DIARY OF HUGH PAULL.
_May, 18—._
It is positively terrible! to-day I have been married eleven months, and
during that time my work has been at a dead standstill.
It is rather my poor darling’s misfortune than her fault. For one with a
temperament of passionate concentration such as hers, a totally
different up-bringing was called for. School, for instance, and plenty
of cheerful, natural society afterwards; she should have mixed freely
with girls of her own age, girls like Daisy. This might have balanced
her tendency to dwell on one idea to the exclusion of all others.
Week after week, month after month, I have tried to wean her from the
one theme—our mutual affection. I see, I feel more bitterly each hour
that she is not in love with _me_, but with her love for me. I may wrong
her affection: God forgive me if I do! But true love is unselfish. Even
her love for her father was unselfish.
To-day I have determined to look into the matter. The resolve formed
itself in my mind during our walk.
She has an embarrassing habit of multiplying wedding-days: I don’t know
what else to call it. For instance, I had to keep the day week of our
marriage in a semi-solemn way: in recalling all our sentiments during
our betrothal, in reading our old letters, in rejoicing that we had met,
etcetera. A charming idea, especially when supplemented by plans for our
future management of the Pinewood, our poor people, the tenants and
labourers. But, like other habits of inspection and classification, not
good when treated with “vain repetitions.” That day fortnight, that day
month, the function was not to be cavilled at. But when, the “day five
weeks” after our marriage, she raised her eyes in that earnest way when
she gave me my first cup of tea at breakfast, and said: “It is five
weeks to-day since we were married——”
Well, I had planned to do some work—in fact, to begin my work again; and
I said, as gently as I could:
“Yes, dear; and to-day we must give up mooning over the past, and begin
to live real, sensible lives.”
I cannot blame myself for the words, nor for my way of saying them. But
their effect upon her alarmed me. She became deadly pale, and looked at
me as if at the very least I had threatened to kill her.
“Did you say ‘_mooning over the past_’?” she stammered.
I confessed that I did.
“What do you mean by ‘_mooning_’?” she asked, imploringly.
“What you are doing now,” I said bravely, for I felt I must begin to
bring my darling down to earth a bit. (It was for all the world like
pulling a string attached to the foot of some fluttering and unwilling
bird.) “You have some romantic idea in your mind. You want to square my
life and your life with it. It cannot be done. Life is not a poem in so
many cantos. It is work; hard, dry, but honest _work_.”
“Did I ever say that it was not?” she said, reproachfully.
“No, dear. But——”
Then I explained, as carefully as I could, how essential it was that we
should settle down; that while I continued to study, I should commence
practising my profession; a thing as essential to a medical man as
theoretical study.
“You are going to _practise_?” she asked, in evident horror.
“Certainly,” I said, firmly.
“Where? Here?” (This was at the Pinewood.)
“Scarcely here, I think,” I said. “In London.”
She said no more. For days after she was gentle, affectionate, but a
very drooping lily indeed. Everything seemed an effort to her.
I persisted. Sir Roderick’s town house had been sold to pay off some
mortgages on the Pinewood. So I saw my good friend Dr. Hildyard about a
house. After discussion, he offered me a floor in his house (which he
only used for business, having taken a country house near Finchley as
his place of residence).
“By-and-by we may take it into our heads to be partners, Paull,” he
said. “Then you will be on the premises.”
It was a brilliant prospect, and my poor girl rejoiced with me. In
theory, it was delightful; in practice, impossible.
Day by day I would return to find the spectre of a wife, instead of the
living, breathing entity I had married. I soon found out that although
Lilia occupied each hour according to a plan we had drawn up together;
although she managed her household cleverly, visited her people, taught
in the school, and studied chemistry and physiology, as she wished, as
she termed it, to be able at any moment to help me in minor matters if
called upon, she seemed to _rust_, as it were, working and living alone.
At first I thought it was loneliness, and Daisy came and spent the last
days of her single life with us, Herbert Pym coming occasionally. (An
abominable prig, that!) But after a few weeks, my sister came to me with
a serious face.
