VII.
Shortly after, as the Ladies Moor were walking through the village, Lady Louisa said to her sister suddenly, "I'm going to call at the doctor's house."
"Why?" said Lady Helen.
"I want to see what it is like. It must be a queer little nutshell of a place, and yet I fancy," she said, glancing her eye along the village street, "people are happy enough in these birdcages."
"They may easily be as happy as people who live in big houses, but what excuse are you going to make for calling at the doctor's? Do you want anything?"
"Nothing except to see the house: it is mere curiosity."
"Won't it seem impertinent?"
"Oh no: they ought to think it an honor. We'll ask for Miss Brunton: the doctor won't be in at this hour."
They were shown into the ordinary sitting-room of the house, in which was Dr. Brunton engaged in reading the newspapers, but from the news of the day his thoughts were straying away to the visit he was to make to his singularly interesting patient at the lodge. Would she be there or would she not? It was not merely that his eyes were fed by her beauty, but it seemed to him that custom could not stale her infinite variety: she had all the qualities that make life noble. He had got to this point of his meditations when the door opened and the lady walked in.
"How do you do?" she said. "This is my sister, Dr. Brunton. I was sure you would be out at this hour."
"In general I am, but I have had a most fortunate lazy fit to-day."
"Why, Loo," said her sister, "I don't know how you always come to know everything. I should not know in the least when Dr. Brunton was likely to be in or out."
"That's different," said Loo: "I'm intimate with the doctor."
"We called," said Lady Helen, feeling that the visit needed to be accounted for in some shape, and that her sister was in the humor for speaking nonsense—"we called to see Miss Brunton: we thought we should like to know her."
"Dr. Brunton," said Lady Louisa, "the truth is I came to see your house. I was curious, and I like to gratify myself. I don't see why your house should not be open to inspection as well as ours: ours is open to the public two days a week all summer—Wednesdays and Saturdays, I think—and it is a great nuisance. Have you ever been through it? If not, I shall be happy to be your guide any day: if every person were as sick of it as I am, fewer would come to see it."
"Sick of it, are you?" said the doctor.
"Yes, sick. It's just like a well-organized prison, with papa for jailer—an upright, humane man, no doubt, but always feeling responsible for his prisoners, and giving them very little indulgence."
"Loo," said Lady Helen, "you talk nonsense.—You must not believe all she says, Dr. Brunton."
"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"
"Why do you not want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.
"I do want to see it."
"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see ours—curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."
"This, then, is our chief apartment."
"You live, move and have your being here?"
"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."
"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms, and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."
Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."
"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he said.
In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the earl to dine at the castle.
The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many instances—which only of late had stuck to his memory—of ladies of rank who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should this not be his case? Why, indeed?
It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe him: possibly the earldom of Birndale had been founded in some such way; and there it was. But the ancestors of Dr. Brunton had had neither the boldness nor the originality for such a stroke; and there he was, in the estimation of society at a very long distance indeed from equality with the earl of Birndale. But the doctor shut his eyes to this answer to his question, and began to let the tow of discretion go with the bucket of hope.
"Well," said Miss Robertson when Miss Brunton and her brother got home—"well, doctor, has the beauty the gypsy-woman spoke of asked you to marry her yet?"
"I don't suppose ladies ever do that," said Mary, "but Lady Louisa might, I am sure, if beauty may be a law to itself."
Seeing she got no answer from her host, Miss Robertson said, "And what kind of an evening had you?"
"Very pleasant," said Mary: "they were good and kind, and the house is well worth seeing, although, as a rule, I don't care for seeing gentlemen's houses, they are all so much alike. Still, where there are the gatherings of two or three hundred years, it is wonderfully interesting."
The old woman at the lodge still lingered. Never was an old woman so well looked after. Was she proud of the attention she got? did it please her that a doctor and an earl's daughter should wait on her every day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine and the caller air.
"Eh, doctor," she said, "do ye no think I might get the length of the door, just to see how things are looking?"
"Hardly yet, I doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would she walk to her own doorstep, when Lady Louisa came in.
"I have only time," she said to Bell, "to ask you how you are and run home again, and I have not time to speak to you at all, Dr. Brunton."
"I'll not detain you," he said. "I go your way, and I'll walk with you: I have a visit to make near the castle."
"Very well," she said; and they left the lodge.
They had often met in Bell's little room, and they had met at the castle, but they had never walked together before; and it seemed to the doctor that this was something closer and nearer than had yet been.
"Do you know," said Lady Louisa, "that I have got my carte taken again? Papa wished it: my sister Mary is here, and we all three were in town yesterday getting them done. Had you ever your photograph taken?"
"Yes."
"And was it good?"
"But not good: that's often the case. Have you got it? I should like to see it."
"I haven't it with me, if you mean that."
"Oh, it doesn't signify, but I am rather fond, do you know, of collecting the photos of people I know."
They had been walking up hill, and had now descended a little, and had come to a seat above a waterfall in the grounds. They did not sit down—neither proposed that—but they stood a moment at this spot. The waterfall was an artificial feature in the grounds, and bore about as great a resemblance to the reality as a glass eye does to the living orb, or a drawing-room polka to the wild war-dance of a tribe of savages. The water fell smoothly and peacefully over a smooth ledge of masonry, then got up quietly and went on its way again, as if slightly ashamed of its tumble; a wild green bank sloped up toward the seat, but as the gardener had planned and made it, it was in keeping with the waterfall: there, however, the primrose showed its richly-embossed leaves and clusters of pale stars, the first love of the year. How is it that all first things are so delicate and pure? Overhanging the bank behind the seat stood what the gardener had not planted, a gigantic Scotch fir, its arms spread out hither and thither, scarred and weatherbeaten: if it had clung to a mountain-side over a raging torrent, it might have seemed the genius of the storm: even as it was, in the afternoon light of the spring day, it had a haggard, weird effect; but the pale green spines at the end of every twig, contrasting with the dark green of a former year, showed that, bare and battered as it looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead; innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned the azure dome.
"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"
"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.
"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."
"Should you?"
"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him, and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the stream.
"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty—"stay only a moment!" But she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.
"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.
Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa seemed the most wild and improbable dream.
He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph—had she not almost asked for it?—and as he did it he felt that according as it should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was, the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have prevented sleep.
In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in the midst of a tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.
It is to be feared that Dr. Brunton's first thought in connection with the intelligence sent him was, the excuse for meeting at the lodge being over, where or how was he to see Lady Louisa?