Book: A Strange Story, Volume 1.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> A Strange Story, Volume 1.
We might have sat together five minutes, side by side in silence as
complete as if in the cave of Trophonius--when without looking up from her
work, Mrs. Poyntz said abruptly,--
"I am thinking about you, Dr. Fenwick. And you--are thinking
about some other woman. Ungrateful man!"
"Unjust accusation! My very silence should prove how intently my
thoughts were fixed on you, and on the weird web which springs under your
hand in meshes that bewilder the gaze and snare the attention."
Mrs. Poyntz looked up at me for a moment--one rapid glance of the
bright red hazel eye--and said,--
"Was I really in your thoughts? Answer truly."
"Truly, I answer, you were."
"That is strange! Who can it be?"
"Who can it be? What do you mean?"
"If you were thinking of me, it was in connection with some other
person,--some other person of my own sex. It is certainly not poor dear
Miss Brabazon. Who else can it be?"
Again the red eye shot over me, and I felt my cheek redden beneath it.
"Hush!" she said, lowering her voice; "you are in love!"
"In love!--I! Permit me to ask you why you think so?"
"The signs are unmistakable; you are altered in your manner, even in
the expression of your face, since I last saw you; your manner is
generally quiet and observant,--it is now restless and distracted; your
expression of face is generally proud and serene,--it is now humbled and
troubled. You have something on your mind! It is not anxiety for your
reputation,--that is established; nor for your fortune,--that is made; it
is not anxiety for a patient or you would scarcely be here. But anxiety
it is,--an anxiety that is remote from your profession, that touches your
heart and is new to it!"
I was startled, almost awed; but I tried to cover my confusion with a
forced laugh.
"Profound observer! Subtle analyst! You have convinced me that I must
be in love, though I did not suspect it before. But when I strive to
conjecture the object, I am as much perplexed as yourself; and with you, I
ask, who can it be?"
"Whoever it be," said Mrs. Poyntz, who had paused, while I spoke, from
her knitting, and now resumed it very slowly and very carefully, as if her
mind and her knitting worked in unison together,--"whoever it be, love in
you would be serious; and, with or without love, marriage is a serious
thing to us all. It is not every pretty girl that would suit Allen
Fenwick."
"Alas! is there any pretty girl whom Allen Fenwick would suit?"
"Tut! You should be above the fretful vanity that lays traps for a
compliment. Yes; the time has come in your life and your career when you
would do well to marry. I give my consent to that," she added with a
smile as if in jest, and a slight nod as if in earnest. The knitting here
went on more decidedly, more quickly. "But I do not yet see the person.
No! 'T is a pity, Allen Fenwick" (whenever Mrs. Poyntz called me by my
Christian name, she always assumed her majestic motherly manner),--"a
pity that, with your birth, energies, perseverance, talents, and, let me
add, your advantages of manner and person,--a pity that you did not choose
a career that might achieve higher fortunes and louder fame than the most
brilliant success can give to a provincial physician. But in that very
choice you interest me. My choice has been much thesame,--a small circle,
but the first in it. Yet, had I been a man, or had my dear Colonel been a
man whom it was in the power of a woman's art to raise one step higher in
that metaphorical ladder which is not the ladder of the angels, why,
then--what then? No matter! I am contented. I transfer my ambition to
Jane. Do you not think her handsome?"
"There can be no doubt of that," said I, carelessly and naturally.
"I have settled Jane's lot in my own mind," resumed Mrs. Poyntz,
striking firm into another row of knitting. "She will marry a country
gentleman of large estate. He will go into parliament. She will study
his advancement as I study Poyntz's comfort. If he be clever, she will
help to make him a minister; if he be not clever, his wealth will make
her a personage, and lift him into a personage's husband. And, now that
you see I have no matrimonial designs on you, Allen Fenwick, think if it
will be worth while to confide in me. Possibly I may be useful--"
"I know not how to thank you; but, as yet, I have nothing to confide."
While thus saying, I turned my eyes towards the open window beside
which I sat. It was a beautiful soft night, the May moon in all her
splendour. The town stretched, far and wide, below with all its
numberless lights,--below, but somewhat distant; an intervening space was
covered, here, by the broad quadrangle (in the midst of which stood,
massive and lonely, the grand old church), and, there, by the gardens and
scattered cottages or mansions that clothed the sides of the hill.
