Read Ebook: The island of Dr. Moreau by Wells H G Herbert George

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Ebook has 385 lines and 54648 words, and 8 pages

"Is there no English doctor in the hotel?"

"Do you know where he has gone?"

"Certainly, monsieur,--to Geneva; did not I myself recommend him to the H?tel de l'Ecu,--me?"

"Do you know his name?"

"I can show monsieur the name in the strangers' book. It is a name of English, which nobody but English can pronounce."

The book was brought; and five minutes after a telegram was despatched to Dr. Hudson, at the H?tel de l'Ecu, Geneva, imploring him to come and see an English lady then lying dangerously ill at Martigny.

The next day at noon Dr. Hudson arrived. Katharine was at her lowest ebb about this time, and Robert was nearly mad with anxiety; but he derived infinite comfort from the sight of the English doctor's honest cheery face and from the sound of his voice. A wondrous voice; so clear and yet so soft, ringing with comfort and encouragement and hope; a voice at the first sound of which Katharine opened her long-closed eyes and looked with interest at the speaker--would have spoken herself, but that Dr. Hudson raised his finger with a cautioning gesture, and then laid it on his lip. He did not permit her to speak until he had felt her pulse and heard the account of her seizure from her husband; and then he only asked her a few questions which needed very short replies. And then Dr. Hudson took Robert Streightley into the next room, and said:

"She may recover--I think she will; but the next four-and-twenty hours will decide."

"My dear sir," interrupted Dr. Hudson, laying his hand on Streightley's arm, "I will not leave her bedside until the crisis is over."

And he did not. Independently of the attraction of the case itself , he found himself very much interested in the beauty of his patient, and profoundly touched by the adoration of her so quietly, so unceasingly shown by her husband. It was a little new to him this worship of a woman by the man who was legally bound to her; for Dr. Hudson lived habitually in Paris, and had a high repute amongst the French aristocracy, amongst whom there was indeed a great deal of the tender passion, though it generally flowed in the wrong channels. He was pleased too with Streightley's sound sense and straightforward honesty; and after the crisis had passed, and Katharine was in the earliest stage of convalescence, she would hear the doctor and her husband discussing politics, and commerce, statistics, and science, far into the night. The doctor was a widower, had no domestic ties, all his patients were away from Paris; and he was so pleased with his new friends that he extended the period of his holiday, and remained with them as their guest.

So a fortnight passed, at the end of which Katharine was pronounced in a fit state to journey homeward; and they started, travelling by easy stages to Paris, where they remained three days. At the "Nord" railway-station, just before their train left for Paris, Dr. Hudson bade them farewell.

"Remember!" said he, holding Katharine's hand, "I've seen you in an important crisis of your life, and I want to be associated with it! I'm an odd old fellow, with no one to care for or to be cared for by, and I've taken a fancy to you and your husband. If ever you're very ill, or in any state in which you think I can be of service to you, you'll promise to let me know?"

Robert was settling the wraps in the carriage; but Katharine pressed the doctor's hand, and said, "I promise you."

The next moment the whistle sounded, and the train moved on.

When and where was that promise kept?

