The Doctor's Wife Part 19

"It has been predicted to you?"

"Yes."

"How very interesting!" exclaimed the lady, with a pretty silvery laugh.

Isabel's eyes opened wider and wider, and fixed themselves on Roland Lansdell's face.

"Pray tell us all about it," continued Lady Gwendoline. "We won't promise to be very much frightened, because the accessories are not quite the thing for a ghost story. If it were midnight now, and we were sitting in the oak room, with the lights burning low, and the shadows trembling on the wall, you might do what you liked with our nerves. And yet I really don't know that a ghost might not be more awful in the broad sunshine--a ghost that would stalk across the gra.s.s, and then fade slowly, till it melted into the water-drops of the fountain. Come, Roland, you must tell us all about the prediction; was it made by a pretty girl with a dove on her wrist, like the phantom that appeared to Lord Lyttleton? Shall we have to put back the clock for an hour, in order to foil the designs of your impalpable foe? Or was it a black cat, or a gentleman usher, or a skeleton; or all three?"

"I dare say it was an abnormal state of the organs of form and colour,"

said Mr. Raymond. "That's the foundation of all ghost stories."

"But it isn't by any means a ghost story," answered Roland Lansdell.

"The gentleman who predicted my early death was the very reverse of a phantom; and the region of the prediction was a place which has never yet been invested with any supernatural horrors. Amongst all the legends of the Old Bailey, I never heard of any ghostly record."

"The Old Bailey!" exclaimed Lady Gwendoline.

"Yes. The affair was quite an adventure, and the only adventure I ever had in my life."

"Pray tell us the story."

"But it's rather a long one, and not particularly interesting."

"I insist upon hearing it," said Mr. Raymond; "you've stimulated our organs of wonder, and you're bound to restore our brains to their normal state by satisfying our curiosity."

"Most decidedly," exclaimed Lady Gwendoline, seating herself upon a rustic bench, with the shining folds of her silk dress spread round her like the plumage of some beautiful bird, and a tiny fringed parasol sloping a little backward from her head, and throwing all manner of tremulous pinky shadows upon her animated face.

She was very handsome when she was animated; it was only when her face was in repose that you saw how much her beauty had faded since the picture with the high forehead and the long curls was first exhibited to an admiring public. It may be that Lady Gwendoline knew this, and was on that, account rather inclined to be animated about trifles.

"Well, I'll tell you the story, if you like," said Roland, "but I warn you that there's not much in it. I don't suppose you--any of you--take much interest in criminal cases; but this one made rather a sensation at the time."

"A criminal case?"

"Yes. I was in town on business a year or two ago. I'd come over from Switzerland to renew some leases, and look into a whole batch of tiresome business matters, which my lawyer insisted upon my attending to in my own proper person, very much to my annoyance. While I was in London I dropped into the United Joint-Stock Bank, Temple-Bar Branch, to get circular notes and letters of credit upon their correspondent at Constantinople, and so on. I was not in the office more than five minutes. But while I was talking to one of the clerks at the counter, a man came in, and stood close at my elbow while he handed in a cheque for eighty-seven pounds ten, or some such amount--I know it came very close upon the hundred--received the money, and went out. He looked like a groom out of livery. I left the bank almost immediately after him, and as he turned into a little alley leading down to the Temple. I followed a few paces behind him, for I had business in Paper Buildings. At the bottom of the alley my friend the groom was met by a big black-whiskered man, who seemed to have been waiting for him, for he caught him suddenly by the arm, and said, 'Well, did they do it?' 'Yes,' the other man answered, and began fumbling in his waistcoat-pocket, making a c.h.i.n.king sound as he did so. I had seen him put his money, which he took in notes and gold, into this waistcoat-pocket. 'You needn't have pounced upon me so precious sharp,' he said, rather sulkily; 'I wasn't going to bolt with it, was I?' The black-whiskered man had seen me by this time, and he muttered something to his companion, which evidently meant that he was to hold his tongue, and then dragged him off without further ceremony in the opposite direction to that in which I was going. This was all I saw of the groom or the black-whiskered gentleman on that occasion. I thought their method of cashing a cheque was rather a queer one; but I thought no more about it, until three weeks afterwards, when I went into the Temple-Bar Office of the United Joint-Stock again to complete my Continental arrangements, and was told that the cheque for eighty-seven pounds ten, more or less, which had been cashed in my presence, was a forgery; one of a series of most audacious frauds, perpetrated by a gang whose plans had only just come to light, and none of whom had yet been arrested. 'They've managed to keep themselves dark in the most extraordinary manner,' the clerk told me; 'the cheques are supposed to have been all fabricated by one man, but three or four men have been employed to get hold of the original signatures of our customers, which they have obtained by a complicated system. No two cheques have been presented by the same person,--that's the point that has beaten the detectives; they don't know what sort of men to look for.' 'Don't they?' said I; 'then I think I can a.s.sist them in the matter.' Whereupon I told my little story of the black-whiskered gentleman."

