Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

DR. PAULL’S THEORY
A ROMANCE

BY

MRS. A. M. DIEHL

AUTHOR OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN, ETC.

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1893

Copyright, 1893,

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

Electrotyped and Printed

at the Appleton Press, U. S. A.

DEDICATED TO

HENRY IRVING, Esq.

CONTENTS.

DR. PAULL’S THEORY.

CHAPTER I.
FATE.

Hugh Paull, house-surgeon to a great City hospital, was seated at his writing-desk. During his spare time he was working at a treatise on nervous disease, the special subject which attracted him. It was a day when a certain public event was disturbing the usual City routine. The thoroughfares near to the hospital were blocked, and his room was quieter than usual. He had almost forgotten that he was liable to be disturbed, when a tap came at his door.

“Wanted, sir. Accident just brought in.”

The porter spoke, standing in the doorway.

Hugh laid down his pen with a sigh.

“Has Mr. Hamley taken the case?”

“Yes, sir. They are getting him into the ward. Old gentleman—carriage accident. Horse frightened and bolted. Two bobbies brought him in.”

“All right, I’ll come.”

He put aside his manuscript, and went down to the accident ward. The “sister” of the ward, two nurses, and young Hamley, a dresser, were standing round the recumbent figure of a fine old man, who lay on his narrow bed still as death, his pale features composed, his grey hair tossed upon the pillow. It was a grand face—a model for a painter.

As Paull neared the group the two nurses moved away to bring forward and unfold a screen.

“Take it away,” he said.

“I think he’s gone, or nearly so,” said the dresser, a fair young man, his face flushing. He had asked for the screen, usually drawn around the dying or dead.

“Nothing of the sort,” said Hugh. He felt the patient’s pulse, listened at his heart, opened the closed eyelids, placed his hand lightly on his brow, which was cold and clammy, then ordered him to be undressed, himself assisting the nurses to rip up the coat-sleeves.

There were no injuries. It was a case of concussion of the brain. The groom was having his slight wounds dressed in the out-patients’ department; and Hugh learned from him that his master, whom he appeared to hold greatly in awe, was Sir Roderick Pym, one of the partners in the well-known banking firm of Pym, Clithero and Pym. He had a town house in a West-end square, and a country house in Surrey, where he mostly lived. He was staying in town for a few days, and had insisted on driving towards the City to-day, in spite of the warning issued by the police to the public. Moreover, he insisted on driving a thoroughbred mare, who no sooner got among quite a small assemblage of roughs than she kicked up her heels and was off. The groom stuck to the tilbury till the final crash, but his master fell out shortly before. That was all he knew (or chose to tell). He was a town groom. He never went into the country. He would return home and tell Sir Roderick’s housekeeper. She would come round and see about their master.

Hugh went thoughtfully back to the ward, and standing at the foot of the bed gazed at the solemn, set face of the unconscious man. He was interested—unusually so. This old man’s aquiline, grave face was full of expression. Peaceful and composed as it was now, it was the countenance of one who had suffered, and suffered deeply.

“His eyelids quivered a little when the ice-bag was applied, sir,” said the nurse who was watching the patient.

Hugh was once more gravely examining the case, when the stout, matronly personage, in a high cap and huge white apron, who was called the “sister” of the ward, came from the little room at its end, through the square window of which she could see all that was going on in the long room with the rows of beds.

“I thought I would give you these, Mr. Paull. I would rather not have anything to do with them,” she said, handing Hugh a massive gold watch and chain, a purse, and some letters and papers.

“I will see to them, sister,” he said.

Giving directions as to the immediate treatment of Sir Roderick, he returned to his room to lock them away in a small iron safe, where certain of the hospital books and cases of instruments were kept. The watch was a hunter. It struck him that the glass might be broken. It was. He shook out the fragments; then, seeing a locket attached to the chain, he opened that.

The glass of this was intact, and covered the coloured photograph of a woman’s face—sweet, bright, fair, with smiling lips and dark eyes, that even on lifeless paper looked mischief and pretty defiance.

He shut up the locket in a hurry—he had not meant prying—and placing the contents of Sir Roderick’s pockets in a corner of the safe, turned the key upon them.

“This is my quiet day’s work,” he thought, with a sigh. It was useless to sit down to a scientific treatise, for which the most complete abstraction was an absolute necessity, when at any moment he might be summoned to this unexpected and important case; so he put the scattered sheets of manuscript together, and re-arranged the books of reference that he had piled on chairs by his writing-table in their rightful places on the book-shelves. Then he sat down in his American chair, and stared at the fire.

“A strange old face,” he was thinking, “massive, thoughtful. Quite a Rembrandt head. I wonder how old he is—whether he will get over it? Nasty shock, anyhow. Must have fallen on a soft bit of road; if it had been the kerb, or cobbles even, it might have been all over with him.”

It seemed to Paull that he must have seen that face before. Yet this could scarcely be. He had come to the hospital from his country home. He was the only son of the Rector of Kilby, in Derbyshire, and had seldom gone out, except to the museums and to scientific lectures; his ambition kept him chained to its object—his profession.

“The sort of face one sometimes dreams of,” he concluded. “I thought I was past nonsense of this sort. This latest thing in accidents has upset me as if I were a girl.”

Presently, the “gentleman’s housekeeper” was announced, and a portly dame, handsomely dressed in dark silk and a fur-trimmed cloak, entered. At once Hugh banished all idea of the locket and Mrs. Naylor having the faintest connecting link.

Sir Roderick’s housekeeper was comely, and good-looking in her buxom way. But although there was anxiety in her enquiries, and evident relief in her manner when Paull gave her hopes that her employer might recover, the ruddiness did not forsake her cheeks, nor was she in the least flurried.

“I feared something might happen, that I did,” she said, accepting a chair. “The groom, David, he didn’t half like going behind that mare. Sir Roderick’s a first-rate driver; they do say at both riding and driving he can manage anything in the way of a horse. But there, I’ve seen that Kitty in the stable, and I know she’s that bad-tempered—but, lor! no one daren’t say one word to Sir Roderick.”

Paull asked if there were no near relations who might be sent for, or informed of her master’s condition.

