DICK soon recovered from the effects of his terrible adventure, and in a short time was able to return to the Castle, and to take his part in all that was going on. Now the doctor felt that the time had come for him to return to London. The cause for his delay was gone, and the sooner he put miles of distance between himself and Doris, the better it would be for him. He would go to the post office and send a telegram to his housekeeper; he would also order his cab, and the next morning he and Maxie would take the tent down.
On his way down the hill he called at the Castle for his letters as usual. Joyce ran to meet him, holding out her hand.
‘Two letters for you, Dr. Forester,’ she called out; ‘aren’t you lucky this morning?’
He took them from her, and opened them as he went down the hill. The first was in the illiterate handwriting of his old housekeeper. It told him that she had just received very bad news; her eldest son was dying in Newcastle, and was very anxious to see her again. As there was no time to ask the doctor about it, she had started at once for the North; she had locked up the flat, and told the policeman to keep an eye upon it; she hoped it would not put her master to inconvenience, but Dr. Fraser had told her that he did not expect Dr. Forester back for some time yet.
The second letter was from his partner, the Dr. Fraser whom Mrs. Timmis had named. He also mentioned the housekeeper’s departure, and at the same time urged him to stay at least another fortnight away. There was nothing in the world to do, Dr. Fraser assured him; nearly everyone was out of town, and those who were not away were quite well, and did not need looking after, so what could be the object of his returning? He reminded Forester how good he had been in relieving him, and doing all the work single-handed for three months in the spring, whilst he was recruiting in the Riviera after his illness; and he told him he was sure that a longer holiday was necessary after the shock and trouble he had experienced just before he left home.
‘You have borne it like a man, Forester,’ he said; ‘but these things take out of one; and remember we may have a hard winter before us.’
After receiving this kind letter, and after hearing of his housekeeper’s absence, Forester hardly knew what to do. He thought perhaps his best plan would be to pack up his tent and send it away, and then to go for a walking tour in North Wales. He had been there once when he was a boy, and he would like to see it again.
On his way down to the shore he met Don, in the best of spirits, as usual.
‘Isn’t it jolly that everyone’s well again, and that we’re going to have a ripping time to end up with?’
‘Yes, I hope you will, Don.’
‘And you too, Norman.’
‘Well, no; I’m thinking of ending my holiday in North Wales.’
‘Never!’ said Don. ‘Come, Norman, you couldn’t be such a brute as to leave us now. You couldn’t, you know; and we’ve got all sorts of picnics in the wind; we’re going to have an Ai time this next fortnight. Jack will be very mad with you, I know, when he hears.’
‘Where is Jack?’
‘Oh, he’s off to Llantrug; didn’t you know? His girl is coming this evening, and he’s gone to meet her.’
‘His girl? What do you mean, Don?’
‘Why, the girl he’s engaged to; he said he told you about it. It was to be a secret, and no one to know, and all that rubbish; but the old father is working round by degrees. He has been rather a stiff old fellow to deal with, but he has actually given leave for her to come here and stay with Doris.’
‘With Doris? With Miss Somerville, do you mean?’
‘Yes, of course. You see, they’re old friends; they were at school together, and very thick, you know. That’s how Jack got to know this girl; he met her first at their house, a long time ago—four or five years, I should think, when she was quite young, sixteen or seventeen, something like Dolly, with her hair only just up. Well, he was very much smitten with her then, and when he went to work in Manchester, lo, and behold, he found she was living close by, in the next parish, I believe, and of course after that they saw each other almost every day.’
‘But I thought you told me, Don, that Jack had always admired your cousin, Miss Somerville?’
‘Did I? Oh yes, I remember, that picnic day. Well, he has always liked her, and they’ve been great friends ever since they were children; I told you about that photo, didn’t I? And I thought, well, we all thought, that perhaps it would end in his liking her in a different sort of way. You see, we knew nothing about this girl in Manchester; he kept it very close, only told us he had met a friend of Doris’, and so on. We never had the least idea of what was going on. Doris knew, though; she has known all along, and it’s Doris that has made it come all right now.’
‘How?’ Forester asked.
