‘A common story, I fear,’
‘Yes; wrecked and ruined lives are common enough, I daresay. They fill the midnight haunts in the Haymarket, and keeping gambling-houses going, and swell the excise. I went to London after my father’s death, and from London to Paris, and from Paris to Vienna. There is very little wildness or wickedness in those three cities, that I could not enlighten you about. A man cannot touch pitch without defilement. I didn’t steep myself to the lips in pitch, or wallow in it, and enjoy it as some men do; but I touched it, and the taint cleaves to me. There is nothing in this world that men call pleasure which has the faintest charm for me. My nights are restless, and troubled with feverish dreams. And sometimes — sometimes — I start up with a sudden thrill of horror going through me like an arrow, and feel as if the hair of my head were lifted up, like Job’s, at a vision of hideous fear.’
‘What is it you fear?’
‘Madness,’ answered Eustace Tregonnell, in a half whisper. ‘It has appeared more than once in my family. My grandfather died mad. Sometimes I fancy that I can it fell it coming. It has seemed near at hand, even. I have looked in the glass, started at my haggard face, hardly recognizing myself, and have cried out involuntarily, “That is the face of a madman.”’
‘A not unnatural result of sleepless and troubled nights,’ answered the doctor, quietly. ‘Do you know that a week’s insomnia — one little week absolutely without sleep — has been known to result in temporary lunacy? That was an extreme case, of course; but the man who can’t sleep comfortably, is always in a bad way. You must have refreshing sleep, Mr. Tregonnell, or your fears may be realized.’
‘Where are the drugs that will give it me? I have tried them all. The sole effect of opiates is to send me into a fever, and to make me twice as wakeful as I am without them.’
‘I should not recommend opiates in your case.’
‘What would you recommend then?’
‘Mesmerism.’
Mr. Tregonnell smiled, a smile at once contemptuous and impatient.
‘I sent for a physician, whose sagacity I have heard highly lauded. I did not expect to meet — —”
“A quack,” said Dr. Carrick. ‘Yes, I know that mesmerism ranks with table-turning and other juggleries. A striking proof of the ignorance of the popular mind upon all scientific questions outside the narrow range of old established orthodoxy.’
And then Dr. Carrick went on to discourse eloquently upon mesmerism as a curative agent. He told Mr. Tregonnell about Dr. Esdaile’s experiments in the native hospital in Calcutta; he argued warmly in favour of an influence which was evidently with him a favourite subject of study.
‘Have you tried this wonderful agent upon any of your Cornish patients?’ asked Mr. Tregonnell.
‘I am not such a fool. A century ago they would have punished mesmerism under the head of witchcraft; to-day they would scout it as quackery. I talk freely to you, because I take you for a reasonable and enlightened being.’
‘Do you think I am a subject for mesmerism?’
‘I know you are, and an excellent one.’
‘Mesmerise me, then,’ said.Mr. Tregonnell, quietly throwing himself back in his chair, and fixing his dark, haggard eyes upon the doctor.
‘In this house? Impossible! I should throw you into a sleep which would last for hours; a sleep of deepest unconsciousness, from which the loudest noises would not awaken you; a sleep in which you would be even insensible to pain. Your servants would take alarm. My coming and going might seem strange; and, in short, if I am to cure you by means of mesmerism, as I know I can — yes, tame that wild fever of your blood, reduce that unhealthy restlessness to placid repose, banish fears which are not wholly groundless; in a word, give you that which ancient philosophy counted as the highest good, a sane mind in a sound body; if I am to do all this, Mr. Tregonnell, I must have the case in my own hands. I must have you under my care by day and night. My house is large and commodious. You must come and live with me.’
‘Humph!’ muttered. Mr. Tregonnell ‘Is not that rather like going into a private lunatic asylum?’
‘My house is not registered as an asylum, and I never had a lunatic in my care. No, Mr. Tregonnell; you will be farther from lunacy under my root than you are here, eating your heart out by this dismal fireside.’
