"Cut off her hair!" said Wilmot,--as if the mere notion were a horrid barbarism, which he could not contemplate as a possibility; "certainly not--it is entirely unnecessary."
"Well, sir," said the nurse, "it's mostly done in fevers. Wherever I've nursed, I've always done it, first thing."
Wilmot turned red and hot. Why should he shrink from sanctioning or ordering the sacrifice in this case, as he had done in a thousand others without a thought of hesitation or regret, just like any other detail? Why, indeed? if not because those were the thousand cases, while this was the one. But he did not face the question; he turned aside from it--turned aside, with his eyes piercing the gloom of the shaded room, in search of the gleam of the golden locks. "No, no," he thought, "the 'little head sunning over with curls' shall 'shine on,' if I can manage it." So he told the nurse that was a matter for after consideration, and that she was to have him called when Miss Kilsyth should wake; and he went out for a solitary walk.
Lady Muriel was most grateful to Dr. Wilmot for the care and skill which he exercised in Madeleine's case. Scarcely Kilsyth himself was more unremitting in his inquiries after the patient, more anxious as to the result. But husband and wife were actuated by totally different motives. The man feared lest the hope of his life should be quenched, the woman lest the object of her ambition should be frustrated; the man dreaded the loss of his darling, the woman the confusion of her scheme. For Lady Muriel had a scheme in connection with Madeleine Kilsyth, which it may be as well at once to declare.
It is Mr. Longfellow who informs us that no one is so accursed by fate, no one so utterly desolate, but some heart, though unknown, responds unto his own. When Lady Muriel Inchgarvie was running her career of two London seasons, waiting for the arrival of the man whom she could persuade herself into marrying, and whom she could persuade into marrying her; while Mr. Burton and Sir Coke Only were fluttering like moths round her brilliant light,--the world, which thinks it marks everything, and which hugs itself in appreciation of its wonderful sagacity and perspicacity, and which had already supremely settled that Lady Muriel had no heart to lose, little knew that its sentence was a just one--simply because Lady Muriel had lost her heart. There was a connection of the house of Inchgarvie, a tall thin Scotchman, named Stewart Caird, a barrister of Lincoln's-inn, who had been a long time settled in London, and who, in virtue of his aristocratic connections, his perfect gentlemanliness, and his utter harmlessness--for everyone knew that poor Stewart merely lived from hand to mouth, by the exercise of his profession, and by writing in the law magazines and reviews--was asked into a good deal of society. He was a languid, consumptive-looking man, with a high hectic colour, and deep-violet eyes, and a soft tremulous voice; and after he had claimed kinship with Lady Muriel, and had his claim allowed, he found plenty of opportunities of meeting her constantly, and on every occasion he was to be found by her side. This was the one chance which fortune had bestowed on Muriel Inchgarvie of loving and being simultaneously beloved; and it is but fair to say that she availed herself of it. Not for one instant did either of them think of the hopelessness of their passion. Lady Muriel well knew that a marriage with Stewart Caird was simply impossible; and Stewart Caird knew it too, possessing at the same time the additional knowledge, that even if family affairs could have been squared by his coming into the immediate heritage of fabulous wealth, there was yet a slight drawback in the fact that his lungs could not possibly hold out beyond six months. And yet they went on loving and fooling: to her the mere fact that there could never be any ties between them was, as it always has been, an incentive to a quasi-romantic attachment; to him, with the perfect conviction that he was a doomed man, the love of a pretty high-bred woman softened the terrors of death, and prevented him from dwelling on his fate. So they went on; the world taking little heed of them, and they ignoring the world; he growing weaker and weaker, but always disguising his weakness, until one night in the height of the season, when Lady Muriel, dressed for a ball, received a short pencil-note, feebly scrawled: "If you would see me before I die, come at once.