The Doctor's Wife
TOO MUCH ALONE.
Brown Molly's were by Mr. Jeffson's patient hands. I the old would have gone long without a clipping, had it not been George's special that the animal should be up he her to Conventford. Clipping is not a very labour: but there is no so difficult that William Jeffson would have from it, if its give George Gilbert happiness.
Brown Molly looked a when George came home, after a of professional visits, and her and bridled, at eleven o'clock, on the March which he had for his to Conventford. But though, the was ready, and had been for a of an hour, there was some while George ran up to his room,—the room which he had slept in from his (there were some of his toys, and forgotten, the and hat-boxes at the top of the painted wardrobe),—and was for some little time in his neckcloth, his and hat, and making other little in his personal appearance.
William Jeffson that his master looked as if he was going off to be married, as he away out of the stable-yard, with a upon his and the his hair. He looked the very of homely, healthy comeliness, the of and English manhood, with the fresh of an nature, by an memory, pure as a new-polished on which no has rested.
He away to his fate, self-deluded, and happy in the idea that his was a wise of the of and the of his surgery.
I do not think there can be a more road in all England than that Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne and Conventford, and I can that in all England there is an town than Conventford itself. I George Gilbert his long on that March morning, when the among the underwood, and the of early with the air. The country were long avenues, which might have the of a park; and every here and there, a in the hedge, a white-walled country or old red-brick out of some of beauty, with in the sun.
Midway Graybridge and Conventford there is the village of Waverly; the village over Elizabethan the towers of a old their protecting shadows. John of Gaunt was master and of the of those old towers, and Henry the Eighth's has in the great banqueting-hall, where the its natural the of the Tudor window. The gave his a of and a drink of water the Waverly Arms, and then at a foot-pace into the long which from the village to the very of the Conventford. George Brown Molly into a of by-and-by, and at a till he came to the little at the end of the avenue, and left Elizabethan Midlandshire him. Before him there was only the smoky, noisy, poverty-stricken town, with the air, and three tall from the high up into the sky.
Mr. Gilbert on the green, which was to-day, though such an spot in fair-time; he rein, and to wonder what he should do. Should he go to the chemist's in the market-place and his drugs, and to Mr. Raymond's house, which was at the other end of the town, or on the of the country and the town; or should he go to Mr. Raymond's by lanes, which were clear of the and of the market-people? To go to the chemist's would be the course, perhaps; but then it wouldn't be very to have in his pocket, and to of and camomile-flowers when he his Miss Sleaford. After a good of deliberation, George on going by the way to Mr. Raymond's house; and then, as he along the and slums, he to think that Mr. Raymond would wonder why he called, and would think his in the nursery-governess odd, or intrusive; and from that a natural of him to wonder it would not be to all idea of Miss Sleaford, and to himself with the purchase of the drugs. While he was of this, Brown Molly him into the at the end of which Mr. Raymond's house stood, on a eminence, looking over a wide of fields, a railway cutting, and a white high-road, here and there by little of trees. The country upon this of Conventford was and of as to that park-like region which I to call Elizabethan Midlandshire.
If Mr. Raymond had other people, I say he would have been surprised—or, it may be, outraged—by a in the medical to make a call upon his nursery-governess; but as Mr. Charles Raymond was the very opposite of else in the world, and as he was a most of Mr. George Combe, and by a at the surgeon's that the man was neither a a scoundrel, he George as as it was his to every who had need of his friendliness; and sent Brown Molly away to his stable, and set her master at his ease, George had left off in his of shyness.
"Come into my room," Mr. Raymond, in a voice that had more in it than any other voice that out upon the air; "come into my room. You've had a from Sigismund,—the idea of the dog calling himself Sigismund!—and he's told you all about Miss Sleaford. Very girl, but wants to be she can teach; the little ones amused, however, and takes them out in the meadows; a very nice, little thing; very large; can't anything out of her about her past life; and to when I ask her questions; has a good of trouble, I'm afraid. Never mind; we'll try and make her happy. What her past life to us if her head's well balanced? Let me have my of the people in Field Lane, and I'll you an Archbishop of Canterbury; take me into places where the of are only by their names in the Decalogue, and I'll you an Greenacre. Miss Sleaford's a very good little girl; but she's got too much Wonder and Ideality. She opens her big when she talks of her books, and looks up all and if you speak to her while she's reading."
