VI.
Early next forenoon, as Dr. Brunton was driving home after having been out the most of the night, he saw two ladies on horseback approaching, followed by a servant in livery: he liked to look at a pleasant sight, and first his eye caught the horses, and he thought what fine animals they were; then he glanced at the ladies. The one nearest bowed to him and touched her hat: the action could not be called "fast;" still, it piquantly broke the bounds of very exact stiff propriety. He hurriedly roused himself to look in her face, which he had not thought of doing till he saw her action, and lo! it was the face, with the smile, of the girl with the amber beads!
Beautiful as she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the Ladies Moor as you came home: did you notice Lady Louisa?—did you?"
"Yes," he said shortly.
"Well, allow that she excels your rustic beauty."
"I allow it," he said. "I'm going to bed: don't call me for an hour or two unless it's something urgent."
Not that he wanted to sleep or could have slept, but he wanted to think: he wanted to cast out the dream he had been dreaming, and from which he had been roused so thoroughly. The girl, the peasant-girl that he had purposed to take from her rude, coarse setting, that he had yearned to love and protect while he lived,—she had disappeared like the mists of the morning, and in her place was left a lady of rank and fashion, the daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone it nor overdone it. She was not only perfectly beautiful, she was excessively clever, down to twisting her hands in her apron, which she was always doing, as if it had been a piece of rustic awkwardness, when it was to hide them of course: if her hands had been visible, they would at once have betrayed her. But he might as well think to win a star from heaven as her. It was a conflict, but it was soon over: there was no doubt about it, no uncertainty. He gave up the thought of her at once: his peasant-girl had taken wings and soared into a region where he could not follow.
He began to dress wearily, as people do when the zest of life has been taken out of it: the world was not the world of yesterday, nor even the world of last week, when he had been his own master and felt no want. If only he had never seen her, or seen and known her only as the Lady Louisa Moor, when the idea of loving her never would have occurred to him—when she would simply to him have been a beautiful creature to look at without exciting the shadow of a thought of appropriation, and not the peasant-girl, the beautiful peasant-girl, he had thought he might possibly win and wear!
While he was still dressing he saw a man in livery ride up to the door and hand in a note, which was sent up to him at once. He opened it and read:
"The Castle, Tuesday.
"Dear Doctor Brunton: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be able to read this.
"I am yours sincerely,
"Louisa Moor."
He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it possible—was it in the least degree possible—that she really cared for him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see when we meet," he thought as he laid it down.
He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last."
"She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring ever so little.
"That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in her short-gown and amber beads—"do you know that my visits here are of no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more seldom than I have done."
"Will you?" she said softly.
"Yes, I will."
"No you won't," she said pleadingly—"not if I wish you to come."
"Do you wish me to come?"
"Certainly I wish it."
"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"
"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her well attended to."
The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll see her every day," meaning his patient.
Which he did—not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the peasant-girl, or in any other rôle she chose to assume: it was an amusement she was fond of.
Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did not—But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed. Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain man—he was the reverse—but he held that human beings were men and women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.
One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she might be back in a little.
"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane, after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour," the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like o' her?"
"I'll stay till one or other of them comes," said the doctor; and he sat down by the bedside, and did not listen to the history of Bell's last severe attack. His ears were at the door, and when he heard a movement outside he went and looked out; but it was only an old beggar-woman he saw, much bent with age and with her head pearled. She was the impersonation of clean, decent, thread-bare poverty: she had a plain snowy muslin mutch close round her face, which was small and wrinkled, and a black ribbon bound round her head, as the fashion used to be. A basket with some pins and tapes in it served as a kind of apology for her visit.
When she saw the doctor she said, "Maybe ye wad tak some preens frae a puir auld body that can neither work nor want?"
She spoke in a thin, shaky voice, and Dr. Brunton's compassion was moved. "Do you belong to this district?" he asked.
"'Deed, div I, sir. Eh, but auld age and poverty are ill neighbors!"
"You ought to be looked after: have you ever applied for relief?"
"Frae the parish? Na, nane o' our family hae come to that yet, let me be thankfu', and I'll mak a fend without it."
"Then how do you live?"
"Ye may say that. Whiles the young leddies at the castle gie me a pickle tea or the like—that's the youngest ane, her they ca' Leddy Louisa: she's just an angel o' licht. Eh, if a' body was like her!"
"I'll inquire into your case and see that something is done for your comfort."
"Oh, mony thanks, sir! I'm no very able noo to travel wi' the basket. Eh, what time does! Little did I think I wad ever come to this."
The doctor dropped a shilling into her hand, which, cased in a carefully-mended big coarse worsted glove, she held out: when she saw what she had got she bowed her head, overcome with thankfulness, and passed on.
The doctor resumed his watch, and in a little he was rewarded: Lady Louisa came in.
"If I had not promised Bell to look in again," she said, "I would not have been here. See, there's your shilling. If I worked as hard for my money as you do, I would not give it to every impostor: I don't do it, as it is."
"I don't understand," he said.
"You gave a shilling to an old woman at the door?"
"Yes: was she an impostor?"
"Rank," said Lady Louisa; and she pulled a cap from her pocket, put it on her head, drew it close round her face, which she threw into age and wrinkles with marvelous effect, and looked at the doctor, shaking her head like the pearled old woman.
"Didn't I give myself a high character?" she said, laughing.
"It was the truth," the doctor said—"nothing but the truth."
"The whole truth, and just a little more, don't you think?"