Face to Face.
"Captain Kilsyth!" No time for Chudleigh Wilmot to deny himself, if even he
had so wished; no time to recover himself from the excitement which
the announcement had aroused. He saw the broad dark outline of his
visitor behind the servant.
"Show Captain Kilsyth in."
Captain Kilsyth came in. Wilmot noticed that he was very pale and
stern-looking, but that there was no trace of yesterday's excitement
about him. It had become second nature to Wilmot to notice these
things; and he found himself critically examining Ronald's external
appearance, as he would that of a patient who had sought his advice.
The men bowed to each other, and Ronald spoke first. "You will be
surprised to see me here, Dr. Wilmot," he said; "but be assured that
it is business of importance that brings me."
Wilmot bowed again. He was fast recovering from his agitation, but
scarcely dared trust himself to speak just yet.
"I see your carriage is at the door, and I will detain you but a very
few moments. You can give me, say, ten minutes?"
Wilmot muttered that his time was at Captain Kilsyth's disposal; an
avowal which apparently annoyed his visitor, for he said testily,
"You, and I should be above exchanging the polite trash of society,
Dr. Wilmot. I am come here to speak on a matter which concerns me
deeply, and those very near and dear to me even more deeply still. Are
you prepared to hear me?"
Those very near and dear to him! O yes; Wilmot was prepared to hear
him fully and said as much. Would Captain Kilsyth be seated?
"I have come to talk to you, Dr. Wilmot, as a friend," commenced
Ronald, dropping into a chair. "I daresay you are scarcely prepared
for that avowal, considering my conduct at our interview yesterday in
Brook-street. Then I was hasty and inconsiderate; and for my conduct
then I beg to tender my apologies frankly and freely. I trust they
will be received?" There was an odd square blunt honesty even in the
manner in which he said this that prepossessed Wilmot.
"As frankly and freely as they are offered," he replied.
"So far agreed," said Ronald. "Now, look here. I am a very bad hand at
beating about the bush; and I have come here to say things the mere
fact of saying which is, where men of honour are not concerned,
compromising to one of the person spoken of I have every belief that
you are a man of honour, and therefore I speak."
Dr. Wilmot bowed again, and said that Captain Kilsyth complimented
him.
"No. I think too highly of you to do that. I simply speak what I
believe to be true, from all I have heard of your doings at Kilsyth."
Of his doings at Kilsyth? A man of honour, from his doings at Kilsyth?
Though perfectly conscious that Ronald was watching him, narrowly,
Chudleigh Wilmot's cheeks coloured deeply at this point, and he was
silent.
"Now, Dr. Wilmot, I must begin by talking to you a little about
myself--an unprofitable subject, but one necessary to be touched upon
in this discourse between us. The men who are supposed to know me
intimately--my own brother officers, I mean--will tell you that I am
an oddity, an extraordinary fellow, and that they know nothing about
me. Nothing is known of my likes or dislikes. I am believed not to
have any of either. Now this is an exaggerated view of the question. I
don't know that I dislike anyone in particular; but I have my
affections. I am very fond of my father; I adore my sister Madeleine."
He spoke with such earnestness and warmth, that Wilmot looked up at
him, half in pleasure, half in wonder. Ronald noticed the glance, and
said, "If you have heard me mentioned at all, Dr. Wilmot, you have
probably heard it said that I am a man with a stone instead of a
heart, with the _Cavalry Officer's Instructions_ instead of a Bible;
and therefore I cannot wonder at your look of astonishment. But what I
have stated to you is pure and simple fact. I love these two
infinitely better than my life."
Wilmot bowed again. He felt ashamed of his reiterated acquiescence,
but had nothing more satisfactory to proffer.
"Now, I don't see much of my family," pursued Ronald. "Their ways of
life are different from mine; and except when they happen to be in
London we are seldom thrown together. This may be to be regretted, or
it may not; at all events the fact is so. But whether I see them or
not, my interest in them never slackens. There are people, I
know--most people, I believe--to whom propinquity is a necessary
ingredient for affection. They must be near those they love--must be
brought into constant communication, personal communication with them,
or their love dies out. That is affection of a type which I cannot
understand; it is a great deal too spaniel-or ivy-like for my
comprehension. I could go on for years without seeing those I love,
and love them all the same. Consequently, although when the eight or
nine weeks' whirl which my family calls the London season is at an
end, and I scarcely see them until it begins again, I do not take less
interest in their proceedings, nor is my keen affection for those I
love one whit diminished. You follow me?"
"So far, perfectly."
