The Doctor's Wife Part 16

He had gone back to Midlands.h.i.+re because he was tired of his Continental wanderings; and now he was tired of Mordred already, before he had been back a week. Lady Gwendoline catechised him rather closely as to what he had done with himself upon the previous afternoon; and he told her very frankly that he had strolled into Hurstonleigh Grove to see Mr. Raymond, and had spent an hour or two talking with his old friend, while Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert and the children enjoyed themselves, and prepared a rustic tea, which would have been something like Watteau, if Watteau had been a Dutchman.

"It was very pretty, Gwendoline, I a.s.sure you," he said. "Mrs. Gilbert made tea, and we drank it in a scalding state; and the two children were all of a greasy radiance with bread-and-b.u.t.ter. The doctor seems to be an excellent fellow; his moral region is something tremendous, Raymond tells me, and he entertained us at tea with a most interesting case of fester."

"Oh, the doctor? that's Mr. Gilbert, is it not?" said Lady Gwendoline; "and what do you think of his wife, Roland? You must have formed some opinion upon that subject, I should think, by the manner in which you stared at her."

"Did I stare at her?" cried Mr. Lansdell, with supreme carelessness. "I dare say I did; I always stare at pretty women. Why should a man go into all manner of stereotyped raptures about a Raffaelle or a Guido, and yet feel no honest thrill of disinterested admiration when he looks at a picture fresh from the hands of the supreme painter, Nature? who, by the way, makes as many failures, and is as often out of drawing, as any other artist. Yes, I admire Mrs. Gilbert, and I like to look at her. I don't suppose she's any better than other people, but she's a great deal prettier. A beautiful piece of animated waxwork, with a little machinery inside, just enough to make her say, 'Yes, if you please,' and 'No, thank you.' A lovely non-ent.i.ty with yellow-black eyes. Did you observe her eyes?"

"No!" Lady Gwendoline answered, sharply; "I observed nothing except that she was a very dowdy-looking person. What, in Heaven's name, is Mr.

Raymond's motive for taking her up? He's always taking up some extraordinary person."

"But Mrs. Gilbert is not an extraordinary person: she's very stupid and commonplace. She was nursery-maid, or nursery-governess, or something of that kind, to that dear good Raymond's penniless nieces."

There was no more said about Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert. Lady Gwendoline did not care to talk about these common people, who came across her dull pathway, and robbed her of some few accidental rays of that light which was now the only radiance upon earth for her,--the light of her cousin's presence.

Ah, me! with what a stealthy step, invisible in the early suns.h.i.+ne, pitiless Nemesis creeps after us, and glides past us, and goes on before to wait for us upon the other side of the hill, amidst the storm-clouds and the darkness! From the very first Gwendoline had loved her cousin Roland better than any other living creature upon this earth: but the chance of bringing down the bird at whose glorious plumage so many a fair fowler had levelled her rifle had dazzled and tempted her. The true wine of life was not that mawkish, sickly-sweet compound of rose-leaves and honey called Love, but an effervescing, intoxicating beverage known as Success, Lady Gwendoline thought: and in the triumph of her splendid conquest it seemed such an easy thing to resign the man she loved. But now it was all different. She looked back, and remembered what her life might have been: she looked forward, and saw what it was to be: and the face of Nemesis was very terrible to look upon.

Thus it was that Lady Gwendoline was exacting of her cousin's attention, impatient of his neglect. Oh, if she could have brought him back! if she could have kindled a new flame in the cold embers! Alas! she knew that to do that would be to achieve the impossible. She looked in the gla.s.s, and saw that her aristocratic beauty was pale and faded; she felt that the story of her life was ended. The sea might break against the crags for ever and for ever; but the tender grace of a day that was dead could never return to her.

"He loved me once," she thought, as she sat in the summer twilight, watching her cousin strolling on the lawn, smoking his after-dinner cigar, and looking so tired--so tired of himself and everything in the world. "He loved me once; it is something to remember that."

The day was very dull at Lowlands, Mr. Lansdell thought. There was a handsome house, a little old and faded, but very handsome notwithstanding; and there was a well-cooked dinner, and good wines; and there was an elegant and accomplished woman always ready to talk to him and amuse him;--and yet, somehow, it was all flat, stale, and unprofitable to this young man, who had lived the same kind of life for ten years, and had drained its pleasures to the very dregs.

"We should laugh at a man who went on writing epic poems all his life, though people refused to read a line of his poetry; and no man can be expected to go on trying to improve the position of people who don't want to be improved. I've tried my hand at the working-man, and he has rejected me as an intrusive nuisance. I've no doubt he was 'in his right.' How should I like a reformer who wanted to set _me_ straight, and lay out my leisure hours by line and rule, and spend my money for me, and show me how to get mild Turkish, and German wines, in the best and cheapest market?"

