Book: A Strange Story, Volume 2.

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CHAPTER XIII.

The next day I had just dismissed the last of my visiting patients, and
was about to enter my carriage and commence my round, when I received
a twisted note containing but these words:--

Call on me to-day, as soon as you can.

M. Poyntz.

A few minutes afterwards I was in Mrs. Poyntz's drawing-room.

"Well, Allen Fenwick" said she, "I do not serve friends by halves. No
thanks! I but adhere to a principle I have laid down for myself. I spent
last evening with the Ashleighs. Lilian is certainly much altered,--
very weak, I fear very ill, and I believe very unskilfuly treated by Dr.
Jones. I felt that it was my duty to insist on a change of physician; but
there was something else to consider before deciding who that physician
should be. I was bound, as your confidante, to consult your own scruples
of honour. Of course I could not say point-blank to Mrs. Ashleigh, 'Dr.
Fenwick admires your daughter, would you object to him as a son-in-law?'
Of course I could not touch at all on the secret with which you intrusted
me; but I have not the less arrived at a conclusion, in agreement with my
previous belief, that not being a woman of the world, Annie Ashleigh has
none of the ambition which women of the world would conceive for a
daughter who has a good fortune and considerable beauty; that her
predominant anxiety is forher child's happiness, and her predominant
fear is that her child will die. She would never oppose any attachment
which Lilian might form; and if that attachment were for one who had
preserved her daughter's life, I believe her own heart would gratefully
go with her daughter's. So far, then, as honour is concerned, all
scruples vanish."

I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy. Mrs. Poyntz dryly
continued: "You value yourself on your common-sense, and to that I address
a few words of counsel which may not be welcome to your romance. I said
that I did not think you and Lilian would suit each other in the long run;
reflection confirms me in that supposition. Do not look at me so
incredulously and so sadly. Listen, and take heed. Ask yourself what, as
a man whose days are devoted to a laborious profession, whose ambition is
entwined with its success, whose mind must be absorbed in its
pursuits,--ask yourself what kind of a wife you would have sought to win;
had not this sudden fancy for a charming face rushed over your better
reason, and obliterated all previous plans and resolutions. Surely some
one with whom your heart would have been quite at rest; by whom your
thoughts would have been undistracted from the channels into which your
calling should concentrate their flow; in short, a serene companion in the
quiet holiday of a trustful home! Is it not so?"

"You interpret my own thoughts when they have turned towards marriage.
But what is there in Lilian Ashleigh that should mar the picture you have
drawn?"

"What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in the least accords with the
picture? In the first place, the wife of a young physician should not be
his perpetual patient. The more he loves her, and the more worthy she may
be of love, the more her case will haunt him wherever he goes. When he
returns home, it is not to a holiday; the patient he most cares for, the
anxiety that most gnaws him, awaits him there."

"But, good heavens! why should Lilian Ashleigh be a perpetual patient?
The sanitary resources of youth are incalculable. And--"

"Let me stop you; I cannot argue against a physician in love! I will
give up that point in dispute, remaining convinced that there is something
in Lilian's constitution which will perplex, torment, and baffle you. It
was so with her father, whom she resembles in face and in character. He
showed no symptoms of any grave malady. His outward form was, like
Lilian's, a model of symmetry, except in this, that, like hers, it was too
exquisitely delicate; but when seemingly in the midst of perfect health,
at any slight jar on the nerves he would become alarmingly ill. I was
sure that he would die young, and he did so."

"Ay, but Mrs. Ashleigh said that his death was from brain-fever, brought
on by over-study. Rarely, indeed, do women so fatigue the brain. No
female patient, in the range of my practice, ever died of purely mental
exertion."

"Of purely mental exertion, no; but of heart emotion, many female
patients, perhaps? Oh, you own that! I know nothing about nerves; but I
suppose that, whether they act on the brain or the heart, the result to
life is much the same if the nerves be too finely strung for life's daily
wear and tear. And this is what I mean, when I say you and Lilian will
not suit. As yet, she is a mere child; her nature undeveloped, and her
affections therefore untried. You might suppose that you had won her
heart; she might believe that she gave it to you, and both be deceived.
If fairies nowadays condescended to exchange their offspring with those
of mortals, and if the popular tradition did not represent a fairy
changeling as an ugly peevish creature, with none of the grace of its
parents, I should be half inclined to suspect that Lilian was one of the
elfin people. She never seems at home on earth; and I do not think she
will ever be contented with a prosaic earthly lot. Now I have told you
why I do not think she will suit you. I must leave it to yourself to
conjecture how far you would suit her. I say this in due season, while
you may set a guard upon your impulse; while you may yet watch, and weigh,
and meditate; and from this moment on that subject I say no more. I lend
advice, but I never throw it away."

