The Doctor's Wife
"SHE ONLY SAID, 'MY LIFE IS WEARY!'"
When the of that at Graybridge was past and done with, Isabel a of for the mute of and that had gone along with it. The of passed with the of the day and hour. In the her new home looked a little better, her new life a little brighter. Yes, she would do her duty; she would be a good wife to dear George, who was so to her, and loved her with such a devotion.
She to church with him at Graybridge for the time on the after that wet Saturday evening; and all through the she of her new home, and what she would do to make it and pretty. The Rector of Graybridge had one of the texts in St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews for his that morning, and Isabel did not try to him. She let her away to and curtains, and flower-pots and Venetian blinds, and little of ornamentation, which should George's house from its square into a cottage. Oh, if the trees had only differently! if there had been up to the chimneys, and a lawn, and a of laurels, and little pathways, and a seat half-hidden under a willow, of that of and gooseberry-bushes, and of earth in black across the waste!
After church there was an early dinner of some meat, prepared by Mrs. Jeffson. Isabel did not take much notice of what she ate. She was at that early period of when a person of from veal; but she that there were on the surgeon's table,—steel with of the of deer,—and a metal mustard-pot with glass, and willow-pattern plates, and a of home-brewed beer; and that was and vulgar.
After dinner Mrs. Gilbert herself by going over the house with her husband. It was a very house, after all; but it wasn't pretty; it had been by people who were satisfied so long as they had chairs to upon, and to sleep on, and tables and cups and plates for the common purposes of breakfast, dinner, and supper, and who would have the purchase of a chair that was not to be sat upon, or a cup that was designed to be out of, as something and absurd, or even, in an manner, sinful, the waste of money that might be to a use.
"George," said Isabel, gently, when she had all the rooms, "did you think of re-furnishing the house?"
"Re-furnishing it! How do you mean, Izzie?"
"Buying new furniture, I mean, dear. This is all so old-fashioned."
George the his head.
"I like it all the for that, Izzie," he said; "it was my father's, you know, and his father's him. I wouldn't a of it for the world. Besides, it's such furniture; they don't make such chairs and tables nowadays."
"No," Izzie with a sigh; "I'm very they don't."
Then she her hands upon his arm, and looked up at him with her opened to their extent, and with a look of rapture.
"Oh, George," she cried, "there was an in one of the shops at Conventford with seats for three people, and little for people to put their cups and upon, and a place in the middle for FLOWERS! And I asked the price of it,—I often ask the price of things, for it's almost like them, you know,—and it was only eleven ten, and I say they'd take less; and oh, George, if you'd make the best into a drawing-room, and have that in the centre, and with rose-colour, and a white paper on the walls, and Venetian outside—"
George put his hand upon the mouth from which the came so rapidly.
"Why, Izzie," he said, "you'd me the year was out. All that would make a in a hundred pounds. No, no, dear; the best was good for my father and mother, and it ought to be good for you and me. By-and-by, when my extends, Izzie, as I've every to it will, we'll talk about a new Kidderminster carpet,—a ground with a spot, or something of that kind,—but until then—"
Isabel away from him with a of disgust.
"What do I about new carpets?" she said; "I wanted it all to look pretty."
Yes; she wanted it to look pretty; she wanted to some into her life—something which, in a degree, should be to the she read of in her books. Everything that was gave her a of happiness; that was gave her a of pain; and she had not yet learned that life was meant to be all happiness, and that the must the upper light out of a region of pain and and confusion, as the plant its way to the from of earth. She wanted to be happy, and herself in her own way. She was not to wait till her of came to her; and she the power to and for a of right to and splendour.
To say that George Gilbert did not his wife is to say very little. Nobody, Sigismund Smith, had yet Isabel. She did not herself than other girls of her age; sometimes she herself worse; for she wanted to say so much, and a would every now and then out of that of and which her brain. In Miss Sleaford's own home people had been a great too much with the ordinary of life to trouble themselves about a lady's reveries. Mrs. Sleaford had that she had said all that was to be said about Isabel when she had her as a lazy, selfish thing, who would have sat on the and read if the house had been blazing, and all her family in the flames. The boys had looked upon their half-sister with all that mixture of and with which all boys are to any fellow-creature who is so weak-minded as to be a girl.
Mr. Sleaford had been very of his only daughter; but he had loved her she was pretty, and of those dark like he had in the of that broken-hearted wife so early to him.