Mr. Lansdell often thought about his life. It is not natural that a man, originally well disposed, should lead a bad and useless life without thinking of it. Mr. Lansdell was subject to gloomy fits of melancholy, in which the Present seemed a burden, and the Future a blank,--a great blank desert, or a long dreary bridge, like that which the genius showed to Mirza in his morning vision, with dreadful pitfalls every here and there, down which unwary foot-pa.s.sengers sank, engulfed in the dreadful blackness of a bottomless ocean.

CHAPTER XIV.

UNDER LORD THURSTON'S OAK.

While Mr. Lansdell remembered Isabel Gilbert as a pretty automaton, who had simpered and blushed when he spoke to her, and stammered shyly when she was called upon to answer him, the Doctor's Wife walked up and down the flat commonplace garden at Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, and thought of her birthday afternoon, whose simple pleasures had been embellished by the presence of a demiG.o.d. Yes, she walked up and down between two rows of straggling gooseberry-bushes, in a rapturous day-dream; a dangerous day-dream, in which Roland Lansdell's dark face shone dazzling and beautiful. Was it wrong to think of him? She never asked herself that question. She had read sentimental books all her life, and had been pa.s.sionately in love with heroes in three volumes, ever since she could remember. What did it matter whether she was in love with Sir Reginald Glanville or Mr. Roland Lansdell? One pa.s.sion was as hopeless as the other, and as harmless therefore. She was never likely to see the lord of Mordred Priory again. Had she not heard him tell Mr. Raymond that he should spend the winter in Paris? Mrs. Gilbert counted the months upon her fingers. Was November the winter? If so, Mr. Lansdell would be gone in four months' time. And in all those four months what likelihood was there that she should see him,--she, who was such a low degraded wretch as compared with this splendid being and those with whom it was his right to a.s.sociate? Never, no, never until now had she understood the utter hideousness and horror of her life. The square miserable parlour, with little stunted cupboards on each side of the fireplace, and sh.e.l.ls and peac.o.c.ks' feathers, and penny-bottles of ink, and dingy unpaid bills, upon the mantel-piece. She sat there with the July sun glaring in upon her through the yellow-white blind; she sat there and thought of her life and its squalid ugliness, and then thought of Lady Gwendoline at Lowlands, and rebelled against the unkindness of a Providence that had not made her an earl's daughter. And then she clasped her hands upon her face, and shut out the vulgar misery of that odious parlour--a _parlour_!--the very word was unknown in those bright regions of which she was always dreaming--and thought of Roland Lansdell.

She thought of him, and she thought what her life might have been--if----

If what? If any one out of a hundred different visions, all equally childish and impossible, could have been realized. If she had been an earl's daughter, like Lady Gwendoline! If she had been a great actress, and Roland Lansdell had seen her and fallen in love with her from a stage-box! If he had met her in the Walworth Road two or three years ago; she fancied the meeting,--he in a cab, with the reins lightly held between the tips of his gloved fingers, and a tiny tiger swinging behind; and she standing on the kerbstone waiting to cross the road, and not out to fetch anything vulgar, only going to pay a water-rate, or to negotiate some mysterious "backing" of the spoons, or some such young-ladylike errand. And then she got up and went to the looking-gla.s.s to see if she really was pretty; or if her face, as she saw it in her day-dreams, was only an invention of her own, like the scenery and the dresses of those foolish dreams. She rested her elbows on the mantel-piece, and looked at herself, and pushed her hair about, and experimented with her mouth and eyes, and tried to look like Edith Dombey in the grand Carker scene, and acted the scene in a whisper.

No, she wasn't a bit like Edith Dombey; she was more like Juliet, or Desdemona. She lowered her eyelids, and then lifted them slowly, revealing a tender penetrating glance in the golden black eyes.

"I'm _very_ sorry that you are not well!"

she whispered. Yes, she would do for Desdemona. Oh, if instead of marrying George Gilbert, she had only run away to London, and gone straight to that enterprising manager, who would have been so sure to engage her! If she had done this, she might have played Desdemona, and Mr. Lansdell might have happened to go to the theatre, and might have fallen desperately in love with her on the spot.

She took a dingy volume of the immortal William's from a dusty row of books on one of the cupboards, and went up to her room and locked the door, and pleaded for Ca.s.sio, and wept and protested opposite the looking-gla.s.s, before which three matter-of-fact generations of Gilberts had shaved themselves.

She was only nineteen, and she was a child, with all a child's eagerness for something bright and happy. It seemed only a very short time since she had longed for a gaily-dressed doll that adorned one of the Walworth Road shop-windows. Her married life had not as yet invested her with any matronly dignity. She had no domestic cares or duties; for the simple household was kept in order by Mrs. Jeffson, who would have resented any interference from the young mistress. Isabel went into the kitchen sometimes, when she was very much at a loss as to what she should do with herself, and sat in an old rocking-chair swinging languidly backwards and forwards, and watching kind-hearted Tilly making a pie.

