THE FORLORN HOPE.
A NOVEL.
BY
EDMUND YATES,
AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "BROKEN TO HARNESS," ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.
1867.
_The Right of Translation is reserved_.
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME. II.
CHAPTER I. Nothing like Wilmot.
II. Another Turn of the Screw.
III. A Coup manqué.
IV. Madeleine awakes.
V. At our Minister's.
VI. The Gulf fixed.
VII. Henrietta.
VIII. Mrs. Ramsay Caird at Home.
IX. Inquisitorial.
X. Against the Grain.
XI. Iconoclastic.
XII. Too Late.
XIII. Quand même!
XIV. Forlorn.
THE FORLORN HOPE.
CHAPTER I.
Nothing like Wilmot.
Mr. Foljambe did not easily throw off the painful impression which his
interview with Chudleigh Wilmot had made upon him. The old gentleman
had always found Wilmot, though not an expansive, a singularly frank
person; he had not indeed ever spoken much to him concerning his wife
or his domestic affairs generally; but men do not do so habitually;
and the men to whom their wives are most dear and important rarely
mention them at all. The circumstance had therefore made no impression
upon Mr. Foljambe, himself a confirmed old bachelor, who, though very
kind and considerate to women and children, regarded them rather as
ornamental trifles, with a tendency to degenerate into nuisances, than
otherwise.
He began by wondering why Wilmot should have been so thoroughly upset
by his wife's death, and went on to speculate how long that very
unexpected and undesirable result might be likely to last. Becoming
sanguine and comparatively cheerful at this point, he made up his mind
that Chudleigh would get over it before long. Perhaps all had not gone
very smooth with the Wilmots. Not that he had any particular reason to
think so; but Wilmot was not a remarkably domestic man, and there
might be perhaps a little spice of self-reproach in his sorrow. At all
events, it would not last; _that_ might be looked upon as certain. In
the mean time, and in order that the world might not think Wilmot's
conduct silly, sentimental, or mysterious, Mr. Foljambe would be
beforehand with the gossips and the curious, and, by assigning to his
absence from England a motive in which the interests of his profession
and those of his health should be combined, prevent the risk of its
being imputed to anything so _rococo_ as deep feeling.
"Gad, I'll do it," said Mr. Foljambe, as he took his seat in his
faultless brougham, having carefully completed an irreproachable
afternoon toilette, in which every article of costume was integrally
perfect and of the highest fashion, but as scrupulously adapted to his
time of life as the dress of a Frenchwoman of middle or indeed of any
age. "I'll go and inquire for that Kilsyth girl, and set the right
story afloat there," he said, as he gave his coachman the necessary
orders; "it will soon find its way about town, especially if that
carrier-pigeon Caird is in the way."
And the old gentleman, chuckling over his own cleverness in hitting on
so happy a device, felt almost reconciled already to the deprivation
which he was doomed to suffer in the loss of Wilmot's society by the
opportunity which it afforded him of exercising the small social
talents, of which he really possessed a good many, and believed
himself to be endowed with a good many more.
Lady Muriel Kilsyth was at home, likewise Miss Kilsyth; and her
ladyship "received" that afternoon. So Mr. Foljambe, who, though an
admittedly old man, long past the elderly stage, and no longer _à
pretention_ in any sense, was as welcome a visitor in a London
drawing-room as the curliest of darlings and most irresistible of
guardsmen, made his way nimbly upstairs, and was ushered into the
presence of the two ladies, who formed an exceedingly pretty and
effective domestic group.
Madeleine Kilsyth, who had recovered her beauty, though a little of
her brilliance and her bloom was still wanting, was drawing, while her
stepmother stood a little behind her chair, her dark graceful head
bent over her shoulder, and directed her pencil. Mr. Foljambe's glance
lighted on the two faces as he entered the room, and they inspired him
with an instantaneous compliment, which he turned with grace, a little
old-fashioned, but the more attractive. They answered him pleasantly;
Lady Muriel gave him her hand; Madeleine suffered him to take both
hers, and repaid the long look of interest with which he regarded her
with her sweetest smile; then resumed her occupation, and listened, as
she drew, to the conversation between Lady Muriel and Mr. Foljambe.
