He walked softly up and down the room, deep in thought.
‘Do you know I implored her to refuse that ascent,’ he said. I had a foreboding that harm would come of it.’
‘You should have forbidden it,’ said the surgeon, with his fingers on the patient’s wrist.
‘Forbidden! You don’t know my wife.’
‘If I had a wife she should obey me.’
‘Ah! that’s a common delusion of bachelors. Wait till you have a wife, and you will tell a different story.’
‘She will do for to-night,’ said Gerard, taking up his hat, yet lingering for one long scrutiny of the white expressionless face on the pillow. ‘Mrs. Mason knows all she has to do; I will be here at six to-morrow morning.’
‘At six! You are an early riser.’
‘I am a haul worker. One is impossible without the other. Good-night, Mr. Chicot; I congratulate you upon your power to take a great trouble quietly. There is no better proof of strong nerve.’
Jack fancied there was a hidden sneer in this parting compliment, but it made very little impression upon him. The perplexity of his life was big enough to exclude every other thought. ‘You had better go to bed, Mrs. Mason,’ he said to the nurse. ‘I shall sit up with my wife.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I could not feel that I was doing my duty if I indulged myself with a night’s rest while the case is so critical; by-and-bye I shall be thankful to get an hour’s sleep.’
‘Do you think Madame Chicot will ever be better?’
The nurse looked down at her white apron, sighed gently, and as gently shook her head.
‘We always like to look at the bright side of things, sir,’ she answered,
‘But is there any bright side to this case?’
‘That rests with Providence, sir,’ It is a very bad case.’
‘Well,’ said Jack Chicot, ‘we must be patient.’
He seated himself in the chair by the bedside and remained there all night, never sleeping, hardly changing his attitude, sunk to the bottom of some deep gulf of thought.
Day came at last, and soon after daybreak came George Gerard, who found no change either for better or worse in his patient, and ordered no change in the treatment.
‘Sir John Pelham is to be here at eleven,’ he said. ‘I shall come at eleven to meet him.’
The great surgeon came, made his inspection, and said that all was going on well.
‘We shall make her lee sound again,’ he said, ‘I have no fear about that; I wish we were as certain about the brain.’
‘Do you think the brain is seriously hurt?’ asked Chicot.
‘We can hardly tell. The iron struck her head as she fell. There is no fracture of the skull, but there is mischief of some kind — rather serious mischief, I fear. No doubt a good deal will depend on care and nursing. You are lucky to have secured Mrs. Mason; I can highly recommend her.’
‘Frankly, do you think my wife will recover?’ asked Chicot, questioning Sir John Pelham to day as earnestly as he had questioned George Gerard last night.
‘My dear sir, I hope for the best; but it is a bad case.’
‘That must mean that it is hopeless,’ thought Chicot, but he only bowed his head gently, and followed the surgeon to the door, where he tried to slip a fee into his hand.
‘No, no, my dear sir, Mr. Smolendo will arrange that little matter,’ said the surgeon, rejecting the money,’ and very properly too, since your wife was injured in his service.’
‘I would rather have paid her debts myself,’ answered Chicot, ‘though Heaven knows how long I could have done it. We are never very much beforehand with the world. Oh, by the way, how about that young man upstairs, Mr. Gerard? Do you approve his treatment of the case?’
‘Very much so; a remarkably clever young man — a man who ought to make rapid way in his profession.’
Sir John Pelham gave a compassionate sigh at the end of his speech, remembering how many young men he had known deserving of success, and how few of them had succeeded, and thinking what a clever and altogether commendable young man he must himself have been to be one of the few.
After this Jack Chicot allowed Mr. Gerard to prescribe for his wife with perfect confidence in the young man’s ability. Sir John Pelham came once a week, and gave his opinion, and sometimes made some slight change in the treatment. It was a lingering, wearying illness, hard work for the nurse, trying work for the watcher. The husband had taken upon himself the office of night nurse. He watched and ministered to the invalid every night, while Mrs. Mason enjoyed four or five hours’ sleep. Mr. Smolendo had suggested that they should have two nurses. He was willing to pay for anything that could ameliorate the sufferer’s condition, though La Chicot’s accident had almost ruined his season. It had not been easy to get a novelty strong enough to replace her.
