CHAPTER XIII.HER DREAM.
He left the station as in a trance. He felt nothing but that something had happened to him that had mortally wounded him.
Mechanically, he got rid of Ralph’s companionship by leaving him at the scientist’s house. Then he gave the order “Home.”
He was going up the steps of his house when the door opened, and the count came out.
“Ah!” The count’s exclamation was one of satisfaction.
“But I am glad to find you, monsieur le docteur! The prince is terribly anxious about madame! She is very ill. You will come to her at once?”
The revulsion of feeling was acute. The blood rushed to Dr. Paull’s cheek. He turned abruptly from the count, and opened the street door with his key.
“Will you come in?” he said coldly.
At that moment some instinct suggested aversion to this man. He had met those seraphic blue eyes fixed upon him with a mocking expression that was anything but seraphic, and in his present humour he would have doubted anyone.
“I understood that the prince had left town,” he said, after he had led the way into the library andclosed the door. “Was it he who sent you, or the princess?”
The count explained that the princess was too ill to give directions, and was proceeding to make further explanations when Hugh cut him short, and explained that the princess having dismissed him, he could attend at her summons alone.
He was desperately angry—was it with Mercedes, or with himself? This anger nerved him to write the names and addresses of certain physicians and to hand them to the count.
“Any of these gentlemen will attend at the prince’s request,” he said. “Under the circumstances, you will quite understand that it is impossible for me to do so except at the princess’ special desire.”
The count was compelled to retreat. He was surprised. Perhaps he had expected that Hugh had only to hear that he was wanted by his beautiful patient to fly to her.
During that short interview Hugh felt triumphant. No sooner was he alone than the agreeable sense of self-vindication fled. He began to doubt whether he had acted rightly.
“I have been selfish—hard,” he told himself. “I ought to have remembered what a child she is—and so tender and sensitive—and so utterly friendless, with that man for a husband, and that fellow for a go-between!”
However, he had no time for further self-reproach. Patients arrived and had to be interviewed. Later in the day he had to visit a hospital, and in the evening Ralph was full of his day’s work. He had written a chapter at the professor’s dictation which had opened out a new vista of science to him. As the boy sat eagerlyexpatiating upon his day’s experiences, his flushed cheek and glistening eyes made him strangely like his dead mother. As Dr. Paull noticed the likeness he shuddered. As soon as he could, he made an excuse to be alone.
“I have work to do—can you amuse yourself without me?” he said.
Ralph’s affectionate glance recalled Lilia still more. Was it his fancy that to-night, of all nights, the lad bore a startling resemblance to his mother that Hugh had not observed before?
“It is not,” he thought, as he lowered the lamp in the library, and opening the window, drew an easy-chair near it and lighting his pipe, settled himself to think. “He is growing like her.”
It was a dark night—moonless, but clear. The stars were brilliant. Obscurity lent a charm to the blackened shrubs in the so-called gardens at the back of the house. The forms of the opposite houses were vaguely defined against the ebon blue. Hugh tried to recall nights such as this, when he and his wife strolled into the pinewoods, and Lilia talked love to him as she leant upon his arm. He tried to recall the tones of her voice, but could not. He tried to remember the expression of her eyes, but, to his horror—for to-day he would have sacrificed much for a keen recollection of the past—when he thought of Lilia’s face, he seemed to see the pathetic beauty of Mercedes; when he thought of Lilia’s voice, he seemed to hear Mercedes when she last spoke to him.
“I am a fickle wretch!” he told himself, bitterly. “I have forgotten the child who loved me better than she loved her God!”
He was attempting to do what he had never since dared to attempt—to recall in all its torturing details the closing rebellious scene of Lilia’s short life—when he heard a tap at the door, and “May I come in?” in Ralph’s familiar tones.
He laid down his pipe with a sigh, and went to the door. He would send Ralph away—he was not in a humour to talk.
On opening the door, he saw Ralph—and two women, one of whom turned to her companion and said a few words in a low voice, then coolly passed him and walked into his room.
He recognised her at once, cloaked and veiled though she was. Still, he stood at the door, hesitating; his heart seemed to stand still at such unparalleled audacity. Only when, removing her veil, she said, almost impatiently, “Please shut the door,” did he seem to recover the right use of his senses.
“I thought—you were very ill,” he said, coming towards her.
