JOHN JARDINE SOLVES THE MYSTERY.
The Jardines came the next day, self-invited guests. Ida had tried to
prevent any such visit, in her desire to keep her husband's degradation
from the knowledge of his kindred; but Bessie was not to be so put off.
She had heard that Brian was ill, and that Vernon had been dangerously
ill; and her heart overflowed with love and compassion for her friend. It
was not easy for Mr. Jardine to leave his parish, but he would have done
a more difficult thing rather than see his wife unhappy; so on the Monday
morning after that scene in the church, Ida received a telegram to say
that Mr. and Mrs. Jardine were going to drive over to see her, and that
they would claim her hospitality for a couple of days.
It was a drive of over thirty miles, only to be done by a merciful man
between sunrise and sunset. Mr. and Mrs. Jardine started at five o'clock,
breakfasted and lunched on the road, and brought their faithful steed,
Drummer Boy, up to the Wimperfield portico at seven in the evening, with
not a hair turned. Ida was waiting for them in the portico.
'You darling, how pale and worried you look!' exclaimed Bessie, as she
hugged her friend; 'and why didn't you let me come before?'
'You could have done me no good, dear, when my troubles were at the
worst. Thank God the worst is over now--Vernie is getting on splendidly.
He was downstairs to-day, and ate such a dinner. We were quite afraid he
would bring on a relapse from over-eating. He is delighted at the idea of
seeing you and Mr. Jardine.'
'Has he gone to bed? I'll go up to see him at once, if I may,' said John
Jardine.
'He is in his own room. He asked to stop up till seven on purpose to see
you.'
'Then I'll go to him this instant.'
The luggage had been brought out of the light T cart, and the Drummer Boy
had been led round to the stables. Ida took Bessie to a room at the end
of the house, remote from Brian's apartments.
'Why, this isn't our usual room!' said Bessie, astonished.
'No, I thought this would be a pleasanter room in such warm weather. It
looks east,' Ida answered, rather feebly.
'It's a very nice room; only I felt more at home in the other. I have
occupied it so often, you know, I felt almost as if it were my own. Oh,
you cruel girl! why didn't you let me come sooner? I wanted so to be with
you in your trouble; and I offered to come directly I heard Vernie was
ill!'
'I know, dear; but you could have done no good. We were in God's hands.
We could only pray and wait.'
'Love can always do good. I could have comforted you!
'Nothing could have comforted me if he had died.'
'And Brian--poor Brian has been ill, too. I thought him very much changed
when we were here--so thin, so nervous, so depressed.'
'Yes, he was ill then--he is very ill now. We take all the care we can of
him, but he doesn't get any better.'
'Poor dear Brian! and he was once the soul of fun and gaiety--used to
sing comic songs so capitally. I suppose it is a poor thing for a man to
do, but it was very nice, especially at Christmas time. There are so few
people who can do anything to help one over Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day. Brian was good at everything--charades, clumps, consequences, dumb
crambo. And to think that he should be ill so long! What is his
complaint, Ida?' asked Bessie, suddenly becoming earnest, after a lapse
into childishness.
'It is a nervous complaint,' faltered Ida; 'he will soon get over it, I
hope and believe, if we take proper care of him. He is very excitable,
very unlike his old self; and you must not be astonished at anything he
may say or do.'
'You don't mean that he is out of his mind?' said Bessie, with an
awe-stricken look.
'No, no; nothing of the kind--at least, nothing that is likely to be
lasting; but he has delusions sometimes--a kind of hysterical affection.
Oh, Bessie, I did not want you to know anything; I tried to keep you
away.'
Bessie had her arms round her old friend, and Ida, quite broken down by
the fears and agitations of the last six weeks, hid her face upon Mrs.
Jardine's shoulder and sobbed aloud. It was a complete collapse of heroic
resolutions, of that unflinching courage and strength of mind which had
sustained her so long; but it was also a blessed relief to the
overcharged heart and brain.
'It is very selfish of me to plague you with my troubles,' she said, when
Bessie had kissed and comforted her with every expression of sympathy and
tenderness in the gamut of womanly love, 'but I wanted you to be prepared
for the worst. And now, let me help you to change your gown, if you are
going to make any change for dinner. The gong will sound in less than
half-an-hour.'