--S.C. You know me well enough to be certain that this is no romantic figure of speech." The writing, feeble throughout, trailed off at last into scarcely legible characters. Lady Muriel wrote one hasty line to the lady who was to be her chaperon, pleading illness as her excuse for not fetching her, threw a thick cloak and hood over her ball-dress and her ivy-wreathed hair, and told the coachman, who was devoted to her, to drive her to Old-square, Lincoln's-inn. There, propped up by pillows, and attended by a hired nurse, who was by no means reluctant to take a hint, and, accompanied by a spirit-bottle, to betake herself to a further room, she found poor Stewart Caird, with large bistre rings round his eyes and two flaming red spots on his hollow cheeks. Between the attacks of a racking cough, he told her that his end was nigh; that he had long foreseen it, but that he could not deny himself the privilege of winning her love. He acknowledged the selfishness of the act; but trusted she would pardon him, when he assured her that the knowledge that she cared for him had inexpressibly lightened the last few months of his earthly career, and that he should die more happily, knowing that he left one regretful heart behind him. He said this in a voice which was tolerably firm at first, but which, touched by her sobs, grew more and more tremulous, and finally broke down, when, in an access of emotion, she flung her arms round him, and clasped him to her heart. How long they remained thus tranced in love and grief neither ever knew; it was the first, the last wild access of passion that ever was to accrue to either. The future, so imminent to one of them at least, was unthought of, and they lived but in the then present fleeting moment, But before they parted Stewart spoke to Muriel of his younger brother Ramsay, who had been left to his care, and whom he was now leaving to the mercy of the world. For Muriel there was, he said he was persuaded, a career in life. When it fell to her, when she was enjoying it, would she, for the sake of him who had loved her--ah, so deeply and so dearly!--whose life she had cheered, and who with his dying breath would call upon and bless her name--would she watch over and provide for Ramsay Caird? With the dying man's hand in hers, with her arm round his neck, with her eyes looking into his, even then glazed and wandering, Muriel swore to fulfil his wishes, and to undertake this charge. Within forty-eight hours Stewart Caird was dead; within six weeks after his death Muriel Inchgarvie was the pledged wife of Kilsyth; and within a fortnight of her betrothal she had hit upon a plan for the future of her dead lover's brother.
Ramsay Caird's future career in life was, as Lady Muriel decided, to be one with Madeleine Kilsyth's, and his fortune was to come to him through his wife. Madeleine's godfather, a childless, rich, old Highland proprietor, an old friend and neighbour of Kilsyth's, had at his death left her twenty thousand pounds, to be hers on her coming of age, or on her marrying with her father's consent. A pleasant competence in itself, but a princely fortune for a young man of small ideas like Ramsay Caird, who was earning a very precarious salary, given to him more from kindness than from any deserts of his, in the office of the Edinburgh agent to several large estates. Soon after her marriage Lady Muriel sent for the young man to Kilsyth, found him gentlemanly and unassuming, sufficiently shrewd to comprehend the extremely delicate hints which she gave him as to the course which she wished him to adopt, and sufficiently delicate to prevent his at once plunging in medias res. Since then he had been frequently at Kilsyth, and had done his best to make himself agreeable to Madeleine. He was a good-looking, gentlemanly, quiet young man, without very much to say for himself, beyond the ordinary society talk, in which he was fairly glib; he had the names of all the members of all the families for whom his principal was agent at his tongue's end; had seen many of them personally,--even knew the appearance of the rest by photograph; kept himself well posted in their movements, through the medium of the fashionable journals; and so could fairly hold his own in the conversation of the people he was thrown amongst. Lady Muriel, who was as clever as she was proud and ambitious, reckoned Ramsay Caird up to a nicety; saw exactly how far he was suitable for her plans, and thought there was little doubt of Madeleine's being captivated by the handsome glib young man who paid her such respectful homage. But for once in her life Lady Muriel was wrong. It is but fair to say that Ramsay Caird never neglected one of the opportunities so frequently thrown in his way; that he never once committed himself in any possible manner; that he did not on every occasion seek to recommend himself to the girl's favour; but it is certain that he failed in making the smallest impression on her. Lady Muriel, watching the progress of affairs with the greatest interest, soon felt this, and was at first dispirited; afterwards consoling herself by the thought that the girl was passionless and devoid of feeling, but so docile withal, that it would be only necessary for her father to suggest her acceptance of Mr. Caird for her at once to fall into the idea. Thoroughly comforted by this notion, Lady Muriel had of late given herself no uneasiness in the matter; contenting herself by asking Ramsay Caird to spend a week or two now and then at Kilsyth, by throwing him frequently into Madeleine's society when there, and by keeping up a perpetual gently flowing perennial stream of laudation of her young protégé to her husband.
On Wilmot's return to the house, he inquired whether it would be convenient to Lady Muriel to receive him.
