A martyr of destiny

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II

“I am he,” said Moncrieffe, advancing a little. “Can I be of any service?”

“Yes, you can, doctor,” said the young man, not with incivility, yet with chill bluntness quite his own. “Our old physician, Dr. Bascomb, is too ill to attend my mother — Mrs. Thirlwall, you know.”

“Ah, you are Mr. ThirlwaU, then?”

The man in the dog-cart stared, and soon curtly nodded. “I thought you knew me.”

“I haven’t had that pleasure — till now.”

White wright moved away, muttering in quick, gleeful soliloquy: “Basil took him down a peg there /”

“Oh, ah, yes,” replied Dunstan ThirlwaU, with cold rumination, fixing his gaze for a second on one upheld hand, as though to survey some rent in his dog-skin driving-glove. “My people have been such an eternity in these parts, you see—”

“And I,” said Moncrieffe, “have been here but a few trifling yesterdays. Hence I must be pardoned for not knowing, as it were, the Riverview immortals.”

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Thirl wall lifted his brows, as if the thought behind them were one of surprise that a bumblelodged village doctor should make an attempt to be clever. Moncrieffe, warned by Whitewright’s late nimble and scorching comment, puffed coolly at his cigar till Mr. Thirlwall altered his supercilious look. Through the azure mist of that cigar the two men’s eyes met. In a minute or so more of silence there seemed to flash between them the intelligence of a mutual forthcoming dislike.

But Thirl wall’s voice was almost bland when he next spoke. “My mother isn’t at all well. She’s had one of her sudden attacks — they always come when least expected. If youTl jump in here and let me drive you to our house — it’s about two miles away — I’ll see that you get back comfortably in this same trap. I’ve been delayed in finding you; I’m afraid the case is pretty urgent. Will you jump right in?”

“Yes,” said Moncrieffe, after a very short pause. “Excuse me a moment, please.” He turned to look for his friend, and glimpsed him at the further end of the narrow hall. Whitewright slipped into the little sitting-room as he saw him advance. Moncrieffe followed, and they met thus in sudden ambush.

“I heard,” White' wright said, in semitone. “Of course you’ll go. The mother has heart-disease, and knows it, poor lady. YouTl be sure to like her; everybody does. Old Mr. Thirlwall’s been dead several years. No one dreamed he wasn’t a millionaire till he died and left his family very little money, and acres on acres of

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rather unprofitable land. There are two children, this Dunstan fellow, and a hunchback sister (a sort of semi-mindless grown-up baby besides) whom they say that he loathes and is ashamed of. He’s a dismal example of how ungracefully we human beings can sometimes bear disappointments. He was put to school for several years in England, and grew up expecting thousands galore. His father’s losses in business have soured him to the bone — and when a narrow egotist like that becomes soured it’s Heaven help his near relations. He hates Greendingle, as their place has been called since almost Revolutionary days. He spends a week at a time, very often, in town. Hobody knows just how he lives, belonging to fashionable clubs and cutting a dash in society as Mr. Dunstan Vandervender Thirl wall. But the family are cramped, it’s said, by his cruel selfishness. He gets away, I’ve been told, with three-quarters of their meager income. But I mustn’t keep you. There’s this, though, to add. You’ll meet the loveliest girl at Greendingle you’ve ever yet laid eyes on.”

“Ah, that’s an inducement to make me leave you here for an hour or so, reading by lamplight among the suicidal night-moths. And this divinity isn’t a Thirlwall?”

“Ho — yes.”

“Ho? Yes? How odd!”

“Go, now, dear boy,” said White wright, with a soft propulsive push. f< I don’t want you to keep away from Mrs. Thirlwall a minute longer

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than you can help. She was always very good to my poor father, over there at the shop. Many a chat they’ve had together; dad swore by her.”

“And the girl — the other' girl, Magnus, not the imbecile hunchback, but the — the Seek-no- Further. Do post me about her, please. ’ ’

“Never mind, just now; I can’t. There’s not time enough. It’s a sad history, but it’s also an inspiring one.”

