"OCEANS SHOULD DIVIDE US."
Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert went to church arm-in-arm as usual on the morning
after the picnic; but Sigismund stayed at home to sketch the rough
outline of that feudal romance which he had planned among the ruins of
Waverly. The day was very fine,--a real summer day, with a blazing sun
and a cloudless blue sky. The sunshine seemed like a good omen, Mrs.
Gilbert thought, as she dressed herself in the white muslin robe that
she was to wear at Mordred. An omen of what? She did not ask herself
that question; but she was pleased to think that the heavens should
smile upon her visit to Mordred. She was thinking of the dinner at the
Priory while she sat by her husband's side in church, looking demurely
down at the Prayer-book in her lap. It was a common thing for her now to
be thinking of _him_ when she ought to have been attending to the
sermon. To-day she did not even try to listen to the rector's discourse.
She was fancying herself in the dusky drawing-room at Mordred, after
dinner, hearing _him_ talk. She saw his face turned towards her in the
twilight--the pale dark face--the dreamy, uncertain eyes. When the
congregation rose suddenly, at the end of the sermon, she sat bewildered
for a moment, like a creature awakened from a dream; and when the people
knelt, and became absorbed in silent meditation on the injunctions of
their pastor, Mrs. Gilbert remained so long in a devotional attitude,
that her husband was fain to arouse her by a gentle tap upon the
shoulder. She had been thinking of _him_ even on her knees. She could
not shut his image from her thoughts; she walked about in a perpetual
dream, and rarely awakened to the consciousness that there was
wickedness in so dreaming; and even when she did reflect upon her sin,
it was very easy to excuse it and make light of it. _He_ would never
know. In November he would be gone, and the dream would be nothing but a
dream.
It was only one o'clock, by the old-fashioned eight-day clock in the
passage, when they went home after church. The gig was to be ready at a
quarter before three, and at that hour they were to start for Mordred.
George meant to put up his horse at the little inn near the Priory
gates, and then they could walk quietly from the church to Mr.
Lansdell's after the service. Mr. Gilbert felt that Brown Molly appeared
rather at a disadvantage in Roland's grand stables.
Sigismund was still sitting in the little parlour, looking very warm,
and considerably the worse for ink. He had tried all the penny bottles
in the course of his labours, and had a little collection of them
clustered at his elbow.
"I don't think any one ever imagined so many ink-bottles compatible with
so little ink," he said, plaintively. "I've had my test ideas baulked by
perpetual hairs in my pen, to say nothing of flies' wings, and even
bodies. There's nothing like unlimited ink for imparting fluency to a
man's language; you cut short his eloquence the moment you limit his
ink. However, I'm down here for pleasure, old fellow," Mr. Smith added,
cheerfully; "and all the printing-machines in the city of London may be
waiting for copy for aught I care."
An hour and three quarters must elapse before it would be time even to
start for Mordred. Mrs. Gilbert went up-stairs and rearranged her hair,
and looked at herself in the glass, and wondered if she was pretty. _He_
had never told her so. He had never paid her any compliment. But she
fancied, somehow, that he thought her pretty, though she had no idea
whence that fancy was derived. She went down-stairs again, and out into
the garden, whence Mr. Smith was calling to her--the little garden in
front of the house, where there were a few common flowers blooming
dustily in oval beds like dishes; and where, in a corner, there was an
erection of shells and broken bits of coloured glass, which Mr. Jeffson
fondly imagined to be the exact representation of a grotto.
Mr. Smith had a good deal to say for himself, as indeed he had on all
occasions; but as his discourse was entirely of a personal character, it
may have been rather wanting in general interest. Isabel strolled up and
down the narrow pathway by his side, and turned her face politely
towards him, and said, "Yes," and "Did you really!" and "Well, how very
strange!" now and then. But she was thinking as she had thought in
church; she was thinking of the wonderful happiness that lay before
her,--an evening in _his_ companionship, amongst pictures and hothouse
flowers and marble busts and trailing silken curtains, and with glimpses
of a moonlit expanse of lawn and shrubbery gleaming through every open
window.
She was thinking of this when a bell rang loud and shrill in her ear:
and looking round suddenly, she saw a man in livery--a man who looked
like a groom--standing outside the garden gate.
