CHAPTER IX.

SOMETHING TOO MUCH FOR GRATITUDE.

By this time Mr. Hossack and his friend had come from the pleasant country road into the shabbiest outskirt of Stillmington, that outskirt which contained Marlow-street. Strange that even in so select a town as Stillmington, Poverty will set up its tents.

The shop had been shut some time, but the door stood ajar, and a light burnt dimly within. Geoffrey and his companion were expected. Miss Grabbit was yawning over a tattered novel in her accustomed place behind the counter.

‘O, is it the doctor, sir?’ she exclaimed, brightening. ‘Will you walk up-stairs, please? Mother’s with the little girl, and she’s been sleeping beautiful. I feel sure she’s took a turn.’

‘Is Mrs. Bertram up-stairs?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘No, she’s lying down a bit on our sofa in there,’ pointing to the closed door of communication between the shop and parlour. ‘She was right down worn out, and mother persuaded her to try and get a little rest. Mother will take all your directions, sir,’ she added to Lucius.

That gentleman bowed, but said nothing. A curious mother this! The mothers he knew were wont to hang upon his words as on the sacred sentences of an oracle. He followed Geoffrey up the narrow stairs to the little bedroom where the child lay asleep. The pure spotless look of the small chamber struck him, and the beauty of the child’s face was no common beauty. There was something in it which impressed him curiously—something that seemed familiar—familiar as a half-remembered dream. Good Heaven, was it not his dead sister’s face that this one recalled to him—the face of the little sister who died years ago?

The fancy moved him deeply; and his hand trembled a little as he lightly raised the bedclothes from the child’s throat and chest, with that gentle touch of the doctor’s skilful hand, and bent down to listen to the breathing. All was satisfactory. He went through his examination calmly enough, that transient emotion once conquered; felt the slender wrist, performed that unpleasant operation with a silver spoon to which we have all submitted our unwilling throats at divers periods, and then pronounced that all was going on well.

He had gone round the bed to the side facing the door, in order to get nearer to his patient, who lay nearer this side than the other. He sat by the pillow, and gave his directions to Mrs. Grabbit without looking up from the little girl, whose hot hand lay gently held in his, while his grave eyes were bent upon the small fever-flushed face. Geoffrey had entered softly during the last few moments, and stood at the foot of the bed.

When Lucius had finished his instructions as to treatment, he looked up.

The door opposite the bed was open, and a woman stood upon the threshold—a tall slim figure dressed in black, a pale anxious face, beautiful even in its sadness.

At sight of that silent figure, the surgeon started from his seat with a smothered cry of surprise. The sad eyes met his steadily with an imploring look, a look that for him spoke plainly enough.

Geoffrey looked at him wonderingly, perplexed by that startled movement.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. But I saw a lady looking in at that door. The mother perhaps.’

Geoffrey darted into the sitting-room. Yes she was there, standing by the window in the wan light of a week-old moon, with tears streaming down her face.

‘My dear Mrs. Bertram, pray, pray do not distress yourself!’ cried Geoffrey, to whom the office of consoler was new and strange. ‘All is going on well; nothing could be more satisfactory—Lucius says so. She will be herself again in a few days.’

‘Thank God, and thank your friend for me,’ she said, in a voice choked with sobs. ‘I could not rest down-stairs; I wanted to hear what he said. Tell him I thank him with all my heart.’

‘Thank him with your own lips,’ pleaded Geoffrey; ‘he will value your words far above mine. And you don’t know what a good fellow he is.’

‘Let Mrs. Bertram feel assured that I am only too happy to have been of use,’ said the voice of Lucius from the threshold.

Mrs. Bertram hurried to the door, where the surgeon’s figure stood, tall and dark, on the unlighted landing.

‘O, let me speak to him, let me take his hand!’ she cried, with uncontrollable agitation; and the next moment stood face to face with Lucius Davoren, with her hand clasped in his.

They could hardly see each other’s faces, but that was a lingering handclasp. Geoffrey stood a little way apart, watching them with some slight wonder, and thinking that quite so much gratitude could hardly be necessary even for a doctor who had travelled over a hundred miles to write a prescription for an idolised child.

‘It’s a pity I’m not in the medical line myself,’ he thought, somewhat bitterly; and yet he had been anxious that Mrs. Bertram should acknowledge his friend’s services.

He reflected that a doating mother was doubtless a foolish creature. He must not be angry with his divinity if she seemed hysterical, or even in a state bordering on distraction.

