THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT CHANGE.
George Gilbert was something more than "knocked up." There had been a
great deal of typhoid fever amongst the poorer inhabitants of Graybridge
and the neighbouring villages lately--a bad infectious fever, which hung
over the narrow lanes and little clusters of cottages like a black
cloud; and the parish surgeon, working early and late, subject to sudden
chills when his work was hottest, exposed to every variety of
temperature at all times, fasting for long hours, and altogether setting
at naught those very first principles of health, wherein it was his duty
to instruct other people, had paid the common penalty to which all of
his profession are, more or less, subject. George Gilbert had caught a
touch of the fever. Mr. Pawlkatt senior called early on Monday
morning,--summoned by poor terrified Isabel, who was a stranger to
sickness, and was frightened at the first appearance of the malady,--and
spoke of his rival's illness very lightly, as a "touch of the fever."
"I always said it was infectious," he remarked; "but your husband would
have it that it wasn't. It was all the effect of dirty habits, and low
living, he said, and not any special and periodical influence in the
air. Well, poor fellow, he knows now who is right. You must keep him
very quiet. Give him a little toast-and-water, and the lime-draughts I
shall send you," and Mr. Pawlkatt went on to give all necessary
directions about the invalid.
Unhappily for the patient, it was not the easiest matter in the world to
keep him quiet. There was not so much in George Gilbert, according to
any poetic or sentimental standard; but there was a great deal in him,
when you came to measure him by the far nobler standard of duty. He was
essentially "thorough;" and in his own quiet way he was very fond of his
profession. He was attached to those rough Midlandshire peasants, whom
it had been his duty to attend from his earliest manhood until now.
Never before had he known what it was to have a day's illness; and he
could not lie tranquilly watching Isabel sitting at work near the
window, with the sunlight creeping in at the edges of the dark curtain
that had been hastily nailed up to shut out the glaring day;--he could
not lie quietly there, while there were mothers of sick children, and
wives of sick husbands, waiting for hope and comfort from his lips.
True, Mr. Pawlkatt had promised to attend to George's patients; but
then, unhappily, George did not believe in Mr. Pawlkatt.--the two
surgeons' views were in every way opposed,--and the idea of Mr. Pawlkatt
attending the sick people in the lanes, and seizing with delight on the
opportunity of reversing his rival's treatment, was almost harder to
bear than the thought of the same sufferers being altogether unattended.
And, beyond this, Mr. Gilbert, so clever while other people were
concerned, was not the best possible judge of his own case; and he would
not consent to believe that he had the fever.
"I dare say Pawlkatt likes to see me laid by the heels here, Izzie," he
said to his wife, "while he goes interfering with my patients, and
bringing his old-fashioned theories to bear. He'll shut up the poor
wretched little windows of all those cottages in the lanes, I dare say;
and make the rooms even more stifling than they have been made by the
builder. He'll frighten the poor women into shutting out every breath of
fresh air, and then take every atom of strength away from those poor
wasted creatures by his drastic treatment. Dr. Robert James Graves said
he only wanted three words for his epitaph, and those words were, 'HE
FED FEVERS.' Pawlkatt will be for starving these poor feeble creatures
in the lanes. It's no use talking, my dear; I'm a little knocked up, but
I've no more fever about me than you have, and I shall go out this
evening. I shall go round and see those people. There's a woman in the
lane behind the church, a widow, with three children lying ill; and she
seems to believe in me, poor creature, as if I was Providence itself. I
can't forget the look she gave me yesterday, when she stood on the
threshold of her wretched hovel, asking me to save her children, as if
she thought it rested with me to save them. I can't forget her look,
Izzie. It haunted me all last night, when I lay tossing about; for I was
too tired to sleep, somehow or other. And when I think of Pawlkatt
pouring his drugs down those children's throats, I--I tell you it's no
use, my dear; I'll take a cup of tea, and then get up and dress."
