When the party returned from the picnic, it was to find Colonel
Bramleigh very ill. Some sort of fit the doctor called it,--not apoplexy
nor epilepsy, but something that seemed to combine features of both. It
had, he thought, been produced by a shock of some sort, and L'Estrange,
who had last been with him before his seizure, was summoned to impart
the condition in which he had found him, and whatever might serve to
throw light on the attack.
If the curate was nervous and excited by the tidings that reached him
of the Colonel's state, the examination to which he was submitted served
little to restore calm to his system. Question after question poured
in. Sometimes two or three would speak together, and all--except
Ellen--accosted him in a tone that seemed half to make him chargeable
with the whole calamity. When asked to tell of what they had been
conversing, and that he mentioned how Colonel Bramleigh had adverted
to matters of faith and belief, Marion, in a whisper loud enough to be
overheard, exclaimed, “I was sure of it. It was one of those priestly
indiscretions; he would come talking to papa about what he calls his
soul's health, and in this way brought on the excitement.”
“Did you not perceive, sir,” asked she, fiercely, “that the topic was
too much for his nerves? Did it not occur to you that the moment was
inopportune for a very exciting subject?”
“Was his manner easy and natural when you saw him first?” asked
Augustus.
“Had he been reading that debate on Servia?” inquired Temple.
“Matter enough there, by Jove, to send the blood to a man's head,” cried
Culduff, warmly.
“I 'm convinced it was all religious,” chimed in Marion, who triumphed
mercilessly over the poor parson's confusion. “It is what they call 'in
season and out of season,' and they are true to their device; for no men
on earth more heartily defy the dictates of tact or delicacy.”
“Oh, Marion, what are you saying?” whispered Nelly.
“It's no time for honeyed words, Ellen, in the presence of a heavy
calamity; but I 'd like to ask Mr. L'Estrange why, when he saw the
danger of the theme they were discussing, he did not try to change the
topic.”
“So I did. I led him to talk of myself and my interests.”
“An admirable antidote to excitement, certainly,” muttered Culduff to
Temple, who seemed to relish the joke intensely.
“You say that my father had been reading his letters. Did he appear to
have received any tidings to call for unusual anxiety?” asked Augustus.
“I found him, as I thought, looking very ill, careworn almost, when I
entered. He had been writing, and seemed fatigued and exhausted. His
first remark to me was, I remember, a mistake.” L'Estrange here stopped,
suddenly. He did not desire to repeat the speech about being invited to
the picnic. It would have been an awkwardness on all sides.
“What do you call a mistake, sir?” asked Marion, calmly.
“I mean he asked me something which a clearer memory would have reminded
him not to have inquired after.”
“This grows interesting. Perhaps you will enlighten us a little
farther, and say what the blunder was.”
“Well, he asked me how it happened that Julia and myself were not of the
picnic; forgetting, of course, that we--we had not heard of it.” A
deep flush was now spread over his face and forehead, and he looked
overwhelmed with shame.
“I see it all; I see the whole thing,” said Marion, triumphantly.
“It was out of the worldliness of the picnic sprung all the saintly
conversation that ensued.”
“No, the transition was more gradual,” said L'Estrange, smiling; for he
was at last amused at the asperity of this cross-examination. “Nor
was there what you call any saintly conversation at all. A few remarks
Colonel Bramleigh indeed made on the insufficiency of, not the Church,
but churchmen, to resolve doubts and difficulties.”
“I heartily agree with him,” broke in Lord Culduff, with a smile of much
intended significance.
“And is it possible; are we to believe that all papa's attack was
brought on by a talk over a picnic?” asked Marion.
“I think I told you that he received many letters by the post, and to
some of them he adverted as being very important and requiring
immediate attention. One that came from Rome appeared to cause him much
excitement.”
Marion turned away her head with an impatient toss, as though she
certainly was not going to accept this explanation as sufficient.
“I shall want a few minutes with Mr. L'Estrange alone in the library, if
I may be permitted,” said the doctor, who had now entered the room after
his visit to the sick man.
“I hope you may be more successful than we have been,” whispered Marion,
as she sailed out of the room, followed by Lord Culduff; and after a few
words with Augustus, the doctor and L'Estrange retired to confer in the
library.
“Don't flurry me; take me quietly, Doctor,” said the curate, with a
piteous smile. “They 've given me such a burster over the deep ground
that I 'm completely blown. Do you know,” added he, seriously, “they've
cross-questioned me in a way that would imply that I am the cause of
this sudden seizure?”
“No, no; they couldn't mean that.”
“There 's no excuse then for the things Miss Bramleigh said to me.”
“Remember what an anxious moment it is; people don't measure their
expressions when they are frightened. When they left him in the morning
he was in his usual health and spirits, and they come back to find
him very ill,--dangerously ill. That alone would serve to palliate
any unusual show of eagerness. Tell me now, was he looking perfectly
himself? was he in his ordinary spirits, when you met him?”
“No; I thought him depressed, and at times irritable.”
“I see; he was hasty and abrupt. He did not brook contradiction,
perhaps?”