"Is not that house," I said, after a short pause, "yonder with the
three gables, the one in which--in which poor Dr. Lloyd lived--Abbots'
House?"
I spoke abruptly, as if to intimate my desire to change the
subject of conversation. My hostess stopped her knitting, half rose,
looked forth.
"Yes. But what a lovely night! How is it that the moon blends
into harmony things of which the sun only marks the contrast? That
stately old church tower, gray with its thousand years, those vulgar
tile-roofs and chimney-pots raw in the freshness of yesterday,--now,
under the moonlight, all melt into one indivisible charm!"
As my hostess thus spoke, she had left her seat, taking her work
with her, and passed from the window into the balcony. It was not often
that Mrs. Poyntz condescended to admit what is called "sentiment" into the
range of her sharp, practical, worldly talk; but she did so at
times,--always, when she did, giving me the notion of an intellect much
too comprehensive not to allow that sentiment has a place in this life,
but keeping it in its proper place, by that mixture of affability and
indifference with which some high-born beauty allows the genius, but
checks the presumption, of a charming and penniless poet. For a few
minutes her eyes roved over the scene in evident enjoyment; then, as they
slowly settled upon the three gables of Abbots' House, her face regained
that something of hardness which belonged to its decided character; her
fingers again mechanically resumed her knitting, and she said, in her
clear, unsoftened, metallic chime of voice, "Can you guess why I took so
much trouble to oblige Mr. Vigors and locate Mrs. Ashleigh yonder?"
"You favoured us with a full explanation of your reasons."
"Some of my reasons; not the main one. People who undertake the task
of governing others, as I do, be their rule a kingdom or a hamlet, must
adopt a principle of government and adhere to it. The principle that
suits best with the Hill is Respect for the Proprieties. We have not much
money; entre nous, we have no great rank. Our policy is, then, to set up
the Proprieties as an influence which money must court and rank is afraid
of. I had learned just before Mr. Vigors called on me that Lady Sarah
Bellasis entertained the idea of hiring Abbots' House. London has set its
face against her; a provincial town would be more charitable. An earl's
daughter, with a good income and an awfully bad name, of the best manners
and of the worst morals, would have made sad havoc among the Proprieties.
How many of our primmest old maids would have deserted tea and Mrs. Poyntz
for champagne and her ladyship! The Hill was never in so imminenta
danger. Rather than Lady Sarah Bellasis should have had that house, I
would have taken it myself, and stocked it with owls.
"Mrs. Ashleigh turned up just in the critical moment. Lady Sarah is
foiled, the Proprieties safe, and so that question is settled."
"And it will be pleasant to have your early friend so near you."
Mrs. Poyntz lifted her eyes full upon me.
"Do you know Mrs. Ashleigh?"
"Not in the least."
"She has many virtues and few ideas. She is commonplace weak, as I am
commonplace strong. But commonplace weak can be very lovable. Her
husband, a man of genius and learning, gave her his whole heart,--a heart
worth having; but he was not ambitious, and he despised the world."
"I think you said your daughter was very much attached to Miss
Ashleigh? Does her character resemble her mother's?"
I was afraid while I spoke that I should again meet Mrs. Poyntz's
searching gaze, but she did not this time look up from her work.
"No; Lilian is anything but commonplace."
"You described her as having delicate health; you implied a hope
that she was not consumptive. I trust that there is no serious reason for
apprehending a constitutional tendency which at her age would require the
most careful watching!"
"I trust not. If she were to die--Dr. Fenwick, what is the matter?"
So terrible had been the picture which this woman's words had brought
before me, that I started as if my own life had received a shock.
"I beg pardon," I said falteringly, pressing my hand to my heart; "a
sudden spasm here,--it is over now. You were saying that--that--"
"I was about to say-" and here Mrs. Poyntz laid her hand lightly
on mine,--"I was about to say that if Lilian Ashleigh were to die, I
should mourn for her less than I might for one who valued the things of
the earth more. But I believe there is no cause for the alarm my words so
inconsiderately excited in you. Her mother is watchful and devoted; and
if the least thing ailed Lilian, she would call in medical advice. Mr.
Vigors would, I know, recommend Dr. Jones."
Closing our conference with those stinging words, Mrs. Poyntz here
turned back into the drawing-room.
