing at him in his sleeve during those long talks in the hospital. Gruesome thought, not to be borne! But he would like to know.
“I should do no harm by running down for a day,” he thought. “I could even leave before the dinner hour, and not have to encounter Lady Pym.”
The portrait in the locket, no less than the silence on the subject of Sir Roderick’s young wife on the part of the housekeeper and Mr. Edmund Pym, had prejudiced Hugh greatly against the lady to whom he had indited that telegram. Sir Roderick’s contempt for women, too, induced the idea that L. Pym, however charming she might be, was not a woman to deserve either respect or love.
Seldom vacillating, to-day Hugh was as irresolute as any woman. One minute he resolved to accept the invitation, the next he told himself it would be better to let it stand over for the present. At last he got angry with himself, went into the house, asked Maud if he might use her davenport in the drawing-room, and presently posted a letter to Sir Roderick with his own hands, lest once more he should change his mind. In this he accepted the invitation to the Pinewood for the following Saturday morning.
Why he was reluctant to enlighten his family on this subject, he could not for the life of him make out.But whenever he neared it in conversation, he felt uncomfortable. The days passed. He told them all he should return to town the following Friday. But of the projected visit to the Pinewood he said not one word.
The sweet summer days came and went, one by one. Once more Hugh said good-bye, perhaps for months, to the old garden; had a farewell fish in the river, and after a reluctant parting with father and sisters, returned—to meet his strange fate.