‘No,’ said Jack Chicot, ‘I don’t want to take more of your money than I can help; and I may as well do something for my wife. I’m useless enough at best.’
So Jack went on drawing for the comic periodicals, and worked at night beside his wife’s bed. Her mind had never awakened since the accident. She was helpless and unconscious now as she had been when they brought her home from the theatre. Even George Gerard was beginning to lose heart, but he in no way relaxed his efforts to bring about a cure.
In the day Jack went for long walks, getting as far away from that close and smoky region of Leicester Square as his long legs would take him. He tramped northward to Hampstead and Hendon, to Highgate, Barnet, Harrow; southward to Dulwich, Streatham, Beckenham; to breezy commons where the gorse was still golden, to woods where the perfume of pine trees filled the warm, still air; to hills below which he saw London lying, a silent city, wrapped in a mantle of blue smoke.
The country had an inexpressible charm for him at this period of his life. He was not easy till he had shaken the dust of London off his feet. He who a year ago in Paris had wasted half his days playing billiards in the entresol of a café on the boulevard St. Michel, or sauntering the stony length of the boulevards from the Madeleine to the Chateau d’Eau — was now a solitary rambler in suburban lanes, choosing every path that led him furthest from the haunts of men.
‘You are always out when I come in the daytime, Mr. Chicot,’ said Gerard, one evening, when he had called later than usual and found Jack at home, dusty, tired after his day’s ramble. ‘Is not that rather hard on Madame Chicot?’
‘What can it matter to her? She does not know when I am here; she is quite unconscious.’
‘I am not so sure of that. She seems unconscious, but beneath that apathy there may be some struggling sense of outward things. It is my hope that the mind is there still, under a dense cloud.’
The struggle was long and weary. There came a day on which even George Gerard despaired. The wound in the leg had been slow to heal, and the pain had weakened the patient. Despite all that watchful nursing could do, she had sunk to the lowest ebb.
‘She is very weak, is she not?’ asked Jack, that summer afternoon — a sultry afternoon late in June, when the close London street was like a dusty oven, and faint odours from stale strawberries and half-rotten pineapples on the costermonger’s barrows tainted the air with a sickly sweetness.
‘She is as weak as she can be and live,’ answered Gerard.
‘You begin to lose faith?’
‘I begin to fear.’
As he spoke he saw a look of ineffable relief flash into Jack Chicot’s eyes. His own eyes caught and fixed that look, and the two men stood facing each other, one of them knowing that the secret of his heart was discovered.
‘I fear,’ said the surgeon, deliberately, ‘but I am not going to leave off trying to save her. I mean to save her life if it is in human power to save it. I have set my heart upon it.’
‘Do your utmost,’ answered Chicot. ‘Heaven is above us all. It must be as fate wills.’
‘You loved her once, I suppose?’ said Gerard, with searching eyes still on the o
ther’s face.
‘I loved her truly.’
‘When and why did you leave off loving her?’
‘How do you know that I have ever done so?’ asked Chicot, startled by the audacity of the question.
‘I know it as well as you know it yourself. I should be a poor physician for an obscure disease of the brain if I could not read your secret. This poor creature, lying here, has for some time past been a burden and an affliction to you. If Providence were to remove her quietly, you would thank Providence. You would not lift your hand against her, or refuse any aid you can give her, but her death would be an infinite relief, Well, I think you will have your wish. I think she is going to die.’
‘You have no right to talk to me like this,’ said Chicot.
‘Have I not? “Why should not one man talk freely to another, uttering the truth boldly. I do not presume to judge or to blame. Who among us is pure enough to denounce his brother’s sin? But why should I pretend not to understand you? Why affect to think you a loving and devoted husband? It is better that I should be plain with you. Yes, Mr. Chicot, I believe this business is going to end your way, and not mine.’