It was in vain that Isabel pleaded; in vain that she brought to her aid
Mrs. Jeffson, the vigorous and outspoken, who declared that it would be
nothing short of self-murder if Mr. Gilbert insisted on going out that
evening; equally in vain the threat of summoning Mr. Pawlkatt. George
was resolute; these quiet people always are resolute, not to say
obstinate. It is your animated, impetuous, impulsive creatures who can
be turned by a breath from the pursuit or purpose they have most
vehemently sworn to accomplish. Mr. Gilbert put aside all arguments in
the quietest possible manner. He was a medical man, and he was surely
the best judge of his own health. He was wanted yonder among his
patients, and he must go. Isabel and Mrs. Jeffson retired in melancholy
resignation to prepare the tea, which was to fortify the surgeon for his
evening's work. George came down-stairs half an hour afterwards,
looking, not ill, or even weak; but at once flushed and haggard.
"There's nothing whatever the matter with me, my dear Izzie," he said,
as his wife followed him to the door; "I'm only done up by very hard
work. I feel tired and cramped in my limbs, as if I'd caught cold
somehow or other. I was out all day in the wet, last week, you know; but
there's nothing in that. I shall just look in at those people at
Briargate, and come back by the lanes; and then an hour or so in the
surgery will finish my work, and I shall be able to get a good night's
rest. I must have an assistant, my dear. The agricultural population
gets very thick about Graybridge; and unless some one takes pity on the
poor people, and brings about some improvement in the places they live
in, we may look for plenty of fever."
He went out at the little gate, and Isabel watched him going along the
lane. He walked a little slower than usual, and that was all. She
watched him with a quiet affection on her face. There was no possible
phase of circumstance by which she could ever have been brought to love
him; but she knew that he was good, she knew that there was something
praiseworthy in what he was doing to-night,--this resolute visiting of
wretched sick people. It was not the knightly sort of goodness she had
adored in the heroes of her choice; but it was good; and she admired her
husband a little, in a calm unenthusiastic manner,--as she might have
admired a very estimable grandfather, had she happened to possess such a
relative. She was trying to be good, remember; and all the sentimental
tenderness of her nature had been aroused by George's illness. He was a
much more agreeable person lying faint and languid in a shaded room, and
requiring his head constantly bathed with vinegar-and-water, than when
in the full vigour of health and clumsiness.
Mr. Pawlkatt came in for his second visit half an hour after George had
left the house. He was very angry when he was told what had happened,
and inveighed solemnly upon his patient's imprudence.
"I sent my son round amongst your husband's patients," he said, "and I
must say, I am a little hurt by the want of confidence in me which Mr.
Gilbert's conduct exhibits."
Isabel was too much occupied by all manner of contending thoughts to be
able to do much towards the soothing of Mr. Pawlkatt's indignation. That
gentleman went away with his heart full of bitterness against the
younger practitioner.
"If your husband's well enough to go about amongst his patients, he
can't want _me_, Mrs. Gilbert," he said, as Isabel opened the gate for
him; "but if you find him much worse, as you are very likely to do after
his most imprudent conduct, you know where to send for me. I shall not
come again till I'm sent for. Good night."
Isabel sighed as she shut the gate upon the offended surgeon. The world
seemed to her quite full of trouble just now. Roland Lansdell was angry
with her. Ah! what bitter anger and contempt had been exhibited in his
face in the church yesterday! George was ill, and bent on making himself
worse, as it seemed; a Person--the person whom of all others the
Doctor's Wife most feared--had dropped as it were from the clouds into
Midlandshire; and here, added to all this trouble, was Mr. Pawlkatt
indignant and offended. She did not go indoors at once; the house seemed
gloomy and hot in the summer dusk. She lingered by the gate, looking
over the top of the rails at the dusty lane,--the monotonous
uninteresting lane, of whose changeless aspect she was so very tired.
