GEORGE GERARD IN DANGER.
Although George Gerard had made up his mind to leave Beechampton by
the first train on Monday morning, and although he began to feel
doubtful as to the purity of Edward Clare’s intentions, and altogether
uncomfortable in the society of that young man, when Monday came and
showed him a dark sky, and a world almost blotted out by rain, he
yielded, more weakly than it was his nature to yield, to the friendly
persuasion of Mrs. Clare and her daughter, who had come down to the
breakfast room at an early hour to pour out the departing guest’s tea.
‘You really must not travel on such a wretched morning,’ said the
Vicar’s wife, with maternal kindness. ‘I wouldn’t let Edward start on a
long journey in such weather.’
George Gerard thought of the discomforts of a third-class carriage,
the currents of icy air creeping in at every crack, the incursion of
damp passengers at every station, breathing frostily, and flapping
their muddy garments against his knees, the streaming umbrellas in the
corners, the all-pervading wretchedness: and then his thoughtful eyes
roamed round the pretty little breakfast room, where the furniture
would hardly have fetched twenty pounds at an auction, but where the
snugness and cosiness and homelike air were above price; and from
the room he glanced at its occupants, Celia in her dark winter gown,
of coarse blue serge, fitting to perfection, and set off by the last
fashion in collar and cuffs.
‘Why do you worry Mr. Gerard, mother?’ asked Celia, looking up from
her tea-making. ‘Don’t you see that we are so horribly dull here, and
he is so anxious to get away from us, that he would go through a much
worse ordeal than a wet journey in order to make his escape?’
‘I almost wish you knew what a cruel speech that is, Miss Clare,’ said
Gerard, looking down at her with a grave smile from his station in
front of the fire.
‘Why cruel?’
‘Because you unconsciously taunt me with my poverty. The eight or ten
patients I ought to see to-morrow morning are worth a hundred pounds
a year to me at most, and yet I can hardly venture to jeopardise that
insignificant income.’
‘How you will look back and laugh at these days years hence when you
are being driven in your brougham from Savile-row to the railway
station, to start for Windsor Castle, at the command of a telegram from
royalty.’
‘Leaving royal telegrams and Windsor Castle out of the question, there
is such a distance between my present abode and Savile-row that I doubt
my ever being able to traverse it,’ said Gerard; ‘but in the meantime
my few paying patients are of vital importance to me, and I have some
rather critical cases among my poor people.’
‘Poor dear things, I am sure they can all wait,’ said Celia. ‘Perhaps
it will do them good to suspend their treatment for a day or two.
Physic seems at best such a doubtful advantage.’
‘I have a friend who looks after anything serious,’ said Gerard
dubiously. ‘If I were to follow my own inclination I should most
assuredly stay.’
‘Then follow it,’ cried Celia. ‘I always do. Mamma, give Mr. Gerard
some bacon and potatoes, while I run and tell Peter to go to the
George, and let them know that the omnibus need not call here.’
‘I am afraid I am imposing upon your kind hospitality, and giving you a
great deal of trouble,’ said Gerard, when Celia had slipped out of the
room to give her orders.
‘You are giving us no trouble; and you must know that I should be happy
to receive any friend of my son’s.’
Gerard’s sallow cheek flushed faintly at this speech. He felt that
there was a kind of imposture in his position at the Vicarage. Every
one insisted upon regarding him as an intimate friend of Edward Clare;
and already it had been made clear to him that Edward was a man whom he
could never make his friend. But for Edward Clare’s mother and sister
he had a much more cordial feeling.
He sat down to breakfast with the two ladies. The Vicar would breakfast
later, and one of Edward’s privileges as a poet of the future was to
lie in bed until ten o’clock every morning in the present. Never,
perhaps, was a merrier breakfast eaten. Gerard, having made up his
mind to stay, abandoned himself unreservedly to the pleasure of the
moment. Celia questioned him about his life, and drew from him a lively
description of some of the more curious incidents in his career. He
had but rarely joined in the wilder amusements of his fellow students,
but he had joined them often enough to see all that was strange and
interesting in London life. Celia listened open-eyed, with rosy lips
apart in wonder.
‘Ah, that is what I call living,’ she exclaimed. ‘How different from
our system of vegetation here. I’m sure if Harvey had lived all his
life at Hazlehurst he would never have found out anything about the
circulation of the blood. I don’t believe ours does circulate.’
‘If you could only know how sweet your rural stagnation seems to a
dweller in cities,’ said Gerard.
‘Let the dweller in cities try it for a month or six weeks,’ said
Celia. ‘He will be weary enough by the end of that time; unless he is
one of those sporting creatures who are always happy as long as they
can go about with a gun or a fishing rod murdering something.’