“I am,” said Mercedes, throwing up her veil.
She certainly looked like death: her face pallid, her features sunken, her great eyes dimmed.
“This is terrible—you should not have come!” said Hugh, passionately, stirred by the sight of the face which had bewitched him, bereft of its exquisite beauty. “This is worse than imprudence!”
He drew a chair for her near the writing-table, turned up the lamp, and pulled down the blind, half indignant that his love—oh! when he saw her he felt she was his love, and nothing else—that this cruel love of his, who had caused him such throes, should have lowered herself thus, and have forgotten her high estateand womanly dignity to come to him! But half despairing—for he saw nothing but an abyss—an abyss of shame for her, of dishonour for him, in this.
“Whydid you come?” he asked her, when his emotion permitted him to think. “It is madness—madness—for you to come here! And at this hour!”
“Why did you not come—to me?” she gasped, rising in her chair. “My husband sent for you—and you would not come!”
“You wrote me my dismissal,” said Hugh, bitterly. “You felt a whim, a fancy, not to see me any more. You gratified it. You did not think what suffering it would cause me. You only pleased your vanity. It pleased your vanity to think you could hurt a man who has not been hurt by a woman before.”
He stopped short, for a sudden light came upon her face.
“What?” she whispered, leaning forward, her features losing their contraction, her pallor lessening. “No womanhurtyou before! I was told you loved your wife!”
She said the word “wife” reluctantly. Hugh gazed at her wonderingly. His eyes travelled eagerly over her countenance. Every line was dear to him. The dimples about her mouth—how sweet they were!
But suddenly he remembered himself—his position—and her, his patient. He recalled himself to a sense of propriety, and assumed a calm which he did not feel.
“I was very sorry to receive your dismissal,” he began, in as ordinary a tone of voice as he could command, leaning up against the book-shelves in the shadow opposite to her, and folding his arms with a vague instinct to repress the turbulent beating of his heart.“But I am still more sorry that you, princess, should have stooped to come to me.”
Then he tried to explain why he had not gone to her at the count’s bidding. He spoke of professional etiquette, of the duty imposed upon members of his craft to support the rules that upheld their dignity. She leant back in her chair listening, with a curious smile on her pale lips.
He spoke confidently at first; indeed, almost with firmness. But as he looked at her, sitting like some exquisite waxen figure in the old leathern chair, a delicacy and royal daintiness about her, even to every fold of her glistening evening gown, her eyes fixed upon him with an expression of sad reproach, faintly tinged with disdain, he felt a wild impulse to throw himself at her feet and tell her he was hers—her slave, to be hers till death. Astonished at his own feelings—alarmed,—he violently repressed them; but his voice first faltered, then lost its resonance; he stammered, forgot what he wanted to say; in fact, failed miserably in his attempt to assert himself. He was thankful to her when she spoke, although she reproached him.
“You were not only mydocteur,” she said, and her sweet, reproachful voice seemed dearer, more familiar, than before. “You said—you promised to be my friend.”
“Friendship cannot be all on one side,” said Hugh bitterly, relinquishing the pretence of doctor speaking to patient. “You told me you did not want me. You wrote as cruelly as ever woman wrote to man. I could not believe in your wish for my friendship after that.”
She looked at him, surprised.
“Think,” she said; “remember, remember! Howdid you be to me that night—that night at Lady Boisville’s? The good count he did come afterwards to console me. He said to me, ‘Excuse him, because he is so clever a man, and he understandsles nerfsas no other man does understand them.’ Then he tells me more——”
“The count is extremely kind,” said Hugh. “He appears to know me very well. And pray what more did the count tell you about me?”
“He tells me” (she closed her eyes and spoke with hesitation and in a stifled voice) “how beautiful was your young wife, and how your poor heart is buried in her grave.”
There was silence in the big, shabby old room, where the Princess Andriocchi, seated in the lamplight, was the spot of light among the shadows. The princess had not spoken mockingly; she spoke like a true woman, sympathetically, although a cool listener would have gathered from her tone and manner how deeply she loved the man to whom she addressed those words.
But Hugh was no cool listener; he was excited to the utmost pitch, beyond the point where he could recognise that he was not himself.