Mr. Lansdell paused to take breath, and stole a glance at Isabel. She was pale always,--but she was very pale now, and was watching him with an eager breathless expression.

"Silly romantic little thing," he thought, "to be so intensely absorbed in my story."

"You're getting interesting, Roland," said Lady Gwendoline. "Pray, go on."

"The upshot of the matter was, that at eight o'clock that evening a grave little gentleman in a pepper-and-salt waistcoat came to me at Mivart's, and cross-questioned me closely as to what I knew of the man who had cashed the cheque. 'You think you could recognize this man with the black whiskers?' he said. 'Yes; most decidedly I could.' 'And you'll swear to him, if necessary?' 'With pleasure.' On this the detective departed, and came to me the next day, to tell me that he fancied he was on the track of the man he warded, but he was at a loss for means of identification. He knew, or thought that he knew, who the man was; but he didn't know the man himself from Adam. The gang had taken fright, and it was believed that they had all started for Liverpool, with the intention of getting off to America by a vessel that was expected to sail at eight o'clock the following morning. The detective had only just got his information, and he came to me for help. The result of the business was, that I put on my great-coat, sent for a cab, and started for Euston Square with my friend the detective, with a view to identifying the black-whiskered gentleman. It was the first adventure I had ever had in my life, and I a.s.sure you I most heartily enjoyed it.

"Well, we travelled by the mail, got into Liverpool in the dead of the night, and in the bleak early dawn of the next morning I had the supreme pleasure of pointing out my black-whiskered acquaintance, just as he was going to step on board the steamer that was to convey him to the _Atalanta_ screw-steam-ship, bound for New York. He looked very black at first; but when he found that my companion was altogether _en regle_, he went away with him, meekly enough, declaring that it was all a mistake, and that it would be easily set right in town. I let the two go back together, and returned by a later train, very well pleased with my adventure.

"I was not so well pleased, however, when I found that I was wanted as a witness at preliminary examinations, and adjourned examinations, and on and off through a trial that lasted four days and a half; to say nothing of being badgered and browbeaten by Old-Bailey pract.i.tioners,--who were counsel for the prisoner,--and who asked me if it was my friend's whiskers I recognized, or if I had never seen any other whiskers exactly like his? if I should know him without his whiskers? whether I could swear to the colour of his waistcoat? whether any member of my family had ever been in a lunatic asylum? whether I usually devoted my leisure time to travelling about with detective officers? whether I had been plucked at Oxford? whether I should be able to recognize an acquaintance whom I had only seen once in twenty years? whether I was short-sighted?

could I swear I was not short-sighted? would I be kind enough to read a verse or so from a diamond edition of the works of Thomas Moore? and so on. But question me as they would, the prisoner at the bar,--commonly known as Jack the Scribe, _alias_ Jack the Gentleman, _alias_ ever so many other names, which I have completely forgotten,--was the identical person whom I had seen meet the groom at the entrance to the Temple. My evidence was only a single link in a long chain; but I suppose it was eminently damaging to my black-whiskered friend; for, when he and two of his a.s.sociates had received their sentence--ten years' penal servitude--he turned towards where I was standing, and said:

"'I don't bear any grudge against the gentlemen of the jury, and I don't bear any malice against the judge, though his sentence isn't a light one; but when a languid swell mixes himself up in business that doesn't concern him, he deserves to get it hot and strong. If ever I come out of prison alive, I'll _kill you_!'"

