Dr Janet of Harley Street

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CHAPTER I. A further love I do not understand

It was a perfect morning in June. The sun had taken long to penetrate and rout the mists which lay heavy over the land, interposing, as it were, between heaven and earth a cloud by which man might conceal the fact of his sluggard uprising.

But the lux ab alto is omnipotent, and the thick dews and vapours slowly lift at the touch of the sunrays, and evaporate into thin air, and the earth and the shortcomings of her children stand confessed.

Then, as ever, out of the heavy morning, pregnant with possibilities, the brightest day is born, so this June day, slow to develop, was growing every hour more beautiful.

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The many tears night had shed in the darkness gleamed brilliantly amid the grass, or were tossed from the eyelids of the flowers in saucy answer to the wind.

The grey old face of the sun-dial, whose iron finger seemed to have stiffened with its everlasting pointing to the passage of the hours, grew warm in the sunshine, permitting its wet features to be dried by the hand of the young morning.

Over in a corner of the great garden, whence we are watching the dawning day., a marble Diana stood, dew-laden as if dripping from her bath, while beside her leaned a sculptured Moraus, whose grotesque buffooneries wakened no response in the divine fair calm of her face. Poor Momus ! he also wet and glistering, through what decades of chagrin had he thus grimaced beside his unappreciative neighbour ! One could almost fancy him abashed and eager to shrink from before the maiden's calm-eyed immobility. Someone should, for pityS sake, have freed the wretched creature from his marbled martyrdom, and sent him back to old Olympus, there to waken the vulgar laughter of heathen gods.

The buffoon seemed out of place in that garden of nature ; the long, cool avenues of shade, the rosearbours and shrubberies, the plantations of slendershafted pines, the dainty sweet community of flowers, yielded their silence to the innocent chatter of the birds, nor held an echo for the cynical, coarse jesting of this civilised clown.

Some such reflections appeared to present themselves to the mind, and to be expressed in the glance of a young girl who, her hands and arms filled to overflowing with white flowers, came down a long avenue, at the end of which the statue stood. The densely-wooded sides of the path prevented her escape, or, to judge from the halt she made as Momus came in view, his leering eyes seeming in their wetness to glisten with unholy satisfaction at his perpetual jest, she would have turned aside.

A light and shadow passed all of a sudden over his features, as the wind bent a branch of the tree beside him, and the girl was almost betrayed into an exclamation of horror, as the movement of light across his face seemed like a spasm of life in it.

She slipped past him and took refuge with the maiden-goddess. The sculptured deity appeared to extend a hand of encouragement to her, and, turning her back upon Momus, she threw herself at Diana's feet, as any heathen maiden might have done who claimed the huntress's protection.

' I hate him ! I hate him ! I will have him broken up,' she cried vehemently. ' He is always sneering and making faces. Just when things seem so delightful I come upon him, and he jeers as if nothing were true. Oh, how I hate him. Diana ! ' she reiterated, stretching up her hand to touch the white cold fingers of the statue. ' And this morning, when I am to be married, and will see the world and all the beautiful things

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in it, and be so happy, that horrid Momus sneers as if none of it were worth having. Oh, I do detest him. Don't you, Diana ? '

To judge by the look of grand disdain with which the goddess perpetually regarded him, one might imagine her to be in full accord with her votary's sentiments, but whatsoever she may have felt, her marble lips recorded not, and the girl had to content herself with the sympathy she gathered from the statue's fine smile.

' How good the Marquis is,' she went on presently, in a pleased reverie, ' and what a happy girl I am. He is just like the old French marquises in books ; he has such lovely manners, and makes such charming compliments. He is like a dear stately old father. And what a lovely day it is for my wedding.'

She broke into a happy, lively singing, laying her head beside Diana's knees.

She was very beautiful and very young. Only seventeen, and that small span of life even had measured her lightly and left her childish for her years. Her slim and supple height showed scarcely a womanly curve as she leaned back in girlish abandon against the friendly statue.

