CHAPTER II. HIS STORY.
I have not been able to continue this. Every day has been full of business, and every night I have spent at Rockmount for the last three weeks.
Such was, I solemnly aver—from no fixed intention: I meant only to go as an ordinary doctor—in order, if possible, to serve the life that was valuable in itself, and most precious to some few; afterwards, whichever way the case terminated, to take my leave, like any other medical attendant: receiving thanks, or fee. Yes—if they offered it, I determined to take a fee; in order to show, both to them and myself, that I was only the doctor—the paid physician. But this last wound has been spared me—and I only name it now in proof that nothing has happened as I expected or intended.
I remember Dallas, in reading to me the sermons he used to write for practice, preparing for the sacred duties which, to him, never came—had one upon the text “Thy will be done,”—where, in words more beautiful than I dare try to repeat in mine, he explained how good it was for us that things so seldom fell out according to our shortsighted plannings; how many a man had lived to bless God that his own petty will had not been done; that nothing had happened to him according as he expected or intended.
Do you know, you to whom I write, how much it means, my thus naming to you of Dallas—whose name, since he died, has never but once passed my lips.
I think you would have liked my brother Dallas. He was not at all like me—I took after my father, people said, and he after our mother. He had soft, English features, and smooth, fine, dark hair. He was smaller than I, though so much the elder. The very last Christmas we had at St. Andrews, I mind lifting him up and carrying him several yards in play, laughing at him for being as thin and light as a lady. We were merry-hearted fellows, and had many a joke, the two of us, when we were together. Strange to think, that I am a man nigh upon forty, and that he has been dead twenty years.
It is you—little as you guess it, who have made me think upon these my dead, my father, mother, and Dallas, whom I have never dared to think of until now. Let me continue.
Mr. Johnston's has been a difficult case—more so in its secondary stages than at first. I explained this to his daughter—the second daughter; the only one whom I found of much assistance. Miss Johnston being extremely nervous, and irritable, and Mrs. Treherne, whom I trusted would have taken her share in the nursing, proving more of a hindrance than a help. She could not be made to comprehend why, when her father was out of danger, she should not rush in and out of the sick room continually, with her chattering voice, and her noisy silk dresses. And she was offended because, when Mr. Charteris, having come for a day from London, was admitted, quiet, scared, and shocked, to spend a few minutes by the old man's bed-side—her Augustus, full of lively rattle and rude animal spirits, was carefully kept out of the room.
“You plan it all between you,” she said, one day, half sulkily, to her sister and myself. “You play into one another's hands as if you had lived together all your lives. Confess, Doctor,—confess, Miss Nurse, you would keep me too out of papa's room, if you could.”
I certainly would. Though an excellent person, kind-hearted and good-tempered to a degree, Mrs. Treherne contrived to try my temper more than I should like to say, for two intolerable days.
The third, I resolved on a little conversation with Miss Theodora; who, having sat up till my watch began at two, now came in to me while I was taking breakfast, to receive my orders for the day. These were simple enough; quiet, silence; and, except old Mrs. Cartwright, whom I had sent for, only one person to be allowed in my patient's room.
“Ah, yes, I'm glad of that. Just hearken!” Doors slamming—footsteps on the stairs—Mrs. Treherne calling out to her husband not to smoke in the hall.—“That is how it is all day, when you are away. What can I do? Help me, please, help me!”
An entreaty, almost childish in its earnestness; now and then, through all this time, she has seemed in her behaviour towards me, less like a woman than a trusting dependant child.
I sent for Treherne and his wife, and told them that the present was a matter of life and death, in which there could be no standing upon ceremony; that in this house, where no legitimate rule existed, and all were young and inexperienced, I, as the physician, must have authority, which authority must be obeyed. If they wished, I would resign the case altogether—but I soon saw that was not desired. They promised obedience; and I repeated the medical orders, adding, that during my absence, only one person, the person I chose, should be left in charge of my patient.
“Very well, Doctor,” said Mrs. Treherne, “and that is—”
“Miss Theodora.”
“Theodora—oh, nonsense! She never nursed anybody. She never was fit for anything.”
“She is fit for all I require, and her father wishes for her also; therefore, if you please, will you at once go up to him, Miss Theodora?”
She had stood patient and impassive till I spoke, then the colour rushed into her face and the tears into her eyes. She left the room immediately.
