of all those who were in the habit of seeing madeleine under circumstances which made it possible for them to observe her closely, her brother had been the last to perceive and the most reluctant to acknowledge that the state of her health was far from satisfactory. ronald kilsyth was habitually unobservant in matters of the kind; and he usually saw madeleine in the evening, when the false spirits and deceptive flush of her disease produced an appearance of health and vivacity which might have imposed upon a closer observer. he knew she had a cough indeed; but then "maddy always had a cough--i never remember her without one," was the ready reply to any observations made on the subject in his hearing, and to any misgivings which occasionally flitted across his own mind. it did not occur to him that in this "fact" there was no reply at all, but rather an additional reason for apprehension concerning this cough. when madeleine was a child, it was acknowledged that she was delicate. "she had it from her poor mother," kilsyth would say--kilsyth, who never had a day's illness in his life, and in whose family ninety years was considered a fair age. but she was to get strong, to "outgrow her delicacy" as she grew up. when madeleine was a girl, she was still delicate; perhaps more continuously so than she had been as a child, though no longer subject to the maladies of childhood; but she was to get stronger as she grew older. now madeleine had grown older; the delicate girl, with her fragile figure and poetical face, was no more; in her place was a beautiful, self-possessed young woman--a wife, with a place in the world, and a career before her. strange, but madeleine was still delicate; the time unhesitatingly foretold, looked forward to so anxiously with a kind of weary patience by her father, had come; but it had not brought the anticipated, the desired result. madeleine was more delicate than ever. her friends saw it, her father saw it; her stepmother saw it more clearly than either--saw it with feelings which would have been remorseful, had she not arrested their tendency in that direction by constantly reminding herself that madeleine had been delicate as a child and as a girl; but her brother had not permitted the fact to establish itself in his mind.
the old affection, tacitly interrupted for a time, when madeleine had felt the unexpressed opposition of her brother to chudleigh wilmot, had been as tacitly restored between them since madeleine's marriage. she had felt during that sad interval, all whose sadness was hidden and unspoken, never taking an external shape, but formless, like a sorrow in a dream, that circumstances and her surroundings were stronger than she was; she had felt somewhat like a prisoner, against and for whom conspiracies were formed, but who had no power to meddle in them, and no distinct knowledge of their methods or objects. mrs. m'diarmid, she vaguely felt, was for her, in the secret desire of her heart; her brother against her. ronald would have been successful in any case, she had been quite sure, even if he had not been at once justified and relieved of all apprehensions by wilmot's departure. hedid not care for her--he had gone away; they might each and all have spared the pains they had taken--their bugbear had been only a myth. then madeleine, in whose mind justice had a high place, turned again to her brother as tacitly, as completely, without explanation, as she had turned from him, and loved him, admired him, thought about him, and clung to him as she had been wont to do. which surprised ronald kilsyth, who had taken it for granted that madeleine, who had married ramsay caird a good deal to the captain's surprise--who had his theories concerning affinities and analogies, into which this alliance by no means fitted--but not at all to his displeasure, would discard everybody in favour of her husband, and devote herself to him after the gushing fashion of very young brides in ordinary. he had smiled grimly to himself occasionally, as he wondered whether lady muriel would be altogether satisfied with a match which was so largely of her own bringing about, and by which, whatever advantages she had secured to her own family, for whom she entertained a truly clannish attachment, she had undeniably provided herself with a young, beautiful, and ever-present rival in her own queendom of fashion and social sway. "let them fight it out," captain kilsyth had thought; "it would have been pleasanter if maddy had gone farther afield; but it cannot be helped. i am sure she is glad to get away from lady muriel; and i am sure lady muriel is glad to get rid of her. i don't understand her taking to caird in this way; for i am as strongly convinced as ever it was no false alarm about wilmot; she was in love with him; only," and his face reddened, "thank god, she did not know it. however, it is time wasted to wonder about women, even the best and the truest of them, and no very humiliating acknowledgment to say i cannot understand them."