“You imply that it’s a very mysterious one,” said Moncrieffe, across his shoulder, as he went out to rejoin Dunstan Thirlwall. Then he paused, wheeled about, and caught Whitewright by the wrist. “There — take care of yourself, old chap,” he said. This had grown a kind of habitual farewell formula with him, of late. His augmented fondness for his friend had given it the veiled yet vivid meaning of a “God bless you.” His vigilance had partaken both of affection and science. He realized that this man, whom he had grown tenderly to love, was shadowed by a dark physical threat. It might be delayed for years, and it might wreak itself in the abruptest ruining way.

“Tell me the lovely creature’s name, at least,” he demanded. “You say that she isn’t a Thirlw r all, and yet that she is."

“Oh, she’s a Thirlwall ,” assented Whitewright. “She’s called so, I mean. She’s the adopted daughter of Dunstan’s mother.”

“Ah— is that all?”

“No — it isn’t all. It isn’t a hit all. Her name? Her name’s Eloise.”

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“Eloise Thirl wall ?”

“Yes; I suppose so.”

“You suppose so? Don’t you know? Hasn’t she any name that you don’t ‘suppose’ about, one way or the other?”

Whitewright gave his head an amiably exasperated toss. Then, with great speed, he spoke more. “She’s been with Mrs. Thirl wall for years. There’s a story about her birth and adoption that’s no doubt a perfectly true one. Ogden Thirlwall, Dunstan’s father’s brother, was a man possibly much like himself — worldly, narrow, unmoral. One day he died suddenly, and after his death the report of his false marriage and fathership of a young child, now orphaned, reached Mrs. Thirl wall’s ears. Perhaps there was no false marriage at all ; perhaps Eloise’s birth was still more pathetic than that. But Mrs. Thirlwall, against the wishes of her husband who was then living, sought and found the baby girl, and brought her home and has been devotedly maternal to her ever since. They say that when her sweet, kind eyes first lighted on little Eloise she was in some dreadful slummish hole, neglected so frightfully that the clothes were almost rotting off her tiny shape. ’

“Yes— I see. And this is the woman I am to go and try to aid this evening?”

“Yes. And now do go and try to aid her, Basil! The delay—”

“Pshaw; it hasn’t been more than the merest handful of seconds. You’ve talked like lightning, and so have I. There, now— I will go.

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But tell me : how do they say that this Dunstan Thirl wall treats his left-handed cousin?”

“Shockingly. I’ve heard that he detests her presence in the house. ’ ’

“The devil he does! How delightful for her! And she’s really so very sweet?”

“Wait till you see her.”

“I shan’t wait another minute,” said Moncrieffe, laughing. “You’ve applied an effective spur. ’ ’

He mounted to a seat beside Dunstan Thirlwall with a smile on his lips. They had got well out upon the main road before either of them spoke.

“You’ve come here to stay, doctor?”

“Yes. That is my intention — as long as there’s any necessity for a graveyard.”

Dunstan laughed with such matter-of-course curtness at his grim little joke that he regretted having made it. “You’re living with that Yfhitewright fellow, I understand — the apothecary’s son.”

“I’m living with Mr. Whitewright. ”

“M — yes. I used to know old Whitewright. Eevrybody in Riverview did, of course. Queer old duffer. Had a head as bald as a billiard-ball for years, and cherished stern antipathy to a wig. Once, when I was a boy, I popped a pea at him from a shooter and hit him right on the crown of the cranium.”

“Yes? What brutes we all are when boys, aren’t we?”

Dunstan started a little, and then struck his

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lumbering horse a sharp whip-blow that made him break into a kind of solemn, reproachful canter. Moncrieffe stole a glance at the young man’s profile. Its upper lip was cut downward at the end in a weary and sneering way, though you felt that perhaps it could pulse upward quite smilingly at will, just as the hard, handsome, icy eye could at will wear a clement sparkle. The small russet mustache grew Huffily close to the cold-curved nose, and a dim network of wrinkles at the bone of the oval, untinted cheek spoke more of owls ’-feet from late hours than crows’-feet from sane dealings with unavoidable time. At the temple, shaded by the gay-ribboned straw hat, was a segment of crisp, yellowish hair, cut short above a small, back-pressed ear.

“Here’s a man who can please women if he tries,” Moncrieffe decided. “He’s good-looking, and he’s got it in him to pass for rarely amiable if he chooses, despite all the badness I’ve just heard about him.”

