"Yes," said old Dr Rippon, who had listened to this astonishing rhapsody with evident interest, with sympathetic and intelligent eye; "but a time will come even to you, when death will appear more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life."
Courtney was silent, and looked for a second or two deadly sick. He cast a searching eye on Dr Rippon.
"That's the one thought," said he, "that makes me sometimes feel as if I werealready under the horror of the shade. It's not that I am afraid of dying—of merely ceasing to live; it is that life may cease to be delightful and friendly, and become an intolerable, decaying burden."
He filled a glass with Burgundy, and set himself attentively to drink it, lingering on the bouquet and the flavour. Lefevre beheld him with surprise, for he had never before seen Julius take wine: he was wont to say that converse with good company was intoxicating enough for him.
"Why, Julius," said Lefevre, "that's a new experience you are trying,—is it not?"
Julius looked embarrassed an instant, and then replied, "I have begun it very recently. I did not think it wise to postpone the experience till it might become an absolute necessity."
Old Dr Rippon watched him empty the glass with a musing eye. "'I sought in mine heart,'" said he, gravely quoting, "'to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom.'"
"True," said Julius, considering him closely. "But, for completeness' sake, you ought to quote also, 'Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy.'"
Lefevre looked from the one to the other in some darkness of perplexity.
"You appear, John," said the old doctor, with a smile, "not to know one of the oldest and greatest of books: you will find it included in your Bible. Mr Courtney clearly knows it. I should not be surprised to hear he had adopted its philosophy of 'wisdom and madness and folly.'"
"Surely you cannot say," remarked Julius, "that the writer of that book had what is called a 'philosophy.' He was moved by an irresistible impulse, of which he gives you the explanation when he uses that magnificent sentence about having 'the world set in his heart.'"
"Yes," said the old doctor, in a subdued, backward voice, regarding Julius with the contemplative eyes of memory. "You will, I hope, forgive me when I say that you remind me very much of a gentleman who took the name of Courtney. I knew him years ago: was he a relation of yours, I wonder?"
"Possibly," said Julius, seeming scarcely interested; "though the name of Courtney, I believe, is not very uncommon." Then, turning to Lefevre, he said, "I hope you don't think I wish to make light of yourgrand idea. I only mean that you must widen your view, if you would work it out to success."
With that Lefevre became more curious to hear Dr Rippon's story. So when they went to the drawing-room he got the old gentleman into a secluded corner, and reminded him of his promise.
"Yes," said the doctor, "it is a romantic story. About forty years ago,—yes, about forty: it was immediately after the fall of Louis Philippe,—I went with my friend Lord Rokeby to Madrid. He went as ambassador, and I as his physician. There was then at the Spanish Court a very handsome hidalgo, Don Hernando—I forget all his names, but his surname was De Sandoval. He was of the bluest blood in Spain, and a marquis, but poor as a church mouse. He had a great reputationfor gallant adventures and for mysterious scientific studies. On the last ground I sought and cultivated his acquaintance. But he was a proud, reserved person, and I could never quite make out what his studies were, except that he read a great deal, and believed firmly in the Arabic philosophers and alchemists of the middle ages; and he would sometimes talk with the same sort of rhapsodical mysticism as this young man delights you with. We did not have much opportunity for developing an intimacy in any case; for he fell in love with the daughter of our Chief Secretary of Legation, a bright, lovely English girl, and that ended disastrously for his position in Madrid. He made his proposals to her father, and had them refused; chiefly, I believe, on account of his loose reputation. The girl, too, wasthe heiress of an uncle's property on this curious condition, it appeared,—that whoever should marry her should take the uncle's name ofCourtney. Don Hernando and the young lady disappeared; they were married, and he took the name of Courtney, and was forbidden to return to Madrid. He and his wife settled in Paris, where I used to meet them frequently; then they travelled, I believe, and I lost sight of them. I returned to Paris on a visit some few years ago, and I asked an old friend about the Courtneys; he believed they were both dead, though he could give me no certain news about them."
"Supposing," said Lefevre, "that this Julius were their son, do you know of any reason why he should be reserved about his parentage?"
"No," said the old man, "no;—unless it be that Hernando was not episcopal in his affections; but I should think the young man is scarcely Puritan enough to be ashamed of that."
Lefevre and the old man both looked round for Julius. They caught sight of him and Leonora Lefevre standing one on either side of a window, with their eyes fixed upon each other.
"The young lady," said the old doctor, "seems much taken up with him."
"Yes," said Lefevre; "and she's my sister."
"Ah," said the old doctor; "I fear my remark was rather unreserved."
"It is true," said Lefevre.
He left Dr Rippon, to seek his mother. He found her excited and warm, and without a word to spare for him.
"You wanted," said he, "some serious talk with me, mother?"
"Oh yes," said she; "but I can't talk seriously now: I can scarcely talk at all. But do you see how Nora and Julius are taken up with each other? I never before saw such a pair of moonstruck mortals! I believe I have heard of the moon having a magnetic influence on people: do you think it has? But he is a charming man!"—glancing towards Julius—"I'm more than half in love with him myself. Now I must go. Come quietly one afternoon, and then we can talk."
Her son abstained from recounting, as he had proposed to himself, what he had heard from Dr Rippon: he would reserve it for the quiet afternoon. He took his leave almost immediately, bearing with him a deep impression—like a stronglybitten etching wrought on his memory—of his last glimpse of the drawing-room: Nora and Julius set talking across a small table, and the tall, pale, gaunt figure of Dr Rippon approaching and stooping between them. It seemed a sinister reminder of the words the old doctor had addressed to Julius,—"A time will come when death will appear more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life!"
The Man of the Crowd.
Ina few days Dr Lefevre found a quiet afternoon, and went and told his mother the story of the Spanish marquis which he had got from Dr Rippon. She hailed the story with delight. Courtney was a fascinating figure to her before: it needed but that to clothe him with a complete romantic heroism; for, of course, she did not doubt that he was the son of the Spanish grandee. She wished to put it to him at once whether he was not, but she was dissuaded by her son from mentioning the matter yet to either Julius or her daughter.
"If he wishes," said Lefevre, "to keep it secret for some reason, it would be an impertinence to speak about it. We shall, however, have a perfect right to ask him about himself if his attentions to Nora go on."
