"A VERY BEAUTIFUL LADY."
The doctor's consulting-room was as uninteresting as the rest of the
house, inside and out; and whilst Christina looked at the orthodox red
walls, the few conventional engravings, the closely-curtained windows,
and the severely correct chairs and tables, a feeling of depression
stole over her. Almost unconsciously she had hoped that the doctor of
whom she had come in search, would prove to be an individual of no
ordinary description; she had an odd fancy that the situation with
which he would have to deal, would be one that was out of the common,
and the bare thought of sending a commonplace, country doctor to help
the beautiful lady with the anguished face, was intolerable to her.
More than once, whilst she sat and waited in the dreary room, whose
outlook into the depths of the pine woods was as depressing as
everything else about it, she half-rose, with a determination to go
elsewhere and seek another doctor. Remembering, however, the urgency
of her message, and the uncertainty of finding another medical man
within any reasonable distance, she was deterred from acting upon this
impulse, though her heart sank with apprehension when the door at last
opened. But the man who entered was in no sense the kind of man she
had dreaded to see; there was nothing ordinary or commonplace, either
in his own personality or in his greeting of her, and Christina could
only feel devoutly thankful that she had not been misled by the mere
externals of house and furniture.
"Now will you tell me what I can do for you?" The voice was cheery and
kind; it gave her a sense of helpfulness, and the man's personality,
like his voice, brought into the room an atmosphere of power and
strength.
He was a short man, with very bright brown eyes, a clean-shaven face,
and a mouth in which humour and determination struggled for the
mastery. But beyond and above everything else, it was a reliable face:
Christina knew, with a subtle and sure instinct, that whatever this man
undertook, would be carried through, if heaven and earth had to be
moved to bring about the carrying.
"Doctor Stokes?" she said enquiringly.
"No, I am not Doctor Stokes," he answered. "Doctor Stokes is away; he
was summoned away suddenly. My name is Fergusson, and I am doing
Doctor Stokes's work."
"I am very glad," Christina exclaimed naively, with a fervour of which
she was not aware, until she saw the twinkle of amusement in the brown
eyes watching her.
"Oh!--I--beg your pardon," she stammered. "I ought not----"
"It is not my pardon you must beg," the doctor answered, laughing a
spontaneous, and very boyish laugh, "and I will promise not to tell
Doctor Stokes what you said," he added, his eyes still twinkling as he
saw the girl's confusion.
"But indeed--please--oh! do understand," she faltered; "I don't know
Doctor Stokes. I am a stranger here, and I never saw him in my life,
but----"
"Then why were you so glad to find I was not he?" asked Fergusson, his
amused look turning to one of puzzled enquiry.
"It sounds so silly," Christina said with seeming irrelevance, "but--I
didn't think the person who lived in--this kind of room--was the sort
of doctor I wanted to find."
Fergusson threw back his head and laughed.
"Do you judge all humanity by the rooms in which it lives?" he asked.
"Nobody but a commonplace person could live contentedly in a room like
this," Christina answered vehemently, "or call his house Pinewood
Lodge, or have a house just like this house."
"I rather agree with you, but Doctor Stokes is a total stranger to me
too; we may be libelling him entirely; and--meanwhile, what can I do
for you?
"I have come to ask you to go somewhere, on a matter of life and
death," she answered, "but----"
"Life and death?"--the doctor's smiling face grew grave--"then we must
not delay. Where am I wanted?" He touched a bell by the fireplace.
"I will order the car at once. Tell me all details as briefly as
possible."
His humorous accent had dropped; he spoke in terse, business-like
tones, his brown eyes looked searchingly at her.
"Bring the car round immediately," he said to a man who answered his
bell. "Now, tell me everything quickly," he went on, turning back to
Christina.
"Before you go, I have to ask you to promise not to tell any living
soul where you have been; and you must swear to tell nobody what you
see and hear when you get to the house."
Fergusson stared at her blankly.
"Swear secrecy about where I go, and what I find there?" he said.
"Yes--swear it," she answered, quailing a little before the sudden
sternness of his eyes.
"But why?--in heaven's name, why?" he questioned, his voice growing
imperious. "What reason can you have for making such extraordinary
conditions?"
"Oh!--I have nothing to do with the conditions," Christina cried, "and
please--_please_ don't look doubtful, and as if you didn't mean to do
what I ask. I have only come here as a messenger. There was nobody
else to send, and the poor, beautiful lady seemed nearly distracted
with grief."