“I suppose most boys are brutes,” Dunstan said, shortly and low- voiced. “I’m devilish sure I was one.”

“That’s a candid confession, Mr. Thirlwall.”

The burly horse shied at a gargoylish stump bulging from an embankment on the roadside. With his long-lashed whip Dunstan gave him a reprimanding sting on his lank neck.

‘ ‘ Confound this brute ! He’s got neither sense nor speed nor pluck nor action nor — anything. He’s simply an old cow. Most boys could show

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better qualities than lie does, doctor. But about your friend — the son of the druggist. We used to understand, here at Riverview, that he was going in for a fine gentleman — a practicing physician, and all that sort of thing. He didn’t, though, did he? He just settled down into the old paternal grooves. How was that?”

“My friend, Magnus Whitewright, started with ambitions to be a doctor,” said Moncrieffe. “But illness has prevented him from pursuing such designs. He has pulmonary weakness, Mr. Thirlwall, and he very sensibly realizes that the career of a physician would overweight him.”

“M— yes. I see.”

“I don’t know whether, as you phrase it, he ever intended to go in for a fine gentleman. But education and study have made him a gentle - man, beyond doubt.”

“Really?”

Moncrieffe, for a little while, leaned back in the dog-cart and let that “Really” pierce him with its irritating poignance. Then he told himself that he would be a sad fool to heed the flimsy arrogance of a person with a mental range as contracted as was broad and lovely the landscape through which he moved.

A wet June had made its foliage richly ver dant. Robust trees massed their dark-green densities, now and then, against a sky where the midsummer sun was westering with splendid grace. He gave his blinding glare only at intervals, and then to blaze, for a moment, on some hollow where a stream sparkled amid caressing

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willows, on some breadth of rolling meadow where cows grazed languidly. In another second he was barred with purplish parallels of cloud, that softened his rays if they did not actually gloom them, and left dusky and mystic lights on a pearl- topped clump of elders, or wrung somber and sickly gleams from a lissome populace of breezy reeds at the verge of some pool.

4 4 1 hope we shall not find your mother very ill, ’ ’ said Moncrieffe, with a deliberate change of subject.

44 No,” came the colorless answer, “I hope not. She was weak and drowsy when I left her, with no desire to speak. Utter prostration, you know. I was just on my way to Newport this morning, when the attack came on. I was going to stay there with some people. Of course I had to put it off, and telegraph, and all that sort of thing.’ ’

4 4 That was — inconvenient. ’ ’

4 4 It’s been distressing, naturally.” He almost growled out the next words, as if through set teeth, and with an air of more than half addressing his own thoughts. 4 4 I’m getting used to these infernal disappointments, however. It looks as if I were to have them feed me, with a kind of pap-spoon, by destiny for the rest of my days.” Then, with the demeanor of having repented this condescension in the way of overgarrulity, he straightened himself and pointed swingingly with his whip-hand toward a clustered sweep of woodland pierced vaguely by a chimneyed roof.

4 4 That’s Greendingle. I imagine you don’t

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know it yet. It’s horribly ugly as architecture, but fairly comfortable inside. The estate is really enormous. I don’t mind saying that it keeps us land-poor, with taxes and all that deviltry. Still, you may have heard of the new railroad that’s being . planned hereabouts. If they carry it out it will run straight through our property for several miles. ” He made another oscillant gesture. “From yonder, I mean, where you see that old wind-mill, right along to here, and past here for a good stretch. It will mean a big pot of money to us, for the new company can’t close their contracts till our demands have been settled.”

As Dunstan ended, the wagon swept round a bend of road that commanded, beyond brief meadowy interspaces, a white-sprinkled expanse, which to look upon was to recognize its pathetic meaning.

Half in humorous vein, Moncrieffe said:

“The new railroad can’t very well go there.”

“It wants to,” returned Dunstan Thirlwall, in sturdy monotone. “At least through a part.”

‘ ‘ What ! Of the Ri verview graveyard ? ’ ’

“A part — yes.”

“How horrible!”

