Sylvester walked home from his case, along the undulating high-road
patched with moonlight and shadow, swinging his stick. The night was
crisp with a touch of frost, and the air smelt sweet. Now and then a
workingman regaining his home after town convivialities, passed him by
with a salute to which he replied with a cheerier good-night than usual.
One he stopped, and discoursed with him at length on family ailments,
much to the man's surprise; for Sylvester was renowned far and wide for
his shy silence as well as for his skill. Once he began to whistle an
air, wofully out of tune, and then broke into a short laugh.
Yes, Ella was right. It was good to be alive, to feel heart and brain
and body on the alert, responsive to outer things. But whence had come
the change? It was years since he had felt so young and conscious of
power. Was it the touch of a girl's fresh cheek against his lips? He
did not know. The feelings that had prompted the act were too new, too
undefined, for immediate analysis. The spell of the benumbing heartache
that had held him nerveless for four long years seemed to be broken, and
he was a man again.
He looked upward at the stars in the simple fancy that the dear dead
wife, the Constance he had worshipped so passionately, was gazing down
upon him with happy consent in her pure eyes. The love he had given
her was immortal, and she knew it. It was no disloyalty to love another
sweet woman on earth and to put his own broken life and his motherless
child into her keeping.... Yet after a few moments he lowered his gaze
for a while and walked on, his heart filled with the old love.
He was one of those reserved natures, capable of intense feeling, yet
incapable of outward expression, who make for themselves few friends and
are often condemned to loneliness of soul. Born with greater cravings
for sympathy than most men, they have less power to demand it. This is
too busy a world for us to stop to wonder whether a man wants what he
does not ask for; too many are clamouring loudly for what we cannot
give. So the unfortunates are passed by unheeded, each working out in
his heart his little tragedy of unfulfilled longings. But when a finer
spirit comes and divines their needs, then their hearts leap towards it
and cling to it with a great unexpressed passion of gratitude. Such had
been the beginning of Sylvesters love for his wife; such that of his
dawning love for Ella. Each in her way had comprehended his solitude;
unasked in words, but spiritually besought, each had filled it with her
influence. He needed the peculiar sympathy that a woman alone can give,
her companionship, her practical intellect, to complement his theoretic
mind. His nature cried dumbly for a whole-hearted, expansive creature
to give objectivity to life. Left to himself, he sank into routine; he
lacked the power of bringing colour and harmony into his world. This
the woman he loved could do. Once, for a few short years, a woman had
changed his universe. Then she had died, and the blackness of night
had encompassed him. He had suffered silently, as a strong man suffers,
rarely mentioning her name, but eating out his heart in desolation; and
then Ella had come. He had known her from early childhood, but had last
seen her as the schoolgirl of no account.
Now she had sprung into his horizon, a young and splendid woman of
amazing opposites, who compelled attention; and she was the only woman
other than Constance who, during all his life, had sought to know him
and to act towards him tenderwise. Nevertheless, he could not say as yet
that he loved her, in the sweet and common way of love. The old and new
hung equipoised on a delicate balance. The vague sense of this, perhaps,
was one element in the rare exaltation of his mood.
Another element, no doubt, was the final resolve he had taken that
morning, to go to London, whither his ambitions summoned him. He was a
specialist of some note in zymotic diseases. His researches had met with
a recognition not confined to England. He had felt keenly that he was
giving up to the small circle of a country practice what was meant for
the general needs of mankind. London was the only place for study and
work; for the quick amassing, too, of the small fortune that would free
him from the necessity of earning daily bread and would allow him to
realise his dreams of a great bacteriological laboratory, where he could
devote himself exclusively to independent research.
It was at the urgent entreaty of Constance that he had bought, just
before his marriage, the practice at Ayresford. A year's life there had
made him regret London. A little later he had spoken of returning. She
had thrown her arms about him and implored him by all his love for her
to stay. She had a horror of London; why, she could not tell. It was
unreasonable, but the fact remained. London would kill her,--its gloom,
its hardness, its cruelty. It had been the same story whenever he had
broached the subject. And then, Dorothy. The child was delicate, would
pine away in the reek and fogs of the town. All her woman's armoury of
passionate weapons had been employed. And he had yielded, out of his
great love. Her death had set him free. But it had taken him four years
to realise his freedom. The mere thought had been anguish. Now he could
gaze upon the past with calmness and the future with hope. As he walked
along, he began to picture the vigorous life before him. He passed
from wide conception to trivial details,--the fittings of his library,
domestic economies. A room for Dorothy--he pulled himself up short. He
had arranged to part with her. The prospect brought a pang. His father's
comfort in the child, however, was a consolation. He thought of him
tenderly,--the dear old man, the most generous and unselfish being who
had ever blessed the earth. He was a man of deep reverences; his father,
his dead mother, and his dead wife were enshrined in his Holy of Holies.