At first their talk was only of generalities: what the ladies had been
doing since they came to London, the extent of Madeleine's drives, how
many of their acquaintance had also arrived, the prospects of society
for the winter, and cognate topics. They had seen a good deal of
Ronald, Lady Muriel told Mr. Foljambe; and her brother's presence had
been a great pleasure to Madeleine. A close observer might have
thought that Madeleine's expression of countenance did not altogether
confirm this statement; but her old friend was not a close observer of
young ladies, and Lady Muriel did not look at her stepdaughter as she
spoke. After a while Mr. Foljambe turned the conversation upon
Madeleine's illness, and so, in the easiest and most natural way,
introduced Wilmot's name. Lady Muriel's manner of meeting this topic
was admirable. She never failed in the _aplomb_ which is part of the
armour of a woman of the world; and though she never again could hear
Wilmot's name mentioned with real composure, she had the mock article
always at hand; so skilful an imitation as successfully to defy
detection.
"A fine fellow, is he not, Lady Muriel?" said Mr. Foljambe, in the
tone of a father desirous of hearing the praises of his favourite son.
"Indeed he is," responded Lady Muriel heartily. "He has laid us under
an obligation which we can never discharge or forget. I am sure
Kilsyth and I reckon him among the most valued of our friends."
"He took the deepest interest in Miss Kilsyth's case, I know," said
Mr. Foljambe; "and of course there was everything to excite such a
feeling;" and the gallant old gentleman bowed in the direction of
Madeleine, who acknowledged the compliment with a most becoming blush.
"It was a very anxious, a very trying time," said Lady Muriel, in the
precise tone which suited the sentiment. "I don't know how Kilsyth
would have borne it, had it not been for Dr. Wilmot. We were much
distressed to hear that such bad news awaited him on his return. He
found his wife dying, did he not?"
"He found her dead, Lady Muriel."
There was a pause, during which Madeleine laid aside her pencil, and
shaded her face with her hand. The tears were standing in her blue
eyes; and while Mr. Foljambe proceeded, they streamed unchecked down
her face.
"Yes, he found her dead. It was a sudden termination to an illness
which had nothing serious in it, to all appearance. But, as many
another illness has done, it set all human calculations at naught; and
when the bad symptoms set in, it was too late for him to reach her in
time. I suppose he has not told you anything about it?"
"No," said Lady Muriel; "beyond a few words of condolence, to which he
made a very brief reply, nothing has been said. I fancy Dr. Wilmot is
a man but little given to talking of his own afnot fairs or his own
feelings."
"Not given to talking of them at all, Lady Muriel. I never met a more
reticent man, even with myself; and I flatter myself he has no closer
friend, none with whom he is on more confidential terms; he is very
reserved in some things. I did not know much of his wife."
"Did you not?" said Lady Muriel; "how was that?"
"When I say I did not know much of her," Mr. Foljambe explained, "I
do not mean that it was from any fault of mine. I called once or
twice, but there was something sullen and impenetrable and
uninteresting about her, and I never felt any real intimacy with her."
"Indeed!" said Lady Muriel, "it is impossible to know Dr. Wilmot
without feeling interested in all that concerns him; and I have often
wished to know what sort of woman his wife was."
"Well, that is precisely what very few persons in the world could have
told you; and I, for one, acknowledge myself astonished at the effect
her death has had on Wilmot."
"He is dreadfully cut up by it certainly," said Lady Muriel; "but I
hope, and suppose, he will recover it, as other people have to recover
troubles of that and every other kind."
"He is taking the best means of getting over it," said Mr. Foljambe;
"and I heartily enter into the notion, and have encouraged him in it.
He thinks of going abroad for some time. I know he has been very
anxious to study the foreign treatment of diseases in general, and of
fever in particular; and he came to me yesterday and told me he meant
to leave London for six months at least. He assigned sound reasons for
such a determination, and I think it is the wisest at which he could
possibly have arrived."
Lady Muriel rose and rang the bell. The fire required mending, and the
brief afternoon twilight rendered the lamps a necessity earlier than
usual. When these things had been attended to, she took up the
dialogue where it had been broken off with all her accustomed grace
and skill.
