'You do love me still a little, Basil, don't you?'
'My darling, you know I do.'
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She burst into tears, but they were tears of joy, for she thought, poor thing! that there ended their troubles. The future would be brighter and quite different.
6
PART of Frank's work as assistant-physician was to make post-mortem examinations of patients who died in the hospital, and in the performance of this duty, some time after Easter, he contracted a septic inflammation of the throat. Characteristically making nothing of it till quite seriously ill, he was at length taken to St Luke's in a high fever, delirious, and there for more than a week remained in a somewhat dangerous condition. For a fortnight more he found himself so languid that, though with vexation rebelling against his weakness, he was obliged to keep his bed; but finally convalescent, he arranged to go for a little to Ferne, near Tercanbury, where his father had a large general practice; then he meant to stay at Jeyston in Dorsetshire, where the Castillyons were giving a small house-party for Whitsun. Nor was there much inconvenience in his taking then a needed holiday, for the absence during August and September of the physician whose place in the wards he must fill would keep him in town for the hottest months.
The night before his departure Frank dined with Miss Ley, alone as both preferred, and during the meal, as was their wont, they discussed the weather and the crops. Each was sufficiently fond of his own ideas to brook no interruption from the service of food, and chose rather to keep till afterwards any topic that needed free discussion. But when the coffee was brought into the library, Miss Ley being comfortably stretched on a sofa, and Frank, with his legs on an armchair, lit his cigar, they looked at one another with a sigh of relief and a smile of self-satisfaction.
'You are going down to Jeyston, aren't you?' he asked.
'I don't think I can face it. As the time grows nearer, I begin to feel more wretched at the prospect, and I'm convinced I shall have worried myself into a dangerous illness by the appointed day. I don't see why at my age I should deliberately expose myself to the tedium of a house-party. Paul Castillyon has notions of old-fashioned hospitality, and every morning after breakfast asks what you would like to do; (as if any sensible woman knew at that preposterous hour what she wanted to do in the afternoon!) but it's a mere form, because he has already mapped out your day, and you'll find every minute has its fixed entertainment. Then, it bores me to extinction to be affable to people I despise, and polite – Oh, how I hate having to be polite! A visit of two days makes me feel as if I should like to swear like a Billingsgate fishwife, just to relieve the monotony of good manners.'
Frank smiled, and drinking his Benedictine, settled himself still more comfortably in his chair.
'By the way, talking of good manners, did I tell you that just before I grew seedy I went to three dances?'
'I thought you hated them?'
'So I do, but I went with a special object. The chief thing that struck me was the execrable breeding of the people. Supper was to be ready at midnight, and at half-past eleven they began to gather round the closed doors of the supper-room; by twelve there was as large a crowd as at the pit-entrance of a theatre, and when the doors were thrown open they struggled and pushed and fought like wild beasts. I'm sure the humble pittite is never half so violent, and they just flung themselves on the tables like ravening wolves. Now, I should have thought polite persons showed no excessive anxiety to be fed. By Jove! they made a greater clamour than the animals at the Zoo.'
'You're so bourgeois, dear Frank,' smiled Miss Ley. 'Why do you suppose people go to a dance, if not to have a good square meal for nothing? But that was surely not your object.'
'No; I went because I'd made up my mind to marry.'
'Good heavens!'
'Having arrived at the theoretical conclusion that marriage is desirable, I determined to go to three dances to see whether I could find anyone with whom it was possible, without absolute distaste, to contemplate passing the rest of my days. I danced and sat out with seventy-five different persons, Miss Ley, ranging in age from seventeen to forty-two, and I can honestly say I've never been so hideously bored in my life. It's no good; I'm doomed to a career of single blessedness. I didn't think I should fall desperately in love on the spot, but it seemed possible that one of those five-and-seventy blooming maidens would excite in me some faint thrill: not one disturbed my equilibrium for a single moment. Besides, they were mostly phthisical or anaemic or ill-developed; I hardly saw one who appeared capable of bearing healthy children.'
