Read Ebook: The Doctor's Wife: A Novel by Braddon M E Mary Elizabeth

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Ebook has 337 lines and 34702 words, and 7 pages

And then the Tempter's hand swept aside a dark curtain, and revealed a lovely picture of the life that might be, if George Gilbert would only be so obliging as to sink under that tiresome low fever which had done so much mischief in the lanes about Graybridge. Roland Lansdell was not a hero; he was only a very imperfect, vacillating young man, with noble impulses for ever warring against the baser attributes of his mind; a spoiled child of fortune, who had almost always had his own way until just now.

"I ought to go away," he thought; "I ought to go away all the more because of this man's illness. There seems something horrible in my stopping here watching and waiting for the result, when I should gain such an unutterable treasure by George Gilbert's death."

But he lingered, nevertheless. A man may fully appreciate the enormity of his sin, and yet go on shining. Mr. Lansdell did not go away from Mordred; he contented himself with sending the Graybridge surgeon a basket of the finest grapes and a couple of the biggest pines to be found in the Priory hothouses; and it may be that his conscience derived some small solace from the performance of this courtesy.

"If there's a dissolution, our party must inevitably come in," the Earl said at parting; "and in that case you must stand for Wareham. The Wareham people look to you as their legitimate representative. I look forward to great things, my boy, if the present ministry go out. I've been nursing my little exchequer very comfortably for the last twelve months; and I shall take a furnished house in town, and begin life again next year, if things go well; and I expect to see you make a figure in the world yet, Roland."

"At last!" he exclaimed, as Mr. Lansdell's name was announced. "I've called at Mordred about half-a-dozen times within the last two months; but as your people always said you were out, and as I could always see by their faces that you were at home, I have given up the business in despair."

Lord Ruysdale came in presently with the "Times" newspaper open in his hand, and insisted on reading a leader, which he delivered with amazing energy, and all the emphasis on the beginnings of the sentences. Dinner was announced before the leader was finished, and Mr. Raymond led Lady Gwendoline to the dining-room, while Roland stayed to hear the Thunderer's climax murdered by his uncle's defective elocution. The dinner went off very quietly. The Earl talked politics, and Mr. Raymond discoursed very pleasantly on the principles of natural philosophy as applied to the rulers of the nation. There was a strange contrast between the animal spirits of the two men who had passed the meridian of life, and were jogging quietly on the shady slope of the lull, and the dreamy languor exhibited by the two young people who sat listening to them. George Sand has declared that nowadays all the oldest books are written by the youngest authors; might she not go even farther, and say that nowadays the young people are older than their seniors? We have got rid of our Springheeled Jacks and John Mittons, and Tom and Jerry are no more popular either on or off the stage; our young aristocrats no longer think it a fine thing to drive a hearse to Epsom races, or to set barrels of wine running in the Haymarket; but in place of all this foolish riot and confusion a mortal coldness of the soul seems to have come down upon the youth of our nation, a deadly languor and stagnation of spirit, from which nothing less than a Crimean war or an Indian rebellion can arouse the worn-out idlers in a weary world. The dinner was drawing to a close, when Lord Ruysdale mentioned a name that awakened all Mr. Lansdell's attention.

Lady Gwendoline's face darkened, and she glanced at Roland, before she spoke.

"I am sorry to hear it," she said. "I am sorry for Mr. Gilbert, for more than one reason. I am sorry he has so very bad a wife."

Roland's face flushed crimson, and he turned to his cousin as if about to speak; but Mr. Raymond was too quick for him.

"I think the less we say upon that subject the better," he exclaimed, eagerly; "I think, Lady Gwendoline, that is a subject that had much better not be discussed here."

"Why should it not be discussed?" cried Roland, looking--if people can look daggers--a perfect arsenal of rage and scorn at his cousin. "Of course, we understand that slander of her own sex is a woman's privilege. Why should not Lady Gwendoline avail herself of her special right? Here is only a very paltry subject, certainly--a poor little provincial nobody; but she will serve for want of a better;--lay her on the table, by all means, and bring out your dissecting-tools, Lady Gwendoline. What have you to say against Mrs. Gilbert?" He waited, breathless and angry, for his cousin's answer, looking at her with sullen defiance in his face.

