Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1905 — The Doctor's Wife [ARTICLE]

The Doctor's Wife

BY MISS M. E. BRADDON

CHAPTER XVl.—^(Continued.) “I startled you,” he said; “you did uoX expect to see me. 1 had no right to come te you so suddenly; but they told me y»® were here, and I wanted so riiueh to see you—l wanted , so mftvh to speak to you.” The words were insignificant enough, hut there was a wu'rmth and earnestness in the tones that was new to Isabel. Feint blushes flickered into her cheeks, so deathly pale a few moments before, k et eyelids fell over the dark, unfathomable eyes, a look of sudden happiness spread itself upon her face and made it luminous. “I thought you would never, never, never come back again.” “I meant to stay away, but I changed my mind, and I came back. I hope, you are'glad to see me again?” What could she say to him? Her terror of saying too kept her silent; the beating of her heart sounded in her cars, and she was afraid that he, too, might hear that tell-tale sound. She dared not raise her eyes, and yet she knew that he was looking at her earnestly, serutinizingly even. “Tell mo that' you are glad to see me,” he said. “Ah, if you knew why ] went away— why I tried so hard to *tay away —why I have come back after all—after all — so many resolutions made and broken —so many deliberations —so much doubt and hesitation! Isabel! tell me you are glad to see me once more!” She tried to speak, and faltered out a word or two, and broke down, and turned away from him. And then she looked round at him with sudden impulse! innocently and childishly, forgetful for a moment of the square-built house in the dusty lane, George Gilbert, aud all the duties of her life. “1 hare been so unhappy; I have been ao miserable; and you will go away again by and by, and I shall never, never aee you any more.” Her voice broke, aud she burst into tears, and then, remembering the surgeon an ia a moment, brushed them hastily away with her handkerchief. “Yon frightened me so, Mr. Lansdell,” she said, “and I’m very late, and I was just going home, aud my husband will be waiting for me. He comes to meet aoe sometimes when he can spare time. Good-bye.” She held out her hand, looking at Roland nervously as she did so. Did he despise her very much? she wondered. No doubt he had come home to marry Gweudoline Pomphrey, and there would bo u fine wedding in the bright May weather. There was just time to go into a coilsumption betweeu March and May, Mrs. Gilbert thought; and her tombstone might be ready for the occasion, if the gods who bestow upon their special favorites the boon of early death would caly he kind to her. “Good-bye, Mr. Lansdell,” she repeated. “Let me walk with you a little way. Ah! if you knew how I have traveled night and day; if you knew how 1 have languished for this hour, and for the Sight of ” For the sight of what? Roland Lansdell was looking down at the pale face of the doctor's wife as he uttered that unfinished sentence. But among all the wonders that ever made the story of a woman’s life wonderful, it could never surely come to pass that a demi-god would descend from the etheral regions which were his common habitation upon her account, Mrs. Gilbert thought. She went home in the chill March twilight, hut not through the bleak and common atmosphere which other people breathed that afternoon; Mr. Lansdell walked by ker side, and, not encountering the surgeon, went all the way to Graybridge, sad only left Mrs. Gilbert at the end of the dusty lane in which the doctor’s red lamp already glimmered faintly in the dusk.

CHAPTER XVII. Mr. Lansdell did not seem in a hurry to make any demonstration of his return to Mordred. He did not affect any secrecy. it is true, but he shut himself • good deal in his own rooms, and seldom vent out except to walk in the direction of Thurston's oak. whither Mrs. Gilbert ■lm rambled in the chilly spring afternoons, and where Mr. Lnnsdell and the doctor’s wife met each other very frequently. not quite by accident now; for, ■t parting. Roland would say, with supreme carelessness: “I suppose you will lie walking this way to-morrow—it is the only walk worth taking hereabouts—and I’U bring you the other volume.” Roland I.atisdell kept aloof from his kindred, but ho was not suffered to go his own way unmolested. The road to perdition is not so smooth and flower* hestrewu a path as we are sometimes taught to beliere. A merciful hand often dings stumbling blocks and hindering brambles in our way. It is our own fault if wo insist upon clambering over the rocky barriers, and scrambling through the briery hedges, in a mad eagerness to reach the goal. Roland had started on the fatal descent, and wus of rearer, goitig at that rapid rale with which we always travel down hill; but the road was uot all clear for him. Charles Raymond of Convention! was among the pooplc who heard accidentally of the young man's return; and about a week after Roland's arrival the kindly philosopher presented himself at the gataa of the Priory, and was fortuaate enough to find bis kinsman at home, la apite of Mr. Lansdell's desire to be at his ease, there was some restraint la his manner os he greeted his old ftritod. ,"I am very glad to see you, Rsyaaaad." he said. *‘l should liuve ridden wear to Convent ford in a day or two. I’ve come home, you see.” "Tea, and I’m very sorry to see It. A* a breach of good faith, Roland.” "Of what faith? With whom?" -With me,” answered Mr. Raymond, i ul) "You promised me that you twalf go away." “I did; and I went away.” *iaf aow you have come back again.” “Tau," replied Mr. I.ansdell, folding Mi anaa and looking full at bia kins

