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."