'Oh, those gongs, they always fill me with despair!' cried Bess. 'I am
never ready when ours begins to buzz through the house, like a gigantic,
melancholy-mad bumble bee. Of course I must change, dear; firstly,
because I am smothered with dust, and sixthly, as Dogberry says, because
I have brought a pretty gown to do honour to Wimperfield.'
And Bessie, rushing to her portmanteau, and tearing out its contents in a
frantic way, shook out the laces and ribbons of a gracious Watteau-like
arrangement in Madras muslin, while she chattered to her hostess.
'Shall I send for Jane Dyson?' the immaculate maid, who had lived with an
archbishop's wife. 'She can unpack your things.'
'Not for worlds. I have oceans to tell you, and I should hate that prim
personage looking on and listening. Such news, Ida: Urania is engaged.'
'At last!'
'That was what everybody said. This was her sixth season, and it
was rapidly becoming a case of real distress, and she was getting
blue, oh, to a frightful extent--a perambulatory epitome of
Huxley-cum-Darwin,--that's what our boys call her. And now, after
refusing ever so many nice young men in the Government offices because
they were not rich enough for her, she is going to make a great match,
and marry a nasty old man.'
'Oh, Bessie! nasty and old!'
'Strong language, isn't it? but the gentleman has been to Kingthorpe, and
there is no doubt about the fact. One wouldn't mind his being elderly if
he were only a gentleman; but he is not.'
'Then why in mercy's name does Miss Rylance marry him?'
'Because he is Sir Tobias Vandilk, one of the richest men on the Stock
Exchange. He is of Dutch extraction, they say; and this is supposed to
account for his utter destitution with regard to English aspirates. He
has a palace in Park Lane, and a park in Yorkshire; gives dinners of a
most _recherché_ description every Thursday in the season; and immense
shooting parties, at which I am told he and his friends slaughter
quintillions of pheasants, and flood the London market every autumn; and
it is whispered that he has lent money to royal personages.'
'Is Urania happy?'
'If she is not, I know who is. Dr. Rylance looks twenty years younger
since the engagement. He was beginning to get weighed down by Urania. You
remember with what a firm hand he managed her in days gone by! Well,
after she took to Huxley and Darwin, and the rest of them, that was all
over. She was always tripping him up with some little shred of scientific
knowledge, fresh from Tyndall; always attacking his old-fashioned notions
with some new light. He was as merry as a boy let loose from school when
he came down to Kingthorpe the other day. He went to one of our picnics,
and made himself tremendously agreeable. We took Sir Tobias to see the
Abbey, and had afternoon tea there. He pretended to admire everything,
but in a patronising way that made me savage; affected to think Wendover
Abbey a little bit of a place, as compared with his modern barrack in
Yorkshire, with its riding-school, tan gallop, range of orchard-houses,
picture-gallery, and so on. And Urania's grandeur is something too large
for words. "You and Mr. Jardine must come and stay with us at Hanborough
some day," she said, as if she were promising me a treat; so I told her
plainly that my husband's parish work made such a visit impossible. "Oh,
but some day," she said sweetly. "Never," said I; "we are rooted in the
chalk of Salisbury Plain." "Poor things!" she sighed, "what a destiny!"'
'And you all drank tea at the Abbey,' said Ida, musingly; 'dear old
Abbey! I can fancy you there, in the long low library, with the afternoon
sunlight shining in at the open windows, and Mary Stuart smiling at you
from the panelling over one fire-place, and crafty Elizabeth looking
sideways at you from over the other, and the Dijon roses clambering and
twining round every lattice.'
'How well you remember the old place. Isn't it horrid of Brian to stay
away all these years?'
'It is--rather eccentric.'
'Eccentric! It is positively wicked, when we know how agreeable he can
make himself. Why, in that happy summer we spent at the Abbey he
brightened all our lives. Didn't he, now, Ida?'
'He was very kind,' faltered Ida, like a slave giving evidence under
torture. 'Have you heard from him lately?'
'Not for more than a year, but father hears of him through his London
agent, and we know he is well. He sent us all lovely presents last
Christmas--Indian shawls, prayer-rugs, ivories, carved sandalwood boxes.
The Vicarage is glorified by his gifts.'
The gong began booming and buzzing as Bessie pinned a big yellow rose
among the folds of her Madras fichu, and Mrs. Jardine and her hostess
went down to the drawing-room lovingly arms entwined, as in that long-ago
holiday, when Ida was a guest at Kingthorpe.
