Yes, he had used her ill, the woman who loved him; had killed her, it might be; or had killed her intellect, leaving her to go down to old age through the long joyous years, a mindless wreck; she who was once so happy, a lovely ethereal creature in whom mind and heart were paramount over clay.
The Rector received him coldly, and with a countenance which unaccustomed anger made strange and forbidding. When a benevolent man is angry his anger has a deeper root and a more chilling aspect than the ready displeasure of less kindly spirits. For Mr. Gilstone to be angry meant a complete upheaval of a nature that was made up of sympathy and compassion. But here for once was a man with whom he could not sympathise, for whom his present feeling was abhorrence.
“Is she recovering? May I see her?” asked Gerard, on the threshold of the Rector’s study, chilled by that stem countenance, yet too full of the thought of Hester to delay his questioning.
“She is a shade better this morning,” the Rector answered coldly, “but she is far too ill for you to see her — at any rate until the doctor thinks it safe — and when you are allowed to see her it is doubtful whether she will recognise you. She is in a world of her own, poor soul, a world of shadows.”
“Is her mind quite gone?” faltered Gerard. “Does the doctor fear—”
“The doctor fears more for her life than for her mind. If we can save her life, the mind may recover its balance as strength returns. That is his opinion and mine. I have seen such cases before — and the result has generally been happy; but in those cases we had to deal with a ruder clay. All that is finest in this girl’s nature will tell against her recovery. There is a heavy account against you here, Mr. Hanley.”
“I know, I know,” cried Gerard, with his face turned from the Rector, as he stood looking out of the window, across the flame-coloured tulips, the level lawn, towards the churchyard, conscious of nothing which his eyes looked at, only turning his face away to hide his agony.
“A heavy account; you have brought dishonour upon a woman whose every instinct makes for virtue. You have broken her heart by your desertion.”
“I did not desert her—”
“Not as the world reckons desertion perhaps. You left her a house and servants and a bundle of bank-notes; but you left her just when she had the most need of sympathy — left her to face an ordeal which might mean death — left her under conditions which no man with a heart could have ignored.”
“I was inconsiderate — selfish — cruel. Say the worst you can of me. Lash me with bitter words. I acknowledge my iniquity. I was only just recovered from a dangerous illness — —”
“Through which she nursed you. I have heard of her devotion.”
“Through which she nursed me. I was not ungrateful — but I was wretched, borne down by the knowledge that I had only a short time to live. Ah, Rector, you in your green old age, sturdy, vigorous, with strength to enjoy the fullness of life even now when your hair is silver — you can hardly realise what a young man feels who has unexpectedly inherited a vast fortune, and who while the delight of possession is still fresh and wonderful, is told that his life is narrowed to a few precarious years — that if he is to last out even that short span he must watch himself with jealous care, husband his emotions, lest the natural joys of youth should waste the oil in the lamp. This was what I was told. Be happy, be calm, be tranquil, said my physician; in other words, be self-indulgent, care for nothing and for no one but self. And I felt that yonder house was killing me. The shadow of that old man’s decaying age darkened my fading youth. If Hester would have gone with me to the South there would have been no break in our union — at least I think not — though there was another claim —— —”
“She refused to leave her father?”
“Yes. She preferred him to me. It was her own free choice.”
“Well, there are excuses for you, perhaps; and the result of your conduct has been so disastrous that you need no sermon from me. If you have a heart, the rest of your life must be darkened by remorse. Your child’s death lies at your door.”
“Does she remember that dreadful night — does she grieve for the child?” asked Gerard.
“Happily not. I have told you she is living in a world of shadows.”
“Let me see her,” pleaded Gerard. “You don’t know how fondly she loves me — how dear we have been to each other. Her mind will awaken at the sound of my voice.”
“Awaken to the memory of all that she has suffered. Would that be an advantage? Mr. Mivor must be the judge as to whether she ought to see you. If he finds no objection —— —”
“When will he be here?”
“Not till the evening.”
“Then I’ll go to his house, and bring him here if necessary. Mr. Gilstone,” said Gerard, stopping on the threshold, as the Rector followed him to the hall, “you are a good man. However hardly you may think of me, nothing will ever lessen my gratitude to you — and in the short time I may yet have to live I hope to prove that with me gratitude means something more than a word.”
The Rector gave him his hand in silence, and Gerard got into the fly and was driven to Mr. Mivor’s comfortable cottage, a low, white-walled building with a thatched roof, at the end of the straggling village street.
Mr. Mivor was surprised to see him, but asked no questions.
“I should have telegraphed to you more than a fortnight ago if I had known where to find you,” he said. “I am glad you have come back. Mrs. Hanley is a little better to-day — only a little. We must be thankful for the least improvement, and we must try not to lose ground again.”
“She has been dangerously ill, I am told?”
“Dangerously! Yes, I should think so. She has been on the brink of death, not once, but several times since the birth of her child. And since the fever took a bad turn — the night she tried to make away with herself — her condition has been all but hopeless, until yesterday, when there were signs of rallying.”
“May I see her?”
“I don’t think it could do her any harm. She won’t know you.”
