Read Ebook: Edina: A Novel by Wood Henry Mrs

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Ebook has 763 lines and 33473 words, and 16 pages

d certainly not caring what she did say.

"Yes," replied Frank. "But she is better this morning; so I am off to others who want me more than she does."

"Is it that Mrs. Bell from Trennach? I saw a bottle of medicine directed to West Street for her one day. Sam was putting it into his basket."

"It is Mrs. Bell. She is worse than she used to be, for the disorder has made progress. And I fear she will grow worse, day by day now, until the end."

"What a hypocrite he is!" thought Daisy: "I dare say there is as much the matter with her as there is with me. Of course he needs some plea of excuse--to be going there for ever after that wretched girl."

"Do you come here pretty often?" went on Daisy, coughing to conceal the spleen in her tone, which she was unable to suppress.

"I shall have to come here oftener in future, I fear," returned Frank, not directly answering the question; of which delay she took due note. Just for these few minutes, he had slackened his pace to hers, and they were walking side by side. "I am glad she is near me: I don't think any stranger would give her the care that I shall give her."

"You speak as though you were anxious about her!" resentfully cried Daisy.

"I am more than anxious. I would give half I am worth to be able to cure her."

"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed Daisy. "One would think you and these people must possess some bond of union in common."

"And so we do," he answered.

Perhaps the words were spoken incautiously. Daisy, looking quickly up at him, saw that he seemed lost in thought.

"What is it?" she asked in a low tone: her breathing just then seeming a little difficult.

"What is what?"

"The bond of union between you and these Bells."

The question brought him out of his abstraction. He laughed lightly: laughed, as Daisy thought, and saw, to do away with the impression the words had made: and answered carelessly.

"The bond between me and Dame Bell? It is that I knew her at Trennach, Daisy, and learnt to respect her. She nursed me through a fever once."

"Oh," said Daisy, turning her head away, indignant at what she believed was an evasion. The "bond," if there were any, existed, not between himself and the mother, but between himself and the daughter.

"I dare say you attend them for nothing!"

"Of course I do."

"What would Mr. Max Brown say to that?"

"What he pleased. Max Brown is not a man to object, Daisy."

"You can't tell."

"Yes, I can. If he did, I should pay him the cost of the medicines. And my time, at least, I can give."

Daisy said no more. Swelling with resentment and jealousy, she walked by his side in silence. Frank saw her to the surgery-door, and then turned back rapidly. She went in; passed Sam, who was leisurely dusting the counter, and sat down in the parlour by the fire.

Her state of mind was not one to be envied. Jealousy, you know, makes the food it feeds on. Mrs. Frank Raynor was making very disagreeable food for herself, indeed. She gave the reins to her imagination, and it presented her with all sorts of suggestive horrors. The worst was that she did not, and could not, regard these pictured fancies as possible delusions, emanating from her own brain, and to be cautiously received; but she converted them into undoubted facts. The sounds of Sam's movements in the surgery, his answers to applicants who came in, penetrated to her through the half-open door; but, though they touched her ear in a degree, they did not touch her senses. She was as one who heard not.

Thus she sat on, until midday, indulging these visions to the full extent of her fancy, and utterly miserable. At least, perhaps not quite utterly so: for when people are in the state of angry rage that Daisy was, they cannot feel very acutely. A few minutes after twelve, Sam appeared. He stared to see his mistress sitting just as she had come in, not even her cloak removed, or her bonnet unfastened.

"A letter for you, please, ma'am. The postman have just brought it in."

Daisy took the letter from him without a word. It proved to be from her sister Charlotte, Mrs. Townley. Mrs. Townley wrote to say that she was back again at the house in Westbourne Terrace, and would be glad to see Daisy. She, with her children, had been making a long visit of several months to her mother at The Mount, and she had only now returned. "I did intend to be back for the New Year," she wrote; "but mamma and Lydia would not hear of it. I have many things to tell you, Daisy: so come to me as soon as you get this note. If your husband will join us at dinner--seven o'clock--there will be no difficulty about your getting home again. Say that I shall be happy to see him."

Should she go, or should she not go? Mrs. Frank Raynor was in so excited a mood as not to care very much what she did. And--if she went, and he did not come in the evening, he would no doubt take the opportunity of passing it with Rosaline Bell.

She went upstairs, took her things off, and passed into the drawing-room. The fire was burning brightly. Eve was a treasure of a servant, and attended to it carefully. Frank had given orders that a fire should be always kept up there: it was a better room for his wife than the one downstairs, and more cheerful.

Certainly more cheerful: for the street and its busy traversers could be seen. The opposite fish-shop displayed its wares more plainly to this room than to the small room below. Just now, Monsieur and Madame, the fish proprietors, were enjoying a wordy war, touching some haddock that Madame had sold under cost price. He held an oyster-knife in his hand, and was laying down the law with it. She stood, in her old brown bonnet, her wrists turned back on her capacious hips, and defied his anger. Daisy had the pleasure of assisting at the quarrel, as the French say; for the tones of the disputants were loud, and partly reached her ears.

"What a frightful place this is!" ejaculated Daisy. "What people! Yes, I will go to Charlotte. It is something to get away from them for a few hours, and into civilized life again."

At one o'clock, the hand-bell in the passage below was rung: the signal for dinner. Daisy went down. Frank had only just come in, and was taking off his overcoat.

"I have hardly a minute, Daisy," he said. "I have not seen all my patients yet."

"Been hindering his time with Rosaline," thought Daisy. And she slowly and ungraciously took her place at the table. Frank, regardless of ceremony, had already begun to carve the boiled leg of mutton.

"Yes, generally. But a good many people are ill: and I was hindered this morning by attending to an accident. A little boy was run over in the street."

"Is he much hurt?"

"Not very much. I shall get him right again soon."

The dinner proceeded in silence. Frank was eating too rapidly to have leisure for anything else; Daisy's angry spirit would not permit her to talk. As she laid down her knife and fork, Frank pressed her to take some more mutton, but she curtly refused it.

"I have said no once. This is luncheon; not dinner."

Frank Raynor had become accustomed to hearing his wife speak to him in cold, resentful tones: but to-day they sounded especially cold. He had long ago put it down in his own mind to dissatisfaction at their blighted prospects; blighted, at least, in comparison with those they had so sanguinely entertained when wandering together side by side at Trennach and picturing the future to each other. It only made him the more patient, the more tender with her.

"Mrs. Townley has written to ask me to go to her. She is back again in Westbourne Terrace. She bids me say she shall be happy to see you to dinner at seven. But I suppose you will not go."

"Yes, I will go," said Frank, rapidly revolving ways and means, as regarded the exigencies of his patients. "I think I can get away for an hour or two, Daisy. Is it dress?"

"Just as you please," was the frosty answer. "Mrs. Townley says nothing about dress; she would be hardly likely to do so; but she is accustomed to proper ways."

"And how shall you go, my dear?" resumed Frank, passing over the implication with his usual sweetness of temper. "You had better have a cab."

"I intend to have one," said Daisy.

"I shall give you a surprise, Daisy," said Mrs. Townley in the course of the afternoon. "An old beau of yours is coming to dinner."

"An old beau of mine! Who is that?"

"Sir Paul Trellasis."

"He and his wife are in London, and I asked them to come and dine with us to-day without ceremony," resumed Mrs. Townley. "Had you married Sir Paul, Daisy, you would not have been buried alive amongst savages in some unknown region of London."

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