I remained some minutes on the balcony, disconcerted, enraged. With
what consummate art had this practised diplomatist wound herself into my
secret! That she had read my heart better than myself was evident from
that Parthian shaft, barbed with Dr. Jones, which she had shot over her
shoulder in retreat. That from the first moment in which she had decoyed
me to her side, she had detected "the something" on my mind, was perhaps
but the ordinary quickness of female penetration. But it was with no
ordinary craft that the whole conversation afterwards had been so shaped
as to learn the something, and lead me to reveal the some one to whom the
something was linked. For what purpose? What was it to her? What motive
could she have beyond the mere gratification of curiosity? Perhaps, at
first, she thought I had been caught by her daughter's showy beauty, and
hence the half-friendly, half-cynical frankness with which she had avowed
her ambitious projects for that young lady's matrimonial advancement.
Satisfied by my manner that I cherished no presumptuous hopes in that
quarter, her scrutiny was doubtless continued from that pleasure in the
exercise of a wily intellect which impels schemers and politicians to an
activity for which, without that pleasure itself, there would seem no
adequate inducement. And besides, the ruling passion of this petty
sovereign was power; and if knowledge be power, there is no better
instrument of power over a contumacious subject than that hold on his
heart which is gained in the knowledge of its secret.
But "secret"! Had it really come to this? Was it possible that the
mere sight of a human face, never beheld before, could disturb the whole
tenor of my life,--a stranger of whose mind and character I knew nothing,
whose very voice I had never heard? It was only by the intolerable pang
of anguish that had rent my heart in the words, carelessly, abruptly
spoken, "if she were to die," that I had felt how the world would be
changed to me, if indeed that face were seen in it no more! Yes, secret
it was no longer to myself, I loved! And like all on whom love descends,
sometimes softly, slowly, with the gradual wing of the cushat settling
down into its nest, sometimes with the swoop of the eagle on his
unsuspecting quarry, I believed that none ever before loved as I loved;
that such love was an abnormal wonder, made solely for me, and I for it.
Then my mind insensibly hushed its angrier and more turbulent thoughts, as
my gaze rested upon the roof-tops of Lilian's home, and the shimmering
silver of the moonlit willow, under which I had seen her gazing into the
roseate heavens.
CHAPTER VIII.
When I returned to the drawing-room, the party was evidently about to
break up. Those who had grouped round the piano were now assembled round
the refreshment-table. The cardplayers had risen, and were settling or
discussing gains and losses. While I was searching for my hat, which I
had somewhere mislaid, a poor gentleman, tormented by tic-doloureux, crept
timidly up to me,--the proudest and the poorest of all the hidalgos
settled on the Hill. He could not afford a fee for a physician's advice;
but pain had humbled his pride, and I saw at a glance that he was
considering how to take a surreptitious advantage of social intercourse,
and obtain the advice without paying the fee. The old man discovered the
hat before I did, stooped, took it up, extended it to me with the profound
bow of the old school, while the other hand, clenched and quivering, was
pressed into the hollow of his cheek, and his eyes met mine with wistful
mute entreaty. The instinct of my profession seized me at once. I could
never behold suffering without forgetting all else in the desire to
relieve it.
"You are in pain," said I, softly. "Sit down and describe the
symptoms. Here, it is true, I am no professional doctor, but I am a
friend who is fond of doctoring, and knows something about it."
So we sat down a little apart from the other guests, and after a
few questions and answers, I was pleased to find that his "tic" did not
belong to the less curable kind of that agonizing neuralgia. I was
especially successful in my treatment of similar sufferings, for which I
had discovered an anodyne that was almost specific. I wrote on a leaf of
my pocketbook a prescription which I felt sure would be efficacious, and
as I tore it out and placed it in his hand, I chanced to look up, and saw
the hazel eyes of my hostess fixed upon me with a kinder and softer
expression than they often condescended to admit into their cold and
penetrating lustre. At that moment, however, her attention was drawn from
me to a servant, who entered with a note, and I heard him say, though in
an undertone, "From Mrs. Ashleigh."
She opened the note, read it hastily, ordered the servant to wait
without the door, retired to her writing-table, which stood near the place
at which I still lingered, rested her face on her hand, and seemed musing.
Her meditation was very soon over. She turned her head, and to my
surprise, beckoned to me. I approached.