But, as I went, she was lying in wait for me at the door. “Thank you—thank you so much! But do you really think I shall make a good careful nurse for dear papa?”
I told her “Certainly—better than any one else here—better indeed than anyone I knew.”
It was good to see her look of happy surprise.
“Do you really think that? Nobody ever thought so well of me before. I will try—ah! won't I try, to deserve your good opinion.”
Ignorant, simple heart.
Most people have some other person, real or imaginary, who is more “comfortable” to them than anyone else—to whom in trouble the thoughts always first fly, who in sickness would be chosen to smooth the weary pillow, and holding whose hand they would like to die. Now, it would be quite easy, quite happy to die in a certain chamber I know, shadowy and still, with a carpet of a green leafy pattern, and bunches of fuchsias papering the walls. And about the room, a little figure moving; slender, noiseless, busy and sweet—in a brown dress, soft to touch, and making no sound, with a white collar fastened by a little coloured bow above it; the delicate throat and small head like a deer's; and the eyes something like a deer's eyes also, which turn round large and quiet, to look you right in the face—as they did then.
I wonder if any accident or illness were to happen to me here, while staying in the camp—something that would make it certain I had only a few days, or hours, to live, and I happened to have sufficient consciousness and will to say what I wished done, whom I desired to see, in those few last hours, when the longing of a dying man could injure nobody,—Enough—this is the merest folly. To live, not to die, is likely to be my portion I accept it—blame me not.
Day after day has gone on in the same round—my ride to Rockmount after dusk, tea there, and my evening sleep in “the Doctor's room.” There, at midnight, Treherne wakes me—I dress and return to that quiet chamber where the little figure rises from beside the bed with a smile and a whisper—“Not at all tired, thank you.” A few words more, and I give it my candle, bid it good night, and take its place, sitting down in the same armchair, and leaning my head back against the same cushion, which still keeps the indentation, soft and warm; and so I watch by the old man till morning.
This is how it has regularly been.
Until lately, night was the patient's most trying time. He used to lie moaning, or watching the shadows of the fire-light on the curtains. Sometimes, when I gave him food or medicine, turning upon me with a wild stare, as if he hardly knew me, or thought I was someone else. Or he would question me vaguely as to where was Dora?—and would I take care that she had a good long sleep—poor Dora!
Dora—Theodora—“the gift of God,”—it is good to have names with meanings to them, though people so seldom resemble their names. Her father seems beginning to feel that she is not unlike hers.
“She is a good girl, Doctor,” he said one evening, when, after having safely borne moving from bed to his arm-chair, I pronounced my patient convalescent, and his daughter was sent to take tea and spend the evening downstairs, “she is a very good girl. Perhaps I have never thought of my daughters.”
I answered vaguely, daughters were a great blessing—often more so than sons.
“You are right, sir,” he said suddenly, after a few minutes' pause. “You were never married I believe?”
“No.”
“If you do marry—never long for a son. Never build your hopes on him—trusting he will keep up your name, and be the stay of your old age. I had one boy, sir; he was more to me than all my daughters.”
A desperate question was I prompted to ask—I could not withhold it—though the old man's agitated countenance showed that it must be one passing question only.
“Is your son living?”
“No. He died young.”
This, then, must be the secret—simple and plain enough. He was “a boy”—he died “young,” perhaps about eighteen or nineteen—the age when boys are most prone to run wild. This lad must have done so; putting all the circumstances together, the conclusion was obvious, that in some way or other he had, before his death, or in his death, caused his father great grief and shame.
I could well imagine it; fancy drew the whole picture, filling it up pertinaciously, line by line. A man of Mr. Johnston's character, marrying late in life—as he must have done, to be seventy when his youngest child was not much over twenty—would be a dangerous father for any impetuous headstrong boy. A motherless boy too; Mrs. Johnston died early. It was easy to understand how strife would rise between him and the father, no longer young, with all his habits and peculiarities formed, sensitive, over-exacting; rigidly good, yet of somewhat narrow-minded virtue: scrupulously kind, yet not tender; alive to the lightest fault, yet seldom warming into sympathy or praise. The sort of man who compels respect, and whom, being oneself blameless, one might even love; but having committed any error, one's first impulse would be to fly from him to the very end of the earth.