‘I should want neither gun nor rod,’ said Gerard. ‘I think I could find
complete happiness among these hills.’
‘What, away from all your hospitals?’
‘I am speaking of my holiday life. I could not afford to live always
away from the hospitals. I have to learn my profession.’
‘I thought you had done with all that when you passed your examination.’
‘A medical man has never done learning. Medical science is progressive.
The tyro of to-day knows more than the adept of a century ago.’
As Mr. Gerard had only one day to spend at the Vicarage, Celia gave
herself up to the task of making that one day agreeable to him, with
the utmost benevolence and amiability. Her brother seemed dull and
morose, and shut himself in his den all day, upon the pretence of
polishing a lyric he had flung off, in a moment of inspiration, for one
of the magazines; so Celia had the visitor thrown altogether on her
hands, as she complained afterwards rather plaintively, though she bore
the infliction pretty cheerfully at the time.
The two young people spent the morning in conversation beside the
breakfast-room fire, Celia pretending to work very hard at an
antimacassar in crewels; while Gerard paced the room, and stared
out of the window, and fidgeted on his chair, after the manner of
a young man, not belonging to the tame cat species, when he finds
himself shut up in a country house with a young woman. In spite
of this restlessness, however, the surgeon seemed particularly
well pleased with his idle morning. He found a great deal to talk
about--people--places--books--life in the abstract--and, finally, his
own youth and boyhood in particular. He told Celia much more than
it was his habit to tell an acquaintance. Those blue eyes of hers
expressed such gentle sympathy; the pretty, pouting, under lip had a
tender look that tempted him to trust her. As a physiognomist he was
inclined to think well of Celia, despite her frivolity. As a young man
he was inclined to admire her.
‘You must have had a very hard youth,’ she said compassionately, when
he had given her a sketch, half sad, half humorous, of his life at the
Marischal College, Aberdeen.
‘Yes, and I am likely to have a hard manhood,’ he answered gravely.
‘How can I ever dare ask a woman to share a life which has at present
so little promise of sunshine?’
‘But do not all your great men begin in that kind of way?’ interrogated
Celia; ‘Sir Astley Cooper, for instance, and that poor dear who found
out the separate functions of the nerves that direct our thoughts and
movements--though goodness knows what actual use that discovery could
have been to anybody----’
‘I think you must mean Sir Charles Bell,’ suggested Gerard, rather
disgusted at this flippant mention of genius.
‘I suppose I do,’ said Celia. ‘He wrote a book about hands, I believe.
I only wish he had written a book about gloves; for your glove-maker’s
idea of anatomy is simply absurd. I never yet could find a maker who
understands my thumb.’
‘What an advantage my sex has over yours in that respect!’ remarked
Gerard.
‘How so?’
‘We never need wear gloves, except when we dance or when we drive.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Celia, with her wondering look. ‘I suppose there are sane
men in big places like London and Manchester, who walk about without
gloves. They wouldn’t do it here, where everybody knows everybody else.’
‘I think I have bought about two pairs of gloves since I attained to
man’s estate,’ said Gerard.
‘But your dances? How do you manage for those?’
‘Easily. I never dance.’
‘What, are you never tired of playing the wallflower? Do not German
waltzes inspire you?’
‘I never go in the way of being inspired. I have never been to a party
since I came to London.’
‘Good gracious! Why don’t you go to parties?’
‘I could give you fifty reasons, but perhaps one will do as well.
Nobody ever asks me.’
‘Poor fellow!’ cried Celia, with intense compassion. Nothing he had
told her of his early struggles had touched her like this. Here was
the acme of desolation. ‘What, you live in London all the season, and
nobody asks you to dances and things?’
‘In that part of London I inhabit there is no season. Life there runs
on the same monotonous wheels all the year round--poverty all the
year round--hard work all the year round--debt, and difficulty, and
sickness, and sorrow all the year round.’
‘You are making my heart bleed,’ said Celia; ‘at least I suppose that’s
anatomically impossible, and I ought not to mention such an absurdity
to a doctor; but you are making me feel quite too unhappy.’
‘I should be sorry to do that,’ returned Gerard gently, ‘and it would
be a very bad return for your kindness to me. Do not imagine that the
kind of life I lead is a silent martyrdom. I am happy in my profession.
I am getting on quite as fast as I ever expected to get on. I
believe--yes, I do honestly believe, that I shall make name and fortune
sooner or later, if I live long enough. It is only when I reflect how
long it must be before I can conquer a position good enough for a wife
to share, that I am inclined to feel impatient.’
Celia became suddenly interested in the shading of a vine leaf, and
bent her face so low over her work, that a flood of crimson rushed into
her cheeks, and she felt disinclined to look up again.
She gave a little, nervous cough presently, and, as Gerard was pacing
the room in silence, felt herself constrained to say something.
