THE day on which the doctor took his newly-appointed nurse with him to the hospital became an occasion associated with distressing recollections in the memory of Iris.
In the morning, Fanny Mere had asked for leave to go out. For some time past this request had been so frequently granted, with such poor results so far as the maid's own designs were concerned, that Lady Harry decided on administering a tacit reproof, by means of a refusal. Fanny made no attempt at remonstrance; she left the room in silence.
Half an hour later, Iris had occasion to ring for her attendant. The bell was answered by the cook—who announced, in explanation of her appearance, that Fanny Mere had gone out. More distressed than displeased by this reckless disregard of her authority, on the part of a woman who had hitherto expressed the most grateful sense of her kindness, Iris only said: "Send Fanny to me as soon as she comes back."
Two hours passed before the truant maid returned.
"I refused to let you go out this morning," Lady Harry said; "and you have taken the liberty of leaving the house for two hours. You might have made me understand, in a more becoming manner, that you intended to leave my service."
Steadily respectful, Fanny answered: "I don't wish to leave your ladyship's service."
"Then what does your conduct mean?"
"It means, if you please, that I had a duty to do—and did it."
"A duty to yourself?" Iris asked.
"No, my lady; a duty to you."
As she made that strange reply the door was opened, and Lord Harry entered the room. When he saw Fanny Mere he turned away again, in a hurry, to go out. "I didn't know your maid was with you," he said. "Another time will do."
His permitting a servant to be an obstacle in his way, when he wished to speak to his wife, was a concession so entirely unbecoming in the master of the house, and so strangely contrary to his customary sense of what was due to himself, that Iris called him back in astonishment. She looked at her maid, who at once understood her, and withdrew. "What can you possibly be thinking of?" she said to her husband, when they were alone. Putting that question, she noticed an embarrassment in his manner, and an appearance of confusion in his face, which alarmed her. "Has something happened?" she asked; "and is it so serious that you hesitate to mention it to me?"
He sat down by her and took her hand. The loving look in his eyes, which she knew so well, was not in them now; they expressed doubt, and something with it which suggested an effort at conciliation.
"I am fearing I shall surprise you," he said.
"Don't keep me in suspense!" she returned. "What is it?"
He smiled uneasily: "It's something about Vimpany."
Having got as far as that, he stopped. She drew her hand away from him. "I understand now," she said; "I must endeavour to control myself—you have something to tell me which will try my temper."
He held up his hands in humorous protest: "Ah, my darling, here's your vivid imagination again, making mountains out of molehills, as they say! It's nothing half so serious as you seem to think; I have only to tell you of a little change."
"A little change?" she repeated. "What change?"
"Well, my dear, you see—" He hesitated and recovered himself. "I mean, you must know that Vimpany's plans are altered. He won't any longer occupy his bedroom in the cottage here."
Iris looked inexpressibly relieved. "Going away, at last!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Harry, if you have been mystifying me, I hope you will never do it again. It isn't like you; it's cruel to alarm me about nothing. Mr. Vimpany's empty bedroom will be the most interesting room in the house, when I look into it to-night."
Lord Harry got up, and walked to the window. As a sign of trouble in his mind, and of an instinctive effort to relieve it, the object of this movement was well-known to Iris. She followed him and stood by his side. It was now plain to her that there was something more to be told—and that he was hesitating how to confide it to his wife.
"Go on," she said resignedly.
He had expected her to take his arm, or perhaps to caress him, or at least to encourage him by her gentlest words and her prettiest smiles. The steady self-restraint which she now manifested was a sign, as he interpreted it, of suppressed resentment. Shrinking, honestly shrinking, from the bare possibility of another quarrel, he confronted the hard necessities of further confession.
"Well, now," he said, "it's only this—you mustn't look into the empty bedroom to-night."
"Why not?"
"Ah, for the best of all good reasons! Because you might find somebody in there."
This reply excited her curiosity: her eyes rested on him eagerly. "Some friend of yours?" she asked.
He persisted in an assumption of good-humour, which betrayed itself as mere artifice in the clumsiest manner: "I declare I feel as if I were in a court of justice, being cross-examined by a lawyer of skill and dexterity! Well, my sweet counsellor, no—not exactly a friend of mine."
She reflected for a moment. "You don't surely mean one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?" she said.
He pretended not to have heard her, and pointed to the view of the garden from the window. "Isn't it a lovely day? Let's go and look at the flowers," he suggested.