Soon afterwards (it was really a fortnight; but in a busy life day melts into day with amazing rapidity), Lefevre was surprised at dinner, and somewhat irritated, by a letter from his mother. She wrote that they had seen nothing of Julius Courtney for three or four days,—which was singular, since for the past three or four weeks he had been a daily visitor; latterly he had begun to look fagged and ill, and it was possible he was confined to his room,—though, after all, that was scarcely likely, for he had not answered a note of inquiry which she had sent. Shebegged her son to call at his chambers, the more so as Nora was pining in Julius's absence to a degree which made her mother very anxious.
With professional suspicion Lefevre told himself that if Julius, with his magnificent health, was fallen ill, it must be for some outrageous reason. But even if he was ill, he need not be unmannerly: he might have let his friends who had been in the habit of seeing him daily know what had come to him. Was it possible, the doctor thought, that he was repenting of having given Nora and her mother so much cause to take his assiduous attentions seriously? He resolved to see Julius at once, if he were at his chambers.
He left his wine unfinished (to the delight of his grave and silent man in black), hastily took his hat from its peg inthe hall, and passed out into the street, while his man held the door open. In two minutes he had passed the northern gateway of the Albany, which, as most people know, is just at the southern end of Savile Row. Courtney's door was speedily opened in response to his peremptory summons.
"Is your master at home, Jenkins?" asked Lefevre of the well-dressed serving-man, who looked distinguished enough to be master himself.
"No, doctor," answered Jenkins; "he is not."
"Gone out," said Lefevre, "to the club or to dinner, I suppose?"
"No, doctor," repeated Jenkins; "he is not. He went away four days ago."
"Went away!" exclaimed Lefevre.
"He do sometimes go away by himself,sir. He is so fond of the country, and he likes to be by himself. It is the only thing that do him good."
"Becomes solitary, does he?" said Lefevre. "Yes; intelligent, impulsive persons like him, that live at high pressure, often have black moods." That was not quite what he meant, but it was enough for Jenkins.
"Yes, sir," said Jenkins; "he do sometimes have 'em black. He don't seem to take no pride in himself, as he do usual—don't seem to care somehow if he look a gentleman or a common man."
"But your master, Jenkins," said Lefevre, "can never look a common man."
"No, sir," said Jenkins; "he cannot, whatever he do."
"He is gone into the country, then?" asked Lefevre.
"Yes, sir; I packed his small port-mantew for him four days ago."
"And where is he gone? He told you, I suppose?"
"No, sir; he do not usual tell me when he is like that."
It did not seem possible to learn anything from Jenkins, in spite of the apparent intimacy of his conversation, so Lefevre left him, and returned to his own house. He had sat but a little while in his laboratory (where he had been occupying his small intervals of leisure lately in electrical studies and experiments) when, as chance would have it, the last post brought him a note from Dr Rippon. Its purport was curious.
"I think," the letter ran, "you were sufficiently interested in the story I told you some week or two ago about one HernandoCourtney, not to be bored by a note on the same subject. Last night I accompanied my daughter and son-in-law to the Lyceum Theatre. On coming out we had to walk down Wellington Street into the Strand to find our carriage, and in the surging crowd about there I am almost sure I saw the Hernando Courtney whom I believed to be dead. Aut Courtney aut Diabolus.I have never heard satisfactory evidence of his death, and I should very much like to know if he is really still alive and in London. It has occurred to me that, considering the intimacy of yourself and your family with the gentleman who was made known to me at your mother's house by the name of Courtney, you may have heard by now the rights of the case. If you have any news, I shall be glad to share it with you."
Considering this in association with the absence of Julius, Lefevre found his wits becoming involved in a puzzle. He could not settle to work, so he put on overcoat and hat, and sallied out again. He had no fixed purpose: he only felt the necessity of motion to resolve himself back into his normal calm. The air was keen from the east. May, which had opened with such wanton warmth and seductiveness, turned a cold shoulder on the world as she took herself off. It was long since he had indulged in an evening walk in the lamp-lit streets, so he stepped out eastward against the shrewd wind. Insensibly his attention forsook the busy and anxious present, and slipped back to the days of golden and romantic youth, when the crowded nocturnal streets were full of the mystery of life. He recalled the sensations of thosedays—the sharp doubts of self, the frequent strong desires to drink deep of all that life had to offer, and the painful recoils from temptation, which he felt would ruin, if yielded to, his hope of himself, and his ambition of filling a worthy place among men.
Thus musing, he walked on, taking, without noting it, the most frequented turnings, and soon he found himself in the Strand. It was that middle time of evening, after the theatres and restaurants have sucked in their crowds, when the frequenters of the streets have some reserve in their vivacity, before reckless roisterers have begun to taste the lees of pleasure, and to shout and jostle on the pavements. He was walking on the side of the way next the river, when, near the Adelphi, he became aware of a man beforehim, wearing a slouch-hat and a greatcoat—a man who appeared to choose the densest part of the throng, to prefer to be rubbed against and hustled rather than not. There was something about the man which held Lefevre's attention and roused his curiosity—something in the swing of his gait and the set of his shoulders. The man, too, seemed urged on by a singular haste, which permitted him to be the slowest and easiest of passengers in the thick of the crowd, but carried him swiftly over the less frequented parts of the pavement. The doctor began to wonder if he was a pickpocket, and to look about for the watchful eye of a policeman. He kept close behind him past the door of the Strand Theatre, when the throng became slacker, and the man turned quickly about and returned the way he had come. ThenLefevre had a glimpse of his face,—the merest passing glimpse, but it made him pause and ask himself where he had seen it before. A dark, foreign-looking man, with a haggard appeal in his eye: he tried to find the place of such a figure in his memory, but for the time he tried in vain.
Before the doctor recovered himself the man was well past, and disappearing in the throng. He hurried after, determined to overtake him, and to make a full and satisfying perusal of his face and figure. He found that difficult, however, because of the man's singular style of progression. To maintain an even pace for himself, moreover, Lefevre had to walk very much in the roadway, the dangers of which, from passing cabs and omnibuses, forbade his fixing his attention on the man alone. Yet he was more and more piqued to lookhim in the face; for the longer he followed him the more he was struck with the oddity of his conduct. He had already noted how he hurried over the empty spaces of pavement and lingered sinuously in the thronged parts; he now remarked further that those who came into immediate contact with him (and they were mostly young people who were to be met with at that season of the night) glanced sharply at him, as if they had experienced some suspicious sensation, and seemed inclined to remonstrate, till they looked in his face.
