Mrs. Dorriman Volume Ii Part 23

Poor Margaret looked up and there indeed she saw that it was raining heavily.

Her heart sank and she paused irresolute.

At that moment the key turned in the lock, and the man came in.

"I have been to the doctor and he is coming directly," he said, and with a feeling of being baffled, though only for the time, poor Margaret turned her weary steps upstairs.

She was over-excited, and cried with the pa.s.sion that comes from weakness, as from despair.

Then she left her child upstairs, and prepared to see the doctor.

Through him she would surely be able to arrange something.

No one, she kept saying to herself, would wish her to stay with a madman, no one could leave a child in his keeping.

And she went to the sitting-room, and when she heard the doctor come she fled swiftly towards him, and took him upstairs to her own room. She would lay everything before him, and he would help her.

And he, looking at her flushed face and great excitement of manner, wondered whether she was going to tell him about some illness of her own; and conscious of a certain prejudice against her, because of her marriage to this man, and a farewell he had witnessed between her and--Sir Albert Gerald.

CHAPTER IX.

Since that first interview Dr. Jones had had with the poor wife his feelings of admiration and pity had changed a good deal.

The explanation of her position lowered her considerably in his eyes.

Perhaps no one sees the utter emptiness of life, and the non-importance of wealth, more than a medical man, who sees how little happiness it brings to any one; how little (standing by itself) it does for poor humanity.

He was disgusted when he saw that there was apparently no excuse for her; and he was shocked when he saw a farewell between her and a young man as he pa.s.sed Mr. Skidd's shop, because here was evidently a lover.

Her face he could not see, but Sir Albert's expression was unmistakable.

Margaret, having no clue to his coldness and evident disapproval, felt speaking difficult, far more difficult than she had thought.

"I want to speak to you," she said, colouring under his searching gaze.

"I want to tell you about my husband. I am very miserable, and I am very much frightened."

"Humph!" said Dr. Jones, "let us leave the misery upon one side, and talk about your fears; what makes you afraid?"

"My husband's violence. He was so very violent yesterday and this morning; I am afraid of his doing me an injury--I am afraid because of my child," and Margaret s.h.i.+vered.

"What made him violent?"

"He cannot bear my going out. He never allows me to go out, I am a prisoner here!"

He remembered having seen her out, and in his heart believed she was deliberately telling him a lie.

"What do you want to go out for?" he asked, roughly. "What do you mean by 'going out'?"

"I want to see my sister oftener."

Another lie he thought. "Why don't you brave him and go?" he said, trying her; "you might leave him altogether."

"Because I am told that if I leave he can keep my child!" said Margaret, pa.s.sionately.

"Of course he can."

"It seems so hard," she said.

"Does it? I do not agree with you; why should a man be deprived of his child any more than a woman?"

"But if a man--is--mad?" whispered poor Margaret.

"Oh, that's where you are, is it! Well, I do not think that word is applicable here. There is temper, and there _was_ drink. You will forgive my saying that, as you married Mr. Drayton, you took him for better or for worse. I do not think his health is good, and his temper is--well, irritable--that is the worst."

"Then you cannot help me!" and poor Margaret, who had hoped much from him, felt cruelly disappointed.

"How can I help you?" he asked, impatiently. "You wish me, _for some reason of your own_, to say that your husband is mad--which I have seen nothing to prove--and I will _not_ say what I do not believe."

"I do not wish you to say it; I wish nothing but what is true and right: but I cannot understand how you, a medical man and experienced, can think Mr. Drayton quite right," pleaded Margaret; "if you could only see him as I have seen him!" and she stopped, afraid of betraying emotion to one so evidently lacking in sympathy.

"Of course, if I saw him with your eyes," began the doctor, coldly, all the more upon his guard because he was conscious that in spite of disapproval, in spite of what he knew and what he had seen, he was beginning to be influenced by her pa.s.sionate appeal to him.

"We need not discuss this matter any longer," said Margaret, rising, and looking very fair and very pale as she stood in the full morning light.

"For some unknown reason--unknown to me--you are not my friend; after all, you do not know me. If I find my life unbearable, I have friends who will help me!"

"Now, Mrs. Drayton, answer me a plain question," and the doctor, rising also, looked at her with a curious expression of mingled distrust and rising interest, "What have you to complain of? Is your husband rough to you. Has he ever done you any injury?"

Poor Margaret!

"He is rough," she said, with hesitation in her voice; "he uses language new to me. But if you can see no strangeness in his manner...." Her voice died away, her hopes had vanished; she had a horrible and undefinable dread--she had seen a wildness in his eyes, which in a less degree she had seen when she had first known him; but our own convictions, unsupported by any facts, are inconclusive to other people--and Dr. Jones, seeing in her a very lovely woman, but one evidently able to deceive, and who did not hesitate to say she had no liberty, when he had seen her alone and out, was steeled against her.

He laid down the law with all the authority of a man who is fully aware of having right on his side.

"Madam, if you have any one tangible grievance--if your husband ever struck you, or ill-treated you in any way--then I should see my way to interfering in your behalf; the law protects you in such a case."

"Yes," Margaret answered, bitterly, "you will interfere, and the law will protect (?) me when I am injured; there is no help for me till the necessity for help has pa.s.sed away."

She bowed and left him--knowing that her words were useless, and went to try and comfort herself, and _try_ and bear her fate without a murmur.

Had she not sinned, and against all her convictions, with her eyes open, and fearing this very thing!

"What a very illogical mind she has," said Dr. Jones, as he stalked downstairs, comfortably satisfied that he had been firm, and that her grace, the pathos of her voice, and her great beauty, had alike been disregarded. Justice, without doubt, was on his side--he thought.

But as he stepped on the last step something made him sensible that there might be a little truth in what she said. Though she had told him a deliberate untruth, all might not be false.

He changed his mind about going home at once, and he went to see Mr.

Drayton instead. He found him very quiet, rather depressed, without a trace of excitement in his manner.