Lady Palliser and Mr. Jardine were in the drawing-room talking to each
other, while Brian paced up and down the room, pale and wan, as he had
looked yesterday in the church. He offered his arm to Bessie at his
wife's bidding, without a word. Mr. Jardine followed, with Lady Palliser
and Ida; and the little party of five sat down to dinner with a blight
upon them, the awful shadow of domestic misery. There are many such
dinners eaten every day in England--than which the Barmecide's was a more
cheerful feast, a red herring and bread and butter in a garret a banquet
of sweeter savour.
For the first two courses Brian preserved a sullen silence. He ate
nothing--did not even pretend to eat--and drank the sherry and soda-water
which were offered to him without comment. With the third course the
butler, who had supplied him with the prescribed amount of sherry, gave
him plain soda-water. He looked at his tumbler for a moment or so, and
burst out laughing.
'Byron used to drink soda-water at dinners when he was the rage in London
society,' he said. 'It was _chic_, and Byron was like Sara Bernhardt--he
would have done anything to get himself talked about.'
'I should have thought the fame he won by "Childe Harold" would have
satisfied him, without any outside notoriety as a total abstainer,' said
Mr. Jardine.
'Oh, if you think that, you don't know Byron,' exclaimed Brian. 'He
wanted people always to be talking of him. A man may write the greatest
book that was ever written, and the world will accept it, and put him on
a pinnacle; but they soon leave off talking about him unless he does
something. He must keep a bear in his rooms--quarrel with his wife--wear
a pea-green overcoat--cross the Channel in a balloon--and go on doing
queer things--if he wants to be famous. Byron was an adept in the art of
_réclame_--just as Whistler is on his smaller scale. It wasn't enough for
Byron to be the greatest poet of modern Europe, he wanted to be the most
notorious rake and _roué_ into the bargain.'
'It was a curious nature,' said Mr. Jardine--'half gold and half tinsel.'
'Ah, but the tinsel caught the public. I really don't think, for a man
who wants to make a stir in his generation, a fellow could have played
his cards better than Byron did.'
'It is a life that one can only contemplate with infinite pity and
regret--a great nature, wrecked by small vices and smaller follies,' said
Mr. Jardine; and then Brian took up the strain, and talked with loud
assertiveness of the right of genius to do what it likes in the world,
launching out into a broad declaration of infidelity and rank
materialism, which shocked and scared the three women who heard him.
Ida gave an imploring look at her stepmother, and they all three rose
simultaneously, and hastily retired, driven away by that blatant
blasphemy. John Jardine closed the door upon the ladies, and then went
quietly back to his seat. He heard all that Brian had to say--he listened
to his wild ramblings as to the voice of an oracle; and then, when Brian
had poured out his little stock of argument in favour of materialism, had
quoted Aristotle, and Holbach, and Hume, and Comte, and Darwin, and had
perverted their arguments against a personal God into the divine right of
man to ruin his soul and body, John Jardine, who had read more of
Aristotle than Brian knew of all the metaphysicians put together, and who
had Plato, Kant, and Dugald Stewart in his heart of hearts, gravely took
up the strain, and made mincemeat of Mr. Wendover's philosophy.
Brian listened meekly, and did not appear to take offence when the Vicar
went on to warn him against the peril here and hereafter of a life
misspent, a constitution ruined by self-indulgence, talents unused,
opportunities neglected. The pale and haggard wretch sat cowering, as the
voice of reproof and warning went on, solemnly, earnestly, with the warm
sympathy which springs from perfect pity, from the Christian's wide love
of his fellow-men.
'For your wife's--for your own sake--for the love of Him in whose image
you were made--wrestle with the devil that possesses you,' said John
Jardine, when they had risen to leave the room, laying his hand
affectionately upon Brian's shoulder. 'Believe me, victory is possible.'
'Not now,' Brian answered, with a semi-hysterical laugh. 'It is too late.
There comes an hour, you know, even in your all-merciful creed, when the
door is shut. "Too late, ye cannot enter now." The door is shut upon me.
I fooled my life away in London. It was pleasant enough while it lasted,
but it's over now. I can say with Cleopatra--"O my life in Egypt, O, the
dalliance and the wit."'
They were in the hall by this time. The broad marble-paved hall, with its
marble figures of gods and goddesses, of which nobody ever took any more
notice than if they had been umbrella stands. They were crossing the hall
on their way to the drawing-room, when Brian suddenly clutched John
Jardine's arm and reeled heavily against him, with an appalling cry.
