Doctor Greystone. A story, etc. (Third thousand.)

Part II

I. The Inmates of Mile Enil Villa ... 6'2 II. Sir Everett Barston, Bart 77 III. "Mr. Stone" 89 IV. Mr. Stone makes a Friend of tho Keeper . 9(5 V. Barston Hall 105 VI. The Garden Tarty at Mile End Villa . . 11*2 VII. The Spider and the Fly 127 VIII. Dr. Greystone Explains 141 IX. Ruth Answers Dr. Greystone's Question . 154 X. Mrs. Turner makes up her Mind . . . 1G7 XL The Baronet discusses French Tlays . . 182 XII. Dr. Greystone offends past forgiveness, and Vengeance overtakes him .... 194 XIII. Mrs. Maltby as Nemesis .... 213 XIV. "Who Did this Thing ?'•' . . . . 22G TART III. I. Deepening Shadows 240 II. Ruth sees Light in the Darkness . . . 258 III. Carrie's Budget of News .... 2G8 IV. Churton Keeps his Tromisa .... A Pbeface is either an explanation or an exculpation ; an introduction must be a comment or an apology ; an avant propos is not English ; the " Envoi," which has become naturalised in the language, finds its place only at the end of the book ; and a dedication which is impertinent when it commits an illustrious name to tho patronage of an obscure one, has no raison d'etre as a record of mere friendship or family affections.

"Dr. Greystone" cannot conscientiously be ushered in with any of the above literary pass ports, and is therefore delivered unprotected by them to the reader by THE AUTHOE, PAET I.

Chapter I

A PATIENT FINDS THE DOCTOR. It had all taken place in less than forty minutes. When James Greystone, the English surgeon, passed under the porte cochere of No. 6, Eue des Feuillandines, and called out to the house porter in his smoky den that he was going up to Mr. Bertall's on the fifth floor, he was, to all appearances, the most confirmed bachelor in the whole of Paris. Not that he was of an age to renounce matrimony, for he was barely thirty two ; not that he would have been an ineligible suitor, for he was a handsome man and a successful one in his profession ; but because he had made that profession his idol, because at that shrine he had laid down his whole existence, and never even contemplated the possibility of giving his jealous mistress — science — a rival in the shape of woman.

Yet for all that, when Dr. Greystone stepped out again into the wet, shiny, lamp-lit streets of the noisy Quartier des Ecoles he was Grace Bertall's affianced husband, James Greystone was the only son of a widow. His mother had been content to spend the re mainder of her days in the remote Shropshire village to which she had come as a youthful bride. Her husband, a simple country practitioner, was a gentleman in the higher and truer sense of the word, recognised as such by the county families and landed gentry around Cal thorpe, and a welcome guest at their table. Mrs. Greystone, ever calmly satisfied with her lot, had borne her bereavement when it came — all too early in her married life — with brave resignation, and henceforth asked of the future no further solace than the listening from afar to the voice of fame beginning to echo the name of her son.

She belonged to that long race of patient, silent women, wives and mothers, who know of happi ness only the pale joys of abnegation and sacrifice ; unambitious, self-forgetting helpmeets of clever, aspiring men, to whose wants and comforts they minister, receiving little attention and less gratitude, claiming neither, and accepting with seeming cheerfulness the solitude to which they are condemned when excitement, pleasure, or glory call their loved ones away. Mr. Grey stone had been an average husband ; James, •albeit reserved and undemonstrative, was a kind A Patient Finds the Doctor, 11 and dutiful son. None, perhaps, stood in his estimation higher than his gentle, quiet mother, and when he left Calthorpe for school, and later for London, his letters, though irregular and hurried, were warmer and less reticent than his speech.

Mrs. Greystone trusted him implicitly ; her faith in his rectitude, singleness of purpose, and honour was unbounded ; she had never sought to assert her authority or exercise any control over his actions ; instinct more than ex perience taught her that as long as his full confi dence was not withheld, his affection was un impaired. The young man had successfully fought his way to the foremost ranks ; he had, almost without protection, obtained a fair practice in London, and had been offered at no distant period the reversion of the post of house surgeon in one of the great hospitals, a flattering and enviable recognition of his worth. Yet he had renounced the security and advantages of his position in the pursuit of the — to him — most attractive branch of his studies. He was one of the warmest advocates of vivisection ; he maintained that none who called themselves healers of men could success fully wage their battle against the insidious foes of chronic ailment or hereditary taint unless they grappled with the active, living, palpitating form of each.