‘I dare say the young lady to whom you are engaged will not mind how
long she has to wait,’ Celia suggested; ‘or, if she is very brave, she
will not shrink from sharing your early struggles.’
‘There is no such young lady in question,’ answered Gerard. ‘I am not
engaged.’
‘I beg your pardon. Ah, I forgot you had said you didn’t go to parties.’
‘Do you think a man should choose a wife at a dance?’
‘I don’t know. Such things do happen at dances, don’t they?’
‘Possibly. For my own part, I would rather see my future wife at home,
by her father’s fireside.’
‘Darning stockings,’ suggested Celia. ‘I believe that is the real
test of feminine virtue. A woman may be allowed to play and sing; she
may even speak a couple of modern languages; but her chief merit is
supposed to lie in her ability to darn stockings and make a pudding.
Now, Mr. Gerard, is not that the old-established idea of perfection in
womankind?’
‘I believe that the darning and pudding-making are vaguely supposed
to include all the domestic virtues. It may seem sordid in a lover to
consider such details, but the happiness of a husband depends somewhat
upon his wife’s housekeeping. Could any home be Eden in which the cook
gave warning once a month, and the policeman ate up all the cold meat?’
Celia laughed, but the laugh ended with a sigh. She had made up her
mind that if ever she married, her husband must be rich enough to be
above the petty struggles of household economy, the cheese-parings of a
limited income. He must be able to keep at least a pony carriage, and
the pony carriage must be perfect in all its appointments. A footman
Celia might forego, but she must have the neatest of parlour-maids.
She did not aspire to get her gowns from Wörth: but she must not be
circumscribed as to collars and cuffs, and must be able to employ the
best dressmaker in Exeter or Plymouth.
But here was a young man who must wait for years before he could
marry; or must drag some poor young woman down into the dismal swamp
of genteel poverty. Celia felt honestly sorry for him. Of all the men
she had ever met he seemed to her the most manly, the brightest, the
bravest--perhaps altogether the best. If not exactly handsome, there
was that in his marked features and vivid expression which Celia
thought more attractive than absolute regularity of line, or splendour
of colour.
Mrs. Clare had been absent all the morning, engaged in small domestic
duties which she considered important, but which Celia described
sweepingly as ‘muddling.’ She appeared by-and-by at luncheon--a
meal which the Vicar never ate--and entertained her guest with
a dissertation on the tiresomeness of servants, and the various
difficulties of housekeeping, until Edward--who honoured the family
circle with his society while he refreshed his exhausted muse with cold
roast beef and pickles--ruthlessly cut short his mother’s sermonising,
and entered upon a critical discussion with George Gerard as to the
relative merits of Browning and Swinburne.
Celia was surprised to discover how widely the young surgeon had read.
She had expected to find him ignorant of almost everything outside his
own particular domain.
‘How can you find time for light literature?’ she asked.
‘Light literature is my only relaxation.’
‘You go to the theatres now and then, I suppose?’
‘I like to go when there is something good to be seen,’ answered
Gerard, flushing at the recollection of the time when he had gone three
nights a week to feast his eyes upon La Chicot’s florid loveliness.
He felt ashamed of an infatuation which at the time had seemed to him
as noble as the Greek’s worship of abstract beauty.
By the time luncheon was finished the rain had ceased, and the gray,
wintry sky, though sunless, looked no longer threatening.
‘Not a bad afternoon for a ramble on yonder moor,’ said Gerard,
standing in the bay window, looking out at the landscape. ‘Would you
have the courage to be my pioneer, Miss Clare?’
Celia looked at her brother interrogatively.
‘I’m not in the humour for any more scribbling to-day,’ said Edward,
‘so perhaps a good long walk would be the easiest way of getting rid of
the afternoon. Put on your waterproof and clump soles, Celia, and show
us the way.’
Celia ran off, delighted at the opportunity. A moorland ramble with a
conversable young man was at least a novelty.
In the hall the damsel met her mother, and, in a sudden overflow of
spirits, stopped to give her a filial hug.
‘Let us have something nice for dinner, mother dear,’ she pleaded.
‘It’s his last evening.’
The tone of the request inspired Mrs. Clare with vague fears. A girl
could hardly have said more had the visitor been her plighted lover.
‘What an idea!’ she exclaimed good-humouredly. ‘Of course I shall do
the best I can, but Monday is such an awkward day.’
‘Of course, dear. We all know that, but don’t let it be quite a Monday
dinner,’ urged Celia.
‘As for that young man, I don’t believe he knows what he is eating.’
‘Heaven forbid that he should be like my father, and his dinner the
most important event in his day!’ retorted Celia, whereat Mrs. Clare
murmured mildly,--
‘My love, your father has a very peculiar constitution. There are
things which he can eat, and things which he cannot eat.’
