Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Mr. Lansdell wheeled forward a chair, but he was obliged to ask her to sit down; and even then she seated herself with the kind of timid irresolution he had so often seen in a burly farmer come to supplicate abnormal advantages in the renewal of a lease.

  “I hope you are not angry with me for coming here at such a time,” she said, in a low tremulous voice; “I could not come any earlier, or I — —”

  “It can never be anything but a pleasure to me to see you,” Roland answered, gravely, “even though the pleasure is strangely mingled with pain. You have come to me, perhaps, because you are in some kind of trouble, and have need of my services in some way or other. I am very much pleased to think that you can so far confide in me; I am very glad to think that you can rely on my friendship.”

  Mr. Lansdell said this because he saw that the Doctor’s Wife had come to demand some favour at his hands, and he wished to smooth the way for that demand. Isabel looked up at him with something like surprise in her gaze. She had not expected that he would be like this — calm, self-possessed, reasonable. A mournful feeling took possession of her heart. She thought that his love must have perished altogether, or he could not surely have been so kind to her, so gentle and dispassionate. She looked at him furtively as he lounged against the farther angle of the massive mantel-piece. His transient passion had worn itself out, no doubt, and he was deep in the tumultuous ocean of a new love affair, — a glittering duchess, a dark-eyed Clotilde, — some brilliant creature after one of the numerous models in the pages of the “Alien.”

  “You are very, very good not to be angry with me,” she said; “I have come to ask you a favour — a very great favour — and I — —”

  She stopped, and sat silently twisting the handle of her parasol — the old green parasol under whose shadow Roland had so often seen her. It was quite evident that her courage had failed her altogether at this crisis.

  “It is not for myself I am going to ask you this favour,” she said, still hesitating, and looking down at the parasol; “it is for another person, who — it is a secret, in fact, and — —”

  “Whatever it is, it shall be granted,” Roland answered, “without question, without comment.”

  “I have come to ask you to lend me, — or at least I had better ask you to give it me, for indeed I don’t know when I should ever be able to repay it, — some money, a great deal of money, — fifty pounds.”

  She looked at him as if she thought the magnitude of the sum must inevitably astonish him, and she saw a tender half-melancholy smile upon his face.

  “My dear Isabel — my dear Mrs. Gilbert — if all the money I possess in the world could secure your happiness, I would willingly leave Midlandshire to-morrow a penniless man. I would not for the world that you should be embarrassed for an hour, while I have more money than I know what to do with. I will write you a cheque immediately, — or, better still, half-a-dozen blank cheques, which you can fill up as you require them.”

  But Isabel shook her head at this proposal. “You are very kind,” she said; “but a cheque would not do. It must be money, if you please; the person for whom I want it would not take a cheque.”

  Roland Lansdell looked at her with a sudden expression of doubt, — of something that was almost terror in his face.

  “The person for whom you want it,” he repeated. “It is not for yourself, then, that you want this money?”

  “Oh no, indeed! What should I want with so much money?”

  “I thought you might be in debt. I thought that —— Ah, I see; it is for your husband that you want the money.”

  “Oh no; my husband knows nothing about it. But, oh, pray, pray don’t question me. Ah, if you knew how much I suffered before I came here to-night! If there had been any other person in the world who could have helped me, I would never have come here; but there is no one, and I must get the money.”

  Roland’s face grew darker as Mrs. Gilbert spoke. Her agitation, her earnestness, mystified and alarmed him.

  “Isabel,” he cried, “God knows I have little right to question you; but there is something in the manner of your request that alarms me. Can you doubt that I am your friend, — next to your husband your best and truest friend, perhaps? — forget every word that I have ever said to you, and believe only what I say to-night — to-night, when all my better feelings are aroused by the sight of you. Believe that I am your friend, Isabel, and for pity’s sake trust me. Who is this person who wants money of you? Is it your step-mother? if so, my cheque-book is at her disposal.”