"Did you not hear what I said to you just now?" she persisted.
"I beg your pardon, dear; I was thinking of something else. Suppose we go into the garden?"
When women have a point to gain in which they are interested, how many of them are capable of deferring it to a better opportunity? One in a thousand, perhaps. Iris kept her place at the window, resolved on getting an answer.
"I asked you, Harry, whether the person who is to occupy our spare bedroom, to-night, was one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?"
"Say one of Mr. Vimpany's patients—and you will be nearer the truth," he answered, with an outburst of impatience.
She could hardly believe him. "Do you mean a person who is really ill?" she said.
"Of course I mean it," he said; irritated into speaking out, at last.
"A man? or a woman?"
"A man."
"May I ask if he comes from England?"
"He comes from one of the French hospitals. Anything more?"
Iris left her husband to recover his good-humour, and went back to her chair. The extraordinary disclosure which she had extracted from him had produced a stupefying effect on her mind. Her customary sympathy with him, her subtle womanly observation of his character, her intimate knowledge of his merits and his defects, failed to find the rational motive which might have explained his conduct. She looked round at him with mingled feelings of perplexity and distrust.
He was still at the window, but he had turned his back on the view of the garden; his eyes were fixed, in furtive expectation, on his wife. Was he waiting to hear her say something more? She ran the risk and said it.
"I don't quite understand the sacrifice you seem to be making to Mr. Vimpany," she confessed. "Will you tell me, dear, what it means?"
Here was the opportunity offered of following the doctor's advice, and putting his wife's credulity to the test. With her knowledge of Vimpany, would she really believe the story which had imposed on the strangers who managed the hospital? Lord Harry made up his mind, to try the experiment. No matter what the result might be, it would bring the responsibilities that were crushing him to an end. He need say no more, if the deception succeeded. He could do no more, if it failed. Under the influence of this cheering reflection, he recovered his temper; his handsome face brightened again with its genial boyish smile.
"What a wonderful woman you are!" he cried. "Isn't it just the thing that I am here for, to tell you what I mean—and my clever wife sees through and through me, and reminds me of what I must do! Pay my fee beforehand, Iris! Give me a kiss—and my poor meaning shall be offered in return. It will help me if you remember one thing. Vimpany and I are old friends, and there's nothing we won't do to accommodate each other. Mind that!"
Tried fairly on its own merits, the stupid fiction invented by the doctor produced an effect for which Lord Harry was not prepared. The longer Iris listened, the more strangely Iris looked at him. Not a word fell from her lips when he had done. He noticed that she had turned pale: it seemed to be almost possible that he had frightened her!
If his bird-witted brains could have coupled cause and effect, this was exactly the result which he might have anticipated.
She was asked to believe that a new system of medical practice had been invented by such a person as Mr. Vimpany. She was asked to believe that an invalid from a foreign hospital, who was a perfect stranger to Lord Harry, had been willingly made welcome to a bedroom at the cottage. She was asked to believe that this astounding concession had been offered to the doctor as a tribute of friendship, after her husband had himself told her that he regretted having invited Vimpany, for the second time, to become his guest. Here was one improbable circumstance accumulated on another, and a clever woman was expected to accept the monstrous excuses, thus produced, as a trustworthy statement of facts. Irresistibly, the dread of some evil deed in secret contemplation cast its darkening presence on the wife's mind. Lord Harry's observation had not misled him, when he saw Iris turn pale, and when the doubt was forced on him whether he might not have frightened her.
"If my explanation of this little matter has satisfied you," he ventured to resume, "we need say no more about it."
"I agree with you," she answered, "let us say no more about it." Conscious, in spite of the effort to resist it, of a feeling of oppression while she was in the same room with a man who had deliberately lied to her, and that man her husband, she reminded Lord Harry that he had proposed to take a walk in the garden. Out in the pure air, under the bright sky, she might breathe more freely. "Come to the flowers," she said.
They went to the garden together—the wife fearing the deceitful husband, the husband fearing the quick-witted wife.
Watching each other like two strangers, they walked silently side by side, and looked now and then at the collection of flowers and plants. Iris noticed a delicate fern which had fallen away from the support to which it had been attached. She stopped, and occupied herself in restoring it to its place. When she looked round again, after attending to the plant, her husband had disappeared, and Mr. Vimpany was waiting in his place.
"WHERE is Lord Harry?" Iris asked.
The reply startled her: "Lord Harry leaves me to say to your ladyship, what he has not had resolution enough to say for himself."