She was so near the gate that it would have been a mere affectation to
keep the man waiting there while Mrs. Jeffson made her way from the
remote premises at the back of the house. The Doctor's Wife turned the
key in the lock and opened the gate; but the man only wanted to deliver
a letter, which he gave her with one hand while he touched the brim of
his hat with the other.
"From Mr. Lansdell, ma'am," he said.
In the next moment he was gone, and the open gate and the white dusty
lane seemed to reel before Isabel Gilbert's eyes.
There had been no need for the man to tell her that the letter was from
his master. She knew the bold dashing hand, in which she had read pencil
annotations upon the margins of those books which Mr. Lansdell had lent
her. And even if she had not known the hand, she would have easily
guessed whence the letter came. Who else should send her so
grand-looking a missive, with that thick cream-coloured envelope (a big
official-looking envelope), and the broad coat-of-arms with tall winged
supporters on the seal? But why should he have written to her? It was to
put off the dinner, no doubt. Her lips trembled a little, like the lips
of a child who is going to cry, as she opened the letter.
She read it very hurriedly twice, and then all at once comprehended that
Roland was going away for some years,--for ever,--it was all the same
thing; and that she would never, never, never, never,--the word seemed
to repeat itself in her brain like the dreadful clanging of a
bell,--never see him again!
She knew that Sigismund was looking at her, and asking her some question
about the contents of the letter. "What did Lansdell say? was it a
put-off, or what?" Mr. Smith demanded; but Isabel did not answer him.
She handed him the open letter, and then, suddenly turning from him, ran
into the house, up-stairs, and into her room. She locked the door, flung
herself face downwards upon the bed, and wept as a woman weeps in the
first great agony of her life. The sound of those passionate sobs was
stifled by the pillows amidst which her face was buried, but the anguish
of them shook her from head to foot. It was very wicked to have thought
of him so much, to have loved him so dearly. The punishment of her sin
came to her all at once, and was very bitter.
Mr. Smith stood for some moments staring at the doorway through which
Isabel had disappeared, with the open letter in his hand, and his face a
perfect blank in the intensity of his amazement.
"I suppose it is a put-off," he said to himself; "and she's disappointed
because we're not going. Why, what a child she is still! I remember her
behaving just like that once at Camberwell, when I'd promised her
tickets for the play, and couldn't get 'em. The manager of the T. R. D.
L. said he didn't consider the author of 'The Brand upon the
Shoulder-blade' entitled to the usual privilege. Poor little Izzie! I
remember her running away, and not coming back for ever so long; and
when she did make her appearance, her eyelids were red and swollen."
Mr. Smith stooped to pick up a narrow slip of lavender-tinted paper from
the garden-walk. It was the cheque which Roland Lansdell had written in
payment of the Doctor's services. Sigismund read the letter, and
reflected over it.
"I'm almost as much disappointed as Izzie, for the matter of that," he
thought to himself; "we should have had a jolly good dinner at the
Priory, and any amount of sparkling; and Chateau what's-its-name and
Clos de thingamy to follow, I dare say. I'll take George the letter and
the cheque--it's just like Izzie to leave the cheque on the ground--and
resign myself to a dullish Sunday."
It was a dull Sunday. The unacademical "ish" with which Mr. Smith had
qualified the adjective was quite unnecessary. It was a very dull
Sunday. Ah, reader, if Providence has some desperate sorrow in store for
you, pray that it may not befall you on a Sunday, in the blazing
sunshine, when the church bells are ringing on the still drowsy air. Mr.
Gilbert went up-stairs by-and-by, when the bells were at their loudest,
and, finding the door of his chamber locked, knocked on the panel, and
asked Isabel if she did not mean to go to church. But she told him she
had a dreadful headache, and wanted to stay at home. He asked her ever
so many questions, as to why her head ached, and how long it had ached,
and wanted to see her, from a professional point of view.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried, from the bed upon which she was lying; "I don't
want any medicine; I only want to rest my head; I was asleep when you
knocked."
Ah, what a miserable falsehood that was! as if she could ever hope to
sleep again!
"But, Izzie," remonstrated Mr. Gilbert, "you've had no dinner. There's
cold lamb in the house, you know; and we're going to have that and a
salad after church. You'll come down to dinner, eh?"