He argued that victorious disease had spent itg strength on its dead victims — he wanted to meet the enemy in full possession of all its resources, so as to conquer him before he had achieved its fell purpose ; he deemed the sacrifice of a score of breathing dumb animals neither useless nor even cruel if it afforded the man of science an opportunity of snatching secrets which would eventually benefit the human race. Paris, with its wide field and resources, its generous hospitality to the adepts in all arts, sciences, and discoveries, its open-handed en couragement of progress, attracted him irresis tibly. He had been for a long time familiar with the admirable works of Bernard and Robin ; he* had learnt from Laurent and Lemaitre ; he had perused the exhaustive pamphlets on the contro verted subjects ; a gradually increasing corre spondence with the most eminent specialists of France, and a perfect mastery of the language con spired to strengthen a resolve he had formed of spending a couple of years in the French capital in order to prosecute his researches and fortify his convictions.

The home appointment was not actually vacant yet ; Mrs. Greystone offered no demur ; it was not her wont to oppose her son in wish or whim of his, whatever the pain might be to her mother's heart ; so it promptly came to pass that the London patients were handed over to a fellow-surgeon, and Doctor Greystone found himself settled in a small, fairly comfort able lodging in one of the infinitely subdivided A Patient Finds the Doctor. 13 tall houses with which the sixth Arrondissement abounds. The Rue du Cherche Midi is con veniently situated between the Academy of Medicine and the Sorbonne, and for the enthusi astic English student Paris possessed no other objects of interest. He did not care to make new acquaintances, and only sought out his former correspondents, men as earnest as himself, by whom he was promptly adopted as one of the brotherhood.

His days were spent at hospitals, amphitheatres, lectures, and libraries ; his solitary evenings in putting into shape his voluminous notes and extracts. Among the medical students who followed the lectures , or Cours, as they were called, of the world-famed Dr. C , (the old surgeon for whom James Greystone entertained a special reverence), was a young man, with an eager, sharp, intelligent face, the restless expression of which con trasted at times with one of extreme good nature. His name was Laurent Noel, his atten dance irregular, and Greystone had never as yet had the opportunity of exchanging with him any of the ordinary civilities which the promiscuity of the lecture room facilitates. Spite of his habitual absorption, he was interested in the young fellow, perhaps because he was physiologically curious about the contrasting revelations of character betrayed in his countenance.

One evening in early spring, as the Doctor was strolling under the blossoming chestnuts of the Luxembourg Gardens, Laurent Noel, who had crossed his path several times looking at him intently, suddenly stopped before him, raised his cap, and in fairly correct English, but with a strong foreign accent, addressed him — ■ " Thousand excuses, Monsieur Greystone — pardon my indiscretion — one of your compatriots who lives in the Rue des Feuillandines has been taken with a sort of fit — not the first. Mademoiselle his daughter, convinced of his strong desire to be attended by an English doctor, has supplicated me to seek one. In Paris I know only you, Monsieur. My friends," he continued, with marked hesitation after his fluent beginning, " are — well, they are not at their ease — poor even, you understand — and the question of fees " "Don't mention it, pray," said Greystone hurriedly.

" The name ? " "Bertall.' " Bertall ! I know it. A familiar one in my own county. Rich people though, as far as I can remember. Is your friend a Shropshire man ? " " Ah I you ask of me too much. I know nothing of it. But from what you say I should imagine he is not. Monsieur Bertall has lived ih Paris some years — en gar con." A quick side glance gave all the needed emphasis to the last words. The young man continued, " Later on Made moiselle Bertall joined her father. I bet you he knows most Continental towns — and to his cost, Spa, Homburg, Monaco— but, bah," he added with an expressive shrug of his shoulder and the easy philosophy of a Bohemian, " what will you? One must pull the devil by the tail, sometimes." " It may be Tom Bertall after all," said the Doctor almost to himself. Then in a brisk busi ness voice he pursued — " Come, let us hurry, I have an hour to spare," and the two men has tened through the maze of narrow, tortuous streets lying between the stately old Luxembourg slumbering in its abandonment, and the busy centre of intellectual progress and activity.

