Man and Wife Part 63

I closed my ears to the profane violence of her language. I set the necessary example, as an English gentlewoman at the head of her household. It was only when I distinctly heard the name of a person, never to be mentioned again in my family circle, issue (if I may use the expression) from Blanche's lips that I began to be really alarmed. I said to my maid: 'Hopkins, this is not Hysteria. This is a possession of the devil. Fetch the chloroform.'"

Chloroform, applied in the capacity of an exorcism, was entirely new to Sir Patrick. He preserved his gravity with considerable difficulty. Lady Lundie went on:

"Hopkins is an excellent person--but Hopkins has a tongue. She met our distinguished medical guest in the corridor, and told him. He was so good as to come to the door. I was shocked to trouble him to act in his professional capacity while he was a visitor, an honored visitor, in my house. Besides, I considered it more a case for a clergyman than for a medical man. However, there was no help for it after Hopkins's tongue.

I requested our eminent friend to favor us with--I think the exact scientific term is--a Prognosis. He took the purely material view which was only to be expected from a person in his profession. He prognosed--_am_ I right? Did he prognose? or did he diagnose? A habit of speaking correctly is _so_ important, Sir Patrick! and I should be _so_ grieved to mislead you!"

"Never mind, Lady Lundie! I have heard the medical report. Don't trouble yourself to repeat it."

"Don't trouble myself to repeat it?" echoed Lady Lundie--with her dignity up in arms at the bare prospect of finding her remarks abridged.

"Ah, Sir Patrick! that little const.i.tutional impatience of yours!--Oh, dear me! how often you must have given way to it, and how often you must have regretted it, in your time!"

"My dear lady! if you wish to repeat the report, why not say so, in plain words? Don't let me hurry you. Let us have the prognosis, by all means."

Lady Lundie shook her head compa.s.sionately, and smiled with angelic sadness. "Our little besetting sins!" she said. "What slaves we are to our little besetting sins! Take a turn in the room--do!"

Any ordinary man would have lost his temper. But the law (as Sir Patrick had told his niece) has a special temper of its own. Without exhibiting the smallest irritation, Sir Patrick dextrously applied his sister-in-law's blister to his sister-in-law herself.

"What an eye you have!" he said. "I was impatient. I _am_ impatient. I am dying to know what Blanche said to you when she got better?"

The British Matron froze up into a matron of stone on the spot.

"Nothing!" answered her ladys.h.i.+p, with a vicious snap of her teeth, as if she had tried to bite the word before it escaped her.

"Nothing!" exclaimed Sir Patrick.

"Nothing," repeated Lady Lundie, with her most formidable emphasis of look and tone. "I applied all the remedies with my own hands; I cut her laces with my own scissors, I completely wetted her head through with cold water; I remained with her until she was quite exhausted--I took her in my arms, and folded her to my bosom; I sent every body out of the room; I said, 'Dear child, confide in me.' And how were my advances--my motherly advances--met? I have already told you. By heartless secrecy.

By undutiful silence."

Sir Patrick pressed the blister a little closer to the skin. "She was probably afraid to speak," he said.

"Afraid? Oh!" cried Lady Lundie, distrusting the evidence of her own senses. "You can't have said that? I have evidently misapprehended you.

You didn't really say, afraid?"

"I said she was probably afraid--"

"Stop! I can't be told to my face that I have failed to do my duty by Blanche. No, Sir Patrick! I can bear a great deal; but I can't bear that. After having been more than a mother to your dear brother's child; after having been an elder sister to Blanche; after having toiled--I say _toiled,_ Sir Patrick!--to cultivate her intelligence (with the sweet lines of the poet ever present to my memory: 'Delightful task to rear the tender mind, and teach the young idea how to shoot!'); after having done all I have done--a place in the carriage only yesterday, and a visit to the most interesting relic of feudal times in Perths.h.i.+re--after having sacrificed all I have sacrificed, to be told that I have behaved in such a manner to Blanche as to frighten her when I ask her to confide in me, is a little too cruel. I have a sensitive--an unduly sensitive nature, dear Sir Patrick. Forgive me for wincing when I am wounded.

Forgive me for feeling it when the wound is dealt me by a person whom I revere."

Her ladys.h.i.+p put her handkerchief to her eyes. Any other man would have taken off the blister. Sir Patrick pressed it harder than ever.

"You quite mistake me," he replied. "I meant that Blanche was afraid to tell you the true cause of her illness. The true cause is anxiety about Miss Silvester."

Lady Lundie emitted another scream--a loud scream this time--and closed her eyes in horror.