"Sit here," she whispered: "turn your back towards those people, who are no
doubt watching us. Read this."
She placed in my hand the note she had just received. It contained but
a few words, to this effect:--
DEAR MARGARET,--I am so distressed. Since I wrote to you a few
hours ago, Lilian is taken suddenly ill, and I fear seriously. What
medical man should I send for? Let my servant have his name and
address.
A. A.
I sprang from my seat.
"Stay," said Mrs. Poyntz. "Would you much care if I sent the servant to
Dr. Jones?"
"Ah, madam, you are cruel! What have I done that you should become my
enemy?"
"Enemy! No. You have just befriended one of my friends. In this world
of fools intellect should ally itself with intellect. No; I am not your
enemy! But you have not yet asked me to be your friend."
Here she put into my hands a note she had written while thus speaking.
"Receive your credentials. If there be any cause for alarm, or if I can
be of use, send for me." Resuming the work she had suspended, but with
lingering, uncertain fingers, she added, "So far, then, this is settled.
Nay, no thanks; it is but little that is settled as yet."
CHAPTER IX.
In a very few minutes I was once more in the grounds of that old gable
house; the servant, who went before me, entered them by the stairs and
the wicket-gate of the private entrance; that way was the shortest. So
again I passed by the circling glade and the monastic well,--sward, trees,
and ruins all suffused in the limpid moonlight.
And now I was in the house; the servant took up-stairs the note
with which I was charged, and a minute or two afterwards returned and
conducted me to the corridor above, in which Mrs. Ashleigh received me. I
was the first to speak.
"Your daughter--is--is--not seriously ill, I hope. What is it?"
"Hush!" she said, under her breath. "Will you step this way for
a moment?" She passed through a doorway to the right. I followed her,
and as she placed on the table the light she had been holding, I looked
round with a chill at the heart,--it was the room in which Dr. Lloyd had
died. Impossible to mistake. The furniture indeed was changed, there was
no bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of the high
casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlight
streamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great square
beams intersecting the low ceiling,--all were impressed vividly on my
memory. The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on
the spot where I had stood by the bedhead of the dying man.
I shrank back,--I could not have seated myself there. So I remained
leaning against the chimney-piece, while Mrs. Ashleigh told her story.
She said that on their arrival the day before, Lilian had been in more
than usually good health and spirits, delighted with the old house, the
grounds, and especially the nook by the Monk's Well, at which Mrs.
Ashleigh had left her that evening in order to make some purchases in the
town, in company with Mr. Vigors. When Mrs. Ashleigh returned, she and
Mr. Vigors had sought Lilian in that nook, and Mrs. Ashleigh then
detected, with a mother's eye, some change in Lilian which alarmed her.
She seemed listless and dejected, and was very pale; but she denied that
she felt unwell. On regaining the house she had sat down in the room in
which we then were,--"which," said Mrs. Ashleigh, "as it is not required
for a sleeping-room, my daughter, who is fond of reading, wished to fit up
as her own morning-room, or study. I left her here and went into the
drawing-room below with Mr. Vigors. When he quitted me, which he did very
soon, I remained for nearly an hour giving directions about the placing of
furniture, which had just arrived, from our late residence. I then went
up-stairs to join my daughter, and to my terror found her apparently
lifeless in her chair. She had fainted away."
I interrupted Mrs. Ashleigh here. "Has Miss Ashleigh been subject
to fainting fits?"
"No, never. When she recovered she seemed bewildered, disinclined
to speak. I got her to bed, and as she then fell quietly to sleep, my
mind was relieved. I thought it only a passing effect of excitement, in a
change of abode; or caused by something like malaria in the atmosphere of
that part of the grounds in which I had found her seated."
"Very likely. The hour of sunset at this time of year is trying to
delicate constitutions. Go on."
"About three quarters of an hour ago she woke up with a loud cry, and
has been ever since in a state of great agitation, weeping violently, and
answering none of my questions. Yet she does not seem light-headed,
but rather what we call hysterical."
"You will permit me now to see her. Take comfort; in all you tell me I
see nothing to warrant serious alarm."
CHAPTER X.
To the true physician there is an inexpressible sanctity in the sick
chamber. At its threshold the more human passions quit their hold on his
heart. Love there would be profanation; even the grief permitted to
others he must put aside. He must enter that room--a calm intelligence.
