The doctor, with his usual bluntness, did not hesitate to make it known
that this unusual visit was of a private nature. Caroline promptly
withdrew, and the two men were left alone in the great hall. The lights
in the billiard-room and drawing-room were extinguished. Every one in
the house except a few servants had retired.
“Sir Everard,” the doctor began, “this return of Lady Dominey's has
taken me altogether by surprise. I had intended to-morrow morning to
discuss the situation with you.”
“I am most anxious to hear your report,” Dominey said.
“My report is good,” was the confident answer. “Although I would not
have allowed her to have left the nursing home so suddenly had I known,
there was nothing to keep her there. Lady Dominey, except for one
hallucination, is in perfect health, mentally and physically.”
“And this one hallucination?”
“That you are not her husband.”
Dominey was silent for a moment. Then he laughed a little unnaturally.
“Can a person be perfectly sane,” he asked, “and yet be subject to
an hallucination which must make the whole of her surroundings seem
unreal?”
“Lady Dominey is perfectly sane,” the doctor answered bluntly, “and as
for that hallucination, it is up to you to dispel it.”
“Perhaps you can give me some advice?” Dominey suggested.
“I can, and I am going to be perfectly frank with you,” the doctor
replied. “To begin with then, there are certain obvious changes in you
which might well minister to Lady Dominey's hallucination. For instance,
you have been in England now some eight months, during which time you
have revealed an entirely new personality. You seem to have got rid
of every one of your bad habits, you drink moderately, as a gentleman
should, you have subdued your violent temper, and you have collected
around you, where your personality could be the only inducement, friends
of distinction and interest. This is not at all what one expected from
the Everard Dominey who scuttled out of England a dozen years ago.”
“You are excusing my wife,” Dominey remarked.
“She needs no excuses,” was the brusque reply. “She has been a
long-enduring and faithful woman, suffering from a cruel illness,
brought on, to take the kindest view if it, through your clumsiness and
lack of discretion. Like all good women, forgiveness is second nature to
her. It has now become her wish to take her proper place in life.”
“But if her hallucination continues,” Dominey asked, “if she seriously
doubts that I am indeed her husband, how can she do that?”
“That is the problem you and I have to face,” the doctor said sternly.
“The fact that your wife has been willing to return here to you, whilst
still subject to that hallucination, is a view of the matter which I
can neither discuss nor understand. I am here to-night, though, to lay
a charge upon you. You have to remember that your wife needs still one
step towards a perfect recovery, and until that step has been surmounted
you have a very difficult but imperative task.”
Dominey set his teeth for a moment. He felt the doctor's keen grey eyes
glowing from under his shaggy eyebrows as he leaned forward, his hands
upon his knees.
“You mean,” Dominey suggested quietly, “that until that hallucination
has passed we must remain upon the same terms as we have done since my
arrival home.”
“You've got it,” the doctor assented. “It's a tangled-up position, but
we've got to deal with it--or rather you have. I can assure you,” he
went on, “that all her other delusions have gone. She speaks of the
ghost of Roger Unthank, of the cries in the night, of his mysterious
death, as parts of a painful past. She is quite conscious of her several
attempts upon your life and bitterly regrets them. Now we come to
the real danger. She appears to be possessed of a passionate devotion
towards you, whilst still believing that you are not her husband.”
Dominey pushed his chair back from the fire as though he felt the heat.
His eyes seemed glued upon the doctor's.
“I do not pretend,” the latter continued gravely, “to account for that,
but it is my duty to warn you, Sir Everard, that that devotion may
lead her to great lengths. Lady Dominey is naturally of an exceedingly
affectionate disposition, and this return to a stronger condition
of physical health and a fuller share of human feelings has probably
reawakened all those tendencies which her growing fondness for you and
your position as her reputed husband make perfectly natural. I warn you,
Sir Everard, that you may find your position an exceedingly difficult
one, but, difficult though it may be, there is a plain duty before you.