“Mr. Edmund—that’s Sir Roderick’s next eldest brother—had dinner with him last night,” she answered, doubtfully, “But he’s taken his family to see the procession. Mr. Pym—that’s the eldest, the head of the firm—isn’t on what you might call good terms with Sir Roderick, who has nothing to do with the bank now.”

“Were those all?” asked Hugh.

Mrs. Naylor could not suggest anyone else. Sir Roderick—well, he was one of those gentlemen that you didn’t know how to take. You might offend him mortally, and you wouldn’t know it except by his never having anything to do with you afterwards.

“You would rather not take any responsibility in the matter then, Mrs. Naylor?” asked Hugh, slightly amused.

The character of that strange man, lying for the present dead to the world without, was being unexpectedly revealed to him.

“I certainly would rather not, sir,” said Mrs. Naylor, briskly.

“But you will not object to give me his brother’s address?”

Mrs. Naylor being quite ready to give Mr. Edmund Pym’s address, Hugh wrote it down. Then he offered to take Mrs. Naylor to see her master.

From this she seemed to shrink; and it was only after being adjured that it was her duty to remain, at all events, in the hospital, until someone else belonging to Sir Roderick came—that she consented to visit the ward.

Mr. Edmund Pym arrived to visit his brother about nine in the evening: a singularly impassive personage, who showed no emotion whatever of any kind, and who departed as soon as possible.

Mrs. Naylor, evidently greatly relieved, slipped away after she had had a short interview with her master’s brother.

At ten o’clock the old man still lay on the hospital bed—breathing, living, but apparently dead to all around him.

“What do you think of him, Mr. Paull?” asked the Sister, as Hugh went his last round—at least the round which was usually his last.

“Think of him?” repeated Hugh, absently. “Oh—well—Dr. Fairlight will be here in the morning. He will take the case. Tell the night nurse I shall be down in an hour.”

“You’re not going to sit up, Mr. Paull?”

“I think I shall.”

The Sister looked from patient to doctor, as Hugh went striding out of the ward, and back again to the livid, solemn face on the pillow.

“That young cabman’s case last week was a good deal worse than this,” she mused, “and he didn’t sit up. I suppose the old gentleman’s age makes him anxious.”

Hugh Paull, with his odd attractiveness, his scrupulous fidelity to his duties, and his learning, which was acknowledged by the great men who were appointed to the hospital, as well as by his fellow-workers, was the hero of the resident staff, both doctors and nurses; and it did not enter the good Sister’s head to dream that any other motive but that of devotion to duty led to this sacrifice of a night’s rest, and singular departure from ordinary hospital routine.

Yet when Hugh took up his position at the patient’s bedside with some books as the possible companions of his vigil, he smiled to himself with a cynical wonder.

“Why am I doing this?” he asked himself. Why, indeed? He could have been summoned if any change took place. He could have ordered an extra night nurse for Sir Roderick. Why should he go out of his way for a strange man? Because this old man’s brother and the housekeeper had behaved so coolly, and his sense of humanity was aroused? Because this human windfall in the accident ward was Sir Roderick Pym, of Pym, Clithero & Pym? No! for neither of these reasons. Hugh Paull was in the habit of self-interrogation. His dissatisfaction with ordinary life as ordinary people took it had made him desperately in earnest; and being desperately in earnest, had made—

“To thine own self be true,

Thou canst not then be false to any man,”

one of his governing mottoes. As he settled himself to his night watch he grimly told himself that he was here for the sole reason that he knew he could not without a struggle have kept away. Sir Roderick Pym attracted him like a magnet. Why, he had still to learn.

Alternately watching the slightest movement of the patient, and reading, the night wore on. There was silence in the long ward. The rows of beds loomed whitely in the distance. The fire crackled. Now and then there was a sigh or a weary moan. The distant clatter of cab-wheels, the howl of a restless dog, or the slow rumbling of the market-waggons, were the only signs that not all in London slept, as did these victims of carelessness or misadventure within the quiet stone building.

Between one and two o’clock, Sir Roderick gave signs of returning consciousness. As the night nurse glided from bed to bed, administering medicine to those patients for whom it had been ordered, he opened his eyes, and muttered something. Then he moved his head on his pillow, turned, and gradually subsided into natural sleep.

After Hugh was completely satisfied that this was real slumber—“tired Nature’s sweet restorer,” indeed—he might safely have sought “balmy sleep” for his own solace; but by this time he was so wide awake, and his brain so fit for study, that he remained. Sir Roderick slept for hours as placidly as an infant, while Hugh studied with all his might and strength.

At six o’clock the night nurse brought him a cup of tea, and congratulated him on the changed appearance of the patient.

“Yes; he’ll do now, I think,” said Hugh, contentedly.

The clatter of the spoon in the saucer, or the whispering, or both, aroused Sir Roderick. He opened his eyes, and stared at Hugh, first wildly, then with an amazed expression.

“Kemble, in Hamlet,” he muttered. Then, as Hugh bit his lip to restrain a smile—a shaken brain must not be irritated—he frowned and stared, stared and frowned, then jerked his head away as from an unpleasant object.

Since the old man had been resolutely driving into the City, against much warning and advice, all had been a blank. Now he was awakening amid the most unpleasant sensations: his limbs heavy as lead, his head curiously light. At first he squinted at the strange objects around him, struggling to focus them aright, like a semi-conscious infant. As his sight adjusted itself, he found that there were really many beds—a row of beds. He began to count them, but before he had reached two figures he felt sick and faint, and instinctively turned back for help.

A lithe strong arm was round him, a glass with some cordial was at his lips. He swallowed the draught, and helplessly subsided.

As he revived he began to think.

“This is real,” was his first thought. “What has happened to me?”

After the thought had hummed about in his mind like a spinning-top, it subsided, tottered, and tumbled. He, as it were, picked it up.

“Who am I?” he stammered, suddenly, to Hugh, who was sitting near, his eyes alert. He had not meant that, but it came out higgledy-piggledy, somehow, and he listened to his own voice wonderingly.

“You are quite safe, Sir Roderick Pym,” said Hugh, gently. “A few hours ago you were thrown out of your carriage, and were brought here. You have been slightly—faint—but you will soon be all right again, and able to go home.”

“A—hospital!” Sir Roderick looked round with evident disgust. “Who—knows?” he added, with a glance of alarm.

