Doctor Darch's Wife. A study

Front matter

DOCTOR DARCH'S WIFE a Doctor Darch's Wife A STUDY BY FLORENCE WARDEN Author of ' Those Westerton Girls; 'A Witch of tlie Hills; 1 The Inn by the Shore; ' Ralph Ryder of Brent,' ' The House on the Marsh; etc., etc. LONDON F. V. WHITE & CO. 14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. CONTENTS CHAP. pAGE I. — A Prophecy, ..... 1 II. — The Fulfilment, . . . . .12 III. — The Little Governess . . .21 IV.— "I Will," 33 V. — A First Confession, . . . .38 VI. — A Sensation for Checksfield, . . .48 VII. — The Girl with the Bulrushes, . . .56 VIII.— The Picture and the Face, . . .69 IX. — Real Sympathy at Last, . . .73 X. — The Mistletoe Season, . . . .83 XI. — Claudia's Penitence, . . . .91 XII. — And Amendment, . . . . .103 XIII. — Claudia hears of a Story, . . . 109 XIV. — Claudia goes to Town, .... 120 XV.— The Strong Hand, . . . .126 XVI. — Claudia's Literary Tastes, . . . 135 XVII. — A Visit from Claudia, . . . .143 XVIII. — Claudia surprises Nance, . . . 156 XIX. — Claudia gives Nance a Lesson, . . 161 XX.— Good-Bye

Chapter I

A PROPHECY The house was called "The Firs," and the odd part of it was that there was really a straggling double row of fir trees on the ridge of high ground behind the house. In the long, white, two-storied house, with its sloping slate roof and green-roofed veranda, the late Dr Darch had carried on for some thirty odd years in the sleepy Sussex village a practice which had been shared, and was now inherited, by his son and only child. Harry Darch, the son in question, was a bachelor ; but this was not the fault of the ladies of the neighbourhood, the older of whom were always impressing upon him that a doctor ought to be a married man, while among the younger there was A a general disposition to look kindly upon the hand some son of the well-to-do old doctor. The hesitation of the young man in taking the necessary plunge was the more unaccountable, as there was a young girl popularly described as " made for him " within very easy reach.

This was Nance Incledon, the orphan niece of his step mother, who had been an inmate of " The Firs " ever since old Dr Darch's second marriage fifteen years before. Harry Darch had, therefore, seen pretty, lively Nance grow from a child to a woman, or, rather, he had found the charming transforma tion completed when, at the end of his student days, he had come back to his father's roof four years ago. Nance had been then nineteen, and all the village were straining their ears for the sound of the wedding-bells on that occasion. No union could have been more appropriate, said everybody. He was fair, and she was dark. He was broad and stalwart, she slender and rapid of movement. He was a trifle stolid and prosaic, while she was as lively as a bird. But the good folk of Checksfield were disap pointed.

For Harry Darch chose to jog on his way unattached until the death of his father gave him another opportunity of treading in the course which had been marked out for him. It was about a month after the death of the old doctor, and no fresh developments had occurred in the situation, when young Dr Darch and a friend from the neighbourhood, Mark Alderby, from " The Grange," were lingering over a glass of wine in the pretty dining-room, while Mark's young sister and Nance played tennis on the lawn, which lay at the bottom of the steep green slope in front of the house. Mrs Darch, a thin, grey-haired woman, in deep widow's mourning, sat sewing — she was always sewing — in a low basket-chair, at a little distance from the players. Mark's eyes followed every movement of Nance, as the girlish figure in black flitted and swayed, and stooped and whirled, in the progress of the game.

Mark was a tall, somewhat ungainly lad of three-and-twenty, of that common English type which has a straight, sharply -protruding chin, light blue eyes, a white face, and hair of no colour in particular. The type generally goes with a senti mental disposition, as it did in this case. Harry Darch watched him with a little smile on his face ; and Mark, turning to him suddenly, caught the smile. He blushed a dull pink colour, and began to stammer. " Er — er — good game tennis ! " he began, awk wardly enough. "I'm a bad player myself, but I like to see it played, especially — " He stopped, and hesitated again. " Your little sister plays very well," said Harry Darch. " Oh, yes, she does, pretty well," returned the brother, without enthusiasm. " Not so well as Miss Incledon, by a long way. She's — she's one of the most graceful players I've ever seen."

