Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1905 — The Doctor's Wife [ARTICLE]

The Doctor's Wife

BY MISS M. E. BRADDON

CHAPTER XVlll.—(Continued.) | “I told George every—almost every time I met Mr. Lansdell,” she exclaimed; “and George knows that he lends me'books; and he likes me to have hooks —nice, in-st-ruetive,” said Mrs. Gilbert, stifling her sobs ns best she might;-“and I n-never thought that lyiybody could be so wicked as to fancy'vthcre was any harm in my meeting him. 1 don't suppose any one ever said anything to Beatrice Portiuari, though she was married, and Dante loved her very dearly; and 1 only want to see him now and then, and to hear hint talk: and he has been very, very kind to me.” “Kind to you!” cried Gwendoline, scornfully. “Do you knd'w the value of such kindness as his? Did you ever hear of any good coming of it? Are you besotted enough to think that his new fancy for you is anything more than the caprice of an idle man of the world?” “You do not know him. Ah, if you could only know how good he is, how noble, how generous! I know that he would never try to injure me by so much as a word or a thought. Why should I not love him; as we love the stars, that are so beautiful and so distant from us? Ah, you do not understand such love as mine!” added Isabel, looking at the general's daughter with an air of superiority that was superb in its simplicity. “I only understand that you are a very foolish person,” : Gwendoline answered coldly; “and I have been extremely foolish to trouble myself about you. I considered, it my duty to do what I have done, and I wash my hands henceforward of you and your affairs. Pray g£> your own way, and do not fear any further interference - from me.” She hurled the cruel word at the doctor’s wife, and departed with a sound of silken rustling in a narrow passage. Isabel heard the carriage drive away, and then flung herself down upon Jier knees, to sob'and lament her cruel destiny. Those last words had stung her to the very heart, took all the poetry out of her life, brought before her. in its fullest significance, the sense of her position.

CHAPTER XIX. It was 11 o’clock when Isabel woke; and it was 12 when sli£ sat down to make some pretense of eating the egg and toast which Mrs. Jeffson before her. The good woman regard i. her young mistress with a grave countenance, and Mrs. Gilbert shrank nervously from that honest gaze. She was not to meet him until 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and it was now only a little after 12; but she could not stay in the house. A terrible fever and restlessness had taken possession of her lately. Had not her life been altogether one long fever since Roland Lansdell's advent? She looked back, and remembered that she had lived once, and had been decently contented, in utter ignorance of this splendid being's existence. She took out her watch every now and then, always to be disappointed at the slow progress of the time; but at last —at last —just as a sudden gleam of sunshine lighted the water fall and flickered upon the winding pathway, a distant church clock struck 3, and the master of Mordred Priory pushed open a little gate and came in and out among 5 the moss-grown trunks of the bare elms. In the next minute he was on the bridge; in the next moment, as it seemed, he was seated by Isabel's side and had taken her passive hand in his. Mrs. Gilbert looked up sadly and shrinkiugly at Roland’s face, and saw that it was flushed and radiant. There was just the faintest expression of nervous hesitation about his mouth; but his dark eyes shone with a resolute glance, and seemed more definite in color than Isabel had ever seen them yet. “My darling,” he said, “I am very punctual, am I not? I did not think you would be here before me. You can never guess how much I have thought of our meeting to-day, Isabel—seriously, solemnly even, lzzie, I want you to answer a serious question to-day, and all the happiness of my future life depends upon your answer.” “Mr. Lausdell!” She looked up at him—very much frightened by his manner, but with her hand still clasping his. The link must so soon be broken forever. Only for a little while longer might she retain that dear hand in hers. Half an hour more, and they would be parted forever and ever. The 3 pain of that thought was strangely mingled with the delicious joy of being with him, of hearing from his lips that she was beloved. What did she care for Gwendoline now! —cruel, jealous Gwendoline, who had insulted her love. “Isabel,” Roland said, very gravely, bending his head to a level with hers, as be spoke, but looking at the ground rather than at her, “it is time that we ended this farce of duty and submission to the world. Mine is no light love; if it were, I would have done my duty, and stayed away from you forever. I have thought of your happiness as well as my own, darling; and I ask you now to trust me, and to leave this place forever.” Something like a cry of despair broke from Isabel’s lips. “You ask me to go away with you?” she exclaimed, looking at Roland as if she could scarcely believe the testimony of her own ears. “You ask me to leave George. Oh, Gwendoline only spoke the truth, then. You don’t understand—no one understands how I love you!” She had risen as she spoke, and flung Jkerself passionately ngainst the balustrade of the bridge, sobbing bitterly, with her face hidden by her clasped hands. “Oh, Roland! Roland! I have loved you ao—and could you think that I Oh. you despise me —you must despise me very much, and think me very wicked, or you would never ” She couldn’t say any more, but still leased against the bridge, sobbing for her lost delusion. Owendoline had been right, after all —this is what Isabel thought—and there had been no Platonism, no poet-worship an Boland Lansdell's side; only the vul-