Hugh hastened to relate details, slowly, clearly, while the nurse administered some light nourishment.

Sir Roderick listened attentively. The only question he asked was if his mare, Kitty, had suffered.

“I wouldn’t have had anything happen to Kitty,” he began, emphatically. Then, as he glanced up at Hugh from under his shaggy grey eyebrows, he seemed to remember that he was speaking to a stranger, and stopping short, sank wearily back.

“I took you for a vision of ‘Hamlet,’” he said, with a short laugh. “You looked like it—all black against the light, bending over your books.”

“My black clothes?” said Hugh. “I am just in mourning for my mother. I am house-surgeon here.”

Sir Roderick looked at him less coldly, and murmured some thanks. Then he asked the time.

“I want to telegraph. I was expected home—in the country—to-day,” he said. “Perhaps—I could go this afternoon.”

Hugh convinced him that this would be, if not impossible, the height of imprudence.

Sir Roderick listened to reason, but bargained that he should write a telegram now, at once, while he was able.

So excitedly did he plead, that Hugh reluctantly fetched a telegram form from the secretary’s room, and propped his troublesome patient up in the bed, that he might fill it in himself.

But the pencil fell from Sir Roderick’s fingers, the effort made him feel faint.

Not till an hour after was the telegram despatched, and then it was Hugh who had written it at Sir Roderick’s dictation:—

“To L. Pym, The Pinewood,

“Near F——, Surrey.

“Am detained by important business. Will return as soon as possible. Keep all letters, and do not see visitors.

Roderick Pym.”

“To his wife, presumably,” thought Hugh, as he left his patient to the day nurse, who was fresh from her night’s rest; and as he thought this he sneered: “Younger than her lord and master; very much under his thumb, too, evidently. Married him for his money, of course! The original of the portrait in the locket, doubtless. Fancy the jealous prudence of the old fox! Wouldn’t write ‘Lady Pym,’ only put ‘L.’ I wondered why he hesitated so long before yielding up the name. Poor old fellow! A young wife, with that mischievous face! Why didn’t the housekeeper mention her?”

Hugh went about his day’s work strangely dissatisfied, and had never felt more annoyed with anyone in his life than with the Sister of the accident ward when she told Dr. Fairlight that he had kindly remained all night by Sir Roderick’s bedside.

CHAPTER II.
AN INITIAL LETTER.

Sir Roderick decidedly improved on acquaintance. During the next two days his health promised to return. He declined the offer of a private ward.

“I like to watch what goes on,” he said to Hugh. “Of course there is a good deal to see that is painful. But I may not have such an opportunity of realising certain conditions of human nature again.”

Then he descanted upon the different cases, upon the various characteristics of the maimed and injured men who were either inmates, or who were brought in, upon the method and patient quietude of the nurses, &c.

“You are a practised observer,” said Hugh. Upon which they began a conversation that partially showed Hugh there was a bond of sympathy between them. Both were dissatisfied with life generally, and with certain matters particularly. Both were prompted to study deeply, and ponder much on the great problems which have puzzled philosophers from Thales to Schopenhauer; and although Sir Roderick was a materialist and pessimist, and Hugh had taken refuge in a high ideal optimism which was to a certain extent original, they met on the common ground of mental disquietude.

Seen thus, Sir Roderick seemed another man. Weak though he still was, his eyes sparkled, his face was brightened by an almost youthful animation. Hugh was about to end the interview, fearing overfatigue for his patient, when Sir Roderick stopped short. His countenance changed. His brother, Mr. Edmund Pym, came into the ward with the secretary of the hospital.

Edmund Pym was a short, wizened little man, with pinched features and blinking eyes, scant white hair and smooth shaven face. Greater opposites in personal appearance than these two brothers could hardly be.

He glanced at Hugh through his eye-glass, nodded, somewhat awkwardly asked the invalid how he was getting on, then stood fidgeting at the bedside.

Hugh offered him a chair, but Sir Roderick gave him such a look that he would have retired precipitately but for his patient’s apologetic—

“Pray don’t go, Mr. Paull, I want to speak to you. My brother cannot stay long.”

“No, I cannot stay long,” said Mr. Edmund, uncomfortably. “I only came in to see how you were getting on, and to tell you how sorry Mary and the girls are about this. Mary will come and see you, if you like?”

“But I don’t like,” interrupted Sir Roderick, pettishly. “Tell her—anything you please. I don’t mind Mary and the girls when I am well. But they can’t come here. If they do, I sha’n’t see them.”

Mr. Pym nervously assured his brother that “Mary and the girls” would not dream of doing anything to displease him. They were most anxious to show their solicitude and sympathy, that was all.

“Tell them that as long as they hold their tongues and don’t gossip about my infernal accident, they may do what they please,” said Sir Roderick, surlily. “And if they must chatter about it, tell them to pray for me. Yes, tell them that. They’ll think the black sheep is coming into the fold at last. It’ll please them, and won’t do me any harm.”

Mr. Edmund Pym was evidently embarrassed, and did not stay long. Hugh pitied him, and accompanying him to the end of the ward apologised for the irascibility of the patient, which was not only natural after the shock, but was, if anything, a favorable symptom, &c.

“Oh! I am accustomed to my brother, Mr. Paull,” he said, with a gentleness that touched the young house-surgeon. “He is naturally irritable. We take it for what it is worth. He has had a great deal of trouble in his life, and it has soured him. And he is quite a recluse. But he has a good heart, a wonderfully kind heart.”

Then he thanked Hugh for his attention to the patient and hurried off, evidently relieved that the visit was over.

“H’m!” muttered Hugh to himself, as he slowly returned to the patient. “H’m! It strikes me that my pessimistic friend is, like most pessimists, a bit of a Tartar.”

Sir Roderick welcomed him with a forced smile.

“I daresay you think me ungracious?” he said, his long, withered hand nervously fingering the bedclothes. “I’m not—at least, not exactly. I can put up with my brother when I’m well, but just now I can’t. The fact is, he is one of the most woman-ridden men on the face of the earth. His wife is a bigot and a snob, and brings up her daughters bigots and snobs. And they rule him. Rule him? They sit upon him. They drive him, like the old donkey he is. He was always the same. At school they called him Neddy, because he took everything so meekly. It used to enrage me, youngster as I was. I used to say to him: ‘Man, why can’t you hold up your head?’ And I’ve gone on saying it to him all through life. If there’s one thing I despise, it’s a man who can’t hold up his head and defend himself.”