Dunstan set his head sideways and shrugged his shoulders. “ We don’t think so. At least, I don’t. Hone of us are buried in the particular part gloated over. It’s chiefly occupied, I believe, by the remains of Riverviewians who haven’t any living descendants. Just before my father died there was a huge outcry of senti-

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mentalists. He yielded to it, and for this very reason, perhaps, the whole railroad project now hangs fire.”

“I should think it might!” Moncrieffe flung out, emotionally.

He wondered, at the same instant, if Magnus Whitewright’s father were buried in the threatened part of this old-time cemetery, and felt a new surge of dislike for his associate creep through every fiber of his frame.

Ill,

Dunstan Thirl wall had not underestimated the charms of his family abode. It was ungainly,

| with mammoth wooden pillars, white and fluted, towering to the little shingled slice of overlaps' ping roof which they rather ridiculously sup- I ported. But inside it was full of graceful proofs that its habitants knew how to live with blended taste and ease. Its neglected lawns and somewhat weedy paths were less pleasing than its wide hall, made almost room-like with great cushioned lounges and woolly rugs, whence Dunstan and Moncrieffe passed into a sitting-room winsome both for elegance and comfort.

“Be seated, please,” Dunstan said, “and I’ll see — ”

But he ended there, for a young woman now glided swiftly into the large, pleasant chamber.

“Dunstan,” she said, with anxiety in her voice, “you’ve brought the doctor?”

“Yes.”

Without waiting for an introduction the newcomer went straight to Moncrieffe and put out her hand. “Doctor,” she said, “I’m very glad you’ve arrived. My aunt is a trifle better, and we think the attack is passing off. But it has left her very weak. Will you come up to her room, please?”

Moncrieffe at once followed the speaker upstairs. Dunstan seemed to have resolved himself into a natural nullity, now, before this new feminine presence, at once so emphatic and so captivating. Her sunshine had dissipated him, and though a kind of pensive sunshine, it was yet curiously potent. She was, of course, Eloise Thirlwall, and thoughts of her strangely sad place in the world thrilled him now that he had seen her. The halls and the staircase by which he accompanied her to the apartment of her aunt, gave him but fitful glimpses of a face he had already seen full and clear, with a surprised, comprehensive enjoyment in the vision.

It was a face so girlish that you wondered it could also be so womanly. It had a sweet keenness of coloring, but beyond that no definable “points” of beauty. It was, in a way, generous of structure, like the maidenly amplitude of the tallish figure. But its expression alone justified its attractiveness. You could best have said of the eyes that they were sincere and courageous ;

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of the brow that it was broad and capable ; of the mouth that it could be both tender and firm. Moncrieffe, while at times moving a few paces behind her, was sensible of an added pictorial pleasure in the thick strands of chestnut hair, rolled up from the milky nape of her neck, just neatly enough to escape the charge of negligence, and somehow in bounteous accord with her rich if immature moldings.

At a certain closed door on the second hall she paused, and said softly, with her hand on the knob :

‘‘Now will you come right in, please? Aunt is much stronger, and quite conscious.”

Then she opened the door of a large bedroom, prettily appointed, with green sweeps of afternoon landscape showing at its wide-open windows. Mrs. Thirlwall, a rather stout lady with sunny violet eyes and benignance on every feature of a face that might once have been beautiful, spoke from the bed before Eloise and her companion had more than half crossed the spacious chamber.

“I’m not half ill enough to see a doctor. By to-morrow I shall probably be up and about. It’s the most amazing thing, the way I sink right down, and then rally again.” She stretched out a hand to Moncrieffe, which he not only took, but retained, with professional gentleness. “So you’re Dr. Moncrieffe?” she went on, with a smile that struck him as exquisitely genial. It was a smile that disclosed her teeth, remarkably pure and flawless for a woman of her evident

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years. “Pm very glad to see you, doctor, though a little while ago I’m afraid you’d have found me neither glad nor sorry. They say that I just dropped off in a dead faint and stayed so a perfect age. Eloise, bring the doctor a chair; that’s right, my dear.” Moncrieffe had seated himself at the bedside when Mrs. Thirlwall again spoke, this time addressing an elderly maid-servant who stood in respectful quiescence beside her pillow. “And Margaret, you can take Miss Anita downstairs now, and try to amuse her with a little stroll about the grounds. ’ ’

“Ho, no, no,” whimpered a voice from one of the windows. Moncrieffe turned and saw a childish though writhen shape, with the face of a grown-up girl crowded in between frail, highbulging shoulders. “I want to stay here with you, mamma,” the voice went on, in that piping falsetto treble that so often leaves the lips of the deformed. “I want to! I want to!” And then a kind of impish screech ensued, as Margaret advanced toward the window.