  “No,” faltered the Doctor’s Wife, “it is not for my step-mother, but — —”

  “But it is for some member of your family?”

  “Yes,” she answered, drawing a long breath; “but, oh, pray do not ask me any more questions. You said just now that you would grant me the favour I asked without question or comment. Ah, if you knew how painful it was to me to come here!”

  “Indeed! I am sorry that it was so painful to you to trust me.”

  “Ah, if you knew — —” Isabel murmured in a low voice, speaking to herself rather than to Roland.

  Mr. Lansdell took a little bunch of keys from his pocket, and went across the room to an iron safe, cunningly fashioned after the presentment of an antique ebony cabinet. He opened the ponderous door, and took a little cash-box from one of the shelves.

  “My steward brought me a bundle of notes yesterday. Will you take what you want?” he asked, handing the open box to Isabel.

  “I would rather you gave me the money; I do not want more than fifty pounds.”

  Roland counted five ten-pound notes and handed them to Isabel. She rose and stood for a few moments, hesitating as if she had something more to say, — something almost as embarrassing in its nature as the money-question had been.

  “I — I hope you will not think me troublesome,” she said; “but there is one more favour that I want to ask of you.”

  “Do not hesitate to ask anything of me; all I want is your confidence.”

  “It is only a question that I wish to ask. You talked some time since of going away from Midlandshire — from England; do you still think of doing so?”

  “Yes, my plans are all made for an early departure.”

  “A very early departure? You are going almost immediately?”

  “Immediately, — to-morrow, perhaps. I am going to the East. It may be a long time before I return to England.”

  There was a little pause, during which Roland saw that a faint flush kindled in Isabel Gilbert’s face, and that her breath came and went rather quicker than before.

  “Then I must say good-bye to-night,” she said.

  “Yes, it is not likely we shall meet again. Good night — good-bye. Perhaps some day, when I am a pottering old man, telling people the same anecdotes every time I dine with them, I shall come back to Midlandshire, and find Mr. Gilbert a crack physician in Kylmington, petted by rich old ladies, and riding in a yellow barouche; — till then, good-bye.”

  He held Isabel’s hand for a few moments, — not pressing it ever so gently, — only holding it, as if in that frail tenure he held the last link that bound him to love and life. Isabel looked at him wonderingly. How different was this adieu from that passionate farewell under Lord Thurston’s oak, when he had flung himself upon the ground and wept aloud in the anguish of parting from her! The melodramas she had witnessed at the Surrey Theatre were evidently true to nature. Nothing could be more transient than the wicked squire’s love.

  “Only one word more, Mrs. Gilbert,” Roland said, after that brief pause. “Your husband — does he know about this person who asks for money from you?”

  “No — I — I should have told him — I think — and asked him to give me the money, only he is so very ill; he must not be troubled about anything.”

  “He is very ill — your husband — is ill?”

  “Yes, — I thought every one knew. He is very, very ill. It is on that account I came here so late. I have been
sitting in his room all day. Good night.”

  “But you cannot go back alone; it is such a long way. It will be two o’clock in the morning before you can get back to Graybridge. I will drive you home; or it will be better to let my coachman — my mother’s old coachman — drive you home.”

  It was in vain that Mrs. Gilbert protested against this arrangement. Roland Lansdell reflected that as the Doctor’s Wife had been admitted by his valet, her visit would of course be patent to all the other servants at their next morning’s breakfast. Under these circumstances, Mrs. Gilbert could not leave Mordred with too much publicity; and a steady old man, who had driven Lady Anna Lansdell’s fat white horses for slow jog-trot drives along the shady highways and by-ways of Midlandshire, was aroused from his peaceful slumbers and told to dress himself, while a half-somnolent stable-boy brought out a big bay horse and an old-fashioned brougham. In this vehicle Isabel returned very comfortably to Graybridge; but she begged the coachman to stop at the top of the lane, where she alighted and bade him good night.