‘Of course, you dear deluded _mater_. Cold mutton is poisonous to
his constitution; but I never heard of his being the worse for truffled
turkey.’
And then Celia skipped off to attire herself, not unbecomingly, in a
dark gray ulster, and the most impertinent of billycock hats.
The ramble on the moor was a success. Edward held himself aloof, and
smoked his cigar in gloomy silence, but the two others were as merry
as a brace of schoolboys taking a stolen holiday. They clambered the
steepest paths, crossed the wildest bits of hill and hollow, narrowly
escaped coming to grief in boggy ground, and laughed and talked with
inexhaustible spirits all the time. George Gerard hardly knew himself,
and was struck with wonder at finding that life could be so pleasant.
The wintry air was fresh and clear, the wind whistled gaily over the
vast sweep of undulating turf and heather. Just at sunset there came a
flood of yellow light over the low western sky; a farewell smile from a
sun that had hidden himself all day.
‘Good gracious!’ cried Celia, ‘we shall barely have time to scamper
home to dinner; and if there is one thing that irritates papa more than
another, it is to wait five minutes for his dinner. He never waits more
than five minutes. If he did, I believe lunacy would ensue before the
tenth. You ought not to have led me astray so far, Mr. Gerard.’
‘I think it is you who have been leading me astray,’ said Gerard, half
grave, half gay. ‘I never felt so far from my work-a-day self in my
life. You have a great deal to answer for, Miss Clare.’
Celia blushed at the charge, but did not reply to it. She turned and
surveyed the ground over which they had travelled.
‘I can’t see Edward anywhere,’ she exclaimed.
‘Do you know, I have an idea that he left us about an hour ago,’ said
Gerard.
‘What a ridiculous young man! And now he will be home ever so long
before us, and will make capital out of his punctuality with my father.’
‘Could you imagine him capable of such meanness?’
‘He is a brother,’ answered Celia, ‘and in that capacity capable of
anything. Come along, pray, Mr. Gerard. We must scamper home awfully
fast.’
‘Won’t you take my arm?’ asked Gerard.
‘Walk arm in arm over the moor! That would be too ridiculous,’
exclaimed Celia, tripping on lightly over hillock and hollow. ‘Do make
haste, Mr. Gerard, or we shall be lost in the darkness.’
George Gerard thought it would be rather nice to be benighted on the
moor with Celia, or at any rate to go astray for an hour or so and
lengthen their ramble. Happily, however, the lights of the village,
glimmering in the valley below, were a safe guide to their footsteps,
and Celia knew the pathway that descended the moor as well as she knew
her father’s garden. The only peril was the risk of getting into some
boggy patch of the common at the bottom of the moor, and even here
Celia’s knowledge availed to keep them out of mischief. They arrived at
the Vicarage breathless, with glowing cheeks, just in time to make a
hurried toilet for dinner.
Oh, how much too short that winter evening, though one of the longest
in the year, seemed to George Gerard! And yet its pleasures were of the
simplest. Three of Celia’s particular friends--the one eligible youth
of Hazlehurst and his two sisters--dropped in to spend the evening, and
the Vicarage drawing-room resounded with youthful voices and youthful
laughter. Celia and the two young ladies played and sang; and though
neither playing nor singing was above the average young lady power,
the voices were tuneful and fresh, and the fingers were equal to doing
justice to a German waltz. The eligible young man was capable of
joining in a glee, and George Gerard consented to try the bass part,
and proved himself the possessor of a fine bass voice and a correct
ear, so they asked each other, ‘Who would o’er the downs so free?’ and
they requested every one to ‘See our oars with feathered spray,’ and
they made valorous attempts at Bishop’s famous ‘Stay, pr’ythee, stay,’
in which they did not break down more than fifteen times, and they
altogether enjoyed themselves immensely, while the Vicar read _John
Bull_ and the _Guardian_ from end to end, and good Mrs. Clare
nodded comfortably over a crochet comforter, giving her ivory hook a
vague dig into the woolly mass every now and then with an idea that she
was working diligently.
Edward sat aloof reading Browning’s “Paracelsus,” and hardly
understanding a word he read. His mind was full of perplexity and
darkest thoughts were brooding there.
Thus the evening ran its course, till the appearance of a tray of
sandwiches and a tankard of claret negus warned the revellers that
it was time to disperse. The church clock chimed the half-hour after
eleven as George Gerard went up to his room.
‘And to-morrow night I shall be alone in my Cibber Street parlour,’ he
said to himself, ‘and I may never see Celia Clare again. Better so,
perhaps. What should a piece of pretty frivolity like that have to do
in so hard a life as mine?’