Since that first interview Dr. Jones had had with the poor wife his
feelings of admiration and pity had changed a good deal.
The explanation of her position lowered her considerably in his eyes.
Perhaps no one sees the utter emptiness of life, and the non-importance
of wealth, more than a medical man, who sees how little happiness it
brings to any one; how little (standing by itself) it does for poor
humanity.
He was disgusted when he saw that there was apparently no excuse for
her; and he was shocked when he saw a farewell between her and a young
man as he passed Mr. Skidd's shop, because here was evidently a lover.
Her face he could not see, but Sir Albert's expression was unmistakable.
Margaret, having no clue to his coldness and evident disapproval, felt
speaking difficult, far more difficult than she had thought.
"I want to speak to you," she said, colouring under his searching gaze.
"I want to tell you about my husband. I am very miserable, and I am very
much frightened."
"Humph!" said Dr. Jones, "let us leave the misery upon one side, and
talk about your fears; what makes you afraid?"
"My husband's violence. He was so very violent yesterday and this
morning; I am afraid of his doing me an injury--I am afraid because of
my child," and Margaret shivered.
"What made him violent?"
"He cannot bear my going out. He never allows me to go out, I am a
prisoner here!"
He remembered having seen her out, and in his heart believed she was
deliberately telling him a lie.
"What do you want to go out for?" he asked, roughly. "What do you mean
by 'going out'?"
"I want to see my sister oftener."
Another lie he thought. "Why don't you brave him and go?" he said,
trying her; "you might leave him altogether."
"Because I am told that if I leave he can keep my child!" said Margaret,
passionately.
"Of course he can."
"It seems so hard," she said.
"Does it? I do not agree with you; why should a man be deprived of his
child any more than a woman?"
"But if a man--is--mad?" whispered poor Margaret.
"Oh, that's where you are, is it! Well, I do not think that word is
applicable here. There is temper, and there _was_ drink. You will
forgive my saying that, as you married Mr. Drayton, you took him for
better or for worse. I do not think his health is good, and his temper
is--well, irritable--that is the worst."
"Then you cannot help me!" and poor Margaret, who had hoped much from
him, felt cruelly disappointed.
"How can I help you?" he asked, impatiently. "You wish me, _for some
reason of your own_, to say that your husband is mad--which I have seen
nothing to prove--and I will _not_ say what I do not believe."
"I do not wish you to say it; I wish nothing but what is true and right:
but I cannot understand how you, a medical man and experienced, can
think Mr. Drayton quite right," pleaded Margaret; "if you could only see
him as I have seen him!" and she stopped, afraid of betraying emotion to
one so evidently lacking in sympathy.
"Of course, if I saw him with your eyes," began the doctor, coldly, all
the more upon his guard because he was conscious that in spite of
disapproval, in spite of what he knew and what he had seen, he was
beginning to be influenced by her passionate appeal to him.
"We need not discuss this matter any longer," said Margaret, rising, and
looking very fair and very pale as she stood in the full morning light.
"For some unknown reason--unknown to me--you are not my friend; after
all, you do not know me. If I find my life unbearable, I have friends
who will help me!"
"Now, Mrs. Drayton, answer me a plain question," and the doctor, rising
also, looked at her with a curious expression of mingled distrust and
rising interest, "What have you to complain of? Is your husband rough to
you. Has he ever done you any injury?"
Poor Margaret!
"He is rough," she said, with hesitation in her voice; "he uses language
new to me. But if you can see no strangeness in his manner...." Her
voice died away, her hopes had vanished; she had a horrible and
undefinable dread--she had seen a wildness in his eyes, which in a less
degree she had seen when she had first known him; but our own
convictions, unsupported by any facts, are inconclusive to other
people--and Dr. Jones, seeing in her a very lovely woman, but one
evidently able to deceive, and who did not hesitate to say she had no
liberty, when he had seen her alone and out, was steeled against her.
He laid down the law with all the authority of a man who is fully aware
of having right on his side.
"Madam, if you have any one tangible grievance--if your husband ever
struck you, or ill-treated you in any way--then I should see my way to
interfering in your behalf; the law protects you in such a case."
"Yes," Margaret answered, bitterly, "you will interfere, and the law
will protect (?) me when I am injured; there is no help for me till the
necessity for help has passed away."
She bowed and left him--knowing that her words were useless, and went to
try and comfort herself, and _try_ and bear her fate without a murmur.
