A little bustle was heard outside the door; and then the doctor came in.
He was a middle-aged man, tall, spare, thoughtful-looking, a little
abrupt in manner, but with a kindly face. He had not advanced two steps
into the room before he stopped short, held up his hand, and said--
"Hallo--what's that?"
It was the patient's voice again uplifted in snatches of delirious talk.
"Cynthia!" they distinctly heard him calling. "Where's Cynthia? Tell
Cynthia that she must come!"
"And why are you not there?" said Doctor Middlemass, darting his finger
in Cynthia's direction. "Why don't you go to him at once? It's madness
to let him cry out like that!"
Cynthia's look was piteous; but for the moment she did not move.
"Would it not be better for a qualified nurse to be obtained for my
brother?" said Mrs. Vane. "This young--lady"--a perceptible pause
occurred before the word--"has had no experience in nursing; and it is
surely not necessary----"
"Oh, doctor," the girl burst out, "must I not stay? I cannot go away
when he calls for me like that!"
Her hands were strained on her bosom; her eyes had the hungry look of a
mother who hears her child cry aloud and cannot go to him. The doctor
shot a look at her pale tortured face, and observed the cold composure
of the finely-dressed lady in the arm-chair, and the subdued uneasiness
of the old gentleman in the background. He began to suspect a
tragedy--at any rate, a romance.
"Go to him at once," he said to Cynthia, pointing to the bed-room door,
"and keep him quiet at any cost. A trained nurse would not do him half
the good that you can do him, if you choose. And now, madam," he
continued rather sternly, as Cynthia disappeared with a joyful face into
the other room, "may I ask what this interference with my orders may
mean?"
"I am Mr. Lepel's sister," said Flossy coldly, "and it was I who sent
for you, Doctor Middlemass. I think I have some right to take an
interest in my brother's condition."
"Certainly, madam"--the doctor spoke with portentous grimness and
formality--"but--excuse me--no right to tamper with any of my
prescriptions. I prescribed Miss West to my patient; and she was doing
him all the good in the world when I went away. He has got another
fever-fit upon him now, a little higher temperature, and we shall not be
able to do anything more for him at all. If you do not wish my orders to
be followed, madam, have the goodness to send for another doctor and I
will throw up the case."
"You misunderstand, sir--you misunderstand!" said the General fussily,
coming forward with his most imposing air. "My wife and I, sir, have not
the slightest desire to interfere. We only wish to know what your
prescriptions are. That young woman, sir, has no right to be here at
all."
"From what I have been told," said the doctor dryly, "I should have said
that she had the greatest possible right to be here; but, however, that
is no business of mine. She has a wonderfully soothing effect on Mr.
Lepel's condition, and, as long as she is here, he is quiet and
manageable. Listen! He is scarcely speaking at all now; her presence and
her touch have calmed him at once. It would be positive madness to take
her away!"
"Would it not be well," said Mrs. Vane quietly, "to send a trained nurse
here too? There is a woman whom I know; she would be very glad to come,
and she would relieve that young lady of the more painful and onerous
portions of her task. I mean, dear," she said, looking towards her
husband, "old Mrs. Meldreth's daughter--Sabina. She is an efficient
nurse, and she has nothing to do just now."
"Has she had experience in cases of brain-disease?" said Doctor
Middlemass snappishly.
"I really do not know." She knew perfectly well that Sabina's knowledge
of nursing was of the most perfunctory kind. "She has had experience of
all kinds of illness, I believe, and she is thoroughly trustworthy. She
could be installed here as an attendant on Miss--Miss West."
Attendant! "As spy" she meant, on all poor Cynthia's movements.
"I should like to see the woman first," said the doctor bluntly. He was
not easy to manage, as Flossy swiftly perceived. "If she is competent
for the task, I have no objection--Miss West must not be allowed to
overdo herself; but I myself should prefer to send a person who is
accustomed to deal with illnesses of this kind."
"As you please, of course," said Flossy. She saw that it would be of no
use to press Sabina Meldreth upon him, much as she would have liked to
secure the services of a spy and an informer in the house. As she
paused, the General came forward.
"I should like to know, sir," he said, bristling with indignation, "what
you mean by saying that that young lady--that girl--has a right to be
here? I do not understand such language?"
"Why, of course she has a right to be here," said the doctor, staring at
him in a purposely matter-of-fact way, "since she is the lady that he is
engaged to marry."
"Marry! Bless my soul--no such thing!" roared the General, utterly
forgetting that there was an invalid in the adjoining room. "Why, he's
going to marry my----"
"Dear Richard, hush, hush!" said his wife, laying her hand entreatingly
upon his arm. "Don't make such a noise--think of poor Hubert!"