"No, no; I don't want any dinner. Please, leave me alone. I _only_ want
to rest," she answered, piteously.
Poor honest George Gilbert little knew how horrible an effort it had
cost his wife to utter even these brief sentences without breaking down
in a passion of sobbing and weeping. She buried her face in the pillows
again as her husband's footsteps went slowly down the narrow stairs. She
was very wretched, very foolish. It was only a dream--nothing more than
a dream--that was lost to her. Again, had she not known all along that
Roland Lansdell would go away, and that all her bright dreams and
fancies must go with him? Had she not counted upon his departure? Yes;
but in November, not in September; not on the day that was to have been
such a happy day.
"Oh, how cruel, how cruel!" she thought. "How cruel of him to go away
like that! without even saying good-bye,--without even saying he was
sorry to go. And I fancied that he liked to talk to me; I fancied that
he was pleased to see me sometimes, and would be sorry when the time
came for him to go away. But to think that he should go away two months
before the time he spoke of,--to think that he should not even be sorry
to go!"
Mrs. Gilbert got up by-and-by, when the western sky was all one lurid
glow of light and colour. She got up because there was little peace for
a weary spirit in that chamber; to the door of which some considerate
creature came every half-hour or so to ask Isabel if her head was any
better by this time, if she would have a cup of tea, if she would come
down-stairs and lie on the sofa, and to torment her with many other
thoughtful inquiries of the like nature. She was not to be alone with
her great sorrow. Sooner or later she must go out and begin life again,
and face the blank world in which _he_ was not. Better, since it must be
so, that she should begin her dreary task at once. She bathed her face
and head, she plaited her long black hair before the little glass,
behind which the lurid sky glared redly at her. Ah, how often in the
sunny morning she had stood before that shabby old-fashioned glass
thinking of him, and the chance of meeting him beside the mill-stream,
under the flickering shadows of the oak-leaves at Thurston's Crag! And
now it was all over, and she would never, never, never, never see him
again! Her life was finished. Ah, how truly he had spoken on the
battlements of the ruined tower! and how bitterly the meaning of his
words came home to her to-day! Her life was finished. The curtain had
fallen, and the lights were out; and she had nothing more to do but to
grope blindly about upon a darkened stage until she sank in the great
vampire-trap--the grave. A pale ghost, with sombre shadowy hair, looked
back at her from the glass. Oh, if she could die, if she could die! She
thought of the mill-stream. The wheel would be idle; and the water low
down in the hollow beyond the miller's cottage would be still to-night,
still and placid and glassy, shining rosy red in the sunset like the
pavement of a cathedral stained with the glory of a painted window. Why
should she not end her sorrows for ever in the glassy pool, so deep, so
tranquil? She thought of Ophelia, and the miller's daughter on the banks
of Allan Water. Would she be found floating on the stream, with weeds of
water-lilies tangled in her long dark hair? Would she look pretty when
she was dead? Would _he_ be sorry when he heard of her death? Would he
read a paragraph in the newspapers some morning at breakfast, and break
a blood-vessel into his coffee-cup? Or would he read and not care? Why
should he care? If he had cared for her, he could never have gone away,
he could never have written that cruel formal letter, with not a word of
regret--no, not one. Vague thoughts like these followed one another in
her mind. If she could have the courage to go down to the water's brink,
and to drop quietly into the stream where Roland Lansdell had once told
her it was deepest.
She went down-stairs by-and-by, in the dusk, with her face as white as
the tumbled muslin that hung about her in limp and flabby folds. She
went down into the little parlour, where George and Sigismund were
waiting for their tea, and where two yellow mould-candles were flaring
in the faint evening breeze. She told them that her head was better; and
then began to make the tea, scooping up vague quantities of congou and
gunpowder with the little silver scollop-shell, which had belonged to
Mr. Gilbert's grandmother, and was stamped with a puffy profile of
George the Third.
"But you've been crying, Izzie!" George exclaimed presently, for Mrs.
Gilbert's eyelids looked red and swollen in the light of the candles.
"Yes, my head was so bad it made me cry; but please don't ask me any
more about it," Isabel pleaded, piteously. "I suppose it was the
p-pic-nic"--she nearly broke down upon the word, remembering how good
_he_ had been to her all through the happy day--"yesterday that made me
ill."
