AN INITIAL LETTER.
Sir Roderick decidedly improved on acquaintance. During the next two
days his health promised to return. He declined the offer of a private
ward.
“I like to watch what goes on,” he said to Hugh. “Of course there is a
good deal to see that is painful. But I may not have such an opportunity
of realising certain conditions of human nature again.”
Then he descanted upon the different cases, upon the various
characteristics of the maimed and injured men who were either inmates,
or who were brought in, upon the method and patient quietude of the
nurses, &c.
“You are a practised observer,” said Hugh. Upon which they began a
conversation that partially showed Hugh there was a bond of sympathy
between them. Both were dissatisfied with life generally, and with
certain matters particularly. Both were prompted to study deeply, and
ponder much on the great problems which have puzzled philosophers from
Thales to Schopenhauer; and although Sir Roderick was a materialist and
pessimist, and Hugh had taken refuge in a high ideal optimism which was
to a certain extent original, they met on the common ground of mental
disquietude.
Seen thus, Sir Roderick seemed another man. Weak though he still was,
his eyes sparkled, his face was brightened by an almost youthful
animation. Hugh was about to end the interview, fearing overfatigue for
his patient, when Sir Roderick stopped short. His countenance changed.
His brother, Mr. Edmund Pym, came into the ward with the secretary of
the hospital.
Edmund Pym was a short, wizened little man, with pinched features and
blinking eyes, scant white hair and smooth shaven face. Greater
opposites in personal appearance than these two brothers could hardly
be.
He glanced at Hugh through his eye-glass, nodded, somewhat awkwardly
asked the invalid how he was getting on, then stood fidgeting at the
bedside.
Hugh offered him a chair, but Sir Roderick gave him such a look that he
would have retired precipitately but for his patient’s apologetic—
“Pray don’t go, Mr. Paull, I want to speak to you. My brother cannot
stay long.”
“No, I cannot stay long,” said Mr. Edmund, uncomfortably. “I only came
in to see how you were getting on, and to tell you how sorry Mary and
the girls are about this. Mary will come and see you, if you like?”
“But I don’t like,” interrupted Sir Roderick, pettishly. “Tell
her—anything you please. I don’t mind Mary and the girls when I am well.
But they can’t come here. If they do, I sha’n’t see them.”
Mr. Pym nervously assured his brother that “Mary and the girls” would
not dream of doing anything to displease him. They were most anxious to
show their solicitude and sympathy, that was all.
“Tell them that as long as they hold their tongues and don’t gossip
about my infernal accident, they may do what they please,” said Sir
Roderick, surlily. “And if they must chatter about it, tell them to pray
for me. Yes, tell them that. They’ll think the black sheep is coming
into the fold at last. It’ll please them, and won’t do me any harm.”
Mr. Edmund Pym was evidently embarrassed, and did not stay long. Hugh
pitied him, and accompanying him to the end of the ward apologised for
the irascibility of the patient, which was not only natural after the
shock, but was, if anything, a favorable symptom, &c.
“Oh! I am accustomed to my brother, Mr. Paull,” he said, with a
gentleness that touched the young house-surgeon. “He is naturally
irritable. We take it for what it is worth. He has had a great deal of
trouble in his life, and it has soured him. And he is quite a recluse.
But he has a good heart, a wonderfully kind heart.”
Then he thanked Hugh for his attention to the patient and hurried off,
evidently relieved that the visit was over.
“H’m!” muttered Hugh to himself, as he slowly returned to the patient.
“H’m! It strikes me that my pessimistic friend is, like most pessimists,
a bit of a Tartar.”
Sir Roderick welcomed him with a forced smile.
“I daresay you think me ungracious?” he said, his long, withered hand
nervously fingering the bedclothes. “I’m not—at least, not exactly. I
can put up with my brother when I’m well, but just now I can’t. The fact
is, he is one of the most woman-ridden men on the face of the earth. His
wife is a bigot and a snob, and brings up her daughters bigots and
snobs. And they rule him. Rule him? They sit upon him. They drive him,
like the old donkey he is. He was always the same. At school they called
him Neddy, because he took everything so meekly. It used to enrage me,
youngster as I was. I used to say to him: ‘Man, why can’t you hold up
your head?’ And I’ve gone on saying it to him all through life. If
there’s one thing I despise, it’s a man who can’t hold up his head and
defend himself.”