But in her deep eyes lay the gathering mystery of womanhood, in the full soft curving of her lips, in the delicate fine dilatation of her nostrils, and the sweet indecision of her white chin. Her eyes were grey and large ; clear and bright almost to colourlessness in moments of excitement, full and dark in moods of softness.

But moments of emotion were not frequent with her. Nature was at present spending her forces in fabricating the woman-face, in amplifying and smoothing the curves of cheek, and chin, and lip in intensifying the tint of the eyes, in curling the soft fine hair in rings upon the neck and brow, and in putting in the many other dainty delicate last touches of developed womanhood.

With a large number of women Nature finds, when all this expenditure has been lavished upon the exterior, that but little or nothing remains for inward graces ; her beautiful handiwork has the appearance of woman in all her perfection, but the warm flesh tints correspond to no fire within, the soft modelling overlies no sensitiveness of heart.

Pygmalion may cry in vain for love and passionate life to vivify his beloved ; she will ever remain cold and incapable of emotion, though her beautiful hands and lips are warm and tender.

But Phyllis Eve belonged not to the order of painted waxen womankind. Even on that morning of her marriage, when she was but a girl in years and growth, she showed symptoms of that feminine subtlety — that nameless charm of mysterious and latent passion without which the most physically perfect woman fails to be attractive.

While she muses dreamily — the hours which are bringing her destiny creeping across the face of the sun-dial in grave, dark shade — let us briefly consider the circumstances under which she has grown to girlhood, and is so soon to pass the marriage-gates.

Her mother, the wife of a country rector, had, some three years previously, been suddenly widowed, her husband dying all at once from an unsuspected heart-disease. Trusting to what he had regarded as an iron constitution, and, moreover, suffering from the pecuniary exigencies which attach to many country livings, he had failed to provide suitably for his wife and daughter, so that these were at his death thrown upon the world, with nothing but a very small annuity.

Mrs. Eve, heart-broken at her husband's death, withdrew to a distance and settled in a small village in Devon. Here she rented a cottage upon the estate of the Marquis de Richeville, an estate inherited from his English mother. The Marquis, a handsome man of sixty, who concealed a very graceless character beneath a very graceful manner, conceived a violent passion for the widow's young daughter, and was a frequent visitor at the cottage, where he contrived to introduce and make himself welcome.

Finally he proposed for Phyllis's hand, and after some objections, based upon her youth and the inequality of their respective ages, Mrs. Eve consented to the marriage, upon the girl assuring her that she was fond of their devoted old friend. Phyllis regarded her admirer from the standpoint of pure romance ; out of her inexperience and young imaginativeness exalting him to a height so heroic that he would certainly have suffered from a chill had he known the lofty altitudes to which her fancy lifted him. His wooing was conducted upon those lines of distant courtesy which characterise a certain class of French alliances ; he had confined himself to paying her delicate compliments and gallantly kissing her hand — in warmer moments permitting himself to salute her formally on her pretty cheek.

It was like a delightful story, she thought, that she should be the young mistress of his beautiful houses, should be able to place her dear mother in luxurious surroundings and give her the comforts necessary to her failing health. Quite incapable of comprehending the complex subtleties of love, she was satisfied that her girlish liking for the Marquis was such as to justify her union with him, and was happy, as we have seen, in the thought of the life-long holiday it promised.

The church clock struck nine while she lingered still in the garden. Counting the strokes she sprang up quickly, with a gesture of dismay at their number, then she gathered her flowers together and started homeward.

She went hurriedly down the avenue, and came suddenly upon her bridegroom, who approached her from a side path. The sunlight fell full upon him ; he was strangely excited when he saw her, his face looked rigid and grey, the lines left by dissipation strongly marked and marred the fineness of his features, the crow's-feet round his eyes, those which Victor Hugo calls furrows in which men hide their evil thoughts, gave up their lurking shadows.

