Читать книгу The Insane Root - Rosa Praed - Страница 5

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The girl sat down again resignedly, pale now, not greatly reassured, still, obliged to confess that there was reason in Caspar Ruel's words, and partly ashamed of what she thought he must have fancied her own grasping attitude.

'Forgive me,' she murmured, and he gave her a long, ardent look, kissed her hand, and went out through the folding doors, just as the curtains separating this room from the Pacha's sanctum were drawn aside by the nurse for Doctor Marillier to pass through.

Rachel rose at his entrance and advanced. As she faced him, her eyes eager, her whole countenance moved and softened by the emotion she had been experiencing, Marillier was almost taken aback by her extraordinary beauty. He stood awkwardly, the hunch of his shoulders accentuated by his hesitation, his strong face reflecting both sides of his nature, the human and the professional. He had been deeply interested in the Pacha's case. His brain was working out theories; he was weighing the forces of disease and life with which he had to deal. For the moment he had forgotten everything else, and the sight of Rachel, setting into vibration chords in him, of which he had hardly suspected the existence, was unexpectedly disturbing.

'Doctor Marillier, she said, with her air of timid self-possession--of withdrawal into her own sanctuary which was so marked when she spoke to a stranger, 'Ruel Bey said you would be kind enough to tell me exactly what you think of the Pacha's condition.'

She held out her hand, not waiting for him to answer. 'Though I did not speak to you, I think we have seen each other before,' she went on. 'I am Rachel Isàdas; of course you know.'

'Yes,' he replied, it seemed to him mechanically. 'Of course I know.'

'And you were at the Pacha's last ball?' she said.

'Yes.'

He remembered her well, and the indefinable attraction she had even then had for him--the curious pity that he had felt, and his vague wonder about her; for it had struck him as strange that she should be at once, so near to the Pacha and yet outside the state and ceremony with which on this occasion he was surrounded. There were no other ladies belonging to the Abarian Embassy, for none of the secretaries were married. She was a comparatively new arrival on the scene, it being her first season in London, thus the fact of her isolation, so apparent to him, might not have impressed the casual crowd. He recalled the scene--the great gilded ballroom, with mirrors at intervals along the walls, reflecting back the lights and diamonds, the forms and faces, all the throng of beautifully-dressed women and of men in uniform with ribbons and orders on their breasts. The Pacha had stood just outside the doorway, above which was a great emblazoned shield with the Star of the Empire and a motto in the pictorial Abarian character, receiving his guests as they came and passed through to the ballroom. The Pacha's breast glittered with many decorations; in truth he was the most picturesque and striking figure present. It seemed almost by design that he was so stationed as not to admit of another person between himself and the door, and the people entering, might not at first have noticed the tall slender girl a pace within, who stood behind the Pacha, and who looked, as Marillier had put it to himself, like an angel dropped down from heaven.

An angel not entirely at ease, however, but bewildered by the situation in which she found herself, and unconsciously realising that, though making a tiny part of this splendid world of fashion and diplomacy, she nevertheless did not belong to it. His physician's eye told him that she was nervous, and that it was by the greatest effort that she maintained her calm dignity. For she was very dignified. Her quietude, her simplicity, the slight droop of her head, and her involuntary shrinking from observation which, erectly though she held herself, was so evident to him, only enhanced the dignity. How beautiful she looked! Her brown eyes shone like stars. Her clear pale cheeks, slightly tinged with pink, reminded him of the inner petals of a certain white rose, her long slender neck of the white calyx of a tropical flower, and the sensitive lips with their pathetic droop, a thread of scarlet, were, in the phrase used by Ruel Bey, as the lips of that fairest among women in the Song of Solomon. She had worn a white satin gown with soft fillings and draperies, and some lilies at her breast. She carried a bouquet of the same Eucharis lilies, and round her neck was a single string of pearls, her only ornament. She had no orders nor ribbons, and her little head bore neither stars nor tiara. So she stood, an exquisite and, to him, pathetically forlorn figure, and no one seemed to remark the pathos and forlornness of her except himself.