Mr. Raymond's room was a little apartment, with books from the to the floor. There were books in Mr. Raymond's house; and the master of the house read at all manner of hours, and a by his in the of the night, when every other citizen of Conventford was asleep. He was a bachelor, and the children it was Miss Sleaford's to educate were a of orphans, left by a pale-faced of Charles Raymond's,—an lady, who only to be unfortunate, and who had married badly, and her husband, and died of consumption, through all the common to her twenty-fifth birthday. Of Mr. Raymond took the children; he would have taken an chimney-sweep's children, if it have been to him that there was no one else to take them. He the pale-faced in a cemetery, and took the home to his house at Conventford, and black for them, and Miss Sleaford for their education, and less about the than many men would have done the of a ten-pound note.
It was Charles Raymond's nature to help his fellow-creatures. He had been very rich once, the Conventford people said, in those far-off days when there were neither in the old town; and he had a great of money in the out of for the of his fellow-creatures, and was in these days. But he was so as to be unable to help other people, or to his hand when a mechanics' institution, or a working-men's club, or an evening-school, or a cooking-dépôt, was wanted for the and of Conventford.
And all this time,—while he was the moving of half-a-dozen committees, while he cast-off clothing, and coals, and for soup, and orders for flannel, and the question as to Betsy Scrubbs or Maria Tomkins was most in want of a petticoat, or gave to the of Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Green to the of the kitchen,—he was an author, a philosopher, a phrenologist, a metaphysician, books, and them for the of mankind. He was fifty years of age; but, that his was grey, he had no single of age. That the that upon mankind, and with the on all. George Gilbert had Mr. Raymond times to-day. Everybody in Conventford, or a of Conventford, Mr. Charles Raymond; and Mr. Charles Raymond everybody. He looked through the screen which the surgeon's thoughts: he looked into the man's heart, through that were as clear as water, and saw nothing there but truth and purity. When I say that Mr. Raymond looked into George Gilbert's heart, I use a of speech, for it was from the of the surgeon's he his deductions; but I like the old fancy, that a good man's is a temple of courage, love, and piety—an of all the virtues.
Mr. Raymond's house was a Gothic building, villa, cottage, with opening into a small garden, which was very different from the garden at Camberwell, as here all was by an and factotum. Beyond the garden there were the meadows, only from Mr. Raymond's lawn by a low hedge; and the the and of Conventford in the distance.
Charles Raymond took George into the drawing-room by-and-by, and from the window the man saw Isabel Sleaford once more, as he had her first, in a garden. But the had a different from that other scene, which still in his mind, like a picture in a gallery. Instead of the pear-trees on the low grass-plat, the green against the yellow of July, George saw a close-cropped lawn and flower-beds, groups of laurel, from the March winds. Against the cold sky he saw Isabel's figure, not in a garden-chair reading a novel, but walking with two pale-faced children in black. A of pain through the surgeon's as he looked at the figure, the face, the sad eyes. He that some had come to Isabel Sleaford since that July day on which she had talked of her authors, and and with love for the dear books out of pages she took the and of her life.
The three faces, the three black dresses, had a look in the cold sunlight. Mr. Raymond at the glass, and to the nursery-governess.
"Melancholy-looking objects, are they not?" he said to George, as the three girls came the window. "I've told my to give them of meat, not too much done; meat's the best for melancholy."
He opened the window and Isabel and her two pupils.
"Here's a friend come to see you, Miss Sleaford," he said; "a friend of Sigismund's; a who you in London."
George out his hand, but he saw something like terror in the girl's as she him; and he into a of and embarrassment.
"Sigismund asked me to call," he stammered. "Sigismund told me to and tell him how you were."
Miss Sleaford's with tears. The came to her now with the smallest provocation.
"You are all very good to me," she said.
"There, you children, go out into the garden and walk about," Mr. Raymond. "You go with them, Gilbert, and then come in and have some and beer, and tell us all about your Graybridge patients."
Mr. Gilbert his host. He out on to the lawn, where the were their to be by the air of March. He walked by Isabel's side, while the two here and there the evergreens, and the that had the gardener's scythe. George and Isabel talked a little; but the man was to himself to a about Conventford, and Mr. Raymond, and Miss Sleaford's new duties; for he saw that the least to the old Camberwell life and her. There was not much that these two talk about as yet. With Sigismund Smith, Isabel would have had to say; indeed, it would have been a the two as to which should do all the talking; but in George Gilbert's company Isabel Sleaford's themselves like are by a northern breeze. She that Mr. Gilbert was a good man her, and, after his fashion, to her; but she than that he did not her, and that in that cloudy region where her for he be her companion. So, after a little of that original which the talk of a call people who have the called small-talk, George and Isabel returned to the drawing-room, where Mr. Raymond was to over a of bread-and-cheese and ale; after which the surgeon's was to the door.