“Never mind,” said another voice, authoritative yet kindly. “You needn’t go with Margaret. You shall go with me.”

A claw-like hand clutched Eloise’ s, and a giggle answered her, vacuous but placated. It was evident that to “go” anywhere with her cousin meant for the half-witted little creature all desirable content. Presently Moncrieffe was alone beside his patient, even the servant having departed ; and looking at him with soft fixity, Mrs. Thirl wall said :

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“That dear niece of mine has managed to leave us together for a short time, doctor. It was just like her careful tact. She knew that I could speak with more point and freedom if we were quite without listeners. I am not in the least doubt concerning the character of my ailment. It’s a valvular weakness, with a tendency to heart-failure. I had a long talk with the famous authority on cardiac troubles, Dr. Wingate, more than five years ago. He then told me that my case was wholly incurable.”

Moncrieffe’s fingers were on her pulse. “I have known Dr. Wingate to make mistakes, Mrs. Thirl wall. I shall ask you a few questions, now. Pray answer each of them with deliberation, for my power to help you in any material way will depend on the perfect accuracy of your statements.”

His repose, frankness, and unobtrusive selfreliance made a look of interest and surprise light the face of his listener.

“I’ll answer with the best conscience I can muster,” she said; and a certain rare cordiality and good cheer beamed from her features, which were somewhat pallid and fatigued, yet without a trace of the invalid’s emaciation or languor. “As you see, doctor, I am almost well and strong again, now. This is so often the way with heart-disease. One may have a foot in the grave and yet seem as if both feet were so securely on the upper surface of terra firma /”

Moncrieffe slowly bowed his head. “ Yes ; that is true. I’m not old in my profession, Mrs. Thirl-

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wall, but I believe that in cases of heart-trouble much may be done that as yet has been done ill or not at all. ’ ’

“Really?” She touched his hand caressingly with her fingers while he still held her wrist. The slight action was both motherly and fond. Moncrieffe’s ambition underwent a thrill, and it has been said that he was ambitious. He felt that here was a chance of gaining some sort of initial distinction, while at the same time testing practically the results of some very hard and patient study. Simultaneously, too, he recalled Whitewright’s words, “You’ll be sure to like her ; everybody does. ’ ’ He had got greatly to like her, indeed, here within a few fleet minutes; and now it was pleasantly plain to him that he was liked in return. And such a result already translated its lure to him in terms more subtle than those of flattering self-love ; for was not this the woman who had acted with such human bravery toward the ill-fated girl— somehow as unusual of aspect as her supple and rhythmic name — whom he had looked on only to admire?

“I have gone into this malady a great deal,” he continued, “and have found that both the French and Germans excel us in our grasp and search of it. And of course, in the hospitals, we’ve every means of observing its various developments. . . How, then, for the questions, Mrs. Thirl wall,” he ended, with a smile.

She gave him just the thoughtful and detailed responses that he desired. And when his cour-

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teous yet shrewd little cross-examination was over he made certain physical tests, which he told her that he should hope soon to repeat more satisfactorily, with the aid of instruments.

4 ‘ And assure yourself, ’ ’ she said, in a quaint mood of sad gayety, 4 ‘that I am a doomed woman. ’ 9

“Perhaps far from that. In a case like yours we are none of us knowably doomed. But I was thinking of something else — of how much, in fact, might be done by science to keep these ugly seizures at bay. For though she has still a very great deal to learn, every year she manages to learn a little more.”

“Ah, that is true! And one day she will begin to solve the mightier mysteries.”

“Do you believe that, Mrs. Thirlwall?” he asked astonishedly.