Once or twice, the Pacha would turn and informally introduce her to some lady whom he greeted, but she was not presented to the greatest of the royal ladies whom the Pacha had descended the stairs to welcome, and it had been quite clear that, officially speaking, she was not recognised. Doctor Marillier observed that one great lady, a lesser light among the royal people, looked at the girl with a motherly curiosity and kindliness, and made an occasion to notice her. That royal lady was ever afterwards endeared to the heart of the doctor, and he had been pleased with the grace of Mademoiselle Isàdas's curtsey, and the soft shy lighting up of her pensive face. Later on, when the dancing began, a bevy of would-be partners crowded round the girl, and after that, he had only seen her as she whirled round in a waltz or played her part in the cotillon led by Ruel Bey. He had noticed his cousin's admiration, and a word or two that he had by chance overheard pass between them, made him feel sure that Ruel Bey loved the Ambassador's niece and desired to marry her.

He was hardly aware, as his memory went back to this scene and the thoughts it had evoked, how awkwardly he stood now after that monosyllabic 'Yes,' and how long the girl, too shy to ask him more directly his professional opinion, waited for him to deliver it.

At last she said, seating herself again in the big gilded chair, and motioning him to a settee opposite,--

'Doctor Marillier, you will tell me how you find the Pacha--what you really think of his state?'

'That is a little difficult for me to put into clear words, Mademoiselle Isàdas.'

'Perhaps,' she went on, 'you are afraid; you think it may be too great a shock for me to hear the truth. But I would always wish to know the truth about a thing that concerns me deeply, even though it might be a shock.'

He remembered those words of hers long afterwards. At the time, he was gauging her with those keen doctor's eyes, weighing in his mind, her capacity to bear the shock of a cruel truth, and he came to the conclusion that her words were literally true, and that she was one of those women with whom a doctor may be candid.

'I ought perhaps to tell you,' she said, mistaking the motive of his slight hesitation, that if--if you thought ill of his condition, the shock would not be so great to me as though I had lived always with the Pacha, as though I were his daughter, or had been his companion for many years.

I have been just a few months at the Embassy, and before that, I can only remember seeing the Pacha three or four times when he came to my convent. So we have not been very close to each other. I don't want you to think,' she added hastily, 'that I am not sincerely attached--that I do not appreciate the Pacha's great goodness to me. He is all I have in the world, and if Excellence were taken away, I should be lonely indeed.'

The little note of emotion in her voice touched him inexpressibly. She must in very truth be lonely if the loss of that cynical, selfish old reprobate would be the loss of her only natural protector.

'I trust, Mademoiselle Isàdas, that his Excellency will be spared to you for a little while yet, if I am correct in my diagnosis, and am permitted to carry out the treatment I propose. In fact I may say that I am sure his life can be saved--for the present.'

'Can anyone be sure?' she said wistfully, struck by the masterfulness of the man's tone. 'Only God can be sure. But oh! Doctor Marillier, I am very thankful for what you say, and I believe it. You make rue feel that you would not speak like this unless you were confident of your power.'

'I am confident,' he replied. 'I will tell you why. You say that no one can be sure but God; and it may be that we doctors have a different conception of the Force which made life and ordained death than that which has been taught you in your convent. Perhaps it is that we have no conception at all; that we are agnostics in the true sense of the word; that ecclesiasticism is to us so much mummery, and creeds and dogmas all equally meaningless and unsatisfactory. But there is a Force we cannot deny, a Something outside ourselves which rules life and decrees death, and it is only when, in some dim manner which I can't explain even to myself, I come into relation with this Force--only then that I can be sure. That does not always happen; it happens rarely. But when I have made my diagnosis and am sure, not the whole College of Physicians against me would shake my opinion. I can cure the Pasha. For how long I will not say. He is a very old man, and already his life has reached the ordinary span.'

Her look of wistful wonder deepened to one of childlike trust.

'You are strong,' she said. 'I like a man to be strong; and there are so few--so very few men upon whom one can lean.'

'You might lean upon me,' said Doctor Marillier, 'and I should not fail you. Of that, too, I am sure.'

He bent a little forward, and as he uttered the words, put his two hands down flat upon his knees as though to emphasise the declaration. She could not help noticing his hands.

'You are strong,' she repeated; 'your hands are strong.'