"Come and see us again, Gilbert, you've a day in Conventford," Mr. Raymond said, as he hands with the surgeon.
George thanked him for his invitation, but he away from the house in spirit, notwithstanding. How he had been that walk on Mr. Raymond's lawn; how little he had said to Isabel, or she to him! How the had died away into every now and then, only to be by some question, some to nothing,—the of despair!
Mr. Gilbert to an near the market-place, where his father had been to take his dinner he to Conventford. George gave Brown Molly into the ostler's custody, and then walked away to the pavement, where the country people were each other in of shop-windows and open stalls; the market-place, where the voices of the were loud and shrill, where the of quack-medicine out upon the air. He walked through the crowd, and away into a narrow leading to an old square, where the great church of Conventford a waste of tombstones, and where the that played a when they the hour were up in the old steeple. The man into the churchyard, which was on a market-day, and walked about among the tombs, away the time—for the of Brown Molly, who and she set out on the return journey—and of Isabel Sleaford.
He had only her twice, and yet already her image had itself with a upon his mind, and was planted there—an picture, again to be out.
That at Camberwell had been the one of this man's life; Isabel Sleaford the one who had come across his pathway. There were girls, and girls, in Graybridge: but then he had them all his life. Isabel came to him in her beauty, and all the sentimentality—without which is hideous—kindled and into life at the magic spell of her presence. The Venus a full-blown from the sea, and man the his enslaver. Who would for a Venus he had rocked, he had watched, the of had the of familiarity?
It was when George Gilbert to the and his of drugs. He would not stop to at the White Lion, but paid his for Brown Molly's accommodation, and took a of at the he into the saddle. He through the avenue, the aisle, the temple, by the great Nature. He through the long avenue, until the lights at Waverly on him the of the trees.
Isabel Sleaford's new life was a very one. There was no to be fetched, no to the Walworth Road. Everything was and and in Mr. Raymond's household. There was a middle-aged who supreme, and an under her sway. Isabel and her had two rooms over the drawing-room, and took their together, and the of one another's all day long. The children were stupid, but they were very good. They too had the of poverty, the butter-fetching, the blank days in which there was no of dinner, the of cold meat and cups of tea. They told Isabel their of an evening; how had when the sheriff's officer came in, and said he was very sorry for her, but must take an inventory, and wouldn't papa's picture or the that had been grandmamma's. Miss Sleaford put her to the wheel very honestly, and through Pinnock's of modern and history with her patient pupils. She let them off with a very of the Heptarchy and the Normans, and the early Plantagenet monarchs; but she gave them of Anne Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots,—fair Princess Mary, Queen of France, and wife of Thomas Brandon,—Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday.
The children only said "Lor'!" when they of Mademoiselle Corday's adventure; but they were very much in the of the of the House of York, and themselves by a of the with the on the school-room sofa.
It was not to be that Mr. Charles Raymond, who had all the of Conventford to his attention, give much time or trouble to the two or the nursery-governess. He was satisfied with Miss Sleaford's head, and was to his to her care.
"If they were children, I should be of her ideality," he said; "but they're too to be by any of that kind. She's got a very region—not equal to that doctor at Graybridge, certainly—and she'll do her to the little ones very well, I say."
So no one with Isabel or her pupils. The education of association, which would have been to her, was as much wanting at Conventford as it had been at Camberwell. She alone with her books and the which were of them, and waited for the prince, the Ernest Maltravers, the Henry Esmond, the Steerforth—it was Steerforth's proud image, and not simple-hearted David's shadow, which in the girl's mind when she the book. She was and sentimental, and it was not the good people upon her itself. To be and proud and miserable, was to an to Miss Sleaford's worship. She to at the of a Byron, and and discontented, his white to the midnight blast, and against the and of mankind. She to be the of some creature, who should ill-treat and neglect her. I think she would have an Bill Sykes, and would have been to die under his hand, only in the of some Gothic castle, by moonlight, with the Alps her eyes, of in Nancy's garret. And then the Count Guilliaume de Syques would be sorry, and put up a on the pathway, to the memory of—, ÂNÁTKH; and he would be some at the of that memorial, with a long black over his king-like form, and an blood-vessel broken.