Chapter II. How Tom Bertall Shifted His Responsibilities

It was Tom Bertall, and yet Laurent Noel had spoken the truth ; he had for years drifted on that troubled stream of European cities which carries on to final destruction the bankrupts, sharpers, gamblers, and swindlers of all nationali ties, and here and there floats amidst its treacher ous shoals semi-genteel poverty and impecunious impotency struggling to retain before the world — or a portion of a certain world — some last shreds of decency and respectability. No heinous offence had as yet had been laid to Bertall's door ; none of those misdemeanours which would have placed him in the grasp of the law and defi nitely rid his family of any anxiety respecting him ; but youthful recklessness had degener ated into doubtful middle-aged shadiness, and by facile degrees he had descended to all but the lowest rungs of the social ladder.

His old Woolwich chums, the fellow officers in the crack regiment he had been advised to leave after some glaring act of folly, the pleasant acquaintances of his earlier wanderings abroad, the few staunch friends who had clung to him through the deep ening shadows, had all been discouraged in turn by the utter hopelessness of his erring ways, and seceded from their allegiance to the irreclaimable scapegrace. Entirely unconscious as he habitually seemed of this ostracism, there were hours now and then when he measured the progress of his downward course and looked up with startled wonder at those higher and purer spheres where his place had been marked by birth, education, intelligence, and physical advantages, and which knew him no more. Tom Bertall had married young and unwisely, as such men always do, and had lost his wife opportunely when it appeared impossible that he could support her any longer.

Careless ne'er do-wells trust to chance with a blind confidence justified by precedent, and shift their responsi bilities with easy insouciance on suppositions eventualities. His confidence was justified. Some one came forward and paid the expenses of the funeral ; some one else took charge charge of the baby daughter, and thus probably saved her life ; later on the child was found in clothes and the rudiments of education in the same haphazard, desultory fashion ; and at one time a tender-hearted, motherly hausfrau allowed the growing girl to remain in her boarding house even after a continuous run of ill luck had driven her gambling father from Baden-Baden in such a hurry that he neglected to pay his debts. Sir Frederick Bertall, the head of the family, uncle and godfather of the child, unwilling for the credit of his name that she should remain a pensioner on the good woman's charity, paid off the score and settled on her a small annuity a year or two before his death.

About this time Tom Bertall again emerged from obscurity. He had been persuaded by some easy-going, foolish, but on the whole comparatively harmless new friends, to pitch his erratic tent in Paris and to invest a rare windfall at cards in the unusual reputability of an apartment very near the sky, secondhand furniture, and a small maid of all work, in preference to the doubtful hospitalities of the garni ox hotel mcuble. Gay, fascinating, unscrupulous, unquestioning Paris suited the elderly nomad ; a chronic inability to discharge outstanding bills held him fast, and he seemed so entirely to have B renounced his roving habits that he suddenly remembered his daughter, her annuity, and his paternal duties, and summoned her to his side. Grace was then twenty, with no beauty of face or form save that of youth and a fair creamy complexion, which seemed to set off the excessive softness and placidity of her appearance.

This was in its turn the index to a nature all pliability and nervelessness ; no vicissitude of fortune affected her serenity, for she had neither the energy that breasts adversity, the pride that rebels at humiliation, or the delicacy that shrinks from help proffered. Her moral sense, if she had ever possessed one, was blunted now, her intellect was undeveloped, her mind untrained, but she had a clinging, superficial, universal lovingness and tenderness which appealed irresis tibly to the other sex, spite the versatility with which it was transferred. Her facile tears were as easily dried as her smiles were won ; her temper was good, which was the more to her credit that her health was bad and that she owed the ivory delicacy of her skin to a latent weakness of the heart, which in early childhood had nearly proved fatal.

