CHAPTER I

It stood on the top of a high hill—bleak, solitary. In winter all the winds of heaven raved round it; in summer the happy sunshine rarely touched it. It was, indeed, hemmed in from brightness of any kind, by a dense row of cypresses that grew before the hall-door, and by a barren rock that rose perpendicularly at the back.

On clear days one could get from this cold house a grand view of the valley below, nestling in its warmth, and from the road that ran under it people would sometimes look up and wonder at the curious colour of the Red House—such a dark red, sombre, like blood.

It was a bleak house at all times, but to-day it showed itself singularly dull. A light rain was falling—light, but persistent, and the usual charming gaiety of an early May morning was drowned in tears. The house looked drearier than ever, in spite of the grand proportions. But no amount of walls can make up for a dearth of nature's bijouteries—her shrubs, her trees, her flowers.

The Red House had no flowering parterres anywhere, no terraces, no charming idyllic toys of any sort, no gracing gardens full of lovely sweets, wherewith to charm the eye. Nothing, save one huge elm upon the barren lawn, and the dark, gloomy row of cypresses—those gloomiest of all dear Nature's gifts, standing in funeral procession before the hall door. They had been there when Dr. Darkham took the place ten years ago. He had thought of removing them, but on second thoughts had let them alone. Somehow, he told himself, they suited his ménage.

Indoors, the day was, if possible, more depressing than outside. May should be a lovely month, but months do not always fulfil their obligations. This May day, as I have said, was full of grief. Rain in the morning, rain in the afternoon, and rain now and again when the evening is descending.

In the morning-room, lounging over a low fire, sat Mrs. Darkham, the doctor's wife, a big, coarse, heavy-looking woman—heavy in mind as in body. Her hair, a dull brown, streaked liberally with gray, was untidily arranged, stray locks of it falling about her ears. She was leaning forward, staring with stupid, small, but somewhat vindictive blue eyes into the sorry glow of the fire, and her mouth looked as though she were dwelling on thoughts unkindly. It was a loose mouth, and vulgar. The woman, indeed, was plebeian in every feature and movement.

The room was well furnished—that is, comfortably, even expensively—but it lacked all signs of taste or culture. It was not unclean, but it was filled with that odious air that bespeaks carelessness, and a want of refinement. The tables had been dusted, but there were few ornaments on them—a copy of Wordsworth was so closely leaved as to suggest the idea that it had never been opened; another of Shakespeare in the same condition; some sea-shells, and no flowers.

On the hearthrug—squatting—foolishly playing with the cinders in the grate, sat a boy—a terrible creature—deaf and dumb and idiotic. It was the woman's son. The son of Dr. Darkham, that clever man, that learned scientist!

He sat there, crouching, mouthing; his head protruded between his knees, playing with the cinders, making passes at the fire with his long fingers. He was sixteen, but his face was the face of a child of seven. His mind had stood still; his body, however, had developed. He was short, clumsy, hideous; but there was strength —enormous strength—in the muscular arms and legs. The face vacant, without thought of any kind, was in some remarkable way beautiful. He had inherited his father's dark eyes—all his father's best points, indeed—and etherealised them. If his soul had grown with his body, he would have been one of Nature's greatest products; but his soul lay stagnant, and the glorious dark eyes held nothing.

His figure was terrible—short and broad. His hair had never grown, and the body had ceased to form upwards at twelve. He had now the appearance of a boy of that age, but the strength of his real years.

The mother sat in the lounging chair looking into the fire; the boy sat on the rug. Neither of them was doing anything besides. Suddenly the door opened.

The woman started and looked round. The poor creature on the rug still played with the cinders.

"Oh, you!" said Mrs. Darkham. Her husband had just come in.

"Yes. I am going out; I want a stamp."

"You'll find them in the table drawer, then," said his wife sullenly. Her voice was guttural, vulgar.

"So you're goin' out again," said she, taking up the poker and stirring the fire into a blaze. As she did so, a hot coal fell on the idiot's finger, and he threw himself backwards with a hideous howl.

"What is it, my darling, my lamb?"

The woman went on her knees, and caught the unwieldy mass of humanity to her with long arms. It had been but a slight burn, and after awhile the turmoil subsided. Mrs. Darkham rose from her knees, and the idiot went back to his play amongst the cinders.

"I believe you'd see him burnt alive with joy," said she, turning to her husband, a great animosity within her eyes.