‘Yes, it is dismal; the sort of house that ought to be occupied by a large family. Well, I am half inclined to go to you. I shall be a free agent in your house, I conclude; able to roam about as I like by day, provided upon my movements?’
‘None.’
‘Can you find room for my horse and for my servant?’
‘For both.’
‘Then I will come. Mind, I do not promise to stay with you for any given time. I must be free as the wind. If you can give me sound and peaceful sleep with your mesmeric passes, I shall be grateful to you — and mesmerism. But can you not give me a taste of your quality at once, here?’
‘No; I am expected home. If I mesmerised you to-night, I should want to stay with you and see the result of my experiment. Come to me for a week. If by the end of that time your spirits are not tranquillized, and your general health is not improved, call me a charlatan, and have done with me.’
‘I am very much inclined to believe in you,’ said Mr. Tregonnell, gazing steadily at the doctor. ‘You look as if you were in earnest.’
‘I have been in earnest all my life,’ answered Dr. Carrick. And then inwardly he added: ‘But I never had an object worth being in earnest about until to-night.’
CHAPTER III. HESTER FINDS A FRIEND.
THE best rooms in St. Hildred House were swept and garnished for Squire Tregonnell. Hester Rushton, who had a natural womanly love of household duties, was in her element while she bustled about, polishing, dusting, and arranging things for the reception of an honoured inmate. She caught herself singing at her work that busy morning, with a sense of pleasant expectation that was new and sweet. It was a relief to think of a stranger coming to live in that big empty house. Dr. Carrick was of so reserved a temper, that Hester seemed no more intimate with him now, after three years’ domestic companionship, than on the day of her aunt’s funeral. She could complain of no unkindness. He never spoke harshly to her, even when most troubled in mind. He thanked her courteously for all her attentions; praised her economies and clever management of his house; but he gave her none of his confidence. She felt that she knew no more of his heart and mind than if he had been a man of stone.
About his new patient, Dr. Carrick had told his cousin only that he was a man of wealth and position; that he was to have the best rooms in the house; and that his valet was to be made comfortable in the servant’s office. Hester was more frightened at the idea of the valet than at the grandeur of the master.
Happily. Mr. Tregonnell’s body-servant was not a pampered cockney, corrupted by the luxurious idleness of chambers in the Albany, but a clever, handy fellow, used to roughing it on board his master’s yacht, and with a genius for every art that can make the wheels of daily life work smoothly. He was a first-rate cook, and an accomplished butler; and took upon himself all those delicate labours which were beyond the power of Dr. Carrick’s maid-of-all-work.
Mr. Tregonnell finished his first week at St. Hildred House, and looked considerably better and brighter at the end of it. He spent his mornings in roaming about the cliffs, or riding in the Cornish lanes; his afternoons in reading; his evenings in the society of Dr. Carrick and Miss Rushton. He was a man who had seen men and cities, and read much. His conversation, therefore, was full of interest; and Hester, to whom all intellectual conversation was new, listened with unvarying delight It was to be observed, however, that he never talked of himself.
The week ended, and Mr. Tregonnell had no wish to return to the manor. He now firmly believed in the power of mesmerism. Nightly, in the silence of his bedchamber, the doctor exercised his potent, but seeming simple art. A steady pressure of his hands upon the shoulders of the patient
, a series of mystic passes before the dreamy eyes, and the charm worked. First a new sense of warmth, comfort, and lightness stole through the frame; then the heavy eyelids drooped involuntarily, the will lost its waking power; then came deep, prolonged, and restful sleep, bringing healing and regeneration to mind and body.
This treatment was known to none save the patient and the physician. David Skelter, the valet, had never been in very close attendance upon his master, who was a man of independent habits. His bedroom was on an upper floor, remote from Mr. Tregonnell’s apartment, and the valet saw nothing of his master after he had arranged his room for the night.
