Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1905 — The Doetor’s Wife [ARTICLE]

The Doetor’s W ife

BY MISS M. E. BRADDON

CHAPTER I If Jbhn Gilbert’s only child has pos•assed the capacity of a Newton or the aspirations of a Napoleon, the surgeon ,would nevertheless have shut him up to compound tincture of rhubarb and essence of peppermint. Luckily for the boy, he was only a commonplace lad, ■With a good-looking, rosy face, clear gray eyes, which stared at you frankly; ■nd a thick stubble of brown hair, parted in the middle and waving from the 'toots. He was tall and muscular, a good runner, tolerably skillful with a Edr of boxing gloves, and a decent shot. e was very good; and. above nil, he was very good looking. No,one had ever ’disputed this fact; George Gilbert was •minently good looking. No one had •ver gone so far as to call him handsome; no one had ever presumed to designate him “plain.” He had those homely, healthy good looks which the practical mind involuntarily associates with tenant farming in a small way. George Gilbert took hisjife as he found it, and had no wisn'to make it ‘better.' To him Graybridge was all the Srorld. He had been hi the city, and ad felt a provincial's "sense us surprised alight in the thronged streets, the ■ls mor and the bustle; but he had very •oon discovered that the great metropolis ■iwae a dirty and a disreputable place as ■compared with Graybridge, where you Wight have taken your dinner comfortably off any door step, so far as the matter of cleanliness is concerned. . The young man was more than satisfied with bia life; he was pleased with it. He was pleased to think that he was to be bia father's partner, and was to live and marry, and have children, and die at last in the familiar rooms in which he bad been born. His nature was very adhesive, and he loved the things that be had long known, because they were old and familiar to him, rather than for any merit or beauty in the things themselves. The 20th of July was a very great day for George Gilbert, and indeed for the ♦own of Graybridge generally; for on ♦hat day an excursion train left Warebarn for the city, conveying such roving ■pirits as cared to pay a week’s visit to the great metropolis upon very moderate terms. George had a week's holiday, which he was to spend with an old ■chool fellow who had turned author. The surgeon left Graybridge at 8 o’clock upon that bright summer morning, in company with Miss Burdock and her sister Sophronia, who were going on a visit to an aristocratic aunt, and who bad been confided to George’s care during the journey. Wareham is only a Irandred and twenty miles from the city, and the excursion train, after stopping at every station ®n the line, had arrived at the terminus at half past 2 o’clock. It was between 3 and 4 now, and the sun was •hining upon the river, and the flags were hot under Mr. Gilbert’s feet. He was very warm himself, and almost worn out, when he found at last the name he was looking for, painted very high up, In white letters, upon a black door post ■—“Fourth Floor: Mr. Andrew Morgan •nd Mr. Sigismund Smith.”

It was in the jnost obscure corner of the dingiest court that George Gilbert found this name. He climbed a very idirty staircase, thumping the end of his portmanteau upon every stair as he (went up, until he came to a landing, midway- between the third and fourth ■tories; here he was obliged to stop for ■heer want of breath, for he hail been lugging the portmanteau about with him throughout his wanderings, and a good many people had been startled by the aspect of a well dressed young man carrying his own luggage, and staring at the Mames of the different rows of houses. A pale-faced young man, with a ■mudge of ink upon the end of his nose, ■nd very dirty wristbands, opened the Moor. ‘•Sain!” “'George!" cried the two young men, Simultaneously, and then began to shake hands with effusion. “My dear old George!” ‘‘My dear old Sam!, But you call yourself Sigismund now?” “Yes; Sigismund Smith. It sounds (well, doesn’t it? If a man’s evil destiny makes him a Smith, the least he can do Id to take it out in his Christian name. JNo Smith, with a grain of spirit would •ver consent to be a Samuel. But come, Bwir old boy, and put your portmanteau down; knock those papers off that chair •—there, by the window. Don’t be frightened of making 'em in a muddle; they can't be in a worse muddle than they ■re now. If you don't mind just amusing yourself for half an hour or so, ■while I finish this chapter of the ‘‘Smuggier’.s Bride,' 1 shall be able to strike work, and do whatever you like; but the printer's boy is coming back in half an Hour for the end of the chapter.” “I wou’.t speak a word,” George said, ■respectfully. The young man with the smudgy nose was an author, and George Gilbert had an awful sense of the sol•mnity of his friend's vocation. "Write ■ way, my dear Sam; 1 won't interrupt you.” He drew his chair close to the open window mid looked down Into the court Below, where the paint was slowly blistering ju the July sun.