‘Well, you see, Miss Leslie always wrote to Doris they’ve been almost like sisters, they go to stay with each other every year for a month at a time. Soon after we got here, Doris got a letter from this poor girl saying how unhappy she was, and how she loved Jack, and how her father would not let her speak to him nor write to him; but she sent him her love in Doris’ letter, and she said she thought if he would write once more to her father, and would tell him that he would be patient, and would not want to get married till he had a living, perhaps her father would come round. So Doris told Jack, and he wrote, and the day of the picnic he got an answer. That was why he kept Doris behind; he wanted to read the letter to her; he knew how glad she would be. And then in the afternoon they were talking it over in the wood when we thought they were in the Castle; and then Doris said she would write and ask Miss Leslie to come and stay with her here. Wasn’t it good? Mr. Leslie knew that Jack was taking the duty here, so we were afraid he would say no; but a letter came a few days after to say she might come for the last fortnight, and Jack has been so excited about it he’s nearly been off his head! Dear old chap, I’m awfully glad for him.’
Forester felt like a man who has just waked up from a bad dream. Was it possible that he was free to let Doris know of his love for her? But, no, it could not be; Don must have made some mistake. Surely Jack had himself told him that it was Doris whom he loved.
‘Don,’ he said, ‘I can’t make this out at all. Jack most certainly told me, that night he walked up the hill with me, that he was engaged to Doris.’
‘So he is!’ cried Don; ‘so he is! But not to our Doris, but to Doris Leslie. Isn’t it funny the two friends should have the same name, and not such a common name, either?’
Forester did not answer; his heart was beating too quickly for him to be able to speak, and he felt as if his voice would not be as steady as he would like it to be.
But he made up his mind that a walking tour in North Wales would not be the most desirable way of ending his holiday, and he did not call on Maxie that morning, or make any arrangement for dispatching his tent the following day.
Yet, although the relief was great which the doctor experienced when he discovered that he might love Doris without any feeling of treachery to his old friend Jack, he, at the same time, had very little hope that his love would be returned. She had known him for such a short time, and it was not everyone that loved at first sight almost, as he had done. Then she had seen him at his very worst, moody, depressed, unsociable, and altogether disagreeable and unlovable.
Forester had an extremely low opinion of himself; he knew his own faults and failings and weaknesses and he, at the same time, underrated his own abilities and the better parts of his character. Was it likely that a girl like Doris would ever care for him? No, it was not likely; and he ought not to give her the pain of refusing him. He shrank from giving anyone pain; he would go anywhere and do anything rather than go where he was not wanted, or do that which would bring trouble upon others. And he knew her well enough to know that, if she refused him, it would cause her pain; her eyes would be full of sympathy and sorrow. Why should he bring a shadow over her happy life?
Moreover, he felt, and felt very keenly, that he was heavily handicapped. He would have to tell her his past story; he would have to let her know that he had been within a fortnight of being married to another. How fickle she would think him. How she would despise him for so soon thinking of anyone else. How she would wonder that he could ask her to accept such secondhand affection. Very few girls would care to come to a home that had been got ready for someone else, or to take a love which had been thrown aside by another as utterly worthless.
And she would never know—he would never be able to explain to her the truth as it really was; he would never make her see that his feelings for her were utterly and entirely different from any he had ever felt before, that he had not known what real love was until he met her. She would never believe, she would never understand; how could she? No, the longer he thought of it, the more he felt that his love for her was hopeless. It was not Jack now that stood in his way, it was his own utter unworthiness.
Forester wondered at himself that he had ever dreamt it barely possible that she might return his love. She had spoken kindly to him, but she had done that to everyone. She had been sorry for him out of the sweet unselfishness of her heart; but she had never done or said anything which was any proof that she loved him. Of what utter folly he had been guilty when he had imagined that it was Jack who came between them! Jack had nothing whatever to do with it. Jack was engaged to someone else and yet Doris Somerville was as far removed from him as ever.
He could not go down to the shore that day; he would go back to his tent, and try to argue himself into a reasonable view of things.
However, the next morning, Jack came up the hill bringing, Doris Leslie with him, that he might introduce her to his friend. She was a bonny, bright girl, with a sweet face and a dimple in her rosy cheek. but to the doctor’s mind she would not bear comparison with Doris Somerville. How could Jack be so blind, he wondered.
After they had left him, Forester watched them wandering over the moorland together, happy in each other’s presence. Well, he was glad his dear old friend had a bright life before him!
The doctor felt restless that morning; he was tired of sitting at his tent door smoking like an old Bedouin Arab, as he had done the greater part of the day before. He would walk to the end of the promontory, he said to himself, and get down upon the shore and watch the waves.
How lovely everything looked that morning!