but captain kilsyth was destined to find himself unable to discard reflection on his sister and her marriage after this fashion. madeleine put all his previously conceived ideas to rout, and disconcerted all his expectations. she was by no means engrossed by her husband; she did not assume any of the happy fussiness or fussy happiness which he had observed exhibit themselves in jeunes ménages constructed on the old-fashioned principle of love, as opposed to the modern expedient of convenance. she was just as friendly, just as kindly with ramsay caird as she had been in the days before their brief engagement, in the days when ronald had found it difficult to believe that lady muriel's wishes and plans would ever be realised. she did not talk about her house, or give herself any of the pretty "married-woman" airs which are additional charms in brides in their teens. she led, as far as ronald knew, much the same sort of life she had led under her stepmother's chaperonage; and kilsyth visited her every day: ronald too, when he was in town; and he soon felt that he was all to her he had formerly been. the innocent, girlish, loving heart had room and power for grief indeed, but none for a half-understood anger, none for the prolongation of an involuntary estrangement. so the first months of madeleine's married life were pleasant to her brother in his relations with her; and the first thing which occurred to trouble his mind in reference to her was his suspicion and dislike of certain points in ramsay caird's conduct here, again, madeleine puzzled him. naturally, he had no sooner conceived this suspicious displeasure against the man to whom such an immense trust as that of his sister's happiness had been committed than he sought to discover by madeleine's looks and manner whether and how far her happiness was compromised by what he observed. but he failed to discover any of the indications which he sought. madeleine's spirits were unequal, but her disposition had never been precisely gay; and there was no trace of pique, sullenness, or the consciousness of offence in her manner towards her husband.
it was when ronald's indignation against ramsay caird was rising fast, and he began to think madeleine either unaccountably indifferent to certain things which women of quite as gentle a nature as hers would inevitably and reasonably resent, or that she was concealing her sentiments, in the interests of her dignity, with a degree of skill and cleverness for which he was far from having given her credit, that his sister's delicate health for the first time attracted ronald's attention. and mrs. m'diarmid was the medium of the first communication on the subject which alarmed him.
as in all similar cases, attention once excited, anxiety once awakened, the progress of both is rapid. ronald questioned his father, questioned lady muriel, questioned ramsay caird. in each instance the result was the same. madeleine was undoubtedly very delicate, and the danger of alarming her, which, as her organisation was highly nervous and sensitive, was considerable, presented a serious obstacle to the taking of the active measures which had become undeniably desirable.
one day ronald went to see his sister earlier in the day than usual, having been told by mrs. m'diarmid that her looks in the evening were not by any paeans a reliable indication of the state of her health. he found her lying on a sofa in her dressing-room, wholly unoccupied, and with an expression of listless weariness in her face and figure which even his unskilled judgment could not avoid observing and appreciating with alarm.
one hand was under her head, the other hung listlessly down; and as ronald drew near, and took it in his tenderly, he saw how thin the fingers were, how blue the veins, how they marked their course too strongly under the white skin, and how the rose-tint was gone. as he took the gentle hand, he felt that it was cold; but it burned in his clasp before he had held it a minute. like all men of his stamp, ronald kilsyth, when he was touched, was deeply touched; when his mood was tender, it was very tender. madeleine looked at him; and the love and sadness in her smile pierced at once his well-defended heart.
"what's this i hear, maddy, about your not being well?" he said, as he seated himself beside her sofa, and kissed her forehead--it was slightly damp, he felt, and she touched it with her handkerchief frequently while he stayed. "you were not complaining last week, when i saw you last; and now i've just come up to town, and been to brook-street, i find my father and my lady quite full of your not being well. what is it all, maddy? what are you suffering from, and why have you said nothing about it?"
"i am not very ill, ronald," said madeleine, raising herself, and propping herself up on her cushions by leaning on her elbow, one hand under her head, its fingers in her golden hair; more profuse and beautiful than ever ronald thought the hair was. "i am really not a bit worse than i have been; only i suddenly felt a few days ago that i could not go on making efforts, and going out, and seeing people, and all that kind of thing, any longer; and then papa got uneasy about me. i assure you that is the only difference; and you know it does grow horribly tiresome, dear, don't you? at least you don't know, because you never would do it; and you were right; but i--i hadn't much else to do, and it does not do to seem peculiar; and i went on as long as i could. but this last week was really too much for me, and i had to tell lady muriel i must be quiet; and so i have been quiet, lying here."
she gave her brother this simple explanation, her blue eyes looking at him with a smile, and a tone in her voice as though she prayed him not to blame her.
"my poor child, my darling maddy!" said ronald, "to think of your trying to go on in that way, and feeling so unequal to it, and fancying alll the time you must! what a wonderful life of humbug and delusion you women lead, to be sure, either with your will or against it! now tell me, does ramsay know how ill you are, and how you have been doing all sorts of things which are most unfit for yon, until you are quite worn out?"