Such, no doubt, had been the case with that poor boy, who “died young.” Out of England, no doubt, or surely they would have brought him home and buried him under the shadow of his father's church, and his memory would have left some trace in the family, the village, or the neighbourhood. As it was, it seemed blotted out—as if he had never existed. No one knew about him—no one spoke about him, not even the sisters, his playmates. So she—the second sister—had said. It was a tacit hint for me also to keep silence; otherwise I would have liked to ask her more about him—this poor fallen boy. I know how suddenly, how involuntarily, as it seems, a wretched boy can fall—into some perdition never afterwards retrieved.
Thinking thus—sitting by the bedroom fire with Mr. Johnston asleep opposite—poor old man, it must have been his boy's case and not his own which has made him so sensitive about only sons—I suddenly called to mind how, in the absorbing anxiety of the last three weeks—that day—the anniversary—-had slipped by, and I had not even recollected it. It could be forgotten then?—was this a warning that I might let it pass, if it would, into oblivion—and yield like any other man, to pleasant duties, and social ties, the warmth of which stole into me, body and soul, like this blessed household fire. It could not last—but while it did last, why not share it; why persist in sitting outside in the cold?
You will not understand this. There are some things I cannot explain, till the last letter, if ever I should come to write it. Then you will know.
Tea over, Miss Theodora came to see after “our patient,” as she called him, asking if he had behaved well, and done nothing he ought not to have done?
I told her, that was an amount of perfection scarcely to be exacted from any mortal creature; at which she laughed, and replied, she was sure I said this with an air of deprecation, as if afraid such perfection might be required of me.
Often her little hand carries an invisible sword. I try to hide the wounds, but the last hour's meditation made them sharper than ordinary. For once, she saw it. She came and knelt by the fire, not far from me, thoughtfully. Then, suddenly turning round, said:—
“If ever I say a rude thing to you, forgive it. I wish I were only half as good as you.”
The tone, so earnest, yet so utterly simple,—a child might have said the same, looking into one's face with the same frank eyes. God forgive me! God pity me!
I rose and went to the bedside to speak to her father, who just then woke, and called for “Dora.”
If in nothing else, this illness has been a blessing; drawing closer together the father and daughter. She must have been thinking so, when to-day she said to me:—
“It is strange how many mouthfuls of absolute happiness one sometimes tastes in the midst of trouble,” adding—I can see her attitude as she talked, standing with eyes cast down, mouth sweet and smiling, and fingers playing with her apron-tassels—a trick she has—“that she now felt as if she should never be afraid of trouble any more.”
That also is comprehensible. Anything which calls out the dormant energies of the character must do a woman good. With some women, to be good and to be happy is one and the same thing.
She is changed too, I can see. Pale as she looks, there is a softness in her manner and a sweet composure in her face, different from the restlessness I once noticed there—the fitful irritability, or morbid pain, perceptible at times, though she tried hard to disguise both. And succeeded doubtless, in all eyes but mine.
She is more cheerful too than she ever used to be, not restlessly lively, like her eldest sister, but seeming to carry about in her heart a well-spring of content, which bubbles out refreshingly upon everything and everybody about her. It is especially welcome in the sick room, where, she knows, our chief aim is to keep the mind at ease, and the feeble brain in absolute rest. I could smile, remembering the hours we have spent—patient, doctor and nurse, in the most puerile amusements, and altogether delicious nonsense, since Mr. Johnston became convalescent.
All this is over now. I knew it was. I sat by the fire, watching her play off her loving jests upon her father, and prattle with him, childish-like, about all that was going on downstairs.
“You little quiz!” he cried at last. “Doctor, this girl is growing—I can't say witty—but absolutely mischievous.”
I said, talents long dormant sometimes appeared. We might yet discover in Miss Theodora Johnston the most brilliant wit of her day.
“Doctor Urquhart, it's a shame! How can you laugh at me so? But I don't care. You are all the better for having somebody to laugh at. You know you are.”
I did know it—only too well, and my eyes might have betrayed it, for hers sank. She coloured a little, sat down to her work, and sewed on silently, thoughtfully, for a good while.
What was in her mind? Was it pity? Did she fancy she had hurt me—touched unwittingly one of my many sores? She knows I have had a hard life, with few pleasures in it; she would gladly give me some; she is sorry for me.
Most people's compassion is worse than their indifference; but hers—given out of the fullness of the pure, tender, unsuspicious heart—I can bear it. I can be grateful for it.