Had she not sinned, and against all her convictions, with her eyes open,
and fearing this very thing!
"What a very illogical mind she has," said Dr. Jones, as he stalked
downstairs, comfortably satisfied that he had been firm, and that her
grace, the pathos of her voice, and her great beauty, had alike been
disregarded. Justice, without doubt, was on his side--he thought.
But as he stepped on the last step something made him sensible that
there might be a little truth in what she said. Though she had told him
a deliberate untruth, all might not be false.
He changed his mind about going home at once, and he went to see Mr.
Drayton instead. He found him very quiet, rather depressed, without a
trace of excitement in his manner.
Nothing during the interview transpired to give the slightest colour to
the wife's dread; and the doctor left, perfectly convinced in his own
mind that Mrs. Drayton was quite in the wrong, in more ways than one.
Just as he reached the front door and was full of his own good sense, he
heard a sound that startled him, a loud soul-less meaningless laugh, and
as the front door shut upon him, pulled by his own hand, a quick, sharp
misgiving crossed his mind, and he wished he had seen the man-servant.
He had not thought it necessary. But his own convictions soon banished
that sudden thought, and the result of his visit was to confirm his
views and to give rise to many moral reflections on the way in which
glaring faults may be marked by unusual personal advantages.
His wife, who was shrewd and kind-hearted, but who had not that deep
estimation for his talents which goes far to make the conjugal
relationship happy, was interested in the poor wife and mother living in
such a singularly secluded manner. She had only seen her, no one ever
being allowed an entrance to the Limes, by Margaret's own wish and
consent, when she had found that her husband had a terrible tendency,
and which she had no wish to alter had she been able to do so, now the
dread had changed.
Mrs. Jones was not a great admirer of her husband's abilities--indeed
she had lived to find him peculiarly dull in a great many things; but he
was very kind to her, and admired her quickness immensely, so that
though the balance was on the wrong side still it was there.
Everything passing in his mind she could generally read pretty clearly,
and he did not object to her doing so. He was always rather relieved
when she brought her mind to bear upon some perplexity; and, though as
far as medical cases went, he was very discreet, there were occasions,
of which the present was one, when it was a substantial comfort to have
his mode of action approved of by her.
Mrs. Jones was one of the women who have no inclination for prolonged
meals, and it was always a trial to her the deliberation and great
enjoyment evinced by her husband on these occasions. Some people have no
talent for eating, and except for his sake Mrs. Jones would never have
gone through that ceremony--to which so many cling--of having a
succession of dishes presented one after another, as though you could
not have one thing and finish with it, she herself would say; and her
luncheon as often as not, consisted of an apple or two which she
crunched between her fine white teeth, and a biscuit, the hardness of
which tested their capability.
But she was wise enough to understand that a good dinner was really an
essential to Mr. Jones, and, without caring about it herself, she threw
herself into the subject, and the result was eminently satisfactory.
She bore the prolonged meals, in which her rapid demolition was a
standing grievance, with some work on her lap, work which employed her
active fingers and left her mind free to apply to any of her husband's
interests at the moment.
He had at one time considered this to be "not quite the thing," and had
questioned its propriety.
"But it is much better for you, if you could only see it," she had
answered. "The work does not prevent my talking, and my dinner does,"
which argument was unassailable.
Mr. Jones had even come to consider there was great merit in the
arrangement, as his wife never hurried him now, or showed by any little
feminine indications that the time seemed long.
"I am glad, my dear," he said, when he had arrived at that pleasant
stage of affairs when his appetite was partially satisfied, and had yet
to be satiated, "I am very glad your acquaintance with Mrs. Drayton went
no further."
"Why?"
"I am afraid, my dear (speaking of course in strictest confidence), that
she is not quite a straightforward person."
"I hardly know any one I consider quite straightforward, myself,"
answered Mrs. Jones calmly. "What has she done?"
"I think you are making rather a sweeping assertion, my dear," he said,
eyeing with a momentary misgiving a roast duck; it looked overdone.
"Never mind my assertions, but tell me what that poor thing has done?"
"Why do you say that _poor_ thing? I really do not see why she is to be
pitied."
"Don't you? well I do. Do you call the life she leads a proper life for
a young creature accustomed probably to all the freedom of a country
life in Scotland? I often think of her, and I declare sometimes I should
like to force my way into that dismal house, and take her and her child
out of it." Mrs. Jones spoke with a vehemence quite surprising to her
husband.