Autumn, with her artist hand, was coloring the bracken on the hillside with every gorgeous tint imaginable. The long streamers of the brambles were decked in their most flaunting colors. The heather was dead and brown, but the ling was still in flower. And what was that? Actually a piece of white heather, still growing under the shelter of the furze bush! Why did he stoop to gather it? Why did he slip it in his pocket? It could never be of the slightest use to him. He had better have left it to grow under the furze bush.
He climbed down the steep, rugged path that led to the shore; he threaded his way between great masses of rock and huge boulders that seemed to have been hurled there by some giant hand. Then he came out upon a stretch of pebbly beach, broken here and there by grey slabs of rock. There was the view which Doris had drawn, looking its very best as he came upon it, the coloring more vivid than ever. And there was Doris, sitting on the rock in her old place finishing her picture. He surely did not guess she would be there, or he would never have come that way. But as she was there, what more natural than that he should sit down beside her to watch the finishing touches being inserted; or that, finding himself in the old place and finding her at the old occupation, they should gradually slip back again into the old familiar companionship that they had enjoyed, before the shadow of Jack’s supposed love came between them?
So an hour passed away in pleasant talk of many things, and then he suddenly said—
‘Miss Somerville, I’m going to ask your advice.’
‘My advice?’ she repeated.
‘Yes, about a friend of mine. He wants to know what he ought to do in a certain matter, and I thought you would perhaps help me to answer him.’
‘What kind of matter?’
‘Well, rather a private matter; he does not want everyone to know about it, but I am sure I may ask you. My friend—'
‘Perhaps you had rather I did not know his name,’ she said. ‘I quite understand.’
‘Well, I’m sure he would not mind; his name is Stewart, and he’s in great difficulties just now.’
‘About money?’
‘No, not about money; he has a very good practice.’
‘He is a doctor, then?’
‘Yes, a doctor, like—like I am.’
‘I understand,’ she said; ‘and this friend (Dr. Stewart I think you said), is in some difficulty?’
‘Yes, he doesn’t know how he ought to act, and I don’t quite know how to advise him; do you see?’
‘Yes, so far; but what is his difficulty?’
‘May I tell you his story, Miss Somerville, and then I think you will be better able to understand. He was born in a little village in the West of England. His father had been the doctor of the place, and he died when Stewart was only a boy. He was very little away from home, for there was a Grammar School in a town three miles off which he attended, and he used to cycle there and back every day. His mother was a good woman, but she spoilt him a bit; he was her only child and she thought no one was like him.’
‘Is she alive?’
‘No, she died last year.’
Forester’s voice was not very steady when he said this.
‘You knew her?’ said Doris, in sympathetic tones.
‘Yes, I knew her; she was a good friend to me. It was not a large village, and beyond the parson’s and the lawyer’s there were no big houses. The parson was an old bachelor, taken up with his books and his sermons, and my friend saw very little of him. The lawyer was a wealthy man, who had retired from practice and lived in a large house just beyond the village. He was a kind of squire of the place; his name was Pargiter.’
‘Had he any family?’
‘Yes, he had one daughter; her mother was dead, but an aunt lived there and brought her up; her name was Letty.’
‘Letty?’
‘Yes, her proper name was Lettice, but we—they called her Letty.’
‘You knew her then?’
‘Yes, I knew her; I went there sometimes. Well, these two children played together from their earliest years; sometimes they agreed; sometimes they quarreled, and then after a time made it up again. They were fond of each other, just as any brother and sister might be They were companions, you see, and had no one else, so that they had to make the best of each other. When Stewart had a holiday from school he spent it with Letty, and they cycled together, and played cricket and tennis together, and alternately pleased and teased each other. That was all right, you see, as long as they were children; but time went on, and Stewart went to a medical college and was working up for his different exams. He did not go home for a long time, and when he did go, Letty was abroad; her father had sent her to a finishing school in Paris. He did not see her again till two years ago.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, then they were both grown-up, and they had seen more of the world, and it was rather different.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, Stewart wanted to take up the friendship on the old lines, just where they had left off, as it were; but it wasn’t very easy to do that.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Very beautiful; her hair was really golden; you don’t often see golden hair, do you? And her eyes were a lovely blue, more violet than blue, I think.’
‘And your friend fell in love with her?’ Doris said. She was bending over her picture now, putting in the foreground, but her hand trembled a little, he noticed.
‘No, he didn’t fall in love with her. He liked her, and he admired her hair and her eyes; but she was not his ideal by any means. She was too cold and calculating, and sometimes he thought her rather selfish. Still, she was the nicest girl he knew, and he thought it was Paris that had spoilt her, and that she would be different when she had been at home for a time.’