"I dare say it was that lobster-salad," Mr. Gilbert answered, briskly:
"I ought to have told you not to eat it. I don't think there's anything
more bilious than lobster-salad dressed with cream."
Sigismund Smith watched his hostess with a grave countenance, while she
poured out the tea and handed the cups right and left. Poor Isabel
managed it all with tolerable steadiness; and then, when the miserable
task was over, she sat by the window alone, staring blankly out at the
dusty shrubs distinct in the moonlight, while her husband and his friend
smoked their cigars in the lane outside.
How was she to bear her life in that dull dusty lane--her odious life,
which would go on and on for ever, like a slow barge crawling across
dreary flats upon the black tideless waters of a canal? How was she to
endure it? All its monotony, all its misery, its shabby dreariness, its
dreary shabbiness, rose up before her with redoubled force; and the
terror of that hideous existence smote her like a stroke from a giant's
hand.
It all came back. Yes, it came back. For the last two months it had
ceased to be; it had been blotted out--hidden, forgotten; there had been
no such thing. An enchanter's wand had been waved above that dreary
square-built house in the dusty lane, and a fairy palace had arisen for
her habitation; a fairy-land of beauty and splendour had spread itself
around her, a paradise in which she wandered hand in hand with a
demigod. The image of Roland Lansdell had filled her life, to the
exclusion of every other shape, animate or inanimate. But the fairy-land
melted away all at once, like a mirage in the desert; like the last
scene in a pantomime, the rosy and cerulean lights went out in foul
sulphurous vapours. The mystic domes and minarets melted into thin air;
but the barren sands remained real and dreary, stretching away for ever
and for ever before the wanderer's weary feet.
In all Mrs. Gilbert's thoughts there was no special horror or aversion
of her husband. He was only a part of the dulness of her life; he was
only one dreary element of that dreary world in which Roland Lansdell
was not. He was very good to her, and she was vaguely sensible of his
goodness, and thankful to him. But his image had no abiding place in her
thoughts. At stated times he came home and ate his dinner, or drank his
tea, with substantial accompaniment of bread and butter and crisp
garden-stuff; but, during the last two months, there had been many times
when his wife was scarcely conscious of his presence. She was happy in
fairy-land, with the prince of her perpetual fairy tale, while poor
George Gilbert munched bread and butter and crunched overgrown radishes.
But the fairy tale was finished now, with an abrupt and cruel climax;
the prince had vanished; the dream was over. Sitting by that open
window, with her folded arms resting on the dusty sill, Mrs. Gilbert
wondered how she was to endure her life.
And then her thoughts went back to the still pool below the mill-stream.
She remembered the happy, drowsy summer afternoon on which Roland
Lansdell had stood by her side and told her the depth of the stream. She
closed her eyes, and her head sank forward upon her folded arms, and all
the picture came back to her. She heard the shivering of the rushes, the
bubbling splash of a gudgeon leaping out of the water: she saw the
yellow sunlight on the leaves, the beautiful sunlight creeping in
through every break in the dense foliage; and she saw his face turned
towards her with that luminous look, that bright and tender smile, which
had only seemed another kind of sunshine.
Would he be sorry if he opened the newspaper and read a little paragraph
in a corner to the effect that she had been found floating amongst the
long rushes in that very spot? Would he remember the sunny afternoon,
and the things he had said to her? His talk had been very dreamy and
indefinite; but there had been, or had seemed to be, an undercurrent of
mournful tenderness in all he said, as vague and fitful, as faint and
mysterious, as the murmuring of the summer wind among the rushes.
The two young men came in presently, smelling of dust and tobacco smoke.
They found Isabel lying on the sofa, with her face turned to the wall.
Did her head still ache? Yes, as badly as ever.
George sat down to read his Sunday paper. He was very fond of a Sunday
paper; and he read all the accidents and police reports, and the
indignant letters from liberal-minded citizens, who signed themselves
Aristides, and Diogenes, and Junius Brutus, and made fiery protests
against the iniquities of a bloated aristocracy. While the surgeon
folded the crackling newspaper and cut the leaves, he told Isabel about
Roland Lansdell's cheque.