"Really, my dear," he said, "the rapid conclusions you arrive at are ...
bewildering to my slower mode of thought. You have seen Mrs. Drayton
once, and you are ready immediately to credit her with weariness, and
the house is a substantial house and very well furnished, and...."
"Do you suppose curtains and carpets can make a woman happy?" asked Mrs.
Jones, severely.
"They do something towards it, I think, judging from your own great
anxiety upon the subject."
Mr. Jones had some reason for this statement.
"All I have to say is that that poor young creature's heart is
broken--yes, broken. I never saw any one so thoroughly and utterly
miserable as she is."
Mr. Jones was startled but not convinced.
"I saw her the other day, though not to speak to," Mr. Jones went on.
"She went to Skidd's, and I was going in also, but as _you_ objected to
my being mixed up with her I drew back. A friend of hers happened to go
there on business, and she welcomed him, and I saw her face, and its
expression has haunted me ever since."
"As you saw her out with your own eyes, you can understand that when she
talks of never going out that is not a perfectly true statement," and
Mr. Jones, who was longing to have his own slight misgivings set at rest
by his wife, took off his spectacles, rubbed imaginary specs off their
polished surface, and replaced them.
"One swallow does not make a summer," said Mrs. Jones, with as much
contempt in her meaning as she thought befitting. "It is a fact known to
every one here that she has only been seen once, and that she is kept
exactly as though the Limes was a prison and her husband a jailer."
"Really, my dear, in these days such expressions are quite absurd."
"Their being absurd does not make them false, and I trust that if you
can in any way help that poor thing you will."
"If she went out once she can do so again."
"Not at all a certainty; she may have managed it once, and yet because
she did so it may be made impossible for her."
"It strikes me, my dear, that you know more about it all than I
imagined," said Dr. Jones, with a sudden perception which for him was
really acute.
"I know this, that Mr. Drayton refused her sister shelter on the worst
night we have had; that the sisters are orphans devotedly attached to
each other; that one sister is ill, and that the other is a prisoner,
therefore they cannot meet. They have one or two friends, and the only
thing that puzzles me is why the friends do not interfere."
"My dear," and Dr. Jones spoke with great irritation, "how can any one
interfere? There is nothing wrong about the man. I saw him to-day. I am
not going to proclaim him mad to please his wife or any one else."
"Then she appealed to you?"
"She told me a long story. She wanted more liberty. How can I
interfere?"
"And she asked you if her husband was--_that_?"
"Was what?"
"Mad."
"She said something, but as I had seen her out, and she said she could
not go out, I did not feel very much inclined to take her view of the
question," said the doctor, obstinately.
"Why are you prejudiced against her?"
"Because I saw her meet the _friend_ you speak of, and I drew my own
conclusions."
"Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mrs. Jones, very
warmly, "thoroughly ashamed of yourself. As it happens the meeting was a
pure accident. Mr. Skidd has been publishing some poetry; he told me
about it at first; in fact he showed the first poem to me, and asked me
what I thought," said Mrs. Jones, not without a pardonable little glow
of satisfaction. "I thought it beautiful. Then the editor of some
magazine in London came down and arranged to have all she wrote. He
called by accident and met Mrs. Drayton, and they talked business. How
you can put such an ill-natured construction on so simple a thing I
cannot make out."
"My dear, I really--putting two and two together--I thought----"
"I shall be afraid of speaking to any one now for fear of your seeing
evil in it--Mr. Paul Lyons, for instance--I shall refuse to shake hands
with him."
"My dear, I wish you would not go off at a tangent like that. It is a
very different thing. You are not in her position; you are not young and
beautiful, and.... What in the world is the matter now?"
His wife rushed out of the room, and disdained answering him.
In the meantime Jean was bravely facing all her difficulties. Her
principal difficulty was that she had a woman to deal with in the shape
of a landlady who was what Jean termed a "slithery" creature. When she
found that Jean looked after things she was impertinent; but that had
no effect. Jean looked over her head and ignored her altogether.
Then she took to being disobliging, and would neither answer a bell nor
give any help. Her next move was to let the kitchen fire out
perpetually, and when Jean wanted to heat some soup and get anything hot
there was no fire.
She calculated that as Grace was very ill and could not be moved, she
would get the best of it in the long run.