" Nance does play well," assented Dr Darch. " Thin people always do, I suppose." " Thin ! " burst out Mark, as if the epithet had been an insult. " You call her thin ! " " Well, slim, slender, whatever you like to call it," agreed Harry, with a laugh. Mark's face still glowed as he answered with less hesitation than before. He was excited by what he considered unjust disparagement of Nance. " I should call it fairy-like," said he. " She makes me think of every graceful thing I've ever seen — swallows, swans, reeds in the wind" " You're getting quite poetical. I really think Nance ought to know of the compliments that are being showered upon her." And Harry Darch rose from his chair, and was stepping out into the veranda, when Mark nervously clutched at his arm. " No, no, don't go, don't say anything.

You might if it would be of any use, but it wouldn't, I know." He was manifestly in earnest, so Dr Darch let himself be detained, and looked at him with a not unkindly smile, which was, perhaps, intended to cover the thought which was in his mind. " Why wouldn't it be of any use ? " he asked quietly. Mark looked at him with a sidelong glance out of his light eyes, and a slight frown of perplexity came over his face. " Oh, surely you know — you must know ! " said he. " Surely I don't know what you mean ! " "Well, everybody else knows it," said Mark, bluntly. " It's been the talk of the place for ever so long that there's only one person Miss Incledon would care to marry." Young Dr Darch said nothing to this. He did not ask who the only person was. Mark looked at him, and, after a short pause, took courage, and asked simply, — " Why on earth don't you, Darch ?

" " Because I'm a fool, I suppose," said the young doctor, drily. "At least — no, I won't say that. There is no great wisdom in hurrying on the in evitable, after all." " The inevitable ? " repeated Mark, rather curtly. He thought these words implied a slight on the beautiful Miss Incledon. The next moment, however, he was reassured by the look in his friend's eyes — a look full of grave, sombre consideration of the situation. " Inevitable. Yes. Isn't it at least as inevitable that I must love her as that she should let her self be loved ? I'm not a particularly interesting person, not a ladies' man at all. If I really have a chance with such a nice girl as Nance, oughtn't I to think myself a lucky fellow ? " " Well, you ought, but you don't." "It doesn't do to be too confident. Supposing she should refuse me, after all ?

" " She won't. You know that." " I don't feel so sure myself." " I only wish I were in your shoes." Harry Darch affected not to hear him. He had gone out on the green slope outside, by way of cutting short a conversation which was embar rassing to him. No man of any spirit cares to tread a path which has been carefully chalked out for him, still less can he be expected to start on his way with enthusiasm, however pleasant, however promising the course may be. If he had been a free agent, it is more than probable that Nance Incledon's vivacity, contrast ing as it did with his own steady gravity, her beauty, which was undeniable, and her girlish charm, would have roused in him that warmth of passion which is inseparable from a man's best love. But, urged forward as he was by the openly expressed wish of his late father, and by the universal voice, it was only natural that he should draw back, that he should find the feet of the lover weighted by the burden of sound, common-place prudence of the man of common sense.

The girls had put down their racquets by the time the two young men reached the tennis ground ; and Mark's sister, who was a feminine replica of himself, tall, angular, light-eyed and gentle, held out her hand to Harry. " Going already ? " said he. " We must. Mamma only let me come on condi tion I went home early. I'm supposed to be deli cate, you know. It's the general superstition about people who are run up by the yard. I hear you're going away ? " " Not very far, or for very long. I've got to go up to town to settle some business in connec tion with my father's will." " And when you come back, will you go on living here at ' The Firs ' just the same ? " went on Minnie, with the delightful indiscretion of fifteen. Dr Darch grew red, and glanced at Nance, who was talking to his step-mother.

" With — with very little difference," answered he stolidly. "Because Mrs Darch and Nance are talking of moving into one of the cottages," pursued Minnie. "Come along, Minnie," cried her brother impatiently, as he noticed a slight look of embarrass ment on the doctor's face. But Harry Darch had been making up his mind. This hint of a removal gave the necessary spur to his lagging energies. As soon as the Alderbys had gone, he turned to Nance, who was picking up the racquets on her way to the house. " Nance," said he, as he took them from her, and accommodated his strides to her little steps, " I want to speak to you. I have something to say to you." The girl had some inkling of the truth, certainly. The pretty colour in her cheeks faded a little, and she stopped for a moment on her way up the slope.