'Hold me!' he screamed; 'hold me! I am going down!'
It was one of the dreadful symptoms of his dreadful disease. All at once,
with the solid black and white marble beneath his feet, he felt himself
upon the edge of a precipice, felt himself falling, falling, falling,
into a bottomless pit.
It was an awful feeling, a waking nightmare. He sank exhausted into John
Jardine's arms, panting for breath.
'You are safe, it is only a momentary delusion,' said Mr. Jardine. 'Have
you had that feeling often before?'
'Yes--sometimes--pretty often,' gasped Brian.
Mr. Jardine's wide reading and large experience as a parish priest had
made him half a doctor. He knew that this was one of the symptoms of
delirium tremens, and a symptom seen mostly in cases of a dangerous type.
He had suspected the nature of Mr. Wendover's disease before now; but now
he was certain of it.
He went with Brian to his room, advising him to lie down and rest. Brian
appearing consentient, Mr. Jardine left him, with Towler in attendance.
In the drawing-room the Vicar contrived to get a little quiet talk with
Ida, while at the other end of the room Lady Palliser was expatiating to
Bessie upon the minutest details of her boy's illness. He invited Ida's
confidence, and frankly told her that he had fathomed the nature of
Brian's disease.
'I have seen too many cases in the course of my parochial experience not
to recognise the painful symptoms. I am so sorry for you and for him. It
is a bright young life thrown away.'
'Do you think he will not recover?'
'I think it is a very bad case. He is wasted to a shadow, and has a worn,
haggard look that I don't like. And then he has those painful
hallucinations--that idea of falling down a precipice, for instance,
which are oftenest seen in fatal cases.'
Ida told him of the scene in the church yesterday--she confided in him
fully--telling him all that Dr. Mallison had said of the case.
'What can I do?' she asked, piteously.
'I don't think you can do more than you are doing. That man who waits
upon your husband is a nurse, I suppose?'
'Yes. Dr. Mallison sent him.'
'And care is taken that the patient gets no stimulants supplied to him?'
'Every care--and yet--'
'And yet what?'
'I have a suspicion--and I think Towler suspects too--that Brian does get
brandy--somehow.'
'But how can that be, if your servants are honest, and this attendant is
to be depended upon?'
'I can't tell you. I believe the servants are incapable of deceiving me.
Towler, the attendant, comes to us with the highest character.'
'Well, I will be on the alert while I am with you,' said Mr. Jardine; and
Ida felt as if he were a tower of strength. 'I have seen these sad cases,
and had to do with them, only too often. On some occasions I have been
happy enough to be the means of saving a man from his own folly.'
'Pray stop as long as you can with us, and do all you can,' entreated
Ida. 'I wish I had asked you to come sooner, only I was so ashamed for
him, poor creature. I thought it would be a wrong to him to let anyone
know how low he had fallen.'
'It is part of my office to know how low humanity can fall and yet be
raised up again,' said Mr. Jardine.
'You won't tell Bessie--she would be so grieved for her cousin.'
'I will tell her nothing more than she can find out for herself. But you
know she is very quick-witted.'
There was a change for the worse in Towler's charge next morning, when
Ida, who still occupied the room adjoining her husband's bedchamber,
went in at eight o'clock to inquire how he had passed the night. Brian
was up, half dressed, pacing up and down the room, and talking
incoherently. He had been up ever since five o'clock, Towler said; but
it was impossible to get him to dress himself, or suffer himself to be
dressed. A frightful restlessness had taken possession of him, more
intense than any previous restlessness, and it was impossible to do
anything for him. His hallucinations since daybreak had taken a frightful
form; he had seen poisonous snakes gliding in and out of the folds of the
bedclothes; he had fancied every kind of hideous monster--the winged
reptiles of the jura formation--the armour-plated fish of the old red
sandstone--everything that is grotesque, revolting, terrible--skeletons,
poison-spitting toads, vampires, were-wolves, flying cats--they had all
lurked amidst the draperies of bed or windows, or grinned at him through
the panes of glass.