"I did not know we were about to lose Dr. Wilmot for a time," she
said. "If all his friends and patients miss him as much as Madeleine
Kilsyth and myself are likely to do, his absence is likely to create a
sensation indeed. And so poor Mrs. Wilmot was not a very amiable,
woman?"
Mr. Foljambe had not said anything about Mrs. Wilmot's amiability, or
the opposite, but he let the observation pass in sheer bewilderment;
and that Lady Muriel Kilsyth understood as well as he did. She went
on. "A man like Dr. Wilmot must miss companionship at home very much.
Of course he can always command the resources of society, but they
would not be welcome to him yet awhile. How long does he speak of
remaining away, Mr. Foljambe?"
"He did not mention any particular time in talking the matter over
with me. His destination is Berlin, I believe. He is anxious to
investigate some medical system carried on there, which I need not say
neither you nor I know anything about. He was very eloquent upon it, I
assure you; and I am glad to perceive that all his trouble has not
decreased his interest in the one great object of his life."
"His professional advancement, I suppose?" said Lady Muriel.
"Well, not exactly that. I think he must retard that by any, and
especially by an indefinite, absence. It is rather to his profession
itself, to science in the abstract, I allude. He always had a perfect
thirst for knowledge, and the greatest powers of application I have
ever known any man possessed of. A 'case' was in his eyes the most
important of human affairs. He would throw himself into the interest
of his attendance upon a patient with preternatural energy. I am sure
you discovered that while he was at Kilsyth."
"Yes indeed; his care of Madeleine was beyond all praise, or indeed
description. No doubt, had any other opportunity offered, we should
have found, as you say, that such devotion was not a solitary
instance."
"O no, Wilmot is always the same. You know, I presume, that I required
his services very urgently indeed just then; but he would not leave
Miss Kilsyth's case for even so old and near a friend as I am."
Madeleine's colour deepened, and she listened to the conversation, in
which she had taken no share, with increased eagerness.
"I know that some one telegraphed to him, but that he kindly said
Madeleine's case being the more urgent of the two, he would remain
with her. And you were none the worse, it seems, Mr. Foljambe?"
"No indeed, Lady Muriel," replied the old gentleman with a
good-humoured smile. "Wilmot's deputy did quite as well for me as the
mighty potentate of medicine himself. But I acknowledge I was a little
annoyed; and if anyone but my old friend Kilsyth's daughter had been
the detaining cause, I should have been tempted to play Wilmot a
trick, by pretending that some extraordinary and entirely novel
symptoms had appeared. He would have come fast enough then, I warrant
you, for the chance of finding out something new about gout."
Lady Muriel laughed, but Madeleine apparently did not perceive the
joke. Soon some other callers dropped in, and Mr. Foljambe took his
leave. But the subject of Wilmot and his contemplated abandonment of
London was not abandoned on his departure. He was well known to the
"set" in which the Kilsyths moved, though their own acquaintance with
him was so recent, and everyone had something to say about the rising
man. The sentimental view of the subject was very general. It was so
very charming to think of any man, especially one so talented, so
popular, so altogether delightful as Wilmot, being "broken-hearted" by
the death of his wife. Lady Muriel gently insinuated, once or twice, a
doubt whether there was any ground for this very congenial but rather
romantic supposition: her doubts, however, were by no means well
received, and she found herself overwhelmed with evidence of the
irremediably desolate condition of Wilmot's heart.
When the afternoon calls had come to an end, and Lady Muriel and her
stepdaughter were in their respective rooms and about to dress for
dinner, the mind of each was in accord with that of the other,
inasmuch as the same subject of contemplation engrossed both. But the
harmony went no farther. Nothing could be more opposite than the
effect produced upon Madeleine and Lady Muriel by Mr. Foljambe's news,
and by all the desultory discussion and speculation which had followed
its announcement.