There is no so foolish, there is no childish, that did not a in Isabel Sleaford's mind the long in which she sat alone in her school-room, the in the dusk, and the in the meadows, while lights to in the of Conventford. Sometimes, when her were fast asleep in their white-curtained beds, Izzie down, and out into the garden to walk up and in the moonlight; the moonlight in which Juliet had looked more than the light of day to Romeo's eyes; in which Hamlet had his father's face. She walked up and in the moonlight, and of all her dreams; and when her life was going to begin. She was old; yes—she of it with a of horror—she was nearly eighteen! Juliet was in the of the Capulets this age, and Beatrix had her life, and Florence Dombey was married and settled, and the all over.
A over this girl as she that her life was to be only a of existence, after all; a blank level, along which she was to to a grave. She was so to be something. Oh, why was not there a revolution, that she might take a knife in her hand and go to the in his lodging, and then die; so that people might talk of her, and her name when she was dead?
I think Isabel Sleaford was just in that of mind in which a respectable, and otherwise harmless, person a at some sovereign, in a of for distinction. Miss Sleaford wanted to be famous. She wanted the of her life to begin, and the hero to appear.
Vague, and grand, and shadowy, there her the image of the prince; but, oh, how slow he was to come! Would he come? Were there any in the world? Were there any of those Beings manners and her books to her, but she had seen? The Sleeping Beauty in the a century the hero came to her. Beauty must wait, and wait patiently, for the of her fate. But Isabel she had waited so long, and as yet there was not the of the prince's visible on the horizon.
There were why Isabel Sleaford should away the memory of her past life, and herself with of a existence. A little might have been good for her, as a against the of her nature; but in Mr. Raymond's house she had to over her books, in which she was to be the heroine, and the hero—?
The hero was the chameleon, as he took his colour from the last book Miss Sleaford had been reading. Sometimes he was Ernest Maltravers, the aristocrat, with and hair. Sometimes he was Eugene Aram, dark, gloomy, and intellectual, with that little of Mr. Clarke's upon his mind. At another time he was Steerforth, selfish and and elegant, Sometimes, when the were asleep. Miss Sleaford let her long black the little looking-glass, and to herself in a whisper. She saw her face, in the glass, her arms, her great black eyes, and she herself a terror-stricken pit. Sometimes she of Mr. Raymond, and going up to London with a five-pound note in her pocket, and out at one of the theatres as a actress. She would go to the manager, and tell him that she wanted to act. There might be a little at first, perhaps, and he would be to be of her powers; but then she would take off her bonnet, and let her hair, and would the long through her thin white fingers—so; she stopped to look at herself in the as she did it,—and would cry, "I am not mad; this I tear is mine!" and the thing would be done. The manager would exclaim, "Indeed, my dear lady, I was not prepared for such acting as this. Excuse my emotion; but really, since the days of Miss O'Neil, I don't to have anything to equal your of that speech. Come to-morrow and play Constance. You don't want a rehearsal?—no, of not; you know every of the part. I shall take the of you fifty a night to with, and I shall place one of my at your disposal." Isabel had read a good many in which essay their powers, but she had read of a dramatically-disposed who had not a full-blown Mrs. Siddons without so much as the of a rehearsal.
Sometimes Miss Sleaford that her Destiny—she to the idea that she had a destiny—designed her to be a poet, an L.E.L.; oh, above all she would have to be L.E.L.; and in the evening, when she had looked over the children's copy-books, and a new of B, in order to a of into the next day's studies, she the nearer to her, and herself, and her pen into the ink, and to some upon the of her life, or some of the unknown prince. She either the or the invocation, for there was some that her to a lock; but she a great many verses, and of paper with sonnets, in which "stars" and "streamlets," "dreams" and "fountains," with a which was to originality or of style.
The child looked right and left for some on the blank sea of life, and nothing but of verdure, that her here and there at the wild will of all the of heaven. Behind her there was a past that she not look upon or remember; her the unknown future, in shadow, by of its obscurity. She was to push onward, to the veil, to tear the curtain, to the of the temple.
Late in the night, when the lights of Conventford had died out under the sky, the girl awake, sometimes looking up at those stars, and of the future; but once, in any or reverie, in any out of the she loved, did the image of the Graybridge a place.
George Gilbert of her, and about her, as he Brown Molly in the Midlandshire lanes, where the hedge-rows were budding, and the into blossom. He of her by day and by night, and was angry with himself for so thinking; and then to when he could, with any of grace, present himself once more Mr. Raymond's Gothic at Conventford.