“Yes, she will! She will know me. She may not recognise people who are almost strangers to her, but she will know me—”
“Poor lady! She hardly knows herself. Ask her who she is, and she will tell you a strange story. All we can hope is that with returning strength mind and memory will return. I will go to the Rectory with you, and if I find her as tranquil as she was this morning you shall see her.”
They were at the Rectory ten minutes later, and this time Mr. Gilstone received Gerard with kindliness. He had given speech to his indignation, and now his natural benevolence pleaded with him for the repentant sinner. He received Gerard in his study, while the doctor went to see his patient.
“You have not asked me why I took upon myself to have Mrs. Hanley brought to this house, rather than to her own,” he said.
“I had no need to ask. It was easy for me to understand your kindly motive. You would not let her re-enter a house in which she had tasted such misery — you wished to surround her with fresh objects, in a peaceful shelter where nothing would remind her of her past sufferings.”
“That was one motive. The other was to place her under the care of my sister. However devoted hired nurses may be, and I have nothing to say against the woman who is now nursing Mrs. Hanley, it is well that there should be some one near who is not a hireling, who works for love, and not for wages. My sister’s heart has gone out to this poor lady.”
Mr. Mivor appeared at the study door, which had been left open while Gerard waited, his ear strained to catch every sound in the quiet, orderly house, where all the machinery of life went on with a calm regularity that knew no change save the changing seasons. The silence of the house oppressed Gerard as he went upstairs, filled with an aching fear. Was he to find her cold and unconscious of his presence — the girl who had hung upon him with despairing love when they parted, less than a month ago?
A door was opened, a woman in a white cap and
apron looked at him gravely, and drew aside. It was the nurse who had waited upon old Nicholas Davenport, and even in this moment the association made him shudder. And then, scarcely conscious of his own movements, he was standing in a sunlit room where a young woman in a white morning gown, and with hollow cheeks and soft, fair hair, cropped close to the well-shaped head, was sitting at a table playing with the flowers that were strewn upon it.
“Hester, Hester, my darling, I have come back to you,” he cried, in a heart-broken voice, and then he fell on his knees beside her chair, and tried to draw the fair face down towards his quivering lips, but she shrank away from him with a scared look.
In spite of the doctor’s warning he was unprepared for this. He had hugged himself with the belief that had her mind wandered ever so far away, as far as east from west, or heaven from earth, she would know him. To him she would be unchanged. The one beloved personality would stand out clear and firm amidst the chaos of delirious dreams. Much as he had prated of molecular action, and nerve messages, and all the machinery of materialism, he had expected here to find spirit working independently of matter, and love dominant over the laws of physiology.
The violet eyes, dilated by madness, looked at him, looked him through and through, and knew him not. She shrank from him with distrust, gathered up the scattered flowers in the folds of her loose muslin gown, and moved hastily from the table.
“I’m going to plant these in the front garden, nurse,” she said, “I want to get them planted before father comes from the library. It’ll be a surprise for him, poor dear. He was grumbling about the dust this morning, and saying how it spoils everything, and he’ll be pleased to see the garden full of tulips and hyacinths. This sort will grow without roots — they grow best without roots, don’t they?” She looked down at the flowers dubiously, as if not quite clear upon this point, and then with a sudden vehemence ran to the fireplace, where a small fire was burning behind a high brass fender, and flung the tulips and hyacinths into the fender.
“Oh, Mrs. Hanley, that’s very naughty of you,” cried the nurse, as if reproving a child, “to throw away the pretty flowers that the Rector brought you this morning. Why did you do that, now?”
“I don’t want them. They won’t grow. It’s the day for my music lesson, and I haven’t practised. How cross Herr Schuter will be!” There was a little cottage piano in a recess by the fireplace — a little old piano on which Miss Gilstone had practised her scales forty years before. Hester ran to the piano, seated herself hastily, and began to play one of Chopin’s nocturnes — a piece so familiar in her girlhood that even in distraction some memory of the notes remained, and she played correctly and with feeling to the end of the first movement, when suddenly, at a loss for a bar, she burst into tears and left the piano.
“It is all gone,” she said. “Why can’t I remember?”
In all these varying moods and rapid movements about the room there had not been one look or one gesture which indicated consciousness of Gerard’s presence. Those large, luminous eyes looked at him and saw him not, or saw him only as a stranger whose image awakened no interest.
The nurse dried the patient’s tears and soothed her after that burst of grief at the piano, and a few minutes later Hester was standing at the open window tranquillised and smiling, watching for some one with an air of glad expectancy.
“How late he is,” she said, “ and I’ve got such a nice little dinner for him! I’m afraid it will be spoilt by waiting. It’s the day the new magazines are given out at the Free Library. He is always late on magazine day. I ought to have remembered.”
She turned quickly from the window and looked about the room.
What has become of my sewing-machine?” she asked. “Have you taken it away?” to the nurse; “Or you?” to Gerard. “Pray bring it back directly, or I shall be behindhand with my work.”
Her thoughts were all in the past, the days before she had entered into the tragedy of life, while yet existence was passionless, and meant only patience and duty. How strange it seemed to find her memory dwelling upon that dull time of drudgery and care, while the season of joy and love was forgotten!