"I can run out of the house," cried her ladys.h.i.+p, wildly. "I can fly to the uttermost corners of the earth; but I can _not_ hear that person's name mentioned! No, Sir Patrick! not in my presence! not in my room!

not while I am mistress at Windygates House!"

"I am sorry to say any thing that is disagreeable to you, Lady Lundie.

But the nature of my errand here obliges me to touch--as lightly as possible--on something which has happened in your house without your knowledge."

Lady Lundie suddenly opened her eyes, and became the picture of attention. A casual observer might have supposed her ladys.h.i.+p to be not wholly inaccessible to the vulgar emotion of curiosity.

"A visitor came to Windygates yesterday, while we were all at lunch,"

proceeded Sir Patrick. "She--"

Lady Lundie seized the scarlet memorandum-book, and stopped her brother-in-law, before he could get any further. Her ladys.h.i.+p's next words escaped her lips spasmodically, like words let at intervals out of a trap.

"I undertake--as a woman accustomed to self-restraint, Sir Patrick--I undertake to control myself, on one condition. I won't have the name mentioned. I won't have the s.e.x mentioned. Say, 'The Person,' if you please. 'The Person,'" continued Lady Lundie, opening her memorandum-book and taking up her pen, "committed an audacious invasion of my premises yesterday?"

Sir Patrick bowed. Her ladys.h.i.+p made a note--a fiercely-penned note that scratched the paper viciously--and then proceeded to examine her brother-in-law, in the capacity of witness.

"What part of my house did 'The Person' invade? Be very careful, Sir Patrick! I propose to place myself under the protection of a justice of the peace; and this is a memorandum of my statement. The library--did I understand you to say? Just so--the library."

"Add," said Sir Patrick, with another pressure on the blister, "that The Person had an interview with Blanche in the library."

Lady Lundie's pen suddenly stuck in the paper, and scattered a little shower of ink-drops all round it. "The library," repeated her ladys.h.i.+p, in a voice suggestive of approaching suffocation. "I undertake to control myself, Sir Patrick! Any thing missing from the library?"

"Nothing missing, Lady Lundie, but The Person herself. She--"

"No, Sir Patrick! I won't have it! In the name of my own s.e.x, I won't have it!"

"Pray pardon me--I forgot that 'she' was a prohibited p.r.o.noun on the present occasion. The Person has written a farewell letter to Blanche, and has gone n.o.body knows where. The distress produced by these events is alone answerable for what has happened to Blanche this morning. If you bear that in mind--and if you remember what your own opinion is of Miss Silvester--you will understand why Blanche hesitated to admit you into her confidence."

There he waited for a reply. Lady Lundie was too deeply absorbed in completing her memorandum to be conscious of his presence in the room.

"'Carriage to be at the door at two-thirty,'" said Lady Lundie, repeating the final words of the memorandum while she wrote them.

"'Inquire for the nearest justice of the peace, and place the privacy of Windygates under the protection of the law.'--I beg your pardon!"

exclaimed her ladys.h.i.+p, becoming conscious again of Sir Patrick's presence. "Have I missed any thing particularly painful? Pray mention it if I have!"

"You have missed nothing of the slightest importance," returned Sir Patrick. "I have placed you in possession of facts which you had a right to know; and we have now only to return to our medical friend's report on Blanche's health. You were about to favor me, I think, with the Prognosis?"

"Diagnosis!" said her ladys.h.i.+p, spitefully. "I had forgotten at the time--I remember now. Prognosis is entirely wrong."

"I sit corrected, Lady Lundie. Diagnosis."

"You have informed me, Sir Patrick, that you were already acquainted with the Diagnosis. It is quite needless for me to repeat it now."

"I was anxious to correct my own impression, my dear lady, by comparing it with yours."

"You are very good. You are a learned man. I am only a poor ignorant woman. Your impression can not possibly require correcting by mine."

"My impression, Lady Lundie, was that our so friend recommended moral, rather than medical, treatment for Blanche. If we can turn her thoughts from the painful subject on which they are now dwelling, we shall do all that is needful. Those were his own words, as I remember them. Do you confirm me?"

"Can _I_ presume to dispute with you, Sir Patrick? You are a master of refined irony, I know. I am afraid it's all thrown away on poor me."

(The law kept its wonderful temper! The law met the most exasperating of living women with a counter-power of defensive aggravation all its own!)

"I take that as confirming me, Lady Lundie. Thank you. Now, as to the method of carrying out our friend's advice. The method seems plain. All we can do to divert Blanche's mind is to turn Blanche's attention to some other subject of reflection less painful than the subject which occupies her now. Do you agree, so far?"