Keep and encourage your wife's affection if you can, but let it be a
charge upon you that whilst the hallucination remains that affection
must never pass certain bounds. Lady Dominey is a good and sweet woman.
If she woke up one morning with that hallucination still in her mind,
and any sense of guilt on her conscience, all our labours for these last
months might well be wasted, and she herself might very possibly end her
days in a madhouse.”
“Doctor,” Dominey said firmly. “I appreciate every word you say. You can
rely upon me.”
The doctor looked at him.
“I believe I can,” he admitted, with a sigh of relief. “I am glad of
it.”
“There is just one more phase of the position,” Dominey went on, after a
pause. “Supposing this hallucination of hers should pass? Supposing she
should suddenly become convinced that I am her husband?”
“In that case,” the doctor replied earnestly, “the position would be
exactly reversed, and it would be just as important for you not to check
the affection which she might offer to you as it would be in the other
case for you not to accept it. The moment she realises, with her present
predispositions, that you really are her lawful husband, that moment
will be the beginning of a new life for her.”
Somehow they both seemed to feel that the last words had been spoken.
After a brief pause, the doctor helped himself to a farewell drink,
filled his pipe and stood up. The car which Dominey had ordered from the
garage was already standing at the door. It was curious how both of them
seemed disinclined to refer again even indirectly to the subject which
they had been discussing.
“Very good of you to send me back,” the doctor said gruffly. “I started
out all right, but it was a drear walk across the marshes.”
“I am very grateful to you for coming,” Dominey replied, with obvious
sincerity. “You will come and have a look at the patient in a day or
two?”
“I'll stroll across as soon as you've got rid of some of this houseful,”
the doctor promised. “Good night!”
The two men parted, and curiously enough Dominey was conscious that
with those few awkward words of farewell some part of the incipient
antagonism between them had been buried. Left to himself, he wandered
for some moments up and down the great, dimly lit hall. A strange
restlessness seemed to have fastened itself upon him. He stood for a
time by the dying fire, watching the grey ashes, stirred uneasily by the
wind which howled down the chimney. Then he strolled to a different
part of the hall, and one by one he turned on, by means of the electric
switches, the newly installed lights which hung above the sombre oil
pictures upon the wall. He looked into the faces of some of these dead
Domineys, trying to recall what he had heard of their history, and
dwelling longest upon a gallant of the Stuart epoch, whose misdeeds had
supplied material for every intimate chronicler of those days. When at
last the sight of a sleepy manservant hovering in the background forced
his steps upstairs, he still lingered for a few moments in the corridor
and turned the handle of his bedroom door with almost reluctant fingers.
His heart gave a great jump as he realised that there was some one
there. He stood for a moment upon the threshold, then laughed shortly to
himself at his foolish imagining. It was his servant who was patiently
awaiting his arrival.
“You can go to bed, Dickens,” he directed. “I shall not want you again
to-night. We shoot in the morning.”
The man silently took his leave, and Dominey commenced his preparations
for bed. He was in no humour for sleep, however, and, still attired in
his shirt and trousers, he wrapped a dressing-gown around him, drew a
reading lamp to his side, and threw himself into an easy-chair, a book
in his hand. It was some time before he realised that the volume was
upside down, and even when he had righted it, the words he saw had no
meaning for him. All the time a queer procession of women's faces was
passing before his eyes--Caroline, with her half-flirtatious, wholly
sentimental _bon camaraderie_; Stephanie, with her voluptuous figure
and passion-lit eyes; and then, blotting the others utterly out of his
thoughts and memory, Rosamund, with all the sweetness of life shining
out of her eager face. He saw her as she had come to him last, with that
little unspoken cry upon her tremulous lips, and the haunting appeal in
her soft eyes. All other memories faded away. They were as though they
had never been. Those dreary years of exile in Africa, the day by day
tension of his precarious life, were absolutely forgotten. His heart was
calling all the time for an unknown boon. He felt himself immeshed in a
world of cobwebs, of weakness more potent than all his boasted strength.