“That is true in a way,” he said, roughly, with a half laugh. “It is true as far as this: if I had a heart, it might be buried in a grave. But I have none, princess. All women and men are alike to me. If they are ill and want me, then, of course, they are my patients, and I am interested in them as such. Otherwise—well, I wish good to everyone; but I am content to live alone—aye, and to die alone.”
He had paced the room while venting that speech. Turning abruptly, as he somewhat savagely enunciatedthose last words, he saw a smile on Mercedes’ sweet face.
“Ah!” she said, shaking her head, “you think you feel that. But——”
She looked incredulity. He and his sentiments had evidently not impressed her or depressed her spirits in the least. On the contrary, she looked far more human, far better in a physiological sense, than when she first came into the room.
“How good it is to be here!” she said, almost ecstatically, glancing above at the dingy ceiling, and around at the rows of book-shelves filled with plain bound volumes. “How much good it does me to be here!” and she heaved a sigh, a sigh of relief and contentment, sinking back in the old chair.
There was so true a ring in her voice, such a reality about her, that Dr. Paull was subdued by a sense of awe, or the beginning of awe. The situation was unnatural, yet Mercedes, more than at her ease, was making him feel as if it were not only natural that he and she should be here alone together thus, but even right and proper.
She was evidently completely at her ease. While he stood uncomfortably wondering what he should do or say next, she promptly solved the difficulty.
“Come here,” she said, not exactly with imperiousness, but certainly with the confidence of one in command. “Come here” (she drew one of the chairs near her own), “and I will tell you—all.”
He hesitated for a moment. A disagreeable feeling that some shock was awaiting him in this threatened revelation made him almost inclined to refuse to hear it, now and for always.
What if he had refused? What if he had left her there and then, unconfessed of her secret, whatever it might be? Would it have changed his after life? would it have averted his fate? Often afterwards he asked himself this question, in wonder, in awe: that question which none on earth could answer.
He did not refuse. He seated himself by her, and said:
“You are mysterious.”
“Yes,” she said, simply. “It is all a dreadful mystery. You know, every time I have seen you, you have made me feel stronger. That is why I ask you to see me for five days, and then I tell you all! I tell you—you will be frightened when you hear what I have to say!”
There was no lightness about her voice and manner. Indeed, she spoke with reluctance, almost with pain.
“I do not think there is much which can frighten me now,” said Hugh, reassuringly. “You can tell me everything, anything you please.”
A nervous tremor shook her whole frame.
“Iwilltell you,” she said, almost convulsively. “I dreamed a dream once, when I was a child. I was sitting on a stone bench, such as we have in our country. But round me were dark trees, dark bushes of the sort we do not have there. It was dark. I dreamed I was in the expectation of some one to come to me. I was sitting there, waiting. Then I saw the moon, and just as I saw the moon, I saw some one who came—a man; and I knew that the man was the one I loved before everything, and as I did not love anyone else.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, encouragingly.
The words brought back some unpleasantly suggestive recollection, but indistinctly.
“I woke from that dream,” she went on, musingly; “and I knew it was not like other dreams. I knew that it meant something. I had been not fond of people like my girl friends were fond of people; but that man, oh! I lovedhim!”
“Did you recognise him?” asked Dr. Paull, feeling uncomfortable, he hardly knew why.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said, “notthen.... I will tell you. I did not dream that dream again. It made me think; I told my confessor. It was not like other dreams. If ever I see the place I shall know it; of that I am sure.”
“And the man?” asked Hugh.
“I did not see his face,” she went on. “Only from what I felt did I guess him to be the same.”
“As what?” His heart beat quick.
“As the man of the dreams which made me so—so unhappy.”
She spoke almost piteously.
“And what were they?” asked Hugh.
Pale as she had been when she came, she grew paler still.
“They,” she said, in a hushed voice, “they were many, many; time after time, but always the same dream.” She paused, drew a sobbing breath, then went on: “It was of a room. At first when I had the dream I could only notice that it was a room with a table, all the other was dark. But two things I could see quite plain: one was apistoletlying upon the table, the other was a man sitting like this.” (She leaned her arms upon the table and buried her face in her hands.) “And I—I,even in the dream, wanted that man to kill himself! yes, to take that pistol and shoot himself! Ah! monsieur!” she started and exclaimed. Hugh had uttered an exclamation.
“I said I should frighten you!” she said, sinking back and looking at him concerned.
