The Doctor's Wife Part 20

He had been a _flaneur_ pure and simple for the last ten years, and was a consummate master of the art of conversation; so he talked to this ignorant girl of books, and pictures, and foreign cities, and wonderful people, living and dead, of whom she had never heard before. He seemed to know everything, Mrs Gilbert thought. She felt as if she was before the wonderful gates of a new fairy-land, and Mr. Lansdell had the keys, and could open them for her at his will, and could lead her through the dim mysterious pathways into the beautiful region beyond.

Mr. Lansdell asked his companion a good many questions about her life at Graybridge, and the books she read. He found that her life was a very idle one, and that she was perpetually reading the same books,--the dear dilapidated volumes of popular novels that were to be had at every circulating library. Poor little childish creature, who could wonder at her foolish sentimentality? Out of pure philanthropy Roland offered to lend her any of the books in his library.

"If you can manage to stroll this way to-morrow morning, I'll bring you the 'Life of Robespierre,' and Carlyle's 'French Revolution.' I don't suppose you'll like Carlyle at first; but he's wonderful when you get accustomed to his style--like a monster bra.s.s-band, you know, that stuns you at first with its crashing thunder, until, little by little, you discover the wonderful harmony, and appreciate the beauty of the instrumentation. Shall I bring you Lamartine's 'Girondists' as well?

That will make a great pile of books, but you need not read them laboriously; you can pick out the pages you like here and there, and we can talk about them afterwards."

The French Revolution was one of Isabel's pet oases in the history of the universe. A wonderful period, in which a quiet country-bred young woman had only to make her way up to Paris and a.s.sa.s.sinate a tyrant, and, lo, she became "a feature" throughout all time. Mr. Lansdell had discovered this special fancy in his talk with the Doctor's Wife, and he was pleased to let in the light of positive knowledge on her vague ideas of the chiefs of the Mountain and the martyrs of the Gironde. Was it not an act of pure philanthropy to clear some of the sentimental mistiness out of that pretty little head? Was it not a good work rather than a harmful one to come now and then to this shadowy resting-place under the oak, and while away an hour or so with this poor little half-educated damsel, who had so much need of some sounder instruction than she had been able to glean, unaided, out of novels and volumes of poetry?

There was no harm in these morning rambles, these meetings, which arose out of the purest chance. There was no harm whatever: especially as Mr.

Lansdell meant to turn his back upon Midlandshire directly the partridge-shooting was over.

He told Isabel, indirectly, of this intended departure, presently.

"Yes," he said, "you must ask me for whatever books yon would like to read: and by-and-by, when I have left Mordred----"

He paused for a moment, involuntarily, for he saw that Isabel gave a little shiver.

"When I leave Mordred, at the end of October, you must go to the Priory, and choose the books for yourself. My housekeeper is a very good woman, and she will be pleased to wait upon you."

So Mrs. Gilbert began quite a new course of reading, and eagerly devoured the books which Mr. Lansdell brought her; and wrote long extracts from them, and made profile sketches of the heroes, all looking from right to left, and all bearing a strong family resemblance to the master of Mordred Priory. The education of the Doctor's Wife took a grand stride by this means. She sat for hours together reading in the little parlour at Graybridge; and George, whose life was a very busy one, grew to consider her only in her normal state with a book in her hand, and was in nowise offended when she ate her supper with an open volume by the side of her plate, or responded vaguely to his simple talk. Mr. Gilbert was quite satisfied. He had never sought for more than this: a pretty little wife to smile upon him when he came home, to brush his hat for him now and then in the pa.s.sage after breakfast, before he went out for his day's work, and to walk to church twice every Sunday hanging upon his arm. If any one had ever said that such a marriage as this in any way fell short of perfect and entire union, Mr. Gilbert would have smiled upon that person as on a harmless madman.

Mr. Lansdell met the Doctor's Wife very often: sometimes on the bridge beside the water-mill; sometimes in the meadow-land which surged in emerald billows all about Graybridge and Mordred and Warncliffe. He met her very often. It was no new thing for Isabel to ramble here and there in that lovely rustic paradise: but it was quite a new thing for Mr.

