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Updated: August 11, 2024
There is the one cloud on a scene that fills me with increasing wonder and reverence. One cold Sunday afternoon, in January, Flaxman, descending the steps of the New Brotherhood, was overtaken by a Dr. Edmondson, an able young physician, just set up for himself as a consultant, who had only lately attached himself to Elsmere, and was now helping him with eagerness to organize a dispensary.
'I have got rooms close by them in the Vice-Consul's cottage, wrote Edmondson, 'Imagine, within sixty hours of leaving London in a January fog, finding yourself tramping over wild marigolds and mignonette, under a sky and through an air as balmy as those of an English June when an English June behaves itself.
When Flaxman went over to Bedford Square in the afternoon, he went like a man going himself to execution. In the hall he met Catherine. 'You have seen Dr. Edmondson? she asked, pale and still, except for a little nervous quivering of the lip. He stooped and kissed her hand. 'Yes. He says he goes with you to Algiers. I will come after if you will have me. The climate may do wonders.
'Robert, to-morrow you will see a doctor? she implored him when at last he was safely in bed white, but smiling. He nodded. 'Send for Edmondson. What I mind most is this hoarseness, he said, in a voice that was little more than a tremulous whisper. Catherine hardly closed her eyes all night. The room, the house, seemed to her stifling, oppressive, like a grave.
When the steamer cast loose, the girl, hanging over the side, stood watching, the tall figure on the pier against the gray January sky. Catherine caught her look and attitude, and could have cried aloud in her own gnawing pain. Flaxman got a cheery letter from Edmondson describing their arrival.
His look was glowing and restless. She saw he felt it a call impossible to disobey. A telegram was sent to Edmondson, and Robert drove off to Waterloo. Out of the fog of London it was a mild, sunny winter's day. Robert breathed more freely with every mile. His eyes took note of every landmark in the familiar journey with a thirsty eagerness. It was a year and a half since he had travelled it.
Edmondson was an old school companion, between whom and herself had continued to exist, as they grew up, the tenderest relations. When she turned from her husband, she fled, with an instinct of affection and sympathy, to this friend, and poured her tears in a gild agony of affliction upon her bosom.
Young Edmondson and Flaxman exchanged a few words on Elsmere's lecture, and then the doctor said abruptly, 'I don't like his looks nor his voice. How long has he been hoarse like that? 'More or less for the last month. He is very much worried by it himself, and talks of clergyman's throat. He had a touch of it, it appears, once in the country.
'Meyrick puts it cautiously, but it may be the end! Catherine looked at him in despair. 'Robert, you are like a ghost yourself, and I have sent for Dr. Edmondson. 'Put him off till the day after to-morrow. Dear little wife, listen; my voice is ever so much better. Murewell air will do me good. She turned away to hide the tears in her eyes. Then she tried fresh persuasions, but it was useless.
Alone with his own thoughts, an hour had not elapsed before Mr. Lane half repented of his conduct in taking so unyielding a position. A conviction forced itself upon his mind that he had gone too far and was asking too much; and he wished that he had not been quite so exacting in his declarations to Mr. Edmondson.
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