"Yes, Madeleine," says Ronald, addressing her as though she had spoken; "I have come to fetch you to Lady Muriel.--I was not aware, sir," he added, turning to Wilmot, "that you were any longer in attendance on this young lady. I thought that her illness was over, and that your services had been dispensed with."
Constitutionally pale, Ronald now, under the influence of strong excitement, was almost livid; but he had not one whit more colour than Chudleigh Wilmot, as he replied: "You were right, Captain Kilsyth: my professional visits are at an end; it is as a friend that I am now visiting your sister."
Ronald drew himself up as he said, "I have yet to learn, Dr. Wilmot, that you are on such terms with the family as to justify you in paying these friendly visits.--Madeleine, come with me."
The girl hesitated for an instant; but Ronald placed her arm in his, and walked off with her to the door, leaving Chudleigh Wilmot immovable with astonishment and rage..
[CHAPTER XVI.]
Giving up.
Rage was quite a novel passion for Chudleigh Wilmot, and one which, like most new passions, obtained for the time complete mastery over him. In his previous career he had been so steeped in study, so overwhelmed by practice--had had every hour of his time so completely and unceasingly occupied, that he had had no leisure to get into a rage, even if he had had the slightest occasion. But the truth is, the occasion had been wanting also. During the time he had been at the hospital he had had various tricks played upon him,--such tricks as the idle always will play upon the industrious,--but he had not paid the least attention to them; and when the perpetrators of the practical jokes found they were disregarded, they turned the tide of their humour upon some one else less pachydermatous. Ever since then his life had flowed in an even stream, which never turned aside into a whirlpool of passion or a cataract of rage, but continued its calm course without the smallest check or shoal. In the old days, when driven nearly to madness by the calm way in which her husband took every event in life, undisturbed by public news or private worry, finding the be-all and the end-all of life in the prosecution of his studies, the correctness of his diagnoses, and the number of profitable visits daily entered up in his diary, Mabel Wilmot would have given anything if he had now and then broken out into a fit of rage, no matter for what cause, and thus cleared the dull heavy atmosphere of tranquil domesticity for ever impending over them. But he never did break out; and the atmosphere, as we have seen, was never cleared.
But Chudleigh Wilmot was in a rage at last. By nature he was anything but a coward, was endowed with a keen sensitiveness, and scrupulously honourable. His abstraction, his studiousness, his simple unworldly ways--for there were few more unworldly men than the rising fashionable physician--all prevented his easily recognising that he was a butt for intentional ribaldry or insult; but when, as in this case, he did see it, it touched him to the quick. As a boy he could laugh at the practical jokes of his fellow-students; as a man he writhed under and rebelled against the first slight that since his manhood he had received. What was to be done? This young man, this Captain Kilsyth, her brother, had studiously and purposely insulted him, and insulted him before her. As this thought rushed through Wilmot's mind, as he stood as though rooted to the spot where they had left him in the drawing-room in Brook-street, his first feeling was to rush after Ronald and strike him to the ground as the penalty of his presumption. His fingers itched to do it, clenched themselves involuntarily, as his teeth set and his nostrils dilated involuntarily. What good would that do? None. Come of it what might, Madeleine's name would be mixed up with it, and--Ah, good God! he saw it all; saw the newspaper paragraph with the sensation-heading, "Fracas in private life between a gallant Officer and a distinguished Physician;" he saw the blanks and asterisks under which Madeleine's name would be concealed; he guessed the club scandal which--No, that would never do. He must give up all thoughts of avenging himself in that manner, for her sake. Better bear what he had borne, better bear slight and insult worse a thousandfold, than have her mixed up in a newspaper paragraph, or given over to the genial talk of society.
He must bear it, put up with the insult, swallow his disgust, forego his revenge. There was not enough of the Christian element in Chudleigh Wilmot's composition to render this line of conduct at all palatable to him; but it was necessary, and should be pursued. He had gone through all this in his thought, and arrived at this determination before he moved from the drawing-room. Then he walked quietly down to Lady Muriel's boudoir, entered, chatted with her ladyship for five minutes on indifferent topics, and took his leave, perfectly cool without, raging hot within.
As he had correctly thought, his long absence from London had by no means injured his practice; if anything, had improved it. In every class of life there is such a thing as making yourself too cheap, and the healthy and wealthy hypochondriacs, who form six-sevenths of a fashionable physician's clientèle, are rather incited and stimulated when they find the doctor unable or unwilling to attend their every summons. So Wilmot's practice was immense. He had a very large number of visits to pay that day, and he paid them all with thorough scrupulousness. Never had his manner been more suave and bland; never had he listened more attentively to his patients' narratives of their complaints; never had his eyebrow-upliftings been more telling, the noddings of his head thrown in more apropos. The old ladies, who worshipped him, thought him more delightful than ever; the men were more and more convinced of his talent; but the truth is, that having no really serious case on hand, Dr. Wilmot permitted himself the luxury of thought; and while he was clasping Lady Cawdor's pulse, or peering down General Donaldbain's throat, he was all the time wondering what line of conduct he could best pursue towards Ronald and Madeleine Kilsyth. In the course of his afternoon drive he passed the carriages of scores of his brother practitioners, with whom he exchanged hurried bows and nods, all of whom returned to the perusal of the Lancet or of their diaries, as the case might be, with envy at their hearts, and jealousy of the successful man who succeeded in everything, and who, if they had only known it, was quivering under the slight and insult which he had just received.