On this first evening that broke the uniformity of the sick-room, we thought it better, she and I, considering the peculiarities of the rest of the family, which she seems to take for granted I am aware of, and can make allowance for—that none of them should be admitted this night. A prohibition not likely to afflict them much.
“And pray, Miss Dora, how do you mean to entertain the doctor and me?”
“I mean to give you a large dose of my brilliant conversation, and, lest it becomes too exciting, to season it with a little reading, out of something that neither of you take the smallest interest in, and will be able to go to sleep over properly. Poetry—most likely.”
“Some of yours?”
She coloured deeply. “Hush, papa, I thought you had forgotten—you said it was 'nonsense,' you know.”
“Very likely it was. But I mean to give it another reading some day. Never mind—nobody heard.”
So she writes poetry. I always knew she was very clever, besides being well-educated. Talented women—modern Corinnes—my impression of them was rather repulsive. But she—that soft, shy girl, with her gay simplicity, her meek, household ways—
I said, if Miss Theodora were going to read, perhaps she might remember she had once promised to improve my mind with a course of German literature. There was a book about a gentleman of my own name—Max—Max something or other—
“Piccolomini. You have not forgotten him! What a memory you have for little things.” She thought so! I said, if she considered a poor doctor, accustomed to deal more with bodies than souls, could comprehend the sort of books she seemed so fond of, I would like to hear about Max Piccolomini.
“Certainly. Only—”
“You think I could not understand it.”
“I never thought any such thing,” she cried out in her old abrupt way, and went out of the room immediately.
The book she fetched was a little dainty one. Perhaps it had been a gift. I asked to look at it.
“Can you read German?”
“Not a line.” For my few words of conversational foreign tongues have been learnt orally, the better to communicate with stray patients in hospitals. I told her so. “I am very ignorant, as you must have long since found out, Miss Theodora.”
She said nothing, but began to read. At first translating line by line; then saying a written translation would be less trouble, she fetched one. It was in her handwriting—probably her own doing.
No doubt every one, except such an unlearned ass as myself, is familiar with the story—historical, I believe she said—how a young soldier, Max Piccolomini, fell in love with the daughter of his General Wallenstein, who, heading an insurrection, wished the youth to join in-promising him the girl's hand. There is one scene where the father tempts, and brings the daughter to tempt him, by hope of this bliss, to turn rebel; but the young man is firm—the girl, too, when he appeals to her, bids him keep to his duty, and renounce his love. It is a case such as may have happened—might happen in these days—were modern men and women capable of such attachments. Something of the sort of love upon which Dallas used to theorise when we were boys, always winding up with his favourite verse—how strange that it should come back to my mind now:—
“I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.”
Max—odd enough the name sounded, and she hesitated over it at first, with a half-laughing apology, then forgetting all but her book, it came out naturally and sweetly—oh, so sweetly sometimes—Max died. How, I do not clearly remember, but I know he died, and never married the girl he loved; that the time when he held her in his arms, and kissed her before her father and them all, was the last time they ever saw one another.
She read, sometimes hurriedly and almost inaudibly, and then just like the people who were speaking, as if quite forgetting herself in them. I do not think she even recognised that there was a listener in the room. Perhaps she thought, because I sat so still, that I did not hear or feel, that I, Max Urquhart, have altogether forgotten what it is to be young and to love.
When she ceased, Mr. Johnston was sound asleep; we both sat silent. I stretched out my hand for the written pages, to go over some of the sentences again; she went on reading the German volume to herself. Her face was turned away, but I could see the curve of her cheek, and the smooth, spiral twist of her hair behind—I suppose, if untwisted, it would reach down to her knees. This German girl, Thekla, might have had just such hair; this boy—this Max—might have been allowed sometimes to touch it—reverently to kiss it.
I was interrupted here. A case at the hospital; James McDermot—fever-ward—cut his throat in a fit of delirium. There must have been great neglect in the nurse or orderly—perhaps in more than they. These night absences were bad—this pre-occupation—though I have tried earnestly to fulfil all my duties. Yet, as I walked back, the ghastly figure of the dead man was ever before me.
Have I not a morbid conscience, which revels in self-accusation? Suppose there were one who knew me as I knew myself—could shew myself unto myself, and say, “Poor soul, 'tis nothing. Forget thyself, think of another—thy other self—of me.”
