“My poor Syl,” he said, “I have to rob you—for your own happiness.”
And at that moment, just outside the door stood Sylvester and Ella bidding each other good-night. The full glow of the hall lamp shone down upon her radiant young face, as he held both her hands in his, and made a glinting aureole of her hair. Suddenly he laughed awkwardly and kissed her; with a half-mirthful, half-reproachful “Oh, you shouldn't!” she snatched away her hands and ran up the stairs. He stood and watched the last gleam of her skirts disappear and then entered his father's room.
Matthew closed his ledger and looked up with one of his rare smiles.
“Going, Syl?”
“Yes. I 've been sent for, as usual. It's all very well for me to work at this ungodly hour. I'm a medical man, and I'm young. But I don't like to see you at it. You 're overdoing it, father.”
“Nonsense!” replied Matthew, cheerily; “I'm as strong as a horse and younger than you are. Besides, I was only amusing myself, like the king in his counting-house, counting out my money.”
He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and stretched himself contentedly in his chair.
“Usher kept me a long time,” he continued, “telling me one of his interminable yarns—a dormir debout, as the French say.”
“I can't think how you stand him,” said Sylvester.
“Oh, you can stand a devil of a lot if you try,” said the old man, laughing. “Have some whisky before you go?”
But Syl pleaded urgency, went out for hat and coat, and returned ready for departure. His father accompanied him to the front door.
“By the way, Syl,” he said, “do you really think so hardly of the woman who sins, or was it only that Usher made you contradictious?”
“I think a woman must be pure and chaste. If she falls, she falls for ever. Why do you ask?”
“I only wanted to know if you were genuine.”
“It is the most sacred of my convictions,” said Sylvester, gravely.
The two men shook hands, and the door closed behind Sylvester. The father listened to his quick footsteps crunching the gravel until the sound died away. Then he turned and sighed.
“My poor lad, God help you,” he said.
CHAPTER III—SYLVESTER CONSULTS THE STARS
Sylvester walked home from his case, along the undulating high-road patched with moonlight and shadow, swinging his stick. The night was crisp with a touch of frost, and the air smelt sweet. Now and then a workingman regaining his home after town convivialities, passed him by with a salute to which he replied with a cheerier good-night than usual. One he stopped, and discoursed with him at length on family ailments, much to the man's surprise; for Sylvester was renowned far and wide for his shy silence as well as for his skill. Once he began to whistle an air, wofully out of tune, and then broke into a short laugh.
Yes, Ella was right. It was good to be alive, to feel heart and brain and body on the alert, responsive to outer things. But whence had come the change? It was years since he had felt so young and conscious of power. Was it the touch of a girl's fresh cheek against his lips? He did not know. The feelings that had prompted the act were too new, too undefined, for immediate analysis. The spell of the benumbing heartache that had held him nerveless for four long years seemed to be broken, and he was a man again.
He looked upward at the stars in the simple fancy that the dear dead wife, the Constance he had worshipped so passionately, was gazing down upon him with happy consent in her pure eyes. The love he had given her was immortal, and she knew it. It was no disloyalty to love another sweet woman on earth and to put his own broken life and his motherless child into her keeping. … Yet after a few moments he lowered his gaze for a while and walked on, his heart filled with the old love.
He was one of those reserved natures, capable of intense feeling, yet incapable of outward expression, who make for themselves few friends and are often condemned to loneliness of soul. Born with greater cravings for sympathy than most men, they have less power to demand it. This is too busy a world for us to stop to wonder whether a man wants what he does not ask for; too many are clamouring loudly for what we cannot give. So the unfortunates are passed by unheeded, each working out in his heart his little tragedy of unfulfilled longings. But when a finer spirit comes and divines their needs, then their hearts leap towards it and cling to it with a great unexpressed passion of gratitude. Such had been the beginning of Sylvesters love for his wife; such that of his dawning love for Ella. Each in her way had comprehended his solitude; unasked in words, but spiritually besought, each had filled it with her influence. He needed the peculiar sympathy that a woman alone can give, her companionship, her practical intellect, to complement his theoretic mind. His nature cried dumbly for a whole-hearted, expansive creature to give objectivity to life. Left to himself, he sank into routine; he lacked the power of bringing colour and harmony into his world. This the woman he loved could do. Once, for a few short years, a woman had changed his universe. Then she had died, and the blackness of night had encompassed him. He had suffered silently, as a strong man suffers, rarely mentioning her name, but eating out his heart in desolation; and then Ella had come. He had known her from early childhood, but had last seen her as the schoolgirl of no account.
Now she had sprung into his horizon, a young and splendid woman of amazing opposites, who compelled attention; and she was the only woman other than Constance who, during all his life, had sought to know him and to act towards him tenderwise. Nevertheless, he could not say as yet that he loved her, in the sweet and common way of love. The old and new hung equipoised on a delicate balance. The vague sense of this, perhaps, was one element in the rare exaltation of his mood.
Another element, no doubt, was the final resolve he had taken that morning, to go to London, whither his ambitions summoned him. He was a specialist of some note in zymotic diseases. His researches had met with a recognition not confined to England. He had felt keenly that he was giving up to the small circle of a country practice what was meant for the general needs of mankind. London was the only place for study and work; for the quick amassing, too, of the small fortune that would free him from the necessity of earning daily bread and would allow him to realise his dreams of a great bacteriological laboratory, where he could devote himself exclusively to independent research.
It was at the urgent entreaty of Constance that he had bought, just before his marriage, the practice at Ayresford. A year's life there had made him regret London. A little later he had spoken of returning. She had thrown her arms about him and implored him by all his love for her to stay. She had a horror of London; why, she could not tell. It was unreasonable, but the fact remained. London would kill her—its gloom, its hardness, its cruelty. It had been the same story whenever he had broached the subject. And then, Dorothy. The child was delicate, would pine away in the reek and fogs of the town. All her woman's armoury of passionate weapons had been employed. And he had yielded, out of his great love. Her death had set him free. But it had taken him four years to realise his freedom. The mere thought had been anguish. Now he could gaze upon the past with calmness and the future with hope. As he walked along, he began to picture the vigorous life before him. He passed from wide conception to trivial details—the fittings of his library, domestic economies. A room for Dorothy—he pulled himself up short. He had arranged to part with her. The prospect brought a pang. His father's comfort in the child, however, was a consolation. He thought of him tenderly—the dear old man, the most generous and unselfish being who had ever blessed the earth. He was a man of deep reverences; his father, his dead mother, and his dead wife were enshrined in his Holy of Holies. Dorothy, then, should remain at Ayresford. Perhaps the separation would not be for long. There was a means of shortening it whose readiness was a great temptation. The vision rose before him of the child's