"Perhaps Mr. Raymond is right, after all," Gwendoline said, quietly. She was very quiet, but very pale, and looked her cousin as steadily in the eyes as if she had been fighting a small-sword duel with him. "The subject is one that will scarcely bear discussion here or elsewhere; but since you accuse me of feminine malice, I am bound to defend myself. I say that Mrs. Gilbert is a very bad wife and a very wicked woman. A person who is seen to attend a secret rendezvous with a stranger, not once, but several times, with all appearance of stealth and mystery, while her husband lies between life and death, must surely be one of the worst and vilest of women."

Mr. Lansdell burst into a discordant laugh.

Lady Gwendoline did not condescend to discuss the truth or probability of her story. She saw that her cousin was ashy pale to the lips, and she knew that her shot had gone home to the very centre of the bull's-eye. After this there was very little conversation. Lord Ruysdale started one or two of his favourite topics; but he understood dimly that there was something not quite pleasant at work amongst his companions. Roland sat frowning at his plate; and Charles Raymond watched him with an uneasy expression in his face; as a man who is afraid of lightning might watch the gathering of a storm-cloud. The dinner drew to a close amidst dense gloom and awful silence, dismally broken by the faint chinking of spoons and jingling of glass. Ah, what funeral-bell can fall more solemnly upon the ear than those common every-day sounds amidst the awful stillness that succeeds or precedes a domestic tempest! There is nothing very terrible in the twittering of birds; yet how ominous sound the voices of those innocent feathered warblers in the dread pauses of a storm!

Lady Gwendoline rose from the table when her father filled his second glass of Burgundy, and Mr. Raymond hurried to open the door for her. But Roland's eyes were never lifted from his empty plate; he was waiting for something; now and then a little convulsive movement of his lower lip betrayed that he was agitated; but that was all.

Lord Ruysdale seemed relieved by his daughter's departure. He had a vague idea that there had been some little passage-at-arms between Roland and Gwendoline, and fancied that serenity would be restored by the lady's absence. He went twaddling on with his vapid discourse upon the state of the political atmosphere, placid as some babbling stream, until the dusky shadows began to gather in the corners of the low old-fashioned chamber. Then the Earl pulled out a fat ponderous old hunter, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour.

"I've some letters to write that must go by to-night's post," he said. "Raymond, I know you'll excuse me if I leave you for an hour or so. Roland, I expect you and Raymond to do justice to that Chambertin."

Charles Raymond murmured some polite conventionality as the Earl left the room; but he never removed his eyes from Roland's face. He had watched the brewing of the storm, and was prepared for a speedy thunder-clap. Nor was he mistaken in his calculations.

"Raymond, is this true?" Mr. Lansdell asked, as the door closed upon his uncle. He spoke as if there had been no break or change in the conversation since Mrs. Gilbert's name had been mentioned.

"Is what true, Roland?"

"This dastardly slander against Isabel Gilbert. Is it true? Pshaw! I know that it is not. But I want to know if there is any shadow of an excuse for such a scandal. Don't trifle with me, Raymond; I have kept no secrets from you; and I have a right to expect that you will be candid with me."

"I do not think you have any right to question me upon the subject," Mr. Raymond answered, very gravely: "when last it was mentioned between us, you rejected my advice, and protested against my further interference in your affairs. I thought we finished with the subject then, Roland, at your request; and I certainly do not care to renew it now."

"But things have changed since then," Mr. Lansdell said, eagerly. "It is only common justice to Mrs. Gilbert that I should tell you as much as that, Raymond. I was very confident, very presumptuous, I suppose, when I last discussed this business with you. It is only fair that you should know that the schemes I had formed, when I came back to England, have been entirely frustrated by Mrs. Gilbert herself."

"I am very glad to hear it."

There was very little real gladness in Mr. Raymond's tone as he said this; and the uneasy expression with which he had watched Roland for the last hour was, if anything, intensified now.