CHAPTER 11. There was very little to look at in tho ■ourt below the window, so George Gilbert fell to watching his friend, whose ■apid pen scratched along the paper in ■ breattties* way, which indicated a Hashing style of literature, rather than Solishcd composition. Sigismund only raw breath once, and then he paused Mo make gashes ajt his shirt coliter with an inky bone paper knife that Ray upon the table. • “I’m only trying whether a man would Hut hie throat from right to left, or left to right,” Mr. Smith said, in answer to His friend’s look of terror; “it’s as well •o be true to nature. A man would cut bls throat from left to right: he couldn’t It the other way without making perslices of himself.”

“There’s a suicide, then, in your story?" George said; with a look of awe. "A suicide!” exclaimed Sigismund Smith, “a suicide in the ‘Smuggler's Bride!’ Why, it teems with suicides. There's the Duke of Port St. Martin's, who walls himself up alive in his own cellar; and there's Leoni de I’asdebasque, the ballet dancer, who throws herself out of Count Caesar Marasehetti's private Jballqon, and there's Lilia, the dumb girl—the public like dumb girls—in fact, there's lots of them.'' said Mr. Smith, dipping his pen in his ink. and hurrying wildly along the paper. The boy came back before the last page was finished, and Mr. Smith detained him five or ten minutes, at the end of which lime he rolled up the manuscript, still damp, and dismissed the printer's cmissafy. “Now. George,” he said, “I can talk to you.” The young men went out upon the landing. Sigjsmund locked tho black door and put the key in his pocket. They went downstairs. ‘‘You'd like to walk, I Supposo, George?” Mr. Smith asked. ““Oh, yes; we can talk" better walk! ng.” They talked a great deal as they walked along. They wore very fond of one another, and had each,-of them a good deal to tell; but George wasn't much of a talker as compared to his friend Sigismund. That young man poured forth a perpetual stream of eloquence, which knew no exhaustion. •

“And so you like the people of Camberwell?” George said. “Oh, yes, they're capital people, free and easy, you know, and no Stupid, stuck-up gentility about them. Not but what Sleaford's a gentleman; he's a bar'-* rister. 1. don't know exactly where his clianfbers are or in what court he practices when he's in town, but he is a barrister. I suppose he goes on circuit sometimes, for he’s often away from home for a long time together. It doesn't do to ask a man those sort of questions, you see, George, so I hold my tongue. I dQn't think he's rich, that's to say not rich in a regular way. He's flush of money sometimes, and then you should sec the Sunday dinners —salmon and. cucumber, and ducks and green pea's, as if they were nothing.”

It was a long walk to Camberwell; but the two voting men were walkers, and as Sigismund Smith talked unceasingly all the way. there were no awkward pauses in the conversation. Mr. Smith conducted his friend by mazy convolutions of narrow streets and lanes, where there was the perpetual sound of clattering tin pails and the slopping of milk, blending pleasantly with • the cry of the milkman. Standing before a little wooden door in the wall that surrounded Mr. Sleaford's gdii'dcn, George Gilbert could only see that the house was a square brick building with sickly ivy straggling here and there about it. and long, narrow windows considerably obscured by dust and dirt. It was not a pleasant house to look at. Whatever could be broken in Mr. Sleaford’s house was broken; whatever could fall out of repair had so fallen. The bell was broken, and the handle rattled loosely in a kind of basin of tarnished brass, so it was no use attempting to ring; but Sigismund was used to this. He stooped down, put his lips to a hole broken in the woodwork above the lock in the garden door, and gave a shrill whistle. "They understand,” he said: “the bell's been broken ever since I lived here, but they never have anything mended.”

"Why not?” "Because they're thinking of leaving. Sleaford talks about going to Australia sonyt of these days.” The garden door was opened while Mr. Smith was talking, and the two young men went in.

