Quand même!
In years to come it was destined to be a marvel to Wilmot how he lived
through the days and the weeks of that time. If they had not been so
entirely filled with supreme suffering, with despairing effort--if
there had been any interval, any relaxation from the immense task
imposed upon him, he might have broken down under it. He might have
said, "I will not stay here, and see this woman whom I love die in her
youth, in her beauty, in the very springtide of her life. I will go
away. I will not see it, at least; I who have not the right to shut
out all others, and gather up the last days of her life into a
treasury of remembrance, in which no other shall have a share. No man
is called upon to suffer that which he can avoid. I will go!" But
there was no time for Wilmot, no chance for him to reach such a
conclusion, to take this supreme resolution of despair. The whole
weight of the family trouble was thrown upon him; and he, in
comparison with whose grief that of all the others, except Kilsyth's,
was insignificant, was the one to whom all looked for support and
hope. As for Ramsay Caird, he adopted the easy and plausible _rôle_ of
a sanguine man. He had the greatest possible respect for Dr. Wilmot's
opinion, the utmost confidence in his ability; but the doctor's talent
gave him the very best grounds for security. He was quite sure Wilmot
would set Madeleine all right. She had youth on her side--and only
just think how Wilmot had "pulled her through" at Kilsyth! And as
nobody occupied themselves particularly with what Ramsay thought, he
was permitted to indulge his incorrigible _insouciance_, and to render
to Dr. Wilmot's talent the original homage of believing it superior to
his judgment and his avowed conviction. For the rest, Ramsay professed
himself, and with reason, to be the worst person in the world in a
sickroom--no use, and "awfully frightened;" and accordingly he seldom
made his appearance in Madeleine's room, after the daily visit of a
few minutes, which was _de rigueur_, and during which he invariably
received the same answer to his inquiries, that she was better--a
statement which it suited him to receive as valid, and which he
therefore did so receive. Wilmot saw very little of him; no part of
the hardness of his task came to him from Madeleine's husband. It was
at her father's hands that Wilmot suffered most, and most constantly.
Kilsyth held two articles of faith in connection with Wilmot: the
first, that he was infallible in judgment; the second, that he was
inexhaustible in skill and resources. And now these articles of belief
clashed, and Kilsyth was swayed about between them,--a prey now to
helpless grief, again to groundless and unreasonable hope. Certainly
Madeleine was very ill. Wilmot was right, no doubt; but then Wilmot
would save her: he had saved her before, when she was also very ill.
Then the poor father would have the difference between fever and
consumption, in point of assured fatality, forced upon his attention,
and an interval of despair would set in. But whether his mood was hope
or despair, an effort to attain resignation, or a mere stupor of fear
and grief, Wilmot had to witness, Wilmot had to combat them all. The
old man clung to the doctor with piteous eagerness and tenacity on his
way to begin the watch over his patient which he maintained daily for
hours, as he had done in the old time at Kilsyth--time in reality so
lately past, but seeming like an entire lifetime ago. When he left her
to take the short and troubled sleep which fell upon her in the
afternoon; in the evening, when he came again; at night, after he had
administered the medicine which was to procure her a temporary
reprieve from the cough, which her father could no longer endure to
hear, Kilsyth would waylay him, beset him with questions, with
entreaties--or, worse still, look speechless into his face with
imploring haggard eyes.
This to the man for whom the young life ebbing away, with terrific
rapidity indeed, but with merciful ease on the whole, was the one
treasure held by the earth, so rich for others, such a wilderness for
him! Yes--her life! When he knew she was married, and thus parted from
him for ever, he had thought the worst that could have come to him had
come. But from the moment he had looked again into the innocent sweet
blue eyes, and read, with the unerring glance of the practised
physician, that death was looking out at him from them, he learned his
error. Then too he learned how much, and with what manner of love, he
loved Madeleine Kilsyth.
"Give her life, and not death, O gracious Disposer of both! and I am
satisfied--and I am happy! Life, though I never see her face again;
life, though she never hears my name spoken, or remembers me in her
lightest thought; life, though it be to bless her husband, and to
transmit her name to his children; life, though mine be wasted at the
ends of the earth!" This was the cry of his soul, the utterance of the
strong man's anguish. But he knew it was not to be; the physician's
eye had been unerring indeed.