man, with an ominous smile upon his face—“yes; the fact is a little too evident for the basis of an 1 have come back.” Mr. Raymond was silent for a minute or so. The younger man stood with his back against the angle of tile embayed window, and he never took his eyes from liis friend’s face. There was something like defiance in the expression of his face, and even in his attitude. “I had better go away, Roland,” Mr. Raymond said, looking at his kinsman" \with a sad, reproachful gaze, and stretching out his hand to take up the hat and 'gloves he ha<f thrown upon a chair near him; “I can do no good here.” One afternoon late in the month, when the March winds were bleaker and more pitiless than usual, Isabel went across the meadows where the hedge rows were putting forth timid little buds to be nipped by the chill breezes, arid where here and there a violet made a tiny speck of purple on the grassy bank. Mr. Lansdell Avas standing on the bridge when Isabel approached the familiar trysting place, and turned with a smile to greet her. “I am going to the city, Isabel,” he said, after standing by Mrs. Gilbert for some time, staring silently at the water; “I am going to-morrow morning.” “Going away!” cried the doctor’s wife, piteously; “ah, I knew you would go away again, and I shall never see you more!” She clasped her hands in her sudden terror, and looked at him with a world of sorrow and reproach in her paleface. “I knew that it would be so!” she repeated. “I dreamed the other night that you had gone away, and I came here, and, oh, it seemed such a dreadful way to come, and I kept taking the wrong turnings, and going through the wrong meadows; and when I came, there was only some one —some stranger—who told me that you had gone, and would never come back.” f

“But Isabel —my —love—my darling” —the tender epithets did not startle her; she was so absorbed by the fear of losing the god of her idolatry—‘T am only going to town for a day or two to see my lawyer—to make arrangements—arrangements of-vital importance—l should be a scoundrel if I neglected them, or incurred the smallest hazard by delaying them an hour. You don’t understand these sort of things, Isabel; but trust me, and believe that your welfare is dearer to me than my own. I must go to town; but I shall only be gone a day of two —two days at the most—perhaps only one. And when I come back, Izzie, I shall have something that involves all the happiness of my future life. Will you meet me here two days hence —on Wednesday at 3 o’clock? You will, won’t you, Isabel? This shall be the last time, Isabel—the last time I will ask you to incur humiliation for me. Henceforward we will hold our heads high, my love; for at least there shall be no falsehood in our lives.” Mrs. Gilbert stared at Roland Lansdell in utter bewilderment. She was almost stifled by mingled grief and indignation. “I did not think you were ashamed to meet me here sometimes,” she sobbed out; “you asked me to come. I did not think that you were humiliated by talking to me —I ” “Why, Izzie —Isabel darling!” cried Roland, “can you misunderstand nre so utterly? Ashamed to meet you—ashamed of your society! Can you doubt what would have happened had I come home a year earlier than it was my ill-fortune to come? Can you doubt for a nioment that I would have chosen you for my wife out of all the women in the universe, and that my highest pride would have been the right to call you by that dear name?” * Isabel Gilbert was not a woman of the world. A perfect happiness had come to her —the happiness of being beloved by the right object of her idolatry; nothing could add to that perfection: the cup was full to the very brim, filled with an inexhaustible draught of joy and delight. Mr. I.nnsdell stopped to shake hands with Isabel when they came to the gate leading into the Graybridge road. “Good-bye,” he said, softly; “good-bye until Wednesday, Isabel. Isabel—what a pretty name it is! You have uo other Christian name?” “Oh, no.” “Only Isabel —Isabel Gilbert. Goodbye.” lie opened the gate, and stood watching the doctor’s wife as she passed out of the meadow, and walked at a rapid pace toward the town. A man passed along the road as Mr. Lnnsdell stood there, and looked at him, as he went by. utnd theu turned and looked after Isabel. ; * Raymond is right, then," thought Roland; “they have begun to stare and chatter already. My poor darling, henceforward it is my duty to protect you from such ns these." Mrs. Gilbert went home to her husband, and sat opposite to him at dinner ns usual; but Roland’s words, dimly as she had comprehended their meaning, had in some manner influenced her, for she blushed when George asked her where she had been that cold afternoon. “He will marry Gwendoline,” Isabel thought in a sudden access of despair; “and that is what he is going to tell me on Wednesday. He was Uifierent to-day from what ho has been since he came hack to Mordred. And yet—and yet " And yet what? Isabel tried in vain to fathom the meaning of all Roland Lausdell's wild talk— now earnestly gravenow suddenly reckless — one moment full of hope, ami the next tinctured with despair. What was this simple young novel reader to make of a man of the world, who was eager to defy the world, arjd know exactly what a terrible world it was that he was about to defy? CHARTER XVIII. Mrs. Gilbert stayed nt home all through the day which succeeded her parting from Roland lnnsdell. She stayed in the dingy parlor, and rend a little, and played upon the piano n little, and sketched a few profile portraits of Mr.