“I must speak to you, Hugh,” she said, with an evident struggle;
“Herbert said it was my duty. My dear boy, do you _know_ about Lilia?”
“Know?” I repeated, slightly nettled by Mr. Herbert’s
Jack-in-office-ship. “Of course I know everything my wife says and does.
I almost flatter myself she tells me her secret thoughts.”
“That is just _it_,” said my sister, who seemed quite unlike her usual
bright self. “We cannot help seeing, Hugh, that if this sort of thing
goes on, Lilia will ruin your life.”
“And pray why do _we_ think so?” I asked.
“If you were to see her when you are away! She does what she sets
herself to do. But in such a way! As soon as you are gone, she changes.
She gets pale, and a sort of film comes over her eyes. She doesn’t
really seem to understand what one says to her; and I can see that the
poor people we go to see are beginning to think that you beat her, or
something. The other day, old Dame Ashwell (that wonderful old woman who
lives in the thatched cottage at the end of Swain’s Lane) looked quite
disgustedly at me, and when she condescended to speak to me, was very
dignified indeed; and yesterday, when I met her in the wood picking up
fir-cones and determined to have it out with her, I found out that not
only she but most of your people are noticing how miserable Lilia looks,
and how different she was when the ‘old gentleman was alive,’ as they
call it.”
It was this talk with Daisy which determined me to give up all idea of
practising my profession for the present; and the very day after Daisy
left us (I would not allow Herbert the satisfaction of knowing that his
interference had influenced me, so sure I am that he has a secret grudge
against me because he thinks I was the means of ousting his brother
Roderick)—the very day after I was well quit of my sister and her
betrothed, I went to Dr. Hildyard and told him how matters stood.
He was more taken back and affected than I could understand. He was
silent for awhile; then he said:
“You had better let me see your wife, Paull. She must not stand in your
way in this fashion.”
For him to see Lilia while entirely in the dark as to the peculiarities
of her past life would never do. But we made a compromise. Shortly he
would take a holiday, and spend it at the Pinewood.
He came, he saw, and was conquered. As I had been for some days entirely
at home, Lilia was in the most brilliant of humours. She treated our
distinguished guest with all the consideration and respect which Sir
Roderick had known so well how to lavish on his favourites; and to this
was added a womanly tenderness and reverence under the influence of
which Dr. Hildyard expanded and, as it were, blossomed out into a
geniality I had not before known in him.
It seemed to me that he told my wife the whole story of his life. She
was intensely interested, and made so many apt and pertinent remarks
that I began to see more than ever that if I pursued my profession, and
left her to herself and her hopeless mood, between the two stools I
should probably fall to the ground. Thus, she was a perfect woman. Away
from me, she was literally _non est_.
An embarrassing position. Dr. Hildyard decided me. We had the matter out
the day he left us. He said, warmly:
“Paull, I confess that from what I heard of your wife, I came here
prepared to find her one of three things: mad, a fool, or a victim to
hysteria. From what I have seen and observed, I think her one of the
sweetest women alive, but a perfect baby.”
I told him my growing fear that she was becoming too absorbed in my
companionship, that it might in time become almost a monomania.
He smiled.
“I think that will cure itself,” he said, “by the homœopathic system.
You will find two babies less trouble than one.”
_Friday, May —._
I was interrupted after that last word (I was writing late, in the
study) by quick footsteps down the staircase, and Lilia came in in her
dressing-gown.
“I was dreadfully frightened!” she said. “I must have fallen asleep,
although I _thought_ I was awake, listening for you; and I woke up and
you were not there! And the clock struck one!”
“And if it did?” I said, taking her on my knee, after shutting this book
into a drawer. Her heart was beating, she was trembling. “Oh, Lilia!” I
said. “I thought I had married a woman who would bravely face life at my
side, not shrink and cower at shadows like a nervous horse.”
Then I talked seriously to her. Many husbands in my position would have
been able to use the argument of maternal responsibility to urge her to
be more matter-of-fact, less absurd in her fancifulness, and I said so.