gar, ev.ery-dSy wish to run away with another man’s wife. "is this actipg, Mrs. Gilbert? Is this show of surprise and indignation a| little comedy, which you play when you want to get rid of your lovers? Am I to accept my dismissal, and bid you good afternoon, and put up patiently with having been made the veriest fool that ever crossed this bridge?” “Oh, Roland!” cried Isabel,, lifting her head and looking round piteously at him. “I loved you so —I loved you so!”' “You love me so, and prove your love by fooling me with tender looks and bltifehes, till I believe that I have met the o-ne woman in all the world who is to make’iny life happy. Oh, Isabel. I have loved you because I thought you unlike other women. Am I to find that it is only the old story after all —falsehood, and trick, and delusion? It was a feather in your cap to have Mr. Lansdell, of the Priory, madly in love with you; and now that he grows troublesome, you send him about his business. I am to think this, I suppose. It has Ml been coquetry and falsehood from .first to lost.” “Oh, no, ho, no!” cried Mrs. Gilbert, despairingly. *‘l never thought that you would ask me* to be more to you than I am now; I never thought it was wicked to come here and meet you. I have lhad of people who, by some fatality, could never marry, loving each other, and being true to each other for years and years —till death sofiietimes; and I fancied that you loved me like that; and the thought of your love made me so happy; „and it was such happiness to see you sometimes, and to think of you afterward, remembering every word you had said, and seeing .jour face'as plainly as I see it now. I thought, till yesterday, that this might go'on forever, and never, never believed that you would thiuk me UJ*&Jl(ose Avii-keM avutuon' wlro .ruu y.way from their husband.’’ “And yet you love me?” “With all my heart.” Roland Lansdell watched her face in silence for some moments, and faintly comprehended the exaltation of spirit which lifted this foolish girl above him to-day. But he was a weak, vacillating young man, who was unfortunate enough not to believe in anything; and he was, in his own fashion, truly and honestly'ill love —too much in love to be just or reasonable —and he was very angry with Isabel. The tide of his .feelings had gathered strength day By day, and had swept relentlessly above every impediment, to be breasted at last by a rocky \Vall; here, where he thought to meet only the free, boundless ocean, ready to receive and welcome him.

“Isabel,” he said,- at last, “have you ever thought what your life is to be; always, after this parting to-day? You are likely to live forty years, and even when you have got through them, you will not be an old woman. Have you ever contemplated these forty years, with three hundred and sixty-five days in every one of them, every day to be spent with a man you don’t love—a man with ■whom you have not one common thought? Think of that, Isabel; and then, if you do love me, think of the life I offer you and choose betwen them.” “I can only make one choice.” Mrs. Gilbert answered, in a low, sad voice. “I shall be very uuhtippy, I dare say, but I will do my duty to my husband, ami—think of you.” “So be it!” exclaimed Mr." Lausdell, with a long-drawn sigh. “In that case, good-by.” He held out his hand, and Isabel was startled by the coldness of its touch. “You are not angry with me?” she asked, piteously. “I have no right to be angry with any one but myself. I have nothing to say to you except good-by. For mercy’s sake, go away and leave me to myself.” She had no pretense fqr remaining with him, after this; so she: went away, very slowly, frightened and sorrowful. But when she had gone a few yards along the pathway under the trees sne felt all at once that she could not leave him thus. She must See his face once more; she must know for certain whether he was angry with her or not. She crept slowly back to the spot where she had left him, and found him lying at full length upou the grass, with his face hidden on his folded arms. With a sudden instinct of grief and terror she knew that he was crying, and falling down upon her knees by his side, murmured, amidst her sobs: “Oh, pray forgive me! Pray do not be angry with me! I love you so dearly and so truly! Only say that you forgive me!" Roland Lausdell lifted his face and looked at her. Ah, what a reproachful look it was, and how long it lived in her memory and disturbed her peace! “I will forgive you,” lie answered, sternly, “when I learn to endure my life without you.” He dropped his head again upon his folded arms, and Isabel knelt by his side for some minutes watching him silently; but he never stirred; and she was too much frightened and surprised by his anger, and remorsefully impressed with a vague sense of her own wrong doing, to dare address him further. So at last sbe got up and went away. She begun to feel that she had been, somehow or other, very wicked, and that her sin had brought misery upon the man whom she loved. * _________ CHAPTER XX. "He knows so much, and yet did not know that I was not a trifling woman,” she thought, in simple wonder. She did not understand Roland’s skeptical inanucr of looking at everything, which could perceive no palpable distinction between wrong nnd right. She could not comprehend that this man had believed himself justified in wliat be bad done. s But she thought of him incessantly. The image of his pale reproachful face never left her mental vision. The sound of his voice bidding her leave him was perpetually in her ears. He had loved her and had wept because of her. There were times when she wanted to go to