'They ought to be,' he answered; 'they have performed many difficult operations.' And then he was inwardly jarred by his own professional plain-speaking. This was not the way to talk to a young delicate girl. What should she know about operations? His bluntness did not appear to have struck her. She was interested, and her eyes remained still fixed upon those firm deft hands.

'If I were very ill, and needed to have an operation performed that would cure or kill me, I would ask you to do it,' she said; 'that is, if you said to me, I know--'

'If I said, "I know that I can cure you"!' he returned. 'Oh, then it would be easy to trust me, for doctors do not say "I know" about operations unless they feel sure. But if I said, "I do not know, and you must run the risk of life or death," what then?'

'I would trust you still,' she replied. 'And it might be,' she added thoughtfully, 'that the trusting would not be so difficult, nor the uncertainty so hard to bear. I do not think that life is very good, and sometimes one might almost prefer death if it were God's will. Then one would be sure of being happy.'

'That is what your Church teaches you. You are a Catholic, of course? So am--so was I. But how about Purgatory?'

'Perhaps,' she said, 'to some, life is the worst Purgatory God will call upon us to endure.'

He gave a queer little laugh.

'That's true. I wouldn't ask a worse Purgatory for my bitterest enemy, supposing I had one, than certain portions out of my own life. I, too, have known what loneliness is, Mademoiselle Isàdas... But this is not business, and I don't know why I'm talking to you in such an odd way. You must think me a queer sort of doctor. Yet I'm very glad we've talked so, for it makes me understand you better. Your saying that you would trust me if I said "I know" in the case of an operation, or, what is better, if I said "I don't know," makes it much easier for me to tell you that the Pacha's life depends upon an operation that I wish to perform and which I know will succeed. Perhaps I should say that it depends even more upon an after treatment which I fancy few English physicians would endorse...But there's no use in talking technicalities to young ladies--they wouldn't understand them.'

'I don't want technicalities. You are quite right, I shouldn't understand them,' she said, with her sweet girl's laugh, that sounded to the doctor like distant bells over snow. 'I trust you absolutely, Doctor Marillier, and thank you--thank you. You have lifted a weight from my heart. Now I can be almost happy again.'

'Almost happy!' The sense of pathos in connection with her, returned to him with that 'almost.' He got up; she rose too, and the girl and this man stood facing each other as the other man and the girl had faced each other. Ruel Bey had towered a head and a half above this tiny head upon its calyx throat. As Doctor Marillier stood erect, with frame squared, his strong, determined face was, if anything, on a lower level than her own. The contrast came upon her with an odd impressiveness. How was it possible that the two men were so nearly related? In temperament, in character, no two beings could be more apart. And each man in his way had a forcefulness which she could not withstand. She felt, in a frightened manner, that Ruel Bey would exercise complete control over one side of her nature, and that side, the one she least comprehended. Another side of her would, she knew, be affected to an enormous degree by Doctor Marillier, and this side she was not afraid of, though it, too, she did not quite understand.

He took her hand in his. The little sensitive hand, which seemed to him like a bundle of nerves tied together, thrilled at his touch--thrilled for a second only, then quieted under the consciousness of mastery and of restfulness. His medical knowledge told him that he could healthfully magnetise the girl. Certain nerves in her, responded sympathetically to a power which he was aware he could wield. That power was in himself and yet was outside himself. He associated it in some way with the Force of which he had spoken, and which was his synonym for her conception of God. Doctor Marillier did not believe in the Churches' God, but he believed in a Force, just as he believed in the law of gravitation, in the law of chemical affinities, of mental affinities, such as were exemplified in telepathy and hypnotism, in the law of evolution, in certain other even more subtle, more occult laws, that his medical experience had compelled him to recognise--mysteries of the universe only to be attributed to the action of a First Cause, expressed by words and symbols that were but words and symbols, and after all, never really touched the heart of the mystery. These were realities to be admitted, but not to be explained as either spiritual or material--though his tendency, as that of most scientists, was to the explanation that all is matter in a more or less rarefied form. Rachel Isàdas herself was sensible of the soothing effect of his touch. She withdrew her hand slowly. 'You feel strong,' she said. 'Yes, I trust you.'