“Against the women?” suggested Hugh. He had seated himself in the chair
he had offered Mr. Pym. His arms were folded. He saw that he must treat
Sir Roderick boldly, if they were to be friends. And some inward feeling
told him that Fate, or Providence, had brought them together—that at
least they were to be well acquainted with each other, if nothing more.
“I am afraid, sir, that you are a woman-hater.”
He half expected his patient to turn upon him somewhat after the manner
in which he had snubbed his brother, in which case he would have left
the old gentleman to himself, as far as conversation went, for the
future. Instead, Sir Roderick smiled, and seemed gratified.
“No, Hamlet, my friend,” he said, with a sort of pleased chuckle,
leaning back against his pillows. “You must excuse my calling you
Hamlet, but with your serious speculative nature, the name seems to fit
you exactly. No, I am no woman-hater. I know we can’t do without them.
But I object to them out of their proper place, as I object to cats out
of the kitchen, or mastiffs and Newfoundlands in the drawing-room. The
drudge woman and the ornamental woman are necessary evils. When strictly
kept under, they serve their purpose. But bowed down to and worshipped
as my unfortunate brother fetishes his womankind, they are only fit for
extermination—as if they were so many rats.” He spoke viciously. Then
turning to Hugh, he said: “I suppose you consider me a barbarian? Like
the rest, you adore a petticoat—eh?”
“No,” said Hugh. “But I can’t say I am with you in the extermination
idea; I have not known any domineering women. My mother was soft,
gentle—more a helpmeet than a companion to my father, who is a very
studious man. She was his right hand. His is not a mind to require a
second self. My sisters are like her.”
“I understand,” said Sir Roderick, in a depreciatory tone. “Good
specimens of the domestic genus. But what about the lady-love, the ideal
realised, the creature apart—eh?”
“I have so many, you see, Sir Roderick,” said Hugh. “Silent lassies, who
only speak when spoken to, and wait patiently side by side for days,
even weeks, till I throw the handkerchief. Their petticoats are
half-calf—morocco—cloth, lettered—”
“Oh! your books,” said the old man. “Ah! well, your turn will come, your
turn will come! And the longer you wait the worse it’ll be.”
“May your words not come true,” said Hugh, as he went off, amused,
yet—when he thought of the portrait in the locket, and of the telegram
sent to “L. Pym”—somewhat puzzled.
During the time that Sir Roderick remained in the hospital—between three
and four days—the subject of the fair sex was mutually tabooed by doctor
and patient. They had interesting conversations, and Sir Roderick
expressing a wish to see Hugh’s treatise, the evening before the old
gentleman left the hospital he supped in the house-surgeon’s room, and
Hugh read him portions of the work, which he was pleased greatly to
approve.
“You must come and see me in the country,” he said, when, after writing
a check for a handsome donation to the hospital fund, and insisting upon
Hugh’s acceptance of a ruby ring he had ordered to be sent from his town
house, he was taking leave of those of the staff who had been good
Samaritans to him in his weakness. “You must come and stay. They think
me an unsociable old brute, do my neighbors and people round about. But
they wouldn’t care for me if they knew me. We have nothing in common. My
friends are men of about my own age, with similar tastes. I hope you and
I will be friends. Although I am nearly old enough to be your
grandfather—minds like yours don’t count by years.”
Hugh answered that he was grateful, obliged—hoped they would be friends,
certainly, etcetera. But as Sir Roderick leaned forward and nodded
gravely to him from his brougham window when the carriage drove off, he
felt a strange sensation—was it an uneasy feeling of aversion for this
peculiar patient who had occupied his time and his thoughts these few
days? Was he relieved by his departure? He could not tell. The ruby ring
on his finger almost annoyed him. He locked it away in his desk, and
tried to lock away the recollection of Sir Roderick with it.
Then he went about his work with a strange oppression of mind and
weariness of body. It was an operating day. A most interesting—in fact,
a thrilling operation took place in the theatre—one which set all the
students and surgical nurses talking. But at the most critical moment he
seemed to see Sir Roderick’s face and to hear that short, cynical laugh.
He felt as if he were haunted.