It was, therefore, with intense pleasure that Robert observed the glow of satisfaction, the eager alacrity with which Katharine inspected the house and grounds; that he noted the bright eyes and glowing smiles with which she praised all the arrangements made for her comfort, and approved of the scale and order of the household. The irrepressible girlishness of her age aided her in these circumstances. It was quite impossible not to feel pride and delight in such possessions; and she felt them to the full. Ignorant as she had been of the real state of her father's affairs, and guiltless of the false pretences of their life in London, she had always had a vague sense of insecurity; she had always been annoyed by a dearth of ready-money; she had constantly found herself wishing papa would give her a cheque when she went out shopping, and would not oblige her to remain so long and so deeply in her milliner's debt; and now she felt the contrast in the sense of an unexplained but intense relief. The perfect order, the luxury, the quiet of her house, the beauty of the gardens and the woods, the deference, the observance with with which she was treated--differing widely from the capricious caresses of her father, under which her keen intelligence detected the unscrupulousness, selfishness, and the contempt for her sex from which her pride and her delicacy revolted--the novel sense of the importance of her position,--all these united to rouse Katharine from the coldness and bitterness of feeling which had succeeded the awakening from her love-trance. She thought in after-days that during the time which immediately succeeded her arrival at Middlemeads she had not been far from loving her husband. Certain it is that she thought less of her false lover, that she nourished her anger against him less sedulously, that she fed less upon the poisonous fruit of pride, rage, and mortification. She took pleasure in the beauty and luxury which surrounded her: she owed it all to Robert; she could hardly look upon and enjoy it without feeling some gratitude to the giver, without some softening of the pride of her resentful heart, without some more tender and womanly sentiment than that she had purchased all this at the price of herself, and it was but her right. The love which she could not deny, which she was forced to acknowledge, to wonder at every day since she had been Robert's wife, had at first inspired her only with contemptuous wonder; she treated it with disdain in her thoughts, as another proof of the reckless selfishness of men. Here was one ready and willing to pay any price for the gratification of a fancy. So much the better! He had his reward; and her father's needs were supplied, and her defeat and mortification covered by the same means. But was she bound to feel any affection or gratitude to this man in consequence? He loved her for his own sake, not for hers; it was a selfish passion, and he was rich enough to buy its object; that was all. It suited her to be sold; and there was the whole transaction. Love and gratitude had no part in it, could never have any part in any thing in which she should be concerned any more. Gordon Frere was a poor man, she believed: well, she could have been grateful to him if he had shared his narrow means with her, and incurred the anger of his family for her sake; she could have been very happy and very good. But what was the use of thinking of these things? He had only amused himself with her. Was she to be grateful to this man, who had merely purchased her, as he might have purchased any other expensive object which it pleased him to possess. They would get on very well together, no doubt. She had no fear of any disagreements; she trusted, with reason, in her own high breeding and her entire indifference; and then rich people never need quarrel and be disagreeable to each other, the restrictions of life were not for them; finally, it did not much matter, after all. Katharine believed that she had discovered life to be a swindle, and that she should never more be deceived. This was already a sufficiently lamentable effect of the disappointment she had sustained. With such a character, what might not result from a discovery of the whole truth--from a discovery that the man she loved had never been false to her, and that the marriage into which she had entered in self-defence was the basest of transactions!

For the present no such discovery was within the reach of calculation or apprehension, and Robert revelled in the new-born graciousness of Katharine's manner and in the revival of her girlish brightness. A little sense of duty now; a little of that training in principle, that discipline in well-doing, which only a mother's care, or that of a woman fitted to replace a mother, can bestow; and a life of happiness and usefulness might have begun for Katharine. But all such influences were wanting; and the instincts for good which made themselves heard occasionally in her tempestuous soul were but impulses--they had no root in themselves, and they withered away. The future process by which they were to be planted, and watered, and given increase, would be full of pain no doubt, as every such process of cultivation of the human soul must be; in those early days at Middlemeads it had not begun. The joyous, gracious manner which shed sunshine into her husband's heart was but the ebullition of Katharine's girlish pleasure, and the natural demonstration of a perfectly well-bred woman, to whom it was pleasant to be gracefully grateful, and to whom polished prettiness of speech was "free as bird on branch." It sufficed to create an Elysium for Robert, who found it easy to accommodate himself to the change in all his habits and in his manner of living, and to whom each day brought a renewed opportunity of ministering to his wife's tastes and pleasures.

"But you have never seen my fine country-house, mother; you will surely come and see it," Robert remonstrated, when his mother requested him to bear her excuses to Katharine.