'Trust me always. Trust me in the matter of this operation upon the Pacha. There you are safe. I can be trusted in the most elementary sense because I know. But trust me, too, where I don't know.'

'Doctor Marillier, that seems a strange thing for you to say to me on the first occasion of our speaking together, and yet, though it is strange, it is natural.'

'It is natural,' he answered, 'because it comes out of that faculty I possess of seeing with my inner eyes things beyond. Don't ask me to explain the faculty. That way madness lies. I do not attempt to reason about it, even to myself. But it is a fact--one that I have tested sufficiently to have scientific evidence of its truth. It is natural for me to bid you trust me, because this inward vision foreshadows a time when you will be required to trust me, and when perhaps--I can't say--but when probably I shall not know. Of this, however, I am certain--in the end, your trust will be justified.'

A spirit seemed to him to be looking out of her eyes.

'I, too,' she answered, 'have something--I cannot call it inward vision. I can only call it instinct. Something which draws or repels me, encourages or warns. I can rely upon it almost always.'

'Almost always!' he repeated. 'There should be no "almost" There is no "almost" with me. If I am standing by the bedside of a patient doomed by the Faculty to death, and that inward vision shows him to me safe and sound--there is no question, it is so. If, on the other hand, I see Death at the back of even a trifling ailment, that also is sure, and I do not question, because I know that to Death my science must bow.'

'You speak of patients--they are not a part of you. I have heard before, that a doctor is only unerring when he does not love. But if you loved--then could you be sure?'

Marillier was silent. If there were a spirit in the girl's eyes, one seemed to be peering forth into futurity from his. Their grey had deepened to the colour of a mountain-locked pool.

'Could I be sure? I cannot tell you, for till this day of my life I have never lived beyond the restrictions of reason and science. My interests have been centred in my profession, Mademoiselle Isàdas, for circumstances have limited them. I have never known love.'

'Till this day of my life.' He had uttered the words deliberately, and while he uttered them, the inward monitor seemed to be pointing out to him their immense significance. To Rachel Isàdas they had no such significance. They seemed the ordinary expression of a cool-headed, steel--hearted scientist, who had not had time for the softer emotions. She knew he was unmarried; she fancied that Ruel Bey had told her that he was himself Marillier's nearest relation. The remembrance spurred her speech.

'But you have--is it true that you are the only one of your name?'

'Quite true. My father was an only child and an orphan; my mother had one sister. Ruel Bey is that sister's son. He represents to me, therefore, all the ties of kindred.'

'But--' she hesitated again. 'Ruel Bey is lovable.'

Marillier interrupted her sharply.

'You find him so, Mademoiselle Isàdas?'

The girl started as if he had struck her, and the blood rushed to her face. She recovered herself and replied,--

'That seems an even stranger thing to say to me.'

'I do not think so. At the Pacha's ball his admiration of you was evident enough. I was naturally interested in observing how you received his attentions. Perhaps it would be well that I should tell you what he himself does not know--I am not a poor man and he is my heir. If you loved and consented to marry him, and the provision made by the Pacha or required by the Pacha were riot adequate, I would supplement it.'

The trouble spread over Rachel Isàdas's face--the faint alarm.

'Oh, I don't know--I don't know.'

'Tell me,' said Marillier, 'is it with him as with me--when you don't know, can you trust?'

'I don't know--I don't know,' she repeated helplessly.

The sight of her perplexity roused in Marillier something of which he had never before been conscious.

'If you can't trust him you may trust me. That's perhaps the meaning of the foreshadowing I have about you. I'll be true to it. Trust me, Mademoiselle Isàdas! Trust me; and by the Force that you call God, I'll protect you against him, if need be; against your own heart, if need be. If need be, too, against myself.'

Before she realised the meaning of his words, while still under the spell of the look he gave her out of those clear grey eyes, in which it seemed that two little electric sparks suddenly blazed, Rachel Isàdas found herself alone. He had abruptly turned from her and vanished through the open half of the folding doors. When she looked through them she was confronted by the sensuous face with its fateful Eastern melancholy, its terrible satiety of the flesh, which gazed out at her from the eyes of the Emperor of Abaria.