"I don't understand you, Mr. Vimpany."
The doctor pointed to the fern which had just been the object of Lady Harry's care.
"You have been helping that sickly plant there to live and thrive," he said, "and I have felt some curiosity in watching you. There is another sickly plant, which I have undertaken to rear if the thing can be done. My gardening is of the medical kind—I can only carry it on indoors—and whatever else it may be, I tell you plainly, like the outspoken sort of fellow I am, it's not likely to prove agreeable to a lady. No offence, I hope? Your humble servant is only trying to produce the right sort of impression—and takes leave to doubt his lordship in one particular."
"In what particular, sir?"
"I'll put it in the form of a question, ma'am. Has my friend persuaded you to make arrangements for leaving the cottage?"
Iris looked at Lord Harry's friend without attempting to conceal her opinion of him.
"I call that an impertinent question," she said. "By what right do you presume to inquire into what my husband and I may, or may not, have said to each other?"
"Will you do me a favour, my lady? Or, if that is asking too much, perhaps you will not object to do justice to yourself. Suppose you try to exercise the virtue of self-control?
"Quite needless, Mr. Vimpany. Pray understand that you are not capable of making me angry."
"Many thanks, Lady Harry: you encourage me to go on. When I was bold enough to speak of your leaving the cottage, my motive was to prevent you from being needlessly alarmed."
Did this mean that he was about to take her into his confidence? All her experience of him forbade her to believe it possible. But the doubts and fears occasioned by her interview with her husband had mastered her better sense; and the effort to conceal from the doctor the anxiety under which she suffered was steadily weakening the influence of her self-respect. "Why should I be alarmed?" she asked, in the vain hope of encouraging him to tell the truth.
The doctor arrived at a hasty conclusion, on his side. Believing that he had shaken her resolution, he no longer troubled himself to assume the forms of politeness which he had hitherto, with some difficulty, contrived to observe.
"In this curious little world of ours," he resumed, "we enjoy our lives on infernally hard terms. We live on condition that we die. The man I want to cure may die, in spite of the best I can do for him—-he may sink slowly, by what we medical men call a hard death. For example, it wouldn't much surprise me if I found some difficulty in keeping him in his bed. He might roam all over your cottage when my back was turned. Or he might pay the debt of Nature—as somebody calls it—with screaming and swearing. If you were within hearing of him, I'm afraid you might be terrified, and, with the best wish to be useful, I couldn't guarantee (if the worst happened) to keep him quiet. In your place, if you will allow me to advise you—"
Iris interrupted him. Instead of confessing the truth, he was impudently attempting to frighten her. "I don't allow a person in whom I have no confidence to advise me," she said; "I wish to hear no more."
Mr. Vimpany found it desirable to resume the forms of politeness. Either he had failed to shake her resolution, or she was sufficiently in possession of herself to conceal what she felt.
"One last word!" he said. "I won't presume to advise your ladyship; I will merely offer a suggestion. My lord tells me that Hugh Mountjoy is on the way to recovery. You are in communication with him by letter, as I happened to notice when I did you that trifling service of providing a postage-stamp. Why not go to London and cheer your convalescent friend? Harry won't mind it—I beg your pardon, I ought to have said Lord Harry. Come! come! my dear lady; I am a rough fellow, but I mean well. Take a holiday, and come back to us when my lord writes to say that he can have the pleasure of receiving you again." He waited for a moment. "Am I not to be favoured with an answer?" he asked.
"My husband shall answer you."
With those parting words, Iris turned her back on him.
She entered the cottage. Now in one room, and now in another, she searched for Lord Harry; he was nowhere to be found. Had he purposely gone out to avoid her? Her own remembrance of Vimpany's language and Vimpany's manner told her that so it must be—the two men were in league together. Of all dangers, unknown danger is the most terrible to contemplate. Lady Harry's last resources of resolution failed her. She dropped helplessly into a chair.
After an interval—whether it was a long or a short lapse of time she was unable to decide—someone gently opened the door. Had her husband felt for her? Had he returned? "Come in! she cried eagerly—" come in!
THE person who now entered the room was Fanny Mere.
But one interest was stirring in the mind of Iris now. "Do you know where your master is?" she asked.
"I saw him go out," the maid replied. "Which way I didn't particularly notice—" She was on the point of adding, "and I didn't particularly care," when she checked herself. "Yesterday and to-day, my lady, things have come to my knowledge which I must not keep to myself," the resolute woman continued. "If a servant may say such a thing without offence, I have never been so truly my mistress's friend as I am now. I beg you to forgive my boldness; there is a reason for it."
