A Mysterious Widow of Bath
Just as soon as she could possibly manage it Nina left the Dalgries, and
alone with her maid hied herself to that stupidest of all English
resorts--Bath.
There she took a flat and secured two servants, and kept herself so
secluded that the story went abroad that the blind beggar in the famous
poem was a beauty beside her.
Some said that she was sightless and some that she had been scarred
beyond all recognition; but nobody really knew because nobody had really
seen her.
Nobody, that is to say, except her surgeon and his assistant, and
Delphine, the French maid.
Nina chose Bath because of this wonderful surgeon, Dr. Pottow, who was
connected with the chief hospital there, and knew more about the skin
and cutaneous affections than any man in England.
He promised to restore her if restoration were possible, but he was very
reticent about the method until his success was assured. Then he told
her that it had been necessary to resort to the grafting of new and
healthy skin to take the place of that which had been scorched
practically to a cinder.
"But where did you get it?" Nina asked, deeply interested. She knew
that it had not been taken from her and transplanted.
"I was fortunate enough to find a volunteer," answered the surgeon.
"I suppose she required some fabulous price," Nina rejoined. "But if it
has given me back an unmarred countenance I shall be only too glad to
pay."
"There is nothing to pay," Dr. Pottow told her. "He gave it
gratuitously, and was glad to."
"_He_ gave it!" exclaimed the patient, starting up, impelled by flooding
emotions.
"Yes, he."
"Shall I have to shave?" she asked, seriously startled by the dread
possibility.
"No," came the answer with a smile. "The skin wasn't from his chin.
There'll be no beard to bother you."
"I'd much rather had it from my own sex," she pouted.
"My sex is less selfish," said the surgeon. "Few women would sacrifice
their cuticle that an afflicted sister might regain her beauty."
"Still I don't like the idea of being even that much man," she insisted.
"I have always been so thoroughly--so entirely feminine."
"The cells are constantly renewing themselves." It was the scientist
speaking. "You will wear these only temporarily."
Nina thought for a moment. Then she said: "Of course I shall pay him. I
shall insist on it."
"I'm sure he won't accept. He regarded it a great privilege, he was
delighted at the opportunity."
And at that she became really alarmed. It was some one she knew, of
course. It was one or another, no doubt, of the army of lovers she had
sent about their business when their ardor grew too oppressive.
But which one? Ah, that was the question--which one?
"But you've put me under a terrible obligation," she complained. "I
think you should have consulted me, Dr. Pottow, before accepting such a
sacrifice. I am very uncomfortable over it."
"You would have been more uncomfortable disfigured for life," he replied
sagely.
Of course it wasn't Nibbetts. He would delight in seeing her hideous.
The cabinet minister was out of the question, too. He'd be sure to get
into the newspapers. Besides, he was very bitter.
The soldier of fortune was out of the country. And Carleigh was married
and honeymooning. The American aviator had been killed volplaning.
"It might be the poet," she said aloud.
"I don't think he's ever been guilty of sonnets," observed Pottow.
"Still we never know. He's most interested now in sheep-raising and in
quarrying freestone."
"Good Heavens!" cried Mrs. Darling. "He isn't even a gentleman. How
could you? Oh, how could you, Dr. Pottow?"
He smiled quizzically and excused himself with: "I hadn't any choice,
you know. To tell the truth, I've done so much of this sort of thing
that I've reduced the visible supply of skin, here in Bath, to the
minimum."
"I don't see how he knew me," she went on, puzzled. "I'm very secluded
here. I don't know a soul in the place, except you."
"You know him, or did. He says he owes you something, and--"
"What is his name?" she demanded, interrupting.
"I thought you'd ask that before. But you wished to place him for
yourself, didn't you? And I'm afraid you'll have to. You see, when he
volunteered it was on certain conditions; and that he was not to be
known in the premises was one of them."
"But you've told me everything but his name."
"That was especially stipulated."
"And I am never to be any the wiser?" she inquired. "That seems hardly
fair. Since I can't pay him I certainly should be permitted to thank
him."
"I'll take your thanks to him."
"No. I wish to thank him myself, in person."
"You want him to come here?"
"I want him to come here--just as soon as I am fit to be seen."
"He'll come to-day, if you say so," he surprised her with.
"Oh, no, no, no. Not while I'm like this."
"But he's seen you worse than this, remember. He's been in this room a
dozen--a score of times."