Why recount this, one of the countless painful incidents that are always recurring to our profession? Because, having begun, I must tell you all that happens to me, as a man would, coming home after his day's labour to his—let me write down the word steadily—his wife. His wife; nearer to him than any mortal thing—bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; his rest, comfort, and delight—whom, more than almost any man, a doctor requires, seeing that on the dark side of human life his path must continually lie.
Sometimes, though, bright bits come across us—such as when the heavy heart is relieved, or the shadow of death lifted off from a dwelling: moments when the doctor, much to his own conscious humiliation, is apt to be regarded as an angel of deliverance—seasons when he is glad to linger a little amidst the glow of happiness he has been instrumental in bringing, before he turns out again into the shadows of his appointed way.
And such will always be this, which I may v consider the last of my nights at Rockmount.
They would not hear of my leaving, though it was needless to sit up. And when I had seen Mr. Johnston safe, and snug for the night, they insisted on my joining the merry supper-table, where, relieved now from all care, the family assembled. The family included, of course, Mr. Charteris. I was the only stranger.
They did not treat me as a stranger—you know that. Sometimes falling, as the little party naturally did, into two, and two, and two, it seemed as if the whole world were conspiring to wrap me in the maddest of delusions; as if I always had sat, and were meant to sit, familiarly, brotherly, at that family table; as if my old solitude were quite over and gone, never to return more. And, over all, was the atmosphere of that German love-tale, which came up curiously to the surface, and caused a conversation, which, in some parts of it, seems the strangest thing of all that strange evening.
It was Mrs. Treherne who originated it. She asked her sister what had we been doing that we were so exceedingly quiet upstairs?
“Reading—papa wished it.” And being further questioned, Miss Theodora told what had been read.
Mrs. Treherne burst out laughing immoderately.
It would hardly be expected of such well-bred and amiable ladies, but I have often seen the eldest and youngest sisters annoy her—the second one—in some feminine way—men would never think of doing it, or guess how it is done—sufficient to call the angry blood to her cheeks, and cause her whole manner to change from gentleness into defiance. It was so now.
“I do not see anything so very ridiculous in my reading to papa out of any book I choose.”
I explained that I myself had begged for this one.
“Oh! and I'm sure she was delighted to oblige you.”
“I was,” she said, boldly; “and I consider that anything, small or great, which either I, or you, or Penelope, can do to oblige Doctor Urquhart, we ought to be happy and thankful to do for the remainder of our lives.”
Mrs. Treherne was silenced. And here, Mr. Charteris—breaking the uncomfortable pause—good-naturedly began a disquisition on the play in question. He bore, for some time, the chief part in a literary and critical conversation, of which I did not hear or follow much. Then the ladies took up the story in its moral and personal phase, and talked it over pretty well.
The youngest sister was voluble against it. She hated doleful books: she liked a pleasant ending, where the people were all married, cheerfully and comfortably.
It was suggested, from my side of the table, that this play had not an uncomfortable ending, though the lovers both died.
“What an odd notion of comfort Dora has,” said Mr. Charteris.
“Yes, indeed,” added Mrs. Treherne. For if they hadn't died, were they not supposed never to meet again? My dear child, how do you intend to make your lover happy?
“By bidding him an eternal farewell, allowing him to get killed, and then dying on his tomb?”
Everybody laughed. Treherne said he was thankful his Lisa was not of her sister's mind.
“Ay, Gus dear, well you may! Suppose I had come and said to you, like Dora's heroine, 'my dear boy, we are very fond of one another, but we can't ever be married. It's of no consequence. Never mind. Give me a kiss, and good-bye,'—what would you have done, eh, Augustus?”
“Hanged myself,” replied Augustus, forcibly.
“If you did not think better of it while searching for a cord,” drily observed Mr. Charteris. (I have for various reasons noticed this gentleman rather closely of late.) “Dora's theories about love are pretty enough, but too much on the gossamer style. Poor human nature requires a little warmer clothing than these 'sky robes of iris woof,' which are not 'warranted to wear.'”
As he spoke, I saw Miss Johnston's black eyes dart over to his face in keen observation, but he did not see them. Immediately afterwards she said:—
“Francis is quite right. Dora's heroics do her no good—nor anybody; because such characters do not exist, and never did. Max and Thekla, for instance, are a pair of lovers utterly impossible in this world.”