So she spoke, with no presumption in her looks, with no familiarity in her manner. The eyes of her friendless mistress filled with tears, the offered hand of her friendless mistress answered in silence. Fanny took that kind hand, and pressed it respectfully—a more demonstrative woman than herself might perhaps have kissed it. She only said, "Thank you, my lady," and went on with what she felt it her duty to relate.
As carefully as usual, as quietly as usual, she repeated the conversation, at Lord Harry's table; describing also the manner in which Mr. Vimpany had discovered her as a person who understood the French language, and who had cunningly kept it a secret. In this serious state of things, the doctor—yes, the doctor himself!—had interfered to protect her from the anger of her master, and, more wonderful still, for a reason which it seemed impossible to dispute. He wanted a nurse for the foreigner whose arrival was expected on that evening, and he had offered the place to Fanny. "Your ladyship will, I hope, excuse me; I have taken the place."
This amazing end to the strange events which had just been narrated proved to be more than Iris was immediately capable of understanding. "I am in the dark," she confessed. "Is Mr. Vimpany a bolder villain even than I have supposed him to be?"
"That he most certainly is!" Fanny said with strong conviction. "As to what he really had in his wicked head when he engaged me, I shall find that out in time. Anyway, I am the nurse who is to help him. When I disobeyed you this morning, my lady, it was to go to the hospital with Mr. Vimpany. I was taken to see the person whose nurse I am to be. A poor, feeble, polite creature, who looked as if he couldn't hurt a fly—-and yet I promise you he startled me! I saw a likeness, the moment I looked at him."
"A likeness to anybody whom I know?" Iris asked.
"To the person in all the world, my lady, whom you know most nearly—a likeness to my master."
"What!"
"Oh, it's no fancy; I am sure of what I say. To my mind, that Danish man's likeness to my lord is (if you will excuse my language) a nasty circumstance. I don't know why or wherefore—all I can say is, I don't like it; and I shan't rest until I have found out what it means. Besides this, my lady, I must know the reason why they want to get you out of their way. Please to keep up your heart; I shall warn you in time, when I am sure of the danger."
Iris refused to sanction the risk involved in this desperate design. "It'syouwho will be in danger!" she exclaimed.
In her coolest state of obstinacy, Fanny answered: "That's in your ladyship's service—and that doesn't reckon."
Feeling gratefully this simple and sincere expression of attachment, Iris held to her own opinion, nevertheless.
"You are in my service," she said; "I won't let you go to Mr. Vimpany. Give it up, Fanny! Give it up!"
"I'll give it up, my lady, when I know what the doctor means to do—not before."
The assertion of authority having failed, Iris tried persuasion next.
"As your mistress, it is my duty to set you an example," she resumed. "One of us must be considerate and gentle in a dispute—let me try to be that one. There can be no harm, and there may be some good, in consulting the opinion of a friend; some person in whose discretion we can trust."
"Am I acquainted with the person your ladyship is thinking of?" Fanny inquired. "In that case, a friend will know what we want of her by to-morrow morning. I have written to Mrs. Vimpany."
"The very person I had in my mind, Fanny! When may we expect to hear from her?"
"If Mrs. Vimpany can put what she has to say to us into few words," Fanny replied, "we shall hear from her to-morrow by telegraph."
As she answered her mistress in those cheering words, they were startled by a heavy knock at the door of the room. Under similar circumstances, Lord Harry's delicate hand would have been just loud enough to be heard, and no more. Iris called out suspiciously: "Who's there?"
The doctor's gross voice answered: "Can I say a word, if you please, to Fanny Mere?"
The maid opened the door. Mr. Vimpany's heavy hand laid bold of her arm, pulled her over the threshold, and closed the door behind her. After a brief absence, Fanny returned with news of my lord.
A commissioner had arrived with a message for the doctor; and Fanny was charged to repeat it or not, just as she thought right under the circumstances. Lord Harry was in Paris. He had been invited to go to the theatre with some friends, and to return with them to supper. If he was late in getting home, he was anxious that my lady should not be made uneasy. After having authorised Mr. Vimpany's interference in the garden, the husband evidently had his motives for avoiding another interview with the wife. Iris was left alone, to think over that discovery. Fanny had received orders to prepare the bedroom for the doctor's patient.