"Kindly moderate your voice, sir," was the doctor's dry remark. "My
patient will hear you if you don't take care."
"It does not matter to me whether he hears me or not," the General
began; but Flossy's hand tightened its grasp upon his arm in a way which
he knew that he must obey.
The General was a docile husband, and his protest died away in
inarticulate angry murmurs.
"Don't trouble about it, General--I will arrange everything," said his
wife caressingly. "Go over to the window again and leave me to speak to
Doctor Middlemass for a moment;" and, as the General retired, still
growling, she half smiled, and raised her eyes to the doctor's face as
if she invited sympathy.
But Doctor Middlemass looked as unresponsive as a block of wood.
"I must go to my patient," he said, "It was to see him, I presume, that
I was summoned?"
"Not entirely," said Flossy very sweetly. "We wanted to know whether it
was absolutely necessary that Miss West should stay with my brother."
"Absolutely necessary, madam!"
"Then of course we should not think of objecting to her presence, which,
I must tell you, is painful to us, because----"
"Excuse me, madam," said the doctor, who was certainly a very uncivil
person, "if I say that these family-matters are of no interest to me,
save as they affect my patient."
"But they do affect your patient, doctor. I think it was the worry of
the affair that brought on this illness. We have found out that this
Miss West's name is really 'Westwood,' and that she is the daughter of
the dreadful man who shot my husband's brother Beechfield some years
ago. Perhaps you remember the case?"
"Oh, yes--I remember it!" said the doctor shortly. "That's the daughter?
Poor girl!"
"It is naturally unpleasant to think that my brother--a cousin also of
the General's--should be contemplating a marriage with her," said Mrs.
Vane.
"Ah, well--perhaps so! We are all under the dominion of personal and
selfish prejudice," said Doctor Middlemass.
"I hoped that this illness might break the tie between them," sighed
Flossy pensively.
"So it may, madam--by killing him. Do you wish to break it in that
way?"
"This doctor is a perfect brute!" thought Mrs. Vane to herself; but she
only looked in a reproachful manner at the "brute," and applied her
handkerchief delicately to her eyes. "I trust that there is no
likelihood that it may end in that way. My poor dear Hubert," she
sighed, "if only you had been warned in time!"
Perhaps this display of emotion softened Doctor Middlemass' heart, or
perhaps he was not so insensible to Mrs. Vane's charms as he tried to
appear; at any rate, when he spoke again it was in a qualified tone.
"I trust that he will get over this attack. He is certainly a little
better than I expected to find him; but I cannot impress your mind too
strongly with the necessity for care and watchfulness. Anything that
tends to tranquilise the mind of a person in his condition must be
procured for him at almost any risk. When the delirium has passed, an
ordinary nurse may be of greater use than Miss West; but at present we
really cannot do without her. You heard for yourself how he called her
when she went out of the room?"
"Yes, I heard. Then shall I send the woman of whom I spoke, doctor? She
might be a help to Miss West, whose work I of course would rather assist
than retard in any way."
"You can thoroughly rely upon her?" said the doctor dubiously.
"Thoroughly. She is a most valuable person."
"She might come for a day or two, and we shall see whether she is of any
use or not. Will you send for her?"
Yes, Mrs. Vane would send. And then the doctor went to look once more at
Hubert, of whose condition he again seemed somewhat doubtful; and
afterwards he took his leave. When he had gone, Mrs. Vane also departed,
taking her docile husband back with her to the Grosvenor Hotel. She had
gained her point and was secretly triumphant; for she had secured the
presence of a spy upon Cynthia, and could depend upon Sabina Meldreth to
give a full account of Miss West's habits and visitors.
Flossy had great faith in her system of espionage. She sent Parker at
once with a note summoning Sabina to the hotel, and there she laid her
plans. Sabina was to go that very night to Mr. Lepel's rooms, and was to
make herself as useful as she could. It was presumed that Cynthia had
not seen with sufficient clearness for the encounter to be a source of
danger the woman in black who had followed Westwood to Kensington
Gardens. Sabina was told to keep herself in the background as much as
possible--to be silent and serviceable, but, above all, to be observant;
for it was likely that Westwood would try to communicate with his
daughter, and, if he did so, Sabina would perhaps be able to track him
down.
Flossy had completely lost all fear for herself in the excitement of her
discoveries. It seemed to her that she and her secret were entirely
safe. Nobody, she thought, had ever known of her understanding with
Sydney Vane in days gone by; nobody had any clue to the secret of his
death; so long as Hubert was silent, she had nothing at all to fear; and
Hubert had succumbed to her for so long that she did not dread him now.