"He shook his fist at me as he said it. There wasn't much in the words, but there was a good deal in the way in which they were spoken. He tried to say more; but the warders got hold of him and held him down, panting and gasping, and with his face all of a dull livid white. I saw no more of him; but if he does _live_ to come out of prison, I most firmly believe he'll keep his word."

"Izzie," cried George Gilbert suddenly, "what's the matter?"

All the point of Mr. Lansdell's story was lost; for at this moment Isabel tottered and fell slowly backward upon the sward, and all the gold fish leaped away in a panic of terror as the doctor dipped his hat into the marble basin. He splashed the water into his wife's face, and she opened her eyes at last, very slowly, and looked round her.

"Did he say that----" she said,--"did he say that he'd kill----!"

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FIRST WARNING.

Mrs. Gilbert recovered very quickly from her fainting-fit. She had been frightened by Mr. Lansdell's story, she said, and the heat had made her dizzy. She sat very quietly upon a sofa, in the drawing-room, with one of the orphans on each side of her, while Brown Molly was being harnessed.

Lady Gwendoline went away with her father, after bidding Mrs. Gilbert rather a cool good morning. The Earl of Ruysdale's daughter did not approve of the fainting-fit, which she was pleased to call Mrs.

Gilbert's extraordinary demonstration.

"If she were a single woman, I should fancy she was trying to fascinate Roland," Lady Gwendoline said to her father, as they drove homewards.

"What can possibly have induced him to invite those people to Mordred?

The man is a clod, and the woman a nonent.i.ty; except when she chooses to make an exhibition of herself by fainting away. That sort of person is always fainting away, and being knocked down by feathers, and going unexpectedly into impossible hysterics; and so on."

But if Lady Gwendoline was unkind to the Doctor's Wife, Roland was kind; dangerously, bewilderingly kind. He was _so_ anxious about Isabel's health. It was his fault, entirely his fault, that she had fainted. He had kept her standing under the blazing sun while he told his stupid story. He should never forgive himself, he said. And he would scarcely accept George Gilbert's a.s.surance that his wife was all right. He rang the bell, and ordered strong tea for his visitors. With his own hands he closed the Venetian shutters, and reduced the light to a cool dusky glimmer. He begged Mr. Gilbert to allow him to order a close carriage for his wife's return to Graybridge.

"The gig shall be sent home to you to-night," he said; "I am sure the air and dust will be too much for Mrs. Gilbert."

But Mr. Raymond hereupon interfered, and said the fresh air was just the very thing that Isabel wanted, to which opinion the lady herself subscribed. She did not want to cause trouble, she said: she would not for all the world have caused _him_ trouble, she thought: so the gig was brought round presently, and George drove his wife away, under the Norman archway by which they had entered in the fresh noonday sun. The young man was in excellent spirits, and declared that he had enjoyed himself beyond measure--these undemonstrative people always declare that they enjoy themselves--but Isabel was very silent and subdued; and when questioned upon the subject, said that she was tired.

Oh, how blank the world seemed after that visit to Mordred Priory! It was all over. This one supreme draught of bliss had been drained to the very dregs. It would be November soon, and Roland Lansdell would go away. He would go before November, perhaps: he would go suddenly, whenever the fancy seized him. Who can calculate the arrangements of the Giaour or Sir Reginald Glanville? At any moment, in the dead darkness of the moonless night, the hero may call for his fiery steed, and only the thunder of hurrying hoofs upon the hard high-road may bear witness of his departure.