  She found all dark in the little surgery, which she entered by means of her husband’s latch-key; and she crept softly up the stairs to the room opposite that in which George Gilbert lay, watched over by Mrs. Jeffson.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  “I’LL NOT BELIEVE BUT DESDEMONA’S HONEST.”

  “See that some hothouse grapes and a pine are sent to Mr. Gilbert at Graybridge,” Roland said to his valet on the morning after Isabel’s visit. “I was sorry to hear of his serious illness from his wife last night.”

  Mr. Lansdell’s valet, very busily occupied with a hat-brush, smiled softly to himself as his employer made this speech. The master of Mordred Priory need scarcely have stained his erring soul by any hypocritical phrases respecting the Graybridge surgeon.

  “I shouldn’t mind laying a twelvemonth’s wages that if her husband dies, he marries her within six months,” Roland’s man-servant remarked, as he sipped his second cup of coffee; “I never did see such an infatuated young man in all my life.”

  A change came over the spirit of Mr. Lansdell’s dreams. The thought, the base and cruel thought, which had never entered Isabel’s mind, was not to be shut out of Roland’s breast after that midnight interview in the library. Do what he would, struggle against the foul temptation as he might, — and he was not naturally wicked, he was not utterly heartless, — he could not help thinking of what might happen — if — if Death, who carries in his fleshless hand so many orders for release, should cut the knot that bound Isabel Gilbert.

  “God knows I am not base enough to wish any harm to that poor fellow at Graybridge,” thought Mr. Lansdell; “but if—”

  And then the Tempter’s hand swept aside a dark curtain, and revealed a lovely picture of the life that might be, if George Gilbert would only be so obliging as to sink under that tiresome low fever which had done so much mischief in the lanes about Graybridge. Roland Lansdell was not a hero; he was only a very imperfect, vacillating young man, with noble impulses for ever warring against the baser attributes of his mind; a spoiled child of fortune, who had almost always had his own way until just now.

  “I ought to go away,” he thought; “I ought to go away all the more because of this man’s illness. There seems something horrible in my stopping here watching and waiting for the result, when I should gain such an unutterable treasure by George Gilbert’s death.”

  But he lingered, nevertheless. A man may fully appreciate the enormity of his sin, and yet go on shining. Mr. Lansdell did not go away from Mordred; he contented himself with sending the Graybridge surgeon a basket of the finest grapes and a couple of the biggest pines to be found in the Priory hothouses; and it may be that his conscience derived some small solace from the performance of this courtesy.

  Lord Ruysdale called upon his nephew in the course of the bright summer morning that succeeded Isabel’s visit to the Priory; and as the young man happened to be smoking his cigar in front of the porch at the moment when the Earl’s quiet cob came jogging along the broad carriage-drive, there was no possibility of avoiding the elderly gentleman’s visit. Roland threw aside his cigar, and resigned himself to the prospect of an hour’s prosy discussion of things in which he felt no kind of interest, no ray of pleasure. What was it to him that there was every prospect of a speedy dissolution, unless —— ? There almost always was every prospect of a dissolution unless something or other took place; but nothing special ever seemed to come of all the fuss and clamour. The poor people were always poor, and grumbled at being starved to death; the rich people were always rich, and indignant against the oppression of an exorbitant income-tax. Poor Roland behaved admirably during the infliction of his uncle’s visit; and if he gave vague answers and asked irrelevant questions now and then, Lord Ruysdale was too much engrossed by his own eloquence to find out his nephew’s delinquencies. Roland only got rid of him at last by promising to dine at Lowlands that evening.

  “If there’s a dissolution, our party must inevitably come in,” the Earl said at parting; “and in that case you must stand for Wareham. The Wareham people look to you as their legitimate representative. I look forward to great things, my boy, if the present ministry go out. I’ve been nursing my little exchequer very comfortably for the last twelve months; and I shall take a furnished house in town, and begin life again next year, if things go well; and I expect to see you make a figure in the world yet, Roland.”