As the days and weeks went on, the sensation lessened. But when the post
came in he generally remembered Sir Roderick. At least, for the first
few weeks after the accident he looked for the large, crooked scrawl he
had noticed on the cheque, among his correspondence. When no letter, no
news came of the strange old man, he began to think of their short
acquaintance as of one of those purposeless episodes which occur in the
lives of most medical men.
As spring blossomed into summer, he began to forget. When he had his
short holiday, and was once more in his childhood’s home among the
fields and woods, with flowers scenting the summer air and the birds
singing all around, the remembrance of the weird old Rembrandt face on
the pillow in the hospital ward came back into his mind as might some
curious dream. Alas! it would have been better for Hugh Paull if indeed
it could have been but a dream.
Kilby was a picturesque village among the Derbyshire hills. A stream ran
through the smiling little valley. It meandered through the rectory
grounds. There was no regular village street. There were groups of
cottages clustering together about the old inn, and around the church.
The rectory was a grey stone, gabled house, in grounds that the Reverend
John Paull had enlarged and improved each year since he “read himself
in” twenty-seven years ago. In front of the house was a large, square
lawn, with spreading beeches and straight conifers on either side.
Opposite, a yew hedge divided the lawn from the beautiful flower garden
with the masses of bloom bordering the winding paths. Then came the
river, famous for its succulent trout, and beyond, grassy banks, a row
of elms, and the sloping hills.
Although Hugh missed the genial presence of his sweet-faced little
mother, his father seemed determined to be cheery during his visit, and
his sisters Maud and Daisy had made up their minds to be bright in their
brother’s presence, so only indulged in their inevitable fits of grief
in private.
“Do not let—Hugh—miss me,” had been their mother’s constant exhortation
during her last brief illness. “He is such a gloomy boy. Pray be
cheerful with him.”
Mrs. Paull herself had lived cheerfully; and as she had lived, so she
died—with a smile of encouragement to those around her on her lips. To
her, life was merely one scene in the eternal drama of the human soul.
When the rector chose the words, “She is not dead, but sleepeth,” to be
engraven on the stone at the head of her grave, he felt indeed that his
Maggie was not, could not be dead. Dead? Sometimes he believed they were
nearer and dearer to each other now than when for the first time he took
his love into his arms and kissed her lips.
Thus it was hardly a house of mourning into which Hugh came. As soon as
he became accustomed to the empty chair, the absence of the kindly
voice, and the sombre garments of his sisters and the maids, he
successfully fought low spirits.
The ordeal of the first visit to his mother’s grave over, he also
struggled to be unselfish, and not to add to his father’s and sisters’
grief by a mournful presence. So he walked about the parish with the
rector as usual, drove his sisters in the pony-chaise, and fished with
them in the old haunts of the capricious trout, which sometimes suddenly
and unaccountably changed their favourite lurking-places, and as
suddenly and unaccountably returned to them again.
In the evenings, when the Rector glanced through the papers and the
girls worked by the light of the shaded lamps, he told them stories of
the hospital: the strange beings that came under his notice, the hard,
cruel tales of some of their lives.
About a week after his arrival, he was reminded of Sir Roderick. In the
weekly journal, _Speculative Thought_, there was a letter on some
subject that bore upon certain theories he held in regard to animal
magnetism. It was signed “R. Pym.” At dinner he inquired of his father
whether he had noticed it. He had not. So, after dinner Hugh read it
aloud.
“Why, I should have thought you had written that,” said his father.
“That is a pet theory of yours, is it not?”
“The old thief!” said Hugh, half to himself, but with an amused smile.
“At least, I have no right to say that. It is written by Sir Roderick
Pym. Of that I have little or no doubt. We had a discussion on the
subject. He defended the opposite view. Now, he is on my side. That is
what I can’t make out.”
“You brought him round to your way of thinking, I suppose,” said the
rector, with a satisfied glance at his son. “You certainly have the gift
of persuasion. Many a time, in our walks and talks, you have staggered
me. I have felt that your hypotheses were uncalled for and preposterous.
But for the life of me I could not advance anything solid in the way of
refutation.”
“You certainly haven’t got the gift of persuasion, papa,” said the
fair-haired, round-faced Daisy. “Giles was drunk again last night. Mary
Giles has a black eye to-day. I am sure I thought your sermon on Sunday
week would do something. But old Brown went to the Arms just the same
all last week, Mrs. Brown told me. I said, quite aghast: ‘What! after
papa’s sermon?’ And she said: ‘Lawk, miss, Brown do go to church, I
know, but he allers settles hisself for a good sleep while the sermon’s
a-goin’ on.’”