"My lady" was in her own sitting-room, and would be very happy to see Dr. Wilmot. So, he went thither, and found the mistress of the mansion alone, and looking to very great advantage in the midst of all the luxuries and refinements with which wealth--in this instance aided by good taste--adorns life. Her rich and simple dress, her finished graceful ease of manner, her sunny beauty, and the perfect propriety with which she expressed interest and anxiety concerning her stepdaughter, made her a very attractive object to Wilmot. He had not yet discovered that she did not in the least experience the sentiments which she glibly expressed in phrases of irreproachable tournure; he did not suspect her of insincerity or want of feeling, or in fact of any fault. Everything and everybody at Kilsyth wore the best and fairest of aspects in the eyes of Chudleigh Wilmot, who was, nevertheless, a very far-seeing and an eminently practical man. Thus, he only furnished another proof of the often-proven truth, that his most distinguishing qualities are the first to fail a man, when judgment is superseded by passion. That is a strong word to use in such a case as Chudleigh Wilmot's, at least to use so soon; but the boundary between the feeling which he entertained knowingly, and the passion which was growing out of it unconsciously, was very slight, and was destined so soon to be destroyed that the word may pass unblamed.
The earlier portion of Lady Muriel Kilsyth's conversation with Wilmot was naturally devoted to Madeleine. She thanked him, with all her own peculiar grace and fluency, for his attention, his "priceless care," for his resolution, which Kilsyth had communicated to her, to remain with them in this great trouble. She asked him to tell her his "real opinion;" and he told it. He told her Madeleine was in danger; but that he hoped, and thought, and believed, her life would be saved. He spoke with earnestness and feeling; and as he dwelt upon the youth, the beauty, and the sufferings of the girl, upon her exceeding preciousness to her father (and gave Lady Muriel credit for sharing her husband's feelings far beyond what she deserved), the soft dark eyes fixed themselves upon him with much interest and curiosity. Deep feeling on any subject was unfamiliar to Lady Muriel; it was not the habit of her society, or included in the scheme of her own organisation, and she liked it for its strangeness. Their conversation lasted long; for when Wilmot was summoned to see his patient, Lady Muriel invited him to come again to her sitting-room; and he did so. The question of sending her children away was speedily decided in the negative; and then the talk rambled on over a great variety of subjects, and Lady Muriel regarded Wilmot with increasing interest and surprise, as she discovered more and more of his originality and fertility of mind. She was not a remarkably clever woman; but she had more brains and more cultivation than were at all common among her "set;" and she did occasionally grow very weary of the well-bred vapid talk, which was the only form of social intercourse assumed in her circle. She had sometimes wondered whether something better was not to be found in the limits within which it would be proper for her to seek for it; but she had stopped at wonderment; she had not followed it up by effort; and now the very thing she had wished for had come to her, in the most unexpected form, and through the most unlikely channel. A doctor, a man whose name she had merely casually heard, an outsider, one whom in the ordinary course of events she would have never met, is called in to attend her stepdaughter in fever, and all at once a new world opens upon Lady Muriel Kilsyth.
She was quick to receive impressions; and she felt at once that this day marked an epoch in her life. As this fine-looking, keen, intelligent man, in whose deep-set eyes, on whose massive forehead power was enthroned, bent those dark steady eyes upon her, seeming to read her soul, the frivolity of her life fell away from her, like a flimsy garment discarded, and she felt, she recognised the charm of superiority of intellect and strength of character. She drew him out on the subjects which had the deepest interest for him, as a woman can, who has tact and perfect manners, even when her intellectual powers are in no way remarkable; and he enjoyed the happy sociable hours of the long, uninterrupted afternoon as much, or nearly as much, as she did. Lady Muriel was too quick and too true an observer to fail in discerning, before they had strayed very far into the pleasant paths of their desultory discourse, that there was very little sentimentality in Chudleigh Wilmot. A practical man, full of action, of ambition, of love of knowledge, and resolve to win the highest prizes it could bring him, he yet spoke and looked like a man whose feelings had been but little tried, and who would be slow to try them. Lady Muriel knew that Chudleigh Wilmot was a married man. The circumstance had been mentioned among the people in the house when he had first been talked of; and she was the first at Kilsyth to ask of herself, for she had no other to whom to address it, that frequent question, "What sort of woman is Chudleigh Wilmot's wife?" She could not have explained, but she did not question, the instinct which led her to say, as she went to her dressing-room, when their long colloquy at length came to a conclusion, "I am sure he does not care for her. I am sure it was not a love-match. I feel convinced he never was in love in his life, not in any real sense." And then, Lady Muriel Kilsyth sighed. Life was not yet an old story for either Lady Muriel or hudleigh.