Lansdell to take such a fancy for pedestrian exercise. The freak could not last long, though: the feast of St. Partridge the Martyr was close at hand, and then Mr. Lansdell would have something better to do than to dawdle away his time in country lanes and meadows, talking to the Doctor's Wife.

Upon the very eve of that welcome morning which was to set all the guns in Midlandshire popping at those innocent red-breasted victims, George Gilbert received a letter from his old friend and comrade, Mr. Sigismund Smith, who wrote in very high spirits, and with a great many blots.

"I'm coming down to stop a few days with you, dear old boy," he wrote, "to get the London smoke blown out of my hyacinthines, and to go abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs--are there any young lambs in September, by the bye? I want to see what sort of a matron you have made of Miss Isabel Sleaford. Do you remember that day in the garden when you first saw her? A palpable case of spoons there and then! K-k-c-k-k! as Mr. Buckstone remarks when he digs his knuckles into the walking gentleman's ribs. Does she make puddings, and sew on b.u.t.tons, and fill up the holes in your stockings with wonderful trellis-work? She never would do that sort of thing at Camberwell. I shall give you a week, and I shall spend another week in the bosom of my family; and I shall bring a gun, because it looks well in the railway carriage, you know, especially if it doesn't go off, which I suppose it won't, if it isn't loaded; though, to my mind, there's always something suspicious about the look of fire-arms, and I should never be surprised to see them explode by spontaneous combustion, or something of that kind. I suppose you've heard of my new three-volume novel--a legitimate three-volume romance, with all the interest concentrated upon one body,--'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor,'--pleasant alliteration of M's, eh?--which is taking the town by storm; that's to say, Camden Town, where I partial board, and have some opportunity of pushing the book myself by going into all the circulating libraries I pa.s.s, and putting my name down for an early perusal of the first copy. Of course I never go for the book; but if I am the means of making any one simple-minded librarian take a copy of 'The M. of M. M.' more than he wants, I feel I have not laboured in vain."

Mr. Smith arrived at Warncliffe by an early train next morning, and came on to Graybridge in an omnibus, which was quite spiky with guns. He was in very high spirits, and talked incessantly to Isabel, who had stayed at home to receive him; who had stayed at home when there was just a faint chance that Mr. Lansdell might take his morning walk in the direction of Lord Thurston's Crag,--only a faint chance, for was it not the 1st of September; and might not he prefer the slaughter of partridges to those lazy loiterings under the big oak?

Mrs. Gilbert gave her old friend a very cordial welcome. She was fond of him, as she might have been of some big brother less objectionable than the ordinary run of big brothers. He had never seen Mr. Sleaford's daughter looking so bright and beautiful. A new element had been introduced into her life. She was happy, unutterably happy, on the mystical threshold of a new existence. She did not want to be Edith Dombey any longer. Not for all the ruby-velvet gowns and diamond coronets in the world would she have sacrificed one accidental half-hour on the bridge under Lord Thurston's oak.

She sat at the little table smiling and talking gaily, while the author of "The Mystery of Mowbray Manor" ate about half a quartern of dough made up into puffy Yorkshire cakes, and new-laid eggs and frizzled bacon in proportion. Mr. Smith deprecated the rampant state of his appet.i.te by-and-by, and made a kind of apology for his ravages.

"You see, the worst of going into society is _that_," he remarked vaguely, "they see one eat; and it's apt to tell against one in three volumes. It's a great pity that fiction is not compatible with a healthy appet.i.te; but it isn't; and society is so apt to object to one, if one doesn't come up to its expectations. You've no idea what a lot of people have invited me out to tea--ladies, you know--since the publication of 'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor.' I used to go at first. But they generally said to me, 'Lor', Mr. Smith, you're not a bit like what I fancied you were! I thought you'd be TALL, and DARK, and HAUGHTY-LOOKING, like Montague Manderville in 'The Mystery of ---- ', &c, &c.; and that sort of thing is apt to make a man feel himself an impostor. And if a writer of fiction can't drink hot tea without colouring up as if he had just pocketed a silver spoon, and it was his guilty conscience, why, my idea is, he'd better stay at home. I don't think any man was ever as good or as bad as his books," continued Sigismund, reflectively, sc.r.a.ping up a spoonful of that liquid grease which Mrs. Jeffson tersely ent.i.tled "dip." "There's a kind of righteous indignation, and a frantic desire to do something splendid for his fellow-creatures, like vaccinating them all over again, or founding a hospital for everybody, which a man feels when he's writing--especially late at night, when he's been keeping himself awake--with bitter ale--that seems to ooze away somehow when his copy has gone to the printers. And it's pretty much the same with one's scorn and hate and cynicism. n.o.body ever quite comes up to his books. Even Byron, but for turning down his collars, and walking lame, and dining on biscuits and soda-water, might have been a social failure. I think there's a good deal of Horace Walpole's Inspired Idiocy in this world. The morning sun shines, and the statue is musical; but all the day there is silence; and at night--in society, I suppose--the sounds are lugubrious. How I do talk, Izzie, and _you_ don't say anything! But I needn't ask if you're happy. I never saw you looking so pretty."

Isabel blushed. Was she pretty? Oh, she wanted so much to be pretty!

"And I think George may congratulate himself upon having secured the dearest little wife in all Midlandshire."

Mrs. Gilbert blushed a deeper red; but the happy smile died away on her lips. Something, a very vague something as yet, was lurking in what Mr.

Raymond would have called her "inner consciousness;".and she thought, perhaps, George had not such very great reason for self-gratulation.

"I always do as he tells me,"' she said navely; "and he's kinder than mamma used to be, and doesn't mind my reading at meals. You know how ma used to go on about it. And I mend his socks--sometimes." She drew open a drawer, where there were some little bundles of grey woollen stuff, and b.a.l.l.s of worsted with big needles stuck across them. "And, oh, Sigismund," she exclaimed, rather inconsecutively, "we've been to Mordred--to Mordred Priory--to a luncheon; quite a grand luncheon--pine-apple and ices, and nearly half-a-dozen different kinds of gla.s.ses for each person."

She could talk to Sigismund about Mordred and the master of Mordred. He was not like George, and he would sympathize with her enthusiasm about that earthly paradise.

"Do you know Mordred?" she asked. She felt a kind of pleasure in calling the mansion "Mordred," all short, as _he_ called it.

"I know the village of Mordred well enough," Mr. Smith answered, "and I _ought_ to know the Priory precious well. The last Mr. Lansdell gave my father a good deal of business; and when Roland Lansdell was being coached-up in the Cla.s.sics by a private tutor, I used to go up to the Priory and read with him. The governor was very glad to get such a chance for me; but I can't say I intensely appreciated the advantage myself, on hot summer afternoons, when there was cricketing on Warncliffe meads."

"You knew him--you knew Mr. Roland Lansdell when he was a boy?" said Isabel, with a little gasp.

"I certainly did, my dear Izzie; but I don't think there's anything wonderful in that. You couldn't open your eyes much wider if I'd said I'd known Eugene Aram when he was a boy. I remember Roland Lansdell,"

continued Mr. Smith, slapping his breakfast-napkin across his dusty boots, "and a very jolly young fellow he was; a regular young swell, with a chimney-pot hat and dandy boots, and a gold hunter in his waistcoat-pocket, and no end of pencil-cases, and cricket-bats, and drawing-portfolios, and single-sticks, and fishing-tackle. He taught me fencing," added Sigismund, throwing himself suddenly into a position that covered one entire side of the little parlour, and making a postman's knock upon the carpet with the sole of his foot.

"Come, Mrs. Gilbert," he said, presently, "put on your bonnet, and come out for a walk. I suppose there's no chance of our seeing George till dinner-time."

Isabel was pleased to go out. All the world seemed astir upon this bright September morning; and out of doors there was always just a chance of meeting _him_. She put on her hat, the broad-leaved straw that cast such soft shadows upon her face, and she took up the big green parasol, and was ready to accompany her old friend in a minute.

"I don't want the greetings in the market-place," Mr. Smith said, as they went out into the lane, where it was always very dusty in dry weather, and very muddy when there was rain. "I know almost everybody in Graybridge; and there'll be a round of stereotyped questions and answers to go through as to how I'm getting on 'oop in London.' I can't tell those people that I earn my bread by writing 'The Demon of the Galleys,'

or 'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor.' Take me for a country walk, Izzie; a regular rustic ramble."

Mrs. Gilbert blushed. That habit of blushing when she spoke or was spoken to had grown upon her lately. Then, after a little pause, she said, shyly:

"Thurston's Crag is a pretty place; shall we go there?"

"Suppose we do. That's quite a brilliant thought of yours, Izzie.

Thurston's Crag is a pretty place, a nice, drowsy, lazy old place, where one always goes to sleep, and wishes one had bottled beer. It reminds one of bottled beer, you know, the waterfall,--bottled beer in a rampant state of effervescence."

Isabel's face was all lighted up with smiles.

"I am so glad you have come to see us, Sigismund," she said.

She was very glad. She might go to Thurston's Crag now as often as she could beguile Sigismund thitherward, and that haunting sense of something wrong would no longer perplex her in the midst of her unutterable joy. It was unutterable! She had tried to write poetry about it, and had failed dismally, though her heart was making poetry all day long, as wildly, vaguely beautiful as Solomon's Song. She had tried to set her joy to music; but there were no notes on the harpsichord that could express such wondrous melody; though there was indeed one little simple theme, an old-fashioned air, arranged as a waltz, "'Twere vain to tell thee all I feel," which Isabel would play slowly, again and again, for an hour together, dragging the melody out in lingering legato notes, and listening to its talk about Roland Lansdell.

But all this was very wicked, of course. To-day she could go to Thurston's Crag with a serene front, an unburdened conscience. What could be more intensely proper than this country walk with her mother's late partial boarder?

They turned into the meadows presently, and as they drew nearer and nearer to the gra.s.sy hollow under the cliff, where the miller's cottage and the waterfall were nestled together like jewels in a casket of emerald velvet, the ground seemed to grow unsubstantial under her feet, as if Thurston's Crag had been a phantasmal region suspended in mid air.

Would he be there? Her heart was perpetually beating out the four syllables of that simple sentence: Would he be there? It was the 1st of September, and he would be away shooting partridges, perhaps. Oh, was there even the remotest chance that he would be there?

Sigismund handed her across the stile in the last meadow, and then there was only a little bit of smooth verdure between them and the waterfall; but the overhanging branches of the trees intervened, and Isabel could not see yet whether there was any one on the bridge.

But presently the narrow winding path brought them to a break in the foliage. Isabel's heart gave a tremendous bound, and then the colour, which had come and gone so often on her face, faded away altogether. He was there: leaning with his back against the big knotted trunk of the oak, and making a picture of himself, with one arm above his head, plucking the oak-leaves and dropping them into the water. He looked down at the glancing water and the hurrying leaves with a moody dissatisfied scowl. Had he been anything less than a hero, one might have thought that he looked sulky.

But when the light footsteps came rustling through the long gra.s.s, accompanied by the faint fluttering of a woman's garments, his face brightened as suddenly as if the dense foliage above his head had been swept away by a t.i.tan's axe, and all the sunshine let in upon him. That very expressive face darkened a little when Mr. Lansdell saw Sigismund behind the Doctor's Wife; but the cloud was transient. The jealous delusions of a monomaniac could scarcely have transformed Mr. Smith into a Ca.s.sio. Desdemona might have pleaded for him all day long, and might have supplied him with any number of pocket-handkerchiefs hemmed and marked by her own fair hands, without causing the Moor a single apprehensive pang.

Mr. Lansdell did not recognize the youthful acquaintance who had stumbled a little way in the th.o.r.n.y path of knowledge by his side; but he saw that Sigismund was a harmless creature; and after he had bared his handsome head before Isabel, he gave Mr. Smith a friendly little nod of general application.

"I have let the keepers shoot the first of the partridges," he said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he bent over Mrs. Gilbert, "and I have been here ever since ten o'clock."

It was past one now. He had been there three hours, Isabel thought, waiting for her.

Yes, it had gone so far as this already. But he was to go away at the end of October. He was to go away, it would all be over, and the world come to an end by the 1st of November.

There was a little pile of books upon the seat under the tree. Mr.

Lansdell pushed them off the bench, and tumbled them ignominiously among the long gra.s.s and weeds beneath it. Isabel saw them fall; and uttered a little exclamation of surprise.

"You have brought me-" she began; but to her astonishment Roland checked her with a frown, and began to talk about the waterfall, and the trout that were to be caught in the season lower down in the stream. Mr.