Sylvester walked home from his case, along the undulating high-road patched with moonlight and shadow, swinging his stick. The night was crisp with a touch of frost, and the air smelt sweet. Now and then a workingman regaining his home after town convivialities, passed him by with a salute to which he replied with a cheerier good-night than usual. One he stopped, and discoursed with him at length on family ailments, much to the man's surprise; for Sylvester was renowned far and wide for his shy silence as well as for his skill. Once he began to whistle an air, wofully out of tune, and then broke into a short laugh.
Yes, Ella was right. It was good to be alive, to feel heart and brain and body on the alert, responsive to outer things. But whence had come the change? It was years since he had felt so young and conscious of power. Was it the touch of a girl's fresh cheek against his lips? He did not know. The feelings that had prompted the act were too new, too undefined, for immediate analysis. The spell of the benumbing heartache that had held him nerveless for four long years seemed to be broken, and he was a man again.
He looked upward at the stars in the simple fancy that the dear dead wife, the Constance he had worshipped so passionately, was gazing down upon him with happy consent in her pure eyes. The love he had given her was immortal, and she knew it. It was no disloyalty to love another sweet woman on earth and to put his own broken life and his motherless child into her keeping.... Yet after a few moments he lowered his gaze for a while and walked on, his heart filled with the old love.
He was one of those reserved natures, capable of intense feeling, yet incapable of outward expression, who make for themselves few friends and are often condemned to loneliness of soul. Born with greater cravings for sympathy than most men, they have less power to demand it. This is too busy a world for us to stop to wonder whether a man wants what he does not ask for; too many are clamouring loudly for what we cannot give. So the unfortunates are passed by unheeded, each working out in his heart his little tragedy of unfulfilled longings. But when a finer spirit comes and divines their needs, then their hearts leap towards it and cling to it with a great unexpressed passion of gratitude. Such had been the beginning of Sylvesters love for his wife; such that of his dawning love for Ella. Each in her way had comprehended his solitude; unasked in words, but spiritually besought, each had filled it with her influence. He needed the peculiar sympathy that a woman alone can give, her companionship, her practical intellect, to complement his theoretic mind. His nature cried dumbly for a whole-hearted, expansive creature to give objectivity to life. Left to himself, he sank into routine; he lacked the power of bringing colour and harmony into his world. This the woman he loved could do. Once, for a few short years, a woman had changed his universe. Then she had died, and the blackness of night had encompassed him. He had suffered silently, as a strong man suffers, rarely mentioning her name, but eating out his heart in desolation; and then Ella had come. He had known her from early childhood, but had last seen her as the schoolgirl of no account.
Now she had sprung into his horizon, a young and splendid woman of amazing opposites, who compelled attention; and she was the only woman other than Constance who, during all his life, had sought to know him and to act towards him tenderwise. Nevertheless, he could not say as yet that he loved her, in the sweet and common way of love. The old and new hung equipoised on a delicate balance. The vague sense of this, perhaps, was one element in the rare exaltation of his mood.
Another element, no doubt, was the final resolve he had taken that morning, to go to London, whither his ambitions summoned him. He was a specialist of some note in zymotic diseases. His researches had met with a recognition not confined to England. He had felt keenly that he was giving up to the small circle of a country practice what was meant for the general needs of mankind. London was the only place for study and work; for the quick amassing, too, of the small fortune that would free him from the necessity of earning daily bread and would allow him to realise his dreams of a great bacteriological laboratory, where he could devote himself exclusively to independent research.
It was at the urgent entreaty of Constance that he had bought, just before his marriage, the practice at Ayresford. A year's life there had made him regret London. A little later he had spoken of returning. She had thrown her arms about him and implored him by all his love for her to stay. She had a horror of London; why, she could not tell. It was unreasonable, but the fact remained. London would kill her,—its gloom, its hardness, its cruelty. It had been the same story whenever he had broached the subject. And then, Dorothy. The child was delicate, would pine away in the reek and fogs of the town. All her woman's armoury of passionate weapons had been employed. And he had yielded, out of his great love. Her death had set him free. But it had taken him four years to realise his freedom. The mere thought had been anguish. Now he could gaze upon the past with calmness and the future with hope. As he walked along, he began to picture the vigorous life before him. He passed from wide conception to trivial details,—the fittings of his library, domestic economies. A room for Dorothy—he pulled himself up short. He had arranged to part with her. The prospect brought a pang. His father's comfort in the child, however, was a consolation. He thought of him tenderly,—the dear old man, the most generous and unselfish being who had ever blessed the earth. He was a man of deep reverences; his father, his dead mother, and his dead wife were enshrined in his Holy of Holies. Dorothy, then, should remain at Ayresford. Perhaps the separation would not be for long. There was a means of shortening it whose readiness was a great temptation. The vision rose before him of the child's dark curls nestling against a girl's soft shoulder. Often had he seen the reality of late, and it had disturbed his depths. Was it not his duty to give the little one so sweet and strong a mother? Again he consulted the stars.