“Against the women?” suggested Hugh. He had seated himself in the chair he had offered Mr. Pym. His arms were folded. He saw that he must treat Sir Roderick boldly, if they were to be friends. And some inward feeling told him that Fate, or Providence, had brought them together—that at least they were to be well acquainted with each other, if nothing more. “I am afraid, sir, that you are a woman-hater.”

He half expected his patient to turn upon him somewhat after the manner in which he had snubbed his brother, in which case he would have left the old gentleman to himself, as far as conversation went, for the future. Instead, Sir Roderick smiled, and seemed gratified.

“No, Hamlet, my friend,” he said, with a sort of pleased chuckle, leaning back against his pillows. “You must excuse my calling you Hamlet, but with your serious speculative nature, the name seems to fit you exactly. No, I am no woman-hater. I know we can’t do without them. But I object to them out of their proper place, as I object to cats out of the kitchen, or mastiffs and Newfoundlands in the drawing-room. The drudge woman and the ornamental woman are necessary evils. When strictly kept under, they serve their purpose. But bowed down to and worshipped as my unfortunate brother fetishes his womankind, they are only fit for extermination—as if they were so many rats.” He spoke viciously. Then turning to Hugh, he said: “I suppose you consider me a barbarian? Like the rest, you adore a petticoat—eh?”

“No,” said Hugh. “But I can’t say I am with you in the extermination idea; I have not known any domineering women. My mother was soft, gentle—more a helpmeet than a companion to my father, who is a very studious man. She was his right hand. His is not a mind to require a second self. My sisters are like her.”

“I understand,” said Sir Roderick, in a depreciatory tone. “Good specimens of the domestic genus. But what about the lady-love, the ideal realised, the creature apart—eh?”

“I have so many, you see, Sir Roderick,” said Hugh. “Silent lassies, who only speak when spoken to, and wait patiently side by side for days, even weeks, till I throw the handkerchief. Their petticoats are half-calf—morocco—cloth, lettered—”

“Oh! your books,” said the old man. “Ah! well, your turn will come, your turn will come! And the longer you wait the worse it’ll be.”

“May your words not come true,” said Hugh, as he went off, amused, yet—when he thought of the portrait in the locket, and of the telegram sent to “L. Pym”—somewhat puzzled.

During the time that Sir Roderick remained in the hospital—between three and four days—the subject of the fair sex was mutually tabooed by doctor and patient. They had interesting conversations, and Sir Roderick expressing a wish to see Hugh’s treatise, the evening before the old gentleman left the hospital he supped in the house-surgeon’s room, and Hugh read him portions of the work, which he was pleased greatly to approve.

“You must come and see me in the country,” he said, when, after writing a check for a handsome donation to the hospital fund, and insisting upon Hugh’s acceptance of a ruby ring he had ordered to be sent from his town house, he was taking leave of those of the staff who had been good Samaritans to him in his weakness. “You must come and stay. They think me an unsociable old brute, do my neighbors and people round about. But they wouldn’t care for me if they knew me. We have nothing in common. My friends are men of about my own age, with similar tastes. I hope you and I will be friends. Although I am nearly old enough to be your grandfather—minds like yours don’t count by years.”

Hugh answered that he was grateful, obliged—hoped they would be friends, certainly, etcetera. But as Sir Roderick leaned forward and nodded gravely to him from his brougham window when the carriage drove off, he felt a strange sensation—was it an uneasy feeling of aversion for this peculiar patient who had occupied his time and his thoughts these few days? Was he relieved by his departure? He could not tell. The ruby ring on his finger almost annoyed him. He locked it away in his desk, and tried to lock away the recollection of Sir Roderick with it.

Then he went about his work with a strange oppression of mind and weariness of body. It was an operating day. A most interesting—in fact, a thrilling operation took place in the theatre—one which set all the students and surgical nurses talking. But at the most critical moment he seemed to see Sir Roderick’s face and to hear that short, cynical laugh. He felt as if he were haunted.

As the days and weeks went on, the sensation lessened. But when the post came in he generally remembered Sir Roderick. At least, for the first few weeks after the accident he looked for the large, crooked scrawl he had noticed on the cheque, among his correspondence. When no letter, no news came of the strange old man, he began to think of their short acquaintance as of one of those purposeless episodes which occur in the lives of most medical men.

As spring blossomed into summer, he began to forget. When he had his short holiday, and was once more in his childhood’s home among the fields and woods, with flowers scenting the summer air and the birds singing all around, the remembrance of the weird old Rembrandt face on the pillow in the hospital ward came back into his mind as might some curious dream. Alas! it would have been better for Hugh Paull if indeed it could have been but a dream.

Kilby was a picturesque village among the Derbyshire hills. A stream ran through the smiling little valley. It meandered through the rectory grounds. There was no regular village street. There were groups of cottages clustering together about the old inn, and around the church. The rectory was a grey stone, gabled house, in grounds that the Reverend John Paull had enlarged and improved each year since he “read himself in” twenty-seven years ago. In front of the house was a large, square lawn, with spreading beeches and straight conifers on either side. Opposite, a yew hedge divided the lawn from the beautiful flower garden with the masses of bloom bordering the winding paths. Then came the river, famous for its succulent trout, and beyond, grassy banks, a row of elms, and the sloping hills.

Although Hugh missed the genial presence of his sweet-faced little mother, his father seemed determined to be cheery during his visit, and his sisters Maud and Daisy had made up their minds to be bright in their brother’s presence, so only indulged in their inevitable fits of grief in private.

“Do not let—Hugh—miss me,” had been their mother’s constant exhortation during her last brief illness. “He is such a gloomy boy. Pray be cheerful with him.”

Mrs. Paull herself had lived cheerfully; and as she had lived, so she died—with a smile of encouragement to those around her on her lips. To her, life was merely one scene in the eternal drama of the human soul.

When the rector chose the words, “She is not dead, but sleepeth,” to be engraven on the stone at the head of her grave, he felt indeed that his Maggie was not, could not be dead. Dead? Sometimes he believed they were nearer and dearer to each other now than when for the first time he took his love into his arms and kissed her lips.