Lefevre could not arrive at a clear front view till, by Charing Cross Station, the man turned on the kerb to look after a handsome youth who crossed before him, and passed over the road. Then the doctor saw the face in the light of a street-lamp, and the sight sent the bloodin a gush from his heart. It was a dark hairless face, terribly blanched and emaciated, as if by years of darkness and prison, with the impress of age and death, but yet with a wistful light in the eyes, and a firm sensuousness about the mouth that betrayed a considerable interest in life. He turned his eyes away an instant, to bring memory and association to bear. When he looked again the man was moving away. At once recognition rushed upon him like a wave of light. The terribly worn, ghastly features resolved themselves into a kind of death-mask of Julius! The wave recoiled and smote him again. Who could the man be, therefore, who was so like Julius, and yet was not Julius?—who could he be but Julius's father,—that Hernando Courtney whom Dr Rippon believed he had seen the evening before?
Here was a coil to unravel! Julius's father—the Spanish marquis that was—supposed to be dead, but yet wandering in singular fashion about the London streets, clearly not desiring, much less courting, opportunities of being recognised; Julius not caring to speak of his father, apparently ignoring his continued existence, and yet apparently knowing enough of his movements to avoid him when he came to London by suddenly removing "into the country" without leaving his address. What was the meaning of so much mystery? Crime? debt? political intrigue? or, what?
The mysterious Hernando went on his way, by the southern sweep of Trafalgar Square and Cockspur Street, to the Haymarket, and Lefevre followed with attention and curiosity bent on him, but yetwith so little thought of playing spy that, if Hernando had gone any other way or had returned along the Strand, he would probably have let him go. And as they went on, the doctor could not but note, as before, how the object of his curiosity lingered wherever there was a press of people, whether on the pavement or on a refuge at a crossing, and hurried on wherever the pavement was sparsely peopled or whenever the persons encountered were at all advanced in years. Indeed, the farther he followed the more was his attention compelled to remark that Hernando sharply avoided contact with the weakly, the old, and the decrepit, and wonder why the young people of either sex whom he brushed against should turn as if the touch of him waked suspicion and a something hostile. Thus they traversedthe Haymarket, the Criterion pavement, and, flitting across to the Quadrant, the more popular side of Regent Street, among pushing groups, weary stragglers, and steady pedestrians. Lefevre had a mind to turn aside and go home when he was opposite Vigo Street, but he was drawn on by the hope of observing something that might give him a clue to the Courtney mystery. When Oxford Circus was reached, however, Hernando jumped into a cab and drove rapidly off, and Lefevre returned to his own fireside.
He sat for some time over a cigar and a grog, walking in imagination round and round the mystery, which steadfastly refused to dissolve or to be set aside. His own honour, and perhaps the peace of his mother and sister, were involved in it. He was resolved to ask Julius for an explanationas soon as he could come to speech with him; but yet, in spite of that assurance which he gave himself, he returned to the mystery again and again, and beset and bewildered himself with questions: Why was Julius estranged from his father? What was the secret of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face? And why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of London, in the crowd, but not of it, urged on as by some desire or agony?
He went to bed, but not to sleep. In the quiet and the darkness his imagination ranged without constraint over the whole field of his questionings. He went back upon Dr Rippon's story of the Spanish marquis, and fixed on the mention of his occult studies. He saw him, in fancy, without wife or son, cut off from the positionand activities in his native country which his proper rank would have given him, sequester himself from society altogether, and give himself up to the study of those Arabian sages and alchemists in whom he had delighted when he was a young man. He saw him shun the daylight, and sleep its hours away, and then by night abandon himself like another Cagliostro to strange experiments with alembic and crucible, breathing acrid and poisonous vapours, seeking to extort from Nature her yet undiscovered secrets,—the Philosophers Stone, and the Elixir of Life. He saw him turn for a little from his strange and deadly experiments, and venture forth to show his blanched and worn face among the throngs of men; but even there he still pursued his anxious quest of life in the midst of death. Hesaw him wander up and down, in and out, among the evening crowd, delighting in contact with such of his fellow-creatures as had health and youth, and seeking, seeking—he knew not what. From this phantasmagoria he dozed off into the dark plains of sleep; but even there the terribly blanched and emaciated face was with him, bending wistful worn eyes upon him and melting him to pity. And still again the vision of the streets would arise about the face, and the sleeper would be aware of the man to whom the face belonged walking quickly and sinuously, seeking and enjoying contact with the throng, and strangely causing many to resent his touch as if they had been pricked or stung, and yet urged onward in some further quest,—an anxious quest it sometimes resolved itself into for Julius, who ever evaded him.
Thus his brain laboured through the dead hours of the night, viewing and reviewing these scenes and figures, to extract a meaning from them; but he was no nearer the heart of the mystery when the morning broke and he was waked by the shrill chatter of the sparrows. The day, however, brought an event which shed a lurid light upon the Courtney difficulty, and revealed a vital connection between facts which Lefevre had not guessed were related.
The Remarkable Case of Lady Mary Fane.
Itwas the kind of day that is called seasonable. If the sun had been obscured, the air would have been felt to be wintry; but the sunshine was full and warm, and so the world rejoiced, and declared it was a perfectly lovely May day,—just as a man who is charmed with the smiles and beauty of a woman, thinks her complete though she may have a heart of ice. Lefevre, as he went his hospital round that afternoon, found his patients revelling in the sunlight like flies. He himself was in excellent spirits, and he said a cheery orfacetious word here and there as he passed, which gave infinite delight to the thin and bloodless atomies under his care; for a joke from so serious and awful a being as the doctor is to a desponding patient better than all the drugs of the pharmacopoeia: it is as exquisite and sustaining as a divine text of promise to a religious enthusiast.
Dr Lefevre was thus passing round his female ward, with a train of attentive students at his heels, when the door was swung open and two attendants entered, bearing a stretcher between them, and accompanied by the house-physician and a policeman.
"What is this?" asked Lefevre, with a touch of severity; for it was irregular to intrude a fresh case into a ward while the physician was going his round.
"I thought, sir," said the house-physician, "you would like to see her at once: it seems to me a case similar to that of the man found in the Brighton train."
"Where was this lady found?" asked Lefevre of the policeman. He used the word "lady" advisedly, for though the dress was that of a hospital nurse or probationer, the unconscious face was that of an educated gentlewoman. "Why, bless my soul!" he cried, upon more particular scrutiny of her features—"it seems to me I know her! Surely I do! Where did you say she was found?"