For a moment they were silent, while Miss Ley, not without amusement, pondered over Frank's fantastic scheme for finding a wife.
'And what are you going to do now?' she asked.
'Shall I tell you?' He put aside the light manner which prevented one from seeing how much of what he said was seriously meant, and how much deliberate nonsense, and leaned forwards, his square strong chin on his hand, looking at Miss Ley with steady gaze. 'I think I'm going to chuck everything.'
'What on earth d'you mean?'
'I've been thinking of it more or less for some months, and during this last fortnight in bed I've put two and two together. I'm going home partly to sound my people. You know my father has toiled year after year, saving every penny he could, so that I might have the best possible medical education, and take at once to consulting work without any anxiety about my bread-and-butter. He knew it entailed earning very little for a long time, but he was determined to give me a chance; it's a poorish practice round Ferne, and he's never had a holiday for thirty years. I want to find out if he could bear it if I told him I intend to abandon my profession.'
'But, my dear boy, d'you realize that you wish to give up a very brilliant career?' exclaimed Miss Ley in some consternation.
'I've considered it pretty carefully. I suppose no one of my years in the medical has quite such a brilliant chance as I. Luck has been on my side throughout. I fell into the post of resident at St Luke's by the death of the man above me, and at the end of my time got the assistant-physicianship at a very early age. I have friends and connections in the world of fashion, so that I shall soon have a rich and important practice. In due course, I dare say, if I stick to it, I may earn ten or fifteen thousand a year, be appointed a royal physician, and eventually be baroneted; and then I shall die, and be buried, and leave rather a large fortune. That is the career that awaits me: I can see myself in the future portly and self-complacent, rather bald, with the large watch-chain, the well-cut frock-coat, and the suave manner of the modish specialist; I shall be proud of my horses, and fond of giving anecdotes about the royal personages I treat for over-eating.'
He paused, looking straight in front of him at this imaginary Sir Francis Hurrell who strutted pompously, sleek and prosperous, under a load of honours. Miss Ley, deeply interested in all stirrings of the soul, observed keenly his look of scorn.
'But it seems to me at the end of it I may look back, intensely bored with my success, and say to myself that, after all, I haven't really lived a single day. I'm thirty now, and my youth is beginning to slip away – callow students in their first year think I'm quite middle-aged – and I haven't lived yet; I've only had time to work, and by Jove! I have worked – like the very devil. When my fellow-students spent their nights in revelry, at music-halls, kicking up a row and getting drunk, or making love to pretty wantons, when they played poker into the small hours of the morning, reckless and light of heart, I sat working, working, working. Now, for the most part, they've settled down as sober, tedious general practitioners, eminently worthy members of society, and respectably married; and a fool would say I have my reward because I'm successful and somewhat distinguished, while they for past dissipation must pay to their life's end with the stupidest mediocrity. But sometimes their nerves must tingle when they look back on those good days of high spirits and freedom; I have nothing to look back on but the steady acquirement of knowledge. Oh, how mu
ch wiser I should have been to go to the deuce with them! But I was just a virtuous prig. I've worked too much, I've been altogether too exemplary, and now my youth is going, and I've known none of its follies; my blood burns for the hot, mad riot of the devil-may-cares. And this medical life isn't as I thought once, broad and catholic; it's warped and very narrow. We only see one side of things; to us the world is a vast hospital of sick people, and we come to look upon mankind from the exclusive standpoint of disease; but the wise man occupies himself, not with death, but with life – not with illness, but with radiant health. Disease is only an accident; and how can we lead natural lives when we deal entirely with the abnormal? I feel I never want to see sick persons again; I can't help it, they horrify and disgust me. I thought I'd busy myself with science, but that, too, seems dead to me and irksome; it wants men of different temper from mine to be scientists. There are plenty to whom the world and its glories are nothing, but I have passions – hot, burning passions; my senses are all alert, and I want to live. I wish life were some rich fruit, that I could take it in my hands and tear it apart, and eat it piece by piece. How can you expect me to sit down at my microscope hour after hour when the blood is racing through my veins and my muscles are throbbing for sheer manual labour!'