"He has sent me five-and-twenty pounds," he said. "It's very liberal;
but of course I can't think of taking such a sum, I've been a good deal
about amongst his farm-people,--for there's been so much low fever this
last month,--but I've been looking over the account I'd made out against
him, and it doesn't come to a five-pound note. I suppose he's been used
to deal with physicians, who charge a guinea for every visit. I shall
send him back his cheque."
Isabel shuddered as she listened to her husband's talk. How low and mean
all this discussion about money seemed! Had not the enclosure of the
cheque in that cruel letter been almost an insult? What was her husband
better than a tradesman, when there could be this question of accounts
and payment between him and Roland Lansdell?
And then she thought of Clotilde and the Duchess,--the Duchess with her
glittering hair and the cruel azure eyes. She thought of "marble pillars
gleaming white against the purple of the night;" of "crimson curtains
starred with gold, and high-bred beauty brightly cold." She thought of
all that confusion of colour and glitter and perfume and music which was
the staple commodity in Mr. Lansdell's poetic wares; and she wondered,
in self-abasement and humiliation, how she could have ever for a moment
deluded herself with the idea that he could feel one transient sentiment
of regard or admiration for such a degraded being as herself. She
thought of her scanty dresses, that never had the proper number of
breadths in the skirt; she thought of her skimpy sleeves made in last
year's fashion, her sunburnt straw hat, her green parasol faded like
sickly grass at the close of a hot summer. She thought of the gulf
between herself and the master of Mordred, and wondered at her madness
and presumption.
* * * * *
Poor George Gilbert was quite puzzled by his wife's headache, which was
of a peculiarly obstinate nature, lasting for some days. He gave her
cooling draughts, and lotions for her forehead, which was very hot under
his calm professional hand. Her pulse was rapid, her tongue was white,
and the surgeon pronounced her to be bilious. He had not the faintest
suspicion of any mental ailment lurking at the root of these physical
derangements. He was very simple-minded, and, being incapable of wrong
himself, measured all his decent fellow-creatures by a fixed standard.
He thought that the good and the wicked formed two separate classes as
widely apart as the angels of heaven and the demons of the fiery depths.
He knew that there were, somewhere or other in the universe, wives who
wronged their husbands and went into outer darkness, just as he knew
that in dismal dens of crime there lurked robbers and murderers, forgers
and pickpockets, the newspaper record of whose evil deeds made no
unpleasant reading for quiet Sunday afternoons. But of vague sentimental
errors, of shadowy dangers and temptations, he had no conception. He had
seen his wife pleased and happy in Roland Lansdell's society; and the
thought that any wrong to himself, how small soever, could arise out of
that companionship, had never entered his mind. Mr. Raymond had remarked
of the young surgeon that a man with such a moral region was born to be
imposed upon.
The rest of the week passed in a strange dreary way for Isabel. The
weather was very fine, cruelly fine; and to Mrs. Gilbert the universe
seemed all dust and sunshine and blankness. Sigismund was very kind to
her, and did his best to amuse her, reciting the plots of numerous
embryo novels, which were to take Camden Town by storm in the future.
But she sat looking at him without seeing him, and his talk sounded a
harsh confusion on her ear. Oh, for the sound of that other voice,--that
other voice, which had attuned itself to such a tender melody! Oh, for
the beautiful cynical talk about the hollowness of life, and the
wretchedness of things in general! Poor simple-hearted Mr. Smith made
himself positively hateful to Isabel during that dismal week by reason
of his efforts to amuse her.
"If he would only let me alone!" she thought. "If people would only have
mercy upon me and let me alone!"
But that was just what every one seemed determined not to do. Sigismund
devoted himself exclusively to the society of his young hostess. William
Jeffson let the weeds grow high amongst the potatoes while he planted
standard rose-bushes, and nailed up graceful creepers, and dug, and
improved, and transplanted in that portion of the garden which made a
faint pretence to prettiness. Was it that he wished to occupy Mrs.
Gilbert's mind, and to force her to some slight exertion? He did not
prune a shrub, or trim a scrap of box, without consulting the Doctor's
Wife upon the subject; and Isabel was called out into the garden
half-a-dozen times in an hour.