There are some young women who take kindly to a simple domestic life, and have a natural genius for pies and puddings, and cutting and contriving, in a cheery, pleasant way, that invests poverty with a grace of its own; and when a gentleman wishes to marry on three hundred a year, he should look out for one of those bright household fairies.

Isabel had no liking for these things; to her the making of pastry was a wearisome business. It was all very well for Ruth Pinch to do it for once in a way, and to be admired by John Westlock, and marry a rich and handsome young husband offhand. No doubt Miss Pinch knew instinctively that Mr. Westlock would come that morning while the beef-steak pudding was in progress. But to go on making puddings for Tom Pinch for ever and ever, with no John Westlock! Isabel left the house affairs to Mrs.

Jeffson, and acted Shakespearian heroines and Edith Dombey before her looking-gla.s.s, and read her novels, and dreamed her dreams, and wrote little sc.r.a.ps of poetry, and drew pen-and-ink profile portraits of Mr.

Lansdell--always looking from right to left. She gave him very black eyes with white blanks in the centre, and streaky hair; she drew Lady Gwendoline and the chip bonnet also very often, if not quite as often as the gentleman; so there was no harm in it. Mrs. Gilbert was strictly punctilious with herself, even in the matter of her thoughts. She only thought of what _might_ have happened if Mr. Lansdell had met her long ago before her marriage.

It is not to be supposed that she forgot Roland's talk of some picnic or entertainment at Mordred. She thought of it a great deal, sometimes fancying that it was too bright a thing to come to pa.s.s: at other times thinking that Mr. Lansdell was likely to call at any moment with a formal invitation for herself and her husband. The weather was very warm just now, and the roads very dusty; so Mrs. Gilbert stayed at home a good deal. He might come,--he might come at any unexpected moment. She trembled and turned hot at the sound of a double knock, and ran to the gla.s.s to smooth her disordered hair: but only the most commonplace visitors came to Mr. Gilbert's mansion; and Isabel began to think that she would never see Roland Lansdell again.

And then she plunged once more into the hot-pressed pages of the "Alien," and read Mr. Lansdell's plaints, on toned paper, with long _s_'s that looked like _f_'s. And she copied his verses, and translated them into bad French. They were very difficult: how was she to render even such a simple sentence as "My own Clotilde?" She tried such locutions as, "_Ma propre Clotilde_," "_Ma Clotilde particuliere_;" but she doubted if they were quite academically correct. And she set the Alien to tunes that he didn't match, and sang him in a low voice to the cracked notes of an old harpsichord which George's mother had imported from Yorks.h.i.+re.

One day when she was walking with George,--one dreary afternoon, when George had less to do than usual, and was able to take his wife for a nice dusty walk on the high-road,--Mrs. Gilbert saw the man of whom she had thought so much. She saw a brown horse and a well-dressed rider sweep past her in a cloud of dust; and she knew, when he had gone by, that he was Roland Lansdell. He had not seen her any more than if there was no such creature upon this earth. He had not seen her. For the last five weeks she had been thinking of him perpetually, and he rode by and never saw that she was there. No doubt Lord Byron would have pa.s.sed her by in much the same manner if he had lived: and would have ridden on to make a morning call upon that thrice-blessed Italian woman, whose splendid shame it was to be a.s.sociated with him. Was it not always so?

The moon is a cold divinity, and the brooks look up for ever and win no special radiance in recompense for their faithful wors.h.i.+p: the sunflower is always turning to the sun, and the planet takes very little notice of the flower. Did not Napoleon snub Madame de Stael? And if Isabel could have lived thirty years earlier, and worked her pa.s.sage out to St.

Helena as s.h.i.+p's needle-woman, or something of that kind, and expressed her intention of sitting at the exile's feet for the rest of her natural life, the hero would have doubtless sent her back by the first homeward-bound vessel with an imperially proportioned flea in her ear.

No, she must be content to wors.h.i.+p after the manner of the brooks. No subtle power of sympathy was engendered out of her wors.h.i.+p. She drew rather fewer profile views of Mr. Lansdell after that wretched dusty afternoon, and she left off hoping that he would call and invite her to Mordred.

She resumed her old habits, and went out again with Sh.e.l.ley and the "Alien," and the big green parasol.

One day--one never-to-be-forgotten day, which made a kind of chasm in her life, dividing all the past from the present and the future--she sat on her old seat under the great oak-tree, beside the creaking mill-wheel and the plas.h.i.+ng water; she sat in her favourite spot, with Sh.e.l.ley on her lap and the green parasol over her head. She had been sitting there for a long time in the drowsy midday atmosphere, when a great dog came up to her, and stared at her, and snuffed at her hands, and made friendly advances to her; and then another dog, bigger, if anything, than the first, came bouncing over a stile and bounding towards her; and then a voice, whose sudden sound made her drop her book all confused and frightened, cried, "Hi, Frollo! this way, Frollo." And in the next minute a gentleman, followed by a third dog, came along the narrow bridge that led straight to the bench on which she was sitting.