He had reached a set of workmen's cottages in process of erection, on either side of the road, which marked the beginning of the town. The moonlight beat hard upon them, showing up vividly their windowless and doorless skeletons and the piles of bricks, mortar, and lime-covered boards at their thresholds. He had passed the first block and was about to traverse a cross-road that led to the railway station, when a dog-cart containing two men and some luggage turned out of it sharply on to the highway. Before he could realise the fact, the vehicle suddenly lurched, the horse plunged, and in a moment the occupants were thrown heavily on to the road. Sylvester could see at once the cause of the mishap. A pail of mortar left by the roadside, either through carelessness or urchin mischief, had caught the wheel. He ran forward. One of the men, the driver, rose, and shaking himself went to the horse's head, which was turned round in calm inquiry. The other man lay still.
“Hurt?” cried Sylvester.
“No, doctor,” replied the driver, who belonged to the George Hotel of Ayresford. “The gentleman may be.”
He left the pacific animal, and bent with Sylvester over the prostrate form.
It was that of a handsome, full-blooded man in the prime of life. He had fair hair and a great moustache. His face gleamed very white beneath the moon, and his eyes were glassy. The driver supported his head, while Sylvester straightened the inert body, which had remained huddled together after the fall, wrapped in a disordered Inverness cape. Apparently no bones were broken. Sylvester felt his pulse, which was just perceptible. Then suddenly he viewed the man's face full, and started back in amazed distress.
“Good heavens! it's Frank Leroux!”
“That's the gentleman's name, sir,” said the driver.
“How do you know?”
“He telegraphed from London for a bed to-night, saying that he was to be met by the last train, which I just did, sir.”
“But he's my oldest friend,” exclaimed Sylvester. “Leave him to me and see if the trap is all right. Bring the cushions for his head.”
He pursued his investigations. Leroux was alive. A trickle of blood damped his hair. After a while Sylvester drew an anxious breath.
It was a severe concussion; how grave he could not for the moment estimate. To drive him in the narrow two-wheeled cart was out of the question. He hailed the driver, who had righted the vehicle.
“Get a ambulance as quick as you can from the Infirm. That's nearest.”
The man touched his hat, and mounting drove off at a forced speed. Sylvester remained by Leroux, and having done all that was momentarily possible, was at last able to reflect upon the entire unexpectedness of his presence. They were old friends, had been at school and at Guy's together. Leroux, who was somewhat of a waif in the world, had spent many holidays here in Ayresford, at Woodlands. And even after he had thrown over medicine for painting, they had maintained the old relations. Sylvester had reckoned upon him being best man at his wedding; and when for some whimsical reason, which Sylvester could never discover but attributed to the artistic temperament, he declined and went off to Norway, the bridegroom elect knew no one intimately enough to appoint in his stead save Roderick Usher, against whom he had a constitutional antipathy. Although he had seen little of him during his married life, owing to his confinement in the country, and had heard little of him of late years, save that he was abroad, Sylvester still entertained for him the warmest affection. How, therefore, was he to explain this sudden unannounced appearance in Ayresford? It was preposterous that Frank Leroux should put up at the George Hotel; as preposterous as if he himself, in earlier days, had driven there instead of to Woodlands. The act was a sort of treason against friendship, and Sylvester felt absurdly hurt. He wished that Leroux would straightway recover consciousness and health so that he could rate him soundly for his unfriendliness. But there the man, with all the mystery of motive locked in the dull brain, lay helpless and inert, amid the builder's refuse from the fantastic shells of houses hard by. It was an ironical way for friends to meet after an absence and a silence of years.
Some stragglers from the station came up, passengers by the train, one or two porters, and the postman with the bag of local mails, and offered assistance. Sylvester declined, explaining briefly. Not daring to proffer suggestions as to the patient's treatment, they cursed in honest terms the offending pail and the worthless hands that had moved it, and loitered around. Dramatic incidents of a public kind are rare in Ayresford, and each man determined to make the most of this one, conscious, perhaps, of a lurking regret that he had not seen the accident.
Soon the dog-cart returned, bringing the ambulance and a couple of bearers from the Infirmary. Leroux was lifted on to the stretcher and covered with a blanket. The bearers started, the muffled form between them giving a ghastly suggestion of death in life; Sylvester walked by the side, the stragglers followed, and the trap brought up the rear.