“Yes.” Lying there before him, she closed her eyes, and as often happens in sleep, new traits of expression crept into her pale, fatigued, yet not seemingly unhealthful face. Mingled with her look of charity was one of trouble and suffering that he had failed before to mark. As she reopened her eyes a lingering sigh fluttered from her lips. “Oh, yes; I believe now that knowledge is everything. Once I did not. The struggle was terrible with me. I suppose mine is what they call the religious temperament. Faith had meant so much to me ! I seemed to feel it die in agony, like a limb that had been crushed and must be lopped off. Do you know, too, I trembled for what the change might effect

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in my moral life? All the help that I gave to my fellow-creatures (not that it was much, but it was something) had seemed to flow straight from that faith. The surrender of a palpable, tangible Revelation cost me a fearful ordeal. Mere reason seemed so cold and aidless after that loving divinity, that providential succor, in which I had trusted implicitly for years ! And the sense of my own constant bodily menace grew so much harder to bear ! Is it not Huxley who says that the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact is one of the great tragedies of science? My awakening into rationalism partook of just that tragic element. I’ve had my bereavements, my trials, as every man or woman of my age has had them. But religion had softened them so! To find its consolation crumble into ashes, and to face the sternness of a new creed (dignified and honorable, if one pleases, but perfectly comfortless) dizzied and dismayed me.” Here the speaker broke off, with a faint laugh of sudden embarrassment. “But what will you think of me for making this confession? It is my way to be expansive with people at a moment’s notice — with people, I mean, who please me as you have done.” She now caught Moncrieffe’s hand and shook it in her own soft and largish one, with an abrupt cordiality. “I can tell you this, with propriety, doctor, can’t I?” she went on. “It would be different if I were not a talkative old woman, prattling to somebody young enough to be her son.”

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As those two words, “her son,” were spoken, Moncrieffe either saw or fancied that he saw a kind of shadow touch her face.

She had forcibly stimulated and attracted him. He returned the pressure of her hand with possh bly more warmth than he was aware of.

‘ ‘ My dear Mrs. Thirlwall, ’ ’ he said. ‘ 4 1 can feel for you and with you more deeply than at first thought you might guess. What you say only reconvinces me of the truth that religion was made for sorrow.”

“Yes! Happiness does not need it,” she murmured. “It is a star, a pilot star, and darkness first gave it birth.”

“And in that pilotage you have now no trust?”

“None! But I once had, as I have told you, and the trust was inestimably sweet!” She paused, and a fresh ardor, if it were not too melancholy to be named so, filled her gaze. “I sometimes think myself the strangest product — a sort of end-of-the-century anomaly. I have actually found myself praying that I might once again pray!”

“You mean — ?”

“Oh, with the old lovely, self-surrendering impulse! Consistent infidels would have none of me, I am sure, and the authentic Christians would hold me in meek discountenance.”

“Authentic Christians?” repeated Moncrieffe, with a bitter inflection. “How few of them are ever met!”

“I know one — my niece, Eloise.”

He gave a slight start. “You’re not sympathetic, then?”

“Perfectly. I revere her belief. It almost makes a new religion for myself. I watch it as if it were some structure with spires and turrets too ethereal for the rough storms it must confront. And yet it is marvelously firm. That comforts me — I mean for the dear girl’s own sake, in the years when I am gone. But all this time I have perhaps been dealing rude shocks to your orthodoxy.”

“Mine?” He spoke almost absently. He was thinking of Eloise Thirlwall in this new and gracious light with which a few enthusiastic words had caressingly clothed her. “ Mine ? ” he again repeated. “Ah, my dear lady, I’m afraid I’ve neither orthodoxy nor heresy. I’ve fallen — ’ ’ He stopped dead short, and seemed to question his own mind for a second. “I’ve fallen,” he soon resumed, “into what I fear you would term an apathetic mental habit. Yet it is not apathetic ; it is only dispassionately reflective. Perhaps I too am an end-of-the-century anomaly.”

“You are — indifferent, then?”

“I suppose I am critical,” his grave voice loitered. “Or why not call it impersonal? There is a line somewhere in Tennyscn,

“ ‘Holding no creed, yet contemplating all.’

Possibly that just expresses me. I — ”

But here his face clouded solicitously, and he rested a hand on the arm of his patient.

“ Would it not be best,” he said, “for you to

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let yourself drop away, easily and peacefully, into a long, refreshing sleep?”