Lady Muriel bore herself on this, as on every other occasion,
irreproachably. The first enunciation of the doctor's opinion had
startled her. She did not love her stepdaughter, but of late she had
been on more affectionate terms with her; and it was not possible that
she could learn that she was doomed to an early death without terror
and grief. Lady Muriel knew well how unspeakably dear to Kilsyth his
daughter was; and apart from her keen womanly sympathies all enlisted
for the fair young sufferer, she felt with agonising acuteness for her
husband's suffering. The first meeting between Lady Muriel and Wilmot
had been under agitating circumstances; and the appeal made to him by
Kilsyth had at once established him on the old footing with them--a
footing which had not existed previously in London, having been
interrupted by Wilmot's domestic affliction, and the tacit but
resolute opposition of Ronald. But even then, in that first interview,
when emotion was permissible, when Dr. Wilmot was forced by his
position to make a communication to the father and brother which even
a stranger must necessarily have found painful, and though he imposed
superhuman control over his feelings, Lady Muriel had seen the truth,
or as much of the truth as one human being can ever see of the
verities of the heart of another. She had received him gravely, but so
that, had he eared to interpret her manner, it might have told him he
was welcome in more than the sense of his value in this dread
emergency; and it had been a sensible relief to Ronald to perceive
that Lady Muriel had not suffered the pride and suspicion which had
dictated her remonstrance to him to appear in any word or look of hers
which Wilmot could perceive. But when Lady Muriel was alone she said
to herself bitterly:
"He did love her, then; he does love her! He is awfully changed; and
this has changed him--to her illness, not the fear of her death--the
change is the work of months--but the loss of her. Her marriage--this
has made his life valueless, this has made him what he is." Then she
remained for a long time sunk in thought, her dark eyes shaded by her
hand. At length she said, half aloud,
"She is not all to be pitied, even if this be indeed true and past
remedy. She has been well beloved."
There was a whole history of solitude and vain aspiration in the
words. Had not she too, Lady Muriel Kilsyth, been well beloved? True;
but all the homage, all the devotion of an inferior nature could not
satisfy hers. This woman would be content only with the love of a man
her intellectual superior, her master in strength of purpose and of
will. She had seen him; he had come; and he loved not her, but the
simple girl with blue eyes and golden hair who was dying, and whom he
would love faithfully when she should be dead. Lady Muriel did not
deceive herself. She had the perfect comprehension of Wilmot which
occult sympathy gives--she knew that he would never love another
woman. She knew, when she recalled the ineffable mournfulness which
sat upon his face, not the garment of an occasion, but the habitual
expression which it had taken, that the hope which but for her
might have been realised, had been the forlorn hope of his life. It
was over now; and he was beaten by fate, by death, by Lady Muriel's
will. He would lay down his arms; he would never struggle again.
Knowing this, Lady Muriel Kilsyth dreamed no more. The vision of a
love which, pure and blameless, would have elevated, fortified, and
sweetened her life, faded never to return. Her gentle stepdaughter,
who would have been incapable of such a thought or such a wish, had
she known how Lady Muriel had acted towards her, was at that moment
amply avenged.
In vain she had laboured to effect this loveless marriage; in vain she
had placed in the untrustworthy hands of Ramsay Caird the happiness
and the fortune of her husband's beloved daughter; in vain had she
been deaf to the truer, better promptings of her conscience, to the
haunting thought of the responsibility which she had undertaken
towards the girl, to the remembrance of Madeleine's dead mother, which
sometimes came to her and troubled her sorely; in vain had she tempted
that dread and inexorable law of retribution, which might fall upon
the heads of her own children. How mad, how guilty, she had been! She
saw it all now; she understood it all now. How could she, who had
learned to comprehend, to appreciate Wilmot,--how could she have
imagined for a moment that any sentiment once really entertained by
him could be light and passing! She recognised, with respect at least,
if with an abiding sense of humiliation, the truth, the strength, the
eternal duration of Wilmot's love for Madeleine. Truly, many things,
in addition to the beautiful young form, were destined to go down into
the grave of Madeleine Kilsyth.
There was so much similarity between the thoughts of Lady Muriel and
those of Chudleigh Wilmot, that he too, after that first visit, which
had shown him the dying girl and revealed to him how he loved her,
pondered also upon an unconscious vengeance fulfilled.
Mabel! She had died in his absence, neglected by him, inflicting upon
him an agonising doubt, almost a certainty, but at least a doubt never
to be resolved in this world--a dread never to be set at rest. He did
not believe that had he been with her he could have saved her; but no
matter: he had stayed away; he had given to another the love, the
care, the time, the skill that should have been hers, that were her
right by every law human and divine. And now! The woman he had
preferred to her, the woman by whose side he had lingered, the woman
he loved, was dying, and he had come to her aid too late! He could see
her, it was true; he might be with her; it was possible he might hear
her last words--might see her draw her last breath; but she was lost
to him, lost unwon, lost for ever, as Mabel had been! It was late in
the night before Wilmot had sufficiently mastered these thoughts and
the emotions which they aroused to be able to apply himself to
studying the details of Madeleine's ease, and arranging his plan, not
indeed of cure, but of alleviation.