Her parasol had fallen back as she stooped to pick up her book, and Roland Lansdell could not avoid seeing her face. He thought her very pretty, as we know, but he thought her also very stupid; and he had quite forgotten his talk about her coming to Mordred.

"Let me pick up the book, Mrs. Gilbert," he said. "What a pretty place you have chosen for your morning's rest! This is a favourite spot of mine." He looked at the open pages of the book as he handed it to her, and saw the t.i.tle; and glancing at another book on the seat near her, he recognized the familiar green cover and beveled edges of the "Alien." A man always knows the cover of his own book, especially when the work has hung rather heavily on the publisher's hands.

"You are fond of Sh.e.l.ley," he said. (He was considerably surprised to find that this pretty nonent.i.ty beguiled her morning walks with the perusal of the "Revolt of Islam.")

"Oh yes, I am very, very fond of him. Wasn't it a pity that he was drowned?"

She spoke of that calamity as if it had been an event of the last week or two. These things were nearer to her than all that common business of breakfast and dinner and supper which made up her daily life. Mr.

Lansdell shot a searching glance at her from under cover of his long lashes. Was this feminine affectation, provincial Rosa-Matilda-ism?

"Yes, it was a pity," he said; "but I fancy we're beginning to get over the misfortune. And so you like all that dreamy, misty stuff?" he added, pointing to the open book which Isabel held in her hands. She was turning the leaves about, with her eyes cast down upon the pages. So would she have sat, shy and trembling, if Sir Reginald Glanville, or Eugene Aram, or the Giaour, or Napoleon the Great, or any other grand melancholy creature, could have been conjured into life and planted by her side. But she could not tolerate the substantive "stuff" as applied to the works of the lamented Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley.

"I think it is the most beautiful _poetry_ that was ever written," she said.

"Better than Byron's?" asked Mr. Lansdell; "I thought most young ladies made Byron their favourite."

"Oh yes, I love Byron. But then he makes one so unhappy, because one feels that he was so unhappy when he wrote. Fancy his writing the 'Giaour' late at night, after being out at parties where everybody adored him; and if he hadn't written it, he would have gone mad," said Mrs. Gilbert, opening her eyes very wide. "Reading Sh.e.l.ley's poetry seems like being amongst birds and flowers and blue rippling water and summer. It always seems summer in his poetry. Oh, I don't know which I like best."

Was all this affectation, or was it only simple childish reality? Mr.

Lansdell was so much given to that dreadful disease, disbelief, that he was slow to accept even the evidence of those eloquent blushes, the earnestness in those wonderful eyes, which could scarcely be a.s.sumed at will, however skilled in the light comedy of every-day life Mrs. Gilbert might be. The dogs, who had no misanthropical tendencies, had made friends with Izzie already, and had grouped themselves about her, and laid their big paws and cold wet noses on her knee.

"Shall I take them away?" asked Mr. Lansdell. "I am afraid they will annoy you."

"Oh no, indeed; I am so fond of dogs."

She bent over them and caressed them with her ungloved hands, and dropped Sh.e.l.ley again, and was ashamed of her awkwardness. Would Edith Dombey have been perpetually dropping things? She bent over a big black retriever till her lips touched his forehead, and he was emboldened to flap his great slimy tongue over her face in token of his affection.

_His_ dog! Yes, it had come to that already. Mr. Lansdell was that awful being, the mysterious "Lui" of a thousand romances. Roland had been standing upon the bridge all this time; but the bridge was very narrow, and as a labouring man came across at this moment with a reaping-hook across his shoulder, Mr. Lansdell had no choice except to go away, or else sit down on the bench under the tree. So he sat down at a respectful distance from Mrs. Gilbert, and picked up Sh.e.l.ley again; and I think if it had not been for the diversion afforded by the dogs, Isabel would have been likely to drop over into the brawling mill-stream in the intensity of her confusion.

He was there by her side, a real living hero and poet, and her weak sentimental little heart swelled with romantic rapture; and yet she felt that she ought to go away and leave him. Another woman might have looked at her watch, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, and gathered up her books and parasol, and departed with a sweeping curtsey and a dignified adieu to Mr. Lansdell. But Isabel was planted to the spot, held by some fearful but delicious charm,--a magic and a mystic spell,--with which the plas.h.i.+ng of the water, and the slow creaking of the mill-wheel, and a faint fluttering of leaves and flowers, the drowzy buzz of mult.i.tudinous insects, the thrilling song of Sh.e.l.ley's own skylark in the blue heavens high above her head, blended in one sweet confusion.