“One man, single-handed, is powerless against alcohol,” said the rector,
helplessly. “I’ve fought it these seven-and-twenty years, and haven’t
scored a point. If they will drink, they will drink—an earthquake would
not stop them.”
The conversation drifted away from Sir Roderick Pym. But next morning it
drifted back again.
“There is a letter for you, Hugh; such a curious-looking letter,” said
Maud, a tall, dark, handsome girl, who was pouring out the tea and
coffee when her brother came down to breakfast. “A most original
handwriting. You must tell me whose it is. I have been reading up
graphology lately, and there seems to me a great deal of sense in it. At
least, my friends’ handwritings correspond wonderfully with what I know
of their characters.”
“I warn you, Maud is getting quite a dangerous person,” said Daisy, with
wide-open eyes. “I found her reading one of your medical books the other
day, Hugh.”
But Hugh did not hear, or heed her. He was turning over the square, grey
envelope, with a big black P stamped on the flap. The first
communication from Sir Roderick after ten weeks’ silence. There was no
mistaking the large, crooked scrawl. The stamp was stuck on corner-ways.
After turning over the closed letter once more, he replaced it by his
plate and began his breakfast. He could not bring himself to open that
letter in the presence of his sisters. Why, he could not have told.
“You are not going to open your letter?” asked Daisy, wonderingly, as
she took her brother’s egg out of the egg-boiler.
He was saved the reply by the entrance of his father. After breakfast,
he escaped into the garden; and there, by the river, among the flowers
and in the sunshine, the first link of the terrible life-chain which was
to crush his heart was forged. He opened the letter. If he could have
guessed, have known, would he have cast it from him into the stream to
be carried away—out of his reach and ken, for ever? In after days he
asked himself this with untold bitterness of soul, but no answer came.
The contents of the envelope, which had been redirected and forwarded by
the secretary of the hospital, were simple enough.
Sir Roderick wrote, dating from the Pinewood, near F——, Surrey, as
follows:—
“My good young Friend,—It must be about time for you to claim a
holiday. Let it be spent here. You will like the place; that it will
be congenial I feel sure. Let me know day and hour, and the carriage
will meet you at F—— Station.
“Yours, RODERICK PYM.”
Hugh read it twice, thrice. At first, he had (so he thought) been full
of self-gratulation that he had so complete an excuse to decline the
invitation as this, that his furlough from hospital, spent in his own
home, was nearly at an end. But, as he paced the garden walk, he
wondered whether, in reality, he had won over Sir Roderick to his views
upon the subject of that letter to the weekly journal _Speculative
Thought_, or whether the baronet had written it in one of his sardonic
humours as a sort of grim jest. He would like to know. Perhaps Sir
Roderick had been laughing at him in his sleeve during those long talks
in the hospital. Gruesome thought, not to be borne! But he would like to
know.
“I should do no harm by running down for a day,” he thought. “I could
even leave before the dinner hour, and not have to encounter Lady Pym.”
The portrait in the locket, no less than the silence on the subject of
Sir Roderick’s young wife on the part of the housekeeper and Mr. Edmund
Pym, had prejudiced Hugh greatly against the lady to whom he had indited
that telegram. Sir Roderick’s contempt for women, too, induced the idea
that L. Pym, however charming she might be, was not a woman to deserve
either respect or love.
Seldom vacillating, to-day Hugh was as irresolute as any woman. One
minute he resolved to accept the invitation, the next he told himself it
would be better to let it stand over for the present. At last he got
angry with himself, went into the house, asked Maud if he might use her
davenport in the drawing-room, and presently posted a letter to Sir
Roderick with his own hands, lest once more he should change his mind.
In this he accepted the invitation to the Pinewood for the following
Saturday morning.
Why he was reluctant to enlighten his family on this subject, he could
not for the life of him make out. But whenever he neared it in
conversation, he felt uncomfortable. The days passed. He told them all
he should return to town the following Friday. But of the projected
visit to the Pinewood he said not one word.
The sweet summer days came and went, one by one. Once more Hugh said
good-bye, perhaps for months, to the old garden; had a farewell fish in
the river, and after a reluctant parting with father and sisters,
returned—to meet his strange fate.