He was pale to lividity, but, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, he once more folded his arms, and said, coolly:
“Go on. Did the gentleman of your dream take your advice?”
“You must not mock or sneer,” she said, somewhat defiantly. “Monsieur, I do not think you should sneer at my suffering! I have been in torment with that dream; when I woke up I have felt that I was wicked, just as if it were the truth. I have cried and groaned. Oh! I have prayed to die!”
“Sneer? I wish Icouldsneer!” said Hugh, bitterly.
She fixed her eyes upon him, seriously, earnestly; then went on:
“After I had that dream many times each year, I see that room plainer. It is a room” (she stopped and looked round) “something like this. Books everywhere, on the walls like those, on the table. But while I dream that I ask that man—I beg him, indeed, more and more each time—to kill himself, never once in all those years did he move or look at me; never once did I see his face!”
Hugh could not speak; he was dumb with horror. He could not doubt that this dream of Mercedes’ was a dream of the terrible crisis in his life; of that hour when Lilia had, dying, tempted him to commit self-murder,and he had been saved from the crime by the accidental appearance of Mrs. Mervyn. But why should this Spanish girl have dreamt of him throughout her young life, far away in a foreign land? Could it be—but of course it must be—a coincidence? The thought of a coincidence was a relief.
“Dreams are strange things,” he stammered. “Go on, you interest me much!” (Interest him—good God!)
“Then,” she said, “came the strangest thing of all. When I was away in the country I dreamed that—once more. But it was more like real life than before; the room, oh! I saw it plain, even as I see this now. But the man—this time he looked at me—and—it wasyou!”
He did not speak. He did not think. It seemed as if his whole life had come to a halt.
It was Mercedes who spoke first. She had watched him wonderingly after her revelation. His dark face, stern and set, told her nothing.
“What—you think about it?” she said, at last. Her voice made him shiver like the touch of cold steel before the cut.
“I? I do not know,” he stammered. “Of course, it all seems very strange to you. But you must not think about it.”
In his perturbation, the instinct to protect this weak woman, who by some law not understood by science had suffered in dreams on his account, mastered all selfish emotion.
“I assure you,” he said, with a valiant attempt at a smile, “that the best thing you can do is to forget all about these dreams. I will give you a book aboutdreams, a book dry and hard to read perhaps, but which will make you feel happier on the subject.”
“But”—she began—“why—why—should I likeyouso much—why should the man of my dream beyou?”
How could the wife of Prince Andriocchi and the constant companion of his friend the count, contrive, being no actress, to look into his face with infantine innocence as Mercedes looked now? That look made him think better of those two men.
“That—belongs to a branch of a subject I have not studied,” he said, hoping she did not notice the guilty flush which suddenly rose to his face. “I will think over all you have said to me to-night, and will tell you my opinion next time I see you,” he added, rising.
“Oh!” She looked disappointed. “When—when will that be?” She spoke anxiously. “You see how well being with you makes me! Let it be soon!” she urged.
What was he to say? To follow the promptings of his passionate feeling for her would have been madness. No, no; duty, duty alone——
That pause of a few seconds when he summoned all his force to subdue himself, a pause which seemed to him hideously long, was broken by a neighbouring, a friendly church clock, which struck ten.
“Do you hear?” he exclaimed, seeming to be horrified although nothing could have horrified him just then. He sprang up. “I had no idea it was this hour,” he said, truthfully enough. “Have you your carriage? Who was that with you?”
“My maid,” she said. “Emma—a German. Lady Boisville sent her to me. Such a kind person!”
“But your carriage?” he asked, anxiously. It was farthest from his thoughts to compromise her.
“It is there,” she added, with a certain assertion of dignity, rising. “Perhaps you will tell—that I am coming?”
Hugh hastened to the door and called “Ralph.” A voice from the dining-room answered “Yes,” and Ralph came hurrying to the door.
“Where is the princess’ maid?” asked his father, as coldly as he could.
“She has been sitting in the dining-room with me, father.”
“That was right. Call up the carriage yourself, will you? Don’t bother Jones.”
“Yes.”
Hugh returned to the room. She was standing thoughtfully at the table.
What should he say to her? As he stood undecided, Ralph came hurrying back; he ceremoniously offered her his arm, and presently he was standing alone on the pavement, the stars shining mockingly down upon him as he gazed after her departing carriage.