Lansdell, desperatrfly inky and sentimental, with impossibly enormous eyes. From the window she saw a lady in a carriage driving slowly toward the gate. The lady was Gen. Ruysdale’s daughter, who, having recognized Isabel at the window, saluted her with a very haughty inclination of the head, abandoned the reins to her attendant, and alight-' cd. , - Oh. what a dingy, shabby place, that Graybridge parlor was always! how doubly and trebly dingy it seejned today by Contrast with that gorgeous figure of Gwendoline Pomphrey. Mrs. Gilbert brought a chair for her visitor, aud asked in a .tremulous vifiice if Gwendoline would be pleased to sit. Isabel felt that some calamity was homing down upon her pa lid she stood pale and silent, meekly Waiting to receive her sentence. “Pray' sit down, Mrs. Gilbert,” said Gwendoline, “I wish to have a little conversation with you. I am very glad tojjave found you at home and. alone." /-TluKlady spoke very kindly, but her 'Kindness had a stately coldness that crept like melting ice through Isabel’s veins, and chilled her to the bone. “I am older than you, Mrs. Gilbert," said after a little pause, and she slightly’ winced as she made the confession; “I am older than you; and if I speak to you in a manner that you may have some right to resent as an impertinent interference with your affairs, I trust that/ you will believe I am influenced only by a sincere desire for your welfare.” c Isabel’s heart ‘sank to a profounder depth of terror than before when she heard this. - “I am older than yon, Mrs. Gilbert,” repeated Gwendoline, “and I know my cousin Roland Lansdell much better than you can possibly know him.” The sound of the dear name, the sacred name, which to Isabel’s mind should only have been spoken in a hushed whisper, like a tender pianissimo passage in music, shot home to the foolish girl’s heart. Her face flushed crimson, and she clasped her hands together, while the tears welled slowly up to her eyes. “I know my cousin better than yob can know him; I know the world better than you can know it. There are some women, Mrs, Gilbert, who would condemn you unheard, and would consider their lips sullied by airy mention of your name. There are many women in my position who would hold themselves aloof from you, content to let you go your own way. But I take leave to think for myself in all matters. I have heard Mr. Raymond speak very kindly of you; I cannot judge you as harshly as other people judge you.” “Oh, what, what can they think of me?” cried Isabel, trembling with a vague fear, an ignorant fear of some deadly peril utterly unknown to her, yet close to her; “what harm have I done, that they should think ill of me? What can they say of me? Wl/at can they say?" Her eyes were blinded by tears that blotted Gwendoline’s stern face from her sight. She was still so much a child that she made no effort to conceal her terroi and coufusiou. She bared all the foolish secrets of her heart before those cruel eyes. , “People say that you are a trifling wife to a simple-hearted and trusting husband. Do you imagine that you could keep any secret from Graybridge? Do you think your actions or even your thoughts could escape the dull eyes of these country people, who have nothing better to do than watch the doings of their neighbors?” demanded Gwendoline bitterly. Isabel had been crying all this time, crying bitterly, with her head bent upon her clasped hands; but to Gwendoline’s surprise she lifted it now, and looked at her accuser with some show of indignation, if not defiance!" (To be continued.)