TOWARDS evening, the Dane was brought to the cottage.
A feeling of pride which forbade any display of curiosity, strengthened perhaps by an irresistible horror of Vimpany, kept Iris in her room. Nothing but the sound of footsteps, outside, told her when the suffering man was taken to his bed-chamber on the same floor. She was, afterwards informed by Fanny that the doctor turned down the lamp in the corridor, before the patient was helped to ascend the stairs, as a means of preventing the mistress of the house from plainly seeing the stranger's face, and recognising the living likeness of her husband.
The hours advanced—the bustle of domestic life sank into silence—everybody but Iris rested quietly in bed.
Through the wakeful night the sense of her situation oppressed her sinking spirits. Mysteries that vaguely threatened danger made their presence felt, and took their dark way through her thoughts. The cottage, in which the first happy days of her marriage had been passed, might ere long be the scene of some evil deed, provoking the lifelong separation of her husband and herself! Were these the exaggerated fears of a woman in a state of hysterical suspicion? It was enough for Iris to remember that Lord Harry and Mr. Vimpany had been alike incapable of telling her the truth. The first had tried to deceive her; the second had done his best to frighten her. Why? If there was really nothing to be afraid of—why? The hours of the early morning came; and still she listened in vain for the sound of my lord's footstep on the stairs; still she failed to hear the cautious opening of his dressing-room door. Leaving her chair, Iris rested on the bed. As time advanced, exhaustion mastered her; she slept.
Awakening at a late hour, she rang for Fanny Mere. The master had just returned. He had missed the latest night-train to Passy; and, rather than waste money on hiring a carriage at that hour, he had accepted the offer of a bed at the house of his friends. He was then below stairs, hoping to see Lady Harry at breakfast.
His wife joined him.
Not even at the time of the honeymoon had the Irish lord been a more irresistibly agreeable man than he was on that memorable morning. His apologies for having failed to return at the right time were little masterpieces of grace and gaiety. The next best thing to having been present, at the theatrical performance of the previous night, was to hear his satirical summary of the story of the play, contrasting delightfully with his critical approval of the fine art of the actors. The time had been when Iris would have resented such merciless trifling with serious interests as this. In these earlier and better days, she would have reminded him affectionately of her claim to be received into his confidence—she would have tried all that tact and gentleness and patience could do to win his confession of the ascendency exercised over him by his vile friend—and she would have used the utmost influence of her love and her resolution to disunite the fatal fellowship which was leading him to his ruin.
But Iris Henley was Lady Harry now.
She was sinking—as Mrs. Vimpany had feared, as Mountjoy had foreseen—lower and lower on the descent to her husband's level. With a false appearance of interest in what he was saying she waited for her chance of matching him with his own weapons of audacious deceit. He ignorantly offered her the opportunity—setting the same snare to catch his wife, which she herself had it in contemplation to use for entrapping her husband into a confession of the truth.
"Ah, well—I have said more than enough of my last night's amusement," he confessed. "It's your turn now, my dear. Have you had a look at the poor fellow whom the doctor is going to cure?" he asked abruptly; eager to discover whether she had noticed the likeness between Oxbye and himself.
Her eyes rested on him attentively. "I have not yet seen the person you allude to," she answered. "Is Mr. Vimpany hopeful of his recovery?"
He took out his case, and busied himself in choosing a cigar. In the course of his adventurous life, he had gained some knowledge of the effect of his own impetuous temper on others, and of difficulties which he had experienced when circumstances rendered it necessary to keep his face in a state of discipline.
"Oh, there's no reason for anxiety!" he said, with an over-acted interest in examining his cigar. "Mr. Oxbye is in good hands."
"People do sometimes sink under an illness," she quietly remarked.
Without making any reply he took out his matchbox. His hand trembled a little; he failed at the first attempt to strike a light.
"And doctors sometimes make mistakes," Iris went on.
He was still silent. At the second attempt, he succeeded with the match, and lit his cigar.
"Suppose Mr. Vimpany made a mistake," she persisted. "In the case of this stranger, it might lead to deplorable results."
Lord Harry lost his temper, and with it his colour.
"What the devil do you mean?" he cried.
"I might ask, in my turn," she said, "what have I done to provoke an outbreak of temper? I only made a remark."
At that critical moment, Fanny Mere entered the room with a telegram in her hand.
"For you, my lady."
Iris opened the telegram. The message was signed by Mrs. Vimpany, and was expressed in these words: "You may feel it your duty to go to your father. He is dangerously ill."