"Yes; I miscalculated when I built all those grand schemes for a happy future. It is not so easy to persuade a good woman to run away from her husband, however intolerable may be the chain that binds her to him. These provincial wives accept the marriage-service in its sternest sense. Mrs. Gilbert is a good woman. You can imagine, therefore, how bitterly I felt Gwendoline's imputations against her. I suppose these women really derive some kind of pleasure from one another's destruction. And now set my mind quite at rest: there is not one particle of truth--not so much as can serve as the foundation for a lie--in this accusation, is there, Raymond?"

"Is there any truth in it, Raymond?" he repeated, rising from his chair, and glowering across the table at his kinsman.

"I decline to answer that question. I have nothing to do with Mrs. Gilbert, or with any reports that may be circulated against her."

"But I insist upon your telling me all you know; or, if you refuse to do so, I will go to Lady Gwendoline, and obtain the truth from her."

Mr. Raymond shrugged his shoulders, as if he would have said, "All further argument is useless; this demented creature must go to perdition his own way."

"What? That she--that Isabel has been seen with some stranger?"

"Yes."

"With whom? when? where?"

"There is a strange man staying at a little rustic tavern in Nessborough Hollow. You know what gossips these country people are; Heaven knows I have never put myself out of the way to learn other people's business; but these things get bruited about in all manner of places."

Roland chafed impatiently during this brief digression.

"Tell your story plainly, Raymond," he said. "There is a strange man staying in Nessborough Hollow--well; what then?"

"But what has all this to do with Mrs. Gilbert?"

"Only this much,--she has been seen walking alone with this man, after dark, in Nessborough Hollow."

"It must be a lie; a villanous invention! or if--if she has been seen to meet this man, he is some relation. Yes, I have reason to think that she has some relation staying in this neighbourhood."

"But why, in that case, should she meet the man secretly, at such an hour, while her husband is lying ill?"

"There may be a hundred reasons."

Mr. Raymond shrugged his shoulders. "Can you suggest one?" he asked.

Roland Lansdell's head sank forward on his breast. No; he could think of no reason why Isabel Gilbert should meet this stranger secretly--unless there were some kind of guilt involved in their association. Secrecy and guilt go so perpetually together, that it is almost difficult for the mind to dissever them.

"So be it, then," answered Mr. Raymond. "In that case we can drop the subject."

But Roland was not so easily to be satisfied. The poisoned arrow had entered far into his soul, and he must needs drag the cruel barb backwards and forwards in the wound.

"Not till you have given me the name of your authority," he said.

"Pshaw! my dear Roland, have I not already told you that my authority is the common Graybridge gossip?"

"I'll not believe that. You are the last man in the world to be influenced by paltry village scandal. You have better grounds for what you told me. Some one has seen Isabel and this man. Who was that person?"

"I protest against this cross-examination. I have been weak enough to sympathize with a dishonourable attachment, so far as to wish to spare you pain. You refuse to be spared, and must take the consequences of your own obstinacy. I was the person who saw Isabel Gilbert walking with a stranger--a showily-dressed disreputable-looking fellow--in Nessborough Hollow. I had been dining with Hardwick the lawyer at Graybridge, and rode home across country by the Briargate and Hurstonleigh Road, instead of going through Waverly. I heard the scandal about Mrs. Gilbert at Graybridge,--heard her name linked with that of some stranger staying at the Leicester Arms, Nessborough Hollow, who had been known to send letters to her and to meet her after dark. Heaven only knows how country people find out these things; but these things always are discovered somehow or other. I defended Isabel,--I know her head is a good one, though by no means so well balanced as it might be,--I defended Isabel throughout a long discussion with the lawyer's wife; but riding home by the Briargate Road, I met Mrs. Gilbert walking arm-in-arm with a man who answered to the description I had heard at Graybridge."

"When was this?"

"The night before last. It must have been some time between ten and eleven when I met them, for it was broad moonlight, and I saw Isabel's face as plainly as I see yours."

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