Dr. Darch's wife; a study

Front matter

A STUDY

Issued Semi-Monthly. Entered at the Post-Office at Mew York as second-class matter.

by

Chapter One 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 neighborhood; 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 general disposition to look kindly upon the handsome 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 stepmother, 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 transformation 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 disappointed. 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 neighborhood, 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, gray-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 t^pe which has a straight, sharply protruding chin, light blue eyes, a white face, and hair of no color in particular. The type generally goes with a sentimental 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 color, and began to stammer.

“Er — er — good game tennis!” he began awkwardly 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.

“/ 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 dryly. “At least — no, I won’t say that. There is no great wisdom in hurrying on the inevitable, 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, somber consideration of the situation.

“Inevitable. Yes. Isn’t it at least as inevitable that I must love her, as that she should let herself 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 to the green slope outside, by way of cutting short a conversation which was embarrassing 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, contrasting 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 lie 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, commonplace 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. Mama only let me come on condition I came home early. I’m supposed to be delicate, you know. It’s the general superstition about people jvho 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 connection 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 stepmother.

“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 embarrassment 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 color 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 gayly :

“Something to say? Something of real importance, do you mean?”

“Well, as tor that, it depends how you look at it. I — I want to ask you if you will be mjr 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 beginning, isn’t it?”

“ Well, do you know, I’m not so sure. 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 upglance 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 scandalize the neighborhood. ”

“Oh, who cares for the neighborhood?”

“You do. A doctor has to.”

“Well, hasn’t the neighborhood 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—”

“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 yoii can get on without me very well, as I expect you will, or if you find someone ‘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 sweetest 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 toward him were, and whether she really experienced something of that stubborn resistance to destiny and himself which he dumbly felt toward destiny and her.

It was impossible to tell. Bad women sometimes 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.

’5

Chapter Two The Fulfillment

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 late father’s will, a month to be spent in traveling 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. Bartholomew 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 recognized 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. door way, 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 unbeGom-

PR' darch’s wife ing 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 noted these details, the girl had glauced 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 blottingpaper; in the restaurant where he lunched; in the club where he passed 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.

DR. DARCH’S W\FE

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 her. 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 returning 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 always goes out at nine o’clock in the morning?”

“Oh, that’s Miss Ritchie. She only has a room on the third floor. Everybody asks who she is. 4 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 who 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 frightened 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 euough 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 says it’s a credit to a girl as nice-looking as that. And on Sunday 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 honor, 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 labored way about the weather, the door was opened softly, and Dr. Darch stopped short in his prophecy that there would be rain in the night.

In the doorway of the shabby basement room the glory of her 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, unconsciously to himself, watched her every movement, or else 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 on waiting upon everybody else at supper; and afterward 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

DR. D ARCHES WIFE tied the old-fashioned, wide strings under her chin, and asked whether any one 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 nor 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’ 11 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 Three 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

M

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.”

*3

“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 clergymaif, 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 astonishment 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 myself,” said Dr. Darch.

There was a sound behind him as of the click of a door-latch. Turning quickly, he was in time to catch a glimpse of Miss Ritchie as she peeped in and then swiftly shut the door and disappeared.

ft

“There, you see she’s back already,” said Mrs. Matthews.

“Why didn’t she come in?” asked the doctor.

“Oh, because you were here,” said the landlady smiling. “She’s always so shy.”

“But I’m not a stranger to her now!”

“Well, anyhow, doctor, shyness in the girls is a fault on the right side, isn’t it?” put in old Matthews from his armchair.

“It may be carried to excess, I think,” said Harry,, who was disappointed at not seeing the girl again.

Nevertheless, this very excess of reserve was an added attraction in the eyes of a man as much in love as Harry by this time was. Every Word and look of the beautiful girl whose face had in the first place attracted him so strongly confirmed the impression her appearance had made upon him.

Used as he was to daily companionship with a girl of sharp tongue and ready wit, the shafts of whose harmless satire were as often aimed at himself as at anybody else, and to daily meetings with the average provincial young lady, who can chatter but can hardly be said to talk, Harry Darch found the society of this fair-faced girl, who smiled more than she spoke, whose every movement was gentle, whose every glance was sympathetic, full of charm and repose.

It seemed to him that he read the charming dependence of a womanly nature in her very attitude as she sat by Mrs. Matthews’ knee; and the contrast between her natural inclinations and the severe isolation into which her position had forced her seemed to him to be full of pathos.

When he had bidden good-night to the landlady and her husband, and gone upstairs to his new quarters on the second floor, old Matthews blinked at his wife with inquiring eyes.

“All that you told him about Miss Ritchie — I never heard it before! Is it true? Did she tell you so?” said he diffidently.

For Mrs. Matthews, being in every sense the head of the household, was not a person whose sayings and doings could be criticised with freedom even by her legal lord and master. And she answered him in tones much less suave than those she had used to her lodgers.