Master of His Fate Part 9

"My dear Lefevre," said he, "I am at a loss how to make you any adequate return for what you have done for my daughter. Money can't do it; no, nor my friendship either, though you are so kind as to say so. But I have an idea, which I think it best to set before you frankly. You are a bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing--old man of the world though he was--flushing to the eyes. "What--what do you think of my daughter? I mean, not as a doctor, but as a man?"

Lefevre was not in his first youth, and he had had his admirations for women in his time, as all healthy men must have, but yet he was made as deliriously dizzy as if he were a boy by his guess at what Lord Rivercourt meant.

"Why," he stammered, "I think her the most beautiful, intelligent, and--and attractive woman I know."

"Yes," said her father, "I believe she is pretty well in all these ways.

But--and you see I frankly expose my whole position to you--what would you think of her for a wife?"

"Frankly, then," said Lefevre, "I find I have admired her from the beginning of this, but I had no notion of letting my admiration go farther, because I conceived that she was quite beyond my hopes."

"My dear fellow," said Lord Rivercourt, "you have relieved me and delighted me immensely. I know no man that I would like so well for a son-in-law. And after all, it is only fitting that the life you have saved with such risk to yourself--oh, I know all about it--should be devoted to making yours happy. And--and I understand from her mother that Mary is quite of the same opinion herself. Now, will you go and speak to her at once, or will you wait till another day? You will have to decide that," said he, with a smile, "not only as lover, but as doctor."

Lefevre hesitated for but an instant; for what true, manly lover would have decided to withdraw till another day when the door to his mistress was held open to him?

"I'll see her now," he said.

Lord Rivercourt led the doctor back to his daughter, and left him with her. There were some moments of chilling doubt and cold uncertainty, and then came a rush of warm feeling at the bidding of a shy glance from Lady Mary. He bent over her and murmured he scarcely knew what, but he heard clearly and with a divine ecstasy a softly-whispered "_Yes!_"

which thrilled in his heart for days and months afterwards, and then he turned to him her face, her beautiful face illumined with love, and kissed it: between two who had been drawn together as they had, what words were needed, or what could poor words convey?

About an hour later he walked to Savile Row to dress and return for dinner. He walked, because he felt surcharged with life. He desired peace and goodwill among men; he pitied with all his soul the weary and the broken whom he met, and wondered with regret that men should get irremediably involved in the toils of their own misdeeds; he was profuse with coppers, and even small silver, to the wretched waifs of society who swept the crossings he had to take on his triumphant way; he would even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if he had met him then;--for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and G.o.ds. Oh matchless magic of the human heart, which confounds all the hypotheses of science, and flouts all its explanations!

It was that evening when he and Lady Mary sat in sweet converse that she said to him these words, which he hung for ever after about his heart--

"Surely, never before did a man win a wife as you have won me! You made me well by putting your own life into me; so what could I do but give you the life that was already your own!"

Thus day followed day on golden wings: Lefevre in the morning occupied with the patients that thronged his consulting-room; in the afternoon dispensing healing, and, where healing was impossible, cheerfulness and courage, in his hospital wards; and in the evening finding inspiration and strength in the company of Lady Mary--for her love was to him better than wine. All who went to him in those days found him changed, and in a sense glorified. He had always been considerate and kind; but the weakness, the folly, and the wickedness of poor human nature, which were often laid bare to his searching scrutiny, had frequently plunged him into a welter of despondency and shame, out of which he would cry, "Alas for G.o.d's image! Alas for the temple of the Holy Ghost!" But in those days it seemed as if disease and death appeared to him mere trivial accidents of life, with the result that no "case," however bad, was sent away empty of hope.

Chapter VIII.

Strange Scenes in Curzon Street.

It happened, however, that just when all the bays and creeks of Dr Lefevre's attention were occupied, as by a springtide, with the excellent, the divine fortune that had come to him,--when he seemed thus most completely divorced from anxious speculation about Julius Courtney and "M. Dolaro," his attention was suddenly and in unexpected fashion hurried again to the mystery. The doctor had not seen Julius since the day he had received him in his bedroom--it must be admitted he had not sought to see him--but he had heard now and then from his mother, in casual notes and postscripts, that Courtney continued to call in Curzon Street.

On a certain evening Lady Lefevre gave a dinner and a reception, designed to introduce Lady Mary to the Lefevre circle. Julius was not at dinner (at which only members of the two families sat down), but he was expected to appear later. It is probable, under the circ.u.mstances, that Lefevre would not have remarked the absence of Julius from the dinner-table, had it not been for Nora. He was painfully struck with her appearance and demeanour. She seemed to have lost much of her beautiful vigour and bloom of health, like a flower that has been for some time cut from its stem; and she, who had been wont to be ready and gay of speech, was now completely silent, yet without constraint, and as if wrapt in a dream.

"What has come over Nora?" asked Lefevre of his mother when they had gone to the drawing-room.

"Ah," said Lady Lefevre, "you have noticed something, have you? Do you find her very changed, then?"

"Very much changed."

"It's this attachment of hers to Julius. I want to have a talk with you about it presently. She seems scarcely to live when he is not with her.

She sits like that always when he is gone, and appears only to dream and wait,--wait with her life as if suspended till he comes back."

"Has it, indeed, got so far as that?" said her son with concern. "I had better have a word or two with Julius about it."

Just then Mr Courtney was announced, and there were introductions on this side and on that. He turned to be introduced to Lady Mary, and for the time Lefevre forgot his sister, so engrossed was he with the altered aspect of his friend. He looked worn and weary, like a student when the dawn finds him still at his books. Lady Lefevre expressed that in her question--

"Why, Julius, have you taken to hard work? You're not looking well, and we have not seen you for days."