Thus it was hardly a house of mourning into which Hugh came. As soon as he became accustomed to the empty chair, the absence of the kindly voice, and the sombre garments of his sisters and the maids, he successfully fought low spirits.

The ordeal of the first visit to his mother’s grave over, he also struggled to be unselfish, and not to add to his father’s and sisters’ grief by a mournful presence. So he walked about the parish with the rector as usual, drove his sisters in the pony-chaise, and fished with them in the old haunts of the capricious trout, which sometimes suddenly and unaccountably changed their favourite lurking-places, and as suddenly and unaccountably returned to them again.

In the evenings, when the Rector glanced through the papers and the girls worked by the light of the shaded lamps, he told them stories of the hospital: the strange beings that came under his notice, the hard, cruel tales of some of their lives.

About a week after his arrival, he was reminded of Sir Roderick. In the weekly journal, Speculative Thought, there was a letter on some subject that bore upon certain theories he held in regard to animal magnetism. It was signed “R. Pym.” At dinner he inquired of his father whether he had noticed it. He had not. So, after dinner Hugh read it aloud.

“Why, I should have thought you had written that,” said his father. “That is a pet theory of yours, is it not?”

“The old thief!” said Hugh, half to himself, but with an amused smile. “At least, I have no right to say that. It is written by Sir Roderick Pym. Of that I have little or no doubt. We had a discussion on the subject. He defended the opposite view. Now, he is on my side. That is what I can’t make out.”

“You brought him round to your way of thinking, I suppose,” said the rector, with a satisfied glance at his son. “You certainly have the gift of persuasion. Many a time, in our walks and talks, you have staggered me. I have felt that your hypotheses were uncalled for and preposterous. But for the life of me I could not advance anything solid in the way of refutation.”

“You certainly haven’t got the gift of persuasion, papa,” said the fair-haired, round-faced Daisy. “Giles was drunk again last night. Mary Giles has a black eye to-day. I am sure I thought your sermon on Sunday week would do something. But old Brown went to the Arms just the same all last week, Mrs. Brown told me. I said, quite aghast: ‘What! after papa’s sermon?’ And she said: ‘Lawk, miss, Brown do go to church, I know, but he allers settles hisself for a good sleep while the sermon’s a-goin’ on.’”

“One man, single-handed, is powerless against alcohol,” said the rector, helplessly. “I’ve fought it these seven-and-twenty years, and haven’t scored a point. If they will drink, they will drink—an earthquake would not stop them.”

The conversation drifted away from Sir Roderick Pym. But next morning it drifted back again.

“There is a letter for you, Hugh; such a curious-looking letter,” said Maud, a tall, dark, handsome girl, who was pouring out the tea and coffee when her brother came down to breakfast. “A most original handwriting. You must tell me whose it is. I have been reading up graphology lately, and there seems to me a great deal of sense in it. At least, my friends’ handwritings correspond wonderfully with what I know of their characters.”

“I warn you, Maud is getting quite a dangerous person,” said Daisy, with wide-open eyes. “I found her reading one of your medical books the other day, Hugh.”

But Hugh did not hear, or heed her. He was turning over the square, grey envelope, with a big black P stamped on the flap. The first communication from Sir Roderick after ten weeks’ silence. There was no mistaking the large, crooked scrawl. The stamp was stuck on corner-ways. After turning over the closed letter once more, he replaced it by his plate and began his breakfast. He could not bring himself to open that letter in the presence of his sisters. Why, he could not have told.

“You are not going to open your letter?” asked Daisy, wonderingly, as she took her brother’s egg out of the egg-boiler.

He was saved the reply by the entrance of his father. After breakfast, he escaped into the garden; and there, by the river, among the flowers and in the sunshine, the first link of the terrible life-chain which was to crush his heart was forged. He opened the letter. If he could have guessed, have known, would he have cast it from him into the stream to be carried away—out of his reach and ken, for ever? In after days he asked himself this with untold bitterness of soul, but no answer came.

The contents of the envelope, which had been redirected and forwarded by the secretary of the hospital, were simple enough.

Sir Roderick wrote, dating from the Pinewood, near F——, Surrey, as follows:—

“My good young Friend,—It must be about time for you to claim a holiday. Let it be spent here. You will like the place; that it will be congenial I feel sure. Let me know day and hour, and the carriage will meet you at F—— Station.

“Yours, Roderick Pym.”

Hugh read it twice, thrice. At first, he had (so he thought) been full of self-gratulation that he had so complete an excuse to decline the invitation as this, that his furlough from hospital, spent in his own home, was nearly at an end. But, as he paced the garden walk, he wondered whether, in reality, he had won over Sir Roderick to his views upon the subject of that letter to the weekly journal Speculative Thought, or whether the baronet had written it in one of his sardonic humours as a sort of grim jest. He would like to know. Perhaps Sir Roderick had been laughing at him in his sleeve during those long talks in the hospital. Gruesome thought, not to be borne! But he would like to know.

“I should do no harm by running down for a day,” he thought. “I could even leave before the dinner hour, and not have to encounter Lady Pym.”

The portrait in the locket, no less than the silence on the subject of Sir Roderick’s young wife on the part of the housekeeper and Mr. Edmund Pym, had prejudiced Hugh greatly against the lady to whom he had indited that telegram. Sir Roderick’s contempt for women, too, induced the idea that L. Pym, however charming she might be, was not a woman to deserve either respect or love.

Seldom vacillating, to-day Hugh was as irresolute as any woman. One minute he resolved to accept the invitation, the next he told himself it would be better to let it stand over for the present. At last he got angry with himself, went into the house, asked Maud if he might use her davenport in the drawing-room, and presently posted a letter to Sir Roderick with his own hands, lest once more he should change his mind. In this he accepted the invitation to the Pinewood for the following Saturday morning.

Why he was reluctant to enlighten his family on this subject, he could not for the life of him make out. But whenever he neared it in conversation, he felt uncomfortable. The days passed. He told them all he should return to town the following Friday. But of the projected visit to the Pinewood he said not one word.

The sweet summer days came and went, one by one. Once more Hugh said good-bye, perhaps for months, to the old garden; had a farewell fish in the river, and after a reluctant parting with father and sisters, returned—to meet his strange fate.

