Volume Two—Chapter Ten.
A Friendly Visit.
A week had passed since Horace North’s straggle with the strange fits of repugnance and dread that had assailed him on his researches: six nights, during each of which he had battled with the same feelings and mastered, and gone on, with Moredock revelling in his opiate-produced sleep in the corner.
Night after night the old man slept in that vault for hours, among the remains of the Candlishes whom he had robbed, and enjoying a voluptuous pleasure in his sleep, which made him the doctor’s willing servant, whose dread was lest the visits to the mausoleum should come to an end.
But these nightly visits were not without their effects, and these intense studies could not be carried on without leaving their traces on the man.
Mrs Berens was taken ill, and the doctor was called in.
In her lonely widowed state, with nothing but her money, her dress, her mirror, and the visits and gossip of Duke’s Hampton to amuse her, thirsting the while for the communings of a kindred spirit who would tell her she was far too young yet to give up thoughts of love, Mrs Berens felt that she must have some relaxation, and she took it in the form of fits of illness of the body and ditto ditto of the mind.
For the former she called in Dr North, and told her pains.
For the latter, the Reverend Hartley Salis, to whom she recounted her doubts, her sorrows, and her sufferings of mind; and in each case she felt better, though she did not take the medicine of the one nor follow out the precepts of the other.
It was very wrong, no doubt, but it was very natural; and Mrs Berens, not middle-aged, and plump, and pleasing, and anxious to please, was very full of human nature.
There was such satisfaction, too, in having her hand held by the doctor. So there was, too, when it was grasped at coming, and again at leaving, by bluff, manly Parson Salis; but they neither of them proposed, or went a step further than to be gently courteous and kind to the loving and lovable weak woman, who longed to empty the urn of her affection upon either head.
And now poor Mrs Berens was in sad trouble.
“I know it,” she sobbed to herself, after a visit from the doctor. “Mary Salis will not confess, and Leo always holds one off; but he does love Leo, and she is holding him in her wicked chains, like one of those terrible witches we read about; and, poor dear man, she is breaking his heart. I’ve tried so hard to wean him from that dreadful love of a bad, base girl, and the more I try the worse he is.”
Mrs Berens sobbed till her eyes ached, and she bathed them with eau-de-cologne and water.
“How dare I say she is bad and base?” she said half aloud, speaking to herself in the glass, as her handsome, large, blue swimming eyes looked appealingly at her; “because I know it. I’m sure of it. I can always feel it. I’m weak and foolish, but I should love him and cherish him, while she is trifling with him—I’m sure—and breaking his heart.
“Oh, poor man, poor man!” she sighed; “how worn out and ill he looks! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
Mrs Berens made up her mind what she would do. She could not send for the curate. She was not sufficiently ill for that.
“And it would look so.”
She could not go and see him, for that would also “look so.” Leo detested her, she knew, quite as much as she detested Leo, whom she declared to be so horribly young. But she could go and see poor Mary; and after well bathing her eyes, she stripped her little conservatory to get a good bunch of flowers for the invalid, and then went across to the Rectory.
Leo was out for a ride, to Mrs Berens’ great delight.
“Master’s in his study over his sermon, ma’am,” said Dally Watlock; “but Miss Mary’s in, ma’am.”
“Yes, Dally, it is Miss Mary I want to see,” sighed Mrs Berens; and then, as much out of genuine kindness as with the idea of making a friend at the Rectory: “How pretty, and young, and well you do look, Dally!”
“Thank ye, ma’am,” said Dally, with a distant bob, but gratified all the same.
“Do you know, Dally, I’ve got a silk dress, a pale red, that would make up so nicely for you? It isn’t old, but I shall not wear it any more.”
Daily’s eyes sparkled at pale red silk.
“It wouldn’t fit you,” continued the widow, “but you could make it up nicely with your clever little fingers;” and she compared her own redundant charms with the trim, tight little figure of the maid.
“Thank ye, ma’am. May I come for it?”
“Yes, Dally, do. Now show me in to Miss Mary.”
Dally ushered in the widow, and then stood in the passage thinking.
“I wouldn’t go for it, that I wouldn’t, if I was quite sure. I don’t want to wear her old dresses. Nice thing for a lady who’s going to have a title and live up at the Hall to have to wear somebody else’s old silk frocks.
