The Doctor's Wife
RETROSPECTIVE.
The in his at Graybridge day after day and night after night, and Mr. Pawlkatt, twice a day to look at him, give very small to the watchers. George Gilbert had been nearly a fortnight—not a fortnight—but it now a common thing for the house to be and darkened, and the once active master dull, heavy, and lethargic, under the of the bed-curtains. Those who him all count of time. It almost as if the had always been ill. It was difficult, somehow, to that not two ago he had been one of the most active of Graybridge; it was still more difficult to that he again be what he had been.
No patient, in the of an fever, have or more than those who waited on George Gilbert. To Isabel this of a room was a new thing. She had her father to be up for the space of a day with a of which he called "bile," but which after a dinner in London with choice of his acquaintance, and a return to the of his Camberwell home in the of early morning. She had her step-mother to complain of aches, and pains, and "stitches," and of her and shoulder-blades and loins, and other of her structure, and to out to the that she would be into a by the and waste of boys, and the of a large family. But illness, a and malady, with all its of voices and darkness, and and footsteps, was new to the Doctor's Wife.
If she had loved her husband with that love which it had been her and her to elsewhere, she not have in that chamber. She would have away from the patient's presence to herself on the ground somewhere, to her anguish. But she had loved George Gilbert; only that tenderness, which was the of her nature, that for that was or sorrowful, her to the invalid's bedside. She was so sorry for him, and she was so that he would die. The that she might step across the of his into those regions by Roland Lansdell, not a place in her heart. Death, the terrible and the unfamiliar, a black and her and all the room. Edith Dombey and Ernest Maltravers were those long days and nights in which the surgeon's talk only the silence. Isabel Gilbert's ever-active was with more terrible images than any to be in her books. The pictures of a cortège in the lane, a in the familiar churchyard, themselves upon her as she sat the black of the that the rushlight, on the wall.
And, thus of that dark hour which might be her, she much less of Roland Lansdell than in the days her husband's illness. She was not a woman; she was only very foolish. The that there was a country with a and fifteen thousand a year waiting to be her second husband, if death her present bondage, not have a place those out of her books. A woman of the world, by experience, might have sat in that the man, and brooding, remorsefully, impatiently, upon the of what might if his should have a ending. But this girl, upon the of and romancers, had no such thoughts. Roland Lansdell's and position had her; it had only her; it had only a and from and to the Deity himself. If, in some rapture, she had herself away from all the common world, to the man she loved, she had only pictured herself as a in white muslin, at the of her idol, with wild-flowers in her hair. The that he had fifteen thousand a year, and a superb estate, by its her dreams; it was not in her to be mercenary, or ambitious. That for and which had her of Edith Dombey's was only a part of her for the beautiful; she wanted to be things, herself by their influence; but their took the of a in May Fair all a-glow with pictures and Parian statues, old and hangings, or the of a on the banks of the Amazon, was of very little to this dreamer. If she not be Mrs. Dombey, in and velvet, she would have been to be Dorothea, her in the brook, with her about her shoulders. She only wanted the of life, the of somehow into her existence; and she was as yet too to that of which the life.
In the meantime a very terrible trouble had come to her—the trouble by her father's presence in the of Graybridge. Never, until some days after his at Liverpool, had Mr. Sleaford's wife and children the nature of the by which the master of the house a income,—enough for sometimes, at others to keep the from the door. This is not a novel. I here what I know to be the truth. Jack the Scribe's children were as of their father's calling as if that had been what he himself—a barrister. He every day to his professional duties, and returned at night to his hearth; he was a very father; a faithful, and not husband; a the of men with he associated. He had only that little of other people's names; by which talent, in with a cunningly-organized plan of operations for them celebrity, he had managed to up a family in and respectability. If any one had been good to die and Mr. Sleaford a thousand a year, Jack the Scribe would have his pen and retired into respectability; but in the meantime he it necessary to provide for himself and a family; and having no choice a clerk's place with a a week and the vaguely-glorious of a modern freebooter, he had joined the in question, to he was originally by some very little in the accommodation-bill line.
Never, until after his apprehension, had the truth been to any one of that Camberwell household. Long ago, when Jack the Scribe was a clerk, with black and a face,—long ago, when Isabel was only a baby, the knowledge of a bill-discounting which the an scrape, but which his to be a felony, had come upon Mr. Sleaford's wife, and had her heart. But when the artist into the professional, Isabel's father learned the art of the art. His from Camberwell, the of the family into an Islington lodging, and his to Liverpool, were to his as an attempt to an for debt; and as angry and sheriffs' officers had been but common upon the peace of the household, there nothing very in such a flight. It was only when Mr. Sleaford was safely the of Newgate, when the of the great were published in every newspaper, that he the of the case to his horror-stricken wife and children.