Lord Harry saw a sudden change in his wife's face that roused his guilty suspicions. "Is it anything about me?" he asked.
Iris handed the telegram to him in silence. Having looked at it, he desired to hear what her wishes were.
"The telegram expresses my wishes," she said. "Have you any objection to my leaving you?"
"None whatever," he answered eagerly. "Go, by all means."
If it had still been possible for her to hesitate, that reply would have put an end to all further doubt. She turned away to leave the room. He followed her to the door.
"I hope you don't think there is any want of sympathy on my part," he said. "You are quite right to go to your father. That was all I meant." He was agitated, honestly agitated, while he spoke. Iris saw it, and felt it gratefully. She was on the point of making a last appeal to his confidence, when he opened the door for her. "Don't let me detain you," he said. His voice faltered; he suddenly turned aside before she could look at him.
Fanny was waiting in the hall, eager to see the telegram. She read it twice and reflected for a moment. "How often do things fit themselves to one's wishes in this convenient way?" she asked herself. "It's lucky," she privately decided—"almost too lucky. Let me pack up your things," she continued, addressing her mistress, "while I have some time to myself. Mr. Oxbye is asleep."
As the day wore on, the noble influences in the nature of Iris, failing fast, yet still at rare intervals struggling to assert themselves, inspired her with the resolution to make a last attempt to give her husband an opportunity of trusting her. He was not in his room, not in any other part of the house, not in the garden. The hours passed—she was left to eat her dinner in solitude. For the second time, he was avoiding her. For the second time, he distrusted the influence of his wife. With a heavy heart she prepared for her departure by the night-mail.
The duties of the new nurse kept her in the cottage. Filled with alarm for the faithful creature whom she was leaving—to what fate, who could say?—Iris kissed her at parting.
Fanny's faint blue eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away, and held her mistress for an instant in her arms. "I know whom you are thinking of," she whispered. "He is not here to bid you good-bye. Let me see what I can find in his room." Iris had already looked round the room, in the vain hope of finding a letter. Fanny rushed up the stairs, determined on a last search—and ran down again with a folded morsel of flimsy foreign notepaper in her hand. "My ugly eyes are quicker than yours," she said. "The air must have come in at the window and blown it off the table." Iris eagerly read the letter:
"I dare not deny that you will be better away from us, but only for a while. Forgive me, dearest; I cannot find the courage to say good-bye." Those few words spoke for him—and no more.
Briefly on her side, but not unkindly, his wife answered him:
"You have spared me a bitter moment. May I hope to find the man whom I have trusted and honoured, when I come back? Good-bye."
When were they to meet again? And how?
THERE now remained but one other person in Lord Harry's household whose presence on the scene was an obstacle to be removed.
This person was the cook. On condition of her immediate departure (excused by alleged motives of economy), she received a month's wages from her master, in advance of the sum due to her, and a written character which did ample justice to her many good qualities. The poor woman left her employment with the heartiest expressions of gratitude. To the end of her days, she declared the Irish lord to be a nobleman by nature. Republican principles, inherited from her excellent parents, disinclined her to recognise him as a nobleman by birth.
But another sweet and simple creature was still left to brighten the sinister gloom in the cottage.
The good Dane sorely tried the patience of Fanny Mere. This countryman of Hamlet, as he liked to call himself, was a living protest against the sentiments of inveterate contempt and hatred, with which his nurse was accustomed to regard the men. When pain spared him at intervals, Mr. Oxbye presented the bright blue eyes and the winning smile which suggested the resemblance to the Irish lord. His beardless face, thin towards the lower extremities, completed the likeness in some degree only. The daring expression of Lord Harry, in certain emergencies, never appeared. Nursing him carefully, on the severest principles of duty as distinguished from inclination, Fanny found herself in the presence of a male human being, who in the painless intervals of his malady, wrote little poems in her praise; asked for a few flowers from the garden, and made prettily arranged nosegays of them devoted to herself; cried, when she told him he was a fool, and kissed her hand five minutes afterwards, when she administered his medicine, and gave him no pleasant sweet thing to take the disagreeable taste out of his mouth. This gentle patient loved Lord Harry, loved Mr. Vimpany, loved the furious Fanny, resist it as she might. On her obstinate refusal to confide to him the story of her life—after he had himself set her the example at great length—he persisted in discovering for himself that "this interesting woman was a victim of sorrows of the heart." In another state of existence, he was offensively certain that she would be living withhim."You are frightfully pale, you will soon die; I shall break a blood-vessel, and follow you; we shall sit side by side on clouds, and sing together everlastingly to accompaniment of celestial harps. Oh, what a treat!" Like a child, he screamed when he was in pain; and, like a child, he laughed when the pain had gone away. When she was angry enough with him to say, "If I had known what sort of man you were, I would never have undertaken to nurse you," he only answered, "my dear, let us thank God together that you did not know." There was no temper in him to be roused; and, worse still, on buoyant days, when his spirits were lively, there was no persuading him that he might not live long enough to marry his nurse, if he only put the question to her often enough. What was to be done with such a man as this? Fanny believed that she despised her feeble patient. At the same time, the food that nourished him was prepared by her own hands—while the other inhabitants of the cottage were left (in the absence of the cook) to the tough mercies of a neighbouring restaurant. First and foremost among the many good deeds by which the conduct of women claims the gratitude of the other sex, is surely the manner in which they let an unfortunate man master them, without an unworthy suspicion of that circumstance to trouble the charitable serenity of their minds.