"ramsay is very kind," said madeleine; and then she hesitated, and the colour deepened painfully in her face; "but you know, ronald, men are not very patient with women when they are only ailing; if i were seriously ill; it would be quite a different thing. re really is not in the least to blame," she went on hurriedly; "he gets bored at home, you know; and since i have not been feeling strong, it has been quite a relief to me to be alone."
"i see--i understand," said ronald; but his tone did not reassure madeleine.
"you really must not blame him," she repeated. "you know you yourself did not perceive that i was ill before you went away; and it is only within the last week, i assure you. i suppose the cough has weakened me; for some time, in the morning, i have felt giddy going downstairs, so i thought it better not to try it until i get stronger."
"i have not heard you cough much, madeleine, that is, not more than usual, you know. you have always had a cough, more or less."
"yes," said madeleine simply, "ever since i was born, i believe; but it is never really bad, except in the morning, and sometimes at night. up to this time i have got on very well in the day and the afternoon; and i like the evening best of all, if i am not too tired. i feel quite bright in the evening, especially when i take my drops."
"what drops, maddy?"
"the drops sir saville rowe ordered for me last winter," said madeleine. "i got on very well with them, and i don't want anything else. papa wants me to see some of the great doctors, but there's really no occasion; and i hate strangers. dr. whittaker comes occasionally--as sir saville wished--and he does well enough. the mere idea of seeing a stranger now--in that way--would make me nervous and miserable." indeed she flushed up again, looked excited and feverish, and a violent fit of coughing came on, and interrupted any remonstrance on ronald's part, which perhaps she dreaded.
but she need not have dreaded such remonstrance. there was a consciousness in ronald's heart which kept him silent; and besides, with every word his sister had spoken, with every instant during which his examination of her, close though furtive, had lasted, increasing alarm had taken firmer hold of him. how had he been so blind? how had he been content to accept appearances in madeleine's case? how had he failed to search and examine rightly into the story of this marriage, and satisfy himself that his sister's heart was in it, that she had really forgotten wilmot? for a conviction seized upon ronald kilsyth, as he looked at his sister and listened to her, that had she been really happy, this state of things would not have existed. in the angry and suspicious state of his feelings towards wilmot, he had accorded little attention, and less credence, to his father's confidences respecting wilmot's opinion and warnings about madeleine's health. he was too honourable, too true a gentleman, even in his anger to set down wilmot as insincere, as acting like a charlatan or an alarmist; but he had dismissed the matter from his thoughts with disregard and impatience. how awfully, how fatally wrong he had been! and a flame of anger sprung wildly up in his heart; anger which involved equally himself and lady muriel.
yes, lady muriel! all he had thought and done, he had thought and done at her instigation; and though, when ronald thought the matter over calmly afterwards, as was his wont, he was unable to believe that any other course than that which had ended in the complete separation of wilmot and madeleine would have been possible, still he was tormented with this blind burning anger.
when lady muriel had aroused his suspicions, had awakened his fears, wilmot was a married man; but when he had acted upon these fears and suspicions, wilmot's wife was dead. "it might have been," then he thought. true; but would he not, being without the knowledge, the fear which now possessed him, have at any time, and under any circumstances, prevented it? it cost him a struggle now, when the knowledge and the fear had come, and his mind was full of them, to acknowledge that he would; but ronald was essentially an honest man--he made the struggle and the acknowledgment. in so far he had no right to blame lady muriel.
in so far--but what about ramsay caird? how, had that marriage been brought about? how had his sister been induced to marry a man whom he now felt assured she did not lave?--something had revealed it to him, nothing she had said, nothing she had looked. how had this marriage, by which his sister had not gained in rank, wealth, or position, been brought about? (he thought at this stage of his meditations, with a sigh, that wilmot could even have given her wealth now--how bizarre the arrangements of fate are!) how had that been done? by lady muriel of course, and no other. maddy might have remained contentedly enough at home, might have been suffered gradually to forget wilmot, and enticed into the amusements and distractions natural to her age and position; there was no need for this extreme measure of inducing her to fix her fate precipitately by a marriage with ramsay caird. yes, lady muriel had done it; done it to secure madeleine's fortune to a relative of her own, and to disembarrass herself of a grown-up stepdaughter. how blind he had been, how completely he had played into her hands! thus thought ronald, as he strode about his bare room at brook-street, his face haggard with care, and his heart sick with the terrible fear which had smitten it with his first look at madeleine.
