The Doctor's Wife
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!
Mrs. Gilbert spoke very little the drive through the moonlight. In her of that drive—or what that drive might be—she had Roland Lansdell by the carriage-window, and going a miles out of his way in order to his friends to Graybridge.
"If he to be with us, he would have come," Isabel thought, with a about Mr. Lansdell.
It is just possible that Roland might have after the from Graybridge, and it along the country roads, talking as he only in all the world talk, according to Mrs. Gilbert's opinion. It is possible that, being so at a as to what he should do with himself, Mr. Lansdell might have an hour thus, had he not been by his old friend Charles Raymond.
As it was, he home to Mordred Priory, very slowly, as he along; about himself and his destiny.
"If my Gwendoline had been true to me, I should have been an different man," he thought; "I should have been a middle-aged steady-going by this time, with a boy at Eton, and a fair-haired to her by my side. I think I might have been good for something if I had married long ago, when my mother died, and my was to the woman she had for me. Children! A man who has children has some to be good, and to do his duty. But to alone in a world that one has of; with every exhausted, and every threadbare; with a waste of memory behind, a of empty years before;—to be alone in the world, the last of a that once was and generous; the feeble, worn-out of a that once did great deeds, and a name for itself in this world;—that is bitter!"
Mr. Lansdell's upon his to-night, as they had before, since the day when his mother's death and cousin's left him lonely.
"Yes, I shall go again," he presently, "and go over the whole once more—like Marryat's captain landsman, like the Wandering Jew in a Poole-built dress. I shall eat fish at Philippe's again, and more in the Rue Castiglione, and more money at Hombourg, and shoot more on the banks of the Nile, and be up with another in the Holy Land. It will be all the same over again, that it will be a great more this time."
And then Mr. Lansdell to think what his life might have been, if the woman he loved, or the woman for he had a fancy,—he did not admit to himself that his for Isabel Gilbert was more than this,—had been free to his wife. He himself returning from those Continental a twelve-month than he had actually returned. "Ah, me!" he thought, "only one little year earlier, and all would have been different!" He would have gone to Conventford to see his dear old friend Charles Raymond, and there, in the sunny drawing-room, he would have a pale-faced, dark-eyed girl over a child's lesson-book, or while a child on the piano. He that scene,—he see it all, like a cabinet picture; ah, how different, how different would have been then! It would have been no then to be happy in that presence; there would have been no pang, no of self-reproach, with every emotion, with every of joy. And then—and then, some night in the garden, when the were about the city still and in the distance, he would have told her that he loved her; that, after a decade of to all the of earth, he had a pure in the and that she would be his wife. He her blushes, her in the of her joy; and he what his life might have been for afterwards, and by its new purpose, its new delights; by a pure and affection. He all this as it all might have been; and and his an image that his own likeness, and yet was not himself—the image of a good man, happy husband and father, true friend and master, for and that peaceful English landscape; beloved, respected, the centre of a happy circle, the key-stone of a arch,—a necessary link in the of love and life.
"And, of all this, I am a nomad, who has been, and can be, of any use in this world; who no place in life, and will no blank when he dies. When Louis the Well-beloved was for the chase, the were to that to-day his would do nothing. I have been doing nothing all my life, and cannot in a stag-hunt."
Mr. Lansdell his way with many of this kind. But, and in his thoughts, as he had been and in his actions, he of himself at one time as being and in love with Isabel Gilbert, and at another time as being only the of a fancy, which would by a death as as its birth.
"What an I am for my pains!" he said to himself, presently. "In six weeks' time this child's will have no more place in my mind than the of last winter have on this earth, or only in far-away and of memory, like the Alpine peaks, where the by the hand of change. Poor little girl! how she and sometimes when she speaks to me, and how she looks then! If they such an Ingénue at the Français, all Paris would be about her. We are very much in love with each other, I say; but I don't think it's a to six weeks' on either side, not on her certainly, dear child! I have only been the hero of a story-book; and all this has been nothing more than a page out of a set in action. Raymond is very right. I must go away; and she will go to her three-volume novels, and in love with a fair-haired hero, and me."
He as he this. It was that he should be forgotten, and speedily; and yet it is hard to have no place in the universe—not one in a woman's heart. Mr. Lansdell was the Priory gates by this time. The old woman a as she the master of the domain. He in past the little light in the narrow Gothic window, and along the that an perfume on the still night air. Scared ghost-like away into the Mordred oaks; and in the the of a cascade, by the into of silver, with a little great of moss-grown and wet fern.