She was sorry for her husband now that he was ill. It was her nature to
love and pity every weak thing in creation. The same kind of tenderness
that she had felt long ago for a sick kitten, or a wounded bird, or a
forlorn street wanderer of the canine species looking pleadingly at her
with great hungry eyes, filled her heart now, as she thought of George
Gilbert. Out of the blank emptiness into which he had melted long ago at
Roland Lansdell's advent, he emerged now, distinct and palpable, as a
creature who wanted pity and affection.
"Is he very ill?" she wondered. "He says himself that he is not: and he
is much cleverer than Mr. Pawlkatt."
She looked out into the lane, watching for her husband's coming. Two or
three people went slowly by at considerable intervals; and at last, when
it was growing quite dark, the figure of a boy, a slouching
country-built lad, loomed out of the obscurity.
"Be this Muster Gilbert's the doctor's?" he asked of Isabel. "Yes; do
you want him?"
"I doan't want him; but I've got a letter for his wife, from a man
that's staying up at our place. Be you she?"
"Yes; give me the letter," answered Isabel, putting her hand over the
gate.
She took the missive from the hand of the boy, who resigned it in a slow
unwilling manner, and then slouched away. Mrs. Gilbert put the letter in
her pocket, and went into the house. The candles had just been taken
into the parlour. The Doctor's Wife seated herself at the little table,
and took the letter from her pocket and tore it open. It was a very
brief and unceremonious kind of epistle, containing only these words:
"I've found comfortable quarters, for the nonce, in a little crib called
the Leicester Arms, down in Nessborough Hollow, to the left of the
Briargate Road. I suppose you know the place; and I shall expect to see
you in the course of to-morrow. Don't forget the sinews of war; and be
sure you ask for Captain Morgan.
Yours truly."
There was no signature. The letter was written in a big dashing hand,
which had sprawled recklessly over a sheet of old-fashioned
letter-paper; it seemed a riotous, improvident kind of writing, that
gloried in the wasted space and squandered ink.
"How cruel of him to come here!" muttered Isabel, as she tore the letter
into a little heap of fragments; "how cruel of him to come! As if I had
not suffered enough already; as if the misery and disgrace had not been
bitter enough and hard enough to bear."
She rested her elbows on the table, and sat quite still for some time
with her face hidden in her hands. Her thoughts were very painful; but,
for once in a way, they were not entirely devoted to Roland Lansdell;
and yet the master of Mordred Priory did figure in that long reverie.
George came in by-and-by, and found her sitting in the attitude into
which she had fallen after destroying the letter. She had been very
anxious about her husband some time ago; but for the last half-hour her
thoughts had been entirely removed from him; and she looked up at him
confusedly, almost startled by his coming, as if he had been the last
person in the world whom she expected to see. Mr. Gilbert did not notice
that look of confusion, but dropped heavily into the nearest chair, like
a man who feels himself powerless to go one step farther.
"I'm very ill, Izzie," he said; "it's no use mincing the matter; I _am_
ill. I suppose Pawlkatt is right after all, and I've got a touch of the
fever."
"Shall I send for him?" asked Isabel, starting up; "he said I was to
send for him if you were worse."
"Not on any account. I know what to do as well as he does. If I should
happen to get delirious by-and-by, you can send for him, because I dare
say you'd be frightened, poor girl, and would feel more comfortable with
a doctor pottering about me. And now listen to me, my dear, while I give
you a few directions; for my head feels like a ton weight, and I don't
think I shall be able to sit upright much longer."
The doctor proceeded to give his wife all necessary instructions for the
prevention of infection. She was to have a separate room prepared for
herself immediately; and she was to fumigate the room in which he was to
lie, in such and such a manner. As for any attendance upon himself, that
would be Mrs. Jeffson's task.
"I don't believe the fever is infectious," Mr. Gilbert said; "I've
caught it from the same causes that give it to the poor people: hard
work, exposure to bad weather, and the foul air of the places I have to
visit. Still we can't be too careful. You'd better keep away from my
room as much as possible, Izzie; and let Mrs. Jeffson look after me.