"Here!" she exclaimed, amazed.
"Of course. While your eyes were bandaged. While the transfer was made."
"Then he saw how awful I was?"
"I fancy he didn't regard you as awful. He seemed--"
But she wouldn't let him go on. "Send him this evening," she commanded,
"and I'll have the lights arranged so that I can see him while I myself
am veiled by the kindly shadow."
When the surgeon was gone Nina fell to wondering once more. There were
flirtations she had totally forgotten; there was no question about that.
But she had always been rather a stickler for caste, and she couldn't at
all reconcile the sheep-raising and the stone-quarrying with any of her
lightly amorous adventures.
Perhaps, after all, she had been on the wrong track. Certainly she had
been on the wrong track. This man owed her something, the perplexing
Pottow had said, meaning evidently a debt of gratitude.
Then it couldn't be one of those. They were the last persons to think
themselves in arrears of that kind. It must be some one she had
befriended. She supposed she had befriended poor men on occasions, but
she couldn't recall individual cases.
Possibly it was a coachman or gardener, or one of the tenantry at some
place she had been years agone.
Or--why, to be sure!--some private from the ranks, who had completed his
service, fallen heir to a little farm and a little quarry here in
Somersetshire, and settled down to the prosaic life of a plodding
civilian.
The idea robbed the prospect of the meeting of most of its interest. And
it was the only idea she could accept. She even forgot to tell Delphine
that she was expecting a caller, and she forgot, too, to have the lights
arranged as she had planned.
When, therefore, her maid came to her with the announcement that a
gentleman was calling--a gentleman who wouldn't give his name, but said
that he came at Dr. Pottow's suggestion--she was not in the least
prepared.
"Does he seem a gentleman, Delphine?" she asked, interested afresh.
"_Oh, oui, madame!_ A young gentleman, and good-looking."
"Have you ever seen him before?"
"Of a certainty, madame. Here, with Dr. Pottow."
"But you never heard his name?"
"Never, madame."
Then, hastily, she had her arrange the lights and give her a fan with
which to mask the lower part of her features where the now healing burns
were still more or less unsightly.
And then she waited--sure still that she was to be disappointed.
She heard the steps at length in the passage, and fixed her eyes upon
the door. But the light was not very good there, either--she had had it
concentrated as far as possible on the chair placed for the visitor at
least four yards from her bedside, toward the foot and facing her.
He was in the room now, just over the threshold, bowing at what must
have seemed to him just a black shadow, and save that he was tall, and
that his figure was gracefully slender, what she saw meant nothing to
her whatever. He hadn't even spoken, so there was no voice to recognize.
As he came forward, though, there was something in his walk and carriage
that seemed familiar, though she couldn't place them for the life of
her.
"Do sit down," she urged. "There! I'd rather you wouldn't come nearer."
Still he didn't speak. But he sat down as she bade him with the light
full on his face, and she saw he was Gerald Andrews.
It was quite a minute before she could speak. Then, "You--of all the
persons in the world!" she breathed barely above a whisper.
"It is odd that we should meet again here under such circumstances," he
agreed, pleasantly amused over her astonishment. "And yet not so
singular, either. It's a tight little island, this, and any two persons
on it are more or less likely to run across each other in time."
"But I thought you were still in India," she said.
"It's three years since I came home. The governor died suddenly,
and--well, there were things to be looked after."
Nina smiled, thinking of what Dr. Pottow had told her.
"Where's little boy blue that looks after the sheep?" she quoted. "Was
that it?"
"Yes," he answered, "the sheep were part of it. But the quarry is the
biggest job."
She wondered how she could be so rude to him after all he had done.
Somehow it didn't just seem to her a gentleman's work. But he wasn't
ashamed of it, evidently. And she was glad of that.
"I read in the newspapers about your misfortune," he told her. "I'm glad
you came to Pottow. He's the best man on scars in all England."
"Scars," she repeated, remembering. But it would be ruder still to ask
him about his. She wondered whether he really did think of her every
time he shaved.
"He took an old scar out for me--a very delicate bit of work, too."
"How vain you must be!" she exclaimed.
"No; it was hardly vanity. I was ashamed of it, not for what it was, but
for what it meant. It symbolized cowardice, and I was ashamed of that."
"I remember," she said; "but I'll forget it, if you'd rather."