'Look!' he shrieked, as Ida approached him, soothing, pleading in
gentlest accents; 'look! don't you see them?' he cried, pointing to the
shapes that seemed to people the room, and trying to push them aside with
a restless motion of his hands; 'don't you see them, the lares and
lemures? Look, there is Cleopatra with the asp at her breast! That bosom
was once beautiful, and see now what a loathsome spectacle death has made
it--the very worms recoil from that corruption. See, there is Canidia,
the sorceress, who buried the boy alive! Look at her hair flying loose
about her head! hair, no, those locks are living vipers! and Sagana, with
hair erect, like the bristles of a wild boar! See, Ida, how she rushes
about, sprinkling the room with water from the rivers of hell! And Veia,
whose cruel heart never felt remorse! Yes, he knew them well, Horace.
These furies were the women he had loved and wooed!'
Fancies, memories flitted across his disordered brain, swift as lightning
flashes. In a moment Canidia was forgotten, and he was Pentheus,
struggling with Agave and her demented crew. They were tearing him to
pieces, their fingers were at his throat. Then he was in the East, a
defenceless traveller in the tropical desert, surrounded by Thugs. He
pointed to one particular spot where he saw his insidious foe--he
described the dusky supple figure, the sinuous limbs, gliding
serpent-like towards him, the oiled body, the dagger in the uplifted
hand. An illustration in Sir Charles Bell's classic treatise had flashed
into his brain. So, from memory to memory, with a frightful fertility of
fancy, his unresting brain hurried on; while his wife could only watch
and listen, tortured by an agony greater than his own. To look on, and to
be powerless to afford the slightest help was dreadful. Up and down, and
round about the room he wandered, talking perpetually, perpetually waving
aside the horrid images which pursued and appalled him, his eyeballs in
constant motion, the pupils dilated, his hollow cheeks deadly pale, his
face bathed in perspiration.
'Send for Mr. Fosbroke,' said Ida, speaking on the threshold of the
adjoining room, to the maid who brought her letters; and, in the midst of
his distraction, Brian's quick ear caught the name.
'Fosbroke me no Fosbrokes!' he said. 'I will have no village apothecaries
diagnosing my disease, no ignorant quack telling me how to treat myself.'
'I will telegraph for Dr. Mallison, if you like, Brian,' Ida answered,
gently; 'but I know Mr. Fosbroke is a clever man, and he perfectly
understands--'
'Yes, he will have the audacity to tell you he knows what is the matter
with me. He will say this is _delirium tremens_--a lie, and you must know
it is a lie!'
To her infinite relief, Mr. Jardine appeared at this moment. He questioned
Towler as to the possibility of tranquillising his patient; and he found
that the sedatives prescribed by Dr. Mallison had ceased to exercise any
beneficial effect. Nights of insomnia and restlessness had been the rule
with the patient ever since Towler had been in attendance upon him.
'I never knew such a brain, or such invention!' exclaimed Towler; 'the
people and the places, and the things he talks about is enough to make a
man's hair stand on end.'
'The natural result of a vivid memory, and a good deal of desultory
reading.'
'Most patients takes an idea and harps upon it,' said Towler. 'It's the
multiplication table--or the day of judgment--or the volcanoes and
hot-springs, and what-you-may-call-ems, in the centre of the earth; and
they'll go on over and over again--always coming back to the same point,
like a merry-go-round; but this one is quite different. There's no bounds
to his delusions. We're at the North Pole one minute, and digging up
diamonds in Africa the next.'
Brian had flung himself upon his bed, rolled in the damask curtain, like
Henry Plantagenet, what time he went off into one of his fury-fits about
Thomas Becket; and Mr. Jardine and Towler were able to talk
confidentially at a respectful distance.
'Are you sure that he does not get brandy without your knowledge?'
'No, sir,' said Towler; 'that is what I am not sure about. It's a
puzzling case. He didn't ought to be so bad as he is after my care of
him. There ought to be some improvement by this time; instead of which
it's all the other way.'
'What precautions have you taken?'
'I've searched his rooms, and not a thing have I found stowed away
anywhere. It isn't often that he's left to himself, for when I get my
midday sleep Mrs. Wendover sits with him; or, if he's cranky, and wants
to be alone, she stays in the next room, with the door ajar between them;
and Robert, the groom, is on duty in the passage, in case the patient
should get unmanageable.'
'I see--you have been very careful; but practically your patient has been
often alone--the half-open door signifies nothing--he was unobserved, and
free to do what he pleased all the same.'
'But he couldn't drink if there was no liquor within reach.'
'Was there none? that is the question!' answered Mr. Jardine.