Then, going briskly on again, she said gaily, — " Something to say ? Something of real im portance, do you mean ? " "Well, as to that, it depends how you look at it. I — I want to ask you if you will be my wife." This was abrupt enough, but Nance did not even pretend to be surprised. She stopped again, and this time she turned to face him. " You are asking me because your father and my aunt wanted you to ! " said she in a low voice, almost breathlessly. " Nance, how can you say such a thing ? Don't you think I care for you, dear ? " '• Yes, yes, I know you do. We've always been good friends. But — That isn't the same as getting married, is it ? " "It's the beginning, and the right sort of be ginning, isn't it ? " "Well, do you know, I'm not so sure of that. I won't go as far as Mrs Malaprop, and recommend beginning with a little aversion, but — " " Well ?

" " I — I should like to feel more sure than I do — much more sure — that you're not — not just taking the quickest way out of a difficulty." " Nance, what do you mean ? " " Why, you don't quite know what to do with Aunt Nell and me ; so the suggestion of marrying me comes as a happy thought." Harry laughed, not the less heartily that there was, in her whimsical remark, a little evident truth. " All this means, I suppose," said he, when they had both let their laughter die down into gravity, " that you don't care enough about me to be my wife ? " If Harry Darch had been a vainer man than he was, the quick little up-glance of her brown eyes, at these words, would have convinced him that his suggestion was a groundless one. She did not answer at once, but looked away at the ridge of fir trees, while over her bright face there came the shadow of a melancholy thought.

" Look here, Harry," she said at last, in a voice so different from her usual gay, bright tones, so much softer, so much deeper, that he was moved to new interest, roused to a warmer feeling, " we are both quite calm " — it was true of him at least — " so we can talk it over soberly. You are going away to-morrow — " " But I would put off going away, and we could get married, and go away together. Do you think I shouldn't enjoy my holiday ever so much better with you than — " "Ah, well, perhaps. But we can't rush these things through in quite such a hurry. So soon after poor uncle's death, too ! We should scandalise the neighbourhood." " Oh, who cares for the neighbourhood ? " " You do. A doctor has to." " Well, hasn't the neighbourhood been trying to coerce me into matrimony ever since I came back home ?

" Nance looked up at him with a shrewd smile. " And it has succeeded at last. Well, but listen. You want a holiday badly ; you are going to take it — by yourself. If you are away six weeks, as you propose, you will have time to think this serious matter of marriage well over, won't you ? " " But I have thought it well over. I — " O " Not enough. If, when you come back at the end of the six weeks, you find by experience that you can't exist without me, why, then, you can ask me again. And — and we can start with some freshness, you see. While if you find that you can get on without me very well, as I expect you will, or if you find some one ' beyond the hills ' whom you like better, then this interlude can be erased altogether." " I shall see no one I could like better than you, Nance. You are the prettiest and the sweet est and the best girl in the world."

" You won't think so when you have been away a month." " Is that a prophecy ? " Yes. " Well, I accept the challenge. I shall go away and think of you for six weeks, and at the end of that time I shall come back and find you engaged to the man who is taking my place." " Well, well, I won't promise that you won't. It would be more exciting, wouldn't it, than just to drift into the engagement with you that everybody's been expecting ? " There was a little pique, a little resentment in her tone, and Harry Darch, while he laughingly agreed with her, wondered, at the bottom of his heart, what her real feelings towards him were, and whether she really experienced something of that stubborn resistance to destiny and himself which he dumbly felt towards destiny and her. It was impossible to tell. Bad women some times speak the truth, the whole truth, and tell what they think and what they feel. But good women never do. And herein great part of the power of the former class lies.

Chapter II The Fulfil

M EN T Harry Darch's programme for the six weeks he was to be away included a stay of a week or ten days in London on business connected with his father's will, a month to be spent in travelling abroad, and a final week in town on his way back to Sussex. Harry Darch had an idea of his own as to the first part. He would not go to a hotel ; he would go straight to one of his old chums of St Bar tholomew days, an artist with permanent lodgings in Fitzroy Street, and would try and find a room in the same house with him. But Mrs Matthews, the landlady, who opened the door to him herself, and recognised him at once, informed him that his friend had left, and that there was another artist in his rooms, one of which was fitted as a studio. But her " dining rooms " were vacant for a few weeks ; would Dr Darch care to have them for his short stay ?

Harry accepted the offer, installed himself at once, and on the following morning, as he opened the door of his sitting-room to go out, he met a girl coming down the stairs, and Nance Incledon's prophecy was fulfilled. The girl was a little shorter than Nance, and her figure, ill-clad in shabby black, was not nearly so good as Miss Incledon's. But her face was so entrancingly pretty in the young doctor's eyes that the first sight of her, as her blue, Madonna eyes met his, sent a thrill of strange excitement through him. The girl seemed a little startled, and she blushed a little as, after one brief glance, she lowered her eyelids modestly and drew back a step. But Dr Darch was obstinate. Raising his hat, he stepped back into his own doorway to allow her to pass out. She hesitated still, and this gave the young man time for a longer look.