Jack stood looking gloomily out of the open window down into the dingy street, where the strawberry barrow was moving slowly along, while the costermonger’s brassy voice brayed out his strange jargon. He had no word to answer to the surgeon’s plain speaking. The accusation was true. He could not gainsay it.
‘Yes, I loved her once,’ he said to himself presently, as he sat by the bedside after George Gerard had gone. ‘What kind of love was it I wonder? I felt my life a failure, and had abandoned all hope of ever getting back into the beaten tracks of respectability, and it seemed to me to matter very little what I did with my life or what kind of woman I married. She was the handsomest woman I had ever seen, and she was fond of me. Why should I not marry her? Between us we could manage to live somehow, au jour la journée, from hand to mouth. We took life lightly, both of us. Those were pleasant days. Yet I look back and wonder that I could have lived in the gutter and revelled in it. How even a gentleman can sink when once he ceases to respect himself. When did I first begin to be weary? When did I begin to hate her? Never till I had met —— .Oh, Paradise, which I have seen through the half-opened gate, shall I verily be free to enter your shining fields, your garden of gladness and delight?’
He sat by the bed in thoughtful silence, till the nurse came in to take his place, and then he went out into the dusty streets, and walked northward in search of air. He had promised the nurse to be back at ten o’clock, when she could have her supper and go to bed, leaving him in charge for the night. This was the usual routine.
‘All may be over when I go home to-night,’ he said to himself, and it seemed to him as if the past few years — the period of his married life — were part of a confused dream.
It was all over now. Its follies and its joys belonged to the past. He could look back and pity his wife and himself. Both had been foolish, both erring. It was done with. They had come to the last page of a volume that was speedily to be closed for ever. He could forgive, he could pity and deplore all that foolish past, now that it was no longer to fetter the future.
He rambled far that day — he was lighter of foot — the atmosphere out of London was clearer, or it seemed clearer, than usual. He walked to Harrow, and lay on the grass below Byron’s tomb, looking dreamily down at the dim world of London.
It was after eleven when he got back to Cibber Street. The public house at the corner was closed, the latest of the gossips had deserted their doorsteps. He looked up to the first-floor windows, La Chicot’s bed had been moved into the front room, because it was more cheerful for her, the nurse said; but it was Mrs. Mason and not La Chicot who looked out of the window. The sickly yellow light shone through the dingy blind, just as it always did after dark. There was nothing to indicate any change. But all things would be the same, no doubt, if death were in the room.
As Jack stood on the doorstep feeling in his pockets for the key, the door opened, and Desrolles, the second-floor lodger, came out.
‘I am going to see if I can get a drop of brandy at the Crown and Sceptre,’ he said, explanatorily; ‘I’ve had one of my old attacks.’
Mr. Desrolles was a sufferer from some chronic complaint which he alluded to vaguely, and which necessitated frequent recourse to stimulants.
‘The Crown and Sceptre is closed,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve some brandy upstairs; I’ll give you a little.’
‘That’s uncommonly good-natured of you,’ said Desrolles. ‘ I should have a night of agony if I couldn’t get a little brandy somewhere. How late you are!’
‘I’ve walked further than usual. It was such a fine evening.’
‘Was it really? Hereabouts it was dull and grey. I thought we were going to have a thunderstorm. Local, I suppose. I’ve got some good news for you.’
‘Good news for me. The rarity of the thing will make it welcome.’
‘Your wife’s better, decidedly better. I looked in two hours ago to enquire. The nurse thinks she has taken a turn. Mr. Gerard was here at eight, and thinks the same. It’s wonderful. She rallied in an extraordinary manner between three and five o’clock, took her nourishment with an appearance of appetite for the first time since she has been ill. Mrs. Mason is delighted. Wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘Very wonderful!’ exclaimed Jack Chicot: and who shall tell the bitterness of heart with which he turned from the shining vision of the future — the vision that had been with him all that evening, back to the dreary reality of the present.