A flush rose to tinge his cheek, but it sank as soon as it appeared.

"I have been out of sorts," said he; "that is all. And you have not seen me because I have bought a yacht and have been trying it on the river."

"A yacht!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I did not know you cared for the water."

"_You_ know me," laughed Julius in his own manner, "and not know that I care for everything!" So saying, he laid his hand on Lefevre's arm. The act was not remarkable, but its result was, for Lefevre felt it as if it were a blow, and stood astonished at it.

During this interchange of words Lefevre (with Lady Mary) had been moving with Julius, as he drew off across the room to greet Nora, and the doctor could not help observing how the attention of all the company was bent on his friend. Before his entrance all had been chatting or laughing easily with their neighbours; now they seemed as constrained and belittled as is a crowd of courtiers when a royal personage appears in their midst. In truth, Julius at all times had a grace, an ease, and a distinction of manner not unworthy of a prince; but on this occasion he had an added something, an indefinable attraction which strangely held the attention. Lefevre, therefore, was scarcely surprised (though, perhaps, a trifle disappointed, considering that he was a lover) to note that Lady Mary was regarding Julius with a silent, wide-eyed fascination. They convoyed Julius to Nora, and then withdrew, leaving them together.

There were several fresh arrivals and new introductions to Lady Mary.

These, Lefevre observed, she went through half-absently, still turning her eyes on Julius in the intervals with open and intense interest.

"Well," said Lefevre at length, smiling in spite of a twinge of jealousy, "what do you think, now you have seen him, of the fascinating Julius?"

She gave him no answering smile, but replied as if she painfully withdrew herself from abstraction,--"I--I don't know. He is very interesting and very strange. I--I can't make him out. I don't know."

Then Lefevre turned his eyes on Julius, and became aware of something strained in the relations of his sister and his friend. He could not forbear to look, and as he continued looking he instinctively felt that a pa.s.sionate scene was being silently enacted between them. They sat markedly apart. Nora's bosom heaved with suppressed emotion, and her look, when raised to Julius, plied him with appeal or reproach--Lefevre could not determine which. The doctor's interest almost drew him over to them, when Lady Lefevre appeared and said to Julius--

"Do go to the piano, Julius, and wake us up."

Nora put out her hand with a gesture which plainly meant, "Don't!...

Don't leave me!"

But Julius rose, and as he turned (the doctor noted) he bent an inscrutable look of pain on Nora. He sat down at the piano and struck a wild, sad chord. Instantly it became as if the people in the room were the instrument upon which he played,--as if the throbbing human hearts around him were directly connected by invisible strings with the ivory keys that pulsed beneath his fingers. What was the music he played no one knew, no one cared, no one inquired: each individual person was held and played upon, and was allowed no pause for reflection or criticism.

The music carried all away as on the flood of time, showing them, on one hand, sunshine and beauty and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance, and death. It might have been, on the one hand, the music with which Orpheus tamed the beasts; and on the other, that which aeschylus arranged to accompany the last act of his tragedy of "Prometheus Bound." There was, however, no clear distinction between the joyous airs and the sombre: all were wrought and mingled into an exciting and bewildering atmosphere of melody, which thrilled the heart and maddened the brain. But as the music continued, its joyous strains died out; the instrument cried aloud in horror and pain, as if the vulture of Prometheus were tearing at its vitals; darkness seemed to descend upon the room--a darkness alive with the sighs and groans, the disillusions and tears, of lost souls. The men sat transfixed with agony and dread, the women were caught in the wild clutches of hysteria, and Courtney himself was as if possessed with a frenzy: his features were rigid, his eyes dilated, and his hair rose and clung in wavy locks, so that he seemed a very Gorgon's head. The only person apparently unmoved was old Dr Rippon, whose pale, gaunt form rose in the background, sinister and calm as Death!

The situation was at its height, when a black cat (a pet of Miss Lefevre's) suddenly leaped on the top of the piano with a canary in its mouth, and in the presence of them all, laid its captive before Julius Courtney. The music ceased with a dissonant crash. With a cry Julius rose and laid his hand on the cat's neck: to the general amazement the cat lay down limp and senseless, and the little golden bird fluttered away. Then the sobs of the women, hitherto controlled, broke out, and the murmurs of the men.

"O Julius! Julius! what have you done?" cried Nora, sweeping up to him in an ecstasy of emotion.

He caught her in his arms, when with a strange cry--a strained kind of laugh with a hysterical catch in it--she sank fainting on his breast.

With a sharp exclamation of pain and fear he bore her swiftly from the room (he was near the door) and into a little conservatory that opened upon the staircase, casting his eyes upon Lefevre as he went, and saying, "Come! come quick!" Lefevre then woke to the fact that he had been fixedly regarding this last strange scene, while Lady Mary clung trembling to his arm. He hurried out after Julius, followed by Lady Mary and his mother.

"Take her!" cried Julius, standing away from Nora, and looking white and terror-stricken. "Restore her! Oh, I must not!--I dare not touch her!"

With nimble accustomed fingers Lady Mary undid Nora's dress, while the doctor applied the remedies usual in hysterical fainting. Nora opened her eyes and fixed them upon Julius.

"O Julius, Julius!" she cried. "Do not leave me! Come near me! Oh!... I think I am going to die!"

"My love! my life! my soul!" said Julius, stretching out his hands to her, but approaching no nearer. "I cannot--I must not touch you! No, no!

I dare not!"

"O Julius!" said she. "Are you afraid of me? How can I harm you?"