Under a large black hat which was trimmed with the greatest simplicity, her fair hair was parted above her forehead, and was brought in severe, demure simplicity down on each side to the tip of the little pink ear, which it veiled slightly before the two coils met in a great knot at the back of her head. This arrangement, so fatally unbecoming to most faces, gave to her particular type of beauty, to the little straight nose, the small, oval, sharp-chinned face, to the red mouth with its turned-down corners, above all, to the great childish blue eyes, the very air of piquant simplicity most appropriate to the type. By the time Harry Darch had noticed these details, the girl had glanced at him once more, and hurried past him out of the house. He followed as quickly as he decently could : but she had disappeared.

All day long he thought about the lovely face : in the lawyer's office in Lincoln's Inn, while he waited the solicitor's leisure in an atmosphere of parchment, rusty pens and much-used blotting paper ; in the restaurant where he lunched ; in the club, where he spent a mighty dull evening. And in the morning, after waiting within his room with a fast-beating heart for the sound of a footstep coming down the stairs, he met her as before. Naturally as he flattered himself he had brought this about, it seemed to Harry that the girl mistrusted him. A little flush of modest alarm came into her pretty face ; and it was with a more rapid step than before, and without another glance at him, that she fled out of the house. Harry Darch did not dare to follow as quickly as before. He was afraid he had offended the pretty creature, and this fear kept him occupied the entire day.

He never once thought of Nance. He was too busy trying to devise a plan of meeting without again alarming the lovely stranger. She was an art student, he imagined, judging from her appearance and by the portfolio she had carried on each occasion. South Kensington was a long way off: he conjectured that she might be studying at the British Museum. He thought himself fortunate when, on return ing to his lodgings at night, the landlady came up to ask if he would mind moving to the second floor on the following day, as the tenant of the dining-rooms was coming back sooner than she had expected. " Not a bit," said Harry, secretly pleased to be nearer the region where his art student dwelt. "You can put me anywhere you like. By-the bye, Mrs Matthews, who is the demure little girl who goes out at nine o'clock in the mornings ?

" " Oh, that's Miss Ritchie. She only has a room on the third floor. Everybody asks who she is. She's a quiet little thing, and her face gets her more notice than she wants." " Well, it's one a good many of her sex wouldn't mind having, with all its drawbacks." "You're right, sir. She's very good-looking. Not but what a girl that has her own living to earn had better be plainer." " She's an art student, isn't she ? " "No. A daily governess. And two or three times a week she comes to me crying, and telling me that she's been annoyed and fright ened in the streets. Dear, dear, it's a wicked world ! " " She's much too pretty to go about alone," said Dr Darch. " Well, what's a girl to do ? I'm sure I pity her with all my heart. A nice, good-natured little thing, too, that never gives a bit of trouble. ' Never mind, Mrs Matthews,' she says to me of a morning, 'I'll do my own room.

You're busy to-day, I know.' Now mostly, you know, sir, the ladies give twice as much trouble in lodgings as the gentlemen." "Yes, I've heard so." " She makes her own breakfast, such as it is, and brings her own supper in. But it's my opinion she don't always have enough to eat." Dr Darch moved uneasily. That the owner of such a face should go hungry seemed a more poignant wrong than any he remembered. "And my husband, he says it's a credit to a girl as nice-looking as that. And on Sundays we ask her in to supper with us, and to see how she enjoys it and tries not to show it — why, it goes to our hearts." "I wish you'd ask me to supper on Sundays," said Dr Darch impulsively. The landlady looked at him askance. "Well, sir," said she, with a rather grudging smile, " you are welcome, seeing we know you for a true gentleman, as we do.

But I wouldn't ask any of the other gentlemen in the house to meet her, that I wouldn't." As this colloquy took place on the Saturday evening, Dr Darch had not long to wait for an introduction to the divinity whose hold on his heart grew more secure with every hour. He dreamed, sleeping and waking, of the madonna face in its frame of soft fair hair. On the Sunday morning Miss Ritchie either did not go out at all, or went downstairs so softly that the young doctor, listening eagerly for her footsteps, failed to hear them. In the evening, at eight o'clock, Dr Darch presented himself punctually in the sitting-room in the basement, where a specially grand supper was laid out in his honour, and where Mrs Matthews, in a white lace cap of ceremony, and Mr Matthews, in the antediluvian frock-coat he had worn at his own wedding thirty years before, welcomed him with much stateliness.