Dorothy, then, should remain at Ayresford. Perhaps the separation would
not be for long. There was a means of shortening it whose readiness was
a great temptation. The vision rose before him of the child's dark curls
nestling against a girl's soft shoulder. Often had he seen the reality
of late, and it had disturbed his depths. Was it not his duty to give
the little one so sweet and strong a mother? Again he consulted the
stars.
He had reached a set of workmen's cottages in process of erection, on
either side of the road, which marked the beginning of the town. The
moonlight beat hard upon them, showing up vividly their windowless and
doorless skeletons and the piles of bricks, mortar, and lime-covered
boards at their thresholds. He had passed the first block and was
about to traverse a cross-road that led to the railway station, when a
dog-cart containing two men and some luggage turned out of it sharply on
to the highway. Before he could realise the fact, the vehicle suddenly
lurched, the horse plunged, and in a moment the occupants were thrown
heavily on to the road. Sylvester could see at once the cause of
the mishap. A pail of mortar left by the roadside, either through
carelessness or urchin mischief, had caught the wheel. He ran forward.
One of the men, the driver, rose, and shaking himself went to the
horse's head, which was turned round in calm inquiry. The other man lay
still.
“Hurt?” cried Sylvester.
“No, doctor,” replied the driver, who belonged to the George Hotel of
Ayresford. “The gentleman may be.”
He left the pacific animal, and bent with Sylvester over the prostrate
form.
It was that of a handsome, full-blooded man in the prime of life. He had
fair hair and a great moustache. His face gleamed very white beneath
the moon, and his eyes were glassy. The driver supported his head,
while Sylvester straightened the inert body, which had remained huddled
together after the fall, wrapped in a disordered Inverness cape.
Apparently no bones were broken. Sylvester felt his pulse, which was
just perceptible. Then suddenly he viewed the man's face full, and
started back in amazed distress.
“Good heavens! it's Frank Leroux!”
“That's the gentleman's name, sir,” said the driver.
“How do you know?”
“He telegraphed from London for a bed to-night, saying that he was to be
met by the last train, which I just did, sir.”
“But he's my oldest friend,” exclaimed Sylvester. “Leave him to me and
see if the trap is all right. Bring the cushions for his head.”
He pursued his investigations. Leroux was alive. A trickle of blood
damped his hair. After a while Sylvester drew an anxious breath.
It was a severe concussion; how grave he could not for the moment
estimate. To drive him in the narrow two-wheeled cart was out of the
question. He hailed the driver, who had righted the vehicle.
“Get a ambulance as quick as you can from the Infirm. That's nearest.”
The man touched his hat, and mounting drove off at a forced speed.
Sylvester remained by Leroux, and having done all that was momentarily
possible, was at last able to reflect upon the entire unexpectedness
of his presence. They were old friends, had been at school and at Guy's
together. Leroux, who was somewhat of a waif in the world, had spent
many holidays here in Ayresford, at Woodlands. And even after he
had thrown over medicine for painting, they had maintained the old
relations. Sylvester had reckoned upon him being best man at his
wedding; and when for some whimsical reason, which Sylvester could never
discover but attributed to the artistic temperament, he declined and
went off to Norway, the bridegroom elect knew no one intimately enough
to appoint in his stead save Roderick Usher, against whom he had a
constitutional antipathy. Although he had seen little of him during his
married life, owing to his confinement in the country, and had heard
little of him of late years, save that he was abroad, Sylvester still
entertained for him the warmest affection. How, therefore, was he
to explain this sudden unannounced appearance in Ayresford? It was
preposterous that Frank Leroux should put up at the George Hotel; as
preposterous as if he himself, in earlier days, had driven there instead
of to Woodlands. The act was a sort of treason against friendship, and
Sylvester felt absurdly hurt. He wished that Leroux would straightway
recover consciousness and health so that he could rate him soundly for
his unfriendliness. But there the man, with all the mystery of motive
locked in the dull brain, lay helpless and inert, amid the builder's
refuse from the fantastic shells of houses hard by. It was an ironical
way for friends to meet after an absence and a silence of years.
Some stragglers from the station came up, passengers by the train, one
or two porters, and the postman with the bag of local mails, and offered
assistance. Sylvester declined, explaining briefly. Not daring to
proffer suggestions as to the patient's treatment, they cursed in honest
terms the offending pail and the worthless hands that had moved it,
and loitered around. Dramatic incidents of a public kind are rare
in Ayresford, and each man determined to make the most of this one,
conscious, perhaps, of a lurking regret that he had not seen the
accident.