Grace Bertall had one strength only, the strength of helplessness and weakness ; it called forth the chivalry of men, while the innate, unconscious feminine instincts of tyranny taught her how best to use her power. Tom Bertall soon found out that this first demonstration of fatherly affection had been a profitable one. From the day of his daughter's reintegration at his hearthstone his lines seem to drop into pleasanter places. Landlords were less sternly exacting on quarter day ; creditors were amenable to persuasion, and retired with small in stalments of a long-standing debt ; tradespeople no longer sent in stale or damaged goods or treated his representations with contemptuous apologies; habitues brought to the dingy parlour of No. G, of the Rue de Feuillandines, fruit, books, theatre cou pons, and, when the girl girl looked more than usually pale and complained of weariness, they contrived for her, out of their scanty means, pleasant outings to Fontainebleau, Versailles, or St. Germain, and bright afternoon excursions to the less distant but equally charming environs of Paris, the suburbs with the picturesque or his torical names Auteuil, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Vin cennes, Enghien.

A dainty little repast under a green arbour, a row on river or lake, an hour at a cafe chantant were among the recreations of the day. Grace was never known to refuse those treats, and would return at night on the arm of one or other of her father's friends, equally grateful to each, equally ready to accept pleasure from another. No anxiety as to opinion, no servile submission to the unwritten code of Mrs. Grundy fettered Tom Bertall or his daughter ; the easy freedom and unconventionality of their Bohemian life ignored rather than it defied criticism. Laurent Noel, living in the same house, had been a frequent visitor at Mr. Bertall's during his bachelor days, and became still more assiduous after Grace's advent. He, like the others, carried on a half playful, half tender flirtation with the young girl.

She probably cared for him a little more than for the others, but at all events she led him to believe that it was a great deal, and felt neither timidity or shyness in so doing. Her evident partiality, conveyed to him by the thousand arts in which women are adepts, touched and flattered the real tenderness under lying the professed scepticism and callousness acquired at some trouble by the young man, who considered it his duty to remain in unison with the tone adopted by his fellow medical students. Had Laurent Noel not been dependent on a somewhat strict father living in a remote Depart ment for his paltry income, unaided as yet by the fruit of his labour, he would at once have made the English girl his wife. Necessity alone sealed his lips, but as the implied if unexpressed intention became more evident even to Grace's somewhat dull perceptions, she allowed the love passages between them to grow warmer and warmer, and for a time at least both the young people were convinced of their mutual attachment.

At this juncture Tom Bertall's splendid consti- ' 21 tution broke down suddenly ; alarming syncopes resembling paralytic seizures warned him that the physical powers on which he had drawn so long and so recklessly were failing him at last, as all his other resources had done before. Bankrupt in all that makes decliniHg years endurable, ruined, disowned, invalided, the voluntary exile from home and country unaccountably conceived an unreason ing longing for the associations he had severed. He turned impatiently from the ill-timed and boisterous companionship of his associates and hangers-on in his sick craving for a familiar English face, a cheery English voice. The name of James Greystone, casually pronounced one day by Laurent Noel, struck him, and awoke a dim recollection of having once met the then rising young doctor during a fleeting visit to England, many years ago, when he was still at intervals a tolerated guest in the old Shropshire family house.

With the querulous persistence of illness he craved for further particulars about the English surgeon, and at last prevailed upon the young man to bring him to his bedside. Doctor Greystone, to whom the whole flavour and atmosphere of the Bertall establishment were constitutionally distasteful, did not, how ever, after the first two or three visits, feel justi fied in refusing his disinterested professional attendance to the stricken man, whose surround ings plainly told a tale of shiftless penury, and on whose drawn and haggard features the stamp of death was already affixed. Tom Bertall clung to his new-found friend with almost senile despair ; he became, as it were, dependent on him for advice, encouragement, and support ; in that strange but frequent return to early habits and feelings which precedes dissolution, the company and presence of the loud, unrefined, out-at-elbow associates of his manhood and age grew utterly distasteful to him.