“True,” said Mr. Charteris, “even as Romeo and Juliet are impossible, Shakspere himself owns
'These violent delights have violent ends.'
Had Juliet lived, she would probably not by force, but in the most legal, genteel, and satisfactory way, have been 'married to the County;' or, supposing she had got off safe to Mantua, obtained parental forgiveness, and returned to set up house-keeping as Mrs. R. Montague; depend upon it she and Romeo would have wearied of one another in a year, quarrelled, parted, and she might, after all, have consoled herself with Paris, who seems such a sweet-spoken, pretty-behaved young gentleman throughout. Do you not think so, Doctor Urquhart? that is, if you are a reader of Shakspere.”
Which he apparently thought I was not. I answered, what has often struck me about this play, “that Shakspere only meant it as a tale of boy and girl passion. Whether it would have lasted, or grown out of passion into love, one need not speculate, any more than the poet does. Enough, that while it lasts, it is a true and beautiful picture of youthful love—that is, youth's ideal of love. Though the love of maturer life is often a far deeper, higher, and better thing.”
Here Mrs. Treherne, bursting into one of her hearty laughs, accused her sister of having “turned Doctor Urquhart poetical.”
It is painful to appear like a fool, even when a lively young woman is trying to make you do so. I sat, cruelly conscious how little I have to say—how like an awkward, dull clod I often feel—in the society of young and clever people, when I heard her speaking from the other end of the table—I mean, Miss Theodora.
“Lisabel, you are talking of what you do not understand. You never did, and never will understand my Max and Thekla, any more than Francis there, though he once thought it so fine, when he was teaching Penelope German, a few years ago.”
“Dora, your excitement is unlady-like.”
“I do not care,” she answered, turning upon her elder sister with flashing eyes. “To sit by quietly and hear such doctrines, is worse than unlady-like—unwoman-like! You two girls may think as you please on the matter; but I know what I have always thought—and think still.”
“Pray, will you indulge us with your creed?” cried Mr. Charteris.
She hesitated—her cheeks burnt like fire—but still she spoke out bravely.
“I believe, spite of all you say, that there is, not only in books, but in the world, such a thing as love, unselfish, faithful and true, like that of my Thekla and my Max. I believe that such a love—a right love—teaches people to think of the right first, and themselves afterwards; and, therefore, if necessary, they could bear to part for any number of years—or even for ever.”
“Bless us all; I wouldn't give two farthings for a man who would not do anything—do wrong even—for my sake.”
“And I, Lisabel, should esteem a man a selfish coward, whom I might pity, but I don't think I could ever love him again, if in any way he did wrong for mine.”
From my corner, whither I had gone and sat down a little out of the circle, I saw this young face—flashing, full of a new expression. Dallas, when he talked sometimes, used to have just such a light in his eyes—just such a glory streaming from all his features; but then he was a boy, and this was a woman. Ay, one felt her womanhood, the passion and power of it, with all its capabilities for either blessing or maddening, in the very core of one's being.
The others chattered a little more, and then I heard her speaking again.
“Yes, Lisabel, you are quite right; I do not think it of so very much importance, whether people who are very deeply attached, ever live to be married or not. In one sense they are married already, and nothing can come between them, so long as they love one another.”
This seemed an excellent joke to the Trehernes, and drew a remark or two from Mr. Charteris, to which she refused to reply.
“No; you put me in a passion, and forced me to speak; but I have done now. I shall not argue the point any more.”
Her voice trembled, and her little hands nervously clutched and plaited the table-cloth; but she sat in her place, without moving features or eyes. Gradually the burning in her cheeks faded, and she grew excessively pale; but no one seemed to notice her. They were too full of themselves.
I had time to learn the picture by heart. every line; this little figure sitting by the table, bent head, drooping shoulders, and loose white sleeves shading the two hands, which were crushed so tightly together, that when she stirred I saw the finger-marks of one imprinted on the other. What could she have been thinking of?
“Miss Dora, please.”
It was only a servant, saying her father wished to speak to her before he went to sleep.
“Say I am coming.” She rose quickly, but turned before she reached the door. “I may not see you again before you go. Good night, Dr. Urquhart.”
We have said good night, and shaken hands every night for three weeks. I know I have done my duty; no lingering, tender clasping what I had no right to clasp; a mere “good night,” and shake of the hand. But, to-night?