As for Katharine, the genuine affection and admiration with which her sister-in-law regarded her soon began to be sweet and precious to her; her former life had been isolated from all such ties of girlish friendship and confidence, and she had despised them in theory, holding them among the missish follies which she laughed at and held herself above. She had aspired to the reputation of a woman of the world, and she had attained it; and in right of it had no intimacies except of convenience, and no relations with her own sex except those of the most superficial social observance. To Katharine, therefore--who had not, since she left the elegant establishment in which she had acquired all the graces with which nature had not previously supplied her, had any more congenial companion for the hours not absolutely demanded by society than Lady Henmarsh--the novelty of such a friendship as that offered her by Ellen Streightley possessed an ineffable charm. The purity, the simplicity, the very narrowness of the girl's mind pleased her; the unquestioning submission with which she received her opinions, the unqualified admiration which she evinced in every look and word, conveyed, by their simple sincerity, the subtlest charm of flattery. Katharine felt that Ellen's presence did her good; that the peace of mind which pervaded her diffused a tranquil and wholesome atmosphere around her: she did not know whence came the salutary influence; she had never been taught to recognise piety and principle by their peaceable fruits; but she felt all that she did not analyse; and above all she became conscious that she was beginning to live less for herself--that she was acquiring new, unselfish, and harmless interests. Her heart had begun to soften in those days; she was won by the artless confidence of the girl to whom she was an object of wondering admiration, and the wrath and bitterness of her soul began to subside.

"Were you not surprised, Robert, to hear of Hester's good fortune?" said Ellen Streightley to her brother one morning, as the little party were engaged in the pleasing occupation of reading their letters, of which an unusually large number had been laid upon the breakfast-table.

"Yes," said Robert, raising his eyes from a letter which he had been reading with a moody and troubled expression. "Yes, I was indeed, and very much pleased. She was an admirable example of industry and courage. I never could bear to think of a woman having to work; that is a man's part in life. Is your letter from Hester?" he asked, in a tone of interest.

"O yes," said Ellen; "Hester is just the same to me as ever, though Matilda Perkins said she wouldn't be, and I must be very silly to imagine a rich heiress would care about me. I can't think how people can be so mean; can you, Robert? Only fancy any one imagining that money can influence people in that way! I am ashamed to say she made me feel almost afraid of Hester; and I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I found her just the same. I was very near confessing to her that I had wronged her in my thoughts; but then I knew they were not my thoughts, but Matilda Perkins's; and I had no business to tell her sins, you know; and after all, perhaps she was not so much to blame,--she did not know Hester as well as I do."

Katharine, who had laid aside her letters, and was now busily crumbling bread into a saucer half-full of cream--an operation which her beautiful little Maltese dog, Topaze, watched with placid but appreciative interest--smiled at the ingenious eagerness with which Ellen sought to exculpate one friend and to exalt another. Robert's attention strayed from his sister; his eyes were following the movements of his wife's slender fingers. She placed the saucer on the ground and called her dog.

Ellen looked rather puzzled as she said, "Hester is very rich, certainly; but I am not sure about her being very handsome; she always seemed so to me, of course--but then I knew her so well."

"And every one is handsome whom you know well?" said Katharine laughing. "What a beauty your brother must be, and Mr. Dutton, and I--after a while, when you know me long enough!"

"You know quite well that you are a beauty now and always, to me and to every one," said Ellen with beaming eyes; "and it is wicked of you to laugh at me because I cannot exactly express what I mean. Hester is not beautiful like you, so that every one must acknowledge and no one can deny her beauty; but I love her face. And she is very clever, wonderfully clever. Robert, have you never told Katharine about Hester? She used to be quite one of ourselves, you know. She knows all about you, Katharine, and takes the greatest interest in you."

"Does she?" said Katharine with rather a vacant smile.

Katharine rose as she spoke, and Ellen did the same, turning with sparkling eyes to her brother.

"O, Robert, do you hear what Katharine says?" she exclaimed. "She desires me to invite Hester to Middlemeads; and I hardly dare tell you how I longed for her to come here. Is she not kind?"

"Yes, indeed," said Robert; but he spoke rather absently. "She is--I am sure we shall be delighted to see Hester here."

"Come, Ellen," said Katharine; "I am going to look after my hyacinths: leave your brother to his letters, and come with me."

A minute later the two girls passed by the window of the room in which Robert sat, still engaged in what was apparently no pleasant task. He looked up as their voices caught his ear, drew near to the window, and followed the graceful figures with thoughtful, regretful eyes, until they disappeared. Then he sighed deeply, and gathering up his papers left the room.

Half an hour later Robert sought his wife and sister in the garden, and found them in deep conversation with the gardener, a Scotchman of unparalleled skill and obstinacy.