"What poor, beautiful lady? You are talking in riddles. Try to tell
me quietly where I have to go, and what is the name of the lady who
needs me."
"I--don't know," Christina faltered, conscious of how strangely her
words must fall upon his ears, when she saw the bewilderment deepen on
his face.
"I was passing a house," she said quickly, before he could speak, "and
a lady came running out--a very beautiful lady. She asked me to fetch
a doctor. She said it was a matter of life and death, and she made me
promise to ask the doctor to swear secrecy--absolute secrecy. That is
all I know--really all I know. But I am sure she is urgently in need
of help."
"What an extraordinary story!" the doctor said in a low voice, "and you
don't know who is ill? or what is the matter?"
"Not in the least. I conclude the patient is a man, because the lady
spoke of 'him' and 'he,' but I know nothing more than I have told you.
You will go to her? You will make the promise she asks? I can't bear
to think of her sad, beautiful face, and her wonderful eyes."
"I will go--yes, certainly I will go," Fergusson exclaimed, after a
moment's pause; "if it is really a matter of life and death, I have no
choice but to go."
"And--you will promise?"
He looked into her face with a curiously grave and questioning glance.
"You know of no reason why I should refuse to take such an
unprecedented oath?" he asked.
"I know nothing!" she answered emphatically. "I know of no reason,
either for or against your doing it. Only--when I think of her
beautiful face, and of her eyes that seemed to hold all the sorrow in
the world, I feel as if you could only do what she asked you."
"And if I refuse to swear?"
"Then I shall refuse to tell you where the lady lives," she answered
with spirit, "and I shall go and find another doctor. But--oh! please
do what she asks."
A smile broke over Fergusson's grave face.
"I don't half like the business," he said; "I am not fond of swearing
in the dark, so to speak, and what guarantee have I that I am not going
to mix myself up in some discreditable affair?"
"The lady I saw could not do anything discreditable," Christina
exclaimed warmly; "it is unthinkable."
Fergusson's smile deepened.
"She has a warm advocate in you; you are not a friend of hers?"
"I never saw her before," Christina answered. "I am staying near
Graystone. I am nurse to Lady Cicely Redesdale's little girl, and it
was only by chance that we were passing the beautiful lady's house
to-day."
"There comes the car," Fergusson said, as the crunching of wheels on
gravel became audible; "now I will drive you as far as our ways go
together, and you shall tell me where I am to go. I will not take my
man, lest there should be any risk of my destination being discovered.
And--I will take the required oath. Mind--I do it much against my
will, but, if it is a matter of life and death, I--can't refuse it.
Come--your beautiful lady's secrets will be absolutely safe with me."
As well as she was able, Christina gave a minute description of the
lonely house in the valley, where she had received the strange message,
and Fergusson, having deposited her safely within a very few hundred
yards of Mrs. Nairne's farm, raced on across the moor and down the
steep lane, which the little cart had traversed so short a time before.
"Never knew there _was_ any house down here," he mused, as he drove
further and further along the lane; "uncanny sort of place." The short
December day was drawing to a close. No ray of the sunshine that still
shone on the moorland above, penetrated into this valley, whose steep,
thickly-wooded sides threw deep shadows across it. "What on earth
possessed anybody to build a house in this gloomy hole, when all the
uplands were there to be built upon?" So Fergusson's musings ran on,
whilst the shadows thickened round him, the gloom of the place
beginning to oppress him like a nightmare. The roughness and steepness
of the road obliged him to proceed slowly and with great caution, and
the fast-fading light made his progress a difficult one. It was a
relief to him, therefore, when, through the semi-darkness, he became
aware of a high stone wall on his right, and descried, above the wall,
the dim outline of a chimney, from which smoke issued.
"This, presumably, is the place," he muttered, stopping the car before
a door in the wall; "and now, how does one get into such a very
prison-like abode?"
He had by this time alighted, and was standing in the lane, looking
first at the closed green door, then at the frowning wall, and finally
up the steep way by which he had come--a way which, in the fast-falling
darkness, was beginning to resemble a long black tunnel.
Now that the sound of his car's machinery had ceased, the silence
around him was very eerie, and Fergusson found that some words of the
burial service were beating backwards and forwards in his brain--
"The grave and gate of death ... The grave and gate of death."