He instinctively recognised the dignity and worth of the gentlemanly surgeon, and it seemed to restore to him a part of that personal manliness and self-esteem which he had so persistently and recklessly thrown to the four winds of heaven. James Greystone's experience told him besides that the comrades of pleasure and idleness would ere long desert the sick man ; he noted the gradual isolation which was slowly encompassing father and daughter, and might have calculated to an hour the time when the sinking man and helpless girl would stand alone in the deserted lodgings. Laurent Noel alone had remained constant in his visits ; the doctor rarely called without finding him with Grace in the Bertalls' only sitting-room, offering all the consolation in his power, and making earnest inquiries about the invalid's health.

But the young man was suddenly summoned to Calvados by an aged and well-to-do female relative, and dared not, in the interest of his future expectations, disobey her mandate. Common humanity, therefore, made it imperative on the surgeon not to transfer the care of his patient to some colleague who, if less occupied than himself, might still be more exacting on the question of fees, and even less indulgent to the desultory habits of the English menage. One rainy afternoon in late September, when the shortening days and lingering twilights con spired to give him some immunity from brain work before his laborious vigils began, Dr. Grey stone bethought himself with something like remorse that nearly a fortnight had elapsed since he had looked in at the Rue des Feuillandines ; half reluctantly he sacrificed his intended stroll, turned into the narrow street, and began the ascension of the not over clean staircase.

When ho reached the upper floor he found.it unnecessary to pull the faded cord of the bell, as the door leading to the apartment was ajar. He pushed it open and entered the dingy wains cote! parlour combining vestibule and dining room, so common in Paris houses. No light was burning, although night had fallen, so it was some time before he became aware that he was not alone. A woman was sitting at the round centre table, her head lying prone on her outstretched arms. He drew closer, and recognised Grace. He gently touched her shoulder with his hand. She started and looked up ; her face was flushed and ■21 swollen with crying. She had apparently been asleep, for it took her a moment or two to recover herself, then she suddenly rose with a stifled cry and flung herself on Dr. Greystone's breast, with loud sobs.

" Oh, bore you are at last," she cried hysteri cally. " Take me away. Why did you not come before ? I have no one but you, now that he is dead." "Dead/ " "Oh, yes. LastMonday. Did they not tell you?" Inexpressibly shocked, James Greystone, gently disengaging himself, placed the girl in a chair, and standing beside her attempted to elicit the particulars of the catastrophe. He gathered at last from her rambling, incoherent statements that poor, restless Tom Bertall had passed from a fit of eoma to the deeper stillness of death without recovering consciousness. In the grey morning the little maid had found him stiff and cold in his bed. The parish doctor, the hideous " croquc mort," had been summoned by the concierge ; the hard, hasty formalities of French law had been complied with ; the burial had taken place within thirty-six hours ; the seals that were applied to the rickety bureau by the Commissaire de Police removed, the few saleable goods disposed of to defray expenses, and on the morrow Grace Bertall would be on the streets of Paris, homeless, father. less, penniless j ' 25 Once again, at the conclusion of her piteous tale, she attempted to fling herself in Greystone's arms, and broke out in inarticulate despairing mutterings, in which he caught at intervals such words as these : ' ' You are my only hope ! my only salvation ! my good angel, the only one I love on this earth."

Impatient and half irritated by this exaggerated demonstration, he somewhat stiffly withdrew himself, and commenced to remonstrate in cool, grave tones with the weeping girl, exhorting her to master her sorrow and to consider the future. He had noted already how little of real grief and mourning there was for the dead father, how much of pity for herself in the utter abandonment of weak and impotent misery ; he felt with dismay that his words were powerless to quiet or encourage her. His clear, strong commonsense failed to see any possible issue to her helpless position. He was conscious that his most plausible suggestions, his most reasonable plans became suddenly impracti cable when met by her absolute lack of responsive energy, and the nerveless, tearful, almost reproach ful answer of Grace, " Oh, I can't do that."