‘Come, Lucius,’ he said; ‘Mrs. Bertram has gone through no end of agitation to-day, or rather yesterday, for it’s past midnight. We had better leave her to rest.’

‘Yes,’ said Lucius, in a slow thoughtful tone, ‘good-night. I will come to see the little girl again early to-morrow morning—say at eight o’clock—as I must leave Stillmington soon after nine.’

‘O, come,’ remonstrated Geoffrey, ‘you must give yourself a holiday to-morrow.’

‘Impossible. Pain and disease will not give my patients a holiday.’

‘But surely their complaints can stand over for a day or so,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Parish patients can’t have such complicated diseases. I thought all the worst evils flesh is heir to came from high living.’

‘There are numerous diseases that come from low feeding, or almost no feeding at all. No; I must go back by an early train to-morrow. But I should like to see you at eight o’clock, if that will not be too soon, Mrs. Bertram.’

‘Not at all too soon,’ she answered; and they departed, Geoffrey with an uncomfortable foreboding that, so soon as the little girl recovered, his occupation would be gone. What other excuse could he find for intruding himself upon Mrs. Bertram’s solitude?

‘Well, Lucius,’ he began, as soon as they were clear of the house, ‘what do you think of her?’

‘I think she is very handsome,’ answered Lucius, with a thoughtful slowness which was peculiarly irritating to his friend. ‘What more can I think of her after so brief an interview? She seems,’ with an almost painful effort, ‘very fond of her child. I am very sorry for her unprotected and solitary position; but—’

‘But what?’ cried Geoffrey impatiently. ‘How you torment the soul of a fellow with your measured syllables!’

‘I think the very wisest—nay, the only rational—thing you can do is to forget her.’

‘Never! And why should I wish to forget her?’

‘Because all surrounding circumstances point to the conclusion that she is no fitting wife for you. A woman so lovely, so accomplished, would hardly lead so lonely a life—I don’t speak of her professional career, since that is a natural use for a woman to make of a fine voice if she wants to get her own living—if there were not some strong reason for her seclusion—some painful secret in the past, some fatal tie in the present. She knows you to be young, generous, wealthy, and her devoted slave; yet she rejects your devotion. She would scarcely repulse such a lover were she free to marry. Believe me, there is something in the background, some obstacle which you will never overcome. Be warned in time, my dear true-hearted Geoffrey; don’t waste the best years of your life in the pursuit of a woman who can never reward your affection, who was not born to make you happy. There are plenty of women in the world quite as lovely, and—I won’t say better worthy of you,’ with ever so faint a quiver of his voice, ‘but better able to bless your love.’

‘When I meet such a woman I will forget her,’ answered the other. ‘I thought you were a better judge of human nature, Lucius; I thought you would be able to recognise a good and pure woman when you saw one. True that you had seen very little of this one; yet you saw her with her fond mother’s heart bared before you; you saw her warm and grateful nature. You had sneered at her as a heartless mother: see how facts belied your unkind suspicion. You saw her moved to passionate tears by the mere thought of your kindness to her child.’

‘For God’s sake, say no more about her!’ cried Lucius, with sudden passion. ‘The subject will breed a quarrel between us. You wanted my advice, and I have given it you—dispassionately. Reason, not feeling, has influenced my words. Pure, good, true: yes, I would willingly believe her all that, did I not—did not circumstances point to the other conclusion. It is hard to look in her face and say, This is not a woman to be loved and trusted. But are you the man to endure a shameful secret in your wife’s past history? Could you face the hazard of some cruel discovery after marriage—a discovery which should show you the woman you love as a victim, perhaps, but not without guilt?’

‘I will never believe her less than she seems to me at this moment!’ cried Geoffrey. ‘What makes you speculate on her past life? why suppose that there must be some ignominious secret? Only because she gets her own living, I suppose; because she is obliged to travel about the world without her own maid, and has no footman, or carriage, or circle of polite acquaintances, and possibly has never been presented at court. I wonder at you, Davoren; I could not have believed you were so narrow-minded.’

‘Think me narrow-minded, if you like, but be warned by me. My voice to-night is the voice of the majority, which always takes the narrowest view of every question. You have asked for my advice, and you shall have it, however distasteful. Don’t marry a woman of whom you know so little as you know about Mrs. Bertram.’

‘Thanks for your advice. Of course I know you mean well, old fellow; but if Mrs. Bertram would take me for her husband to-morrow, I should be the proudest man in Stillmington, or in Christendom.’

‘I think I know enough of her to feel very sure she will never consent to marry you,’ said Lucius.