"I beg your pardon, Katharine," he said, "but I overlooked this letter this morning. It is from your father, enclosed to me, from Paris. It must have fallen out when I opened his."

"Thank you," said Katharine carelessly, as she took the note from his hand and stuck it into her belt; then resumed her conversation with the gardener. Ellen felt rather surprised that Katharine could possibly defer the reading of a letter from her father, and recurred to the matter again as she sat down to her desk to enjoy the delight of sending off the longed-for invitation to Hester Gould. She had seen Mr. Guyon at his daughter's wedding, but only on that occasion, and she had not been particularly attracted by him.

"Could it be possible that he was not kind to Katharine, and that she is not very fond of him?" thought the guileless Ellen, to whom any perversion of the relations and duties of life was almost inconceivable and incredible. She shook her simple head gravely at the suspicion, and then proceeded to write a gushing letter to Miss Gould, in answer to that which she had received, and in which, had she indulged a second person with its perusal, that individual would have discerned a very distinct intimation that the writer expected and exacted from Ellen that she should obtain precisely such an invitation as Katharine had so readily and gracefully suggested.

"This room is perfectly exquisite," Lady Henmarsh began again; "and I suppose you keep it strictly to yourself; that you give audience here, queen of Middlemeads, when it suits you; but shut out the profane vulgar,--eh, Kate?"

"Ellen and you!" repeated Lady Henmarsh with profound astonishment. "You don't mean to tell me, Katharine, that you have really taken to be intimate with that uninteresting creature--that sheep-like young lady, the veriest type of the most detestable class of society girls that I have ever encountered! A silly, pious, underbred girl, engaged to a vulgar missionary preacher! Really you amaze me, Kate. Perhaps," she said, with a covert glance at Katharine, and a strong effort to be perfectly familiar and natural, dictated by an instinctive feeling that she had lost ground with one whom she had formerly influenced--"perhaps you are doing the model wife, acting on the 'love-me-love-my-dog' principle, and cultivating this very modest flower for her brother's sake. If so, I admire you for it, Katharine. I am glad to see you have a due sense of the value of 'thorough' in you; there is no more precious quality; but I confess I did not expect it."

Katharine had fixed her large bright eyes upon Lady Henmarsh at the beginning of this speech with an expression of cold surprise, which succeeded in making the speaker feel very uncomfortable before she reached the end of it. A few moments elapsed before Katharine answered gravely:

Katharine spoke in a cold and dignified tone, which produced an exceedingly unpleasant effect upon Lady Henmarsh, whose face assumed a certain comical expression, suggestive of an instantly-repressed inclination to whistle. Her feeling towards Katharine had always hovered on the borders of dislike; but from the present moment it crossed them, and she never tried to deceive herself more about its nature. She had been a party to the wound inflicted upon the pride of this haughty woman; she had witnessed her suffering, had spoken to her of her humiliation, had had cognisance of the "transaction" of this marriage; and Katharine would never forgive her. In her she would find a polished, hospitable, and attentive hostess, observant of every social duty, and resolute against every attempt on her part to reestablish an intimacy which had never been more than superficial and of convenience. Lady Henmarsh perceived the state of the case clearly; but as she had no feelings to be hurt in the matter, she took very kindly to a hearty dislike of Katharine.

But Lady Henmarsh said aloud, and with the most perfect suavity,

"My dear Katharine, you are surely not so silly as to suppose I blame you for any attention to Mr. Streightley's sister. I daresay I shall like her very much when I know her better; and I'm sure it's quite charming to find you getting on so admirably with your people-in-law. And now, I think, having seen as much of your beautiful house as I can manage for to-day, I will disappear until dinner-time. I must look after Sir Timothy. Thank you, dear; I know my way to my rooms. How delightfully you have chosen for me, Kate! just the situation and aspect I like best. Sir Timothy is perfectly charmed."