Mr. Lansdell might leave Mordred at any hour in the long summer day, Isabel thought, as she stood at the parlour window looking out at the dusty lane, where Mrs. Jeffson's fowls were pecking up stray grains of wheat that had been scattered by some pa.s.sing wain. He might be gone now,--yes, now, while she stood there thinking of him. Her heart seemed to stop beating as she remembered this. Why had he ever invited her to Mordred? Was it not almost cruel to open the door of that paradise just a little way, only to shut it again when she was half blinded by the glorious light from within? Would he ever think of her, this grand creature with the dark pensive eyes, the tender dreamy eyes that were never the same colour for two consecutive minutes? Was she anything to him, or was that musical lowering of his voice common to him when he spoke to women? Again and again, and again and again, she went over all the shining ground of that day at Mordred; and the flowers, and gla.s.s, and pictures, and painted windows, and hothouse fruit, only made a kind of variegated background, against which _he_ stood forth paramount and unapproachable.

She sat and thought of Roland Lansdell, with some sc.r.a.p of never-to-be-finished work lying in her lap. It was better than reading.

A crabbed little old woman who kept the only circulating library in Graybridge noted a falling-off in her best customer about this time. It was better than reading, to sit through all the length of a hot August afternoon thinking of Roland Lansdell. What romance had ever been written that was equal to this story; this perpetual fiction, with a real hero dominant in every chapter? There was a good deal of repet.i.tion in the book, perhaps; but Isabel was never aware of its monotony.

It was all very wicked of course, and a deep and cruel wrong to the simple country surgeon, who ate his dinner, and complained of the underdone condition of the mutton, upon one side of the table, while Isabel read the inexhaustible volume on the other. It was very wicked; but Mrs. Gilbert had not yet come to consider the wickedness of her ways. She was a very good wife, very gentle and obedient; and she fancied she had a right to furnish the secret chambers of her mind according to her own pleasure. What did it matter if a strange G.o.d reigned in the temple, so long as the doors were for ever closed upon his awful beauty; so long as she rendered all due service to her liege lord and master? He was her lord and master, though his fingers were square at the tips, and he had an abnormal capacity for the consumption of spring-onions. Spring-onions! all-the-year-round onions, Isabel thought; for those obnoxious bulbs seemed always in season at Graybridge. She was very wicked; and she thought perpetually of Roland Lansdell, as she had thought of Eugene Aram, and Lara, and Ernest Maltravers--blue-eyed Ernest Maltravers. The blue-eyed heroes were out of fashion now, for was not _he_ dark of aspect?

She was very wicked, she was very foolish, very childish. All her life long she had played with her heroines and heroes, as other children play with their dolls. Now Edith Dombey was the favourite, and now dark-eyed Zuleika, kneeling for ever at Selim's feet, with an unheeded flower in her hand. Left quite to herself through all her idle girlhood, this foolish child had fed upon three volume novels and sentimental poetry: and now that she was married and invested with the solemn duties of a wife, she could not throw off the sweet romantic bondage all at once, and take to pies and puddings.

So she made no endeavour to banish Mr. Lansdell's image from her mind.

If she had recognized the need of such an effort, she would have made it, perhaps. But she thought that he would go away, and her life would drop back to its dead level, and would be "all the same as if he had not been."

But Mr. Lansdell did not leave Mordred just yet. Only a week after the never-to-be-forgotten day at the Priory, he came again to Thurston's Crag, and found Isabel sitting under the oak with her books in her lap.

She started up as he approached her, looking rather frightened, and with her face flushed and her eyelids drooping. She had not expected him.

Demi-G.o.ds do not often drop out of the clouds. It is only once in a way that Castor and Pollux are seen fighting in a mortal fray. Mrs. Gilbert sat down again, blushing and trembling; but, oh, so happy, so foolishly, unutterably happy; and Roland Lansdell seated himself by her side and began to talk to her.

He did not make the slightest allusion to that unfortunate swoon which had spoiled the climax of his story. That one subject, which of all others would have been most embarra.s.sing to the Doctor's Wife, was scrupulously avoided by Mr. Lansdell. He talked of all manner of things.