To Madeleine the knowledge that she should see Wilmot no more for an
indefinite period was like a sentence of death. The young girl was
profoundly unconscious of the meaning of her own feelings. That the
sentiment which she entertained towards Wilmot was love, she never for
a moment dreamed. In him the ideal of an elevated and refined fancy
had found its realisation; he was altogether different from the men
she had hitherto met since her emancipation from the schoolroom;
different from the hunting, shooting devotees of field-sports, or the
heavy country gentlemen given to farming and local politics, who
frequented Kilsyth; different from the associates of her brother, who,
whether they were merely fashionable and empty, or formal and priggish
like Ronald himself, were essentially distasteful to her. She was of a
dreamy and romantic temperament, to which the delicacy of health and
the not quite congenial conditions of her life at home contributed not
a little; and she had seen in Wilmot the man of talent, action, and
resolve, the realisation of the nineteenth-century heroic ideal. To
admire and reverence him; to find the best and most valuable of
resources in his friendship, the wisest and truest guidance in his
intellect, the most exquisite of pleasures in his society; to triumph
in his fame, and try to merit his approval,--such was the girl's
scheme for the future. But it never occurred to her that there was one
comprehensive and forbidden word in which the whole of this state of
feeling might be accurately defined. She had grieved for Wilmot's
grief when she heard of the death of his wife, but at the same time a
subtle instinct, which she never questioned and could not have
defined, told her that his marriage had not been a happy one,
according to her enthusiastic girlish notion of a happy marriage. She
did not know anything about it; she had no idea what sort of woman
Chudleigh Wilmot's wife was, but she had felt, by the nameless sense
which, had she been an elder woman with ever so little experience,
would have enlightened her as to the nature of her own feelings, that
he was not really attached to her to the extent which alone seemed to
her to imply happiness in the conjugal relation. So, when Madeleine
heard that Wilmot was going abroad, and heard her stepmother's
visitors talk about his being "broken-hearted," she felt equally
wretched and incredulous. Sentimental reason for this resolution she
did not, she could not accept; the other was exquisitely painful to
her. Had he, indeed, so absorbing a love for his professional studies?
Was he really occupied by them to the exclusion of all else; had her
"case," and not herself, been his attraction at Kilsyth? If Mr.
Foljambe had really resorted to the device he had spoken of, would
Wilmot have left her? To none of these questions could Madeleine find
an answer inside her own breast, or without it; so they tortured her.
Her vision of seeing him frequently, of making him her friend--the
vision which had so strangely beautified the prospect of her stay in
London,--faded suddenly; and unconscious of all the idea meant and
implied, the girl said to herself, "If he had cared for me--not as I
care for him, of course that could not be--but ever so little, he
would not go away."
Very different were Lady Muriel's meditations. To her this resolve on
the part of Wilmot was peculiarly welcome. In the first place, she was
a thorough woman of the world, and free from the impetuosity of youth.
She was quite willing to be deprived of Wilmot's society for the
present, if, as she calculated would be the case, he should return
under circumstances which would enable her to reckon with increased
security upon gaining the influence over him to which she ardently
aspired, to which she aspired more and more ardently as each day
proved to her how strong an impulse her life had taken from this new
source. She cared little from what motive Wilmot's resolve had sprung.
If indeed he had deeply loved, and if indeed he did desperately mourn
his wife, the very power and violence of the feeling would react upon
itself, and force him to accept consolation all the sooner that he had
proved the greatness of his need of it. He would be absent during the
dark time when grief forms an eclipse, and he would emerge from its
shadow into the brightness which she would cause to shine upon his
life. She did not anticipate that his absence would be greatly
prolonged, but she did not shrink, even supposing it should be, from
the interval. She had enough to do within its duration. Lady Muriel
was as thoroughly acquainted with Madeleine's love for Wilmot as the
girl was ignorant that she loved him. There was not a corner of her
innocent heart which the keen experienced eye of her stepmother had
not scanned and examined narrowly.
In Madeleine's perfect ignorance of the real nature of her own
feelings Lady Muriel's best security for the success of her wishes and
designs lay. As she had no notion that her love was aught but liking,
she would be the more easily persuaded that her liking was love. She
had a liking for Ramsay Caird. The gay, careless, superficial
good-nature of the young man, his easy gentlemanly manners, and the
familiarity with which his intercourse with the Kilsyth family was
invested in consequence of his relationship to Lady Muriel, were all
pleasing to the young girl; and probably, "next to Ronald," she
preferred Ramsay Caird to any man of her acquaintance. Of late, too,
an unexplained something had come between Madeleine and her brother--a
certain restraint, a subtle sense of estrangement--which Lady Muriel
thoroughly understood, but for which Madeleine could not have
accounted, and shrunk from acknowledging to herself. This unexplained
something, which made her look forward to Ronald's visits with greatly
decreased pleasure, and made her involuntarily silent and depressed in
his presence, told considerably in Ramsay Caird's favour; for it led
to Madeleine's according him an increased share of her attention. The
young man was a constant visitor at the Kilsyths'; and there was so
much decision in Madeleine's liking for him, that she missed him if by
any chance he was absent of an evening, and occasionally was heard to
wonder what could have kept Mr. Caird away.