CHAPTER 111. The garden at the back of Mr. Sleaford's house was a large square plot of ground, with fine »ld pear trees sheltering a neglected lawn. A row of hazel bushes screened all the length of the wall upon one side of the garden; and whenever you looked, there were roses and sweet brier, apples and tall straggling raspberry bushes, all equally unfamiliar with the gardener's pruning knife. It was a dear old, untidy place, where the odor of distant pig sties mingled faintly with the perfume of the roses; and it was in this neglected garden that Isabel Sleaford spent the best part of her idle, useless life. She was sitting in a basket chair under one of the pear trees when Sigismund Smith and his friend went into the garden to look for her. She was lolling In a low basket chair, with a book on her lap, and her chin resting on the palm of her hand, so absorbed by the interest of the page before her that sho did not even lift her eyes when the two young men went close up to her. Sho wore a muslin dress a good deal tumbled and not too clean, and a strip of black velvet was tied around her long throat. Her hair was black and was rollesl up hi a great loose knot, from which a long, untidy curt fell straggling on her white throat—her throat was very white with the dead, yellowish whiteness of ivory. "I wish that was ‘Colonel Montefiasco, ’ ” said Mr. Smith, pointing to the book which the young lady was reading. “1 shoul I like to see n lady so interested in one of my books that she wouldn't so much as look up when a gentleman was waiting to be introduced to her.” Miss Sleaford shut her book and rose from her low chair, abashed by thia reproach; but she kept her thumb between the pages, and evidently meant to go on with the volume at the first convenient opportunity. She did not wait for any ceremonious introduction to George, but held out her hand to him. and smiled at him frankly. "You are Mr. Gilbert, I know,” she said. "Sigismund has been talking of you incessantly for the last week. Mamma has got your room ready; and I suppose we shall have tea soon. There are to bo some chops on purpose for your

friend, Sigismund, mamma told me to tell you*” Bhe giftneed downward at the book, as much as to say that she had finished speaking and wanted to get back to it. “What is it, Izzie?” Sigismund asked, interpreting her look. “ ‘Alberman Mountfort.’ ” . . “I thought so. Always his books.” A faint blush trembled over Miss Sleaford’s pale face. “They are so beautiful!” she said. “Dangerously, I’m afraid, Isabel.” tho young man said, gravely; “beautiful sweetmeats, with opium inside the sugar. These books don't make you happy, do they. Izzie?” “No. they make me unhappy; but”—• .-he hesitated a little, and then blushed as she said—“l like that sort of unhappiness. It’s better than eating and drinking and sleeping, and being happy that way.” George could only stare at the young lady's kindling face, which lighted up all in a moment and was suddenly beautiful like some transparency which seems a dingy picture until you put a lamp behind it. The young surgeon could only stare wonderingly at Mr. Sleaford’s daughter, for he hadn't the faintest idea what she and bis friend were talking about. She shut her book altogether at Sigismund's request, and went with the two young men to show George the garden; but she carried the dingy-looking volume lovingly under her arm, and she relapsed into a dreamy silence every now and then, as if she had been reading the hidden pages by some strange faculty of clairvoyance. After tea the two young men walked up and down the weedy pathways in the garden, while Isabel sat under her favorite pear tree reading the volume she had been so loath to close. Sigismund talked of what they called old times; but those old times were only four or five years ago, though the young men talked like graybcard&j who look back half a century or soy>.®kj<b wondered at the folly of their youth 1 / Isabel went on with her book; the light was dying little by little, drooping down behind the pear trees at the western side of the garden, and the pale evening star glimmered at the end of one of the pathways. She read on more eagerly, almost breathlessly, as the light grew less; for her stepmother would call her in by- and by, and there would be a torn jacket to -mend, perhaps, or a heap of worsted socks to bo darned for the boys; and there would be no chance of reading another line of that sweet sentimental story, that heavenly prose, which fell into a cadence like poetry, that tender melancholy music which haunted tire retlder for long after the book was shut ami laid aside, and made the dull course of common life so dis mally unendurable. George and Sigismund talked 'pf Miss Sleaford when they grew tired of dis*

foni'sing upon the memories of their school boy life. "You didn't tell me that Mr. Sleaford had a daughter,” George said. "Didn't I?” "No. She —Miss Sleaford—is very pretty.” “She's gorgeous,” answered Sigismund, with enthusiasm; "she's lovely. Ido her for all my dark heroines —the good heroines. not the wicked ones. Have you noticed Isabel's eyes? People call them black; but they arc a bright orange color, if you look at them in the sunshine. There is a story called ‘The Giri with the 'Golden Eyes.’ I never knew what golden eyes were till I saw Isabel Sleaford.” They went across the grass to the pear tree, under which Isabel was still seated. It was growing dark, and her pale face and black eyes had a mysterious look in the dusky twilight. George Gilbert thought she was fitted to be the heroine of a romance', and felt himself miserably- awkward and comnfonplace. The young surgeon enjoyed his first night at Camberwell to his heart’s content. It was when the little party was gayest that a shrill whistle from the gate sounded. “It's your pa, Izzie,” Mrs. Sleaford said. “He’ll want a light; you’d better take it to him. I don’t suppose he’ll care about coming here.” Isabel went out into the hall to greet her father. She left the door ajar, and George could hear her talking to Mr. Sleaford, but the barrister answered bis daughter with a very ill grace, and the speech which George heard plainest gave him no very favorable impression of his host, (To be continued.)