Carefully on the look-out for any discoveries which might enlighten her, Fanny noticed with ever-increasing interest the effect which the harmless Dane seemed to produce on my lord and the doctor.
Every morning, after breakfast, Lord Harry presented himself in the bedroom. Every morning, his courteous interest in his guest expressed itself mechanically in the same form of words:
"Mr. Oxbye, how do you find yourself to-day?"
Sometimes the answer would be: "Gracious lord, I am suffering pain." Sometimes it was: "Dear and admirable patron, I feel as if I might get well again." On either occasion, Lord Harry listened without looking at Mr. Oxbye—said he was sorry to hear a bad account or glad to hear a good account, without looking at Mr. Oxbye—made a remark on the weather, and took his leave, without looking at Mr. Oxbye. Nothing could be more plain than that his polite inquiries (once a day) were unwillingly made, and that it was always a relief to him to get out of the room. So strongly was Fanny's curiosity excited by this strange behaviour, that she ventured one day to speak to her master.
"I am afraid, my lord, you are not hopeful of Mr. Oxbye's recovering?"
"Mind your own business," was the savage answer that she received.
Fanny never again took the liberty of speaking to him; but she watched him more closely than ever. He was perpetually restless. Now he wandered from one room to another, and walked round and round the garden, smoking incessantly. Now he went out riding, or took the railway to Paris and disappeared for the day. On the rare occasions when he was in a state of repose, he always appeared to have taken refuge in his wife's room; Fanny's keyhole-observation discovered him, thinking miserably, seated in his wife's chair. It seemed to be possible that he was fretting after Lady Harry. But what did his conduct to Mr. Oxbye mean? What was the motive which made him persist, without an attempt at concealment, in keeping out of Mr. Vimpany's way? And, treated in this rude manner, how was it that his wicked friend seemed to be always amused, never offended?
As for the doctor's behaviour to his patient, it was, in Fanny's estimation, worthy of a savage.
He appeared to feel no sort of interest in the man who had been sent to him from the hospital at his own request, and whose malady it was supposed to be the height of his ambition to cure. When Mr. Oxbye described his symptoms, Mr. Vimpany hardly even made a pretence at listening. With a frowning face he applied the stethoscope, felt the pulse, looked at the tongue—and drew his own conclusions in sullen silence. If the nurse had a favourable report to make, he brutally turned his back on her. If discouraging results of the medical treatment made their appearance at night, and she felt it a duty to mention them, he sneered as if he doubted whether she was speaking the truth. Mr. Oxbye's inexhaustible patience and amiability made endless allowances for his medical advisor. "It is my misfortune to keep my devoted doctor in a state of perpetual anxiety," he used to say; "and we all know what a trial to the temper is the consequence of unrelieved suspense. I believe in Mr. Vimpany." Fanny was careful not to betray her own opinion by making any reply; her doubts of the doctor had, by this time, become terrifying doubts even to herself. Whenever an opportunity favoured her, she vigilantly watched him. One of his ways of finding amusement, in his leisure hours, was in the use of a photographic apparatus. He took little pictures of the rooms in the cottage, which were followed by views in the garden. Those having come to an end, he completed the mystification of the nurse by producing a portrait of the Dane, while he lay asleep one day after he had been improving in health for some little time past. Fanny asked leave to look at the likeness when it had been "printed" from the negative, in the garden. He first examined it himself—and then deliberately tore it up and let the fragments fly away in the wind. "I am not satisfied with it," was all the explanation he offered. One of the garden chairs happened to be near him; he sat down, and looked like a man in a state of torment under his own angry thoughts.