Nobody had Isabel; and least of all George Gilbert the woman he had for his wife. He loved her and her, and he was that she should be happy; but then he wanted her to be happy according to his ideas of happiness, and not her own. He wanted her to be with little tea-parties, at which the Misses Pawlkatt, and the Misses Burdock, and Mrs. Henry Palmer, wife of Mr. Henry Palmer junior, solicitor, of the patterns in crochet, and the last popular of some Evangelical curate. Isabel did not take any in these things, and not make herself happy with these people. Unluckily she allowed this to be seen; and, after a tea-parties, the Graybridge away from her, only calling now and then, out of respect for George, who was on account of his most selection of a wife.
So Isabel was left to herself, and little by little into very much the same of life as that which she had at Camberwell.
She had up all of the house which was now her home. After that about the ottoman, there had been many other in which Isabel had for smaller and less improvements, only to be by that hard common with which Mr. George Gilbert was wont—on principle—to his wife's enthusiasm. He had married this girl she was other women; and now that she was his own property, he set himself to work to her into the most ordinary of every-day womanhood, by means of that flat-iron called common sense.
Of he succeeded to admiration. Isabel all of making her new home pretty, or George Gilbert into a Walter Gay. She had a mistake, and she the of her mistake; and upon the life she had so long in her father's house.
The surgeon's him all day long, and Isabel was left to herself. She had none of the common of a matron. She had no to scold, no to dust, no or or or to for her husband's dinner. Mrs. Jeffson did all that of work, and would have any from the "slip of a girl" Mr. Gilbert had for his wife. Isabel did as she liked; and this meant reading all day long, or as long as she had a to read, and of a nature on half-sheets of paper.
When the came she out—alone; for her husband was away among his patients, and had no time to her. She for long in that Elizabethan Midlandshire, and of the life that was to be hers. She alone in the country where the were budding; and sat alone, with her book on her lap, among the and in the of a meadow, where the a natural above her head. Stray the near Graybridge often the doctor's wife under a big green parasol, with a little of wild-flowers on the her, and with an open book upon her knees. Sometimes she as as Thurston's Crag, the Midlandshire seat of Lord Thurston; a dear old place, an of mediæval a sea of green pasture-land, where, under the very of a mansion, there was a and a miller's that was difficult to in out of a picture. There was a across that of waterfalls, and a oak, all the of the water; and it was on a bench under this dear old tree that Isabel loved best to sit.
The Graybridge people were not slow to upon Mrs. Gilbert's habits, and that a person who so much of her time in the of of be a model wife. Before George had been married three months, the ladies who had been familiar with him in his had to him, and had already out for him such a career of as to the of man.
Mrs. Gilbert was not pretty. The Graybridge ladies settled that question at the very tea-party from which George and his wife were absent. She was not pretty—when you looked into her. That was the point upon which the great stress. At a distance, certainly, Mrs. Gilbert might look showy. The lady who upon the "showy" was very much by her friends. At a Isabel might be called showy; always provided you like that are so large as only by a to from being goggles, and that are so red as to be of scarlet-fever. But look into Mrs. Gilbert, and this of vanished, and you only saw a person, with and black hair—so and common in texture, that its length and thickness—of which Isabel was no proud—were very little to of.
But while the Graybridge ladies his wife and for him all manner of sufferings, George Gilbert, to say, was very happy. He had married the woman he loved, and no that he had loved or married entered his mind. When he came home from a long day's work, he a waiting to him—a and creature, who put her arms around his and him, and at him. It was not in his nature to see that the little embrace, and the kiss, and the smile, were that came of themselves. He took his dinner, or his weak tea, or his supper, as the case might be, and his long across the familiar hearth-rug, and talked to his wife, and was happy. If she had an open book her plate, and if her to the page every now and then while he was talking to her, she had often told him that she and read at the same time; and no she do so. What more than sweet and looks the most husband demand? And George Gilbert had of these; for Isabel was very to him, he at her and novel-reading, or and as her step-mother had done. She was of him, as she would have been of a big brother, who let her have a good of her own way; and so long as he left her by his common sense, she was happy, and satisfied with her life. Yes; she was satisfied with her life, which was the same every day, and with the old town, where no came. She was satisfied as an opium-eater is satisfied with the common every-day world; which is only the that together all manner of and ever-changing pictures. She was with a life in which she had to of a different existence.
