Now, as he knelt down in the grass before the little brown shoes, and lifted the hem of her linen gown and kissed it, the hulking-shouldered Doctor proved his possession of the quality. Devouring desire, riotous passion, were, if not killed in him, at least quelled and overthrown and bound. Pure pity and tenderness awakened in him. And Chivalry, all cap-à-pie in silver mail, rose up to do battle for her against the world and against that other Saxham.
"I accept the trust you are willing should be mine. Take my name—take all I have to give! I make no reservations. I stipulate no conditions. I ask for nothing in return, except the right to be your brother and guardian and defender. Trust me! The life-work you have chosen shall be yours; as far as lies in my power, I will help you in it. Your pure ends and noble aims shall never be thwarted or hindered. And have no fear of me, my sweet saint, my little sister. For I may die," said Saxham once again, "but, living, I will never fail you!"
LVII
Saxham, of St. Stephen's, had long ago faded from the recollection of London Society, but Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., Late Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and frequently mentioned in Despatches from that bit of debatable soil, while it was in process of debating, was distinctly a person to cultivate. Not that it was in the least easy—the man was almost quite a bear, but his brevity of speech and brusqueness of manner gave him a cachet that Society found distinguished. He was married, too—so romantic! married to a girl who was shut up with him in Gueldersdorp all through the Siege. Quite too astonishingly lovely, don't you know? and with manners that really suggested the Faubourg St. Germain. Where she got her style—brought up among Boers and blacks—was to be wondered at, but these problems made people all the more interesting. And one met her with her husband at all the best houses since the Castleclares had taken them up. Indeed, Mrs. Saxham was a relative—was it a cousin? No—now it all came back! Adopted daughter, that was it, of an aunt—no, a step-sister of Lord Castleclare, that ineffable little prig of twenty-two, who as a Peer and Privy Councillor of Ireland, and a Lord-in-Waiting to boot, was nevertheless a personage to be deferred to.
One had heard, hadn't one, ages ago, of the famous beauty, Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne? Well, that was the very person, who had been Abbess, or Prioress, or something-else-ess of a Roman Catholic Sisterhood at Gueldersdorp, and died of pneumonia during the Siege, or did she get shot? That was it, poor dear thing, and how quite too horrid for her!
We may know that that belated letter of the Mother's—written to her kinswoman when the first mutterings of the storm were yet dulled by distance, and the threatening clouds were beginning to build their blue-black bastions and frowning ramparts on the horizon—had got through at last. The Bawnes, true to their hereditary quality of generous loyalty, threw open their doors and their hearts to dead Bridget-Mary's darling; and Saxham was undisguisedly grateful when he saw how she warmed to them. But he gave no encouragement, verbal, written, or tacit to their desire to fulfil the dead woman's wishes in the settlement of a sum of money upon Lynette. He had made such provision for her himself as his means permitted. His books had been selling steadily for the past six years, his publishers had paid him a handsome sum in royalties, and a thousand guineas for the copyright of a new work. Plas Bendigaid was secured to his wife; and Saxham's life was heavily insured, and the bulk of the sum remaining from the purchase of the furniture and fixtures of the house in Harley Street, with the practice of the physician who was giving up tenancy, had been invested in her name with the other funds. Why should strangers interfere with his sole privilege of working for her?
"I should prefer that the decision should be left entirely to my wife," he said, when the Head of the House of Bawne, with the pompous solemnity distinctive of a young man who takes himself and his position seriously, formally broached the subject.
"Lady Castleclare has—arah!—already approached Mrs. Saxham on the question," said Lord Castleclare, tapping the shiny surface of the leather-covered writing-table near which he sat with the long, thin, ivory-hued fingers, ending in long, narrow, bluish-tinted nails, that had descended to him—with the peculiar sniffing drawl that prolonged and punctuated his verbal utterance—from his late father. "And I regret to hear from Lady Castleclare that Mrs. Saxham gave no encouragement to the suggestion. I confess myself disappointed equally with my wife and my elder step-sister, the Duchess of Broads, to whom the letter was written—the letter that you will understand conveys to the family I represent, the last wishes of one whose memory we hold in the most sacred love and reverence——"
The Right Honourable Privy Councillor had here to stop and dry his eyes, that were frankly overflowing. Though short, and not at all distinguished of appearance, having derived from his mother, the Dowager Countess, née Miss Nancy McIleevy, of McIleevystown, County Down, certain personal disadvantages to counterbalance the immense fortune amassed by her uncle, the brewer, this little gentleman of great affairs possessed the kindly heart, and the quick and sensitive nature of the paternal stock. Now he continued: