Kitabı oku: «Guy Deverell. Volume 2 of 2», sayfa 11
CHAPTER XXVII
Lady Alice Redcliffe makes General Lennox's Acquaintance
Old General Lennox stopped a servant on the stairs, and learned from the staring domestic where Lady Alice Redcliffe then was.
That sad and somewhat virulent old martyr was at that moment in her accustomed haunt, Lady Mary's boudoir, and in her wonted attitude over the fire, pondering in drowsy discontent over her many miseries, when a sharp knock at the door startled her nerves and awakened her temper.
Her "come in" sounded sharply, and she beheld for the first time in her life the General, a tall lean old man, with white bristles on brow and cheek, with his toilet disordered by long and rather rapid exercise, and grim and livid with no transient agitation.
"Lady Alice Redcliffe?" inquired he, with a stiff bow, remaining still inclined, his eyes still fixed on her.
"I am Lady Alice Redcliffe," returned that lady, haughtily, having quite forgotten General Lennox and all about him.
"My name is Lennox," he said.
"Oh, General Lennox? I was told you were here last night," said the old lady, scrutinising him with a sort of surprised frown; his dress and appearance were a little wild, and not in accordance with her ideas on military precision. "I am happy, General Lennox, to make your acquaintance. You've just arrived, I dare say?"
"I arrived yesterday – last night – last night late. I – I'm much obliged. May I say a word?"
"Certainly, General Lennox," acquiesced the old lady, looking harder at him – "certainly, but I must remind you that I have been a sad invalid, and therefore very little qualified to discuss or advise;" and she leaned back with a fatigued air, but a curious look nevertheless.
"I – I – it's about my wife, ma'am. We can – we can't live any longer together." He was twirling his gold eyeglass with trembling fingers as he spoke.
"You have been quarrelling – h'm?" said Lady Alice, still staring hard at him, and rising with more agility than one might have expected; and shutting the door, which the old General had left open, she said, "Sit down, sir – quarrelling, eh?"
"A quarrel, madam, that can never be made up – by – , never." The General smote his gouty hand furiously on the chimneypiece as he thus spake.
"Don't, General Lennox, don't, pray. If you can't command yourself, how can you hope to bear with one another's infirmities? A quarrel? H'm."
"Madam, we've separated. It's worse, ma'am – all over. I thought, Lady – Lady – I thought, madam, I might ask you, as the only early friend – a friend, ma'am, and a kinswoman – to take her with you for a little while, till some home is settled for her; here she can't stay, of course, an hour. That villain! May – damn him."
"Who?" asked Lady Alice, with a kind of scowl, quite forgetting to rebuke him this time, her face darkening and turning very pale, for she saw it was another great family disgrace.
"Sir Jekyl Marlowe, ma'am, of Marlowe, Baronet, Member of Parliament, Deputy Lieutenant," bawled the old General, with shrill and trembling voice. "I'll drag him through the law courts, and the divorce court, and the House of Lords." He held his right fist up with its trembling knuckles working, as if he had them in Sir Jekyl's cravat, "drag him through them all, ma'am, till the dogs would not pick his bones; and I'll shoot him through the head, by – , I'll shoot him through the head, and his family ashamed to put his name on his tombstone."
Lady Alice stood up, with a face so dismal it almost looked wicked.
"I see, sir; I see there's something very bad; I'm sorry, sir; I'm very sorry; I'm very sorry."
She had a hand of the old General's in each of hers, and was shaking them with a tremulous clasp.
Such as it was, it was the first touch of sympathy he had felt. The old General's grim face quivered and trembled, and he grasped her hands too, and then there came those convulsive croupy sobs, so dreadful to hear, and at last tears, and this dried and bleached old soldier wept loud and piteously. Outside the door you would not have known what to make of these cracked, convulsive sounds. You would have stopped in horror, and fancied some one dying. After a while he said —
"Oh! ma'am, I was very fond of her – I was, desperately. If I could know it was all a dream, I'd be content to die. I wish, ma'am, you'd advise me. I'll go back to India, I think; I could not stay here. You'll know best, madam, what she ought to do. I wish everything the best for her – you'll see, ma'am – you'll know best."
"Quite – quite; yes, these things are best settled by men of business. There are papers, I believe, drawn up, arranged by lawyers, and things, and I'm sorry, sir – "
And old Lady Alice suddenly began to sob.
"I'll – I'll do what I can for the poor thing," she said. "I'll take her to Wardlock – it's quite solitary – no prying people – and then to – perhaps it's better to go abroad; and you'll not make it public sooner than it must be; and it's a great blow to me, sir, a terrible blow. I wish she had placed herself more under direction; but it's vain looking back – she always refused advice, poor, poor wretched thing! Poor Jennie! We must be resigned, sir; and – and, sir, for God's sake, no fighting – no pistoling. That sort of thing is never heard of now; and if you do, the whole world will be ringing with it, and the unfortunate creature the gaze of the public before she need be, and perhaps some great crime added – some one killed. Do you promise?"
"Ma'am, it's hard to promise."
"But you must, General Lennox, or I'll take measures to stop it this moment," cried Lady Alice, drying her eyes and glaring at him fiercely.
"Stop it! who'll stop it?" holloed the General with a stamp.
"You'll stop it, General," exclaimed the old lady; "your own common sense; your own compassion; your own self-respect; and not the less that a poor old woman that sympathises with you implores it."
There was here an interval.
"Ma'am, ma'am, it's not easy; but I will – I will, ma'am. I'll go this moment; I will, ma'am; I can't trust myself here. If I met him, ma'am, by Heaven I couldn't."
"Well, thank you, thank you, General Lennox —do go; there's not much chance of meeting, for he's ill; but go, don't stay a moment, and write to me to Wardlock, and you shall hear everything. There – go. Good-bye."
So the General was gone, and Lady Alice stood for a while bewildered, looking at the door through which he had vanished.
It is well when these sudden collapses of the overwrought nerves occur. More dejected, more broken, perhaps, he looked, but much more like the General Lennox whom his friends remembered. Something of the panic and fury of his calamity had subsided, too; and though the grief must, perhaps, always remain pretty much unchanged, yet he could now estimate the situation more justly, and take his measures more like a sane man.
In this better, if not happier mood, Varbarriere encountered him in that overshadowed back avenue which leads more directly than the main one to the little town of Marlowe.
Varbarriere was approaching the house, and judged, by the General's slower gait, that he was now more himself.
The large gentleman in the Germanesque felt hat raised that grotesque head-gear, French fashion, as Lennox drew nigh.
The General, with two fingers, made him a stern, military salute in reply, and came suddenly to a standstill.
"May I walk a little with you, General Lennox?" inquired Varbarriere.
"Certainly, sir. Walk? By all means; I'm going to London," rejoined the General, without, however, moving from the spot where he had halted.
"Rather a long stretch for me," thought Varbarriere, with one of those inward thrills of laughter which sometimes surprise us in the gravest moods and in the most unsuitable places. He looked sober enough, however, and merely said —
"You, know, General, there's some one ill up there," and he nodded mysteriously toward the house.
"Is there? Ay. Well, yes, I dare say," and he laughed with a sudden quaver. "I was not sure; the old woman said something. I'm glad, sir."
"I – I think I know what it is, sir," said Varbarriere.
"So do I, sir," said the General, with another short laugh.
"You recollect, General Lennox, what you promised me?"
"Ay, sir; how can I help it?" answered he.
"How can you help it! I don't quite see your meaning," replied Varbarriere, slowly. "I can only observe that it gives me new ideas of a soldier's estimate of his promise."
"Don't blame me, sir, if I lost my head a little, when I saw that villain there, in my room, sir, by – " and the General cursed him here parenthetically through his clenched teeth; "I felt, sir, as – as if the sight of him struck me in the face – mad, sir, for a minute – I suppose, mad, sir; and – it occurred. I say, sir, I can't help it – and I couldn't help it, by – I couldn't."
Varbarriere looked down with a peevish sneer on the grass and innocent daisies at his feet, his heel firmly placed, and tapping the sole of his boot from that pivot on the sward, like a man beating time to a slow movement in an overture.
"Very good, sir! It's your own affair. I suppose you've considered consequences, if anything should go wrong?"
And without awaiting an answer, he turned and slowly pursued his route toward the house. I don't suppose, in his then frame of mind, the General saw consequences very clearly, or cared about them, or was capable, when the image of Sir Jekyl presented itself, of any emotions but those of hatred and rage. He had gone now, at all events; the future darkness; the past irrevocable.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Bishop sees the Patient
In the hall Varbarriere met the Reverend Dives Marlowe.
"Well, sir, how is Sir Jekyl?" asked he.
The parson looked bilious and lowering.
"To say truth, Monsieur, I can't very well make out what the Doctor thinks. I suspect he does not understand very well himself. Gout, he says, but in a very sinking state; and we've sent for the physician at Slowton; and altogether, sir, I'm very uneasy."
