A Simpleton

First of all, I thought I ought to write to his wife. I know where she lives; it is called Kent Villa, Gravesend. But I was afraid; it might kill her: and you are so good and sensible, I thought I had better write to you, and perhaps you could break it to her by degrees, before it gets in all the papers.

I send this from the island, by a small vessel, and paid him ten pounds to take it.

Your affectionate cousin,

TADCASTER.

Words are powerless to describe a blow like this: the amazement, the stupor, the reluctance to believe--the rising, swelling, surging horror.

She sat like a woman of stone, crumpling the letter. "Dead!--dead?"

For a long time this was all her mind could realize--that Christopher Staines was dead. He who had been so full of life and thought and genius, and worthier to live than all the world, was dead; and a million n.o.bodies were still alive, and he was dead.

She lay back on the sofa, and all the power left her limbs. She could not move a hand.

But suddenly she started up; for a n.o.ble instinct told her this blow must not fall on the wife as it had on her, and in her time of peril.

She had her bonnet on in a moment, and for the first time in her life, darted out of the house without her maid. She flew along the streets, scarcely feeling the ground. She got to Dear Street, and obtained Philip Staines's address. She flew to it, and there learned he was down at Kent Villa. Instantly she telegraphed to her maid to come down to her at Gravesend, with things for a short visit, and wait for her at the station; and she went down by train to Gravesend.

Hitherto she had walked on air, driven by one overpowering impulse.

Now, as she sat in the train, she thought a little of herself. What was before her? To break to Mrs. Staines that her husband was dead. To tell her all her misgivings were more than justified. To encounter her cold civility, and let her know, inch by inch, it must be exchanged for curses and tearing of hair; her husband was dead. To tell her this, and in the telling of it, perhaps reveal that it was HER great bereavement, as well as the wife's, for she had a deeper affection for him than she ought.

Well, she trembled like an aspen leaf, trembled like one in an ague, even as she sat. But she persevered.

A n.o.ble woman has her courage; not exactly the same as that which leads forlorn hopes against bastions bristling with rifles and tongued with flames and thunderbolts; yet not inferior to it.

Tadcaster, small and dull, but n.o.ble by birth and instinct, had seen the right thing for her to do; and she, of the same breed, and n.o.bler far, had seen it too; and the great soul steadily drew the recoiling heart and quivering body to this fiery trial, this act of humanity--to do which was terrible and hard, to

She reached Gravesend, and drove in a fly to Kent Villa.

The door was opened by a maid.

"Is Mrs. Staines at home?"

"Yes, ma'am, she is at HOME: but--"

"Can I see her?"

"Why, no, ma'am, not at present."

"But I must see her. I am an old friend. Please take her my card. Lady Cicely Treherne."

The maid hesitated, and looked confused. "Perhaps you don't know, ma'am.

Mrs. Staines, she is--the doctor have been in the house all day."

"Ah, the doctor! I believe Dr. Philip Staines is here."

"Why, that IS the doctor, ma'am. Yes, he is here."

"Then, pray let me see him--or no; I had better see Mr. Lusignan."

"Master have gone out for the day, ma'am; but if you'll step in the drawing-room, I'll tell the doctor."

Lady Cicely waited in the drawing-room some time, heart-sick and trembling.

At last Dr. Philip came in, with her card in his hand, looking evidently a little cross at the interruption. "Now, madam, please tell me, as briefly as you can, what I can do for you."

"Are you Dr. Philip Staines?"

"I am, madam, at your service--for five minutes. Can't quit my patient long, just now."

"Oh, sir, thank G.o.d I have found you. Be prepared for ill news--sad news--a terrible calamity--I can't speak. Read that, sir." And she handed him Tadcaster's note.

He took it, and read it.

He buried his face in his hands. "Christopher! my poor, poor boy!"

he groaned. But suddenly a terrible anxiety seized him. "Who knows of this?" he asked.

"Only myself, sir. I came here to break it to her."

"You are a good, kind lady, for being so thoughtful. Madam, if this gets to my niece's ears, it will kill her, as sure as we stand here."

"Then let us keep it from her. Command me, sir. I will do anything. I will live here--take the letters in--the journals--anything."

"No, no; you have done your part, and G.o.d bless you for it. You must not stay here. Your ladys.h.i.+p's very presence, and your agitation, would set the servants talking, and some idiot-fiend among them babbling--there is nothing so terrible as a fool."

"May I remain at the inn, sir; just one night?"

"Oh yes, I wish you would; and I will run over, if all is well with her--well with her? poor unfortunate girl!"

Lady Cicely saw he wished her gone, and she went directly.

At nine o'clock that same evening, as she lay on a sofa in the best room of the inn, attended by her maid, Dr. Philip Staines came to her. She dismissed her maid.

Dr. Philip was too old, in other words, had lost too many friends, to be really broken down by bereavement; but he was strangely subdued. The loud tones were out of him, and the loud laugh, and even the keen sneer.

Yet he was the same man; but with a gentler surface; and this was not without its pathos.

"Well, madam," said he gravely and quietly. "It is as it always has been. 'As is the race of leaves, so that of man.' When one falls, another comes. Here's a little Christopher come, in place of him that is gone: a brave, beautiful boy, ma'am; the finest but one I ever brought into the world. He is come to take his father's place in our hearts--I see you valued his poor father, ma'am--but he comes too late for me. At your age, ma'am, friends.h.i.+ps come naturally; they spring like loves in the soft heart of youth: at seventy, the gate is not so open; the soil is more sterile. I shall never care for another Christopher; never see another grow to man's estate."

"The mother, sir," sobbed Lady Cicely; "the poor mother?"

"Like them all--poor creature: in heaven, madam; in heaven. New life!

new existence! a new character. All the pride, glory, rapture, and amazement of maternity--thanks to her ignorance, which we must prolong, or I would not give one straw for her life, or her son's. I shall never leave the house till she does know it, and come when it may, I dread the hour. She is not framed by nature to bear so deadly a shock."

"Her father, sir. Would he not be the best person to break it to her? He was out to-day."

"Her father, ma'am? I shall get no help from him. He is one of those soft, gentle creatures, that come into the world with what your canting fools call a mission; and his mission is to take care of number one.

Not dishonestly, mind you, nor violently, nor rudely, but doucely and calmly. The care a brute like me takes of his vitals, that care Lusignan takes of his outer cuticle. His number one is a sensitive plant. No scenes, no noise; nothing painful--by-the-by, the little creature that writes in the papers, and calls calamities PAINFUL, is of Lusignan's breed. Out to-day! of course he was out, ma'am: he knew from me his daughter would be in peril all day, so he visited a friend. He knew his own tenderness, and evaded paternal sensibilities: a self-defender. I count on no help from that charming man."