"Your beliefs are so numerous, and are always so complimentary, that it is hard to reply," said Dr. Darkham, with a slow smile.

If her glance had betrayed animosity, his, to her, betrayed a most deadly hatred.

"Oh, there, you're at your sneers again!" said she shrugging her ample shoulders. "So you're going out this wet day. Where?"

"To"—slowly—"visit the sick."

"Same old answer," said she, trying to laugh contemptuously.

"What you mean is—only you haven't the courage to say it—that you're going to Rickton Villa."

"I dare say"—with admirable composure, though his heart is beginning to beat—"that I shall call in there on my way home to see Mrs. Greatorex."

"Mrs. Greatorex!"

She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and peers at him insolently. In this position the detestable order of her gown becomes more apparent.

"Mrs. Greatorex, or her niece, eh?"

"I am not aware that Miss Nesbitt requires the services of any doctor. Where are these stamps?"

"No! Doesn't she? You seem as blind about her as you are about the finding of them stamps. And so it is Mrs. Greatorex you go to see three times a week? She pays you, I suppose?"

"Not now. Feeling herself better a little time ago, she told me to discontinue my visits. But I dislike leaving a cure half finished. So I told her I should still call occasionally. She is not very well off, as you are aware."

He said all this with the dry, business-like air of one who felt he was bound to speak, but then would do it as concisely as possible.

"She is well enough off to treat me as a nobody. Me—the wife of a man whose visits she accep's for nothing! She a pauper, and me who can ride in my carriage! Why, she wouldn't raise her eyes to mine if she could 'elp it. Can't see me sometimes, she can't. And so she's taking your time and your advice for nothing! and you give them, knowing how she treats your wife!"

The word "wife," so incessantly insisted on, seemed to grind his very soul. Yes, there she was, sodden, hideous, irredeemable, and —his wife!

"She is not well off, as I have told you; but she has a certain standing in the neighbourhood. And it is not well for a doctor to quarrel with those around him."

"Hypocrite!" said the woman, in a dull but furious way. The very stolidity of her often made the outburst the more remarkable.

"Don't you think I see into you? Don't you think I know you?— that I haven't known for the past six months the reason of your visits to the Villa?"

"Put an end to this," said the doctor, in a slow, cold voice.

"Are you mad?" His dark eyes glowed.

He was a tall, singularly gaunt man, and handsome. The deeply-set eyes were brilliant, and dark as night. As night too, unfathomable. The mouth was fixed, cold, determined, and suggestive of cruelty. The brow was broad and grand. He was about forty-five, and in manner was suave, low-voiced, and agreeable. Education and resolution had lifted him up from his first surroundings to a plane that made him level with those with whom he now desired to mix. But all his quality could not conceal the fact that he would be a bad man to fight with—that he possessed an indomitable will that would drive all things before it, till it gained the object of its desire.

"Mad? Don't think you'll make me that. I tell you again and again that I know very well why you visit at—-"

He turned upon her, and by an impressive gesture stopped her.

"How dare you speak so of—-"

"Miss Nesbitt?" She laughed aloud as she interrupted him.

"No. Of me! Of course I know what you mean. But am I to give up all my patients to satisfy your detestable jealousy?"

"My jealousy! Do you think I am jealous of you?" said his wife, with a contemptuous smile.

"'Pon me word, you must think a lot of yourself! Why, who the deuce are you, any way? Tell me that. You married me for my money, and glad enough you were to get it."

She poured out the terrible torrent of invective in a slow, heavy, rumbling way; whilst he stood silent, motionless, listening. It was so true! And her hideous vulgarity—that was true too. It would never alter. She would be there always, clogging him, dragging him down to her own level. She was now as uneducated and idealess as when, at the age of twenty-two, he married her for the sake of her money; and now besides all that, she was hideous and old—older than himself in appearance. Quite an old woman!

And then the child!

CHAPTER II

Dr. Darkham's eyes turned to the hearthrug, and then turned away again hastily. He loathed to look upon this, his first-born and only child. He shrank with horror whenever he saw him. Physical deformity was an abomination in his eyes, beauty a thing to worship. Thus his only child was a living torture to him.

To the mother the unfortunate idiot was something to love—he was the first of her womb, and an object of love—but to the father he was loathsome.

The child had been born beautiful, but time had proved him deaf and dumb, and, worse than all, devoid of intellect; without a single idea, save, indeed, an overpowering adoration for his mother, a clinging, unreasoning love that knew no bounds.