I suppose if the blow had fallen, the reverend gentleman would in a little while have become quite resigned, as became him. There were the baronetcy and some land; but on the whole, when Death drew near smirking, and offered on his tray, with a handsome black pall over it, these sparkling relics of the late Sir Jekyl Marlowe, Bart., the Rev. Dives turned away; and though he liked these things well enough, put them aside honestly, and even with a sort of disgust. For Jekyl, as I have said, though the brothers could sometimes exchange a sharp sally, had always been essentially kind to him; and Dives was not married, and, in fact, was funding money, and in no hurry; and those things were sure to come to him if he lived, sooner or later.
"And what, may I ask, do you suppose it is?" inquired Varbarriere.
"Well, gout, you know – he's positive; and, poor fellow, he's got it in his foot, and a very nasty thing it is, I know, even there. We all of us have it hereditarily – our family." The apostle and martyr did not want him to suppose he had earned it. "But I am very anxious, sir. Do you know anything of gout? May it be there and somewhere else at the same time? Two members of our family died of it in the stomach, and one in the head. It has been awfully fatal with us."
Varbarriere shook his head. He had never had a declared attack, and had no light to throw on the sombre prospect. The fact is, if that solemn gentleman had known for certain exactly how matters stood, and had not been expecting the arrival of his contumacious nephew, he would have been many miles on his way to London by this time.
"You know – you know, sinking seems very odd as a symptom of common gout in the great toe," said Dives, looking in his companion's face, and speaking rather like a man seeking than communicating information. "We must not frighten the ladies, you know; but I'm very much afraid of something in the stomach, eh? and possibly the heart."
"After all, sir," said Varbarriere, with a brisk effort, "Doctor – a – what's his name? – he's but a rural practitioner – an apothecary – is not it so?"
"The people here say, however, he's a very clever fellow, though," said Dives, not much comforted.
"We may hear a different story when the Slowton doctor comes. I venture to think we shall. I always fancied when gout was well out in the toe, the internal organs were safe. Oh! there's the Bishop."
"Just talking about poor Jekyl, my lord," said Dives, with a sad smile of deference, the best he could command.
"And – and how is my poor friend and pupil, Sir Jekyl? – better, I trust," responded the apostle in gaiters and apron.
"Well, my lord, we hope – I trust everything satisfactory; but the Doctor has been playing the sphinx with us, and I don't know exactly what to make of him."
"I saw Doctor Pratt for a moment, and expressed my wish to see his patient – my poor pupil – before I go, which must be – yes – within an hour," said the Bishop, consulting his punctual gold watch. "But he preferred my postponing until Doctor – I forget his name – very much concerned, indeed, that a second should be thought necessary – from Slowton – should have arrived. It – it gives me – I – I can't deny, a rather serious idea of it. Has he had many attacks?"
"Yes, my lord, several; never threatened seriously, but once – at Dartbroke, about two years ago – in the stomach."
"Ah! I forgot it was the stomach. I remember his illness though," said the Bishop, graciously.
"Not actually the stomach – only threatened," suggested Dives, deferentially. "I have made acquaintance with it myself, too, slightly; never so sharply as poor Jekyl. I wish that other doctor would come! But even at best it's not a pleasant visitor."
"I dare say – I can well suppose it. I have reason to be very thankful. I've never suffered. My poor father knew what it was – suffered horribly. I remember him at Buxton for it – horribly."
The Bishop was fond of this recollection, people said, and liked it to be understood that there was gout in the family, though he could not show that aristocratic gules himself.
At this moment Tomlinson approached, respectfully – I might even say religiously – and with such a reverence as High-Churchmen make at the creed, accosted the prelate, in low tones like distant organ-notes, murmuring Sir Jekyl's compliments to "his lordship, and would be very 'appy to see his lordship whenever it might be his convenience." To which his lordship assented, with a grave "Now, certainly, I shall be most happy," and turning to Dives —
"This, I hope, looks well. I fancy he must feel better. Let us hope;" and with slightly uplifted hand and eyes, the good Bishop followed Tomlinson, feeling so oddly as he threaded the same narrow half-lighted passages, whose corners and panelling came sharply on his memory as he passed them, and ascended the steep back stair with the narrow stained-glass slits, by which he had reached, thirty years ago, the sick-chamber of the dying Sir Harry Marlowe.
The Bishop sighed, looking round him, as he stood on the lobby outside the little ante-room. The light fell through the slim coloured orifice opposite on the oak before him, just as it did on the day he last stood there. The banisters, above and below, looked on him like yesterday's acquaintances; and the thoughtful frown of the heavy oak beams overhead seemed still knit over the same sad problem.