And then during his visit Sigismund insisted upon taking Mrs. Gilbert to
Warncliffe to dine with his mother and sisters. Mr. Smith's family made
quite a festival for the occasion: there was a goose for dinner,--a
vulgar and savoury bird; and a big damson pie, and apples and pears in
green leaf-shaped dishes for dessert; and of course Isabel's thoughts
wandered away from that homely mahogany, with its crimson worsted
d'oyleys and dark-blue finger-glasses, to the oval table at Mordred and
all its artistic splendour of glass and fruit and flowers.
The Smith family thought Mrs. Gilbert very quiet and insipid; but
luckily Sigismund had a great deal to say about his own achievements,
past, present, and future; so Isabel was free to sit in the twilight
listening dreamily to the slow footsteps in the old-fashioned street
outside--the postman's knock growing fainter and fainter in the
distance--and the cawing of the rooks in a grove of elms on the
outskirts of the town.
Mr. Smith senior spent the evening in the bosom of his family, and was
put through rather a sharp examination upon abstruse questions in
chancery and criminal practice by his aspiring son, who was always
getting into morasses of legal difficulty, from which he required to be
extricated by professional assistance.
The evening seemed a very long one to poor Isabel; but it was over at
last, and Sigismund conducted her back to Graybridge in a jolting
omnibus; and during that slow homeward drive she was free to sit in a
corner and think of _him_.
Mr. Smith left his friends on the following day; and before going, he
walked with Isabel in the garden, and talked to her a little of her
life.
"I dare say it is a little dull at Graybridge," he said, as if in answer
to some remark of Isabel's, and yet she had said nothing. "I dare say
you do find it a little dull, though George is one of the best fellows
that ever lived, and devoted to you; yes, Izzie, devoted to you, in his
quiet way. He isn't one of your demonstrative fellows, you know; can't
go into grand romantic raptures, or anything of that kind. But we were
boys together, Izzie, and I know him thoroughly: and I know that he
loves you dearly, and would break his honest heart if anything happened
to you; or he was--anyhow to take it into his head that you didn't love
him. But still, I dare say, you do find life rather slow work down here;
and I can't help thinking that if you were to occupy yourself a little
more than you do, you'd be happier. Suppose, now," cried Mr. Smith,
palpably swelling with the importance of his idea,--"suppose you were to
WRITE A NOVEL! THERE! You don't know how happy it would make you. Look
at me. I always used to be sighing and lamenting, and wishing for this,
that, or the other: wishing I had ten thousand a year, or a Grecian
nose, or some worldly advantage of that sort; but since I've taken to
writing novels, I don't think I've a desire unsatisfied. There's nothing
I haven't done--on paper. The beautiful women I've loved and married;
the fortunes I've come into, always unexpectedly, and when I was at the
very lowest ebb, with a tendency to throw myself into the Serpentine in
the moonlight; the awful vengeance I've wreaked upon my enemies; the
murders I've committed would make the life of a Napoleon Buonaparte seem
tame and trivial by comparison. I suppose it isn't I that steal up the
creaking stair, with a long knife tightly grasped and gleaming blue in
the moonbeams that creep through a chink in the shutter; but I'm sure I
enjoy myself as much as if it was. And if I were a young lady,"
continued Mr. Smith, speaking with some slight hesitation, and glancing
furtively at Isabel's face,--"if I were a young lady, and had a kind of
romantic fancy for a person I ought not to care about, I'll tell you
what I'd do with him,--I'd put him into a novel, Izzie, and work him out
in three volumes; and if I wasn't heartily sick of him by the time I got
to the last chapter, nothing on earth would cure me."
This was the advice which Sigismund gave to Isabel at parting. She
understood his meaning, and resented his interference. She was beginning
to feel that people guessed her wickedness, and tried to cure her of her
madness. Yes; she was very wicked--very mad. She acknowledged her sin,
but she could not put it away from her. And now that he was gone, now
that he was far away, never to come back, never to look upon her face
again, surely there could be no harm in thinking of him. She did think
of him, daily and hourly; no longer with any reservation, no longer with
any attempt at self-deception. Eugene Aram and Ernest Maltravers, the
Giaour and the Corsair, were alike forgotten. The real hero of her life
had come, and she bowed down before his image, and paid him perpetual
worship. What did it matter? He was gone! He was as far away from her
life now as those fascinating figments of the poetic brain, Messrs. Aram
and Maltravers. He was a dream, like all the other dreams of her life;
only he could never melt away or change as they had done.