The policeman explained that he was on his beat outside St James's Park, when a park-keeper called him in and showed him, in one of the shady walks, the lady set on a bench as if she hadfainted. The keeper said he had taken particular notice of her, because he saw from her dress and her veil she was a hospital lady. When he first set eyes on her, an old gentleman was sitting talking to her—a strange, dark, foreign-looking gentleman, in a soft hat and a big Inverness cape.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed the doctor. "The very man! That's the meaning of it. And I did not guess!"
His assistant and the policeman gazed at him in surprise; but he recovered himself and asked, with a serious and determined knitting of the brows, if the policeman had seen the old gentleman. The policeman replied he had not; the gentleman was nowhere to be seen when he was called in. The keeper saw him only once; when he returned that wayagain, in about a quarter of an hour, he found the lady alone and apparently asleep. She had a very handsome umbrella by her side, and therefore he kept within eye-shot of her on this side and on that, lest some park-loafer should seize so good a chance of thieving. He thus passed her two or three times. The last time, he remarked that she had slipped a little to one side, and that her umbrella had fallen to the ground. He went to pick it up, and it struck him as he bent that she looked strangely quiet and pale. He spoke to her; she made no reply. He touched her—he even in his fear ventured to shake her—but she made no sign; and he ran to call the policeman. They then brought her straight to the hospital, because they could see she was a hospital lady of some sort.
"It must—it must be the same!" said Lefevre.
"I thought, when I first heard of it below," said the house-physician, "that it must be the same man as was the cause of the other case, in the Brighton train."
"No doubt it is the same. But I was thinking of it in another—a far more serious sense!" Then turning to the waiting policeman, he said, "Of course, you must report this to your inspector?"
"Yes, sir," said the policeman.
"Give him my compliments, then, and say I shall see him presently."
Yet, he thought, how could he speak to the official, with all that he suspected, all that he feared, in his heart? With his attention on thequi vivewith his experiences and speculations of the night, he was seized, as we have seen, by theconclusion that the "strange, dark, foreign-looking gentleman" of the park-keeper's story was the same whose steps he had followed the evening before, without guessing that the man was perambulating the pavement and passing among the crowd in search, doubtless, of a fresh victim for occult experiment or outrage! That conclusion once determined, shock after shock smote upon his sense. What if the mysterious person were really proved to be Julius's father? What if he had entered upon a course of experiment or outrage (he passed in rapid review the mysteries of the Paris pavement and the Brighton train, and this of the Park)—outrage yet unnamable because unknown, but which would amaze and confound society, and bring signal punishment upon the offender? And what—what if Juliusknew all that, and therefore sought to keep his parentage hidden?
"She is ready, doctor," said the Sister of the ward at his elbow, adding with a touch of excitement in her manner as he turned to her, "do you know who she is? Look at this card; we noticed the name first on her linen."
Dr Lefevre looked at the card and read, "Lady Mary Fane, Carlton Gardens, S.W."
"I suspected as much," said he. "Lord Rivercourt's daughter. It's a bad business. She has been learning at St Thomas's the duties of nurse and dresser, which accounts for her being in that uniform."
He went to the bed on which his new patient had been laid, and very soon satisfied himself that her case was similar to that of the young officer, though gravermuch than it. He wrote a telegram to Lord Rivercourt, sent the house-physician for his electrical apparatus, and returned to the bedside. He looked at his patient. He had not remarked her hitherto more than other women of his acquaintance, though he had sometimes sat at her father's table; but now he was moved by a beauty which was enhanced by helplessness—a beauty stamped with a calm disregard of itself—the manifest expression of a noble and loving soul, which had lived above the plane of doubt and fear and gusty passion. Her wealth of lustrous black hair lay abroad upon her pillow, and made an admirable setting for her finely-modelled head and neck. As he looked at this excellent presentment, and thought of the intelligence and activity which had been wont to animate it, resentment rose inhim against the man who, for whatever end, had subdued the noble woman to that condition, and a deep impatience penetrated him that he had not discovered—had even scarcely guessed—the purpose or the method of the subjugation!
It was, however, not speculation but action that was needed then. The apparatus described in the case of the young officer was ready, and the house-physician was waiting to give his assistance. The stimulation of Will and Electricity was applied to resuscitate the patient—but with the smallest success: there was only a faint flutter, a passing slight rigidity of the muscles, and all seemed again as it had been. The exhausting nature of the operation or experiment forbade its immediate repetition. Disappointment pervadedthe doctor's being, though it did not appear in the doctor's manner.
"We'll try again in half an hour," said he to his assistant, and turned away to complete his round of the ward.
At the end of the half-hour, Lefevre and the house-physician were again by Lady Mary's bedside. Again, with fine but firm touch, Lefevre stroked nerves and muscles to stimulate them into normal action; again he and his assistant put out their electrical force through the electrode; and again the result was nothing but a passing galvanic quiver. The doctor, though he maintained his professional calm, was smitten with alarm,—as a man is who, walking through darkness and danger to the rescue of a friend, finds himself stopped by an unscalable wall. While he sought fresh means of help, his patient might passbeyond his reach. He did not think she would—he hoped she would not; but her condition, so obstinately resistant to his restoratives, was so peculiar, that he could not in the least determine the issue. Imagination and speculation were excited, and he asked himself whether, after all, the explanation of his failure might not be of the simplest—a difference of sex! The secrets of nature, so far as he had discovered, were of such amazing simplicity, that it would not surprise him now to find that the electrical force of a man varied vitally from that of a woman. He explained this suspicion to his assistant.
"I think," said he, "we must make another attempt, for her condition may become the more serious the longer it is left. We'll set the Sister and the nurse to try this time, and we'll turn her bed northand south, in the line of the earth's magnetism." But just then the lady's father, the old Lord Rivercourt, appeared in response to the doctor's telegram, and the experiment with the women had to wait. The old lord was naturally filled with wonder and anxiety when he saw his apparently lifeless daughter. He was amazed that she should have been overcome by such influence as, he understood, the old gentleman must wield. She had always, he said, enjoyed the finest health, and was as little inclined to hysteria as woman well could be. Lefevre told the father that this was something other than hystero-hypnotism, which, while it reassured him as to his daughter's former health, made him the more anxious regarding her present condition.