Among the letters awaiting his attention there was one from Mrs.
Prendergast. She requested him to call on her; she wished to consult
him concerning the matter they had talked of. The following morning he
wrote her a line saying he could not attend to anything for the
present; and subsequently Henrietta learned from Mrs. Charlton,
through Mrs. M'Diarmid, that Wilmot had consented to act as physician
to Mrs. Caird, whom he pronounced to be in hopeless consumption.
Henrietta went home grave and pensive, thinking much of her dead
friend, Mabel Wilmot.
Time had gone inexorably on since that day, laden every hour of it
with grief to Wilmot, with immense and complicated responsibility,
with the dread of the rapidly-approaching end. There had been
hours--no, not hours, moments--when he almost persuaded himself that
he might be wrong, that it was still time, that a warm climate might
yet avail. But the delusion was only momentary; and he had told
Madeleine's father and brother from the first that she was unfit for a
journey, that the most merciful course was to let her die at home in
peace, among the people and the things to whom and to which she was
accustomed. He understood the attachment of an invalid to the
inanimate objects around her; an attachment strongly developed in
Madeleine, whose dressing-room, where she lay on the sofa all day,
contained all her girlish treasures. She was always awake early in the
morning, and anxious to be carried from her bed to her sofa, whence
she would wistfully watch the door until it opened and admitted
Wilmot. Then she would smile--such a happy smile too! Only a pale
reflection in point of brightness, it is true, of the radiant smile of
the past, but full of the old trust and happiness and peace. Her
father came early too, and received the report of how she had passed
the night, and controlled himself wonderfully, poor old man! for
agitation and disquiet were very bad for his darling; and he was
strengthened by Wilmot's example. It never occurred to Kilsyth to
remember that Wilmot was "only the doctor," and therefore might well
be calm; he never reasoned about Wilmot at all--he only felt and
trusted. The world outside the sickroom went on as usual. Within it
Madeleine Caird lay dying, not poetically, not of the fanciful
extinction which consumption becomes in the hands of the poet and the
romancer, but of the genuine, veritable, terrible disease, not to be
robbed by wealth, or even by comfort or skill, of its terrors. Those
who know what is meant when a person is said to be dying of
consumption need no amplification of the awful significance of the
phrase. Those who do not--may they remain in their ignorance!
And Madeleine? And the contending emotions, amid the varied suffering
which surrounded her, and had all its origin in her, how was it with
Madeleine? On the whole, it was well. A strange phrase to apply to a
young woman, a young wife, an idolised daughter, who was dying thus,
of a disease which kills more thoroughly, so to speak, than any other,
doing its dread office with slowness, and marking its progress day by
day. She knew she was dying, though sometimes she did not feel it very
keenly; the idea did not come to her as relating to herself, but with
a sort of outside meaning. This dulness would last for days, and then
she would be struck by the truth again, and would realise it with all
the strength of mind and body left to her. Realise it, not to be
terrified by it, not to resist it, not to appeal against it, but to
accept it, to acquiesce in it, to be satisfied and profoundly quiet.
Madeleine's notions of God and eternity were vague, like those of most
young people. She had been brought up in a careful observance of the
forms of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and she had always had a
certain devotional turn, which accompanies good taste and purity of
mind in young girls. But she had never looked at life or death
seriously, in the true sense, at all. Sentimentally she had considered
both, extensively of course; had she not read all the poetry she could
lay her hands on, and a vast number of essays? Of late a voice whose
tones she had never before heard, still and small, had spoken to
her--spoken much and solemnly in her girlish heart, and had taught
her, in the silent suffering and doubt, the unseen struggle she had
undergone, great things. She kept her own counsel; she listened, and
was still; and the chain of earth fell from her fair soul while yet it
held her fair form in its coil a little longer. Madeleine had looked
into her life to find the meaning of her Creator in it. She had found
it, and she was ready for the summons, which was not to tarry long.