In his excitement he jumped up, and walked up and down, blowing out the smoke furiously in white clouds. The old fable of the ant and the grasshopper came to Miss Ley's mind, and she reflected that so at the approach of autumn might have reasoned the ant when she contemplated her store of food laboriously collected; perhaps she, too, bitterly envied the grasshopper who had spent the glorious days in idle singing, and in her heart, notwithstanding an empty larder and the cold winter to come, felt that the careless songster had made a better use than she of the summer-time.
'Do you think you'll have the same ideas after a fortnight in the country has brought you back again your full health?' asked Miss Ley meditatively.
She was astonished at the effect of this question, for he turned on her with an anger which she had never seen in him before.
'D'you think I'm an absolute fool, Miss Ley?' he cried. 'D'you think these are mere idle womanish fancies? I've been thinking of this for months, and my illness has left my brain clearer than ever it was. We're all tied to the wheel, and when one of us tries to escape the rest do all they can by jibes and sneers to hold him back.'
'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, my son,' smiled Miss Ley indulgently. 'You know I have a certain discreet affection for you.'
'I beg your pardon; I didn't mean to be so violent,' he answered, quickly penitent. 'But I feel as though chains were eating into my flesh, and I want to get free.'
'I should have thought London offered a fairly spirited and various life.'
'London doesn't offer life at all – it offers culture. Oh, they bore me to extinction, the people I go and see, all talking of the same things and so self-satisfied in their narrow outlook! Just think what culture is. It means that you go to first-nights at the theatre and to private views at the Academy; you rave over Eleonora Duse and read the Saturday Review; you make a point of wading through the latest novel talked of in Paris, discuss glibly the books that come out here, and occasionally meet at tea the people who write them. You travel along the beaten track in Italy and France, much despising the Cook's Tourist, but really no better than a vulgar tripper yourself; you're very fond of airing your bad French, and you have a smattering of worse Italian. Occasionally, to impress the vulgar, you consent to be bored to death by a symphony concert, you go into fashionable raptures over Wagner, collect paste buckles, and take in the Morning Post.'
'Spare me,' cried Miss Ley, throwing up her hands; 'I recognize a particularly unflattering portrait of myself.'
Frank in his vehemence paid no attention to her remark.
'And the dull stupidity of it just chokes me, so that I pant for the fresh air. I want to sail in ships, and battle with hurricane and storm; I want to go far away among men who actually do things – to new countries, Canada and Australia, where they fight hand to hand with primitive nature; I desire the seething scum of great cities, where there's no confounded policeman to keep you virtuous. My whole soul aches for the East, for Egypt and India and Japan; I want to know the corrupt, eager life of the Malays and the violent adventures of South Sea Islands. I may not get an answer to the riddle of life out in the open world, but I shall get nearer to it than here; I can get nothing more out of books and civilization. I want to see life and death, and the passions, the virtues and vices, of men face to face, uncovered; I want really to live my life while there's time; I want to have something to look back on in my old age.'
'That's all very fine and romantic,' replied Miss Ley; 'but where are you going to get the money?'
'I don't want money; I'll earn my living as I go. I'll ship before the mast to America, and there I'll work as a navvy; and I'll tramp from end to end picking up odd jobs. And when I know that, I'll get another ship to take me East. I'm sick to death of your upper classes; I want to work with those who really know life at the bottom, with its hunger and toil, its primitive love and hate.'
'That's nonsense, my dear. Poverty is a more exacting master than all the conventions of society put together. I dare say one voyage before the mast would be interesting, and would certainly teach you the advantage of ample means and the comfort of useless luxuries. But remember that as soon as anything becomes a routine it ceases to be true.'