But Miss Ritchie was not there. While they all three talked in a laboured way about the weather, the door was opened softly, B and Dr Darch stopped short in the prophecy that there would be rain in the night. In the doorway of the shabby basement room the glory of the sweet face and golden hair made a radiance which intoxicated the stolid doctor. Coming in with a light tread, she was checked by the sight of the stranger, and she seemed to hesitate whether she should advance into the room or retire at once. Mrs Matthews got up and led her forward. " We ought to have told you, Miss Ritchie, that Dr Darch, an old friend of ours, was coming to supper to-night," said she. Miss Ritchie shook hands demurely with the doctor, and sat down. When she spoke, it was in a soft, musical voice, which completed the conquest of Harry Darch, whose eyes, uncon sciously to himself, watched her every movement, or looked elsewhere with evident constraint, and stole back to her face shyly when he thought he was unobserved.

Miss Ritchie talked very little. She insisted upon waiting on everybody else at supper ; and afterwards she placed herself on a hassock at Mrs Matthews' feet, and listened to the talk rather than joined in it. But the presence of his divinity was enough for Dr Darch, who had never before shone in conversation as he did that night, talking to his landlady and her husband, all for the benefit of Miss Ritchie, with so much success that he kept them all amused and interested, and drew from Miss Ritchie the pleased glances and the laughter which are all that a man asks of the girl who has intoxicated him. When the girl got up from her lowly seat to say good-night, she took up from the sideboard a bundle of letters. " Is this all for the post to-night ? " asked she. " Yes, dear," said Mrs Matthews.

Dr Darch looked surprised. " Let me take them for you," said he. Miss Ritchie smiled and shook her head. " Oh, no, I always take them. It isn't a dozen steps from here." Then let me go with you ? "No, thank you. I'm used to going about by myself." She had snatched up a bonnet — one of Mrs Matthews' — from a cupboard by the fireplace, and she put it on, smiling with arch fun as she tied the old-fashioned, wide strings under her chin, and asked whether anyone would not take her for Mrs Matthews. " Saucy girl ! " exclaimed the landlady, smiling through her spectacles, as the girl went quickly and lightly out of the room. She ran up the area steps, and round the corner to the next street, where the pillar-box was. As she dropped the letters in, a voice startled her. " Hallo, Claudia ! " The girl turned round quickly.

It was a young man, carelessly dressed, who looked like an artist, who had addressed her. " How do you do ? " said she coldly, without offering him her hand. " Oh, I'm all right. What are you doing ? ' "Nothing at present. But I'm going to be married." " No ! Really — married ? Who's the happy man?" " A young doctor who lives in the country, and keeps a carriage." " Well, well, I hope you'll be happy, I'm sure." " Thank you. Of course I shall. I'm always happy." " So you are, I believe. Well, I hope he'll be happy too." "Thank you. Good-night." " Good-night." The young man gazed after her with a face full of perplexity and amusement, as the little figure in black turned the corner on its way back to the house.

Chapter III The Little Governess

Miss Ritchie had hardly left the basement sitting room when Dr Darch turned to Mrs Matthews and her husband in some surprise. " I wonder you let her go out by herself so late," said he. But both the landlady and her husband laughed at him, and the former shook her head shrewdly. "There's one set of rules for ladies that live quietly at home in their fathers' houses, and another for those that have to get their own living," said she. " Miss Ritchie thinks no more of having to go out at night than I should; she does it every Sunday night to save our old legs. She'll be back again in less than no time." " She's very independent," said the young doctor. " And yet so womanly. I never saw such an odd combination of extreme modesty with great self reliance. She's a very interesting girl. An orphan, I suppose ?

" "Yes. Very respectably connected, and the daughter of a schoolmaster, who was at one time a beneficed clergyman, I believe. Her friends were very much against her working for her own living, but she couldn't bear to be dependent upon them, and so she came to London all alone to support herself by teaching." While Mrs Matthews ran glibly on with this history, her husband stared in some astonish ment behind her back, but did not offer any comment. " And is she quite without friends in London ? " " Oh, no. She makes friends wherever she goes by the pretty ways she has. Some of them come here to see her sometimes. But she's too proud to see much of them, because, as she says, she's too poor to repay their hospitality." " Quite right. It's just what I should feel my self," said Dr Darch. There was a sound behind him as of the click of a door latch.