He looked upward at the stars in the simple fancy that the dear dead wife, the Constance he had worshipped so passionately, was gazing down upon him with happy consent in her pure eyes. The love he had given her was immortal, and she knew it. It was no disloyalty to love another sweet woman on earth and to put his own broken life and his motherless child into her keeping.... Yet after a few moments he lowered his gaze for a while and walked on, his heart filled with the old love.
He was one of those reserved natures, capable of intense feeling, yet incapable of outward expression, who make for themselves few friends and are often condemned to loneliness of soul. Born with greater cravings for sympathy than most men, they have less power to demand it. This is too busy a world for us to stop to wonder whether a man wants what he does not ask for; too many are clamouring loudly for what we cannot give. So the unfortunates are passed by unheeded, each working out in his heart his little tragedy of unfulfilled longings. But when a finer spirit comes and divines their needs, then their hearts leap towards it and cling to it with a great unexpressed passion of gratitude. Such had been the beginning of Sylvesters love for his wife; such that of his dawning love for Ella. Each in her way had comprehended his solitude; unasked in words, but spiritually besought, each had filled it with her influence. He needed the peculiar sympathy that a woman alone can give, her companionship, her practical intellect, to complement his theoretic mind. His nature cried dumbly for a whole-hearted, expansive creature to give objectivity to life. Left to himself, he sank into routine; he lacked the power of bringing colour and harmony into his world. This the woman he loved could do. Once, for a few short years, a woman had changed his universe. Then she had died, and the blackness of night had encompassed him. He had suffered silently, as a strong man suffers, rarely mentioning her name, but eating out his heart in desolation; and then Ella had come. He had known her from early childhood, but had last seen her as the schoolgirl of no account.
Now she had sprung into his horizon, a young and splendid woman of amazing opposites, who compelled attention; and she was the only woman other than Constance who, during all his life, had sought to know him and to act towards him tenderwise. Nevertheless, he could not say as yet that he loved her, in the sweet and common way of love. The old and new hung equipoised on a delicate balance. The vague sense of this, perhaps, was one element in the rare exaltation of his mood.
Another element, no doubt, was the final resolve he had taken that morning, to go to London, whither his ambitions summoned him. He was a specialist of some note in zymotic diseases. His researches had met with a recognition not confined to England. He had felt keenly that he was giving up to the small circle of a country practice what was meant for the general needs of mankind. London was the only place for study and work; for the quick amassing, too, of the small fortune that would free him from the necessity of earning daily bread and would allow him to realise his dreams of a great bacteriological laboratory, where he could devote himself exclusively to independent research.
It was at the urgent entreaty of Constance that he had bought, just before his marriage, the practice at Ayresford. A year's life there had made him regret London. A little later he had spoken of returning. She had thrown her arms about him and implored him by all his love for her to stay. She had a horror of London; why, she could not tell. It was unreasonable, but the fact remained. London would kill her,—its gloom, its hardness, its cruelty. It had been the same story whenever he had broached the subject. And then, Dorothy. The child was delicate, would pine away in the reek and fogs of the town. All her woman's armoury of passionate weapons had been employed. And he had yielded, out of his great love. Her death had set him free. But it had taken him four years to realise his freedom. The mere thought had been anguish. Now he could gaze upon the past with calmness and the future with hope. As he walked along, he began to picture the vigorous life before him. He passed from wide conception to trivial details,—the fittings of his library, domestic economies. A room for Dorothy—he pulled himself up short. He had arranged to part with her. The prospect brought a pang. His father's comfort in the child, however, was a consolation. He thought of him tenderly,—the dear old man, the most generous and unselfish being who had ever blessed the earth. He was a man of deep reverences; his father, his dead mother, and his dead wife were enshrined in his Holy of Holies. Dorothy, then, should remain at Ayresford. Perhaps the separation would not be for long. There was a means of shortening it whose readiness was a great temptation. The vision rose before him of the child's dark curls nestling against a girl's soft shoulder. Often had he seen the reality of late, and it had disturbed his depths. Was it not his duty to give the little one so sweet and strong a mother? Again he consulted the stars.
He had reached a set of workmen's cottages in process of erection, on either side of the road, which marked the beginning of the town. The moonlight beat hard upon them, showing up vividly their windowless and doorless skeletons and the piles of bricks, mortar, and lime-covered boards at their thresholds. He had passed the first block and was about to traverse a cross-road that led to the railway station, when a dog-cart containing two men and some luggage turned out of it sharply on to the highway. Before he could realise the fact, the vehicle suddenly lurched, the horse plunged, and in a moment the occupants were thrown heavily on to the road. Sylvester could see at once the cause of the mishap. A pail of mortar left by the roadside, either through carelessness or urchin mischief, had caught the wheel. He ran forward. One of the men, the driver, rose, and shaking himself went to the horse's head, which was turned round in calm inquiry. The other man lay still.
“Hurt?” cried Sylvester.
“No, doctor,” replied the driver, who belonged to the George Hotel of Ayresford. “The gentleman may be.”
He left the pacific animal, and bent with Sylvester over the prostrate form.
It was that of a handsome, full-blooded man in the prime of life. He had fair hair and a great moustache. His face gleamed very white beneath the moon, and his eyes were glassy. The driver supported his head, while Sylvester straightened the inert body, which had remained huddled together after the fall, wrapped in a disordered Inverness cape. Apparently no bones were broken. Sylvester felt his pulse, which was just perceptible. Then suddenly he viewed the man's face full, and started back in amazed distress.