Rage was quite a novel passion for Chudleigh Wilmot, and one which, like most new passions, obtained for the time complete mastery over him. In his previous career he had been so steeped in study, so overwhelmed by practice--had had every hour of his time so completely and unceasingly occupied, that he had had no leisure to get into a rage, even if he had had the slightest occasion. But the truth is, the occasion had been wanting also. During the time he had been at the hospital he had had various tricks played upon him,--such tricks as the idle always will play upon the industrious,--but he had not paid the least attention to them; and when the perpetrators of the practical jokes found they were disregarded, they turned the tide of their humour upon some one else less pachydermatous. Ever since then his life had flowed in an even stream, which never turned aside into a whirlpool of passion or a cataract of rage, but continued its calm course without the smallest check or shoal. In the old days, when driven nearly to madness by the calm way in which her husband took every event in life, undisturbed by public news or private worry, finding the be-all and the end-all of life in the prosecution of his studies, the correctness of his diagnoses, and the number of profitable visits daily entered up in his diary, Mabel Wilmot would have given anything if he had now and then broken out into a fit of rage, no matter for what cause, and thus cleared the dull heavy atmosphere of tranquil domesticity for ever impending over them. But he never did break out; and the atmosphere, as we have seen, was never cleared.
But Chudleigh Wilmot was in a rage at last. By nature he was anything but a coward, was endowed with a keen sensitiveness, and scrupulously honourable. His abstraction, his studiousness, his simple unworldly ways--for there were few more unworldly men than the rising fashionable physician--all prevented his easily recognising that he was a butt for intentional ribaldry or insult; but when, as in this case, he did see it, it touched him to the quick. As a boy he could laugh at the practical jokes of his fellow-students; as a man he writhed under and rebelled against the first slight that since his manhood he had received. What was to be done? This young man, this Captain Kilsyth, her brother, had studiously and purposely insulted him, and insulted him before her. As this thought rushed through Wilmot's mind, as he stood as though rooted to the spot where they had left him in the drawing-room in Brook-street, his first feeling was to rush after Ronald and strike him to the ground as the penalty of his presumption. His fingers itched to do it, clenched themselves involuntarily, as his teeth set and his nostrils dilated involuntarily. What good would that do? None. Come of it what might, Madeleine's name would be mixed up with it, and--Ah, good God! he saw it all; saw the newspaper paragraph with the sensation-heading, "Fracas in private life between a gallant Officer and a distinguished Physician;" he saw the blanks and asterisks under which Madeleine's name would be concealed; he guessed the club scandal which--No, that would never do. He must give up all thoughts of avenging himself in that manner, for her sake. Better bear what he had borne, better bear slight and insult worse a thousandfold, than have her mixed up in a newspaper paragraph, or given over to the genial talk of society.
He must bear it, put up with the insult, swallow his disgust, forego his revenge. There was not enough of the Christian element in Chudleigh Wilmot's composition to render this line of conduct at all palatable to him; but it was necessary, and should be pursued. He had gone through all this in his thought, and arrived at this determination before he moved from the drawing-room. Then he walked quietly down to Lady Muriel's boudoir, entered, chatted with her ladyship for five minutes on indifferent topics, and took his leave, perfectly cool without, raging hot within.
As he had correctly thought, his long absence from London had by no means injured his practice; if anything, had improved it. In every class of life there is such a thing as making yourself too cheap, and the healthy and wealthy hypochondriacs, who form six-sevenths of a fashionable physician's clientèle, are rather incited and stimulated when they find the doctor unable or unwilling to attend their every summons. So Wilmot's practice was immense. He had a very large number of visits to pay that day, and he paid them all with thorough scrupulousness. Never had his manner been more suave and bland; never had he listened more attentively to his patients' narratives of their complaints; never had his eyebrow-upliftings been more telling, the noddings of his head thrown in more apropos. The old ladies, who worshipped him, thought him more delightful than ever; the men were more and more convinced of his talent; but the truth is, that having no really serious case on hand, Dr. Wilmot permitted himself the luxury of thought; and while he was clasping Lady Cawdor's pulse, or peering down General Donaldbain's throat, he was all the time wondering what line of conduct he could best pursue towards Ronald and Madeleine Kilsyth. In the course of his afternoon drive he passed the carriages of scores of his brother practitioners, with whom he exchanged hurried bows and nods, all of whom returned to the perusal of the Lancet or of their diaries, as the case might be, with envy at their hearts, and jealousy of the successful man who succeeded in everything, and who, if they had only known it, was quivering under the slight and insult which he had just received.