He made a great effort to shake off his uncanny sensations, but they
were only heightened by the gloom about him, and by the death-like
silence which brooded over the valley. The lane, as he could faintly
see, ended only a few yards beyond the gate at which he stood, and
merged itself into a grassy track amongst the densest woodland; and the
house, with its surrounding wall, was so enclosed by woods, that they
seemed to be on the point of swallowing it up altogether.
"What a place for a crime--for any number of crimes," Fergusson
reflected, with a shudder, as he peered about the green door, trying to
discover any means of making his presence known to the inmates of the
house beyond the wall. But neither bell nor knocker was visible, and
the doctor, after banging vainly on the wood of the door, moved away,
and walked slowly round the wall, seeking for another entrance. A
narrow, grass-grown path, evidently rarely used, ran close under the
wall, but Fergusson made the whole circuit of the place without finding
any other means of entrance, excepting an old iron gate, rusty with
age, choked up with weeds and rank grass. It was obvious that the gate
had not been opened for years, and that it was certainly not reckoned
by the inhabitants of the house as one of the entrances. Fergusson
peered through the bars, but the light was so dim, and the grass and
undergrowth so thick and high, that beyond getting an impression of a
neglected garden, he saw nothing. He fancied, however, that he could
catch a distant murmur of voices, and he called out loudly:
"Is there any means of getting in here? I am the doctor." Total
silence answered him, a silence only broken by the sharp clang of a
closing door inside the house. When the echoes of the sharply clanging
door died away, silence settled down more deeply than ever upon the
place; and Fergusson, as he completed his circuit of the walls, and
found himself once more at the green door, felt strongly tempted to
climb into his car again and drive away.
But the remembrance of the girl who had so lately stood in his
consulting-room, looking at him with wistful eyes, speaking in so
appealing a voice, determined him to make one more attempt to gain
access to the inaccessible house, and, lifting up his hands, he
battered on the green door with heavy thuds that reverberated loudly in
the silence.
"They must be all deaf or dead, if that fails to bring them out," he
exclaimed grimly, pausing for a moment to take breath; then, when no
one responded to his efforts, he was beginning again to hammer at the
door, when the sound of a footstep fell on his ears, and a woman's
voice from within the gate cried--
"Who is there?"
"The doctor--Dr. Fergusson," he answered impatiently; and upon that, he
heard the grinding of a key in the lock, bolts were shot back, and the
door was opened. A woman stood in the aperture, a woman whom Fergusson
took to be a servant, and she stood aside, a little, as though inviting
him to enter.
"I was asked to come here," he said. "Is there someone ill? Am I
wanted?"
"Yes, sir," the woman answered quietly. "Will you come in? I am sorry
there was any delay in answering the door, but--I--couldn't get away."
Her voice was low and shaken, and Fergusson now observed that she was
trembling violently.
"Come--in--quickly, sir," she jerked out. "I am afraid what may
happen--come quickly!" Whilst she spoke, she was locking and bolting
the green door again; then, without uttering another syllable, she led
the way up a flagged path, across a bare and deserted garden, to a
white stone house, through whose open front door a stream of light fell
across an unkempt, overgrown lawn.
"This way, sir," the woman said, when, having entered the door, she
turned across a wide hall; "this way--quickly!" As she uttered the
last word, a little cry broke the stillness of the house--a woman's
cry, sharp with fear, and the doctor's guide, her face suddenly grown
livid and pinched, broke into a run. They were passing along a
corridor, which intersected the hall at one end, and even in his hurry
Fergusson noticed the thickness of the carpet beneath his feet, and the
heavy curtains that shrouded the windows on his right; noticed, too,
that after that one short sharp cry, a silence had fallen over the
house again--a silence as sinister and uncanny as that in the valley
outside.
His guide paused before a door on their left, and as she turned her
plain but kindly face towards him, he saw how strained and ashen it had
grown, and what a great fear looked out of her eyes.
"It is so quiet," she whispered in low, horror-stricken accents, "so
quiet--I--am--afraid!"
Pushing her aside, Fergusson opened the door, ashamed of feeling how
hard his own heart was knocking against his ribs, ashamed of that
momentary shrinking from what he might find inside the room; but his
involuntary shrinking did not bring with it even a second of
hesitation. He opened the door widely, and stepped straight into the
apartment. Excepting for a night-light burning on a chest of drawers,
the room was in darkness, and he could make out nothing of his
surroundings. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he
uttered a short exclamation of horror, and moved hurriedly forwards,
calling to the woman behind him to bring a light, and to bring it
quickly.