For his father, the unhappy mute felt nothing but a settled, and often openly shown, aversion.

His wife had recovered her breath, and was still hurling accusations and sneers at him. He had grown accustomed to let her rave, but now something she said caught his ear, and made him turn to her sharply.

"You are getting yourself pretty well talked of, I can tell you."

"Talked of? What"—sternly—"do you mean?"

"Right well you know. They are talking about your attentions to that minx at the Villa—that Miss Nesbitt."

Darkham's eyes suddenly blazed.

"Who has dared to talk of Miss Nesbitt with disrespect?" asked he.

"Oh, law! You needn't make such a fuss about it, even if she is your dearie-o. But I can tell you this Darkham, that people are talking about you and her, all the same. And why shouldn't they? Why, you never take your eyes off her."

"Be silent, woman!" said he savagely, coarsely; now and again his own birth betrayed him. "Who are you that you should speak to me like that?"

"I am your wife, any way," said she.

"Ay. My wife!"

The look that accompanied his tone should have frozen her, but she only laughed.

"I know, I know," she said, wagging her hideous fat head at him.

"You would undo it all if you could. You would cast me out, like Rebecca, and marry your Sarah instead; but"—with slovenly triumph—"you can't. You can't, you know. I"—with a hideous leer at him—"am here, you see, and here I'll stick! You wish me dead, I know that; but I'll not die to please you."

(If she had only known!)

She looked up at her husband out of her small, obstinate eyes—- looked at the tall, handsome, well-dressed man whose name she bore, yet who was so different to her in all ways. And he looked back at her.

A strange smile curled his lips.

"Wishes don't kill," said he, slowly. Now his voice was soft, refined, brutal.

"Good for me," returned she, with a hoarse chuckle, "or I wouldn't be long above ground. I know you! And as for that girl down there"—she paused, then went on with malicious intonation: "you may as well cease your funning in that quarter. I hear she's as good as engaged to that young fellow who took up Dr. Fulham's practice three months ago—Dr. Dillwyn."

"A very suitable match for her," said Darkham, after a second's pause that contained a thousand seconds of acute agony. He spoke coldly, evenly.

"Yes." She looked disappointed; her spleen had desired a larger fulfilment of its desire. "Suitable indeed, for both are paupers. But, for all you're so quiet, I don't believe you like it, eh? Dr. Dillwyn, you know, and you—-"

"I wish sometimes you would forget me," said he.

"Ha, ha, ha!" She flung herself back in her chair, and laughed aloud, her hideous vulgar laugh. "For once in our lives we are agreed. I wish that, too. But I can't, you see—I can't. You're always there, and I'm always there!"

"You! you!" Darkham took a step towards her; his face was convulsed. "You," he muttered, "always you!" His voice, his gesture, were menacing.

The idiot on the hearthrug, as though gathering into his poor brain something of what was going on between his father and his mother, here writhing round upon the rug, threw himself upon the latter. He embraced her knees with a close, soft clasp. He clung to her. Every now and then he glanced behind him at his father, his dull eyes angry, menacing. His whole air was one of protection; short barking cries came from him, hideous to hear.

Mrs Darkham bent down to him, and caught the beautiful soulless face to her bosom, wreathing upon it sweet reassuring words. The idiot, mouthing, slaps her quietly, incessantly, on the shoulder. Darkham watches them—the mother's heavy, coarse endearments, the boy's vacant affection, with his mouth open—and from them presently Darkham turned away with an oath. A shudder of disgust ran through him. "Great heavens! what a home!"

His wife had looked up for a moment, and had seen the disgust. It was fuel to an already very hot fire.

"Go!" she cried violently. She had the boy's head pressed to her breast, keeping his eyes against her that he might not see her face, perhaps, which now was frightful. "Go! leave us! Go where you are welcome! Leave us! Leave your home!"

"My home!" he paused, but always with his eyes on hers. "My home is a hell!" said he.

He went out then, closing the door softly behind him.

But when he had stepped into his brougham he gave himself full sway. As the wheels rolled over the gravel his thoughts surged and raged within him.

That dull, illiterate creature, why had he ever married her? What cruel fate had driven him to such a marriage? And for ever that marriage would endure—trampling him down, destroying him, clogging his career.

Some men got rid of their wives. But that was when kindly Providence stepped in and Death took them away. But this woman, without feeling, sentiment or beauty, even Death would not deign to touch her.