“To my house,” said Sylvester.
The melancholy procession went on its way through the outskirts of the little town. The cottages gave place to villas, then came houses standing on their own grounds. Opposite the front gates of Woodlands was the doctor's house. Sylvester dismissed his followers at the gate and, taking Leroux's portmanteau from the trap, opened the door for the bearers and their burden, and directed their way upstairs. The old housekeeper, roused by the tramping, met them on the landing.
“It's a man hurt,” explained Sylvester. “Frank Leroux. We'll put him in my room.”
A short while afterwards, the unconscious man was settled in Sylvester's bed, a fire lighted, and Sylvester was left alone. Able to make a more minute diagnosis, he grew very grave and prepared for an all-night sitting.
In the morning Leroux was still unconscious.
Sylvester sent for a trained nurse, and as soon as she arrived and had received her instructions, he went over to Woodlands. The family were at breakfast. Miss Lanyon, a faded elderly woman, her lean shoulders enveloped in a black shawl, paused in the act of pouring out tea, tea-pot in hand.
“Oh, Sylvester, what a dreadful thing! We have just heard. How is he?”
He briefly described the accident and hinted at the result, which might be fatal. Everything depended upon treatment and nursing. He had been up all night.
“How tired you must be!” said Ella.
A world of tenderness underlay the commonplace words. Sylvester looked at her gratefully. She was deliciously fresh and sweet in her simple morning dress, and again Sylvester felt how gracious a thing was life,—especially after his night's battle with death. They talked of Leroux. All were deeply shocked by the news, for he had been a universal favourite. In the days past Ella had been accused of a schoolgirl flirtation with him. Miss Lanyon used to save up especial household goodies for his consumption during the holidays. Matthew, always fond of youth, had loved the boy's frank nature, and in his generous way had seldom let him leave the house without a five-pound note, or a watch, or a silver-mounted walking-stick in his possession. And now the prodigal had returned in this dismaying and tragic fashion.
“What I can't understand,” said Sylvester, “is why he did not announce his coming,—why he should suddenly turn up at that ungodly hour. There are plenty of day trains.”
He appealed unconsciously to his father, who made no reply. But a little later, when Miss Lanyon and Ella had left the room, Matthew said, suddenly breaking a short silence,—
“I was expecting him.”
“Why didn't you tell me?” asked Sylvester, involuntarily.
“He was in some trouble apparently, and asked to see me alone this morning on business.”
“I wonder what it could have been?”
“I wonder,” said the old man, drily.
Sylvester flushed, as if at a rebuke. Knowing his father, he was aware of indiscretion. Matthew had always maintained the most impenetrable reserve as regards his business affairs; the son had been trained from childhood to look upon them as sacrosanct, and to question was an indecency.
“I beg your pardon, father,” he said deferentially.
“I mentioned the fact, for obvious reasons,” said Matthew.
“Quite so,” said Sylvester, and then hesitating and finally blurting it out, as if he were ashamed of it, he added,—
“I know you are a father confessor to every poor devil in trouble.”
The old man looked at his son and his kind eyes grew a little moist. Any tribute of faith and love from Sylvester touched him deeply. But he laughed and said characteristically,—
“There are some people who'll tell you anything, if you 're only soft-headed enough to listen to them.” Then he nodded towards the window, and waved his hand,—
“There is one, anyhow, who doesn't want a confessor.”
It was Ella, standing in the clear March sunshine of the garden, looking in through the French window, and holding up a bunch of fresh-gathered violets. With a word of adieu to his father, Sylvester went out and joined her. She pinned the flowers in his buttonhole and for ten pleasant minutes they walked along the trim-kept paths.
“You were not angry with me last night?” he asked.
She murmured very meekly,—“If I were, I should not be here with you now.”
“I never thought I should—ever do such a thing again,” he said awkwardly. “I couldn't help it. It has made a different man of me.”
She drew herself up quite proudly and looked him straight in the eyes. They were brave, clear eyes, and so were the man's that met them.
“Are you in earnest?” she asked.
“Am I the man not to be in earnest?” he answered.
The doctor's page, running across the strip of lawn to them, broke the spell with the time-honoured morning announcement,—
“There is some one in the surgery, sir.”
Sylvester dismissed the urchin and looked at his watch. It was some minutes past his consultation hour.
“We will have a long talk this evening,” he said, bidding her farewell.
Matthew and Miss Lanyon were standing under the front porch talking over poor Frank Leroux when Ella came up with a very happy face.
“What a colour you 've got, child!” cried Agatha Lanyon.
“It is the fresh country air. I was being choked in town.”
“And the country people,” suggested the elder lady, archly.