He is disabled for his mission if he suffer aught to obscure the keen
quiet glance of his science. Age or youth, beauty or deformity, innocence
or guilt, merge their distinctions in one common attribute,-human
suffering appealing to human skill.
Woe to the households in which the trusted Healer feels not on his
conscience the solemn obligations of his glorious art! Reverently as in a
temple, I stood in the virgin's chamber. When her mother placed her hand
in mine, and I felt the throb of its pulse, I was aware of no quicker beat
of my own heart. I looked with a steady eye on the face more beautiful
from the flush that deepened the delicate hues of the young cheek, and the
lustre that brightened the dark blue of the wandering eyes. She did not
at first heed me, did not seem aware of my presence; but kept murmuring to
herself words which I could not distinguish.
At length, when I spoke to her, in that low, soothing tone which we
learn at the sick-bed, the expression of her face altered suddenly; she
passed the hand I did not hold over her forehead, turned round, looked at
me full and long, with unmistakable surprise, yet not as if the surprise
displeased her,--less the surprise which recoils from the sight of a
stranger than that which seems doubtfully to recognize an unexpected
friend. Yet on the surprise there seemed to creep something of
apprehension, of fear; her hand trembled, her voice quivered, as she
said,--
"Can it be, can it be? Am I awake? Mother, who is this?"
"Only a kind visitor, Dr. Fenwick, sent by Mrs. Poyntz, for I was uneasy
about you, darling. How are you now?"
"Better. Strangely better."
She removed her hand gently from mine, and with an involuntary modest
shrinking turned towards Mrs. Ashleigh, drawing her mother towards
herself, so that she became at once hidden from me.
Satisfied that there was here no delirium, nor even more than the
slight and temporary fever which often accompanies a sudden nervous attack
in constitutions peculiarly sensitive, I retired noiselessly from the
room, and went, not into that which had been occupied by the ill-fated
Naturalist, but down-stairs into the drawing-room, to write my
prescription. I had already sent the servant off with it to the chemist's
before Mrs. Ashleigh joined me.
"She seems recovering surprisingly; her forehead is cooler; she is
perfectly self-possessed, only she cannot account for her own
seizure,--cannot account either for the fainting or the agitation with
which she awoke from sleep."
"I think I can account for both. The first room in which she
entered--that in which she fainted--had its window open; the sides of the
window are overgrown with rank creeping plants in full blossom. Miss
Ashleigh had already predisposed herself to injurious effects from the
effluvia by fatigue, excitement, imprudence in sitting out at the fall of
a heavy dew. The sleep after the fainting fit was the more disturbed,
because Nature, always alert and active in subjects so young, was making
its own effort to right itself from an injury. Nature has nearly
succeeded. What I have prescribed will a little aid and accelerate that
which Nature has yet to do, and in a day or two I do not doubt that your
daughter will be perfectly restored. Only let me recommend care to avoid
exposure to the open air during the close of the day. Let her avoid also
the room in which she was first seized, for it is a strange phenomenon in
nervous temperaments that a nervous attack may, without visible cause, be
repeated in the same place where it was first experienced. You had better
shut up the chamber for at least some weeks, burn fires in it, repaint and
paper it, sprinkle chloroform. You are not, perhaps, aware that Dr. Lloyd
died in that room after a prolonged illness. Suffer me to wait till your
servant returns with the medicine, and let me employ the interval in
asking you a few questions. Miss Ashleigh, you say, never had a fainting
fit before. I should presume that she is not what we call strong. But
has she ever had any illness that alarmed you?"
"Never."
"No great liability to cold and cough, to attacks of the chest or lungs?"
"Certainly not. Still I have feared that she may have a tendency to
consumption. Do you think so? Your questions alarm me!"
"I do not think so; but before I pronounce a positive opinion, one
question more. You say you have feared a tendency to consumption. Is
that disease in her family? She certainly did not inherit it from you.
But on her father's side?"
"Her father," said Mrs. Ashleigh, with tears in her eyes, "died young,
but of brain fever, which the medical men said was brought on by over
study."
"Enough, my dear madam. What you say confirms my belief that your
daughter's constitution is the very opposite to that in which the seeds of
consumption lurk. It is rather that far nobler constitution, which the
keenness of the nervous susceptibility renders delicate but elastic,--as
quick to recover as it is to suffer."