Читать книгу Dr. Wainwright's Patient. A Novel онлайн

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"No chance for our Paul," said Alexis Derinzy disconsolately.

"Our Paul" was growing into a fine boy, and his father gave himself much mental exercitation as to whether he could "stand the racket" of educating him at Eton or Harrow.

One evening a cab drove up to the door, and a gentleman alighted and asked for Mrs. Derinzy. Alick was, according to his usual practice, at the club, enjoying that pleasant hour's gossip so dear to married gentlemen who are kept rather tightly in hand at home, and which they relinquish with such looks of envy at the happy bachelors or more courageous Benedicks whom they leave behind. But Mrs. Alick was in her very pretty little boudoir, into which she desired the stranger might be shown.

He came in; a man who had probably been tall, but was now bent double, walking with a stick, and then making but slow progress; a man with snow-white hair and long beard of the same hue, wrapped from head to foot in a huge fur coat of foreign make. Mrs. Derinzy saw that he was a gentleman, but did not recognise him. It was not until he advanced to her and mentioned his name that she knew him for her brother-in-law, Paul. She received him very warmly, and he seemed touched and gratified, so far as lay in him. Where were his wife and his little daughter? she asked. They were--over there, in Switzerland, he said with an effort. He was alone, then, in London? He must come and stay with them. No; he had been in London three or four days. He came over on some special business, and he was about to return to the Continent the next day, but he did not like to go without having seen her. He fidgeted about while he stopped, and seemed nervously anxious to be off; but Mrs. Alick, with a woman's tact, began to ask him questions about his child, and he quieted down, and spoke of her with rapture. She was the joy of his soul, he said, the one bright ray in his life, of which, indeed, he spoke in very melancholy terms. Alick came home from his club in due course, and was as surprised as his wife had been at the alteration in Paul's appearance, and took so little pains to disguise his impressions, that Paul himself made allusion to his white hair and his bowed back, and said he had had trouble enough to have broken a much younger and stronger man. He did not say what the trouble was, and they did not like to ask him. Alick had thought it was pecuniary worry; that his brother had "dropped his money," as he phrased it. Mrs. Alick saw no reason to ascribe it to any such source. But she noticed that her brother-in-law said very little about his wife, and she felt certain that the marriage which had promised so brilliantly had turned out a disappointment, and that the shadow which darkened his life was of home creation.