Nothing seemed to her more unlikely than that after so many years he
should deliberately divest himself of name and fame, clear Westwood's
reputation at the cost of his own, and sacrifice his freedom for the
sake of a scruple of conscience. Flossy did not believe him foolish
enough or self-denying enough to do all that--and in her estimate of her
brother's character perhaps, after all, Flossy was very nearly right.
Sabina Meldreth presented herself to Cynthia and Mrs. Jenkins that
evening, and was not very graciously received. However, she proved
herself both capable and willing, and was speedily acknowledged--by Mrs.
Jenkins, at least--to be "a great help in the house." Cynthia said
nothing; she hardly seemed to know that a stranger was present. Her
whole soul was absorbed in the task of nursing Hubert. When he slept,
she did not leave the house; she lay on a sofa in another room. She
could not bear to be far away from Hubert; and more and more, as the
days went on and the delirium was not subdued, did she shrink from the
knowledge that any other ears beside her own should hear the ravings of
the patient--should marvel at the extraordinary things he said, and
wonder whether or no there was any truth in them.
"He talked in this way because he has brooded over my poor father's
fate!" Cynthia said to herself, with piteous insistence. "He must have
been so much distressed at finding that I was the daughter of Andrew
Westwood that his mind dwelt on all the details of the trial; and now
he fancies almost that he did the deed himself. I have read of such
strange delusions in books. When he is better, no doubt the delusion
will die away. It shows how powerfully his mind was affected by what I
told him--the constant cry that he sees no way out of it shows how he
must have brooded over the matter. No way out of it indeed, my darling,
until the person who murdered Mr. Vane is discovered and brought to
justice! And I almost believe that my father is right, and that the
murderer, directly or indirectly, was Mrs. Vane."
To Cynthia, Hubert's ravings were the more painful, because they bore
almost entirely upon what had been the great grief--the tragedy--of her
life. He spoke much of Sydney Vane, of Florence, and of Cynthia herself,
but in such strange connection that at times she hardly knew what was
his meaning, or whether he had any definite meaning. Presently, however,
it appeared to her as if one or two ideas ran through the whole warp and
woof of his imaginings. One was the conviction that in some way or
another he must take Westwood's place--give himself up to justice and
set Westwood free. Another was the belief that it was utterly impossible
for Cynthia ever to forgive him for what he had done, and that the
person chiefly responsible for all the misery and shame and disgrace,
which had fallen so unequally on the heads of those concerned in "the
Beechfield tragedy," was no other than Florence Vane.
Farther than these vague statements he did not go. He never said in so
many words that he was guilty of Sydney Vane's death, and that he, and
not Westwood, ought to have borne the punishment. Yet he said enough to
give Cynthia cause for great unhappiness. She tried not to believe that
there was any foundation of truth for his words; but she could not
succeed. The ideas were too persistent, too logical, to be altogether
the fruit of imagination. More and more she clung to the belief that
Flossy was responsible for Mr. Vane's sudden death, that Hubert knew it,
and that for his sister's sake he had concealed the truth. If this were
so, it would be terrible indeed; and yet Cynthia had a soft corner in
her heart for the man who had sacrificed his own honor to conceal his
sister's sin.
Cynthia did not go back to Madame della Scala's house. Flossy had done
her work with the singing-mistress as she had done it elsewhere. She
blackened Cynthia's name wherever she went. So, two days after the
girl's departure from Norton Square, her boxes and all her belongings
were sent to her from her former home without a word of apology or
explanation. She felt that she was simply turned out of Madame's
house--that she could never hope to go back to it again. She was now
absolutely homeless; and she was also without employment; for she had
withdrawn from several engagements to sing at concerts, and at more than
one private house she had received an intimation that her services could
be dispensed with. No reason in these cases was given; but it was plain
that the world did not think Miss West a very reputable person, and that
society had turned its back upon her. Cynthia had not leisure to think
what this would mean for her in the future; at present she cared for
nothing but her duties in Hubert Lepel's sick-room.
Her boxes were deposited at last in Mrs. Jenkins' little house at the
back; and there a small room was appropriated to Cynthia's use. She was
"supposed to be lodging at Mrs. Jenkins'," as Sabina told her mistress;
but she practically lived in Hubert's rooms. Still it was a comfort to
her to think that she had that little room to retire to when Hubert
should recover consciousness; and till then she did not care where or
how she lived.
Sabina found little to report to Mrs. Vane, who had now returned to
Beechfield. Cynthia went nowhere, and received neither visitors nor
letters. She had been interviewed by the police-officials; but they had
not been able to get any information from her. As for Andrew Westwood,
he seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth; and some of
the authorities at Scotland Yard went so far as to say that the report
made to them of his discovery must have been either an illusion of the
fancy or pure invention on the part of Sabina Meldreth and Mrs. Vane.