E-text prepared by Joyce McDonald, Christine Bell, and Marc D'Hooghe
(http:www.girlebooks.com & http://www.freeliterature.org)
THE DOCTOR'S WIFE
A Novel
By the Author of
"Lady Audley's Secret," "Aurora Floyd"
Etc. Etc. Etc.
London
John and Robert Maxwell
Milton House, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street
CONTENTS.
I. A young man from the country
II. A sensation author
III. Isabel
IV. The end of George Gilbert's holiday
V. George at home
VI. Too much alone
VII. On the bridge
VIII. About poor Joe Tillet's young wife
IX. Miss Sleaford's engagement
X. A bad beginning
XI. "She only said, 'my life is weary!'"
XII. Something like a birthday
XIII. "Oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted!"
XIV. Under Lord Thurston's oak
XV. Roland says, "Amen"
XVI. Mr. Lansdell relates an adventure
XVII. The first warning
XVIII. The second warning
XIX. What might have been!
XX. "Oceans should divide us!"
XXI. "Once more the gate behind me falls"
XXII. "My love's a noble madness"
XXIII. A little cloud
XXIV. Lady Gwendoline does her duty
XXV. "For love himself took part against himself"
XXVI. A popular preacher
XXVII. "And now I live, and now my life is done!"
XXVIII. Trying to be good.
XXIX. The first whisper of the storm
XXX. The beginning of a great change
XXXI. Fifty pounds
XXXII. "I'll not believe but Desdemona's honest"
XXXIII. Keeping a promise
XXXIV. Retrospective
XXXV. "'Twere best at once to sink to peace"
XXXVI. Between two worlds
XXXVII. "If any calm, a calm despair"
THE DOCTORS WIFE.
CHAPTER I.
A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY
There were two surgeons in the little town of
Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, in pretty pastoral Midlandshire,--Mr.
Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the middle of
the queer old High Street; and John Gilbert, the parish doctor, who
lived in his own house on the outskirts of Graybridge, and worked very
hard for a smaller income than that which the stylish Mr. Pawlkatt
derived from his aristocratic patients.
John Gilbert was an elderly man, with a young son. He had married late
in life, and his wife had died very soon after the birth of this son. It
was for this reason, most likely, that the surgeon loved his child as
children are rarely loved by their fathers--with an earnest,
over-anxious devotion, which from the very first had been something
womanly in its character, and which grew with the child's growth. Mr.
Gilbert's mind was narrowed by the circle in which he lived. He had
inherited his own patients and the parish patients from his father, who
had been a surgeon before him, and who had lived in the same house, with
the same red lamp over the little old-fashioned surgery-door, for
eight-and-forty years, and had died, leaving the house, the practice,
and the red lamp to his son.
If John Gilbert's only child had possessed the capacity of a Newton or
the aspirations of a Napoleon, the surgeon would nevertheless have shut
him up in the surgery to compound aloes and conserve of roses, tincture
of rhubarb and essence of peppermint. Luckily for the boy, he was only a
common-place lad, with a good-looking, rosy face; clear grey eyes, which
stared at you frankly; and a thick stubble of brown hair, parted in the
middle and waving from the roots. He was tall, straight, and muscular; a
good runner, a first-rate cricketer, tolerably skilful with a pair of
boxing-gloves or single-sticks, and a decent shot. He wrote a fair
business-like hand, was an excellent arithmetician, remembered a
smattering of Latin, a random line here and there from those Roman
poets and philosophers whose writings had been his torment at a certain
classical and commercial academy at Wareham. He spoke and wrote
tolerable English, had read Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, and
infinitely preferred the latter, though he made a point of skipping the
first few chapters of the great novelist's fictions in order to get at
once to the action of the story. He was a very good young man, went to
church two or three times on a Sunday, and would on no account have
broken any one of the Ten Commandments on the painted tablets above the
altar by so much as a thought. He was very good; and, above all, he was
very good-looking. No one had ever disputed this fact: George Gilbert
was eminently good-looking. No one had ever gone so far as to call him
handsome; no one had ever presumed to designate him plain. He had those
homely, healthy good looks which the novelist or poet in search of a
hero would recoil from with actual horror, and which the practical mind
involuntarily associates with tenant-farming in a small way, or the sale
of butcher's meat.