As the young girl, lovely in her innocence and beauty, went towards him, her arms filled with her flowers, the smile her dreams had conjured up upon her face, he lost control still further. The coarse, crude passion of which alone he was capable blurred his habitual expression so that

Phyllis scarcely recognised him. With a stumbling stride he advanced, and seizing her in his arms, he drew her insistently to him, kissing her fiercely and repeatedly upon her cheek and lips.

Uttering an amazed, horrified cry, she pushed him violently away, thrusting him back with her flower-laden hands. The white flowers were bruised and broken in the brief fierce struggle, then were trodden under her feet as she escaped him and fled wildly homewards.

' How dared he ! How dared he ! ' was all she could say, as the memory of his touch trembled through her like a taint.

Her eyes were full of fire, her face was deathly white, while a great circle of scarlet flamed upon her cheek where he had .left his kisses.

Too hot and indignant to weep, she could but feel with every fibre and cry with all her revolted strength, ' How dared he ! '

Even so Diana might have passionately felt if Momus, with his jeering face and jesting mouth, had kissed her.

Chapter II

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

As fast as her swift young feet could carry her, the girl sped homeward, conscious only of the one strong impulse to place as great a distance as possible between herself and her bridegroom.

Reaching her little white bedroom, she threw herself feverishly upon the bed, and laid her burning face against the cool, lavender-fragrant pillow. A nameless dread and sense of helplessness soon shook the strength of her fervid indignation. She had suddenly awakened to the consciousness of a vague, fearful chasm between her own nature and that of the man who, ere the shadow had crept two hours forward on the dial's face, would be her husband. Her young feet seemed to slip and tremble upon this chasm's brink.

' He must have taken too much wine,' she

reflected, 'to make him seem so coarse, just like

DR. JANET OF IIARLEY STREET. II

a horrid, common man — not a bit like the courtly Marquis.'

She lay for a long time, like one wandering in a maze, groping amid and wrestling with strange, terrible shadows, which had arisen in her quickened mind.

She was recalled presently by her mother's voice sounding quietly beside her, while a gentle hand was laid upon her shoulder.

'Phyllis, Phyllis, what is it, dear? I have looked for you everywhere. Breakfast is ready ■ — has been waiting nearly an hour. Does your head ache ? Shall I bring your breakfast to you ? '

' Oh, mother, mother ! ' gasped the girl, wringing her mother's hand in hers excitedly.

' I know, dear ; it is an ordeal to leave home so young, and you have seen so little of life, but the Marquis is so kind, so good — '

' Oh, don't speak of him ! Send him away, mother ! Only send him away from me.'

' My child, you are dreaming. Do you forget you are to be married to-day? Come, Phyllis, wake up ! You have been too much alone with your fancies. It will not be long before you are at home again, and then you will have me with you in your beautiful house.'

' I will never — never leave you. I will not be married to-day. I will never be married. Oh, mother, save me, save me from him ! '

' Save you from whom ? From the Marquis who is so good to you ? Why, Phyllis, what has come to you ? It is foolish and hysterical to talk so,' Mrs. Eve expostulated firmly. ' All girls marry and leave their mothers. You must control yourself and not give way to such childishness. God knows you are too young, but what else could I do ? There is nothing for you at my death, not even the little we have now, which is only enough to keep us from actual starvation.'

' Oh, let me work. Let me learn some way to get my own living and to help you. I could be a governess, or a nurse, or a nurse at the Hospital, like the rector's daughter.'

' You can be nothing of the kind, you foolish girl,' replied her mother, losing patience. ' Rouse yourself, dear,' she added in a kinder voice. ' Bathe your face and come to breakfast. Come,' she persisted, taking her by the arm, 'you must not give way to this hysterical weakness.'

Phyllis, worn out by her emotions and exertions, had no strength to resist further, and, accustomed as she was to obey her affectionate but firm-willed mother, she rose passively.

She laved her burning cheeks and eyes, and smoothed her ruffled hair, which had tumbled about her shoulders in curly disorder. Then she followed Mrs. Eve downstairs.