ronald's interview with his sister had been long and painful to him, though nothing, or very little more, had been said on the subject of her health. he had perceived her anxiety to abridge discussion on that point, and had fallen in with her humour. once or twice, as he talked with her, he had asked her if she was quite sure he was not wearying her, if she did not feel tired or inclined to sleep, if he should go, and send her maid to her. but to all his questions she replied no; she was quite comfortable, and had not felt so happy for a long time; and she had begged him to stay with her as long as he could. the brother and sister talked of numerous subjects--much of kilsyth, and their childhood; a little of their several modes of life in the present; and sometimes the current of their talk would be broken by madeleine's low musical laugh, but oftener by the miserable cough, from which ronald shrunk appalled, wondering that he ever could have heard it without alarm, with indifference. but the truth was, he had never heard it at all. the cough had changed its character; and the significance which it had assumed, and which crept coldly with its hollow sound to ronald's heart, was new.
ronald had a dinner engagement for that day, and remained with his sister until it was time to go home and dress. he looked into kilsyth's room on his way to the hall-door, when he had completed that operation; but his father was not there. "i will speak to him in the morning," thought ronald. "i was impatient with him for croaking, as i thought, about maddy. god help him, i'm much mistaken, or it's worse than he thinks for."
and so captain kilsyth went out to dinner, and was colder in his manner and much less lucid and decisive in his conversation than usual. he left the party early, did not "join the ladies;" and all the other guests, notably "the ladies" themselves, were of opinion that they had no loss.
"if wilmot had not gone away when he did," said kilsyth to his son, at an advanced stage of the long and sad conversation which took place between them on the following morning, "maddy would have been quite well now. nobody understood her as he did; you must have seen it to have believed it, ronald. you always had some unaccountable prejudice against wilmot--i could not get to the bottom of it--but you must have acknowledged that, if you had seen it."
"it is too late to talk about that now, sir," said ronald; "and you are quite mistaken in supposing that i undervalue dr. wilmot's ability. but something decisive must be done at once; and as wilmot's advice is not to be had, we must procure the best within our reach. there is no use now in looking back; but i do wonder caird has permitted her to be without good advice all this time, and has suffered us to be so misled. he must have known of the cough being so bad in the morning, and of her exhaustion at times when neither you nor lady muriel saw her."
kilsyth sighed. "i spoke to him yesterday," he said, "and i found him very easy about the matter. he says maddy wouldn't have a strange doctor."
"maddy wouldn't have a strange doctor! my dear father, what perfect nonsense! as if maddy were the proper person to judge on such a subject--as if she ever ought to have been asked or consulted! as if anyone in what i fear is her state ever had any consciousness of danger! i recognise caird completely in that, his invincible easiness, his selfishness, his--"
he stopped. kilsyth was looking at him, new concern and anxiety in his face; and ronald had no desire to cause either, beyond the absolute necessity of the case, to his father.
"however," he said, "let us at least be energetic now. come with me to see her now, and then we will consult someone with a first-rate reputation. maddy will not offer any resistance when she sees your anxiety, and knows your wishes."
kilsyth and his son walked out together; and in the street he took ronald's arm. he was changed, enfeebled, by the fear which had captured him a few days since, and held him inexorably in its grasp.
madeleine received her father and brother cheerfully. as usual now, she was in her dressing-room, and also, as usual, she was lying down. ramsay caird had told her the previous evening that her father was anxious she should have immediate advice, and she was prepared to accede to the wish. not that she shared it; not that, as ronald supposed, she was unconscious of her danger, as consumptive persons usually are. quite the contrary, in fact. madeleine caird firmly believed that she was dying; only she did not in the least wish to live; and neither did she wish that her father should learn the fact before it became inevitable, which she felt it must, so soon as an experienced medical opinion should be taken upon her case.
but a certain dulness of all her faculties had made itself felt within the last few days, and she was particularly under its influence just then. she had neither the power nor the inclination to combat any opinion, to dissent from any wish. so she said, "certainly, papa, if it will make your mind any easier about me;" and twined her thin arm round her father's neck and kissed him, when he said, "i may bring a doctor to see you then, my darling, and you will tell him all about yourself."
her arm was still about his neck, and his brow was resting against her cheek, when he said:
"ah, if wilmot were only here! no one ever understood you like wilmot, my darling."
neither ronald nor madeleine said a word in reply; and when ronald took leave of his sister, he avoided meeting her glance.