Oh, how she of that other and life! that life in which there was passion, and poetry, and beauty, and rapture, and despair! Here among these meadows, and waters, and hedgerows, life was a long sleep: and one might as well be a brown-eyed cow, from week's end to week's end in the same pastures, as a woman with an soul.
Mrs. Gilbert of London—that West-End, May-Fair London, which has no in common with all the great around and about it. She of that of holies, that of life, in which all the are and all the men are wicked, in which is a of and dinner-parties and flowers and despair. She of that life, and pictured it, and with a of its and brightness, as she sat by the waterfall, and the wheel of the mill, and the of the weeds. She saw herself the light and music of that other world; queen of a boudoir, where of upon of velvet-pile; where, a of and colour, she might sit, among the of a low chair, and (she always herself contemptuous) to the of a prince. And then the Row! She saw herself in the Row sometimes, upon an Arab—a black Arab—that would away with her at the most time in the afternoon, and all but kill her; and then she would him up as no woman in an Arab before, and would slowly two ranks of half-scared, half-admiring faces, with her over her and her on her cheeks. And then the prince, by an of treatment, would ill, and be at the point of death; and one night, when she was at a ball, with of cloud-like and diamonds in her hair, he would send for her—that wicked, handsome, would send his to her to his deathbed, and she would see him there in the lamplight, and repentant, and and delightful; and as she on her in all the of her and diamonds, he would a blood-vessel and die! And then she would go to the ball, and would be the and most in all that of and beauty. Only the next morning, when her came to her, they would her—dead!
Amongst the books which Mrs. Gilbert most often to the bench by the was the which Charles Raymond had looked at in such a in Hurstonleigh Grove—the little thin of "An Alien's Dreams." Mr. Raymond had his nursery-governess a parcel of light soon after her marriage, and this little book of was one of the in the parcel; and as Isabel her Byron and her Shelley by heart, and long from the of either by the hour together, she upon this little green-covered by a writer.
The Alien's like her own fancies, somehow; for they to that other world which she was to see. How familiar the Alien was with that region; and how he spoke of the flowers and diamonds, the and Arab steeds! She read the over and over again in the June weather, in the little common when the afternoons were too for out-door rambles, and up now and then to look at her profile in the over the mantel-piece, and to wonder she was like any of those but hollow-hearted upon the Alien such of abuse.
Who was the Alien? Isabel had asked Mr. Raymond that question, and had been a little by the reply. The Alien was a Midlandshire squire, Mr. Raymond had told her; and the word 'squire' nothing but a broad-shouldered, rosy-faced man, in a and top-boots. Surely no have those half-heartbroken, half-cynical verses, those upon the of woman and in general! Isabel had her own image of the writer—her own poet, who rose in all his glory, and pushed the red-coated country out of her mind when she sat with the "Alien's Dreams" in her lap, or weak of that gentleman's upon the of old and other of waste paper.
Sometimes, when George had his supper, Isabel would do him the of reading one of the most of the Alien's dreams. But when the Alien was most cynical, and the girl's voice with of feeling, her eyes, by to where her husband sat, would watch him his of ale, or a patient's account on the square of his fingers. On one occasion George was to his wife her book upon her and into tears. He no for her weeping, and he sat aghast, at her for some moments he any word of consolation.
"You don't for the poetry, George," she cried, with the of a child. "Oh, why do you let me read to you, if you don't for the poetry?"
"But I do for it, Izzie, dear," Mr. Gilbert murmured, soothingly,—"at least I like to you read, if it you."
Isabel the "Alien" into the of the little parlour, and from her husband as if he had her.
"You don't me," she said; "you don't me."
"No, my dear Isabel," returned Mr. Gilbert, with (for his common itself after the of surprise); "I do not you when you give way to such as this without any visible cause."
He walked over to the of the room, up the little volume, and the leaves; for his were orderly, and the of a book open upon the was to him.
Of George was right, and Isabel was a very capricious, ill-tempered woman when she into a of and her husband his while she was reading to him. But then such little as these make the of people who are from the and of life. Such as these are the Scotch mists, the of existence. The weather doesn't appear so very to those who it from a window; but that of the to the very bone. I have of a lady who was an musician, and who, in the of a evening, played to her husband,—played as some play, out all her upon the keys of the piano, her and purest in one of Beethoven's sonatas.
"That's a very tune," said the husband, complacently.
She was a proud woman, and she closed the piano without a word of or disdain; but she to be old, and she touched the keys again.