"It is very extraordinary," said the oldlord; "but whatever it is,—and you say it is like the young man's case that we have all read about,—whatever it is,"—and he laid his hand emphatically on the doctor's arm,—"she could not be in more capable hands than yours."
That assurance, though soothing to the doctor's self-esteem, added gravely to his sense of responsibility.
While they were yet speaking, Lefevre was further troubled by the announcement that a detective-inspector desired to speak with him! Should he tell the inspector all that he had seen the night before, and all that he suspected now, or should he hold his peace? His duty as a citizen, as a doctor, and as, in a sense, the protector of his patient, seemed to demand the one course, while his consideration for Julius and for his own family suggested the other.Surely, never was a simple, upright doctor involved in a more bewilderingimbroglio!
The detective-inspector entered, and opened an interview which proved less embarrassing than Lefevre had anticipated. The detective had already made up his mind about the case and his course regarding it. He put no curious questions; he merely inquired concerning the identity and the condition of the lady. When he heard who she was, and when he caught the import of an aside from Lord Rivercourt that it would be worth any one's while to discover the mysterious offender, professional zeal sparkled in his eye.
"I think I know my man," said he; and the doctor looked the lively interest he felt. "I am right, I believe, Dr Lefevre, in setting this down to the author of that other case you had,—that from theBrighton train?" Lefevre thought he was right in that. "'M. Dolaro:' that was the name. I had charge of the case, and was baffled. I shan't miss him this time. I shall get on his tracks at once; he can't have left the Park in broad daylight, a singular man like him, without being noticed."
"It rather puzzles me," said the doctor, "what crime you will charge him with."
"It is an outrage," said Lord Rivercourt; "and if it is not criminal, it seems about time it were made so."
"Oh, we'll class it, my lord," said the detective; "never fear."
The detective departed; but Lord Rivercourt seemed not inclined to stir.
"You will excuse me," said Lefevre; "but I must perform a very delicate operation."
"To be sure," said the old lord; "andyou want me to go. How stupid of me! I kept waiting for my daughter to wake up; but I see that, of course, you have to rouse her. It did not occur to me what that machine meant. Something magneto-electric—eh? Forgive one question, Lefevre. I can see you look anxious: is Mary's condition very serious?—most serious? I can bear to be told the complete truth."
The doctor was touched by the old gentleman's emotion. He took his hand. "It is serious," said he—"most serious, for this reason, that I cannot account for her obstinate lethargy; but I think there is no immediate danger. If necessity arises, I shall send for you again."
"To the House," said Lord Rivercourt. "I shall be sitting out a debate on our eternal Irish question."
Lefevre was left seriously discomposed, but at once he sent for the house-physician, summoned the Sister and the nurse, and set about his third attempt to revive his patient. He got the bed turned north and south. He carefully explained to the two women what was demanded of them, and applied them to their task; but, whatever the cause, the failure was completer than before: there was not even a tremor of muscle in the unconscious lady, and the doctor was suffused with alarm and humiliation. Failure!—failure!—failure! Such a concatenation had never happened to him before!
But failure only nerves the brave and capable man to a supreme effort for success. Still self-contained, and apparently unmoved, the doctor gave directions for some liquid nourishment to be artificially administeredto his patient, said he would return after dinner, and went his way. The society of friends or acquaintances was distasteful to him then; the thought even of seeing his own familiar dining-room and his familiar man in black, whose silent obsequiousness he felt would be a reproach, was disagreeable. All his thought, all his attention, all his faculties were drawn tight to this acute point—he must succeed; he must accomplish the task he had set himself: life at that hour was worth living only for that purpose. But how was success to be compelled?
He walked for a while about the streets, and then he went into a restaurant and ordered a modest dinner. He broke and crumbled his bread with both hands, his mind still intent on that one engrossing, acute point. While thus he sat he hearda voice, as in a dream, say, "The very doctor you read about. That's the second curious case he's got in a month or so.... Oh yes—very clever; he treats them, I understand, in the same sort of way as the famous Dr Charbon of Paris would.... I should say so; quite as good, if not better than Charbon. I'd rather have an English doctor any day than a French.... His name's in the paper—Lefevre." Then the doctor woke to the fact that he was being talked about. He perceived his admirers were sitting at a table a little behind him, and he judged from what had been said that his fresh case was already being made "copy" of in the evening papers. The flattering comparison of himself with Dr Charbon had an oddly stimulating effect upon him, notwithstanding that it had been uttered by he knew not whom,—amerevox et præterea nihil. He disclaimed to himself the truth of the comparison, but all the same he was encouraged to bend his attention with his utmost force to the solution of his difficult problem—what to do to rouse his patient?
He sat thus, amid the bustle and buzz of the restaurant, the coming and going of waiters, completely abstracted, assailing his difficulty with questions on this side and on that,—when suddenly out of the mists that obscured it there rose upon his mental vision an idea, which appealed to him as a solution of the whole, and, more than that, as a secret that would revolutionise all the treatment of nervous weakness and derangement. How came the idea? How do ideas ever come? As inspirations, we say, or as revelations; and truly they come upon us with such amazing and inspiritingfreshness, that they may well be called either the one or the other. But no great idea had ever yet an epiphany but from the ferment of more familiar small ideas,—just as the glorious Aphrodite was born of the ferment and pother of the waves of the sea. Lefevre's new idea clothed itself in the form of a comparative question—Why should there not be Transfusion of Nervous Force, Ether, or Electricity, just as there is Transfusion of Blood?
He pushed his dinner away (he could scarcely have told what he had been eating and drinking), called for his bill, and returned with all speed to the hospital. He entered his female ward just as evening prayers were finished, before the lights were turned out and night began for the patients. He summoned his trusted assistant, the house-physician, again.
"I am about to attempt," said he, "an altogether new operation: the patient has remained just as I left her, I suppose?"
"Just the same."
"Nervous Force, whether it be Electricity or not, is manifestly a fluid of some sort: why should it not be transfused as the other vital fluid is?"
"Indeed, sir, when you put it so," said the house-physician, suddenly steeled and brightened into interest, "I should say, 'why not?' The only reason against it is what can be assigned against all new things—it has not, so far as I know, been done."
"Exactly. I am going to try. I think, in case we need a current, so to say, to draw it along, that we shall use the apparatus too; we shall therefore need the women."
"You mean, of course," said the young man, "you will cut a main nerve."