CHAPTER III.
EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF HUGH PAULL.

July—, 18—.

Am I awake? Is my visit to the Pinewood a dream? No, no, it has all happened—one of the strangest experiences that ever befell mortal man.

It has been like a visit to some new world: the impressions have been so strong. It is the Pinewood which seems the reality, and this, my hospital life, a dream. To my horror, things are growing shadowy. I cannot concentrate my thoughts upon my cases; and when the fellows or the nurses ask me anything, I am not “all there.” At last the climax came this morning. An epileptic case came in, and Dr. Hildyard asked my opinion upon his diagnosis. My mind was a blank. Suddenly I could have sworn I heard a laugh—her laugh.

I will write it all down, that is what I will do; then perhaps I may forget.

I left London last Saturday week morning, in the full possession of my senses (of that I feel sure). I can remember everything—all the details of the journey down to F——, through the heathery moorland, the firwoods, the cornfields.

No one waiting at F—— station. Taking my bag, I was leaving, intending to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of the Pinewood and to walk, when an old coachman, perched up on the driving-seat of a high dogcart, touched his hat and said:

“The gentleman for the Pinewood?”

“I am going to the Pinewood,” I said.

“The doctor, sir, what attended Sir Roderick in London?”

“Yes.”

I got up, and we drove off. The skittish bay (Reindeer) went like the wind at first along the smooth highroad, through snug villages, past outhouses, between hop-gardens, till we came to the hills covered with pine-forest.

“This is the Pinewood, sir,” said the old man; “as far as you can see a tree.”

That was much farther than I could see. The slopes were clad with the straight, tall trees, from slim saplings to lofty giants, until the dark green outlines of the hills melted into the lilac haze of the horizon.

Driving less quickly uphill, he told me something about his master and his habits.

“You must excuse my not believin’ in you at first sight, sir,” he said; “but so few gen’l’men comes here, and they’re not young gen’l’men, but them as pokes about after beetles or goes butterfly catching. Some goes out with a hammer, and knocks the stones about. And as for a lady—well, sir, I suppose you know Sir Roderick can’t abide the sight of a petticoat?”

I murmured something. I was certainly not going to discuss my host with one of his servants. Fortunately, we were now in the grounds.

What a dream of beauty!

Velvety, mosslike hillocks, among the stern clumps of pines; whole glades of bracken in narrow dells, fairy sporting grounds; then, an occasional oasis of garden, apparently growing spontaneously among the woodland. Here and there a flight of steps, leading to the shrubbery of high laurels and conifers, or a small white-stone temple; now and again a stone bench, flanked by cypresses and urns on pedestals—such a bench as one sees in the gardens in Italy.

Then, suddenly, a dip in the land to the right, disclosing a tiny park, with some beeches and elms, and in its centre a circular garden, surrounding a white-domed building.

“A chapel?” I asked.

“It was wonst,” my conductor told me; “but not in my time. We none of us knows nothink about wot’s inside. They do talk about that chapel, folks do. My opinion is, that there’s nothink in it; it just amuses Sir Roderick to tease their curiosity.”

Then a sharp turn and a short drive between thick firwoods brought us to a strange place.

A long, high wall—the wall of a solid building; for there was a porch, a door, and long, narrow windows on either side. If the whole façade had had windows it would have looked like a museum, for on the top there was a balustrade crowned at intervals with small, funereal-looking urns.

The place looked mouldy and dismal even on this glorious summer day.

“Well?” I said, for Thomas drew up before the door.

“Well, sir, if you just give that bell hanging to the right of the door a good pull, they’ll hear you.”

Did Sir Roderick’s eccentricity extend to his living in a semi-tomb? As I pulled the bell, and heard a distant, feeble clang, I looked somewhat disconsolately after the comfortable-looking dogcart driving away, remembering some of the ancient Greek philosophers’ predilections for doing their work among the tombs.

Out of perversity, I daresay, I felt utterly disinclined for philosophical disquisitions in this tomb-like place; in fact, I yearned for a real boyish holiday in those grounds with young, merry companions (I had better be truthful with myself).

What was my dismay when a solemn-looking old servitor in black (he had white hair and a “white choker,” and looked like a major-domo of State funerals) ushered me into a vault-like crypt. There were niches in the walls and more urns. He offered to take my bag. I clutched it tight, expecting some grim jest on the part of my host. When he said, “Will you please walk this way, sir,” and, opening a door, disclosed a long, vault-like passage, I hesitated; but he slouched off at such a rate, and the echo of his footsteps clattering on the stone pavement was so loud, I could not stop him, so I followed in silence—down a flight of stone steps, round a corner, down another darker and narrower staircase (all lighted dimly by tiny yellow-glass windows in the wall), until, when I was emerging into total darkness, I paused.

“I can’t see!” I shouted, really annoyed.

Sir Roderick could not be living underground—that was all nonsense. He was playing a trick upon me, and would think it fine fun.

“I will strike a match,” I added, crossly; but the old man pulled open a door.

The landing just below me was suddenly flooded with light. Stepping down, I turned and followed him into a large conservatory.

What a magical change! The blue clear light from the glass dome showed up each frond of the great tree-ferns, each grand leaf of the palms, each yellow orange and white-waxen blossom of the orange-trees. Huge crimson blooms hung upon the thick festoons of the sub-tropical creeping plants, and there was my friend the Cape jessamine strengthening the warm, intoxicating perfume of the gardenias, daphnes, and, above all, of the orange-blossom.

It was a relief to be out of the scented atmosphere and in an ordinary, square hall, which had a billiard-table in the centre.

My cicerone asked me to wait; but after opening various doors and exploring several rooms, he came to me with a rueful expression.

“They was here half-an-hour ago,” he said; “but they must be out now. Lor! why they’re on the lawn. Come along, sir!”

He must have caught sight of “them” through a window. He opened the hall-door, and I saw a lawn with spreading trees, under one of which Sir Roderick was seated in a basket-chair, smoking. At his feet lay a huge mastiff. By his side sat a lady, bending over a book, her face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat.

My conductor had shut the door, and left me to my fate. I walked across the lawn, thinking to myself that under that hat was the face I had seen in Sir Roderick’s locket.