'That sounds epigrammatic,' interrupted Frank; 'but does it by any chance mean something?'
Miss Ley, uncertain that it did, went on quickly.
'I assure you that no one can be free who isn't delivered from the care of getting money. For myself, I have always thought the philosophers talk sheer silliness when they praise the freedom of a man content with little; a man with no ear for music will willingly go without his stall at the opera, but an obtuse-ness of sense is no proof of wisdom. No one can really be free, no one can even begin to get the full value out of life, on a smaller income than five hundred a year.'
Frank looked straight in front of him, without answering; his quick mind still thrilled with the prospect his imagination offered. Miss Ley continued reflectively.
'On the other hand, it seems to me proof of great dullness that a person of ample fortune should devote himself to any lucrative occupation, and I have no patience with the man of means who from sheer habit or in poverty of spirit pursues a monotonous and sordid industry. I know a millionaire who makes his only son work ten hours a day in a bank, and thinks he gives him a useful training! Now, I would have the rich leave the earning of money to such as must make their daily bread, and devote their own energies exclusively to the spending thereof. I should like a class, leisured and opulent, with time for the arts and graces, in which urbanity and wit and comeliness of manner might be cultivated; I would have it attempt curious experiments in life, and like the Court of Louis XV, offer a frivolous, amiable contrast to the dark strenuous-ness in which of necessity the world in general must exist. A deal of nonsense is now talked about the dignity of labour, but I wonder that preachers and suchlike have ever had the temerity to tell a factory hand there is anything exalting in his dreary toil. I suppose it is praised usually because it takes men out of themselves, and the stupid are bored when they have nothing to do. Work with the vast majority is merely a refuge from ennui, but surely it is absurd to call it noble on that account; on the contrary, there is probably far more nobility in indolence, which requires many talents, much cultivation, and a mind of singular and delicate constitution.'
'And now for the application of your harangue,' suggested Frank, smiling.
'It's merely that in this short life of ours it's never worth while to be bored. I set no such value on regular occupations as to blame you if you abandon your profession; and for my part neither honours nor wealth would tempt me to a career wherein I was imprisoned by any kind of habit, tie, or routine. There's no reason why you should cont
inue to be a doctor if it irks you, but for Heaven's sake don't on that account despise the fleshpots of Egypt. Now, I have a proposition to make. As you know, my income is much greater than my needs, and if you will graciously accept it, I shall be charmed to settle upon you five hundred a year – the smallest sum, as I have often told you, on which may be played the entertaining game of life.'
He shook his head, smiling.
'It's awfully good of you, but I couldn't take it. If I can bring my father round, I shall go to Liverpool, and get on a ship as ordinary seaman. I don't want anybody's money.'
Miss Ley sighed.
'Men are so incurably romantic'
Frank bade her good night, and next day went to Ferne. But Miss Ley considered what he had said, and the morning after solemnly visited her solicitor at Lancaster Gate – an elderly, rubicund gentleman with mutton-chop whiskers.
'I wish to make my will,' she said, 'but I really don't know what to do with this blessed fortune of mine; no one much wants it, and now my brother is dead there's no one I can even annoy by leaving him nothing. By the way, can I during my lifetime settle an annuity on a person against his will?'
'I'm afraid you can't force anyone to take money,' answered the solicitor, with a chuckle.
'How tiresome your laws are!'
'I should have said they applied perfectly, because a man who refuses an income is certainly fit only for a lunatic asylum.'
Beside her house in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley had somewhat less than four thousand a year, and the necessity of leaving it in a more or less rational fashion had of late much tormented her.
'I think,' she said, after a moment's thought, 'I'll just divide it into three – one part to my niece, Bertha Craddock, who won't in the least know what to do with it; one part to my nephew, Gerald Vaudrey, who's a scamp and will squander it in riotous living; and one part to my friend, Francis Hurrell.'