"I shall use this nerve," said Lefevre, indicating the main nerve in the wrist,—upon which the young man, in his ready enthusiasm, began to bare his arm.
"My dear fellow," said Lefevre, "do you consider what you are so promptly offering? Do you know that my experiment, if successful, might leave you a paralytic, or an imbecile, or even—a corpse?"
"I'll take the risk, sir," said the young man.
"I can't permit it, my boy," said Lefevre, laying his hand on his arm, and giving him a look of kindness. "Nobody must run this risk but me. I don't mean, however, to cut the nerve."
"What then, sir?"
"Well," said Lefevre, "this Nervous Force, or Nervous Ether, is clearly a very volatile, and at the same time a very searching fluid. It can easily pass through the skin from a nerve in one person to a nerve in another. There is no difficulty about that; the difficulty is to set up a rapid enough vibration to whirl the current through!" He said that in meditative fashion: he was clearly at the moment repeating the working out of the problem.
"I see," said the young man, looking thoughtful.
"Now, you are a musician, are you not?"
"I play a little," said the young man, with a bewildered look.
"You play the violin?"
"Yes."
"And, of course, you have it in your rooms. Would you be so good as to bring me the bow of your violin, and borrow for me anywhere a tuning-fork of as high a note as possible?"
The young man looked at Dr Lefevre in puzzled inquiry; but the doctor was considering the electrical apparatus before him, and the young man set off on his errands. When he returned with the fiddle-bow and the tuning-fork, he saw Lefevre had placed the machine ready, with fresh chemicals in the vessels.
"Do you perceive my purpose?" asked Lefevre. He placed one handle of the apparatus in the unconscious patient's right hand, while he himself took hold of her left arm with his right hand, so that the inner side of his wrist was in contact with the inner side of hers; and then, tocomplete the circle of connection, he took in his left hand the other handle of the apparatus. "You don't understand?"
"I do not," answered the young man.
"We want a very rapid vibration—much more rapid than usual," said the doctor. "I can apply no more rapid vibration at present than that which the note of that tuning-fork will produce. I want you to sound the tuning-fork with the fiddle-bow, and then apply the fork to this wire."
"Oh," said the young man, "I understand!"
"Now," said Lefevre, "you'd better call the Sister to set the electricity going."
The Sister came and took her place as before described—with her hands, that is, on the cylinder of the electrode, her fingers dipping over into the vessels of chemicals.She opened her eyes and smiled at sight of the fiddle-bow and tuning-fork.
"I am trying a new thing, Sister," said Lefevre, with a touch of severity. "I do not need you, I do not wish you, to exert yourself this time; I only wish you to keep that position, and to be calm. Maintain your composure, and attend.... Now!" said he, addressing the young man.
The fiddle-bow was drawn across the tuning-fork, and the fork applied with its thrilling note to the conducting wire which Lefevre held. The wire hummed its vibration, and electricity tingled wildly through Lefevre's nerves....There was an anxious, breathless pause for some seconds, and fear of failure began to contract the doctor's heart.
"Take your hands away, Sister," saidhe. Then, turning to his assistant, "Apply that to the other wire," said he; and dropping his own wire, he put his hand over the cylinder, with his fingers dipping into the vessel from which the other wire sprang. When the wire hummed under the tuning-fork and the vibration thrilled again, instantly he felt as if an inert obstruction had been removed. The vibratory influence whirled wildly through him, there was a pause of a second or two (which seemed to him many minutes in duration), and then suddenly a kind of rigor passed upon the form and features of his patient, as if each individual nerve and muscle were being threaded with quick wire, a sharp rush of breath filled her chest, and she opened her eyes and closed them again.
"That will do," said Lefevre in awhisper, and, releasing his hands, he sank back in a chair. "It's a success," said he, turning his eyes with a thin smile on the house-physician, and then closing them in a deadly exhaustion.
At the Bedside of the Doctor.
Forthe first time since he had come into the world Dr Lefevre was that night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant-physician took him home to Savile Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution; that he was only exhausted—though exhausted very much; and thatall he needed was rest, sleep, nourishment,—sleep above all.
Lefevre slept the night through like a child, and awoke refreshed, though still very weak. He was bewildered with his condition for a moment or two, till he recalled the moving and exhausting experiences of the day before, and then he was suffused with a glow of elation,—elation which was not all satisfaction in the successful performance of a new experiment, nor in a good deed well done. His friend came to see him early, to anticipate the risk of his rising. He insisted that he should keep his bed, for that day at least, if not for a second and a third day. He reported that the patient was doing well; that she had asked with particularity, and had been informed with equal particularity, concerning the method ofher recovery, upon which she was much bemused, and asked to see her physician.
"It is a pity she was told," said Lefevre; "it is not usual to tell a patient such a thing, and I meant it to be kept secret, at least till it was better established." But for all his protest he was again suffused with that new sense of inward joy.
Alone, and lying idle in bed, it was but natural—it was almost inevitable—that the doctor's thoughts should begin to run upon the strange events and suspicions of the past two days; and their current setting strongly in one channel, made him long to be resolved whether or no the Man of the Crowd, the author of yesterday's outrage, the "M. Dolaro" of whom the detective had gone in search, and who, if captured, would be certainly overwhelmed with contumely, if not with punishment,—whetheror not that strange creature was Julius's father, or any relation at all of Julius. He was not clear how he could well put the matter to Julius, since he so evidently shrank from discourse upon it, yet he thought some kind of certainty might be arrived at from an interview with him. On the chance of his having returned to his chambers, he called for pen and paper and wrote a note, asking him to look in, as he would be resting all day. "Try to come," he urged; "I have something important to speak about."
This he sent by the trusty hand of his man in black; and by mid-day Julius was announced. He came in confident, and bright as sunshine (Lefevre thought he had never seen him looking more serene); but suddenly the sunshine was beclouded, and Julius ceased to be himself, and becamea restless, timorous kind of creature, like a bird put in a cage under the eye of his captor.
"What?" he cried when he entered, with an eloquent gesture. "Lazying in bed on such a day as this? What does this mean?" But when he observed the pallor and weakness of Lefevre's appearance, he paused abruptly, refrained from the hand stretched out to greet him, and exclaimed in a tone of something like terror, "Good heavens! Are you ill?" A paleness, a shudder, and a dizziness passed upon him as if he sickened. "May I," he said, "open the window?"
"Certainly, Julius," said Lefevre, in surprise and alarm. "Do you feel ill?"