“And the fresh country people,” assented Ella.
“My dear,” said Matthew to his sister, “this is the first time we've been complimented on our adorable rusticity.”
“We don't count,” said Miss Lanyon.
“I never knew you could be so wicked,” cried Ella, taking her by her shoulders and kissing her. Whereupon she disappeared into the house.
“I do hope it is settled,” said Miss Lanyon, with a little sentimental sigh.
“What?”
“Sylvester and Ella. Do you mean to say you haven't noticed? I have been following it all for months.”
Miss Lanyon had reached the age when one lives in the romances of others.
“I believe you amuse yourself, Agatha, by mixing up your young friends and sorting them out in pairs, like gloves,” remarked Matthew.
Miss Lanyon denied the charge indignantly. This was quite a different matter. Anybody with eyes could see how things were tending. It was a match. She was sure it was a marriage made in heaven.
“I like heaven-made marriages as little as machine-made boots,” said Matthew. “Both are apt to come undone in unexpected places. But if these two are thinking of a wholesome earth-made union—well, I shall be delighted.”
“But hasn't Syl told you anything?”
“Not a word.”
“Couldn't you ask him, Matthew?”
“My dear Agatha,” said he, drawing himself up, “how can you suggest my committing such an impertinence?”
Miss Lanyon worshipped her brother, but she felt there were many odd corners of his mind which needed the housewifely besom; just as there were cobwebs in his office which, on the rare occasions when she entered it, made her fingers twitch. But being organically acquiescent she sighed again sentimentally, and brought Matthew his hat and stick.
For Ella, the hours of that day were winged with sunshine. She loved Sylvester as deeply as one of our untried, pure-minded Northern girls can love; and with larger wisdom, too, than most. For she had lived a free life in her aunt's eccentric house in London, and had sifted the vanities of many men. Passion would only be evoked by the clasp of encircling arms and would rise to meet claiming lips. As yet in Ella it lay a pure fire hidden in the depths of a fervent nature. But all the sweet thrills of a woman's early love were hers,—the pride in a strong man's wooing, the fluttering fears as to her sufficiency for his happiness, the resolves, scarce formulated, to raise herself to his level, the dim dreams of a noble life together, striving for the great things of the world that are worth the winning. Added thereto was the delicate charm, essentially feminine, of triumph over the shadows that had fought with her for possession of his heart.
When she entered her room to dress for dinner that evening, she took down her frocks and laid them on the bed, and stood a while in deep thought. She must look her best tonight. She chose a simple cream dress with chiffon round the bodice and sleeves. Halfway through her toilette she clasped her white arms over her neck, and looking in the glass held long converse with her image. It seemed so strange that she, with all her imperfections of soul and body, should be chosen to guide a man's destiny. Then lighter fancies prevailed, and she spent anxious moments in arranging her thick auburn hair. When she came down at last, with a diamond-hilted dagger thrust through the coils, and a bunch of violets peeping shyly from the chiffon in her corsage, Matthew paid her an old man's compliment.
“Do I look nice?” she asked, gratified. “I'm glad; for you once told me that you liked me in this frock.”
There are times when the sincerest of women can be most blandly deceitful.
A general practitioner may propose to himself many pleasant occupations for his spare hours, but his patients dispose of them effectually. On this particular day, when Sylvester craved leisure to watch over Leroux and to open his heart finally to Ella, impossible people fell sick at interminable distances, tiny human beings came with preposterous haste into this world of trouble, and larger ones gave sudden and alarming symptoms of leaving it. It was one of those well-known days of sudden stress when a country doctor eats his meals standing and wearing his overcoat. Finally, an evening visit from which he reckoned on being free by nine kept him by an anxious bedside till nearly eleven. But he had found time to despatch to Ella a few lines scribbled on a leaf of his pocket-book:—
Dearest,—I can't come, much as I long to. Will see you inthe morning. S. L.
This was almost the first letter he had ever written to her; certainly the first love-letter. The new sweetness of it soothed Ella's disappointment.
At half-past eleven he reached his house, a very weary man. He put on his slippers, stretched himself, yawned, and thought wistfully of bed. But first he must go to Leroux, whom he had only seen at odd intervals during the day. He was pouring himself out some whisky when the housekeeper entered the dining-room, smoothing her apron.
“I'm glad you 've come, Mr. Sylvester. He's took worse, nurse says. His temperature has gone up to 104.”