'Look about the rooms yourself, sir, and see if he could hide anything,
except in such places as I've overhauled every morning,' said Towler,
with an offended air; and then, swelling with outraged dignity, he flung
open doors of wardrobes and closets, pulled out drawers, and otherwise
demonstrated the impossibility of anything remaining secret from his
eagle eye.
'What about the next room?' asked Mr. Jardine, going into the adjoining
room, which was Brian's study.
The room was littered with books and papers heaped untidily upon tables
and chairs, and even strewn upon the carpet. Brian had objected to any
attempt at setting this apartment in order--the servants were to leave
all books and papers untouched, on pain of his severe displeasure. Thus
everything in the shape of litter had been allowed to accumulate, with
its natural accompaniment, dust. Everyone knows the hideous confusion
which the daily and weekly newspapers alone can make in a room if left
unsorted and unarranged for a month or so; and mixed with these there
were pamphlets, magazines, manuscripts, and piles of more solid
literature in the shape of books brought up from the library for
reference and consultation.
In one corner there were a pile of empty boxes, and on one of these Mr.
Jardine's eye lighted instantly, on account of its resemblance to a wine
merchant's case.
He pulled this box out from the others--a plain deal box, roughly
finished, just the size of a two-dozen case. One label had been pulled
off, but there was a railway label which gave the date of delivery, just
three weeks back.
'Have you any idea what this box contained?' inquired Mr. Jardine.
'No, sir. It was here when I came, just as you see it now.'
'It looks very like a wine merchant's box.'
'Well, it might be a wine-case, sir, as far as the look of it goes; but
it might have held anything. It was empty when I came here, and there's
no stowage for wine bottles in these rooms, as you have seen with your
own eyes.'
'Don't be too sure of that; and now go back to your patient, and get him
to eat some breakfast, if you can, while I go downstairs.'
'He can't eat, sir. It's pitiful; he don't eat enough, for a robin. We
try to keep up his strength with strong soups, and such like; but it's
hard work to get him to swallow anything.'
Mr. Jardine went down to the family breakfast room, where his wife, Ida,
and her stepmother were sitting at table, with pale perturbed faces, and
very little inclination for that excellent fare which the Wimperfield
housekeeper provided with a kind of automatic regularity, and would have
continued to provide on the eve of a deluge or an earthquake. He told Ida
that all was going on quietly upstairs, and that he would share Towler's
task as nurse all that day, so that she might be quite easy in her mind
as to the patient. And then the servants came trooping in, as the clock
struck nine, and they all knelt down, and John Jardine read the daily
portion of prayer and praise.
It had been decreed by medical authority that on this day, provided the
sky were propitious and the wind in a warm quarter, Vernon was to go out
for his first drive. Mr. Jardine accordingly entreated that the three
ladies would accompany him, and that Ida would have no fear as to her
husband's welfare during her absence.
'I don't like to leave him,' she said, in confidence, to Mr. Jardine;
'he seems so much worse this morning--wilder than I have ever seen him
yet--and so white and haggard.'
'He is very bad, but your remaining indoors will do him no good. I will
not leave him while you are away.'
Ida yielded. It was a relief to her to submit to authority--to have some
one able to tell her to do this or that. She felt utterly worn out in
body and mind--all the energy, the calm strength of purpose, which had
sustained her up to a certain point, was now exhausted. Despair had taken
possession of her, and with despair came that dull apathy which is like
death in life.
John Jardine took his wife aside before he went back to Brian's rooms.
'I want you to take care of Ida, to keep with her all day. She has been
sorely tried, poor soul, and needs all your love.'
'She shall have it in full measure,' answered Bessie. 'How grave and
anxious you look! Is Brian very ill?'
'Very ill.'
'Dangerously?'
'I am afraid so. I shall hear what Mr. Fosbroke says presently, and if
his report be bad, I shall telegraph for the physician.'
'Poor Brian! How strangely he talked at dinner last night! Oh, John, I
hardly dare say it--but--is he out of his mind?'
'Temporarily--but it is the delirium of a kind of brain fever, not
madness.'
'And he will recover?'
'Please God; but he is very low. I am seriously alarmed about him.'
'Poor dear Brian!' sighed Bess. 'He was once my favourite cousin. But I
must go back to Ida. You need not be afraid of my neglecting her. I
shan't leave her all day.'
Mr. Jardine went to the housekeeper's room to make an inquiry. He wanted
to know what that box from London had contained, a box delivered upon
such and such a date.