"No—no," said Julius from the window, where he stood letting the air play upon his face, and speaking as if he had to putconsiderable restraint upon himself. "I—I am unfortunately, miserably constituted: I cannot help it. I cannot bear the sight of illness, or lowness of health even. It appals me; it—it horrifies me with a quite instinctive horror; it deadens me."
Lefevre, whose abundant sympathy and vitality went out instinctively to succour and bless the weak and the ill, was inexpressibly shocked and offended by this confession of what to his sense appeared selfish cowardice and inhumanity. He had again and again heard it said, and he had with pleasure assented to the opinion, that Julius was a rare, finely-strung being, with such pure and glowing health that he shrank from contact with, or from the sight of, pain or ill-health, and even from their discussion; but now that the singularity of Julius's organization impingedupon his own experience, now that he saw Julius shrink from himself, he was shocked and offended. Julius, on his part, was pitiably moved. He kept away from the bed; he fidgeted to and fro, looking at this thing and that, without a sparkle of interest in his eye, yet all with his own peculiar grace.
"You wanted to speak to me," he said. "Do you mind saying what you have to say and letting me go?"
"I reckoned upon your staying to lunch," said Lefevre.
"I can't!—I can't!... Very sorry, my dear Lefevre, but I really can't! Forgive what seems my rudeness. It distresses me that at such a time as this my sensations are so acute. But I cannot help it!—I cannot!"
"You have been in the country,—haveyou not?" said Lefevre, beginning with a resolve to get at something.
"I have just come back," said Julius. "My man told me you had called."
"Yes. My mother wrote in a state of great anxiety about you, and asked me to go and look at you. She said that she and my sister had seen a good deal of you lately; that you began to look unwell, and then ceased to appear, and she was afraid you might be ill."
This was put forth as an invitation to Julius to expound not only his own situation, but also his relations with Lady and Miss Lefevre, but Julius took no heed of it. He merely said, "No; I was not ill. I only wanted a little change to refresh me,"—and walked back to the window to lave himself in the air.
"Well," continued Lefevre, "since Icalled to see you, I have had an adventure or two. You never look at a newspaper except for the weather, and so it is probable you do not know that I had brought to me yesterday afternoon another strange case like that of the young officer a month ago,—a similar case, but worse."
"Worse?" exclaimed Julius, dropping into the chair by the window, and glancing, as a less preoccupied observer than the doctor would have remarked, with a wistful desire at the door.
"Much worse—though, I believe, from the same hand," said Lefevre. "A lady this time,—titularly and really a lady,—Lady Mary Fane, the daughter of Lord Rivercourt."
"Oh, good heavens!" exclaimed Julius, and there were manifest so keen a note of apprehension in his voice and so deep ashade of apprehension on his face, that Lefevre could not but note them and confirm himself in his suspicion of the intimate bond of connection between him and the author of the outrage. He pitied Julius's distress, and hurried through the rest of his revelation, careless of the result he had sought.
"It may prove," said he, "a far more serious affair than the other. Lord Rivercourt is not the man to sit quietly under an outrage like that."
Julius astonished him by demanding, "What is the outrage? Has the lady given an account of it? What does she accuse the man of?"
"She has not spoken yet,—to me, at least," said Lefevre; "and I don't know what the outrage can be called, but I am sure Lord Rivercourt—and he is a manof immense influence—will move heaven and earth to give it a legal name, and to get it punishment. There is a detective on the man's track now."
"Oh!" said Julius. "Well, it will be time enough to discuss the punishment when the man is caught. Now, if that is all your news," he added hurriedly, "I think——" He took up his hat, and was as if going to the door.
"It is not quite all," said the doctor, and Julius went back to the window, with his hat in his hand.
"I wonder," he broke out, "if we shall ever be simple enough and intelligent enough to perceive that real wickedness—the breaking of any of the laws of Nature, I mean (or, if you prefer to say so, the laws of God)—is best punished by being left to itself? Outraged nature exacts asevere retribution! But you were going to say——?"
"The night before last," continued Lefevre, determined to be brief and succinct, "I was walking in the Strand, and I could not help observing a man who fulfilled completely the description given of the author of this case and my former one."
"Well?"
"That is not all. When I caught sight of his face I was completely amazed; for—I must tell you—it looked for all the world like you grown old, or, as I said to myself at the time, like a death-mask of you."
"You—you saw that?" exclaimed Julius, leaning against the window with a sudden look of terror which Lefevre was ashamed to have seen: it was like catching a glimpse of Julius's poor nakedsoul. "And you thought—?" continued Julius.
"You shall hear. Dr Rippon—you remember the old doctor?—had a sight of a man in the Strand the night before, who, he believes, was his old friend Courtney that he thought dead, and who, I believe, was the man I saw."
Lefevre stopped. There was a pause, in which Julius put his head out of the window, as if he had a mind to be gone that way. Then he turned with a marked control upon himself.
"Really, Lefevre," said he, "this is the queerest stuff I've heard for a long time! This is hallucination with a vengeance! I don't like to apply such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come about. An excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something,has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a friend of his youth. Very well. The excellent old gentleman tells you of that, and it impresses you.Youwalk on the same pavement the next evening—I won't emphasise the fact of its being after dinner, though I daresay it was——"
"It was."
"——Youhave a glimpse of a man who looks—well, something like me; and you instantly conclude, 'Ah! the Courtney person—the friend of Dr Rippon's youth!—and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!' Next day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you saw,argal, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! Is your conclusion clear upon theevidence? Is it inevitable? Is it necessary? Is it not forced?"
"Well," began Lefevre.
"It is bad detective business," broke in Julius, "though it may be good friendship. You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you wished to give me warning of it. But—que diable vas-tu faire dans cette galère?You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am in trouble—and who knows? who knows? 'Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward'—I may ask of you both your friendship and your skill. One thing I ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now, thus miserably moved, to any one! Now I must go. Good-bye." And before Lefevre could find another word, Julius had opened the door and was gone.
"If it moves him like that," said the doctor to himself, through his bewilderment, "there must be something worse in it—God forgive me for thinking so!—than I have ever imagined."
Contains a Love Interlude.
Nextday Lefevre learned that the police had been again baffled in their part of the inquiry. The detective had contrived to trace his man—though not till the morning after the event—to the St Pancras Hotel, where he had dined in private, and gone to bed early, and whence he had departed on foot before any one was astir, to catch, it was surmised, the first train. But wherever he had gone, it was just as in the former case: from the time the hotel door had closed on his cloaked figure, all trace of him was lost.