  And in all that interview Lord Ruysdale did not once remark the tired look in his nephew’s face; that nameless look which gave a sombre cast to all the Lansdell portraits, and which made the blasé idler of thirty seem older of aspect than the hopeful country gentleman of sixty.

  Roland went to Lowlands in the evening. Why should he not do this to please his uncle; inasmuch as it mattered so very little what he did, or where he went, in a universe where everything was weariness. He found Lady Gwendoline in the drawing-room, looking something like Marie Antoinette in a demi-toilette of grey silk, with a black-lace scarf crossed upon her stately shoulders, and tied in a careless bow at the back of her waist. Mr. Raymond was established in a big chintz-covered easy-chair, turning over a box of books newly arrived from London, and muttering scornful comments on their titles and contents.

  “At last!” he exclaimed, as Mr. Lansdell’s name was announced. “I’ve called at Mordred about half-a-dozen times within the last two months; but as your people always said you were out, and as I could always see by their faces that you were at home, I have given up the business in despair.”

  Lord Ruysdale came in presently with the “Times” newspaper open in his hand, and insisted on reading a leader, which he delivered with amazing energy, and all the emphasis on the beginnings of the sentences. Dinner was announced before the leader was finished, and Mr. Raymond led Lady Gwendoline to the dining-room, while Roland stayed to hear the Thunderer’s climax murdered by his uncle’s defective elocution. The dinner went off very quietly. The Earl talked politics, and Mr. Raymond discoursed very pleasantly on the principles of natural philosophy as applied to the rulers of the nation. There was a strange contrast between the animal spirits of the two men who had passed the meridian of life, and were jogging quietly on the shady slope of the lull, and the dreamy languor exhibited by the two young people who sat listening to them. George Sand has declared that nowadays all the oldest books are written by the youngest authors; might she not go even farther, and say that nowadays the young people are older than their seniors? We have got rid of our Springheeled Jacks and John Mittons, and Tom and Jerry are no more popular either on or off the stage; our young aristocrats no longer think it a fine thing to drive a hearse to Epsom races, or to set barrels of wine running in the Haymarket; but in place of all this foolish riot and confusion a mortal coldness of the soul seems to have come down upon the youth of our nation, a deadly languor and stagnation of spirit, from which nothing less than a Crimean war or an Indian rebellion can arouse the worn-out idler
s in a weary world. The dinner was drawing to a close, when Lord Ruysdale mentioned a name that awakened all Mr. Lansdell’s attention.

  “I rode into Graybridge after leaving you, Roland,” he said, “and made a call or two. I am sorry to hear that Mr. Gilmore — Gilson — Gilbert, — ah, yes, Gilbert, — that very worthy young doctor, whom we met at your house the other day — last year, by the bye — egad, how the time spins round! — I was sorry to hear that he is ill. Low fever — really in a very dangerous state, Saunders the solicitor told me. You’ll be sorry to hear it, Gwendoline.”

  Lady Gwendoline’s face darkened, and she glanced at Roland, before she spoke.

  “I am sorry to hear it,” she said. “I am sorry for Mr. Gilbert, for more than one reason. I am sorry he has so very bad a wife.”

  Roland’s face flushed crimson, and he turned to his cousin as if about to speak; but Mr. Raymond was too quick for him.

  “I think the less we say upon that subject the better,” he exclaimed, eagerly; “I think, Lady Gwendoline, that is a subject that had much better not be discussed here.”

  “Why should it not be discussed?” cried Roland, looking — if people can look daggers — a perfect arsenal of rage and scorn at his cousin. “Of course, we understand that slander of her own sex is a woman’s privilege. Why should not Lady Gwendoline avail herself of her special right? Here is only a very paltry subject, certainly — a poor little provincial nobody; but she will serve for want of a better; — lay her on the table, by all means, and bring out your dissecting-tools, Lady Gwendoline. What have you to say against Mrs. Gilbert?” He waited, breathless and angry, for his cousin’s answer, looking at her with sullen defiance in his face.