She's a strong-minded sort of a woman, who wouldn't be likely to catch a
fever, because she'd be the last in the world to trouble her head about
the risk of catching it."
But Isabel declared that she herself would wait upon her sick husband.
Was she not trying to be good; and did not all Mr. Colborne's sermons
inculcate self-sacrifice and compassion, tenderness and pity? The
popular curate of Hurstonleigh was perhaps the kind of teacher that some
people would have designated a sentimentalist; but his tender, loving
exhortations had a fascination which could surely never belong to the
tenable threats and awful warnings of a sterner preacher. In spite of
Austin Colborne's deep faith in an infinitely grand and beautiful region
beyond this lower earth, he did not look upon the world as a howling
wilderness, in which Providence intended people to be miserable. He
might certainly behold in it a place of probation, a kind of preparatory
school, in which very small virtues were expected of ignorant and
helpless scholars, wandering dimly towards a starry future: but he did
not consider it a universal Dotheboys Hall, presided over by a
Providence after the model of Mr. Squeers. He looked into the simple
narratives of four historians who flourished some eighteen centuries
ago; and in those solemn pages he saw no possible justification for the
gloomy view of life entertained by many of his clerical compeers. He
found in those sacred histories a story that opened like an idyl; he
found bright glimpses of a life in which there were marriage festivals
and pleasant gatherings, social feasts and happy Sabbath wanderings
through rustic paths betwixt the standing corn; he found pure earthly
friendship counted no sin against the claims of Heaven, and passionate
parental love not reproved as an unholy idolatry of the creature, but
hallowed for ever, by two separate miracles, that stand eternal records
of a love so entirely divine as to be omnipotent, so tenderly human as
to change the sternest laws of the universe in pity for weak human
sorrow.
Mr. Pawlkatt was summoned to his rival's bedside early on the following
morning. George's case was quite out of his own hands by this time; for
he had grown much worse in the night, and was fain to submit to whatever
people pleased to do to him. He was very ill. Isabel sat in the
half-darkened room, sometimes reading, sometimes working in the dim
light that crept through the curtain, sometimes sitting very quietly
wrapt in thought--painful and perplexing thought. Mr. Gilbert was
wakeful all through the day, as he had been all through the night,
tossing uneasily from side to side, and now and then uttering
half-suppressed groans that wrung his wife's heart. She was very
foolish--she had been very wicked--but there was a deep fount of
tenderness in that sentimental and essentially feminine breast; and I
doubt if George Gilbert was not more lovingly watched by his weak erring
young wife than ever he could have been by a strong-minded helpmate, who
would have frozen any lurking sentiment in Mr. Lansdell's breast by one
glance from her pitiless eyes. The Doctor's Wife felt a remorseful
compassion for the man who, after his own matter-of-fact fashion, had
been very good to her.
"He has never, never been cross to me, as my step-mother used to be,"
she thought; "he married me without even knowing who I was, and never
asked any cruel questions; and even now, if he knew, I think he would
have pity upon me and forgive me."
She sat looking at her husband with an earnest yearning expression in
her eyes. It seemed as if she wanted to say something to him, but lacked
the courage to approach the subject. He was very ill; it was no time to
make any unpleasant communication to him. He had been delirious in the
night, and had fancied that Mr. Pawlkatt was present, at an hour when
that gentleman was snoring comfortably in his own bed. Isabel had been
specially enjoined to keep her husband as quiet as it was possible for
an active industrious man, newly stricken down by some unlooked-for
malady, to be kept. No; whatever she might have to say to him must be
left unspoken for the present. Whatever help he might, under ordinary
circumstances, have given her, he was utterly powerless to give her now.