His visits over, he went home and dined quietly. The romantic feelings connected with an "empty chair" troubled Chudleigh Wilmot very little. He had never paid very much attention to the person by whom the chair had been filled; indeed very frequently during Mabel's lifetime he had done what he always had done since her death, taken a book, and read during his dinner. But he could not read on this occasion. He tried, and failed dismally; the print swam before his eyes; he could not keep his attention for a moment on the book; he pushed it away, and gave up his mind to the subject with which it was preoccupied.
Fair, impartial, and judicial self-examination--that was what he wanted, what he must have. Captain Kilsyth had insulted him, purposely no doubt; why? Not for an instant did Wilmot attempt to disguise from himself that it was on Madeleine's account; but how could Captain Kilsyth know anything of his (Wilmot's) feelings in regard to Madeleine; and if he did know of them, why should he now object? Captain Kilsyth might be standing out on the question of family; but that would never lead him to behave in so brusque and ungentlemanly a manner; he might object to the alliance--to the alliance!--good God! here was he giving another man credit for speculating on matters which had only dimly arisen even in his own brain!
Still there remained the fact of Captain Kilsyth's conduct having been as it had been, and still remained the question--why? To no creature on earth had he, Chudleigh Wilmot, confided his love for this girl; and so far as he knew--and he searched his memory carefully--he had never in his manner betrayed his secret in the remotest degree. Had his wife been alive, Ronald Kilsyth might have objected to finding him in close converse with his sister; yet in the fact of his having a wife lay--
It flashed across him in an instant, and sent the blood rushing to his heart. The manner of his wife's death--was that known? The causes which, as Henrietta Prendergast had hinted to him, had led Mabel to the vial with the leaden seal--had they leaked out? had they reached the ears of this young man? Did he suspect that jealousy--no matter whether with or without foundation--of his sister had led Mrs. Wilmot to lay violent hands upon herself? And if he suspected it, why not a hundred others? The story would fly from mouth to mouth. This Captain Kilsyth--no; he would not lend his aid to its promulgation; he could not for his sister's sake; but--And yet, with or against Captain Kilsyth's wish, it must come out. When his visits ceased in Brook-street, as they must cease--he had determined on that; when he no longer saw Madeleine, who, as he perfectly well knew, had been brought to London with the view of being under his care, would not old Kilsyth make inquiries as to the change in the intended programme, and would not his son have to tell him all he had heard? It was too horrible to think of. With such a rumour in existence--granting that it was a rumour merely, and all unproved--it would be impossible for Kilsyth, however eagerly he might wish it, to befriend him--at least in the manner in which he could best befriend him, by encouraging his addresses to Madeleine. Lady Muriel would not listen to it; Ronald would not listen to it, even if those two were in some way--he could not think how, but there might be a way of getting round those two and winning them to his side--even if that were done, while that horrible story or suspicion was current--and it was impossible to set it at rest without the chance of establishing it firmly for ever--Kilsyth would never consent to his marriage with Madeleine.
He must at once free himself from the chance of any story of this kind being promulgated. The more he thought the matter over, the more he saw the impossibility of again going to Brook-street, after what had occurred; the impossibility of his absence passing without remark and inquiry by Kilsyth; the impossibility of Ronald's withholding his statement of his own conduct in the matter, and his reasons for that conduct. For an instant a ray of hope shot through Chudleigh Wilmot's soul, as he thought that perhaps the reasons might be infinitely less serious and less damaging than he had depicted them to himself; but it died out again at once, and he acknowledged to himself the hopelessness of his situation. He had been indulging in a day-dream from which he had been rudely and ruthlessly waked, and his action must now be prompt and decisive. There was an end to it all; it was Kismet, and he must accept his fate. No combined future for Madeleine and him; their paths lay separate, and must be trodden separately at once; her brother was right, his own dead wife was right--it is not to be!
There must be no blinking or shuffling with the question now, he thought. To remain in London without visiting in Brook-street would evoke immediate and peculiar attention; and it was plain that Ronald Kilsyth had determined that Dr. Wilmot's visits to Brook-street were not to be renewed. He must leave London, must leave England at once. He must go abroad for six months, for a year; must give up his practice, and seek change and repose in fresh scenes. He would spoil his future by so doing, blow up and shatter the fabric which he had reared with such industry and patience and self-denial; but what of that? He should ascribe his forced expatriation and retreat to loss of health, and he should at least reap pity and condolence; whereas now every moment that he remained upon the scene he ran the chance of being overwhelmed with obloquy and scorn. He could imagine, vividly enough, how the patients whom he had refused to flatter, whose self-imagined maladies ............