‘You are quick in forming conclusions,’ exclaimed Geoffrey, with a somewhat distrustful glance at his friend, ‘considering that you saw Mrs. Bertram for something less than five minutes.’

They arrived at the hotel, where Geoffrey, although displeased with his friend, was not forgetful of hospitality’s sacred rites. He ordered a spatchcock and a bottle of Roederer, and over this repast the two young men sat till late, talking of that subject which filled Geoffrey’s heart and mind. Like a child, he was one moment angry with his friend, and in the next eager to hear all that Lucius could say about his passion and its object—eager for advice which he had no idea of following; bent upon proving, by love’s eloquent oratory, that his divinity was all that is perfect among women. And so the night waned; and Geoffrey and his guest were the last among the inmates of that respectable family hotel to retire to their chambers in the long corridor, where the old-fashioned eight-day clock ticked solemnly in the deep of night.

* * * * *

Geoffrey would fain have presented himself in Marlow-street next morning with his friend, but having no reasonable excuse for visiting Mrs. Bertram at such an early hour, he contented himself with accompanying Lucius to the end of the street and then walking on to the station, there to await his coming.

He had to wait a good deal longer than he had expected, and as the slow minute hand crept round the dial of the station clock his impatience increased to fever point. He had a good mind to go back to Marlow-street. What in heaven’s name could Lucius have to say about that simple case of scarlatina which could not be said in a quarter of an hour? Ten minutes had been enough last night; to-day he had been more than an hour. Nine had struck on that slow-going station clock. The next up-train went at 9.15. Did Lucius mean to miss it, after all his talk about his London patients? As it was, he could not be in London till the afternoon. It seemed to Geoffrey as if this morning visit to the sick child was somewhat supererogatory, since Lucius had declared the case to be one of the simplest.

Fretting himself thus he left the station, and on the windy high road between trim hedges, in which the hawthorn was sprouting greenly, and the little white flower-buds already began to show themselves, saw Lucius hurrying towards him at a sharp pace.

‘I thought you meant to lose the next train,’ said Geoffrey somewhat sharply. ‘Well, what’s your news?’

‘The little girl has passed a very quiet night and is going on capitally, and you need have no farther alarm.’

‘I didn’t ask you about the little girl. You would hardly spend an hour talking about the scarlatina—Keep her cool, and give her the mixture regularly; and as soon as she is able to eat it let her have the wing of a chicken—as if one didn’t know all that bosh. Why, you doctors rattle it off just as we used to say our Latin verbs at Winchester—_amo_, _amas_, _amat_, and so on. Of course, you have been talking about other things—drawing Mrs. Bertram out, I suppose? Come, Lucius, we’ve only five minutes. What did you think of her to-day?’

‘The same as I thought last night. That she is a beautiful and noble woman, but that her past life has been overshadowed by some sad secret which we are never likely to know.’

‘And you still warn me against her?’

‘Still, with all my strength. Admire her, and respect her for all that is admirable in her nature, pity her for her misfortunes, but keep aloof.’

‘Thanks for your remarkably disinterested advice,’ said Geoffrey, with a bitter laugh. ‘After devoting an hour of your precious time to this lady’s society, you arrive at the conclusion that she is the last woman in the world for me. Yet you pay that child an unnecessary visit this morning in order to see the mother once more, and you come to me with a face as pale as—as the countenance of treachery itself.’

‘Geoffrey!’

‘However, as I don’t mean to take your advice it makes very little difference. By the bye, here’s your fee, Lucius; I promised Mrs. Bertram to see to that.’ And he tried to thrust a folded cheque into the surgeon’s hand.

This Lucius rejected with infinite scorn.

‘What! you first ask my opinion, then call me a traitor because it happens not to jump with your own fancy, and then offer me money for a service for which you must know I could never dream of accepting payment. How utterly this foolish infatuation has changed you! But I have no time for discussion. Good-bye. There goes the bell, and I have to get my ticket.’

They ran into the station. Geoffrey, penitent already, stuck close to his friend until Lucius was seated in the second-class carriage which was to take him back to London and hard labour. Then he stretched out his hand.

‘Shake hands, old fellow,’ he said, with a remorseful look; ‘of course I didn’t mean anything; or only in a Pickwickian sense. Good-bye.’

The train bore off its burden and left Geoffrey stranded on the platform, perplexed, unhappy.

‘I daresay he is right,’ he said to himself, ‘and I _know_ that he is a good fellow. Yet why did he stay so long with her, and why did he look so pale and thoughtful when I met him?’