him and fall at his feet, crying "Oh, what am I, that should be counted against your sorrow?” There were -time? when the thought of Boland Lnnsdell’s sorrow overcame every other thought in Isabel Gilbert’s mind. Until the day when he had thrown himself upon the ground in a sudden passion of grief, she had nev&r realized the possibility of his being unhappy because of her. The weeks went slowly by. To Roland the days were weary and the nights intolerable. He went up to the city several times, always leaving Mordred alone and at abnormal hours, and every time intending to remain away. But he squid not; a sudden fever seized him as v the distance grew wide. She would repent of her stern determination; she would write to hinifjavowing that she could not live without him. All, lrow long life had expected that letter! She would gjow suddenly unable to endure her life perhaps, and would be rash and desperate enough to go-to Mordred in the hope of seeing him. Day after day he haunted the bridge under Thurston’s oak; day after day he waited in the faint hope that the doctor’s wife might wander thither. Oh, how cruel *she "was; how cruel! If she had ever loved him, she too would have haunted that spot. She would have come to the place associated with his memory. She would have come, as he came, in the hope of another meeting. He sat by the’ water listening to the church bells as they rang out upon the tranquil atmosphere. The people were coming to church. Roland's heart throbs bed heavily iu his breast. Was she among them? At last all was quiet, and the only bell to be heard in the summer stillness was the distant tinkle of a sheep bell far away in the sunlit meadows. Mr. Lansdell got up as the clock struck 3 and walked at a leisurely pace to the church. < She was there; yes, she was, there. She was alone, in a pew near the pulpit, on her knees, with her hands clasped and her eyes looking up wand. The high, old-fashioned pew shut herein from the congregation about her, hut Mr. Lansdell could look down upon her from his post of observation in the gallery. Her face was pale and worn, and her eyes looued larger and orighter than when he had seen her last. Was she in a con'sumption? Ah. no; it was only the eager, yearning soul which was always consum--iag» ksg-lfl 4t-was- no physioah -Hteess,-bat the sharp pains of a purely mental struggle that had left those traces ou her face. Rolaud was seized with a sudden desire that Isabel-should see him. lla wanted to see the .recognition of him in her face. Might he not learn the depth of her love, the strength, of her regret, by that one look of recognition? A green serge curtain hung before him. He pushed the Folds aside; and the brazen rings made a little clanging noise as they slipped along the rod. The sound was loud enough to startle the woman whom Mr. Lansdell was watching so intently. She looked up and recognized him. He saw a white change flit across her face; he saw her slight muslin garments fluttered by a faint shiver; and then in the next moment she was looking demurely downward at the book on her lap, something as she had looked on that morning when he first met her under Thurston’s oak. All through the service Roland Lansdell sat watching her. Ho made no pretense «of joining in the devotions of the congregation; but he disturbed no one. He only sat, grim and somber-looking, staring down at that one pale face in the pew near the pulpit. A thousand warring thoughts and emotions surged in. his breast. Finally the service came to a closed Little by little the (jpngregation melted out of the aisle. The* charity hoys from the neighborhood of the organ loft came clumping down the stairs. Still Mr. Lansdell stood watching and waiting the doctor’s wife in the pew below. Still Isabel Gilbert kept her place, rigicLand inflexible, until the church was quite empty. Then Mr. Lansdell looked at her —only one 100k —but with a world of emotion concentrated in its dark fury. -He looked at her, slowly folding his arms and drawing himself to his full height. He shrugged his shoulders with one brief, contemptuous movement, as if he flung some burden off him by the gesture, and then turned and left the pew. Mrs. Gilbert heard his firm tread upon the stairs, and she rose from her seat in time to see him pass out of the porch. (To be continued.)