She came here to a dead pause, and began putting on her bonnet and
scarf, which lay on the table beside her. I was a little chilled by her
words, and yet more by the blunt, shrewd, hard look and manner which aided
the effect of their delivery; but the chill melted away in the sudden glow
of my heart when she again turned towards me and said,--

"Of course you guess, from these preliminary cautions, that you are
going into danger? Mrs. Ashleigh wishes to consult you about Lilian, and
I propose to take you to her house."

"Oh, my friend, my dear friend, how can I ever repay you?" I caught her
hand, the white firm hand, and lifted it to my lips.

She drew it somewhat hastily away, and laying it gently on my shoulder,
said, in a soft voice, "Poor Allen, how little the world knows either of
us! But how little perhaps we know ourselves! Come, your carriage is
here? That is right; we must put down Dr. Jones publicly and in all our
state."

In the carriage Mrs. Poyntz told me the purport of that conversation
with Mrs. Ashleigh to which I owed my re-introduction to Abbots' House.
It seems that Mr. Vigors had called early the morning after my first
visit! had evinced much discomposure on hearing that I had been summoned!
dwelt much on my injurious treatment of Dr. Lloyd, whom, as distantly
related to himself, and he (Mr. Vigors) being distantly connected with the
late Gilbert Ashleigh, he endeavoured to fasten upon his listener as one
of her husband's family, whose quarrel she was bound in honour to take up.
He spoke of me as an infidel "tainted with French doctrines," and as a
practitioner rash and presumptuous; proving his own freedom from
presumption and rashness by flatly deciding that my opinion must be
wrong. Previously to Mrs. Ashleigh's migration to L----, Mr. Vigors had
interested her in the pretended phenomena of mesmerism. He had consulted
a clairvoyante, much esteemed by poor Dr. Lloyd, as to Lilian's health,
and the clairvoyante had declared her to be constitutionally predisposed
to consumption. Mr. Vigors persuaded Mrs. Ashleigh to come at once with
him and see this clairvoyante herself, armed with a lock of Lilian's hair
and a glove she had worn, as the media of mesmerical rapport.

The clairvoyante, one of those I had publicly denounced as an impostor,
naturally enough denounced me in return. On being asked solemnly by Mr.
Vigors "to look at Dr. Fenwick and see if his influence would be
beneficial to the subject," the sibyl had become violently agitated, and
said that, "when she looked at us together, we were enveloped in a black
cloud; that this portended affliction and sinister consequences; that our
rapport was antagonistic." Mr. Vigors then told her to dismiss my image,
and conjure up that of Dr. Jones. Therewith the somnambule became more
tranquil, and said: "Dr. Jones would do well if he would be guided by
higher lights than his own skill, and consult herself daily as to the
proper remedies. The best remedy of all would be mesmerism. But since
Dr. Lloyd's death, she did not know of a mesmerist, sufficiently gifted,
in affinity with the patient." In fine, she impressed and awed Mrs.
Ashleigh, who returned in haste, summoned Dr. Jones, and dismissed
myself.

"I could not have conceived Mrs. Ashleigh to be so utterly wanting in
common-sense," said I. "She talked rationally enough when I saw her."

"She has common-sense in general, and plenty of the sense most common,"
answered Mrs. Poyntz; "but she is easily led and easily frightened
wherever her affections are concerned, and therefore, just as easily as
she had been persuaded by Mr. Vigors and terrified by the somnambule, I
persuaded her against the one, and terrified her against the other. I had
positive experience on my side, since it was clear that Lilian had been
getting rapidly worse under Dr. Jones's care. The main obstacles I had to
encounter in inducing Mrs. Ashleigh to consult you again were, first, her
reluctance to disoblige Mr. Vigors, as a friend and connection of Lilian's
father; and, secondly, her sentiment of shame in re-inviting your opinion
after having treated you with so little respect. Both these difficulties
I took on myself. I bring you to her house, and, on leaving you, I shall
go on to Mr. Vigors, and tell him what is done is my doing, and not to be
undone by him; so that matter is settled. Indeed, if you were out of the
question, I should not suffer Mr. Vigors to re-introduce all these
mummeries of clairvoyance and mesmerism into the precincts of the Hill. I
did not demolish a man I really liked in Dr. Lloyd, to set up a Dr. Jones,
whom I despise, in his stead. Clairvoyance on Abbey Hill, indeed! I saw
enough of it before."