Mordred Priory, in the moonlight, was not a place upon which a man would turn his back. Long ago Roland Lansdell had of its familiar beauties; but to-night the transformed. He looked at it with a new interest; he of it with a sad regret, that him like a physical pain.
As he had of what his life might have been under other circumstances, he now of what the place might have been. He the old rooms with the of children's voices; he pictured one white-robed on the terrace; he a the path along which he rode; he the of a arm itself in his; he the low of a voice—his wife's voice!—bidding him welcome home.
But it was to be! The watch-dog's bark—or the of watch-dogs—made the night presently, when Mr. Lansdell the porch; but there was no to mark his coming, and be when he came; unless, indeed, it was the of his valet, which had over the of the "Morning Post," and may have faintly, in of that functionary's at the of being from duty.
If it was so, the was to disappointment; for Mr. Lansdell—usually the least of masters--wanted a great done for him to-night.
"You may set to work at once with my portmanteau, Jadis," he said, when he met his in the hall. "I must Mordred to-morrow in time for the seven o'clock from Warncliffe. I want you to pack my things, and for Wilson to be to drive me over. I must here at six. Perhaps, by the bye, you may as well pack one for me to take with me, and you can with the of the on Monday."
"You are going abroad, sir?"
"Yes, I am of Mordred. I shall not stop for the season. You can go up-stairs now and pack the portmanteau. Don't to make all about the carriage; for six precisely. You can go to when you've packing. I've some to write, and shall be late."
The man and departed, to grumble, in an undertone, over Mr. Lansdell's and waistcoats, while Roland into the library to his letters.
The which he had to out to be only one letter, or a dozen upon the same theme, which he up, one after another, almost as soon as they were written. He was not to be so in the of his epistles, but to-night he not be satisfied with what he wrote. He to Mrs. Gilbert; yes, to her! Why should he not to her when he was going away to-morrow morning; when he was going to offer up that which had him, a sacrifice, on the of and honour?
"I am not much good," he said: for his by his self-depreciation. "I set up for being a good man; but I have some of left in me at the worst." He to Isabel, therefore, than to her husband, and he many he what he to the occasion. Did not the tenderness, the regret, the passion, itself in some of those letters, in of his own to be and correct? But the which he last was and to have satisfied the moralist.
"Dear Mrs. Gilbert,—I much that circumstances, which only came to my knowledge after your party left last night, will me to Mordred early to-morrow morning. I am therefore to the which I had from our little dinner to-morrow evening; but pray Smith that the Priory is at his he to come here, and that he is welcome to make it the of half-a-dozen fictions, if he pleases. I the old place will soon look and to satisfy his ideas of the romantic, for it may be some years I again see the Midlandshire and meadows."
("The dear old across the waterfall, the old under which I have such hours," Mr. Lansdell had here in one of the which he destroyed.)
"I you will to Mr. Gilbert my thanks, with the cheque, for the and skill which have him to my cottagers. I shall be very if he will continue to look after them, and I will for the out of any he may to Hodgeson, my steward.
"The library will be always prepared for you you to read and study there, and the of the will be at the service of and Mr. Gilbert.
"With to your husband, and all for Smith's and success,
"I remain, dear Mrs. Gilbert,
"Yery yours,
"ROLAND LANSDELL.
"Mordred Priory, Saturday night."
"It may be some years I again see the Midlandshire and meadows!" This was the of the letter, the letter, which was as and as a schoolboy's to his parents.
"My poor, innocent, tender-hearted darling! will she be sorry when she reads it?" Mr. Lansdell, as he his letter. "Will this be a new to her, a sorrow, like her for Shelley, or fever-stricken Byron? My darling, my darling! if had sent me here a earlier, you and I might have been by in the moonlight, talking of the happy us. Only a year! and there were so many that might have my return. Only one year! and in that little space I my one of happiness."
Mr. Lansdell had done his duty. He had Charles Raymond a promise which he meant to keep; and having done so, he gave his and a which he had allowed them before. He no longer to the from which he had to Mrs. Gilbert. He no longer it his to think of her as a pretty, grown-up child, him for the moment. No; he was going away now, and had no longer need to set any upon his thoughts. He was going away, and was free to to himself that this love which had up so in his was the one of his life, and, under different circumstances, might have been his and redemption.