Death—death! If he were only free!

All at once the face of a young girl rose before him. It stood out clear and tranquil from a detestable background—not like a dream, a thought, but sweetly, definitely. The eyes, the hair, the lovely mouth, all were there. They seemed to sit there before him, embodied in the brougham.

Darkham flings himself back and covers his eyes with his hand, as if to blot out the too, too lovely apparition. But it would not go. It stayed. The sweet eyes always smiling, the lips a little parted.

What was it that woman, that human devil, had said about her? That she was thinking of—that she was in love with that young Dillwyn? Pshaw!

Here the brougham stopped at the gate of a small if pretty entrance, beyond which a gravel path led to a small but perfectly appointed house. Dr. Darkham stepped out of his carriage, and, entering the hall, followed the servant into the drawing-room beyond, and into the presence of the gentle spectre who had possessed his thoughts during his short drive.

She stood at the end of the room, bending over some flowers she was arranging, and after a slight inclination of her small and charming head, took no further notice of him.

He passed up the room quickly to his quasi-patient, Mrs. Greatorex, an elderly but still pretty woman who sat lounging in a cosy chair.

The room was warm and sweet with flowers. It was exquisitely arranged, if not richly furnished. It spoke of refinement, though not of wealth, and was very charming and womanly. A few Persian rugs lay here and there, and jars full of early flowering branches were placed in the corners of the windows and against the tall screens that stood at the end of the room. All the place was sweet with little bowls full of honeysuckle and primroses.

Mrs. Greatorex held out her hand to him.

"How good of you to come!" said she, in her low, cultivated voice. "And after your hard day's work, too."

"I like work. How do you feel this evening—you are better? You look better. You will be out of my hands altogether soon, and I shall be left desolate."

His eyes wandered to the figure bending over the primroses, but she seemed engrossed with her pretty flowers.

She was tall, slender, graceful, with dark hair, and a mouth beautiful in its strength and purity. Her eyes were her chief feature, and shone like stars. They were a clear gray—soft and kind by day, dark and even kinder by night; and so full of expression, love and laughter, grief and quick delight, tenderness and anger: all things those perfect eyes could declare in their right season.

Just now they were lowered, so it was hard to see what lay within their shining depths; but a little line across her forehead showed that her thoughts were not altogether pleasant. She bent even more assiduously over the flowers, and showed no disposition to go forward and add to the pleasant reception her aunt was giving Dr. Darkham.

The latter had been going through the usual formula with Mrs. Greatorex, feeling her pulse, asking about her appetite, etc., and then had drifted into a light gossip. This pleased his patient, and gave him leisure to gaze on the lovely figure in the window. He hardly cared that she did not speak to him.

After a time he rose, and bid Mrs. Greatorex good-bye. Then he turned deliberately to the girl.

"If you can spare me one moment, Miss Nesbitt, there is just a word or two I would say to you about our patient here," with a smile and bow towards Mrs. Greatorex. "She has been making a little too free, I am afraid, and if you will let me write a prescription in the next room—-"

"Certainly," said Agatha, courteously but coldly. She let her flowers fall, and led the way to the little anteroom beyond, hidden by a falling curtain, where a tiny writing-room had been made up.

She stood silent, whilst he told her to keep her aunt a little warmer, or something as trivial, and then scribbled a line or two on a sheet of paper for the chemist. The he went. But he had gained his end. He had held her small cool hand in his. She had not been able to refuse it when he held out his.

CHAPTER III

Agatha came back to the drawing-room, and went straight to her flowers. She did not look at her aunt.

"Well," asked the latter inquisitively. She loved discussing her own ailments.

"Well, there is nothing new. He evidently thinks you immensely better. So much better that I wonder he comes here at all."

"It is very kind of him to come," said Mrs. Greatorex calmly.

"It is too kind. And—for nothing."

"My dear Agatha, I'm afraid it cannot be for nothing. I expect he will see little symptoms of—-"

"I don't mean that. What"—impatiently—"I want to say is, that he gains nothing by coming here."

"Nothing in a pecuniary sense, certainly," said Mrs. Greatorex; "but he likes good society—-"

Agatha made a sudden movement.

"I wonder how you can do it," said she.

"Do what?" asked Mrs. Greatorex, letting the pretty little pale pink silk sock she was knitting lie upon her lap for a moment.