He nodded, swallowed the drink, and went upstairs. The nurse was bending over the bed in the dimly lit room, adjusting the ice-bag. The sick man's portmanteau had been unpacked, and the contents were piled upon a chest of drawers. The clothes he had been wearing were hanging from a row of pegs against the door. The flap of the jacket turned outward, revealed in the breast-pocket a letter-case stuffed with papers. With the air of a man accustomed to prompt action, Sylvester withdrew the letter-case and locked it up. The nurse confirmed the housekeeper's statements.
“He has been delirious at times,” she added.
Sylvester bent down and placed the thermometer in position, then waited, looking gravely down upon his friend. Leroux's face was congested. His hands moved feebly.
Now and then he moaned. Sylvester examined him closely, inspected the temperature chart of the last few hours, questioned the nurse as to their history. A surmise that had been troubling him most of the day now converted itself into a certainty. Leroux must have been drinking heavily of late. Thus it was that meningitis had set in from the concussion. But why should Leroux, once the sanest and cleanest of men, have taken to drink? The pity of it smote Sylvester. The gay spirit brutalised, the noble mind o'erthrown. His heart yearned over the unconscious man. His father had spoken of Leroux being in trouble. He conjectured pitiful histories of downfall. With a sigh he turned away, gave final directions, and went to bed.
Three hours later he was waked. The nurse outside the door was calling him. Accustomed to sudden rising, he leaped up, and thrusting on dressing-gown and slippers, went back to the sick room. Leroux was in full tide of violent delirium, his words, wonderfully articulate, striking almost spectrally upon the utter silence of the house,—“It is better to die than to live in hell on earth. If you give me up, God Almighty will give me up.... What is his love to mine?”
The nurse, who had been on duty since ten, was young and nervous.
“He has been like this for an hour. I couldn't stand it any longer.”
“We will go away to the south,” continued Leroux. “No one minds what a painter does—For God's sake don't give me up—”
“You can go to bed, nurse,” said Sylvester. “I'll sit with him.”
The tired girl, glad to gain some extra and unexpected hours of slumber, retired gratefully. Sylvester sat by the bedside. It was as well, he thought, that the man's poor secrets should be blabbed into a friend's ears instead of a stranger's. He tried not to listen, but to think of other things,—Ella and his meeting with her on the morrow. But the clear voice, now rising in ghastly emphasis, now sinking to a murmur losing itself in guttural incoherence, continued its tale of love and despair, so that Sylvester could not choose but piece it together in his mind. It was a common tale of unlawful love: a passionate man, a yielding woman, a deceived and adoring husband. Sylvester, whose reserved, chaste nature had caused him to train himself in a narrow groove of orthodox morality, felt strangely repelled by the confession. He had always regarded Leroux as the soul of honour. The thief of a man's wife was lowered in his esteem.
There was a silence. He rested his head on his hand and wearily dozed. Suddenly came a cry from the bed, a cry of great pain and longing,—
“Constance—Constance!”
The name, fitting in with a waking dream, brought Sylvester with a leap to his feet, and he looked in foolish bewilderment at Leroux. The latter murmured incoherently. Had he dreamed the voice crying out the name so distinctly? He held his breath, trying to seize the half-formed syllables. “Constance—my love—” had come again. He had not been dreaming. The voice rose once more, and each word came sharply cut from the sick man's lips.
“Sylvester will never know.”
Then the tremendous horror of the revelation crashed down upon the man, stunning his brain, paralysing his limbs. The great drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and his eyes were staring. And Leroux, who had struck upon a quieter vein of reminiscence, babbled on of the happy days of his love.
The first thunder-clap had passed. Thought began to return. Sylvester sank into a chair and stared at the ground. The once clear vision of the past was distorted into a phantasmagoria of leering shapes. He shivered as with an ague, rubbed his eyes, and looked sharply at the man on the bed. Which of the two was delirious? Leroux raved of death and despair. The involuntary confession was too complete; mistake was impossible. Yet the other was impossible. Constance guilty of this hideousness? Her life a lie? The firm anchorage of his soul but shifting sand? He had worshipped her as more than woman,—as the purest, chastest thing that God had ever given to man for his guidance. It was a ghastly figment of Leroux's drink-besotted brain.
He rose, went to the drawer in which he had locked Leroux's letter-case, and taking it out with shaking hands, deliberately turned the contents on to the corner of the chest. In spite of the revulsion of faith he had a sickening certainty of finding there what he hoped he would not find.
There it was, staring him in the face amid a heap of stamps, visiting cards, pencilled memoranda slips, letters, and law papers: a soiled, crumpled letter in his dead wife's hand. He took it up, and from it dropped a lock of fair hair,—her hair. He read it through steadily. It was a letter of passionate love, leaving no doubt as to guilt; of despair, almost madness; such a letter of abandonment as a woman writes but to one man in a lifetime. It bore no date save the day of the week,—Wednesday. Even in his agony he contrasted the difference between this woman and the serene, methodical wife who would as soon have left a letter undated as the household dinner unordered. He threw the letter and the lock of hair into the fire, and watched the two little flames in the glowing coals. The paper curled, the hair writhed; then a little light ash remained.