But Jean was not a woman who would allow herself to be put out of it
without giving her opinion and trying to remedy matters. She had a great
contempt for the "wishy-washy" voice and untidy ways of Mrs. Cripps, a
woman who lived in a black cap, and knew nothing of any but baker's
bread, and could neither make "a scone or even oat-bread, let be
bannocks," Jean said to Grace when she was dwelling upon the
shortcomings of the house one day.
"I am glad," said Grace, laughing. "I never cared for oat-bread. I
always feel, if I ever try to eat it, that I am eating sand; please do
not be offended."
"I'll take no offence where none is meant," said Jean, quietly; "and
people are not a' born wi' a good taste."
The landlady tried in vain to speak her high-bred English, and to put
herself above her. There are a good many like her that cannot
distinguish between provincialism and vulgarity. Jean had a ready
tongue, and, though she assured Grace that she kept it well between her
teeth, the landlady heard it occasionally, and felt it in all its
roughness.
The skirmishes were invariably amusing to Grace, who used to lie in her
chair and laugh over the scenes afterwards, and tell them to Paul Lyons,
who showed how little any real love had existed for her by the way in
which he still came to see her and to hear of Margaret.
She could not help asking herself what she gained in all this
unhappiness; she was as badly off as ever. She was still dependent on
Mr. Sandford. She was living in a tiny lodging. She disliked the doctor,
and never would see him if she could help it, and the sister, who had
all their lives been her one great stay and support, had no liberty to
come and see her.
She had planned her life so differently, and it came vividly before her.
How proud she had always been of the cleverness, which tested at length,
had failed in every particular. But once she rallied, hers was not at
all the nature to dwell upon unpleasant things. The first day she went
out she drove to the Limes, taking Jean with her, and they asked for
Mrs. Drayton.
"Mrs. Drayton is out," said the man-servant, who did not dare say
otherwise.
"Hoot! man," said Jean, "you need not tell me that. Why, Mrs. Drayton is
never out."
"Shut that door immediately," called out an angry voice, and Mr.
Drayton, looking very haggard and wild, came to the door.
"My sister! I want to see my sister," and Grace held out her hands
imploringly.
Mr. Drayton came down the steps and looked at her; then he made a
perfectly diabolical face, burst into a roar of laughter, and slammed
the door in her face.
Grace, weak and terrified, clung to Jean as they went home. "What shall
we do? What shall we do?" she sobbed. "Oh, Jean! that man is mad, and
she, my poor Margaret, is in his power!"
"Whist, my dear bairn," said Jean, who was nigh upon tears herself.
"Whist! I think we will be guided," she said, reverently, and she sat
silent for a few minutes. "I doubt we will have to speak to the police,"
she added, as that brilliant idea came to console her.
Grace wrote a letter to Mrs. Dorriman that night, in which she told her
all she knew, all she feared, for the first time; she expressed her
gratitude for all the kindness she had received; for the first time she
acknowledged that she was to blame, and she asked to express something
of her feeling to Mr. Sandford.
This done she felt more happy than she had done lately, and rose next
day trusting that in some way her sister's freedom would be brought
about.
Mr. Lyons called early, and was delighted to receive her confidence.
Might he go and call? Surely there could be no harm, he asked,
anxiously; it might save time.
"It would only make matters worse for my sister," Grace said, "and you
would do no good."
"But it will show that she--that your sister--has friends near her."
"That very fact might rouse him to more violence, and my sister would
suffer."
"I might go and call on _him_. I do not believe he would be violent if I
asked for him. I am afraid he knows me, otherwise I might take some
circulars and call upon him about business."
"As if you know anything about business."
"I assure you I have been very hard at work lately. I have gone into the
question of employment very seriously."
"I doubt your having done anything seriously," laughed Grace.
"That is rather hard on a fellow, when a fellow has really tried."
"Come, Mr. Lyons, what have you tried?"
"I have offered myself as an agent to begin with. Agency is a very good
thing. You spend no money yourself, and other people's money sticks to
your fingers; it is really a very simple thing."
"And what are you agent for, may I ask?"
"Oh! the appointment is not confirmed, but I think I am on the high road
to it. It does not much matter what it is as long as you can get people
to buy. I have at this moment two things before me, of which I have
really a very fair chance."
"Have you?"
"Are you sufficiently interested, Miss Rivers, to hear what they are?"
"I am doing my best to show my interest by listening to you with both my
ears."
"Ah! but you are _not_ giving me your undivided attention. You are
knitting, and just now I quite distinctly heard you count five. A fellow
cannot talk of his prospects to a girl while she counts five," Mr. Lyons
said, in a tone of disgust, and looking round the room appealing to an
imaginary audience.