"I was detained here on duty in London during last August and
September; and even if I had been free, I doubt whether I should have
been with my people at Kilsyth. As I have just said, their ways of
life, their amusements and pursuits are different from mine, and I
should probably have been following my own fancies somewhere else. But
I always hear from some of them with the greatest regularity; and I
heard, of course, of my sister's illness, and of your being called in
to attend upon her. Your name was thoroughly familiar to me. What my
friends call my 'odd ways' have made me personally acquainted with
several of the leading members of your profession; and directly I
heard that you had arrived at Kilsyth, I knew that Madeleine could not
possibly be in better hands."
To anyone else Wilmot would have said that she could not have been
under the charge of anyone who would have taken greater interest in
her case; but he had not forgotten the interview of yesterday, and he
forbore.
"I was delighted to hear of your arrival at Kilsyth," continued
Ronald, "and I was deeply grateful to you for the unceasing care and
anxiety which, as reported to me, you bestowed upon my sister. The
accounts which I received vied with each other in doing justice to
your skill and your constant attention; and I believe, as I know all
at Kilsyth believed, that, under Providence, we owe Madeleine's life
to you."
"You will pardon my interrupting you, Captain Kilsyth," said Wilmot,
speaking almost for the first time; "but you give me more credit than
I deserve. Miss Kilsyth was very ill; but what she required most was
constant attention and watching. The excellent doctor of the
district--I forget his name, I'm ashamed to say--Joyce, Dr. Joyce,
would have been thoroughly efficient, and would have doubtless
restored Miss Kilsyth to health as speedily as I did; only
unfortunately others had a claim upon him, and he could not devote his
time to her."
"Exactly what I was saying. I presume it will not be doubted that Dr.
Wilmot, of Charles-street, St. James's--in his own line the principal
physician of London--had as many calls upon his time even as the
excellent doctor of the district, and yet he sacrificed all others to
attend on Miss Kilsyth."
"Dr. Wilmot was away from his patients on a holiday, and no one had a
claim upon his time."
"And he made the most of his holiday by spending a great portion of it
in the sick-room of a fever-stricken patient! No, no, Dr. Wilmot; you
made a great sacrifice undoubtedly. Now, why did you make it?"
He turned suddenly upon Wilmot as he spoke, and looked him straight in
the face. Wilmot's colour came again; he moved restlessly in his
chair, pressed his hands nervously together, but said nothing.
"I told you, Dr. Wilmot, that I was about to speak of things the mere
mention of which, were we not men of honour, would be compromising to
some of the persons spoken of. I ask you why you made that sacrifice
of your professional time. I ask you not for information, because I
know the reason. Before you left Kilsyth, I heard that my sister was
receiving attention from a most undesirable quarter--from a quarter
whence it was impossible that any good could arise. My sister is, as I
have told you, dearer to me than my life, and the news distressed me
beyond measure. I turned it over and over in my mind; I made every
possible kind of inquiry. At length, on the evening on which you
arrived in London and called on me at my club, I knew that you were
the man alluded to by my informant."
No change in Chudleigh Wilmot. His cheek is still flushed, his eyes
still cast down; still he moves restlessly in his chair, still his
hands pluck nervously at each other.
"I knew it, and yet I hardly could believe it. I knew that men of your
profession, specially men of such eminence in your profession, were in
the habit of being received and treated with the utmost confidence;
which confidence was never abused. I knew that bystanders and
lookers-on, unaccustomed to illness, might very easily misconstrue the
attention which a physician would pay to a young lady whose case had
excited his strong professional interest. I--well, constrained to take
the worst view of it--I knew that you were a married man, and I
thought that you might have admired Miss Kilsyth, and that--that when
you left her--there--there would be an end of the feeling."
No change in Chudleigh Wilmot. His cheek is still flushed, his eyes
still cast down; still he moves restlessly in his chair, still his
hands pluck nervously at each other. Something in his appearance
seemed to touch Ronald Kilsyth as he looked at him earnestly, for he
said:
"I wish to God I could think so now, Dr. Wilmot! I wish to God I could
think so now! But though I don't pretend to be versed in these
matters, I have a certain amount of insight; and when I saw you
standing by my sister's side in the drawing-room in Brook-street
yesterday, I knew that the information I had received was correct." He
paused for an instant, and passed his hand across his forehead, then
resumed. "I am a blunt man, Dr. Wilmot, but I trust neither coarse nor
unsympathetic. I want to convey to you as quietly as possible that you
have made a mistake; that for everyone's sake--ours, Madeleine's, your
own--this thing cannot, must not be."