"Thirty years ago!" murmured the Bishop, with a sad smile, nodding his silvery head slightly, as his saddened eyes wandered over these things. "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou so regardest him?"
Tomlinson, who had knocked at the Baronet's door, returned to say he begged his lordship would step in.
So with another sigh, peeping before him, he passed through the small room that interposed, and entered Sir Jekyl's, and took his hand very kindly and gravely, pressing it, and saying in the low tone which becomes a sick-chamber —
"I trust, my dear Sir Jekyl, you feel better."
"Thank you, pretty well; very good of you, my lord, to come. It's a long way, from the front of the house – a journey. He told me you were in the hall."
"Yes, it is a large house; interesting to me, too, from earlier recollections."
"You were in this room, a great many years ago, with my poor father. He died here, you know."
"I'm afraid you're distressing yourself speaking. Yes; oddly enough, I recognised the passages and back stairs; the windows, too, are peculiar. The furniture, though, that's changed – is not it?"
"So it is. I hated it," replied Sir Jekyl. "Balloon-hacked blue silk things – faded, you know. It's curious you should remember, after such a devil of a time – such a great number of years, my lord. I hated it. When I had that fever here in this room – thirteen – fourteen years ago – ay, by Jove, it's fifteen– they were going to write for you."
"Excuse me, my dear friend, but it seems to me you are exerting yourself too much," interposed the prelate again.
"Oh dear no! it does me good to talk. I had all sorts of queer visions. People fancy, you know, they see things; and I used to think I saw him – my poor father, I mean – every night. There were six of those confounded blue-backed chairs in this room, and a nasty idea got into my head. I had a servant – poor Lewis – then a very trustworthy fellow, and liked me, I think; and Lewis told me the doctors said there was to be a crisis on the night week of the first consultation – seven days, you know."
"I really fear, Sir Jekyl, you are distressing yourself," persisted the Bishop, who did not like the voluble eagerness and the apparent fatigue, nevertheless, with which he spoke.
"Oh! it's only a word more – it doesn't, I assure you – and I perceived he sat on a different chair, d'ye see, every night, and on the fourth night he had got on the fourth chair; and I liked his face less and less every night. You know he hated me about Molly – about nothing– he always hated me; and as there were only six chairs, it got into my head that he'd get up on my bed on the seventh, and that I should die in the crisis. So I put all the chairs out of the room. They thought I was raving; but I was quite right, for he did not come again, and here I am;" and with these words there came the rudiments of his accustomed chuckle, which died out in a second or two, seeming to give him pain.
"Now, you'll promise me not to talk so much at a time till you're better. I am glad, sir – very glad, Sir Jekyl, to have enjoyed your hospitality, and to have even this opportunity of thanking you for it. It is very delightful to me occasionally to find myself thus beholden to my old pupils. I have had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Marquis at Queen's Dykely; in fact, I came direct from him to you. You recollect him – Lord Elstowe he was then? You remember Elstowe at school?"
"To be sure; remember him very well. We did not agree, though – always thought him a cur," acquiesced Sir Jekyl.
The Bishop cleared his voice.
"He was asking for you, I assure you, very kindly – very kindly indeed, and seems to remember his school-days very affectionately, and – and pleasantly, and quite surprised me with his minute recollections of all the boys."
"They all hated him," murmured Sir Jekyl. "I did, I know."
"And – and I think we shall have a fine day. I drive always with two windows open – a window in front and one at the side," said the Bishop, whose mild and dignified eyes glanced at the windows, and the pleasant evidences of sunshine outside, as he spoke, "I was almost afraid I should have to start without the pleasure of saying good-bye. You remember the graceful farewell in Lucretius? I venture to say your brother does. I made your class recite it, do you remember?"
And the Bishop repeated three or four hexameters with a look of expectation at his old pupil, as if looking to him to take up the recitation.
"Yes, I am sure of it. I think I remember; but, egad! I've quite forgot my Latin, any I knew," answered the Baronet, who was totally unable to meet the invitation; "I – I don't know how it is, but I'm sorry you have to go to-day, very sorry; – sorry, of course, any time, but particularly I feel as if I should get well again very soon – that is, if you were to stay. Do you think you can?"
"Thank you, my dear Marlowe, thank you very much for that feeling," said the good Bishop, much gratified, and placing his old hand very kindly in that of the patient, just as Sir Jekyl suddenly remembered his doing once at his bedside in the sick-house in younger days, long ago, when he was a school-boy, and the Bishop master; and both paused for a moment in one of those dreams of the past that make us smile so sadly.