“You dislike giving me pain, dear, I know,” I said. “And your horror of
the poor little one God may give to us is a great pain to me. Other
women rejoice at such a prospect.”
She drew herself away from my arm and looked fixedly at me.
“What other women do you mean?” she said.
“All women, at least most women,” was my answer. “Lilia, I cannot
understand this feeling, or rather this want of feeling, in you. Tell me
truly, frankly, darling, why do you hate the idea of a child—our child?”
She took my face between her hands and kissed me.
“Because,” she spoke passionately, “you may love it—would love it; and I
cannot spare one thought, one word, one look of yours!”
I sighed, I could not help it. Then I reminded her of a great oak we had
seen during an expedition with Dr. Hildyard into the adjacent county. We
had paused to look at the giant, around whose spreading branches ivy had
climbed and twisted until bough after bough was dying.
She had said:
“That ivy clings to the tree like I cling to you.”
“The ivy is choking the life out of the oak,” said I; “it is to be hoped
you will not do the same by me.”
I said it, and she took it, jestingly. But, as I told her, if matters do
not mend—if I cannot at least have freedom for study, or to go to town
now and then on business and to look people up, my end may be the same
as the oak’s.
She was all penitence, all promises; nor would she leave the study until
I had given her my word that I would for the future go on my own way
regardless of her feelings, which she would try to modify by degrees.
Before we retired for the night, I had promised to go to town to-day for
some scientific works I particularly want, and to transact neglected
business.
_Sunday, May —._
Only two days! It seems weeks—weeks of horror, anxiety—since I wrote
those last words.
I went to town, got my books, saw Dr. Hildyard, etcetera, and returned
by the seven o’clock train. Thomas was to meet me at the station with
the dogcart. He was there. At first I noticed nothing unusual, but the
instant I reached my seat he drove off at a tremendous rate.
“Gently, gently!” I cried. “What’s wrong with Firefly?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the _hoss_, sir,” he said, gruffly; “but we’ve had
visitors to-day, and whether it’s them or not I don’t know, but the
missus is upset, like.”
“Is your mistress ill?” I cried, startled, dreading I knew not what.
“I dunno, sir,” was all I could get out of Thomas for some minutes,
until I was really angry, when he blurted out that “one of them Pyms—the
old ’un, he thought,” had come and had had a long interview with my
wife, since which no one had seen her or had been able to find her.
Distracted, I had poor Firefly driven home at racing speed, and
searched, first the house, then the grounds, with lanterns.
No result. I feared calling her name, for the cottagers might hear, and
there would be fresh talk such as that Daisy repeated to me.
May I never, never have to go through such a time again! I was getting
mad with anxiety and fear when something seemed to _say_ to me—not in my
ear, but in my mind:
“Her father’s grave.”
With a flash of hope, I bade the men who accompanied me stay where they
were; and taking a lantern went on into the churchyard alone.
The lantern sent a flicker upon a black heap on the grass: Lilia,
asleep—or dead?
Her dress was wet to the touch, drenched with dew. Feeling half crazy
with dread, I gently shook her.
She started, and staring with dazed eyes, sat up, rubbed her eyes (thank
God! she had only been asleep, but that was bad enough!). Then she said,
“Oh, dear!” looked at me, first with sharp inquiry, then with a smile,
and held out her hands to be lifted up.
“How _could_ you?” I said, as she clung to me.
“My uncle Pym came and said cruel things; said your inhuman treatment of
me was the talk of the countryside: that I owed it to myself to leave
you and go and live with him; and when I told him what I thought of him,
got in a fearful rage, told me I was a fool and a dupe, and I should rue
it, and went away,” she said, in her direct, childish manner. “Then I
felt very bad—so lonely—and came here. I could not help crying, and I
expect I cried myself to sleep. But I am not sorry!” she added,
triumphantly, “for you look so ill, that I see you have really cared;
that you really do love me!”
If I had not been so thankful to find and hold my darling to my heart
once more, this would have been exasperating.