She drank mechanically the tea poured for her, and ate a thin piece of bread-and-butter. Her exhaustion made her now very pale, all the fire in her face seemed to have passed into her eyes, which shone with an unnatural brilliancy.

Mrs. Eve maintained a quiet, continuous conversation, affecting all the while not to notice her distress.

When, however, two heavy tears rolled down the girl's white cheeks, and her unsteady lips tremulously failed to answer some question put to her, her mother spoke.

' Now, Phyllis, you shall tell me all about it. But be brave, my dear. Remember I also have something to bear in losing you.'

Phyllis, so bidden, left the table, and throwing herself at her mother's feet buried her face in her lap.

'Oh, mother, mother, he kissed me!' she cried, and broke into a fit of sobbing.

' Who kissed you ? ' her mother asked bewildered ; ' and when ? '

' He — he — Louis did ; this morning in the garden,' the girl gasped hysterically.

Mrs. Eye smiled compassionately. After all it was no very grave matter that was disturbing her daughter's composure.

' Well, well,' she answered, in a soothing voice, stroking the girl's bright head, ' that was not very terrible. He has kissed you before, and he is to be your husband, you know.'

' Yes ; but, mother, he never kissed me like that before. Oh, you don't know. It seemed to burn into my cheek. I think he must — Oh, mother, do you think he had been drinking ? '

' How foolish you are, Phyllis, and unjust, dear. It is only that he loves you so much.'

' Oh, mother ! Is that love ? Did my dear, noble father love you like that, and ever kiss you so that you hated him and could have killed him?'

' But, my child, you could not feel like that if you cared for him.'

' I don't. I don't. I liked him when he was different, but I hate him now. And I can't — I won't — I never will marry him ! '

It is impossible to say how long the argument might not have lasted had not an interruption at that moment put an abrupt termination to it, for just then a figure passed the window, a knock sounded upon the door, and the Marquis stepped into the room.

Chapter III

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.

As may readily be supposed, the Marquis had not been flattered by his bride's reception of him that morning. ' The silly child,' he said peevishly, ' docs she think herself a little goddess that one may not kiss her?'

He did not realise the extent to which he had alarmed her. He did not know how far his uncontrol had shown her the gulf between their natures, casting across her young soul the shadows of his irregular life.

A materialist and man of the world, his creed had been to extract all possible amusement and enjoyment from existence. Possessed of a large fortune, he had, from youth upwards, devoted himself to the pursuit of worldly and unworthy pleasures, and it was not wonderful if these had not particularly fitted him to mate with a young girl, the white pages of whose life grew whiter and more luminous with the unfolding of her nature. He regarded the fear and repulsion she had suddenly shown as being merely symptoms of girlish ignorance and reserve, and beyond a little temporary annoyance, did not greatly concern himself thereat.

But he determined to humour her, and, having dressed carefully, he assumed his wonted courtly air and started out to regain his bride's confidence.

He made his appearance at that moment when Phyllis lay abandoned to her dread of him, with eyes wet and hot with tears, her ha:r tumbled passionately over her face, her hands locked one in another as she entreated her mother against him.

On his entrance she rose quickly, regarding him with glances of questioning fear. The glances reassured her somewhat. Here was no remnant of the crude coarseness she had detected in him Here was no sign of the uncouth lover, whose kiss had .so repelled her. Here, in his place, was the courteous, kind, old Marquis, bearing in one hand a diamond-laden morocco case, in the other a bouquet of beautiful flowers.

Having saluted Mrs. Eve, he advanced and took Phyllis's trembling hand.

' My dear,' he said, in suave, seductive tones, ' I

DR. JANET OF HARLEY STREET. IJ

startled you this morning, I came so suddenly upon you ; thinking to surprise and please you, I succeeded only in alarming you. See, I have brought you something to make up for my gaucherie.'