Methodically he replaced the cards and papers in the letter-case and locked it up again in the drawer. Then he stood at the foot of the bed and watched the man who had done him this great wrong, his brain on fire with bewildering fury. The name of his wife came again from the man's lips. A red cloud passed before Sylvester's eyes. For a moment he seemed to lose consciousness of manhood, to become a wild beast. When he recovered, he found himself glaring into Leroux's eyes with his fingers at his throat. How near he had been to murder he did not know.
He drew himself up and wiped the sweat from his forehead, shaken to the depths by the beast impulse. The reaction brought self-control. He resumed his vigil by the bedside, listening grimly to the words of Leroux, now less frequent and distinct. Yet though he could master his actions, he did not combat with the increasing hatred that took the place of the old affection. At times he considered calmly whether such a man should be allowed to live. In his weak state one quick blow over the heart would stop its beating for ever. The man had done more than wrong him. He had killed his soul, made it an awful thing to live. Yet, as if in contempt of such imaginings, he rose once or twice and changed the bandages with a surgeon's delicate handling, and moistened the swollen lips with ice.
Gradually all the phases of realisation developed themselves in his mind. Far off memories recurred, touched the flesh. It was their marriage bed whereon Leroux was lying.
He shuddered from the manifold horror of it, and for the first time broke into a hoarse cry.
Toward morning the fever lowered and Leroux lay still. Streaks of a ghostly daylight crept in through the Venetian blinds and barred the floor. The nurse came to take over her watch. Sylvester gave brief instructions, and, going to his room, threw himself on his bed and slept heavily. At the moment of waking he had a sense of nightmare, was all but congratulating himself on his release; but another instant brought the full flood of memory. He rose, shaved, dressed himself as usual, and went down to breakfast. At the bottom of the stairs was a quick patter of feet and two little arms were thrown around his limbs. It was Dorothy. He started back, looked at her stupidly. Then roughly disengaging her, he thrust her aside and hurried into the breakfast room. A new and sickening doubt convulsed him. Was she his child?
She came in a while later, shyly holding by the maid-servant's skirts, regarding him with scared reproach. Never had her father been cross or rough. Ungentleness from him was incomprehensible to her child's mind.
“Run away upstairs,” he said, controlling his voice, then added to the servant, “Take Miss Dorothy into the nursery.”
The child burst into tears, as the maid led her out. Tender-hearted a man as he was, for all the world he could not have called her back.
He received his patients in the consulting-room, visited Leroux, and went on his morning rounds. On his return, he perceived Ella at the gates of Woodlands. He raised his hat and was proceeding to turn into his own little carriage drive, when she made a gesture of arrest. He pulled up, descended from the trap, and went to meet her.
“How is poor Mr. Leroux? we have all been so anxious. Of course the nurse has reported, but we wanted to know from you.”
“I am afraid it's a serious matter,” said Sylvester.
“Do you mean that he may die?”
“Possibly.”
“I am so sorry,” she said, laying a sympathetic touch on his arm. “I know what a dear friend he was.”
“A dear friend,” he assented grimly.
“You are looking so fagged. You have been sitting up all night, I hear. Two nights.” He confessed his vigils, explained Leroux's symptoms, and gave her an authoritative report for his father. If he found any material change since the morning, he would send a message across. The topic exhausted, there was a short silence. She tried to speak, after an embarrassed glance, but his sombreness daunted her. He was taking this danger of his friend greatly to heart.
“You are coming in to see Uncle Matthew some time to-day?” she asked.
“It depends upon my work,” he said. “I have a great deal to occupy me.”
With a word of adieu he left her and went into his own house. Ella passed through the gate of Woodlands and strolled slowly down the shrubbery walk, carrying a little burden of depression. For all his anxiety on Mr. Leroux's behalf, he might have made some reference to his letter, some allusion to the sweet and delicate suspense of their present relations. She felt vaguely disappointed at the lack of appeal to her sympathy. But her spirits revived when Matthew Lanyon, coming briskly home to lunch, overtook her and asked her in his cheery voice for news of the invalid. She took his arm in girlish fashion and gave him Sylvester's message.
“He seems dreadfully distressed,” she said.
“Poor old Syl! But he'll pull him through. He doesn't realise his own powers. I don't think we respect Syl half enough. He's a great physician, you know.”