‘Was she?’
‘He thought she was, and she seemed very fond of him, and when he was at home he saw a great deal of her. But I don’t think he meant things to go any further, at least not at present.’
Forester stopped.
‘Yes?’ said Doris presently. ‘Will you tell me the rest?’
‘Well, it’s rather hard to tell; to make you understand just how it was. Her father interfered. He wanted her to get married, and he thought Stewart would be a good match for her. So he asked him what he meant by paying so much attention to Letty, and he told him that he thought, after he had gone so far, they ought to be engaged.’
Doris had stopped painting, though she was still bending over her picture. At last she said, as if with an effort, ‘Do go on.’
‘There isn’t much more. Stewart went and made a fool of himself.’
‘They were engaged?’
‘Yes, they were engaged, and were to be married in six months. He got the home ready, and bought the furniture, and the presents began to come in; but she told him that, before she was married, she wanted to go to stay with some friends of hers in Paris. He thought it was a funny time to go away, and he said so; but she told him, in her wilful way, that she had not long now to please herself, and she should do as she liked till she was married. Her father seemed rather annoyed with her, but she got her own way, as she generally did.’
‘Was she away long?’
‘Yes, some time. Stewart kept writing to her to urge her to come home. He wanted to consult her about things in the house and the different arrangements for the wedding, but she put off her return from time to time. She told him she was getting her trousseau and her wedding dress in Paris, and could buy much prettier things there than in England. He got very few letters from her, and they seemed to get shorter and shorter, and then they ceased altogether. He wrote and wrote, but no answer came for ten days or more. It was getting close upon the day fixed for their wedding; in about a fortnight she would be his wife. He wrote once more, a very strong letter, urging her again to come home, and asking what she meant by not answering his letters. And then—’
Forester stopped a minute as if he found it hard to go on.
‘Yes?’ said Doris gently.
‘Then he got a letter telling him she was not coming home, for she was engaged to a French Count, and was to be married to him the following month. She told him she had never really cared for him, and she would only have made him miserable, so he ought to be very grateful to her for breaking it off.’
‘It was dreadful!’ said Doris, almost in a whisper.
‘Yes, so he thought—then; and she sent back all his letters and presents, and said he must not write to her again, as Count D’Enville would object to it. He didn’t want to write to her again, as you can imagine.’
‘What did her father say?’
‘Oh! he was very angry, of course, and declared he knew nothing at all about it. Whether he did or not I really can’t say.’
Doris was not even pretending to paint now; she was looking away from Forester and over the sea; but he noticed, as he turned to her for a moment, that she had tears in her eyes.
‘Shall I go on?’
She did not answer.
‘Shall I go on, or had you rather not hear any more?’
‘I should like to hear,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘Well, then, I will go on. He had a terrible time. He knew then what a fool he had been, and he determined to forget the past if he could. But it wasn’t easy to do that; everything in the house reminded him of it, and he thought he would get away. So he went—Well, never mind where he went, but he got right away from it all. And then—Miss Somerville—Doris; shall I go on?’
She did not answer this time even by a whisper: but covered her face with her hand, that he might not see the tears.
‘Then,’ said the doctor, ‘he suddenly found his ideal; he suddenly discovered what love was, real love I mean; he knew now that he had never loved Letty; he had been fond of her in a way; he had admired her, but he had never really loved her. But now he did love; he loved so much and so deeply that he knew that, if she did not care for him, he would never, all his life, love anyone else. She was the one he had dreamed of and pictured to himself as the wife he would like to have, and he marveled that he had been such a fool as even to imagine that he cared for Letty.’
Again a long pause.
‘Shall I go on?’
Again she did not answer, so Forester went on without leave, this time in the present tense.
‘But he has no reason to think she loves him; she is very sorry for him; she gives him kind, helpful words of sympathy, but he has seen nothing in her to give him any real hope. And then he shrinks from telling her he loves her, because there is that story of the past to be explained. She will think him changeable and faithless; she will never be able to see how it really was. And so he is afraid she will have to tell him that she can have nothing to do with such a man as that. And he wants to know, he wants me to ask you, what you would advise him to do. Shall he go away, and never cross her path again? Or shall he try to tell her? What do you advise, Miss Somerville—Doris?’
She turned round. He could see the tears now; but he saw something else in her eyes, something he had never hoped to see there. She put her hand on his and she said—
‘I think he had better try to tell her. I think he has told her; hasn’t he?’