He opened the leather case, showing a magnificent necklet of diamonds. Very few women fear the Danaos, dona ferentes, and, despite the world's strictures, their pleasure at the Danaian gift is as often tender as it is mercenary. Poor Phyllis, in girlish delight, laid down the white flowers with one hand, and took up the jewels with the other, a fact which must certainly have occasioned some delight to the Marquis's friend, Mephisto (who doubtless stood near), affording him opportunity for a cynical sneer at the poor Marguerite.

' Thank you, Louis,' Phyllis faltered. ' Are they for me, my very own ? '

He deftly and gracefully cast them over her head, letting them fall round her slender throat.

' For you, my little queen, in honour of to-day.'

He delicately kissed her finger-tips. The thrill again went through her at the touch of his lips. Even at that moment, had she dared, beneath his gaze, dominant though mild, she would have snatched away her hand and torn the jewels off.

But she was tired — exhausted. The long morning, her continued excitement and fasting condition all combined to weaken her will, and, moreover, the habit of childish deference and obedience towards him, which had grown with her years, made her fear to vex him.

Nevertheless, she found courage for a last appeal.

'Oh, do not let us be married to-day,' she pleaded. ' I cannot leave mother. I cannot bear to go so far away alone.'

' Alone ! ' he echoed, while no very amiable expression showed in his eyes. ' Do you count me as no one ? '

' Oh, let it be put off,' she entreated.

' My dear child,' he said coldly, ' you will please get your frock on. Mr. Heath will be here shortly, and you would scarcely like him to see you in your present condition.'

' Come, Phyllis,' her mother added ; ' I cannot allow you to be foolish any longer.'

The poor girl felt herself friendless. Even her mother was leagued against her. She looked from the one to the other, helplessly, hopelessly, but neither showed her any sign of sympathy. With a submission born of exhaustion and despair she suffered her mother to lead her away. During the process of her simple toilette she remained speechless and impassive. This wedding of hers, the pleasant aspect of which had changed so grievously within a short space, seemed to her dazed mind to be an execution from which it was as impossible for her to escape as for a criminal to free himself from the hangman.

Oh, if the ceiling would but fall, she prayed heaven, and leave her crushed and lifeless on her white bed. But neither the heavens nor the ceiling were destined to descend upon her at that opportune moment, and she dressed in unwelcome security. Her bridal toilette finished, she went down to the small sitting-room where her fate was to be sealed ; for De Richeville, having no fancy to form a centre of interest for gaping ' hinds,' as Devon still calls her village population, had obtained a special licence in order that the ceremony might take place in the cottage.

Here, in the presence of her mother and their old servant, Phyllis Eve was indissolubly united to the Marquis de Richeville, and the clergyman impressively, in the silence of the little room, forbade any man to put asunder these two whom ' God had joined together.'

It was over at last. The bright gold ring was on her finger, though her hand shrank fearsomely when the bridegroom placed it there.

The clergyman offered his congratulations and left. Her mother kissed her tenderly. Her new-made husband kissed her. Then a rush of sounding waters flooded her sense, her head swam, her knees swayed, and like an overwhelming torrent a sudden weakness loosened the reins of her control, and she fell fainting on the floor.

Chapter IV

For what is wedlock forced, but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife ?

On regaining consciousness our poor bride found herself lying upon her bed in her little room. For a time her returning senses, which showed her the well-known surroundings, brought no other knowledge to her. Downstairs she could hear the sounds of footsteps, which passed to and fro as if in everyday domestic occupation ; outside the opened window the song and chatter of the birds, the soft lifting of the leaves, and their rustle one upon the other as the lively wind whispered its news to them, struck upon her ears familiarly.

She had heard such yesterday and the day before, and on the many other summer mornings to which she had awakened in her cottage chamber.

An under-running consciousness of something unwonted having taken place slowly made itself felt, as the murmur of running water will gradually steal upon our notice, after passing unheeded though we have stood long beside it; yet she was not sure but that the something which it seemed to her had happened, had not happened in a dream.