"I will not count again--only just this once. I have made a mistake
already;" and Grace wrinkled her forehead and became absorbed in her
work for a few moments.
"Miss Rivers, will you really let a fellow talk to you? life and death
does not hang upon a few stitches more or less."
"No, but a sock does; and dear Mrs. Dorriman took such pains to teach me
to make one."
"You are always knitting," the young man said, discontentedly.
"No; only when I feel very good," she answered, gravely; "then I knit
all kinds of things into my sock."
"What sort of things--colours? that thing looks all the same colour to
me."
"Oh, I do not mean material things, but sorrow and penitence--and the
bitterest repentance," she added the last words in a lower tone, and her
eyes were concealed under lowered lids; then she sighed.
Mr. Lyons sighed also, he had a very good idea what she referred to.
"To return to your wishes," said Grace, laughing a little, to carry off
a feeling of awkwardness at having shown emotion; "what do you wish to
tell me?"
"It--it sounds a little frivolous now. I only wanted to say I have tried
to get into every agency you can think of. I have gone steadily down the
alphabet and picked out everything you can think of. It is quite
astonishing how many things there are to be canvassed for. I did the W's
yesterday, and the X's and Y's to-day. I took the W's out of their turn
because of wine; there are such an enormous number of firms who sell or
want to sell _the_ only drinkable wine; and it is a subject I know a
little about."
"And you got nothing?"
"Considerably less than nothing. One question was
asked--introductions--references, and, as I had never thought of an
introduction, and could refer to no one as to my ability--I was bowed
out. I met with civility, I will say; I had on my best coat, and that
tells," he said, in a tone of satisfaction.
"Perhaps something may turn up," Grace answered brightly.
"I hope so; you see, I never could do much more than sign my name--my
handwriting is simply abominable. It has happened to me to have my
address and signature cut out of my own letter and pasted on as the only
way of solving the problem of where I lived, and then it sometimes
wandered about a good deal before it reached me;" and he laughed at the
recollection. Grace laughed with him.
"But what is your plan as regards Margaret, my poor darling sister?"
she asked, and her countenance changed.
"If I was agent to something in which Mr. Drayton was interested I could
ask to see him on business, and if I could only get a recommendation or
introduction to him all would be easy; once in the house I am not
afraid." The young man drew up his head and looked quite ready for
anything that might happen.
Grace clasped her hands. "I think it is a very good plan," she
exclaimed, "and I can help you a little myself. What do you call a
manufactory that turns out horrible smells, and kills trees and plants
and things."
"Artificial manures?" he said, pulling a list out of his pocket and
referring to it.
"Oh, dear no," said Grace, impatiently, "it makes all the trees look
like skeletons. Who ever heard of manure killing anything? it makes them
grow."
"I spoke without thinking, only remembering that that made an appalling
smell, quite enough to kill everything."
"Well, think, with all your might, or, still better, think, and give me
your list--and if I saw the name I should know it--and you can think in
the meantime," said Grace, speaking very quickly.
"I have it!" she exclaimed, joyfully pointing with her finger to it and
holding out the paper to him. "Chemical works! now do not forget,
chemical, chemical, chemical--say it over and over again, for fear of
forgetting it. Well, Mr. Lyons, at Renton there is a huge large chemical
work, and Mr. Drayton used to go there constantly. I remember his saying
one day that he had invested money--a quantity of money--in these
things."
"That will do then," he said. "I will boldly ask for Mr. Drayton
to-morrow morning, and ask if he is still interested in the Renton
chemical works. You will see, all will go well."
"I pray that it may. I shall write a long letter to my poor darling and
entreat her to tell me exactly the state of the case. She has so much
cleverness that I _cannot_ understand her not coming to see me. She must
have some difficulty to contend with we know nothing of."
"Ask her to suggest some plan herself, if she requires help of any
kind," said young Lyons.
"Yes, only she is so horribly conscientious, she may make difficulties.
Her spirit seems so broken."
"Hearing that man laugh is quite enough to make one wish never to laugh
again. However, now that I have something definite to do I feel happier.
Oh! if all only goes well.
"I hope Lady Lyons is not uneasy about your being so much away."
"No, she is quite accustomed to my erratic movements. Good-bye, and
if...."
He stopped, turned very red, and went swiftly out of her presence.