“I never went that far. If I dissented once or twice, I did so mildly
and even doubtingly.”
“Which made him more exacting and more intolerant, you would say?”
“Possibly it did. I remember he rated me rather sharply for not being
contented with a very humble condition in life, though I assured him I
felt no impatience at my lowly state, and was quite satisfied to wait
till better should befall me. He called me a casuist for saying this,
and hinted that all churchmen had the leaven of the Jesuit in them; but
he got out of this after a while, and promised to write a letter in my
behalf.”
“And which he told me you would find sealed and addressed on this table
here. Here it is.”
“How kind of him to remember me through all his suffering!”
“He said something about it being the only reparation he could make you;
but his voice was not very clear or distinct, and I could n't be sure I
caught his words correctly.”
“Reparation! he owed me none.”
“Well, well, it is possible I may have mistaken him. One thing is plain
enough; you cannot give me any clew to this seizure beyond the guess
that it may have been some tidings he received by post.”
L'Estrange shook his head in silence, and after a moment said, “Is the
attack serious?”
“Highly so.”
“And is his life in danger?”
“A few hours will decide that, but it may be days before we shall know
if his mind will recover. Craythorpe has been sent for from Dublin, and
we shall have his opinion this evening. I have no hesitation in saying
that mine is unfavorable.”
“What a dreadful thing, and how fearfully sudden. I cannot conceive how
he could have bethought him of the letter for me at such a moment.”
“He wrote it, he said, as you left him; you had not quitted the house
when he began. He said to me, 'I saw I was growing worse, I felt my
confusion was gaining on me, and a strange commixture of people and
events was occurring in my head; so I swept all my letters and papers
into a drawer and locked it, wrote the few lines I had promised,
and with my almost last effort of consciousness rang the bell for my
servant.'”
“But he was quite collected when he told you this?”
“Yes, it was in one of those lucid intervals when the mind shines out
clear and brilliant; but the effort cost him dearly: he has not rallied
from it since.”
“Has he over-worked himself; is this the effect of an over-exerted
brain?”
“I 'd call it rather the result of some wounded sensibility; he appears
to have suffered some great reverse in ambition or in fortune. His tone,
so far as I can fathom it, implies intense depression. After all, we
must say he met much coldness here. The people did not visit him,
there was no courtesy, no kindliness shown him; and though he seemed
indifferent to it, who knows how he may have felt it?”
“I do not suspect he gave any encouragement to intimacy; beseemed to me
as if declining acquaintance with the neighborhood.”
“Ay, but it was in resentment, I opine; but _you_ ought to know best.
You were constantly here?”
“Yes, very frequently; but I am not an observant person; all the little
details which convey a whole narrative to others are utterly lost upon
_me_.”
The doctor smiled. It was an expression that appeared to say he
concurred in the curate's version of his own nature.
“It is these small gifts of combining, arranging, sifting, and testing,
that we doctors have to cultivate,” said he, as he took his hat. “The
patient the most eager to be exact and truthful will, in spite of
himself, mislead and misguide us. There is a strange bend sinister in
human nature, against sincerity, that will indulge itself even at the
cost of life itself. You are the physician of the soul, sir; but take
my word for it, you might get many a shrewd hint and many a useful
suggestion from us, the meaner workmen who only deal with nerves and
arteries.”
As he wended his solitary road homewards, L'Estrange pondered
thoughtfully over the doctor's words. He had no need, he well knew, to
be reminded of his ignorance of mankind; but here was a new view of it,
and it seemed immeasurable.
On the whole he was a sadder man than usual on that day. The world
around him--that narrow circle whose diameter was perhaps a dozen miles
or so--was very sombre in its coloring. He had left sickness and sorrow
in a house where he had hitherto only seen festivity and pleasure; and
worse again, as regarded himself, he had carried away none of those
kindlier sympathies and friendly feelings which were wont to greet him
at the great house. Were they really then changed to him? and if so, why
so? There is a moral chill in the sense of estrangement from those
we have lived with on terms of friendship that, like the shudder that
precedes ague, seems to threaten that worse will follow. Julia would see
where the mischief lay had she been in his place. Julia would have read
the mystery, if there were a mystery, from end to end; but _he_, he
felt it,--he had no powers of observation, no quickness, no tact. He saw
nothing that lay beneath the surface, nor, indeed, much that was on the
surface. All that he knew was, that at the moment when his future was
more uncertain than ever, he found himself more isolated and friendless
than ever he remembered to have been. The only set-off against all this
sense of desertion was the letter which Colonel Bramleigh had written in
his behalf, and which he had remembered to write as he lay suffering on
his sick bed. He had told the doctor where to find it, and said it lay
sealed and directed. The address was there, but no seal. It was placed
in an open envelope, on which was written, “Favored by the Rev. G.
L'Estrange.” Was the omission of the seal accident or intention? Most
probably accident, because he spoke of having sealed it. And yet that
might have been a mere phrase to imply that the letter was finished.
Such letters were probably, in most cases, either open, or only closed
after being read by him who bore them. Julia would know this. Julia
would be able to clear up this point, thought he, as he pondered and
plodded homeward.