He rattled on, proud of his son, quite glad to have a pretty girl hanging, in that daughterly way, on his arm. He stopped now and then, pointing to the tiny green shoots on the trees. The fine weather of the last few days was the cause. Did Ella remember how black everything was only a week ago? He spoke as if it were a miracle performed for the first time and not the recurring phenomenon of a million springs. A thrush flew out of a laurel bush. He named it, followed it with his eyes to the elm where it alighted, stooped down and picked a snail from the middle of the gravel, where it might get crushed, and threw it lightly on the grass. The tender simplicities of the old man touched the girl deeply that afternoon, and his steady optimism made her feel ashamed of her misgivings. So the sunshine came into her heart again.
But two days passed before they saw Sylvester. News came frequently. Leroux was sinking. At last Sylvester entered the library at the hour of tea and announced gravely,—“He is dead.”
Miss Lanyon uttered a little cry, and tears flooded her eyes. Matthew held out his hand.
“I'm sorry, Syl.”
“He died about half an hour ago,” said Sylvester. “He never recovered consciousness, so what were his last wishes God alone knows. I have put all his papers into a sealed envelope, which I had better hand over to you, father.”
Matthew took the packet in silence and locked it in a drawer of his writing-table.
“You had better let me look after the funeral too, Syl,” said he, kindly. “It's the first chance I 've had of doing anything for the poor fellow.”
“Thank you, father,” said Sylvester.
Miss Lanyon tearfully enumerated Leroux's virtues. What a frank, open-hearted, generous lad! And to be taken away, like this, in his prime! Who could fathom the will of God? Ella remained silent, grieved at Sylvester's loss. But he refused to meet the ready sympathy in her eyes, and looked stonily through the window on the grey March sky. Presently he turned away. To remain there longer was unendurable.
“I have a patient to see, some way out. One mustn't neglect the living for the dead.”
Then for the first time he met Ella's glance, and a special application of his saying occurred to him.
“Good-bye, all,” he said, and strode hurriedly from the room. He drew a deep breath on reaching the open air. It was good to be alone, away from the torturing irony of sympathy. And it was good to be away from the foreshadowing of reproach in a woman's eyes.
That night, before he slept, he shut his teeth upon a horrible repulsion, and went into the death chamber to see that all things had been decently done. The man lay cold and pale, his jaws swathed and his eyes closed, an awful sphinx. Sylvester stood and gazed upon him till his heart grew as cold as the dead man's. It was well that he was dead, so that he could blab the disastrous secret no more. Sylvester had questioned the nurses discreetly. To his relief he had found that the delirious ravings had made no impression on their memories. He alone had been the confidant. He had tended the man with devoted skill. The strain of that terrible task was over. Now the dead past would bury its dead,—his own heart and youth therewith. He was glad the man would no longer cumber the earth—and he was glad that his wife was dead.
Three days afterwards, Leroux was buried. A fussy elderly man, Leroux's cousin and sole surviving relative, shared with Sylvester the post of chief mourner, and departed into the unknown whence he came. Sylvester stood by the grave with a set, impassive face, and his father stood by his side, looking strangely like him. On the drive home it was Sylvester who exchanged a few courteous remarks with the cousin; but the old man remained singularly silent.
They sat together alone that evening in the library.
“Leroux died intestate,” said Matthew, breaking a long silence. “He was in a troubled state of mind and was coming to me to help him with his will.”
“He had been drinking heavily,” said Sylvester.
“I presumed so. He had roughed the will out. He only had a few thousands. But Dorothy was to have the greater part. I showed the draft to John Leroux to-day, who is a man of great wealth. He is desirous that his cousin's wishes should be carried out.”
“I can accept no gifts from Mr. John Leroux,” said Sylvester.
The old man argued the point. Morally the money was Dorothy's. Sylvester listened stubbornly. He revolted at the thought of touching Leroux's money. It was a ghastly impossibility. He repeated,—
“I cannot accept it.”
“Money is money, Syl, after all; and I may not be able, perhaps, to do what I had hoped for Dorothy.”
“While my daughter bears my name I can support her decently. If Mr. Leroux will not benefit by what is legally his, he can devote it to charity. It is a matter of principle.”
They were both inflexible men, and they understood each other's nature. Matthew did not press the point.
“Very well,” he said in a business tone. “I will tell Mr. Leroux of your decision.”
But the impassiveness of his tone was belied by the almost yearning earnestness with which he regarded his son, who sat staring into the fire. He would have given years of his own happiness to know whether a gnawing suspicion were baseless; but the question could not be put. Sylvester was silent. What troubles were at work behind his sombre brow the old man could not fathom; and Sylvester, though his heart was bursting, could not speak.