He found Mrs. Mason elated. She had never seen a more marked change for the better.
‘She’s as weak as a new-born infant, poor dear,’ she said of her patient, ‘but it’s just as if life was coming gently and slowly back, like the tide coming in over the sands when it has ebbed as low as ever it can ebb.’
The improvement continued steadily from that hour. The brain, so long clouded, awakened as from sleep. Zaïre recovered her strength, her senses, her beauty, her insolence and audacity. Before September she was the old ‘Chicot,’ the woman whose portrait had flaunted on all the walls of London. Mr. Smolendo was in raptures. The broken leg was as sound as ever it had been. La Chicot would be able to dance early in November. A paragraph announcing this fact had already gone the round of the papers. Another paragraph, more familiar in tone, informed the town that Madame Chicot’s beauty had gained new lustre during the enforced retirement of her long illness. Mr. Smolendo knew his public.
CHAPTER IX. ‘AND ART THOU COME! AND ART THOU TRUE!’
IT was late in November, and the trees were bare in the grounds of Hazlehurst Manor. The grand old mansion wore its air of grave dignity, under the dull, grey skies of late autumn, but the charms and graces of summer had gone, and there was a shade of melancholy in the stillness of the house and garden, and that pleasant enclosure, too big for a meadow, and too small for a park, over which the rooks swept like a black cloud at evensong, going screaming home to their nests in the tall elms behind the house.
In this dreary season of the year, Laura Malcolm was living quite alone at the Manor-house. Celia Clare had been invited to spend a month with a well-to-do aunt at Brighton, and Brighton in the winter season represented the highest form of terrestrial bliss that had ever come within Celia’s experience. She had vague dreams of Paris, as of a city that must far surpass even Brighton in blissfulness; but she had no hope of seeing Paris, unless, indeed, she were to get married, when she would insist on her husband taking her there for the honeymoon.
‘Of course, the poor creature would do anything I told him then,’ said Celia, ‘It would be different afterwards. I dare say when we had been married a year he would try to trample on me.’
‘I can’t imagine anyone trampling upon you, Celia,’ said Laura, laughing.
‘Well, I think I should make it rather difficult for him. But all men are tyrants. Look at papa, for instance; the best
of men, with a heart of gold; but let the cook make a failure, and he goes on all dinner-time like the veriest heathen. Oh, they are altogether an inferior breed, believe me, There is your young man, Laura — very handsome, very gentlemanlike, but as weak as water.’
‘Whom do you mean by my young man?’ asked Laura.
‘You know, or you would not blush so violently. Of course I mean John Treverton, your future husband. And, by-the-bye you are to be married within a year after old Mr. Treverton’s death. I hope you have begun to order your trousseau.’
‘I wish you would not talk such nonsense, Celia. You know very well that I am not engaged to Mr. Treverton. I may never be engaged to him.’
‘Then what were you two talking about that night under the chestnuts, when you lingered so far behind us?’
‘We are not engaged. That is quite enough for you to know.’
‘Then, if you are not engaged you ought to be. That is all I can say. It is ridiculous to leave things to the last moment, if you are ever so sure of each other. Old Mr. Treverton died early in January, and it is now late in November. I feel quite uncomfortable about going away, and leaving your affairs in such an unsatisfactory state.’
Celia, who was the most frivolous of beings, affected a talent for business, and assumed an elder-sister air towards Laura Malcolm that was pleasant in its absurdity.
‘You need not be uneasy, Celia. I can manage my own affairs.’
‘I don’t believe you can. You are awfully clever, and have read more books than I have ever seen the outside of in the whole course of my life. But you are not the least little bit practical or business-like. You run the risk of losing this dear old house, and the estate that belongs to it, as coolly as if it were the veriest trifle. I begin to be afraid that you have a sneaking kindness for that worthless brother of mine.’
‘You need have no such fear. I feel kindly towards your brother for auld lang syne, and be cause I think he likes me — —’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 593