Then he suddenly felt that the madness which he had begun to fear had
really come. It was the thing for which he longed yet dreaded most--the
faint click, the soft withdrawal of the panel, actually pushed back by a
pair of white hands. Rosamund herself was there. Her eyes shone at him,
mystically, wonderfully. Her lips were parted in a delightful smile, a
smile in which there was a spice of girlish mischief. She turned for
a moment to close the panel. Then she came towards him with her finger
upraised.
“I cannot sleep,” she said softly. “Do you mind my coming for a few
minutes?”
“Of course not,” he answered. “Come and sit down.”
She curled up in his easy-chair.
“Just for a moment,” she murmured contentedly. “Give me your hands,
dear. But how cold! You must come nearer to the fire yourself.”
He sat on the arm of her chair, and she stroked his head with her hands.
“You were not afraid, then?” she asked, “when you saw me come through
the panel?”
“I should never be afraid of any harm that you might bring me, dear,” he
assured her.
“Because all that foolishness is really gone,” she continued eagerly.
“I know that whatever happened to poor Roger, it was not you who killed
him. Even if I heard his ghost calling again to-night, I should have no
fear. I can't think why I ever wanted to hurt you, Everard. I am sure
that I always loved you.”
His arm went very softly around her. She responded to his embrace
without hesitation. Her cheek rested upon his shoulder, he felt the
warmth of her arm through her white, fur-lined dressing-gown.
“Why do you doubt any longer then,” he asked hoarsely, “that I am your
husband?”
She sighed.
“Ah, but I know you are not,” she answered. “Is it wrong of me to feel
what I do for you, I wonder? You are so like yet so unlike him. He is
dead. He died in Africa. Isn't it strange that I should know it? But I
do!”
“But who am I then?” he whispered.
She looked at him pitifully.
“I do not know,” she confessed, “but you are kind to me, and when I feel
you are near I am happy. It is because I wanted to see you that I would
not stay any longer at the nursing home. That must mean that I am very
fond of you.”
“You are not afraid,” he asked, “to be here alone with me?”
She put her other arm around his neck and drew his face down.
“I am not afraid,” she assured him. “I am happy. But, dear, what is the
matter? A moment ago you were cold. Now your head is wet, your hands are
burning. Are you not happy because I am here?”
Her lips were seeking his. His own touched them for a moment. Then he
kissed her on both cheeks. She made a little grimace.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that you are not really fond of me.”
“Can't you believe,” he asked hoarsely, “that I am really Everard--your
husband? Look at me. Can't you feel that you have loved me before?”
She shook her head a little sadly.
“No, you are not Everard,” she sighed; “but,” she added, her eyes
lighting up, “you bring me love and happiness and life, and--”
A few seconds before, Dominey felt from his soul that he would have
welcomed an earthquake, a thunderbolt, the crumbling of the floor
beneath his feet to have been spared the torture of her sweet
importunities. Yet nothing so horrible as this interruption which really
came could ever have presented itself before his mind. Half in his arms,
with her head thrown back, listening--he, too, horrified, convulsed for
a moment even with real physical fear--they heard the silence of the
night broken by that one awful cry, the cry of a man's soul in torment,
imprisoned in the jaws of a beast. They listened to it together until
its echoes died away. Then what was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing
of all, she nodded her head slowly, unperturbed, unterrified.
“You see,” she said, “I must go back. He will not let me stay here.
He must think that you are Everard. It is only I who know that you are
not.”
She slipped from the chair, kissed him, and, walking quite firmly across
the floor, touched the spring and passed through the panel. Even then
she turned around and waved a little good-bye to him. There was no sign
of fear in her face; only a little dumb disappointment. The panel glided
to and shut out the vision of her. Dominey held his head like a man who
fears madness.