Nor could Lady Mary Fane add anything of moment to what Lefevre already knew or guessed. Her account of her adventure (which she gave him in her father's house, whither she had been removed on the third day) was as follows: She was returning home from St Thomas's Hospital, dressed according to her habit when she went there; she had crossed Westminster Bridge, and was proceeding straight into St James's Park, when she became aware of a man walking in the same direction as herself, and at the same pace. She casually noted that he looked like a distinguished foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,—a suggestion which melted the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning sailor. Shewas stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a steadying hand on his arm, and asked what ailed him. He turned on her a pair of wonderful dark eyes, which were animal-like in their simple, direct appeal, and their moist softness. He begged her to lead him aside into a path by which few would pass: he disliked being stared at. Thinking only of him as a creature in sickness and distress, she obeyed without a thought for herself. She helped him to sit down upon a bench, and sat down by him and felt his pulse. He looked at her with an open, kindly eye, with a simple-seeming gratitude, which held her strangely (though she only perceived that clearly on looking back). He said to her suddenly,—
"There was a deep, mystical truth in the teaching of the Church to its children—that they should prefer in their moments of human weakness to pray to the Virgin-mother; for woman is always man's best friend."
She looked in his face, wondering at him, still with her finger on his pulse, when she felt an unconsciousness come over her, not unlike "the thick, sweet mystery of chloroform;" and she knew no more till she opened her eyes in the hospital bed. "Revived by you," she said to Lefevre.
He inquired further, as to her sensations before unconsciousness, and she replied in these striking words: "I felt as if I were strung upon a complicated system of threads, and as if they tingled and tingled, and grew tighter to numbness." That answer, he saw, was kindred to the descriptiongiven by the young officer of his condition. It was clear that in both cases the nerves had been seriously played upon; but for what purpose? What was the secret of the stranger's endeavour? What did he seek?—and what find? To these questions no satisfactory answer would come for the asking, so that in his impatience he was tempted to break through the severe self-restraint of science, and let unfettered fancy find an answer.
But, most of all, he longed to see close to him the man whom the police sought for in and out, to judge for himself what might be the method and the purpose of his strange outrages. He scarcely desired his capture, for he thought of the possible results to Julius, and yet—— Day after day passed, and still the man was unfound, and very soon a change came overLefevre's life, which lifted it so far above the plane of his daily professional experience, that all speculation about the mysterious "M. Dolaro," and his probable relation to Julius, fell for a time into the dim background. The doctor had been calling daily in Carlton Terrace to see his patient, when, on a certain memorable day, he intimated to her father that she was so completely recovered that there was no need of his calling on her professionally again. The old lord, looking a little flustered, asked him if he could spare a few minutes' conversation, and led him into his study.
"My dear Lefevre," said he, "I am at a loss how to make you any adequate return for what you have done for my daughter. Money can't do it; no, nor my friendship either, though you are sokind as to say so. But I have an idea, which I think it best to set before you frankly. You are a bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing—old man of the world though he was—flushing to the eyes. "What—what do you think of my daughter? I mean, not as a doctor, but as a man?"
Lefevre was not in his first youth, and he had had his admirations for women in his time, as all healthy men must have, but yet he was made as deliriously dizzy as if he were a boy by his guess at what Lord Rivercourt meant.
"Why," he stammered, "I think her the most beautiful, intelligent, and—and attractive woman I know."
"Yes," said her father, "I believe she is pretty well in all these ways. But—andyou see I frankly expose my whole position to you—what would you think of her for a wife?"
"Frankly, then," said Lefevre, "I find I have admired her from the beginning of this, but I had no notion of letting my admiration go farther, because I conceived that she was quite beyond my hopes."
"My dear fellow," said Lord Rivercourt, "you have relieved me and delighted me immensely. I know no man that I would like so well for a son-in-law. And after all, it is only fitting that the life you have saved with such risk to yourself—oh, I know all about it—should be devoted to making yours happy. And—and I understand from her mother that Mary is quite of the same opinion herself. Now, will you go and speak to her at once, or will you wait till another day?You will have to decide that," said he, with a smile, "not only as lover, but as doctor."
Lefevre hesitated for but an instant; for what true, manly lover would have decided to withdraw till another day when the door to his mistress was held open to him?
"I'll see her now," he said.
Lord Rivercourt led the doctor back to his daughter, and left him with her. There were some moments of chilling doubt and cold uncertainty, and then came a rush of warm feeling at the bidding of a shy glance from Lady Mary. He bent over her and murmured he scarcely knew what, but he heard clearly and with a divine ecstasy a softly-whispered "Yes!" which thrilled in his heart for days and months afterwards, andthen he turned to him her face, her beautiful face illumined with love, and kissed it: between two who had been drawn together as they had, what words were needed, or what could poor words convey?
About an hour later he walked to Savile Row to dress and return for dinner. He walked, because he felt surcharged with life. He desired peace and goodwill among men; he pitied with all his soul the weary and the broken whom he met, and wondered with regret that men should get irremediably involved in the toils of their own misdeeds; he was profuse with coppers, and even small silver, to the wretched waifs of society who swept the crossings he had to take on his triumphant way; he would even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if hehad met him then;—for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and gods. Oh matchless magic of the human heart, which confounds all the hypotheses of science, and flouts all its explanations!
It was that evening when he and Lady Mary sat in sweet converse that she said to him these words, which he hung for ever after about his heart—
"Surely, never before did a man win a wife as you have won me! You made me well by putting your own life into me; so what could I do but give you the life that was already your own!"
Thus day followed day on golden wings: Lefevre in the morning occupied with the patients that thronged his consulting-room; in the afternoon dispensinghealing, and, where healing was impossible, cheerfulness and courage, in his hospital wards; and in the evening finding inspiration and strength in the company of Lady Mary—for her love was to him better than wine. All who went to him in those days found him changed, and in a sense glorified. He had always been considerate and kind; but the weakness, the folly, and the wickedness of poor human nature, which were often laid bare to his searching scrutiny, had frequently plunged him into a welter of despondency and shame, out of which he would cry, "Alas for God's image! Alas for the temple of the Holy Ghost!" But in those days it seemed as if disease and death appeared to him mere trivial accidents of life, with the result that no "case," however bad, was sent away empty of hope.