Hester Rushton’s ideas as to the treatment of the patient were of the vaguest. Dr. Carrick had told her only that Mr. Tregonnell required rest and retirement.
So the days went on, and Hester’s life took a new colour from the presence of a man of intellect and refinement, who treated her as a being of equal intelligence, and opened his mind to her freely on all subjects that were not personal. Of his opinions she knew much, of himself very little.
Spring advanced. The blusterous March winds softened into the gentle breezes of April. St. Hildred House had a good old-fashioned garden — a garden where departed generations had planted homely flowers, which blossomed year after year, unaided by the gardener’s art. Everything about the place had been sorely neglected till Hester came, but this garden was her chief delight. Her household duties occupied her all the morning, but she spent every fine afternoon in the garden — her bright young head bared to the spring breeze, her clever little hands encased in thick gardening-gloves — digging, transplanting, weeding, clipping, pruning, with skill that would have done credit to a professed gardener. Labour was cheap at St. Hildred, and for sixpence a day she could get a strong lad to mow the grass and roll the gravel-walks once a week or so; an extravagance which the doctor hardly approved.
Mr. Tregonnell’s sitting-room looked into the garden. One warm afternoon towards the close of April, he threw aside his book, and went downstairs to join Hester, who was budding a rose on the lawn.
‘How fond you seem to be of this garden of yours, Miss Rushton,’ he said at her elbow.
His footfall had been noiseless on the thick, soft grass, and his speech startled her. The cheek — turned a little from him, but not so far but that he could see its change of colour — flushed crimson, and the scissors shook in her hand.
‘How you startled me!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t know what a critical business budding is.’
‘It looks rather like a surgical operation. Did Dr. Carrick teach you?’
‘Dr. Carrick!’ laughed Hester. ‘I don’t think he knows a rose from a dandelion, except when he uses them in medicine. No; it was a dear, deaf old gardener in Herfordshire who taught me, years and years ago,’
‘Years and years ago,’ echoed Mr. Tregonnell. ‘What an eternity of time you seem to express by that phrase. Pray how many centuries old may you be, Miss Rushton?’
‘In actual years I believe I am twenty-five,’ answered Hester, smiling; ‘but i feel dreadfully old. I suppose it is because I have known a great deal of sorrow. I don’t mean to complain. Indeed, I should be very wicked if I did; for my aunt Hedger and my Cousin Carrick have both been very good to me; but it is hard to lose those one fondly loves in the morning of life.’
‘It is,’ assented Mr. Tregonnell earnestly. ‘I have known that loss, Miss Rushton, and it has made me what you see — a man without aim or purpose in life — a mere shuttle-cock to drift about in a yacht, buffeted by the winds and waves, and caring very little what port I put into, or whether I go down some stormy night in mid-ocean, unlamented and unknown. And you, too, have drawn a mournful lot out of the urn, have you, little one?’
‘I lost my father and mother when I was fourteen. They both died in the same week. Dear, dear papa was a curate in a Bedfordshire village. A fever broke out, and he took it, and then mamma. It was all like a dreadful dream. In a week they were gone, and I was alone with two coffins. Then aunt Hedger sent for me, and I lived with her. She was old and ailing when I went to her. Her life seemed like one long illness, and then the end came, and I was alone again. I haven’t the least idea what would have become of me if cousin Carrick had not asked me to come and take care of his house.
‘You are very much attached to Dr. Carrick, I suppose?’ said Mr. Tregonnell, looking at her searchingly.
He was wondering whether any hidden evil lurked beneath this outward simplicity; whether the relations between the doctor and his cousin were pure and free from guile.
‘He has been very good to me,’ answered Hester, innocently.
‘And you like him very much no doubt?’
‘I like him as much as he will let me. He is my benefactor. I should be base and ungrateful if I did not honour him. I do honour him for his kindness to me, and for his patience and fortitude, and skill in his profession. I see how much good he does. But he is as much a stranger to me now as when first I crossed the threshold of his house. It i.s his nature to live alone.’