Madeleine's delicate health furnished Lady Muriel with a sufficient
and reasonable pretext for keeping her at home in the evenings; and
she contrived to make it evident that Ramsay Caird's presence
constituted a material difference in the dulness or the pleasantness
of the little party which assembled with tolerable regularity in the
drawing-room. Ronald would come in for an hour or so, and then
Madeleine would be particularly _prévenante_ towards Ramsay Caird; an
innocent and unconscious hypocrisy, poor child, which her stepmother
perfectly understood, and which she saw with deep though concealed
satisfaction.
On the evening of the day when Mr. Foljambe had discussed Wilmot's
departure with Lady Muriel and Madeleine, the elder lady was a little
embarrassed by the manifest effect on the looks and the spirits of the
younger which the intelligence had produced. At dinner Kilsyth
perversely chose to descant on the two themes with all a single-minded
man's amiable pertinacity, and, of course, without the smallest
conception that any connection existed between them. He was quite
aggrieved at Wilmot's departure, and called on everyone to take notice
of Madeleine's looks in confirmation of the loss he and his in
particular must sustain by his absence. Ronald was of the party; and
he preserved so marked and ungracious a silence, that at length even
Kilsyth could not avoid noticing it, and said:
"I suppose you are the only man who knows him, Ronald, who underrates
Wilmot; and I really believe you think we make quite an unnecessary
fuss about him."
"I by no Means underrate the abilities of your medical attendant,
sir," Ronald answered in his coldest and driest tone, and, as
Madeleine felt in all her shrinking nerves, though she dared not look
up to meet it, with a moody searching glance at her; "but, admirable
as he may be in his proper capacity and his proper place, I cannot
quite appreciate his social importance."
"Just listen to him, Muriel," said Kilsyth in a provoked but yet
good-humoured tone. "What wonderful fellows these young men are! He
actually talks of a man like Wilmot as if he were a general
practitioner or an apothecary's apprentice!"
Lady Muriel interposed, and turned off this somewhat perilous and
peace-breaking remark with one of the graceful, skilful generalities
of which she always had a supply ready for emergencies. Ronald
contented himself with a half smile of contempt at his father's
enthusiastic misrepresentation; Madeleine talked energetically to
Ramsay Caird; and the matter dropped.
To be resumed in the drawing-room, however. Madeleines looks were not
improved when her father and the two young men joined her and Lady
Muriel. She was dreaming over a book which she was pretending to read,
when Kilsyth came up to her, took her chin in his hand, and turned up
her face to his and to the light.
Tears were trembling in her blue eyes.
"Hallo, Maddy," said her father, "what's this? You're nervous, my
darling! I knew you were not well. Has anything fretted you?--Has
anything vexed her, Muriel?"
"No, papa, nothing; nothing at all," said Madeleine, making a strong
effort to recover herself. "I have got hold of a sorrowful book,
that's all."
"Have you, my dear? then put it away. Let's look at it. Why, it's
_Pickwick_, I declare! Maddy, what can all you? How could you possibly
cry over anything in _Pickwick?_"
"I don't know that, sir," said Ramsay, jauntily and jovially coming to
Madeleine's assistance, without the faintest notion of anything beyond
her being "badgered by the governor." "There's the dying clown, you
know, and the queer client. I've cried over them myself; or at least
I've been very near it," And he sat down beside Madeleine, and applied
himself with success to rousing and amusing her. Ronald said nothing,
and very soon went away.
"I'm determined on one thing, Muriel," said Kilsyth to his wife when
they were alone; "I'll have a long talk with Wilmot before he goes,
and get the fullest instructions from him about Madeleine. I have no
confidence in anyone else in her case, and I'll write to Wilmot about
it, and ask him to come here professionally, as soon as he can, the
first thing to-morrow morning."