The day in that sick chamber seemed terribly long. Not because Isabel
felt any selfish weariness of her task; she was only too anxious to be
of use to the man she had so deeply wronged; she was only too eager to
do something,--something that Mr. Colborne himself might approve,--as an
atonement for her sin. But she was quite unused to sickness; and, being
of a hyper-sensitive nature, suffered keenly at the sight of any
suffering whatever. If the invalid was restless, she fancied directly
that he was worse--much worse--in imminent danger, perhaps: if he
rambled a little in his talk betwixt sleeping and waking, she sat with
his burning hands clasped in hers, trembling from head to foot: if he
fell into a profound slumber, she was seized with a sudden terror,
fancying him unnaturally quiet, and was fain to disturb him, in her fear
lest he should be sinking into some ominous lethargy.
The Doctor's Wife was not one of those excellent nurses who can settle
themselves with cheerful briskness in a sick room, and improve the
occasion by the darning of a whole basketful of invalided stockings,
reserved for some such opportunity. She was not a nurse who could accept
the duties of her position in a businesslike way, and polish off each
separate task as coolly as a clerk in a banking-house transacts the work
assigned to him. Yet she was very quiet withal,--soft of foot,
gentle-handed, tender; and George was pleased to see her sitting in the
shadowy room, when he lifted his heavy eyelids a little now and then; he
was pleased in a dim kind of way to take his medicine from her
hand,--the slender little white hand with tapering fingers,--the hand he
had admired as it lay lightly on the moss-grown brickwork of the bridge
in Hurstonleigh churchyard on the afternoon when he asked her to be his
wife.
Mrs. Gilbert sat all day in her husband's room; but about five in the
afternoon George fell into a deep slumber, in which Mr. Pawlkatt found
him at a little after six o'clock. Nothing could be better than that
tranquil sleep, the surgeon said; and when he was gone, Mrs. Jeffson,
who had been sitting in the room for some time, anxious to be of use to
her master, suggested that Isabel should go down-stairs and out into the
garden to get a breath of fresh air.
"You must be a'most stifled, I should think, sitting all day in this
room," Tilly said, compassionately. Mrs. Gilbert's face crimsoned all
over, as she answered in a timid, hesitating way:
"Yes; I should like to go down-stairs a little, if you think that George
is sure to sleep soundly for a long time; and I know you'll take good
care of him. I want to go out somewhere--not very far; but I must go
to-night."
The Doctor's Wife sat with her back to the light; and Mrs. Jeffson did
not see that sudden tide of crimson that rushed into her face, and
faded, as she said this; but George Gilbert's housekeeper gave a sniff
of disapproval notwithstanding.
"I should have thought if you was the greatest gadderabout that ever
was, you'd have stayed quietly at home while your husband was lying ill,
Mrs. Gilbert," she said, sharply; "but of course you know your own
business best."
"I'm not going far; only--only a little way on the Briargate Road,"
Isabel answered, piteously; and then her head sank back against the wall
behind her, and she sighed a plaintive, almost heart-broken sigh. Her
life was very hard just now,--hard and difficult,--begirt with terror
and peril, as she thought.
She put on her bonnet and shawl--the darkest and shabbiest she
possessed. Mrs. Jeffson watched her, as she stood before the
old-fashioned looking-glass, and perceived that she did not even take
the trouble to brush the rumpled hair which she pushed under her dingy
bonnet. "She can't be going to meet _him_ in that plight, anyhow,"
thought honest Matilda, considerably pacified by the contemplation of
her mistress's toilette. She lifted the curtain and looked out of the
window as the garden-gate closed on Isabel, and she saw the Doctor's
Wife hurrying away with her veil pulled over her face. There was some
kind of mystery about this evening's walk: something that filled the
Yorkshirewoman's mind with vague disquietude.