I will not say that poor George was ungentlemanly, because he had kind,
cordial manners, and a certain instinctive Christianity, which had never
yet expressed itself in any very tangible form, but which lent a genial
flavour to every word upon his lips, to every thought in his heart. He
was a very trusting young man, and thought well of all mankind; he was a
Tory, heart and soul, as his father and grandfather had been before him;
and thought especially well of all the magnates round about Wareham and
Graybridge, holding the grand names that had been familiar to him from
his childhood in simple reverence, that was without a thought of
meanness. He was a candid, honest, country-bred young man, who did his
duty well, and filled a small place in a very narrow circle with credit
to himself and the father who loved him. The fiery ordeal of two years'
student-life at St. Bartholomew's had left the lad almost as innocent as
a girl; for John Gilbert had planted his son during those two awful
years in the heart of a quiet Wesleyan family in the Seven-Sisters Road,
and the boy had enjoyed very little leisure for disporting himself with
the dangerous spirits of St. Bartholomew's. George Gilbert was
two-and-twenty, and in all the course of those two-and-twenty years
which made the sum of the young man's life, his father had never had
reason to reproach him by so much as a look. The young doctor was held
to be a model youth in the town of Graybridge; and it was whispered that
if he should presume to lift his eyes to Miss Sophronia Burdock, the
second daughter of the rich maltster, he need not aspire in vain. But
George was by no means a coxcomb, and didn't particularly admire Miss
Burdock, whose eyelashes were a good deal paler than her hair, and whose
eyebrows were only visible in a strong light. The surgeon was young, and
the world was all before him; but he was not ambitious; he felt no sense
of oppression in the narrow High Street at Graybridge. He could sit in
the little parlour next the surgery reading Byron's fiercest poems,
sympathizing in his own way with Giaours and Corsairs; but with no
passionate yearning stirring up in his breast, with no thought of revolt
against the dull quiet of his life.
George Gilbert took his life as he found it, and had no wish to make it
better. To him Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne was all the world. He had been
in London, and had felt a provincial's brief sense of surprised delight
in the thronged streets, the clamour, and the bustle; but he had very
soon discovered that the great metropolis was a dirty and disreputable
place as compared to Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, where you might have
taken your dinner comfortably off any doorstep as far as the matter of
cleanliness is concerned. The young man was more than satisfied with his
life; he was pleased with it. He was pleased to think that he was to be
his father's partner, and was to live and marry, and have children, and
die at last in the familiar rooms in which he had been born. His nature
was very adhesive, and he loved the things that he had long known,
because they were old and familiar to him; rather than for any merit or
beauty in the things themselves.
The 20th of July, 1852, was a very great day for George Gilbert, and
indeed for the town of Graybridge generally; for on that day an
excursion train left Wareham for London, conveying such roving spirits
as cared to pay a week's visit to the great metropolis upon very
moderate terms. George had a week's holiday, which he was to spend with
an old schoolfellow who had turned author, and had chambers in the
Temple, but who boarded and lodged with a family at Camberwell. The
young surgeon left Graybridge in the maltster's carriage at eight
o'clock upon that bright summer morning, in company with Miss Burdock
and her sister Sophronia, who were going up to London on a visit to an
aristocratic aunt in Baker Street, and who had been confided to George's
care during the journey.
The young ladies and their attendant squire were in very high spirits.
London, when your time is spent between St. Bartholomew's Hospital and
the Seven-Sisters Road, is not the most delightful city in the world;
but London, when you are a young man from the country, with a week's
holiday, and a five-pound note and some odd silver in your pocket,
assumes quite another aspect. George was not enthusiastic; but he looked
forward to his holiday with a placid sense of pleasure, and listened
with untiring good humour to the conversation of the maltster's
daughters, who gave him a good deal of information about their aunt in
Baker Street, and the brilliant parties given by that lady and her
acquaintance. But, amiable as the young ladies were, George was glad
when the Midlandshire train steamed into the Euston Terminus, and his
charge was ended. He handed the Misses Burdock to a portly and rather
pompous lady, who had a clarence-and-pair waiting for her, and who
thanked him with supreme condescension for his care of her nieces. She
even went so far as to ask him to call in Baker Street during his stay
in London, at which Sophronia blushed. But, unhappily, Sophronia did not
blush prettily; a faint patchy red broke out all over her face, even
where her eyebrows ought to have been, and was a long time dispersing.
If the blush had been Beauty's bright, transient glow, as brief as
summer lightning in a sunset sky, George Gilbert could scarcely have
been blind to its flattering import; but he looked at the young lady's
emotion from a professional point of view, and mistook it for
indigestion.
"You're very kind, ma'am," he said. "But I'm going to stay at
Camberwell; I don't think I shall have time to call in Baker Street."
The carriage drove away, and George took his portmanteau and went to
find a cab. He hailed a hansom, and he felt as he stepped into it that
he was doing a dreadful thing, which would tell against him in
Graybridge, if by any evil chance it should become known that he had
ridden in that disreputable vehicle. He thought the horse had a rakish,
unkempt look about the head and mane, like an animal who was accustomed
to night-work, and indifferent as to his personal appearance in the day.