Soon the dog-cart returned, bringing the ambulance and a couple of
bearers from the Infirmary. Leroux was lifted on to the stretcher and
covered with a blanket. The bearers started, the muffled form between
them giving a ghastly suggestion of death in life; Sylvester walked by
the side, the stragglers followed, and the trap brought up the rear.
“To my house,” said Sylvester.
The melancholy procession went on its way through the outskirts of
the little town. The cottages gave place to villas, then came houses
standing on their own grounds. Opposite the front gates of Woodlands was
the doctor's house. Sylvester dismissed his followers at the gate and,
taking Leroux's portmanteau from the trap, opened the door for the
bearers and their burden, and directed their way upstairs. The old
housekeeper, roused by the tramping, met them on the landing.
“It's a man hurt,” explained Sylvester. “Frank Leroux. We'll put him in
my room.”
A short while afterwards, the unconscious man was settled in Sylvester's
bed, a fire lighted, and Sylvester was left alone. Able to make a more
minute diagnosis, he grew very grave and prepared for an all-night
sitting.
*****
In the morning Leroux was still unconscious.
Sylvester sent for a trained nurse, and as soon as she arrived and had
received her instructions, he went over to Woodlands. The family were
at breakfast. Miss Lanyon, a faded elderly woman, her lean shoulders
enveloped in a black shawl, paused in the act of pouring out tea,
tea-pot in hand.
“Oh, Sylvester, what a dreadful thing! We have just heard. How is he?”
He briefly described the accident and hinted at the result, which might
be fatal. Everything depended upon treatment and nursing. He had been up
all night.
“How tired you must be!” said Ella.
A world of tenderness underlay the commonplace words. Sylvester looked
at her gratefully. She was deliciously fresh and sweet in her simple
morning dress, and again Sylvester felt how gracious a thing was
life,--especially after his night's battle with death. They talked of
Leroux. All were deeply shocked by the news, for he had been a universal
favourite. In the days past Ella had been accused of a schoolgirl
flirtation with him. Miss Lanyon used to save up especial household
goodies for his consumption during the holidays. Matthew, always fond
of youth, had loved the boy's frank nature, and in his generous way had
seldom let him leave the house without a five-pound note, or a watch, or
a silver-mounted walking-stick in his possession. And now the prodigal
had returned in this dismaying and tragic fashion.
“What I can't understand,” said Sylvester, “is why he did not announce
his coming,--why he should suddenly turn up at that ungodly hour. There
are plenty of day trains.”
He appealed unconsciously to his father, who made no reply. But a
little later, when Miss Lanyon and Ella had left the room, Matthew said,
suddenly breaking a short silence,--
“I was expecting him.”
“Why didn't you tell me?” asked Sylvester, involuntarily.
“He was in some trouble apparently, and asked to see me alone this
morning on business.”
“I wonder what it could have been?”
“I wonder,” said the old man, drily.
Sylvester flushed, as if at a rebuke. Knowing his father, he was aware
of indiscretion. Matthew had always maintained the most impenetrable
reserve as regards his business affairs; the son had been trained
from childhood to look upon them as sacrosanct, and to question was an
indecency.
“I beg your pardon, father,” he said deferentially.
“I mentioned the fact, for obvious reasons,” said Matthew.
“Quite so,” said Sylvester, and then hesitating and finally blurting it
out, as if he were ashamed of it, he added,--
“I know you are a father confessor to every poor devil in trouble.”
The old man looked at his son and his kind eyes grew a little moist.
Any tribute of faith and love from Sylvester touched him deeply. But he
laughed and said characteristically,--
“There are some people who'll tell you anything, if you 're only
soft-headed enough to listen to them.” Then he nodded towards the
window, and waved his hand,--
“There is one, anyhow, who doesn't want a confessor.”
It was Ella, standing in the clear March sunshine of the garden, looking
in through the French window, and holding up a bunch of fresh-gathered
violets. With a word of adieu to his father, Sylvester went out and
joined her. She pinned the flowers in his buttonhole and for ten
pleasant minutes they walked along the trim-kept paths.
“You were not angry with me last night?” he asked.
She murmured very meekly,--“If I were, I should not be here with you
now.”
“I never thought I should--ever do such a thing again,” he said
awkwardly. “I couldn't help it. It has made a different man of me.”
She drew herself up quite proudly and looked him straight in the eyes.
They were brave, clear eyes, and so were the man's that met them.
“Are you in earnest?” she asked.
“Am I the man not to be in earnest?” he answered.
The doctor's page, running across the strip of lawn to them, broke the
spell with the time-honoured morning announcement,--
“There is some one in the surgery, sir.”
Sylvester dismissed the urchin and looked at his watch. It was some
minutes past his consultation hour.
“We will have a long talk this evening,” he said, bidding her farewell.