"True; your strong intellect detected at once the absurdity of the whole
pretence,--the falsity of mesmerism, the impossibility of clairvoyance."

"No, my strong intellect did nothing of the kind. I do not know whether
mesmerism be false or clairvoyance impossible; and I don't wish to know.
All I do know is, that I saw the Hill in great danger,--young ladies
allowing themselves to be put to sleep by gentlemen, and pretending they
had no will of their own against such fascination! Improper and shocking!
And Miss Brabazon beginning to prophesy, and Mrs. Leopold Smythe
questioning her maid (whom Dr. Lloyd declared to be highly gifted) as to
all the secrets of her friends. When I saw this, I said, 'The Hill is
becoming demoralized; the Hill is making itself ridiculous; the Hill must
be saved!' I remonstrated with Dr. Lloyd as a friend; he remained
obdurate. I annihilated him as an enemy, not to me but to the State. I
slew my best lover for the good of Rome. Now you know why I took your
part,--not because I have any opinion, one way or the other, as to the
truth or falsehood of what Dr. Lloyd asserted; but I have a strong opinion
that, whether they be true or false, his notions were those which are not
to be allowed on the Hill. And so, Allen Fenwick, that matter was
settled."

Perhaps at another time I might have felt some little humiliation to learn
that I had been honoured with the influence of this great potentate not as
a champion of truth, but as an instrument of policy; and I might have
owned to some twinge of conscience in having assisted to sacrifice a
fellow-seeker after science--misled, no doubt, but preferring his
independent belief to his worldly interest--and sacrifice him to
those deities with whom science is ever at war,--the Prejudices of a
Clique sanctified into the Proprieties of the World. But at that moment
the words I heard made no perceptible impression on my mind. The gables
of Abbots' House were visible above the evergreens and lilacs; another
moment, and the carriage stopped at the door.




CHAPTER XIV.

Mrs. Ashleigh received us in the dining-room. Her manner to me, at first,
was a little confused and shy. But my companion soon communicated
something of her own happy ease to her gentler friend. After a short
conversation we all three went to Lilian, who was in a little room on the
ground-floor, fitted up as her study. I was glad to perceive that my
interdict of the deathchamber had been respected.

She reclined on a sofa near the window, which was, however, jealously
closed; the light of the bright May-day obscured by blinds and curtains; a
large fire on the hearth; the air of the room that of a hot-house,--the
ignorant, senseless, exploded system of nursing into consumption those who
are confined on suspicion of it! She did not heed us as we entered
noiselessly; her eyes were drooped languidly on the floor, and with
difficulty I suppressed the exclamation that rose to my lips on seeing
her. She seemed within the last few days so changed, and on the aspect of
the countenance there was so profound a melancholy! But as she slowly
turned at the sound of our footsteps, and her eyes met mine, a quick blush
came into the wan cheek, and she half rose, but sank back as if the effort
exhausted her. There was a struggle for breath, and a low hollow cough.
Was it possible that I had been mistaken, and that in that cough was heard
the warning knell of the most insidious enemy to youthful life?

I sat down by her side; I lured her on to talk of indifferent
subjects,--the weather, the gardens, the bird in the cage, which was
placed on the table near her. Her voice, at first low and feeble, became
gradually stronger, and her face lighted up with a child's innocent,
playful smile. No, I had not been mistaken! That was no lymphatic,
nerveless temperament, on which consumption fastens as its lawful prey;
here there was no hectic pulse, no hurried waste of the vital flame.
Quietly and gently I made my observations, addressed my questions,
applied my stethoscope; and when I turned my face towards her mother's
anxious, eager eyes, that face told my opinion; for her mother sprang
forward, clasped my hand, and said, through her struggling tears,--

"You smile! You see nothing to fear?"

"Fear! No, indeed! You will soon be again yourself, Miss Ashleigh, will
you not?"

"Yes," she said, with her sweet laugh, "I shall be well now very soon.
But may I not have the window open; may I not go into the garden? I so
long for fresh air."

