The Doctor's Wife: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

"Oh, that person is gone now," Isabel answered frankly. "It was very unkind of people to say anything against him, or against me. He was a relation,—a very near relation,—and I could not do otherwise than see him now and then while he was in the neighbourhood. I went late in the evening, because I did not wish to leave my husband at any other time. I did not think that the Graybridge people watched me so closely, or were so ready to think that what I do must be wrong."

Mr. Pawlkatt patted her hand soothingly.

"A relation, my dear Mrs. Gilbert?" he exclaimed. "That, of course, quite alters the case. I always said that you were no doubt perfectly justified in doing as you did; though it would have been better to invite the person here. Country people will talk, you know. As a medical man, with rather a large field of experience, I see all these little provincial weaknesses. They will talk; but keep up your courage, Mrs. Gilbert. We shall do our best for our poor friend. We shall do our very best."

He gave Isabel's tremulous hand a little reassuring squeeze, and departed complacently.

The Doctor's Wife stood absently watching him as he walked away, and then turned and went slowly into the parlour—the empty, miserable-looking parlour, which had not been used now for more than a week. The dust lay thick upon the shabby old furniture, and the atmosphere was hot and oppressive.

Here Isabel sat down beside the chiffonier, where her poor little collection of books was huddled untidily in a dusty corner. She sat down to think—trying to realize the nature of that terror which seemed so close to her, trying to understand the full significance of what Mr. Pawlkatt had said of her husband.

The surgeon had given no hope that George Gilbert would recover; he had only made little conventional speeches about calmness and fortitude.

She tried to think, but could not. She had only spoken the truth just now, when she cried out that she was frightened. This kind of terror was so utterly new to her that she could not understand the calm business-like aspect of the people who watched and waited on her husband. Could he be dying? That strong active man, whose rude health and hearty appetite had once jarred so harshly upon all her schoolgirl notions of consumptive and blood-vessel-breaking heroes! Could he be dying?—dying as heroic a death as any she had ever read of in her novels: the death of a man who speculates his life for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and loses by the venture. The memory of every wrong that she had ever done him—small wrongs of neglect, or contemptuous opinions regarding his merits—wrongs that had been quite impalpable to the honest unromantic doctor,—crowded upon her now, and made a dull remorseful anguish in her breast. The dark shadow brooding over George Gilbert—the dread gigantic shadow, growing darker day by day—made him a new creature in the mind of this weak girl. No thought of her own position had any place in her mind. She could not think; she could only wait, oppressed by a dread whose nature she dared not realize. She sat for a long time in the same forlornly listless attitude, almost as helpless as the man who lay in the darkened chamber above her. Then, rousing herself with effort, she crept up-stairs to the room where the grave faces of the watchers greeted her, with very little sympathy in their gaze.

Had not Mr. and Mrs. Jeffson heard the reports current in Graybridge; and was it likely they could have any pity for a woman who crept stealthily at nightfall from her invalid husband's house to meet a stranger?

Isabel would have whispered some anxious question about the patient; but Matilda Jeffson frowned sternly at her, commanding silence with an imperious forefinger; and she was fain to creep into a dark corner, where it had been her habit to sit since the Jeffsons had, in a manner, taken possession of her husband's sick bed. She could not dispute their right to do so. What was she but a frivolous, helpless creature, fluttering and trembling like a leaf when she essayed to do any little service for the invalid?