“Lilia, your absurd want of faith will be your ruin,” I told her. “Do
you know that since our first meeting my experience of you has taught me
that Faith is not only necessary to people’s happiness, but to their
soundness in mind and body?”
Then I cautioned her to be careful what she said and did before those
men—there would be talk enough of to-day’s incidents as it was,—and we
went back to the house.
But the shock of that malignant old man’s visit had its natural result.
Before morning my darling was suffering greatly. As soon as the
telegraph-office was open I wired to Dr. Taylor (the specialist to whom
Dr. Hildyard had introduced me, and who had promised to come to us if
necessary). By midday he came. Towards evening a pale, delicate little
boy was taken to his mother to be kissed. She was quite revived by the
fact that he was a boy.
“You may say I am selfish! I am,” she said, wistfully, to me afterwards.
“But if it had been a girl, and you had loved her like my father loved
me, what room would there have been in your heart for me?”
_June —._
The little one is a week old to-day. It is very sweet to see mother and
son together. I could sit and look at them by the hour. But “Life is
real, life is earnest!” as the great author of that incomparable “Psalm
of Life” says; and all the more that the boy has come upon the scene, I
must be “up and doing, with a heart for any fate!”
Any fate! what fate can I fear, with those two precious ones to love and
work for?
_July —._
Can I, this wretched, hopeless wreck, groping in a thick darkness, where
not the faintest gleam of hope tells me what I am, where I am, how I am
to bear my life—can I be the _fool_ who wrote that last entry?
Fool, fool! I boasted of a to-morrow. If ever any eyes see this—man or
woman,—I solemnly warn you, never, NEVER, whatever happens, however you
may have been blessed, look upon to-morrow with anything approaching to
the feeling (was it confidence or presumption?) with which I wrote those
last words.
It was all sunshine that day; next day the storm was down upon me with a
vengeance.
My darling was lying on the sofa (it was a sultry afternoon) by the
window. We were looking over a map together, discussing where we should
all go for change of air as soon as she might travel, when suddenly she
asked me “if I would mind shutting the window.”
“I think the wind must have changed,” she said, pulling her little shawl
together over her shoulders; “I feel quite cold.”
She could not possibly have had a chill; the air itself was like that
which comes from a heated oven. However, I closed the window. I had
hardly done so when she was seized with shivering.
I called Nurse, who is a kind, but highly-experienced woman. I called
her in fear. I saw her look swiftly at Lilia, then at me.
_Then I knew._ We both pretended to Lilia to think nothing of the
rigours which shook her and turned her lips blue over her chattering
teeth; but I stole my opportunity, rushed downstairs, sent off a
telegram to Dr. Taylor, despatched a messenger for the Mervyns. I could
not face this alone: I turned coward. I “groaned in my anguish, and the
thorn fastened in me.”
And when I went back—the pity of it—Nurse struggling to lift the pale,
suffering darling into bed, and baby crying piteously in the next room;
while _she_ said piteously to me, “He might be quiet till I get warm,
mightn’t he?”
Poor infant! if he were quiet till his mother got warm, he would never
cry again.
I sent Nurse to quiet him, and waited on her myself. I did everything, I
hazarded everything I dared, to bring about a reaction. But presently
she complained of her chest.
“I feel as if they had taken one of those hideous flat stones off a
grave and laid it on my chest,” she said, gazing at me with eyes that
looked bluer and more staring than those dear grey eyes had ever looked.
“What is it? Is there anything wrong with my heart, Hugh! Tell me, is it
my _heart_?” (with alarm).
“Stuff!” I said. “I let you sit up too long, and you are chilly, that’s
all.”
Then I began, watching her stealthily, to talk as easily as I could.
Her features were paling into an ugly yellow, her eyes were sinking, and
her nose looked pinched. Nurse, coming to the bed with a cheerful “Well,
dear, are you all right now?” gave me a look that, knowing well enough
what was happening, stabbed my very soul.
“Rather quick, don’t you think so?” she managed to whisper to me.
She need not have whispered. I knew my wife was sinking away from me as
fast as any human being has ever sunk from time into eternity.