The cells of her brain, which had taken cognisance of the morning's events, had been so strongly stimulated, that exhaustion succeeded on excitement, and languidly inert they no longer sent their quota to the general consciousness.

She felt strangely tired, her limbs ached with a leaden heaviness. Had it not been for the bright sunlight streaming in through the window, and the sounds which stirred below, she would have been sure she had waked too early, the sense of fatigue giving rise to an impression that she had not had her sleep out.

She turned over with a sigh of dreamy langour, intending to take a short last half-hour of slumber, when a ray of the sunshine glinted all at once upon the new ring encircling her finger. The sudden brilliant gleaming flashed through her eyes right into her brain, and there woke up the sleeping cells that linked the continuity of her consciousness.

In a moment she knew all. The kiss in the garden, which had so repelled and terrified her, the ceremony that had sounded like a doom, and then the darkness rushing down upon her. Truly,

DR. JANET OF HARLEM STREET. 23

truly she had been deceived by the placid murmurings of nature, the sights and echoes which had seemed familiar. There had been nothing in all her recollection one little bit like this. Years seemed to have passed since that meeting with the Marquis in the garden.

With all the memories that leapt up swiftly in her mind, there came a strong, wild longing to escape, a longing which quickly formulated itself into a determination. No consideration for her disappointed bridegroom, no thought even of her mother, found place amid the fears and fancies which, like phantoms, passed hurried and disordered through her brain.

Only to escape. To free herself at once and forever from a bondage which had in a moment shown itself hateful and impossible.

She felt like one who, walking in calm sunshine, had suddenly been enveloped by lurid flame and smoke, which the earth he trusted sent full into his face. The poor girl's excited mind terribly exaggerated her fears.

She lay quiet upon her bed, devising and reviewing plans. She would go to London, she determined finally. No one would find her there. A brief visit, made with her parents some six years previously, had shown the city to her as a vast chaotic wilderness, an interminable maze, so thronged with numbers and varieties of persons, that one could be easily and irretrievably lost in it. She did not decide very definitely as to what she would do there, but she reflected vaguely that so immense and busy a place could not fail to afford her occupation. She could be a governess to young children, or, if it came to that, a nurse. She was a good needlewoman, and might do sewing for some large shop. Or she might, like the vicar's daughter, enter a hospital and tend sick people.

Various methods for earning her bread rose readily to her thought, and she passed them lightly in review, with the easy confidence of youth which calmly formulates the facts of life according to its faith and fancy.

Any reflection, that the ceremony in which she had taken part bound her by a solemn obligation, at no time impressed her.

No power, human or divine, she was assured, could make hers one with the nature which had suddenly revealed itself to her.

Love is such a wild, sweet, wayward creature that not all the forces of heredity, self-interest and custom can transform it into a tame domestic thing which clings inevitably to the hand that feeds it.

In healthy unspoiled hearts it still retains its qualities of wilful blindness and sublime insanity, though these more often than not lead it into the world's thorny ways and byeways, wherein it perisheth miserably.

The foreshadowing of such an inherent madness was at that moment looming up in Phyllis's consciousness, urging her to exchange the assured comfort and luxury of her newly-acquired position for probable hardship and struggle, to throw off in a moment class and family tradition,— to reject the obedience and training of her lifetime.

The keen excitement, quickening her mental powers, brought to the surface faculties which had hitherto lain dormant, placing at her disposal latent resources of perception and strength of purpose. Her quiet unstimulated life had stored reserves of mind and body which, now first called upon, answered to her need.

As she lay thinking rapidly, making her plans with a calm clear-headedness born of the sobering force of her necessity, she was grateful for the time afforded by her temporary weakness. Not long, she knew, would she be permitted to rest thus quietly.

She and her bridegroom were to be conveyed by an afternoon train to London en route for Paris. That honeymoon, that brief, bright entry into the world of wonders, to which she had looked forward, she dared not now consider, the thought so terrified and unnerved her. Had the aristocratic, handsome old Marquis suddenly developed hoof and horns, her horror of him could not have been greater.