George was not used to riding in hansoms; so, instead of balancing
himself upon the step for a moment while he gave his orders to the
charioteer, he settled himself comfortably inside, and was a little
startled when a hoarse voice at the back of his head demanded "Where to,
sir?" and suggested the momentary idea that he was breaking out into
involuntary ventriloquism.
"The Temple, driver; the Temple, in Fleet Street," Mr. Gilbert said,
politely.
The man banged down a little trap-door and rattled off eastwards.
I am afraid to say how much George Gilbert gave the cabman when he was
set down at last at the bottom of Chancery Lane; but I think he paid for
five miles at eightpence a mile, and a trifle in on account of a
blockade in Holborn; and even then the driver did not thank him.
George was a long time groping about the courts and quadrangles of the
Temple before he found the place he wanted, though he took a crumpled
letter out of his waistcoat-pocket, and referred to it every now and
then when he came to a standstill.
Wareham is only a hundred and twenty miles from London; and the
excursion train, after stopping at every station on the line, had
arrived at the terminus at half-past two o'clock. It was between three
and four now, and the sun was shining upon the river, and the flags in
the Temple were hot under Mr. Gilbert's feet.
He was very warm himself, and almost worn out, when he found at last the
name he was looking for, painted very high up, in white letters, upon a
black door-post,--"4th Floor: Mr. Andrew Morgan and Mr. Sigismund
Smith."
It was in the most obscure corner of the dingiest court in the Temple
that George Gilbert found this name. He climbed a very dirty staircase,
thumping the end of his portmanteau upon every step as he went up, until
he came to a landing, midway between the third and fourth stories; here
he was obliged to stop for sheer want of breath, for he had been lugging
the portmanteau about with him throughout his wanderings in the Temple,
and a good many people had been startled by the aspect of a well-dressed
young man carrying his own luggage, and staring at the names of the
different rows of houses, the courts and quadrangles in the grave
sanctuary.
George Gilbert stopped to take breath; and he had scarcely done so, when
he was terrified by the apparition of a very dirty boy, who slid
suddenly down the baluster between the floor above and the landing, and
alighted face to face with the young surgeon. The boy's face was very
black, and he was evidently a child of tender years, something between
eleven and twelve, perhaps; but he was in nowise discomfited by the
appearance of Mr. Gilbert; he ran up-stairs again, and placed himself
astride upon the slippery baluster with a view to another descent, when
a door above was suddenly opened, and a voice said, "You know where Mr.
Manders, the artist, lives?"
"Yes, sir;--Waterloo Road, sir, Montague Terrace, No. 2."
"Then run round to him, and tell him the subject for the next
illustration in the 'Smuggler's Bride.' A man with his knee upon the
chest of another man, and a knife in his hand. You can remember that?"
"Yes, sir."
"And bring me a proof of chapter fifty-seven."
"Yes, sir."
The door was shut, and the boy ran down-stairs, past George Gilbert, as
fast as he could go. But the door above was opened again, and the same
voice called aloud,--
"Tell Mr. Manders the man with the knife in his hand must have on
top-boots."
"All right, sir," the boy called from the bottom of the staircase.
George Gilbert went up, and knocked at the door above. It was a black
door, and the names of Mr. Andrew Morgan and Mr. Sigismund Smith were
painted upon it in white letters as upon the door-post below.
A pale-faced young man, with a smudge of ink upon the end of his nose,
and very dirty wrist-bands, opened the door.
"Sam!"
"George!" cried the two young men simultaneously, and then began to
shake hands with effusion, as the French playwrights say.
"My dear old George!"
"My dear old Sam! But you call yourself Sigismund now?"
"Yes; Sigismund Smith. It sounds well; doesn't it? If a man's evil
destiny makes him a Smith, the least he can do is to take it out in his
Christian name. No Smith with a grain of spirit would ever consent to be
a Samuel. But come in, dear old boy, and put your portmanteau down;
knock those papers off that chair--there, by the window. Don't be
frightened of making 'em in a muddle; they can't be in a worse muddle
than they are now. If you don't mind just amusing yourself with the
'Times' for half an hour or so, while I finish this chapter of the
'Smuggler's Bride,' I shall be able to strike work, and do whatever you
like; but the printer's boy is coming back in half an hour for the end
of the chapter."
"I won't speak a word," George said, respectfully. The young man with
the smudgy nose was an author, and George Gilbert had an awful sense of
the solemnity of his friend's vocation. "Write away, my dear Sam; I
won't interrupt you."
He drew his chair close to the open window, and looked down into the
court below, where the paint was slowly blistering in the July sun.