"No, no, darling," exclaimed Mrs. Ashleigh, "not while the east winds
last. Dr. Jones said on no account. On no account, Dr. Fenwick, eh?"

"Will you take my arm, Miss Ashleigh, for a few turns up and down the
room?" said I. "We will then see how far we may rebel against Dr. Jones."

She rose with some little effort, but there was no cough. At first her
step was languid; it became lighter and more elastic after a few moments.

"Let her come out," said I to Mrs. Ashleigh. "The wind is not in the
east, and, while we are out, pray bid your servant lower to the last bar
in the grate that fire,--only fit for Christmas."

"But--"

"Ah, no buts! He is a poor doctor who is not a stern despot."

So the straw hat and mantle were sent for. Lilian was wrapped with
unnecessary care, and we all went forth into the garden. Involuntarily we
took the way to the Monk's Well, and at every step Lilian seemed to revive
under the bracing air and temperate sun. We paused by the well.

"You do not feel fatigued, Miss Ashleigh?"

"No."

"But your face seems changed. It is grown sadder."

"Not sadder."

"Sadder than when I first saw it,--saw it when you were seated here!" I
said this in a whisper. I felt her hand tremble as it lay on my arm.

"You saw me seated here!"

"Yes. I will tell you how some day."

Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and there was in them that same surprise
which I had noticed on my first visit,--a surprise that perplexed me,
blended with no displeasure, but yet with a something of vague alarm.

We soon returned to the house.

Mrs. Ashleigh made me a sign to follow her into the drawing-room, leaving
Mrs. Poyntz with Lilian.

"Well?" said she, tremblingly.

"Permit me to see Dr. Jones's prescriptions. Thank you. Ay, I thought
so. My dear madam, the mistake here has been in depressing nature instead
of strengthening; in narcotics instead of stimulants. The main stimulants
which leave no reaction are air and light. Promise me that I may have my
own way for a week,--that all I recommend will be implicitly heeded?"

"I promise. But that cough,--you noticed it?"

"Yes. The nervous system is terribly lowered, and nervous exhaustion is a
strange impostor; it imitates all manner of complaints with which it has
no connection. The cough will soon disappear! But pardon my question.
Mrs. Poyntz tells me that you consulted a clairvoyants about your
daughter. Does Miss Ashleigh know that you did so?"

"No; I did not tell her."

"I am glad of that. And pray, for Heaven's sake, guard her against all
that may set her thinking on such subjects. Above all, guard her against
concentring attention on any malady that your fears erroneously ascribe to
her. It is amongst the phenomena of our organization that you cannot
closely rivet your consciousness on any part of the frame, however
healthy, but it will soon begin to exhibit morbid sensibility. Try to fix
all your attention on your little finger for half an hour, and before the
half hour is over the little finger will be uneasy, probably even
painful. How serious, then, is the danger to a young girl, at the age in
which imagination is most active, most intense, if you force upon her a
belief that she is in danger of a mortal disease! It is a peculiarity of
youth to brood over the thought of early death much more resignedly, much
more complacently, than we do in maturer years. Impress on a young
imaginative girl, as free from pulmonary tendencies as you and I are, the
conviction that she must fade away into the grave, and though she may not
actually die of consumption, you instil slow poison into her system. Hope
is the natural aliment of youth. You impoverish nourishment where you
discourage hope. As soon as this temporary illness is over, reject for
your daughter the melancholy care which seems to her own mind to mark her
out from others of her age. Rear her for the air, which is the kindest
life-giver; to sleep with open windows: to be out at sunrise. Nature
will do more for her than all our drugs can do. You have been hitherto
fearing Nature; now trust to her."

Here Mrs. Poyntz joined us, and having, while I had been speaking, written
my prescription and some general injunctions, I closed my advice with an
appeal to that powerful protectress.

"This, my dear madam, is a case in which I need your aid, and I ask it.
Miss Ashleigh should not be left with no other companion than her mother.
A change of faces is often as salutary as a change of air. If you could
devote an hour or two this very evening to sit with Miss Ashleigh, to talk
to her with your usual cheerfulness, and--"

"Annie," interrupted Mrs. Poyntz, "I will come and drink tea with you at
half-past seven, and bring my knitting; and perhaps, if you ask him, Dr.
Fenwick will come too! He can be tolerably entertaining when he likes it."

"It is too great a tax on his kindness, I fear," said Mrs. Ashleigh.
"But," she added cordially, "I should be grateful indeed if he would spare
us an hour of his time."