Robert's reception of Sir Timothy and Lady Henmarsh had been all that the most exacting guests could desire. The poor fellow felt unbounded gratitude towards Lady Henmarsh, who had, as he said to himself, "always been his friend,"--gratitude which it was a pleasure and a relief to him to feel,--gratitude which he could not extend to Mr. Guyon,--no; he was an accomplice, not a friend; and the tie between them was, one of pain, which made itself felt, and of shame, to which no effort, no triumph, could render him insensible. He was totally ignorant of Lady Henmarsh's complicity in Mr. Guyon's manoeuvres; he knew only that he had received the warmest welcome from her when his pretensions were announced; that she had appeared to regard his marriage as all that it should be; and even now that the prize was won, the treasure he had paid so high a price for all his own, he attached an unreasonable importance to Lady Henmarsh's presence, to her approbation. He did not say so in plain terms to himself; but he felt that she would support his cause with Katharine, that she would lend him additional importance. In the timidity of his sore conscience, he felt that it was a great thing to be strengthened by the presence of a person unconscious and unsuspicious of the means by which his success had been effected, and who had welcomed it on its own merits. So little did he understand his wife's proud isolation of heart, that he mistook her courtesy to her guest for respect for her opinion, and looked to Lady Henmarsh's aid in gaining Katharine's heart as ardently as he had hailed her support in his suit for her hand.

Ellen Streightley had been rather frightened by Lady Henmarsh, whose rapid talk on a variety of subjects removed from Ellen's comprehension and experience had oppressed her considerably. She had accordingly kept out of the way, since she had contrived to make her escape during the tour of inspection; and Katharine ultimately discovered her in a quiet corner of the library, deeply engaged in the manufacture of an unspeakably hideous pair of embroidered slippers. She laid aside her work at Katharine's approach, and they proceeded to discuss the time and manner of Miss Gould's expected arrival on the ensuing day, Ellen losing herself in conjectures as to what Katharine would think of Hester, and what Hester would think of Katharine. She had most of the discourse to herself, and also enjoyed a secret satisfaction in the reflection that to-morrow she would have her friend--a more important person than Lady Henmarsh--too, to make a fuss about. She wondered how Robert could like that woman so much, and be so deferential to her; she might be very grand and all that, but she had a way of making people feel small and uncomfortable, which was not like a real lady--not like dear Katharine, for instance; however, there was one comfort, she could not put down Hester.

"Is Miss Gould likely to marry, Ellen?" asked Katharine in the course of their conversation. "It would be a terrible take-in for the fortune-hunters, you know, or rather you don't know, if the prize of the season were found to be already won."

"No," said Ellen slowly; "I do not think Hester ever cared for any one; she gave all her mind, she used to say, to her work. But O, Katharine, how nice it is to think that she can marry a man as poor as Decimus now, if she likes!--that is the only thing that makes it worth while to be an heiress, is it not?"

"I am not sure of that, Ellen," said Katharine; "it is a great recommendation certainly, but heiress-ship has some other advantages too. But there's the first bell; let us go and make ourselves beautiful for Sir Timothy."

"Ay, she may marry a poor man if she likes," thought Robert's wife, as she sat before a long glass in her room, and looked at her beautiful face framed in the unbound masses of her glossy hair. "She may buy, instead of being bought--that's all the difference; the distinction is valuable, however."

Robert Streightley drove his sister to the station where he and Yeldham had hired a trap on the occasion of their visit to Middlemeads, to meet her friend on the day following Lady Henmarsh's arrival. The drive was a pleasant one, for Ellen talked of Katharine, with only occasional and brief interludes and digressions in favour of the absent missionary; and Robert was ready to extend his sympathy to his sister to a degree which would have seemed incredible to him a short time before. He was very happy that day; his face showed the gladness that was at his heart, as it reflected the smile with which Katharine had nodded a farewell to him and Ellen, as the open carriage passed the window where she was standing with her little white dog in her arms. How bright and beautiful and girlish she looked! he thought; how truly she harmonised with all around her! surely she was happy now--happier than at first.

"O yes, it's all most delightful, and ever so grand, Hester; so different, you know, to Brighton and that, that I really should have been half afraid of it if it hadn't been for Katharine. She is so delightful, you can't think, Hester. I think she could make a cabin feel like a palace. I do so long for you to see her."

"You forget that I have already seen Mrs. Streightley several times, Ellen; and I cannot believe that my admiration can be increased on better acquaintance."

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