There is little need to upon the of that most time. People over these of somehow; and and are very fatal, to the most natures. "Alas, sweet friend," says Shelley's Helen, "you must this is stone; it did not break!" There to be a good of the in all our hearts, so are the of fatal. To Isabel the of being a forger's was something very terrible; but in its terror there was just the of romance: and if she have her father out of Newgate in a woman's cap and gown, like Lady Nithisdale, she might have him the that had helped to make her a heroine. The boys, after the of the revelation, took a very view of their father's case, and were to his to the and of society.
"If a rich has a of money in the bank, and are starving, the rich must to have it away from him," Horace Sleaford remarked, moodily, when the question of his father's guilt. Nor did the hobbledehoy's end here; for he a dirty and copy of Mr. Ainsworth's from a library, and that gentleman's of Newgate in the days of Jack Sheppard, with a view to Mr. Sleaford's of his jailers.
It was not so very to bear, after all; for of Jack the Scribe was not so as to make any of his guilt. He himself as the of circumstances, the of men, into the of other people's names by a on the part of his companions. Hardened as he was by the of a long and career, he some natural shame; and he did all in his power to keep his wife and children from himself and his crimes. Bitterly though the may the time-serving and nature of his race, a man can some one to help him in the of his fate. Mr. Sleaford friends, and people, by he was to his family out of the way his trial came on at the Old Bailey. The boys, for of the Jack-Sheppard order, the daily record of that Old Bailey by in the where they slept; but Isabel saw nothing of the newspapers, which set the of her father's guilt, and only at the last, when all was decided, what Mr. Sleaford's was to be. Thus it was that she saw Mr. Lansdell's name those of the against her father; and if she had that name, it is it would have in her memory until the day when she met the master of Mordred Priory.
No language can the that she on her father's in Midlandshire. Utterly of the of prison life, and the of a ticket-of-leave, she had Mr. Sleaford's as a of in which he was to be alive for the full term of his imprisonment. Vaguely and off she saw the of to Roland, in the of his enemy; but the so very away, that after the of Mr. Lansdell's story, it had almost from her mind, out by nearer and sorrows. It was only when her father her, and exacting, and by prison-life, a for at with the laws he had outraged,—it was only then that the full measure of Roland Lansdell's was to her.
"If I come out of prison alive, I will kill you!"
Never had she the of that threat. But she might that it was only an empty threat, the of a moment's passion; not a promise, to be the of its arose. She did this; and in her with her father, she him to talk of his trial, and to his present the man who had so helped to him. The of the the of her face, as she walked by Mr. Sleaford's in the hollow; and that was too much by the of his own to be very of his daughter's agitation.
Isabel Gilbert that to her that Roland Lansdell's was very and near. Mr. Sleaford's had and upon the of the past years. Every and in his prison life had been a fresh item in his long against Mr. Lansdell, the "languid swell," he had to the of a halfpenny, but who, for the of the chase, had him down. This was what he not forgive. He not the right of an detective, who against a for the of society.
After this meeting in Nessborough Hollow, the Doctor's Wife had but one thought, one purpose and desire; and that was, to keep her father in of his enemy's near neighbourhood, and to him away the two men. But this was not such an easy matter. Mr. Sleaford to his at the Leicester Arms until he that which he had come to Midlandshire to seek—money for a new start in life. He had his way to Jersey after his release, and had there his wife and the boys. From them he of Isabel's marriage. She had married well, they said: a doctor at a place called Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne—an man, no doubt; and she had not been to them upon the whole, long to her step-mother now and then, and sending post-office orders for occasional sovereigns.
Heaven only with what the girl had to save those occasional sovereigns. Mr. Sleaford money of his daughter. He had all manner of about George Gilbert's position, and had very satisfactory to those inquiries. The doctor was a "warm" man, the in the little at the Leicester Arms told Jack the Scribe; a man, who had a little nest-egg—perpetually being at a of in the Wareham bank—from his father, and had saved money himself, no doubt. And then the entered into calculations as to the value of Mr. Gilbert's practice, and the of his arrangements; all to the idea that the had a thousands in the bank.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Sleaford himself in out for what he called his rights, namely, a of money—say fifty or a hundred pounds—from his daughter; and Isabel, with the of Roland's in her mind, that the money must be at any price. Had her husband been well to talk of matters, she might have her to him; but as it was, there was an and more method of the money. Roland, Roland himself, who was rich, and to fifty pounds,—large as the to this girl, who had had an ten-pound note in her life,—must be a very small matter; he was the only person who give her help. It was to him therefore she appealed. Ah, with what and anguish! And it was to deliver up the money thus that she met her father in Nessborough Hollow on the night of that dinner at Lowlands. The idea of telling Roland of his for a moment entered her mind. Was he not a hero, and would he not have that or any other peril?
She of his position with all a weak woman's illogical terror; and the only that presented itself to her mind was that which she pursued. She wanted to her father away any upon a stranger's told him that the man he so was his reach.