I murmured an assent which I endeavoured to make not too joyous.

"So that matter is settled," said Mrs. Poyntz; "and now I shall go to Mr.
Vigors and prevent his further interference."

"Oh, but, Margaret, pray don't offend him,--a connection of my poor dear
Gilbert's. And so tetchy! I am sure I do not know how you'll manage
to--"

"To get rid of him? Never fear. As I manage everything and everybody,"
said Mrs. Poyntz, bluntly. So she kissed her friend on the forehead, gave
me a gracious nod, and, declining the offer of my carriage, walked with
her usual brisk, decided tread down the short path towards the town.

Mrs. Ashleigh timidly approached me, and again the furtive hand bashfully
insinuated the hateful fee.

"Stay," said I; "this is a case which needs the most constant watching. I
wish to call so often that I should seem the most greedy of doctors if my
visits were to be computed at guineas. Let me be at ease to effect my
cure; my pride of science is involved in it. And when amongst all the
young ladies of the Hill you can point to none with a fresher bloom, or a
fairer promise of healthful life, than the patient you intrust to my care,
why, then the fee and the dismissal. Nay, nay; I must refer you to our
friend Mrs. Poyntz. It was so settled with her before she brought me here
to displace Dr. Jones." Therewith I escaped.




CHAPTER XV.

In less than a week Lilian was convalescent; in less than a fortnight she
regained her usual health,--nay, Mrs. Ashleigh declared that she had never
known her daughter appear so cheerful and look so well. I had established
a familiar intimacy at Abbots' House; most of my evenings were spent
there. As horse exercise formed an important part of my advice, Mrs.
Ashleigh had purchased a pretty and quiet horse for her daughter; and,
except the weather was very unfavourable, Lilian now rode daily with
Colonel Poyntz, who was a notable equestrian, and often accompanied by
Miss Jane Poyntz, and other young ladies of the Hill. I was generally
relieved from my duties in time to join her as she returned homewards.
Thus we made innocent appointments, openly, frankly, in her mother's
presence, she telling me beforehand in what direction excursions had been
planned with Colonel Poyntz, and I promising to fall in with the party--if
my avocations would permit. At my suggestion, Mrs. Ashleigh now opened
her house almost every evening to some of the neighbouring families;
Lilian was thus habituated to the intercourse of young persons of her own
age. Music and dancing and childlike games made the old house gay. And
the Hill gratefully acknowledged to Mrs. Poyntz, "that the Ashleighs were
indeed a great acquisition."

But my happiness was not uncheckered. In thus unselfishly surrounding
Lilian with others, I felt the anguish of that jealousy which is
inseparable from those earlier stages of love, when the lover as yet has
won no right to that self-confidence which can only spring from the
assurance that he is loved.

In these social reunions I remained aloof from Lilian. I saw her courted
by the gay young admirers whom her beauty and her fortune drew around
her,--her soft face brightening in the exercise of the dance, which the
gravity of my profession rather than my years forbade to join; and her
laugh, so musically subdued, ravishing my ear and fretting my heart as if
the laugh were a mockery on my sombre self and my presumptuous dreams.
But no, suddenly, shyly, her eyes would steal away from those about her,
steal to the corner in which I sat, as if they missed me, and, meeting my
own gaze, their light softened before they turned away; and the colour on
her cheek would deepen, and to her lip there came a smile different from
the smile that it shed on others. And then--and then--all jealousy, all
sadness vanished, and I felt the glory which blends with the growing
belief that we are loved.

In that diviner epoch of man's mysterious passion, when ideas of
perfection and purity, vague and fugitive before, start forth and
concentre themselves round one virgin shape,--that rises out from the sea
of creation, welcomed by the Hours and adorned by the Graces,--how the
thought that this archetype of sweetness and beauty singles himself from
the millions, singles himself for her choice, ennobles and lifts up his
being! Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that
mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like himself, yet for
a while the illusion has grandeur. Though it comes from the senses which
shall later oppress and profane it, the senses at first shrink into shade,
awed and hushed by the presence that charms them. All that is brightest
and best in the man has soared up like long-dormant instincts of Heaven,
to greet and to hallow what to him seems life's fairest dream of the
heavenly! Take the wings from the image of Love, and the god disappears
from the form!

Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment's relief
from it sufficed for my rapture. But I had a cause for disquiet less
acute but less varying than jealousy.

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