A change in Chudleigh Wilmot now. He does not look up; he covers his
brow with his left hand; but he says in a deep husky voice:
"There is--as you are aware--a change in my circumstances: I am--I am
free now; and perhaps--in the future--"
"In no future, Dr. Wilmot," interrupted Ronald gravely, but not
unkindly. "Listen to me. If, as I half suspected you would, you had
flung yourself into a rage,--denied, stormed, protested,--I should
simply have said my say, and left you to make the best or the worst of
it. But you have not done this, and--and I pity you most sincerely.
You are, as you say, free now. You think probably there is no reason
why, at some future time, you should not ask my sister to become your
wife. You would probably urge your claims upon her gratitude--claims
which you think she might possibly be brought to allow. It can never
be, Dr. Wilmot. I, who am anything but, in this sense, a worldly man,
even I know that your presence at Kilsyth, your long stay there, to
the detriment of your home interests, your devotion to my sister, have
already given matter for talk to the gossips of society, and received
the usual amount of malicious comment. And if you have real regard for
Madeleine, you would give up anything to shield her from that,
indorsed as would be the imputation and intensified as would be the
malice, if your relations with her were to be on any other footing
than--they ought to have been."
Quite silent now, Chudleigh Wilmot; his hand still covering his brow,
his head sunk upon his breast.
"I said I pitied you; and I do," continued Ronald. "And here,
understand me, and let me explain one point in our position, Dr.
Wilmot. What I have to say, though it may pain you in one way, will, I
think, be satisfactory to you in another. You may think that Madeleine
may be destined by her family for some--I speak without the least
offence--some higher destiny; that her family would wish for her a
husband higher in social rank. I give you my honour that, as far as I
am concerned, I could not, from all I have heard of you, wish my
sister's future confided to a more honourable man. Social rank and
dignity weigh very little with me. My life is passed generally with
those who have won their spurs, rather than inherited their titles;
and I would infinitely sooner see my sister married to a man whose
successful position in life was due to himself than to one who merely
wore the reflected glory of his ancestors. So far you would have been
a suitor entirely acceptable to me, had there not been the other
unfortunate element in the matter."
Ronald ceased speaking, and for some minutes there was a dead silence.
Then Chudleigh Wilmot raised his head, rose from his chair, and
commenced pacing the room with long strides; Ronald, perfectly
understanding his emotion, remaining passively seated. At length
Wilmot stopped by Ronald's chair, and said:
"When you entered this room, you told me you had come here to speak to
me as a friend. I am bound to say that you have perfectly fulfilled
that implicit promise. No one could have been more frank, more candid,
and, I may say, more tender than you have been with me. My
profession," said Wilmot with a dreary smile,--"my profession teaches
us to touch wounds tenderly, and you seem to be thoroughly imbued with
the precept. You will do me the justice to allow that I have listened
to you patiently; that I have heard without flinching almost,
certainly without complaint."
Ronald bowed his head in acquiescence.
"Now, then, I must ask you to listen to me. What I have to say to you
is as sacred as what you have said to me, and will not, could not be
mentioned by me to another living soul. When I received your father's
telegram summoning me to your sister's bedside, there was no more
heart-whole man in Britain than myself. When I use the word
'heart-whole,' I do not intend it to convey the expression of a
perfect content in the affections I possessed, as you, knowing I was
married and settled, might understand it. I was heart-whole in the
sense that, while I was thoroughly skilled in the physical state of my
heart, its mental condition never gave me a thought. I had, as long as
I could recollect, been a very hard-working man. I had married, when I
first established myself in practice, principally, I believe, because
I thought it the most prudent thing for a young physician to do; but
certainly not from any feeling that ever caused my heart one extra
pulsation. You must not be shocked at this plain speaking. Recollect
that you are listening to an anatomical lecture, and go through with
it. All the years of my married life passed without any such feeling
being called into existence. My--my wife was a woman of quiet domestic
temperament, who pursued her way quietly through life; and I,
thoroughly engrossed in my professional pursuits, never thought that
life had anything better to engage in than ambition, better to offer
than success. I went to Kilsyth, and for weeks was engaged in
constant, unremitting attendance upon your sister. I saw her under
circumstances which must to a certain extent have invested the most
uninteresting woman in the world with interest; I saw her deserted and
shunned, by everyone else, and left entirely to my care; I saw her in
her access of delirium, and afterwards, when prostrate and weak, she
was dependent on me for everything she wanted. And while she and I
were thus together--I now combating the disease which assailed her,
now watching the sweet womanly patience, the more than womanly
courage, with which she supported its attacks--I, witnessing how pure
and good she was, how soft and gentle, and utterly unlike anything I
had ever seen, save perhaps in years long past, began to comprehend
that there was, after all, something to live for beyond the attainment
of success and the accumulation of fees."