“Is she often as restless as this?” he asked, with an agonised look at the doctor, who stood by the window, calmly watchful of his patient.
“Restless, do you call her? You would know what restlessness means if you had seen her three days ago, when the delirium was at its height, and one delusion followed another at lightning pace in that poor little head, and when it was all her two nurses could do to keep, her from doing herself harm. She has improved wonderfully since then, and I am a great deal more hopeful about her.”
“Have you had no second opinion? Surely in such a case as this a specialist should have been consulted?”
“We have had Dr. Campbell, the famous lunacy-doctor, whose opinion of the case corresponds with my own. There is very little to be done. Watchfulness and good nursing are all that we have to look to — and Nature, the great healer. I was right, you see. I told you she would not know you, and that seeing you could do her neither good nor harm.”
“Yes, you were right. I am nothing to her — no more than if I had been a century dead — no more than any of the dead who are lying under those crumbling old tombstones yonder.”
He glanced towards the churchyard, where the soft spring sunlight was shining upon grey granite and golden lichen, the dark foliage of immemorial yews and the downy tufts upon the young willows. He was standing side by side with the woman who had loved him better than her life, and she took no heed of him. He tried to clasp her hand, but she moved away from him looking at him in shy surprise, and with some touch of apprehension or dislike. “Hester,” he exclaimed piteously, “don’t you know me?”
“Are you another doctor?” she asked. “There have been so many doctors — so many nurses — and yet I am quite well. They have cut off my hair, and they treat me as if I were a child — but there is nothing the matter with me. I don’t want any more doctors.”
“You see how she is,” said Mr. Mivor. “I think you had better come away at once. Your presence excites her, although she doesn’t know you. Nothing can be done for her that is not being done. Miss Gilstone has been all kindness. She has given up her sitting-room and bedroom to your wife because they are the prettiest in the house.”
“She is an angel of charity,” said Gerard, “and Heaven knows how I can ever repay her.”
“She is a Christian,” said Mr. Mivor, “and she won’t look to you for any reward. It is as natural for her to do good as it is for the flowers to bloom when their season comes.”
Gerard followed the doctor out of the room, his looks lingering to the last upon the sweet pale face by the window, but the face gave no sign of returning memory. The doctor was right, no doubt. Messages of some kind were being carried swiftly enough along the nerve-fibres to the nerve corpuscles, but no message told of Gerard Hillersdon’s existence, or of last year’s love-story.
Gerard Hillersdon did not go back to London immediately after leaving the Rectory. He was fagged and faint after the long night of travel, the long morning of heart-rending emotions, the unaccustomed hurrying to and fro; but he had something to do that must be done, and with this business on his mind he had refused all offers of refreshment from the hospitable Rector, although he had eaten nothing since the hurried dinner in Paris on the previous night. He went from the Rectory at Lowcombe to the Rose and Crown, in the next village, the inn to which Hester had been carried after the rescue from the river, and at which the inquest upon her drowned baby had been held. He went to that house thinking that there he would be most likely to get the information he wanted about the man who had saved Hester’s life.
Life was saved, and reason might return; but, alas, with returning reason would come the mother’s cry for the child her madness had destroyed. Must she be told — or would she remember what she had done? Would she recall the circumstances of that fearful night, and know that in her a
ttempt to end her own sorrows she had killed her innocent child?
To-day his business was to find out the name of the man who had saved her life, possibly at the hazard of his own; and he argued that the Rose and Crown was the likeliest place at which to get the information he wanted.
He was not mistaken. The inn was kept by a buxom widow, who charged abnormal prices for bedrooms in the boating season, and was said to have fattened by picking the bones of boating men. Although her bills were extortionate her heart was beneficent, and she was eager to be serviceable to Mr. Hanley, of the Rosary. She expatiated tearfully upon the loveliness of the dear young lady who had been carried unconscious and apparently dead to the Rose and Crown’s best bedroom. She dilated upon the efforts that had been made to bring life back to that cold form, and upon her own pious thankfulness when those efforts proved successful.
“Indeed, sir, I thought the dear young lady was gone,” she said, “and if we hadn’t had a medical student in the house who hurged us to go on” — the aspirate here seemed only an element of force—” and if we hadn’t had the Newmane Serciety’s instructions ‘anging up in the ‘all, I don’t suppose we should ever have had the patience or the strength of mind to have kep’ at it as we did.”
“Can you tell me the name of the man who rescued her?” asked Gerard, somewhat curtly, considering the landlady’s beneficence a matter to be settled like her bills, by a cheque.
“Why, of course I can, sir. He and his friend was obliged to stay the night in the ‘ouse, for he’d nothing but his wet boating clothes and a overcoat He stopped that night, and his clothes was dried at my own sitting-room fire, which I kep’ up all night, on purpose, and he wrote his name in the visitors’ hook before he left next morning. I says, ‘I should like to have your name in my book, sir, for you’re a brave-hearted man.’ And he laughs and say, ‘Lor, landlady, you don’t think what I’ve done anythink out of the way, do you? And as for my name,’ he says, ‘it’s a very common one, but such as it is you’re welcome to it.’”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 932