One day, when she had told Wilmot that she was wonderfully easy, had
had quite a good night, and had hardly coughed at all since morning,
he was sitting by her sofa, and she, lying with her face turned
towards him, had fallen into a light sleep. He drew a coverlet closely
round her, and signed to the nurse that she might leave the room. Then
he sat quite still, his face rigid, his hands clasped, looking at her;
looking at the thin pale face, with the blazing spots of red upon the
cheekbones, with the darkened eyelids, the sunken temples, the dry red
lips, the damp, limp, golden hair. As in a phantasmagoria, the days at
Kilsyth passed before him; the day of his arrival, the day the nurse
had asked him whether the golden hair must be cut off, the day he
had pronounced her out of danger. Outwardly calm and stern, what a
storm of anguish he was tossed upon! Words and looks and little
incidents--small things, but infinite to him--came up and tormented
him. Then came a sense of unreality; it could not be, it was not the
same Madeleine; this was not Kilsyth's beautiful daughter. His hands
went up to his face, and a groan burst from his lips. The sound
frightened him. He looked at her again; and as he looked, her eyes
opened, and she began to speak. Then came the frightful, the
inevitable cough. He lifted her upon his arm, kneeling by her side,
and the paroxysm passed over. Then she looked at him very gently and
sweetly, and said:
"Are we quite alone?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember one night at Kilsyth, when I was very ill, I asked
you whether I was going to die?"
"I remember," he said, with a desperate effort to keep down a sob.
"And I told you I was very glad when you said, 'No.' Do you remember?"
"Yes--I remember."
She paused and looked at him; her blue eyes were as steady as they
were bright. "If I asked you, but I don't--I don't"--she put out her
wasted hand. He took the thin fingers in his, and trembled at their
touch--"because I know--but if I did, you would not make me the same
answer now."
He did not speak, he did not look at her; but her eyes pertinaciously
sought his, and he was forced to meet them. She smiled again, and her
fingers clasped themselves round his.
"You will always be papa's friend," she said. "Poor papa--he will miss
me very much; the girls are too young as yet. And Ronald--I have
something to say to you about Ronald. Sit here, close to me, in papa's
chair, and listen."
He changed his seat in obedience to her, and listened; his head bent
down, and her golden hair almost touching his shoulder.
"Something came between Ronald and me for a little while," she said,
her low voice, which had hardly lost its sweetness at all, thrilling
the listener with inexpressible pain. "I cannot tell what exactly; but
it is all over now, and he is--as he used to be--the best and kindest
of brothers. But there is someone--not papa; I am not talking of poor
papa now--better and kinder still. Do you know whom I mean?" The sweet
steady blue eyes looked at him quite innocent and unabashed. "I Mean
_you_."
"Me!" he said, looking up hastily; "me!"
"Yes; best and kindest of all to me. And when Ronald will not have me
any longer, I want you to promise me to be his friend too. They say he
is hard in his disposition and his ways; he never was to me, but once
for a little while; and I should like him to see you often, and be
with you much, that he may be reminded of me. As long as he remembers
me he will not be hard to anyone; and he will remember me whenever he
sees you."
Thus the sister interpreted the brother's late repentance, and
endeavoured to render it a source of blessing to the two men whom she
loved.
"When you left Kilsyth," she said, "and came here, and when I heard
the dreadful affliction that had befallen you, it made me very
unhappy. It seemed, somehow, awful to me that sorrow should have come
to you through me."
"It did not," he replied. "Don't think so; don't say so! Did anyone
tell you so? It would have come all the same--"
"It would not," she said solemnly; "it would not. If I never felt it
before, I must have come to feel it now, that I caused unconsciously a
dreadful misfortune. You are here with me; you make suffering, you
make death, light and easy to me. And you were away from _her_ when
she was dying who had a right to look for you by her side. I hope she
has forgiven me where all is forgiven."
There was silence between them for a while. Wilmot's agony was quite
beyond description, and almost beyond even his power of self-control.
Madeleine was quite calm; but the bright red spots had faded away from
her cheekbones, and she was deadly pale. His eyes were fixed upon her
face--eagerly, despairingly, as though he would have fixed it before
them for ever, a white phantom to beset, of his free will, all his
future life. Another racking fit of coughing came on, and then, when
it had subsided, Madeleine fell again into one of the sudden short
sleeps which had become habitual to her, and which told Wilmot so
plainly of the progress of exhaustion. It was only of a few minutes'
duration; and when she again awoke, her cheeks had the red spots on
them once more. He watched her more and more eagerly, to see if she
would resume the tone in which she had been speaking, and which, while
it tortured him to listen to it, he had not the courage to interrupt
or interdict. There was a little, a very little more excitement in the
voice and in the eyes as she said,
"You are not going to be a doctor any more, they tell me, now that you
are a rich man."