Wilmot stopped here, and looked at his companion; but Ronald's head
was turned away, and he made no movement; so Wilmot proceeded.
I--I scarcely know how to go on here; but I determined to tell you
all, and I will go through with it. You cannot tell, you cannot have
the smallest idea of what I have suffered. You were pleased to call me
a man of honour: God alone knows how I struggled to deserve that title
from you, from every member of Miss Kilsyth's family. I succeeded so
well, that until I noticed the expression of your face yesterday, I
believed no one on earth knew of the state of my feelings towards that
young lady. At Kilsyth, when I first felt the fascination creeping
over me; when I found that there was another, a better and a brighter
be-all and end-all for human existence than I had previously imagined;
when I found that the whole of my career had hitherto lacked, and
under then existent circumstances was likely to lack, all that could
make it worth running after, the want had been discovered; I did my
best to shut my eyes to what might have been, and to content myself
with what was. I knew that though my--my wife and I had never
professed any extravagant affection for each other; that though we had
never been lovers, in the common acceptation of the word, she had
discharged her duty most faithfully to me, and that I should be a
scoundrel to be untrue to her in thought--in word, of course, from
other considerations, it was impossible. I did my best, and my best
availed. I succeeded so far, that I left your father's house with the
knowledge that my secret was locked in my own breast, and that I had
never made the slightest tentative advance to your sister, to see if
she were even aware of its existence. More than this. During my
attendance on Miss Kilsyth, I had discovered that she was suffering
from a threatening of what the world calls consumption. I felt it my
duty to mention this to your father, and he requested me to attend her
professionally when the family returned to London. I agreed--to him;
but I had long reflection on the subject during my return journey, and
had almost decided to decline, on some pretext or another.
"Hear me but a little longer. I need not dwell to you upon the event
which has occurred since I left Scotland, and which has left me a free
man--free to enjoy legitimately that happiness, a dream of which
dawned upon me at Kilsyth, and which I shut out and put aside because
it was then wrong, and almost unattainable. Circumstances are now so
altered, that it is certainly not the former, and it is yet to be
proved whether, so far as the young lady is concerned, it is the
latter. In my desire to do right, even with the feeling of relief and
release which I had, even with the hope which I do not scruple to
confess I have nourished, I kept from Brook-street until a line from
Miss Kilsyth summoned me thither. When you met me yesterday, I was
there in obedience to her summons. You know that, I suppose, Captain
Kilsyth?'"
"I made inquiries yesterday, and heard so. I said at the outset, Dr.
Wilmot, that you were a man of honour. Your conduct since your return,
and since the return of my family, weighed with me in the utterance of
that opinion."
"I did not go to Brook-street--not that I did not fully comprehend the
change in the nature of my position since I had last seen Miss
Kilsyth, not that I had not a certain half-latent feeling of hope that
I might, now I had the legitimate chance, be enabled to rouse an
interest in her, but because I thought it was perhaps better to stay
away. If I did not see her again, I preposterously attempted to argue
to myself, the feeling that I had for her might die out. I have seen
her again. I have heard from you that my feelings towards your sister
are known--at least to you; and now I ask you whether you still think
that, under existing circumstances, it is impossible for me to ask
Miss Kilsyth to be my wife at some future date?"
As Chudleigh Wilmot stopped speaking, he bent over the back of the
chair by which he had been standing during the latter part of his
speech, and looked long and earnestly at Ronald. It was very seldom
that Captain Kilsyth dropped his eyes before anyone's gaze; but on
this occasion he passed his hand hastily across them, and kept them
for some minutes fixed upon the ground. A very hard struggle was going
on in Ronald Kilsyth's mind. He was firmly persuaded that the decision
he had originally taken, and which he had come to Charles-street for
the purpose of insisting on with Wilmot, was the right one. And yet
Wilmot's story, in itself so touching, had been so plainly and
earnestly told, there was such evident honesty and candour in the man,
that Ronald's heart ached to be compelled to destroy the hopes which
he felt certain that his companion had recently cherished. Moreover,
in saying that in considering Madeleine's future, his aspirations for
her marriage took no heed of rank or wealth, Ronald simply spoke the
truth. He had a slight tendency to hero-worship; and a man of Wilmot's
talent, and, as he now found, of Wilmot's integrity and gentlemanly
feeling, was just the person of whose friendship and alliance he would
have been proud. Madeleine too? In his own heart Ronald felt perfectly
certain that Madeleine was already gratefully fond of her preserver,
and would soon become as passionately attached to him as the mildness
of her nature would admit; while he knew that she would not feel that
she was descending from her social position--that she was "marrying
beneath her," to use the ordinarily accepted phrase, in the smallest
degree. And yet--no, it was impossible! He, Ronald Kilsyth, the last
man in the world to care for the talk of "_on_," "they," "everybody,"
the social scandal, and the club chatter, while it concerned himself,
shrunk from it most sensitively when it threatened anyone dear to
him. Physicians were all very well--everyone knew them of course,
necessarily; but their wives--Ronald was trying to recollect how many
physicians' wives he had ever met in society, when he recollected that
it was Madeleine, who would of course hold her own position; and--and
then came a thought of Lady Muriel, and the influence which she had
over his father when they were both tolerably agreed upon the subject.