“I think I’ll go, though,” said Dally. “No, I won’t, for it’s coming to a nice blow up for some one I know, and I’ll let ’em all see.”
“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs Berens, entering the room, flower-bearing, and bending down over the invalid with a good deal of gushing sentiment, but plenty of genuine affection.
“It’s very good of you to come, Mrs Berens,” cried Mary, flushing. “And the flowers—for me?”
“For you? Yes,” said the widow, plumping down on her knees by Mary’s couch, and playfully laying the bouquet upon Mary’s bosom, and holding it there beneath her chin. “Now it’s perfect. It only wanted your sweet rose of a face added to it. My dear, what an angel’s face you have!”
“Mrs Berens!” cried Mary, flushing more deeply, half annoyed, half amused at her visitor’s flattering words; but there was no feeling anything but pleasure at the affectionate kiss pressed upon her lips, and the tender touches of the two well-gloved hands.
“There, I’ve come to have a quiet chat with you,” said the widow. “I ought to have been in before, but I have been so unwell, my dear; obliged to send for Dr North.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs Berens,” said Mary, laying her hand in those of the widow.
“I knew you would be, dear; and, oh, I have been so poorly.”
“But you are better now?” said Mary kindly.
“No, no, my dear. I’m a poor, weak, unhappy woman, and—oh! I ought to be ashamed of myself, that I ought, to go on like that when there you are so ill and yet so patient that one never hears a murmur escape your lips.”
“I don’t think I’m very ill, Mrs Berens.”
“Then I do, my dear; and I shall come and see you more often, for you’ve done me no end of good. It’s like a lesson to me, and I’ll never complain any more.”
“That’s right,” said Mary, smiling. “Do come oftener; I’m very much alone. We will not talk about our ailments,” she added with a smile.
“No, of course not; but I have been very poorly, dear, and I sent for Dr North. Do you take any interest in Dr North?”
Mrs Berens was not subtle enough of intellect to note the change in Mary’s countenance. At first there was a faint flush; then a waxen pallor; but she mastered her emotion, though her heart beat heavily as she said:
“Of course. He was very good and kind to me all through my illness.”
“Yes, poor man—poor, dear man!” sighed the widow. “And of course Mr Salis likes him very much?”
“Yes; they are very warm friends,” said Mary quietly.
“Then do—do pray talk to your brother,” cried Mrs Berens, with pathetic eagerness.
“No, no, Mrs Berens,” said a bluff, deep voice. “I’m always with my sisters, and they talk to me too much.”
“Oh, Mr Salis! You shouldn’t, you know,” cried the widow, all of a flutter. “You shouldn’t come in so suddenly.”
“Why, I only came in to say ‘how do?’” replied Salis pleasantly, as he shook hands. “There, sit down again, and tell me what I am to be talked to about.”
“Oh, really, Mr Salis, I—I—I was only going to say, pray talk to or see to poor Dr North. I’m afraid he’s very far from well.”
“So am I,” cried Salis. “I have just been telling him so.”
“He—he has been here, then—just now?”
“Not exactly just now; I mean this morning. You noticed, then, that he seemed ill and over-excited?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Mrs Berens, as Mary tried to lie back perfectly calm, but with her eyes glancing rapidly from one to the other, and her trembling fingers telling the agitation from which she suffered. “I was so poorly that I sent for him, and he quite startled me: his manner was so strange and abrupt. I’m sure he’s being worried over something.”
“Studies too hard,” said Salis quietly. “He will do it, and advice is of no avail. Mrs Milt tells me that he sits up at night. Doctors are like clergymen, I’m afraid, Mrs Berens: they are fond of teaching and curing other people, but they neglect themselves.”
“There, I hope you will give him a good talking to, Mr Salis,” said the widow, rising to go; “for I should really not like to ask him to see me again until he is better. He seemed to be so wild and eccentric: he quite startled me.”
“Just for the sake of saying something, Mary,” said the curate as soon as they were alone; and, in answer to Mary’s inquiring eyes, “Horace has made up his mind to distinguish himself for Leo’s sake, and, heigho! my dear, things seem to be very awkward, and I don’t know how to set them right.”