And _how—how_ was she going?
“What is making that buzzing noise? I can’t hear you two,” she said
presently. “And, Hugh, raise me, or I shall choke!”
She was gasping. I raised her. She did not feel cold now. Nurse was
fanning her.
No hope for anyone to come! I felt desperate. Just then she said, “_You_
fan me; Nurse—baby.” So Nurse gave me the fan and went away. The dying
must be obeyed.
As I held her—a dead weight—on one arm and fanned her with my disengaged
hand, she looked up at me with a terrible look—the most hopeless, yet
defiant and angered, look I have ever seen in human eyes. I once saw it
in a celebrated picture of “Lucifer at His Condemnation,” and,
remembering this, it was hell to see it in my wife’s eyes now.
“I must know,” she said, in her altered voice. “Is this _death_?”
“It may be,” I faltered. I dared not withhold the awful truth.
She smiled—a sneering, derisive smile.
“And you still believe in a good God?” she said.
“More than ever!” I said, my very life in my words. “Darling, how could
I live and see you like this if God did not hold me, help me? I should
be like a dead thing—helpless—and you know I am holding you up. I am
calm, I can talk, by the mercy of God——”
“Hush!” she said, violently, with a tremendous effort raising herself
(she was gradually slipping down, hold her how I might). “Do not say any
more about _that_. Tell me, how long have I——”
“My darling, I have sent for Dr. Taylor; we must not give up hope,” I
said. In my agony of despair the words mocked me like so many separate
and distinct lies. “He may do something. Why should you die? You are so
young——”
“I asked you, _how long_?” she repeated. “I have something to say.”
“Days—I mean hours,” I stammered, lying hard and fast in my misery.
She feebly shook her head.
“No, no!” she said; “perhaps in a minute. I want you to promise your
dying wife something. Will you—whatever I ask?”
“Anything! anything!” I said. “Your will is my will now!”
“_Anything?_” she repeated.
Drops, those last cold drops, were on her brow.
“I swear—anything,” I said, recklessly.
“Ah!” she laughed.
Yes, let me remember that, in her hour of agony, I pleased her so—that
once more, for the last time, I heard that sweet little joyous laugh.
“Well,” she said, “as soon as I am dead, go downstairs. In the
right-hand drawer of my father’s writing-table you will find a small
revolver. I have kept it loaded. Shoot yourself! We shall then be as
much together as we are now. You will?”
It was an awful struggle—her dying eyes gazing into mine. At last I
said:
“I—will.”
“Now I don’t hate this God of yours quite so much,” she began, when
suddenly her face was convulsed, a rattle came in her throat, her eyes
glazed.
Minutes passed—half-an-hour; then (she had been dead a
quarter-of-an-hour) I left her body, her beautiful young lifeless body,
to Nurse, after kissing those dear lips for the last time, and I went to
fulfil my promise.
I locked the library door, and, opening the drawer, found not only a
revolver, but a case of pistols. The revolver seemed to me
untrustworthy, so I cleaned one of the pistols, and loaded it. Did I
feel remorse, anxiety, as to my future? I did not. I felt absolutely
apathetic, commonplace, as a body, I imagine, might feel without its
soul, if its life could continue under those conditions.
I had just completed the loading to my satisfaction when there was a
knock at the door.
“I will come presently,” I said.
“Please, let me in,” said Mrs. Mervyn. “Baby fell off the sofa and is
hurt. I have brought him.”
Her child! For an instant the room whirled; then an agony of grief
welled up within me. The poor, innocent child!—our child!
Senselessly, I staggered to the door, opened it, and took the babe from
Mrs. Mervyn. He was not much hurt—a wound on the head of but slight
importance.
Turning to reassure Mrs. Mervyn, I saw her gazing at the pistols as if
she were petrified.
“You meant _this_?” she said to me, her face aflame like the face of the
accusing Angel. “What a love God must have had for you, for you to have
been saved!”
Walking to me, she took baby’s hand and laid it on mine.
“He has saved you,” she said. “Oh, never, never forget it!”