It was impossible; and he must say so.
He looked up straightforwardly and honestly at his companion, and
said, "I wish to God that I could give you a different answer, Dr.
Wilmot; but I cannot. I still think it is impossible."
"I think so too," said Wilmot sadly. "I have looked at it, as you may
imagine, from the most hopeful aspect; and even then I am compelled to
confess that you are right. But, see here, Captain Kilsyth; whatever I
make up my mind to I can go through with,--all save slow torture. My
doom must be short and sharp--no lingering death. What I mean to say
is," he continued, striving to repress the knot rising in his
throat,--"what I mean to say is, that as I am to give up this hope of
my life, I must quench it utterly and at once, not suffer it to
smoulder and die out. You tell me--no!" he added, as Ronald put out
his hand. "I do not mean you personally, believe me. I am told that I
must abandon any idea of asking Miss Kilsyth to be my wife, and--and I
agree. But--I must never see Miss Kilsyth again. I could not risk the
chance of meeting her here, there, and everywhere. I would not run the
chance of being thrown with her again. I should do my best to hold to
the line of conduct I have marked out for myself; but I am but mortal,
and, as such, liable to err."
"Then, in heaven's name, what do you intend to do with yourself?"
asked Ronald, with one hand plucking at his moustache, and the other
hooked round the back of the chair.
"To do with myself!" echoed Wilmot. "To fly from temptation. The thing
that every sensible man does when he really means to win. It is only
your braggarts who stop and vaunt the excellence of their virtue, and
give in after all. Read that letter, Captain Kilsyth, and you will see
that I have anticipated the object of your visit."
Ronald took the letter to Sir Saville Rowe which Wilmot handed to him,
and read it through carefully. The tears stood in his eyes as he
handed it back.
"You're a noble fellow, Dr. Wilmot," said he; "such a gentleman as one
seldom meets with. But this will never do. You must never think of
giving up your practice."
"For a time at least; it is the only way. I must cure myself of a
disease that has laid firm hold upon me before I can be of any use to
my patients, I fancy."
"When do you purpose going?"
"At once, or within the week."
"And where?"
"I don't know. Through Germany--to Vienna, I imagine. Vienna is a
great stronghold of the _savans_ of our profession; and I should give
out that I was bound thither on a professional mission."
"I feel as though there is nothing I would not give to dissuade you
from carrying out what only half an hour since my heart was so
earnestly set upon. But is it absolutely necessary that you should
thus exile yourself? Could you not--"
"I can take no half measures," said Wilmot decisively. "I go, or I
stay; and we have both decided what I had better do."
Five minutes more and Ronald was gone, after a short and earnest
speech of gratitude and thanks to Wilmot, in which he had said that it
would be impossible ever to forget his manly chivalry, and that he
hoped they would soon meet under happier auspices. He wrung Wilmot's
hand at parting, and left, sensibly affected.
Wilmot's servant heard the hall-door shut behind the departing
visitor, and wondered he had not been rung for. Five minutes more
elapsed, ten minutes, and then the man, thinking that his master had
overlooked the fact that the carriage was waiting for him, went up to
the room to make the announcement. When he entered the room, he found
his master with his head upon the table in front of him clasped in his
hands. He looked up at the sound of the man's voice and murmured
something unintelligible, seized his hat and gloves from the
hall-table, and jumped into his brougham.
"He was ghastly pale when he first looked up," said the man to the
female circle downstairs, "and had great red lines round his eyes.
Sometimes I think he's gone off his 'ead! He's never been the same man
since missus's death."
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Forlorn Hope (Vol. 1 of 2), by Edmund Yates