No—as she suddenly looked up—it was not the same! What! that wild-rose, tender young face, with large grey eyes, the same as that saucy, imperious minx of the portrait? No relation, I could swear it.

“Well, Hamlet!” Sir Roderick was quite warm in his welcome.

“I didn’t look myself. No, unmistakably I did not. Overwork, of course; the foul atmosphere, too. Oh! I might say what I liked. Mine was a good hospital in its way, doubtless; but all the same, the atmosphere was a foul one. Else, why the disinfectants?”

“You mentioned some unheard-of sum that you annually spend in disinfectants, and you can’t deny it,” he said. “Well, here you will have Nature’s disinfectants—pure air, and the scent of the pines and the heather and the hay. But I have not introduced you. Lilia, this is Dr. Paull.”

The lovely girl, who wore white stuff with something red twisted round her waist, had been looking at me like children taken to the Zoo for the first time look at the wild beasts.

She did not bow to me. I felt the blood come to my face. What on earth was she staring at? Then she turned to him, and said slowly:

“Doctor Paull?”

It was not flattering, but I understood.

“You are right—not Doctor,” I said. “There is much work before me before I can claim that title. I am only a medical student—”

“Bosh!” interrupted Sir Roderick. “I know what Lilia means. I never have any young men here; she expected one of the old fogies. That’s it, isn’t it, child?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “But—do you care for butterflies or beetles? No? Dear me! Oh, you are a botanist!”

I hastened to disclaim the soft impeachments.

“Then”—she knit her brow, and looked like a child making up an old woman’s face—“then you like geology?”

I remembered Thomas’ mention of the visitors who went about with hammers, and responded gravely to my catechist.

“I prefer to look at Nature and to ask no questions,” I said.

Then there was some talk of the covered way from the road above, which my host informed me was built by his father.

“He had some peculiar pleasure in startling people,” he said. “He used to give out that he was a social hermit; and although he lived down here much like other people live, would go about in town strangely dressed and behave oddly. My poor father was very eccentric.”

He made the remark so innocently that I involuntarily glanced at his companion. She seemed unaware that there was anything naïf in those words, and met my eyes with a deep, enquiring look. I have never seen such child eyes in a woman’s face.

Then the luncheon bell rang, and I was conducted to my room by a blushing youth in livery. I was burning to know who “Lilia” was—for that brief introduction was all that I had had—but I could not ask the gauche young footman (evidently a “new hand”). So I washed my hands and wondered, as I gazed round the quaint old room. It must be an old house, although from the lawn it looked modern, and foreign, with its brilliantly white walls and bright green shutters. The flooring, though spotless, was old; the ceiling low. There was a fourposter of carved wood black with age, and the mahogany furniture, which shone like mirrors, was of an ancient pattern. White dimity hung about, and there was a fresh scent of lavender.

Going downstairs, I noticed that the shallow stairs were of old oak, likewise the balustrade; but the dining-room, to which Sir Roderick, who met me in the hall, escorted me, was of newer fashion—a square room with massive furniture, and hung with paintings.

“All Pyms,” said my host, following my eyes as, seated at “Lilia’s” right, I ate my soup. Then ensued some talk about the various dark visages that frowned down from the black canvases. To all appearance, misanthropy ran in the family. Most of these bilious-looking ancestors seemed to have done something strange; and the nearer they had drifted to contempt of social law, the more unctuously Sir Roderick related their exploits. Meanwhile the gentle Lilia listened with wide-open eyes and evident interest.

“But that? Surely that one is not a Pym!” I said, indicating a portrait in an oval Florentine frame that hung conspicuously over the mantelpiece—in fact, in solitary glory, while the other portraits were somewhat huddled together.

“And pray, why not?” asked my host dryly, after a moment’s pause.

I looked again. A sunbeam lighted up the laughing face of a fair young man, with large blue eyes and the very much-curved lips which always produce the effect of a sneer. To me they are painful, recalling the cruel risus sardonicus which I have never seen without distress.

“Why not?” I repeated, stupidly. “Oh! because he is so unlike all the others, I suppose.”

“Do you not see any likeness?” he quietly asked presently, after he had carved a fowl and insisted on giving me the breast.

I looked around.

“Oh, not to the pictures—to Lilia!” he cried, impatiently.

“No, I cannot say I do,” I said, glancing at my hostess.

I smiled; but I did not feel at all like smiling. My—was it dread?—to find so young a girl the wife of so old a man made me flinch at any suggestion which strengthened such a possibility.

“They are both Pyms!” he said, quite irritably. “You have evidently no eye for likenesses. Of course, there are dark Pyms and fair Pyms. The fair Pyms are upstairs in a corridor.”

“Women,” said the fair Lilia explanatorily to me. “Papa dislikes women so much, he won’t have their portraits about him.”

I had been on the point of calling the child Lady Pym, and she was his daughter! Fool that I had been!

“Because they simper and attitudinise,” said Sir Roderick. “If they behaved as sensibly as men I should like them as well.”

“That’s not saying very much,” said Lilia, with an amused look at me. “Papa is not enamoured of his fellow-men.”

“Do you want me to be hail-fellow well-met with Tom, Dick, and Harry?” he said, frowning at the daughter who was so unlike him that I began to think more charitably of my mistake.

“You know I don’t. I like you just as you are!” said his daughter, looking adorable with an infantine smile of love and trust brightening her sweet face.

It was like a personal sunshine. I felt it so, later, when she deigned to shine upon me; and every time it humbled me, and made me feel coarse, clumsy, unworthy, a very clod; and now it, or the memory of it, comes back here—it shines suddenly upon a poor sufferer’s face upon the pillow, and the patient vanishes and I see Lilia.

This won’t do. I must return to my statement.

After luncheon, Sir Roderick sent me out into the grounds with his daughter. From first to last he purposely threw us together. What his motive was I cannot imagine. Motive he has: I have seen enough to know that he never acts without one.