* * * * *
The "touch of the fever," alluded to so lightly by Mr. Pawlkatt, turned
out to be a great deal more serious in its nature than either he or
George Gilbert had anticipated. The week came to an end, and the parish
surgeon was still a prisoner in the room in which his father and mother
had died. It seemed quite a long time now since he had been active and
vigorous, going about his work all day, mixing medicines in the surgery,
and coming into the parlour at stated times to eat hearty meals of
commonplace substantial food. Now that he was so weak, and that it was a
matter for rejoicing when he took a couple of spoonfuls of beef-tea,
Isabel's conscience smote her cruelly as she remembered how she had
despised him because of his healthy appetite; with what bitter scorn she
had regarded him when he ate ponderous slices of underdone meat, and
mopped up the last drop of the goriest-looking gravy with great pieces
of bread. He had been ill for only a week, and yet already it seemed
quite a normal state of things for him to be lying in that darkened
chamber, helpless and uneasy, all through the long summer day. The state
of the doctor's health was common talk in Graybridge; as common a
subject for idle people's converse as the heat of the weather, or the
progress of the green corn in the fields beyond the little town. All
manner of discreditable-looking parish patients came every day to the
surgery door to inquire after the surgeon's health; and went away
downcast and lamenting, when they were told that he grew daily worse.
Mrs. Gilbert, going down to answer these people's questions, discovered
for the first time how much he was beloved; he who had not one of the
attributes of a hero. She wondered sometimes whether it might not be
better to wear thick boots, and go about doing good, than to be a
used-up aristocratic wanderer, with white hands, and, oh, such
delightful varnished boots wrinkled over an arched instep. She was
trying to be good herself now--pleased and fascinated by Mr. Colborne's
teaching as by some newly-discovered romance--she wanted to be good, and
scarcely knew how to set about the task; and, behold, here was the man
whom she had so completely ignored and despised, infinitely above her in
the region she had entered. But was her romantic attachment to Roland
Lansdell laid down at the new altar she had found for herself? Ah, no;
she tried very hard to do her duty; but the old sentimental worship
still held its place in her heart. She was like some classic pagan newly
converted to Christianity, and yet entertaining a lurking love and
reverence for the old heathen deities, too grand and beautiful to be
cast off all at once.
The first week came to an end, and still Mr. Pawlkatt came twice a day
to visit his patient; and still he gave very much the same directions to
the untiring nurses who waited on George Gilbert. He was to be kept very
quiet; he was to continue the medicine; all the old stereotyped rules
were to be observed.
Throughout her husband's illness, Isabel had taken very little rest;
though Mr. and Mrs. Jeffson would gladly have kept watch alternately
with her in the sick room, and were a little wounded when banished
therefrom. But Mrs. Gilbert wanted to be good; the harder the task was,
the more gladly did she undertake it. Very often, quite alone in that
quiet room, she sat watching through the stillest hours of the night.
During all those solemn watches did any bad thoughts enter her mind? did
she ever think that she might be free to marry Roland Lansdell if the
surgeon's illness should terminate fatally? Never--never once did such a
dark and foul fancy enter the regions of her imagination. Do not believe
that because she had been a foolish woman she must necessarily be a
vicious woman. Again and again, on her knees by her husband's bed, she
supplicated that his life might be spared. She had never encountered
death, and her imagination shrank appalled from the thought of that
awful presence. A whole after-life of happiness could not have atoned to
her for the one pang of seeing a dreadful change come upon the familiar
face. Sometimes, in spite of herself, though she put away the thought
from her with shuddering horror, the idea that George Gilbert might not
recover _would_ come into her mind. He might not recover: the horror
which so many others had passed through might overtake her. Oh, the
hideous tramp of the undertaker's men upon the stairs; the knocking,
unlike all other knocking; the dreadful aspect of the shrouded house!
If--if any such sorrow came upon her, Mrs. Gilbert thought that she
would join some community of holy women, and go about doing good until
she died.
Was it so very strange, this sudden conversion? Surely not! In these
enthusiastic natures sentiment may take any unexpected form. It is a
question whether a Madame de Chantal shall write hazy devotional letters
to a St. Francis de Sales, or peril her soul for the sake of an earthly
lover.