This speech made Mr. Tregonnell thoughtful, He remembered a line of Schiller’s:
‘Fear all things in which there is kn unknown depth.’
Yet what had he to fear from Dr. Carrick? All the doctor could possibly desire from him was liberal payment for service rendered, and to have his praises sounded in the neighbourhood by a grateful patient. Mr. Tregonnell had already pressed a cheque for a hundred pounds upon the doctor’s acceptance, and had found it difficult to persuade him to receive so large a fee. There was to all appearance no desire to take advantage of his natural recklessness.
Henceforward it became quite a usual thing for Mr. Tregonnell to loiter in the garden while Hester worked with her pruning-scissors or trowel. He even volunteered his assistance, but Hester laughed at his offer, and declined such clumsy help. They became very confidential during those sunny afternoons; Hester telling the doctor’s patient all about her happy childhood, and sad girlhood, freely confessing her want of education, and her ardent desire to learn. Mr. Tregonnell rode over to the manor one morning to select a heap of volumes for her instruction, and ordered them to be sent to St. Hildred House the same day. He took as much pains to choose books that would at once arouse her interest, as if he had been a father catering for a favourite child.
Sometimes, when the fair May afternoons were especially tempting, he insisted upon Hester’s going down to the beach with him; and they idled together upon the rugged strand, picking up masses of many coloured sea-weed, watching the black cormorants perching on the rocky pinnacles, and listening to the great strong voice of the sea. It was altogether a new life for simple Hester Rushton, but the firm, fresh young mind was in no wise injured by the association. The clever little housekeeper performed her daily tasks just as diligently as of old. The eager young student, to whom all the world of intellect was new, only applied herself to her books when her domestic duties were done.
CHAPTER IV. MR. TREGONNELL MAKES HIS WILL.
WHILE the acquaintance between Mr. Tregonnell and Hester Rushton thus ripened gradually into a very close friendship, Dr. Carrick was too busily occupied by his daily round of professional work to be aware of the change. He was away from home all day. When he saw his cousin and his patient in the evening, he perceived no more than that they got on very well together. This was as it should be. He wished his patient to be comfortable in his house. Mr. Tregonnell had now been with him three months, and had pressed a second cheque for a hundred pounds upon his acceptance. This was very well, and Dr. Carrick felt that if it could go on for ever his fortune would be made. But how could he hope that the thing would last? Eustace Tregonnell’s fitful temper was proverbial. Some morning he would feel the old longing for the wide salt sea, and be off and away in his yacht, leaving the doctor as desolate as Dido. Dr. Carrick’s only wonder was that his patient had stayed so long. It never entered into his mind that Hester Rushton’s hazel eyes and gentle child-like ways c
ould have any influence upon Mr. Tregonnell. Even the valet noticed the change which his new mode of life had wrought in his master. He talked of it in the village, and lauded Dr. Carrick’s skill.
‘He’s the first doctor that ever did Mr. Tregonnell any good,’ he said, leaning over the counter of the chief shopkeeper in St. Hildred — grocer, chemist, stationer, and postmaster — for a comfortable gossip. ‘I never saw anybody so tamed down and quieted as master. He used to be all fits and starts, and as restless as if life was a burden to him. Now he seems to find pleasure in the simplest things.’
‘Ah,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘he’s been a wild one, I reckon. The Tregonnells always were wild. It’s in the blood. But he hasn’t been taking any more chloroform, I hope. That’s a dangerous habit.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked David.
‘Why, he’s been in the habit of taking chloroform for pains in his head. You must know that, surely. Dr. Carrick warned me not to sell him any, if he should come here for it.’
‘I don’t know anything about his taking chloroform,’ said David. ‘I know he’s taken all sorts of things on board his yacht, to make him sleep; but I never heard of his taking chloroform in particular. He’s got a little bottle in his medicine chest, but I don’t believe he’s ever taken the stopper out.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1126