I did not say a word—I did not look at her. Yet the touch of that little cold, passive hand has never left mine since. If I lay my hand down here, on this table, it seems to creep into it and nestle there; if I let it go, it comes back again; if I crush my fingers down upon it, though there is nothing, I feel it still—feel it through every nerve and pulse, in heart, soul, body, and brain.
This is the merest hallucination, like some of the spectral illusions I have been subject to at times;—the same which made Coleridge once say “he had seen too many ghosts to believe in them.”
Let me gather up my faculties.
I am sitting in my hut. There is no fire—no one ever thinks of lighting a fire, for me, of course, unless I specially order it. The room is chill, warning me that winter is nigh at hand: disorderly—no one ever touches my goods and chattels, and I have been too much from home lately to institute any arrangement myself. All solitary, too; even my cat, who used to be the one living thing lingering about me, marching daintily over my books, or stealing up purring to lay her head upon my knee, even my cat, weary of my long absence, has disappeared to my next-door neighbour. I am quite alone.
Well, such is the natural position of a man without near kindred, who has reached my years, and has not married. He has no right to expect aught else to the end of his days.
I rode home from Rockmount two hours ago, leaving a still lively group sitting round the fire in the parlour—Miss Johnston on her sofa, with Mr. Charteris beside her; Treherne sitting opposite, with his arm round his wife's waist.
And upstairs, I know how things will look—the shadowy bed-chamber, the little white china lamp on the table, and one curtain half-looped back, so that the old man may just catch a glimpse of the bending figure, reading to him the Evening Psalms; or else she will, by this time, have said “Good night, papa,” and kissed him, and gone away to the upper part of the house, of which I know nothing, and have never seen. Therefore, I can only fancy her as I one night happened to see, going upstairs, candle in hand, softly, step by step, as saintly souls slip away into paradise, and we below, though we would cling to the hem of their garments, crush our lips in the very print of their feet, can neither hold them, nor dare beseech them to stay.
Oh, if I were only dead, that you might have this letter,—might know, feel, comprehend all these things!
I have been “doing wrong.” I owe it to myself—to more than myself, not to yield to weak lamentation or unmanly bursts of frenzy against inevitable fate.
Is it inevitable?
Before beginning to write to-night, for two hours I sat arguing with myself this question; viewing the circumstances of both parties, for such a question necessarily includes both, with a calmness which I believe even I can attain, when the matter involves not myself alone. I have come to the conclusion that it is inevitable.
When you reach these my years, when you have experienced all those changes which you now dream over, and theorise upon in your innocent, unconscious heart, you also will see that my judgment was right.
To seek and sue a woman's yet unwon love, implies the telling her, when won, the whole previous history of her lover, concealing nothing, fair or foul, which does not compromise any other than himself. This confidence she has a right to expect, and the man who withholds it is either a coward in himself, or doubts the woman of his choice, as, should he so doubt his wife,—woe to him and to her! To carry into the sanctuary of a true wife's breast, some accursed thing which must be for ever hidden in his own, has always seemed to me one of the blackest treasons against both honour and love, of which a man could be capable.
Could I tell my wife, or the woman whom I would fain teach to love me, my whole history? And if I did, would it not close the door of her heart eternally against me? or, supposing it was too late for that, and she already loved me, would it not make her, for my sake, miserable for life? I believe it would.
On this account merely, things are inevitable.
There is another reason; whether it comes second or first in my arguments with myself, I do not know. When a man has vowed a vow, dare he break it?
There is a certain vow of mine, which, did I marry, must be broken. No man in his senses, or possessing the commonest feelings of justice and tenderness, would give his name to a beloved woman, with the possibility of children to inherit it, and then bring upon each and all of them the end, which I have all my life resolutely contemplated as a thing necessary to be done—either immediately before my death, or after it.
Therefore, also, it is inevitable.
That word—inevitable—always calms me. It is the will of God. If He had meant otherwise, He would have found out a way—perhaps by sending me some good woman to love me, as men are loved sometimes, but not such men as I. There is no fear—or hope—which shall I say?—of any one ever loving me.
Sleep, child! You are fast asleep by this hour, I am sure: you once said, you always fall asleep the instant your head touches the pillow. Blessed pillow! precious, tender, lovely head!
“Good night.” Sleep well, happy ignorant child.