A bright thought struck him. " Miss Bertall," he said, after a longer pause, " my mother's house in England is small and very quiet, but it is home. Make it yours for awhile. I shall see that you reach it in safety, and I can answer that you will meet with a kind and cordial reception," For the first time Grace was roused to some thing like determination ; she looked up quickly, and her voice had lost nearly all its querulous apathy as she said, " No, no, doctor, I will not leave Paris. How can you ask such a thing?" Then, altering her tone to one of coaxing entreaty, she laid both her hands on his folded arms and continued, " Don't send me away so far, away from all my friends," seemingly forgetting that she had pleaded her utter isolation a few moments before. "Away from Laurent Noel, who is my — who was my father's best friend, and who may return any day — next week, perhaps."

As Dr. Greystone remained silent her manner altered once more ; with something like petulance she seized his hand, and pressing it to her bosom looked into his eyes, saying caressingly, "Dear Doctor Greystone, I can't part from you. Oh ! let me stay some where — anywhere. Take me with you for a little while. I will keep house for you, mend your socks, prepare your coffee in the morning. — I shan't take much room, or burden you long. Oh, do, do take me away with you, for how can I live — alone ? " Her words were accompanied by foreign gestures and inflections that had become habitual to her in her long residence abroad, and which as a rule irritated and offended Dr. Greystone ; but the wailing pathos with which her voice died out on the last sad word touched a dormant sense ' 27 within him.

Her pale expressionless features had suddenly flushed with emotion, her pulseless languor had vanished under a febrile anxiety ; she seemed another creature. He looked at her in thoughtful silence ; a deep pity filled his heart, a new tenderness stole over him ; to leave such a one fighting the hard battle of life alone became suddenly an impossibility. He was a man after all, and before him in the darkened room rose a pale, pure vision, evoked by his generous sympathy; he saw a grateful, submissive, devoted woman, ministering to his wants, illuminating the darkness of his home, softening the severity of his sur roundings, coming like a gleam of sunshine to his lonely hearth ; a woman to be protected and sheltered, perchance a daughter for his widowed mother. Yet the instincts of a w*hole lifetime put in their claim.

What would become of his cherished independence, his liberty, his consecra tion to science, the vocation and labours that were to benefit humanity, and make him the benefactor ? He must remain free. Grace Bertall had fallen back in her low chair, in her old listless attitude — suddenly a wet cheek was laid against his hand, warm lips pressed his fingers, and a deep sob sounded through the gloom. After a short silence, he spoke with grave resolve : " You are right, Grace Bertall ; you cannot stand alone ; I will take you home. But listen," he continued, in answer to a half-uttered cry of joy, " you can come to me only as my wife." " Your wife ? " she exclaimed. " As your wife ? " Her tone was one of incredulous protest. " Yes ! As my wife. Do you consent ? " She was silent. She seemed to be weighing some remote possibilities in her mind, to seek the answer to a troubled problem.

At last, quietly, coldly, almost reluctantly, she rose, placed her hind in Jamas Greystone's outstretched palm, and said very low — "Yes, thank you." This was his wooing. He liked her none the less for this unexpected reserve, yet a sense of something discordant chilled him in that first hour of his generous impulse. His was, however, too self-contained a nature to belong impressed by passing sensations ; he knew he had linked his future for good or evil, for weal or woe, with the future of that girl, and that come what might he would do his duty by her.

Chapter III. Db

GKEYSTONE EETUENS HOME UNEXPECTEDLY. As there had been no courtship, so there was no long engagement. The contract so suddenly entered into was ratified with the shortest possible delay ; the marriage ceremony was performed a fortnight after Tom Bertall's death in tho quiet fashion which would at all times have suited the taste of the bridegroom, and which the deep mourning of the bride rendered imperative. Old Dr. C and the beadle were the witnesses, a few women and children composed the congrega tion ; the newly wedded pair signed their names in the registers of the British Embassy, and became man and wife. Mrs. James Greystone reigned in the whilom bachelor establishment, which a few simple preparations had fitted for its new requirements ; some additional furniture had gladdened the bare lodgings, hut — significant precaution — a room had been set apart exclusively for the Doctor's sole use and occupation ; his books, papers, and manu script were to abide there in undisturbed posses sion, and it was an accepted provision that, what ever liberty Grace enjoyed in her own domain, that quiet stud}* at the end of the passage, with its separate egress on the back staircase, was not to be intruded upon at any hour of the day or night.