Lilia told me so much as we wandered, first about the Italian garden just outside the dining-room windows, then across the lawns into the pinewoods. It was so difficult to check her childish confidences, which she poured out as a little creature just finding the use of its tongue will babble as it trots along holding one’s hand. They treated me, all of them, at the Pinewood, except one, of whom more presently, with simple trust; even Nero, the old mastiff, slouched along at our heels with his big tongue out, panting, as if I were an old friend. I must never, even in thought, betray that trust. I must never forget that to aspire would be a breach of that sacred confidence—never, never! On this subject I pray, as the octogenarian said in Dickens’ Haunted Man, “Lord, keep my memory green!”

She talked of her father—well and good.

“Papa has no patience with frivolity,” she said. “He only has sympathy with people who do their duty. That is what every one ought to feel, is it not? Ah! I thought you would say ‘Yes.’ Of course, it is much nicer when you like doing your duty, isn’t it? Those old men who come here and beetle-hunt and botanise, or go poring over the books in the library, not only like what they have to do in life, they love it. I do envy them.”

“But you—you like your life, do you not?” I asked.

Just then we came to a clearing in the wood. A giant pine, lately felled, lay prone among the ferns and mosses. She stopped.

“Let us sit down a moment,” she said; “you take my breath away.”

She seated herself on the trunk, looking like the embodied spirit of the pinewood in her white gown. Nero stood for a few minutes watching me as I sat down beside her, then slouched up and lay down at his mistress’ feet, one eye fixed on me. Evidently this proceeding was new to him. The botanists and gentlemen of the hammer did not care to sit on felled trunks and talk with the daughter of the house.

“I said that,” she went on, “because it was just as if you knew how treasonable my thoughts have been lately. I have actually been wishing to travel, and see the world!”

I asked her what treason there was in that.

“Such an idea, in me, is treason itself!” she said, almost indignantly—“when my father despises the world, and would rather anything should happen than that I should go beyond the Pinewood.”

Then I was amazed by the disclosure that this sweet young creature had lived all her life shut up in the Pinewood, almost as much a prisoner as a princess in a fairy-tale immured in a high tower. Her only companions and friends had been her nurses, the clergyman and his wife, and her cousin Roderick, the fair young man with a sneer whose portrait I had said to be unlike the Pyms.

Without governesses or tutors, Lilia has managed to learn a great deal. Latin and Greek are not dead languages to her, and she and her father chatter away in Italian like natives. But in the ordinary affairs of life, poor dear child, how ignorant she is!

Sitting there with myself, still almost an absolute stranger, she spoke out her heart as if I were a dear old friend returned after a long separation, and actually asked my advice. Mine!

It seemed that she had mentioned this desire to see other places to her cousin Roderick, who was a favourite nephew of her father’s, although he would not have anything to do with his family. She and this Roderick had been brought up together like brother and sister playing and sympathising and bickering in the usual fashion. Only when she had confided her treasonable ideas to him had he shocked her by a supplementary suggestion, which seemed to have made a terrible impression upon her.

“We have quarrelled, and never, never can be the same again,” she told me in much agitation. “My father does not know it, and has asked Roderick to dinner to meet you. What shall I do?”

She was quite tragic. I could hardly help smiling. But seeing how sensitive she was—a natural sensibility greatly increased by a life of unnatural seclusion—I repressed a smile, and said:

“See your cousin before dinner, and ‘make it up,’ as the children say.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!” she said, in distress. “He won’t make it up.”

“Then you have tried him?”

She nodded.

“It has been a dreadful shock to me,” she said. “If you knew, you would understand.”

After a little coaxing, she spoke, or rather blurted out:

“If you must know—he actually—asked me—to marry him!”

Nothing so very dreadful, I suppose; but, under the circumstances, rash, to say the least—for Lilia admitted that her father was in total ignorance.

“He would never look at Roderick again,” she assured me. “Don’t say ‘nonsense.’ I tell you he would not. I am never to marry!”

“Why not?” I asked, perversely.

She looked at me almost with indignation.

“Marriage means misery,” she said, oracularly.

“You mean, that Sir Roderick thinks it does,” I suggested.

“He knows it,” she said, with emphasis, below her breath.

I was silent with confusion. The next word, and Lilia might unbosom herself of secrets not her own—sacred to her father—not from any malice aforethought, but through the spontaneity to which she was bred by that very father. It behoved me to be cautious.

“I really should tell Sir Roderick if I were you,” I hazarded. “It is only what he would reasonably expect. Cousins often marry. The contingency must have occurred to him.”

At that moment I was inclined to think that such an issue might even have been planned by my self-sufficient host.

“I thought you knew him!” she cried, recoiling from me a little.

Nero got up and stood between us, looking suspiciously at me.

I explained, apologetically, that although Sir Roderick and I had talked over the questions of humanity in the abstract, we had not arrived at the domestic problems.

“The most important of all,” she said, somewhat pompously.

“Granted,” I said. “And problems that can, unfortunately, only be solved by individual experience.”

“Ah! you acknowledge that,” she said, with a sort of exultation. “You really uphold my father’s theory—that the risk is too great. He loves both Roderick and myself so well that he has preached the delights of celibacy to us ever since I can recollect.”

“His preaching has had more effect upon you than upon your cousin, evidently,” I suggested.

“I fear so,” she said, in a sorrowful tone which reproached me for my feeling this talk, so seriously in her estimation, almost absurd. “Poor, dear Roderick! I would rather do anything than ‘sneak,’ as he used to call it. But papa will be sure to notice something.”

“Cannot you act—pretend?” I hazarded.

She shook her head.

“I never tried,” she said; “it has never been necessary.”

“I daresay he will be equal to the occasion,” I said. “Your cousin is in the army, is he not? Oh! he is captain already? He has told you a good deal about life in camp, in barracks?”

“Lots,” she said.

(Doubtless lots, Captain Pym!)

“Well, you know, officers can be silent when necessary, and know how to veil their opinions and feelings.” (I yearned to say, “know how to tell lies,” but checked myself.) “If I were you, I should be just the same to him to-night: I should ignore his unlucky suggestion, and behave exactly as if he had never made it.”

Lilia resolved to take my advice, and we strolled in the gardens and into the enclosed park. I tried to find out something about the chapel in the circular garden, but she was evidently on guard.

I thought of her, dear child, while I was dressing. How few real friends she could have had! These Mervyns, the rector and his wife, seemed the only ones. I was anxious to see them. They had been invited for the evening. Lilia told me “they never would come to dinner; it was no use asking them.”