"I would rather."
"You're stronger now, aren't you? I'm so glad."
Then for the first time came something of that old boyish lilt in his
voice that recalled the Simla days--days prior to the night of the
season's last dance at Viceregal Lodge, which wasn't the end of
everything, after all.
"Are you glad, really?" he asked, delighted. "Do you care just that
little bit?"
"Indeed I am," she told him. "I care a great deal--for your happiness. I
want you to be happy."
"I'm hardly that," he confessed. "That is, I haven't been. But I'm very
nearly so this evening."
She must have experienced some little emotion, for she forgot her fan
for an instant and left her chin unmasked. But she lifted it again
almost instantly.
"How good you have been to me!" she murmured. "I didn't deserve such
sacrifice."
"It wasn't a sacrifice. It was a delight. Besides, it was the least I
could do to make good for being a cad when you were in trouble."
Even in the shadow he could see that she didn't understand. Her eyes
showed him that.
"I lost my head," he confessed. "I wasn't only weak; I was half wild. It
was I that told Dinghal all you'd ever said to me. It was I, really,
who started the horrid stories that got about. I feel I can never do
enough to wipe that out."
To his surprise she showed no resentment. "I dare say that all you said
wasn't half the truth. I did kill poor Darling, you know."
His brow contracted to a frown.
"You didn't," he protested. "You couldn't--you couldn't have meant to.
If you had any part in it, it was accidental."
She didn't insist. All she said was: "I don't see why you should think
so well of me, Gerald. I was perfectly horrid to you."
"Were you?" he asked, dreaming. "You were very good to me, too. I can't
forget that. I don't want to. It's that and that only I care to
remember."
"Would you think it good of me if I should let you come every day to see
me?" she asked suddenly, with fresh impulse. "It's a privilege I've
allowed no one."
"Oh, will you?" he cried, delighted. "I _would_ be glad."
"I've seen no one but Dr. Pottow, you know; not even my oldest, dearest
friends. Not my own people."
His smile was rapturous.
"I know it," he said. "Have you heard what you are called here? No?
Well, you are 'the mysterious widow of Bath.'"
"Isn't that funny?" she laughed. "Fancy how dull I have been! You will
come and amuse me, won't you, Gerald?"
"Every day. And if ever I bore you, or you'd rather not see me, say so.
You'll do that?"
"I'll do that. And"--she hesitated just an instant--"and you mustn't
neglect your sheep or your freestone, you know. If you don't come I'll
know a lamb has strayed from the fold and you're out on the hill looking
for it. Do you carry a crook?"
"My shepherds do," he said solemnly.
"Send me some south-down mutton, Gerald. I'm so fond of chops." And at
that he laughed.
"I'm not going to be teased," he said and stood up. But Nina made him
sit down again. She was enjoying his call so much. She made him stay
another hour.
He came every day after that, as she bade him. She usually set the hour
herself, and he arrived on the minute.
He sent her the magnificent skin of a tiger he had shot in India, and
sometimes it pleased her to crouch on this, sensuously delighted by the
contact, while remembering with a curious mingling of emotions how
Kneedrock had declared her to be the reincarnation of just such another
creature of the jungle, cruel, remorseless, blood-lusting--a tigress in
the guise of a woman.
But she could never bear to look on that skin again after events that
were soon to come.
Kneedrock himself never saw the rug.
As he was leaving one afternoon Andrews heard voices in the vestibule.
The housemaid was sending away an insistent caller.
"Mrs. Darling doesn't see any one," he heard her say.
"But I'm sure she'll see me," the persistent male voice continued. "You
just take her my card."
"She forbids me to fetch cards," rejoined the housemaid. "I'm sorry,
sir."
He heard the jingle of silver coin. The caller was about to resort to
bribery. As a privileged one, out of compassion for Nina, he would lend
his aid. He might pretend he was the attending surgeon or physician, and
that it was by his orders that the patient was denied visitors.
He drew the door, which was slightly ajar, wider. He made a third in the
vestibule. And then he recognized the caller. It was Lord Kneedrock.
Nibbetts recognized him, too. He shrugged his hulking shoulders and
thrust his handful of coins back into his pocket. Then he turned to the
housemaid again.
"I understand," he said in his penetrating undertone. "I quite
understand. Mrs. Darling sees no one."
Then he reopened the outer door and stalked lumberingly away.