If the patient's health had altered for the worse, and if the tendency to relapse had proved to be noticeable after medicine had been administered, Fanny's first suspicions might have taken a very serious turn. But the change in Oxbye—sleeping in purer air and sustained by better food than he could obtain at the hospital—pointed more and more visibly to a decided gain of vital strength. His hollow checks were filling out, and colour was beginning to appear again on the pallor of his skin. Strange as the conduct of Lord Harry and Mr. Vimpany might be, there was no possibility, thus far, of connecting it with the position occupied by the Danish guest. Nobody who had seen his face, when he was first brought to the cottage, could have looked at him again, after the lapse of a fortnight, and have failed to discover the signs which promise recovery of health.
IN the correspondence secretly carried on between the mistress in London and the maid at Passy, it was Fanny Mere's turn to write next. She decided on delaying her reply until she had once more given careful consideration to the first letter received from Lady Harry, announcing her arrival in England, and a strange discovery that had attended it.
Before leaving Paris, Iris had telegraphed instructions to Mrs. Vimpany to meet her at the terminus in London. Her first inquiries were for her father. The answer given, with an appearance of confusion and even of shame, was that there was no need to feel anxiety on the subject of Mr. Henley's illness. Relieved on hearing this good news, Iris naturally expressed some surprise at her father's rapid recovery. She asked if the doctors had misunderstood his malady when they believed him to be in danger. To this question Mrs. Vimpany had replied by making an unexpected confession.
She owned that Mr. Henley's illness had been at no time of any serious importance. A paragraph in a newspaper had informed her that he was suffering from nothing worse than an attack of gout. It was a wicked act to have exaggerated this report, and to have alarmed Lady Harry on the subject of her father's health. Mrs. Vimpany had but one excuse to offer. Fanny's letter had filled her with such unendurable doubts and forebodings that she had taken the one way of inducing Lady Harry to secure her own safety by at once leaving Passy—the way by a false alarm. Deceit, so sincerely repented, so resolutely resisted, had tried its power of temptation again, and had prevailed.
"When I thought of you at the mercy of my vile husband," Mrs. Vimpany said, "with your husband but too surely gained as an accomplice, my good resolutions failed me. Is it only in books that a true repentance never stumbles again? Or am I the one fallible mortal creature in the world? I am ashamed of myself. But, oh, Lady Harry, I was so frightened for you! Try to forgive me; I am so fond of you, and so glad to see you here in safety. Don't go back! For God's sake, don't go back!"
Iris had no intention of returning, while the doctor and his patient were still at Passy; and she found in Mrs. Vimpany's compassion good reason to forgive an offence committed through devotion to herself, and atoned for by sincere regret.
Fanny looked carefully over the next page of the letter, which described Lady Harry's first interview with Mr. Mountjoy since his illness. The expressions of happiness on renewing her relations with her old and dear friend confirmed the maid in her first impression that there was no fear of a premature return to Passy, with the wish to see Lord Harry again as the motive. She looked over the later letters next—and still the good influence of Mr. Mountjoy seemed to be in time ascendant. There was anxiety felt for Fanny's safety, and curiosity expressed to hear what discoveries she might have made; but the only allusions to my lord contained ordinary inquiries relating to the state of his health, and, on one occasion, there was a wish expressed to know whether he was still on friendly terms with Mr. Vimpany. There seemed to be no fear of tempting her mistress to undervalue the danger of returning to the cottage, if she mentioned the cheering improvement now visible in Mr. Oxbye. And yet Fanny still hesitated to trust her first impressions, even after they had been confirmed. Her own sad experience reminded her of the fatal influence which an unscrupulous man can exercise over the woman who loves him. It was always possible that Lady Harry might not choose to confide the state of her feelings towards her husband to a person who, after all, only occupied the position of her maid. The absence, in her letters, of any expressions of affectionate regret was no proof that she was not thinking of my lord. So far as he was personally concerned, the Dane's prospects of recovery would appear to justify the action of the doctor and his accomplice. Distrusting them both as resolutely as ever, and determined to keep Lady Harry as long as possible at the safe distance of London, Fanny Mere, in writing her reply, preserved a discreet silence on the subject of Mr. Oxbye's health.