How could he disclose, even to the being who now was dearest to him in the world, his wife's shame, his own dishonour? Better to keep the hideous fact locked up in his breast. But yet, if he could have found a rush of tumultuous words, what heart-ease were in it! So many, with that great gift of expansiveness, had come to his father and gone away comforted, and he, the son deeply loving and deeply loved, was powerless to utter a complaint. He bit his lip to repress a groan.
And so it was all through the remainder of his residence in Ayresford. His relations with his father continued their old undemonstrative course. To please him, he assumed his wonted cheerfulness and spoke of matters political and parochial. And by degrees the old man forgot the cloud he had seen hanging over him and only thought of his approaching departure. Dorothy came to live at Woodlands, so as to grow accustomed to the change, said Sylvester, and he only saw her on his rare visits. He forced himself to be kind and take notice of her as formerly. But the sight of her was a great pain.
Ella he avoided as much as possible, never seeing her alone. One day she was standing by the porch as he came up.
“Is my father in?” he asked.
“He hasn't yet come back from the office.”
“I will go and meet him there,” he replied, and went away forthwith.
“Have you and Syl quarrelled?” asked Miss Lanyon, who had observed the scene from indoors.
Ella laughed; not a happy laugh.
“You are behind the times, Aunt Agatha. Nowadays unceremoniousness is a proof of friendship.”
“I should call it rudeness, my dear,” said Miss Lanyon.
“That's a proof of affection,” said Ella.
But she went quickly up to her room, lest the elder lady should see the angry tears that rose in her eyes.
At first she strove to explain away his change of attitude. Then she examined her own conduct, with a view to discover therein some possible cause. She could find none. A dull sense of pain and dread crept over her. What did it mean? He had kissed her, all but asked her to be his wife, and now, suddenly, he ignored her existence. The realisation of the fulness of her love for him smote her cruelly as she lay awake at night. She shrank, fearful-eyed, from the prospect of life without him. It stretched before her a dreary waste of futile years. Then the quick hope of youth came back. It was some foolish misunderstanding. Sylvester was worried, preoccupied, saddened. There were so many things to be reckoned with in the strenuous life of a man. He would speak, explain. All would be well.
But the days passed and that of Sylvester's departure drew nigh. He had hurried it on. His successor had arrived, been introduced to the practice; no advantage could be gained by remaining at Ayresford, where all save his father was strangely hateful. Ella waited, but Sylvester never spoke nor looked her way. At last she could bear the mortifying suspense no longer. It was the evening before his departure. She was sitting with Miss Lanyon in the drawing-room after dinner, having left the two men below to their coffee and cigars. Her companion was silently knitting, her eyes somewhat dim, poor soul, at the prospect of Sylvester's absence. Ella went to the piano and tried to play, but her heart was not in the music. The men lingered downstairs. An hour passed. The silence and the aching of her own suspense acted on her nerves. Suddenly she left the room and went downstairs and opened the dining-room door. Both men rose as she stood on the threshold, a graceful figure, with heightened colour and eyes unusually bright.
“I want to say something to Syl before he goes,” she announced boldly.
“Here he is,” said Matthew, coming forward. “I was just going into the library for a little as you came in. No; really, Syl, I was. I'll join you upstairs when you have had your chat.”
“You spoil me, Uncle Matthew,” said the girl, touched, as she always was, by his old-fashioned courtesy. “Why can't Syl and I go into the library?”
“Because I'm master in my own house, my dear,” smiled the old man.
He closed the door behind him. Sylvester motioned Ella to a chair.
“No,” she said. “I have not come to stay.”
She was silent for a moment, looking at the tip of her slipper that rested on the fender.
“Have I done anything to offend you lately, Sylvester?” she asked at length.
“Nothing that I am aware of,” he answered gravely.
“We don't seem to be such good friends,” she hazarded.
“I am sure you must be mistaken.”
The cold formality of the phrase was a knell to her hopes. She looked up somewhat piteously and met hard, unsympathetic eyes.
“I thought—you made me think—” she began. He raised his hand slightly to check her.
“If I did,” he said coldly, “I was wrong. I owe you all my apologies.” There was a moment's silence. “If I could say more, I would,” he added.
But a quickly gathering anger in the girl's heart suddenly broke out. She drew herself up, flaming-cheeked, with eyes flashing through the tears that would come.
“You have behaved horribly, cruelly, and I want never to see your face again.”
Sylvester bowed his head. A swift rustle of skirts, a sound of the door, and she was gone. He raised his head and drew rather a choking breath. He knew that Ella had just cause for reproach. But what could be done? The new budding love had been killed outright. He regarded her with aversion, with something akin even to horror. And his heart was as cold as a stone.