"No," he said, in a low but bitter tone. "I am done with doctoring.
All my skill and knowledge have availed me nothing, and they are
nothing to me any more."
"Nothing! And why?"
"O Madeleine," he said,--and as he spoke he fell on his knees beside
the sofa on which she lay--"how can you ask me? What have they
done for me? They have not saved you. I asked nothing else--no
other reward for all my years of labour and study and poverty and
insignificance--nothing but this. Even at Kilsyth, when you had the
fever, I asked nothing else. I got it then, for they did save you.
Yes, thank God; they did save you then for a little time! But now,
now--" And, forgetful of the agitation of his patient, forgetful of
everything in this supreme agony, Chudleigh Wilmot hid his face in the
coverlet of the sofa and wept--wept the burning and distracting tears
it is so dreadful to see a man shed. Madeleine raised herself up, and
tried to lift his head in her feeble, wasted hands. Then he recovered
himself with a tremendous effort, and was calm.
"I must tell you," he said, "having said what you have heard.
Madeleine, there is no sin, no shame in what I am going to tell you. I
will tell it to your father and your brother yet; I would tell it to
your husband, Madeleine. When I went away from England, I took a
vision with me. It was, that I might return some time and ask for your
love. It faded, Madeleine; but I claim, as the one solitary
consolation which life can ever bring me, to tell you this: you are
the only woman I have ever loved."
Madeleine looked at him still; the colour rose higher and brighter on
her wasted cheeks; the light blazed up in her blue eyes.
"Did you love me," she said, "because you saved my life?"
"I don't know, child. I loved you--I loved you! That is all I know. I
know I ought not to say it now; but I must, I must!"
"Hush!" she said; "and don't shiver there, and don't cry. It is not
for such as you to do either!" He resumed his seat; she gave him her
hand again, and lay still looking at him--looking at him with her blue
eyes full of the inexplicably awful look which comes into the eyes of
the dying. After a while she smiled.
"I am very glad you told me," she said. "People said you never cared
for the patient, only for the _case_; but since you have been here I
have known that was not true. It is better as it is. If your vision
had come true, I must have died all the same, and then it would have
been harder. It is easier now."
Another fit of coughing--a frightful paroxysm this time. Wilmot rang
for the nurse, and Kilsyth and Lady Muriel entered the room with her.
* * * * *
Several hours later Madeleine was lying in the same place, still,
tranquil, and at ease. She had had a long interval of respite from the
cough, and was cheerful, even bright. Her father was there, and
Ronald; Lady Muriel also, but sitting at some distance from her, and
looking very sad.
When the time came at which Madeleine was to be removed to her bed,
Ronald and Wilmot took leave; the first for the night, the second to
return an hour later, and give final instructions to the nurse.
Wilmot's left hand hung down by his side as he stood near her, and
Madeleine touched a ring upon his little finger.
"What is the motto on that ring?" she asked.
"The untranslateable French phrase, which I always think is like a
shrug in words: _Quand même_," he replied.
The ring was the seal-ring which his wife had been used to wear. It
struck him with a new and piercing pain, amid all the pains of this
dreadful day, that Madeleine should have noticed it, and reminded him
of it then.
"_Quand même_," she said softly. "Notwithstanding, even so--ah, it
can't be said in English, but it means the same in every tongue." He
bent over her, no one was near, her eyes met his; she said, "I am very
happy--very happy, _Quand même!_"
* * * * *
Wilmot went home and sat down to think--to think over the words he had
spoken and heard. He was overpowered with the fatigue, the excitement,
the emotion of the day. A thousand confused images floated before his
weary eyes; the room seemed full of phantoms. Was this illness? Could
it be possible? No, that must not be; he could not be ill; he had not
time. After--yes, after, illness--anything! but not yet. He called for
wine and bread, and ate and drank. His thoughts became clearer, and
arranged themselves; then he became absorbed in reflection. He had
told his servant he should require the carriage in an hour, and,
hearing a noise in the hall, he started up, thinking the time had
come. He opened his study-door, and called--
"Is that the brougham, Stephen?"
"No, sir," said the man, presenting himself with an air of having
something important to say.
"What is it, then?" said Wilmot impatiently. "A messenger from
Brook-street, sir; Captain Kilsyth's man, sir."
Wilmot went out into the hall. The man was there, looking pale and
frightened.
"What is it, Martin? what is it?"
"Captain Kilsyth sent me, sir, to let you know that Mrs. Caird is
dead, sir,--a few minutes after you left, sir. Went off like a lamb.
They didn't know it, sir; till the nurse came to lift her into bed."