The housekeeper's mind was dark, or worse than dark upon the subject--an
obscurity enlightened by flashes of delusive light. Two housemaids, and
an odd man who looked after the coal scuttles, were produced, and gave
their evidence in a manner which would have laid them open to the charge
of rank prevarication and perjury, as to the receipt of a certain wooden
box, which at some stages of the inquiry became hopelessly entangled with
a hamper from the Petersfield fishmonger, and a band-box from Lady
Palliser's Brighton milliner.
'The carriage must have been paid,' said the housekeeper, 'that's the
difficulty. If there'd been anything to pay, it would have been entered
in my book; but when the carriage is paid, don't you see, sir, it's out
of my jurisdiction, as you may say,' with conscious pride in a free use
of the English language, 'and I may hear nothing about it.'
But now the odd man, after much thoughtful scratching of his head, was
suddenly enlightened by a flash of memory from the paleozoic darkness
of three weeks ago. He remembered a heavy wooden box that had come in
his dinner-time--the fact of its coming at that eventful hour had
evidently impressed him--and he had carried it up to Mr. Wendover's own
sitting-room.
It was very heavy, and Mr. Wendover had told him that it contained books.
'Did you open it for Mr. Wendover?'
'No, sir; I offered to open it, but Mr. Wendover says he'd got the tools
himself, and would open it at his leisure. He had no call for the books
yet awhile, he says, and didn't want it opened.
'I see, the box contained books. Thank you, that's all I wanted to know.'
John Jardine had very little doubt in his mind now as to the actual
contents of the box. He had no doubt that Brian, finding himself refused
drink, for which he suffered the drunkard's incessant craving, had
contrived to get himself supplied from London; and that if the fire of
his disease had known no abatement it was because the fuel that fed the
flame had not been wanting.
The only question that remained to be answered was how Brian, carefully
attended as he had been, had managed to dispose of his secret store of
drink, under the very eyes, as it were, of his keeper. But Mr. Jardine
knew that the sufferer from alcoholic poison is no less cunning than the
absolute lunatic, and that falsehood, meanness, and fraud seem to be
symptoms of the disease.
When he went back to Brian's rooms, he found the patient lying on his
bed, exhausted by the agitation and restlessness of the last few hours.
He was not asleep, but was quieter than usual, in a semi-conscious state,
muttering to himself now and then. Towler was sitting at a little table
by the open window, breakfasting comfortably; his enjoyment of the
coffee-pot, and a dish of ham and eggs, being in no manner lessened by
the neighbourhood of the patient.
'Haven't been able to get him to take any nourishment,' whispered Towler,
as Mr. Jardine came quietly into the room. 'He's uncommon bad.'
'Mr. Fosbroke will be here presently, I hope.'
'I don't think he'll be able to do much good when he does come,' said
Towler; 'doctors ain't in it with a case of this kind. If he don't go off
into a good sleep by-and-by, I'm afraid this will be a fatal case.'
Mr. Jardine made no reply to this discouraging observation. There are
times when speech is worse than useless. He stood by the window, looking
over at that shrunken figure on the great old-fashioned four-post bed,
with its voluminous drab damask curtains, its cords, fringes, tassels,
and useless decorations--the nerveless, helpless figure of wasted youth,
the wreckage of an ill-spent life. The haggard countenance, damp with
the dews of mental agony, and of a livid pallor, looked like the face
of death. What could medicine do for this man beyond diagnosing his case,
and giving an opinion about it, for the satisfaction--God save the
mark!--of his friends? John Jardine knew in his heart that not all the
doctors in Christendom could pick this shattered figure up again, and
replace it in its former position among mankind.
Still intent upon solving that mystery about the contents of the
wine-case, Mr. Jardine's eyes wandered about the room, trying to discover
some hiding-place which the careful had overlooked. But so far he could
see no such thing There was the tall four-poster, with its square
cornice, a ponderous mahogany frame with fluted damask stretched across
it. Could Brian have hidden his brandy up yonder, behind the mahogany
cornice? Surely not. First the damask would have bulged with the weight
of the bottles, and, secondly, the place was not accessible enough. He
must have hidden his poison in some spot where he could apply himself to
it furtively, hurriedly twenty, fifty, a hundred times in the day or
night.
Presently Mr. Jardine's glance fell on the half-open door of the
bath-room. It was a slip of a room cut off the study, a room that had
been created within the last twenty years. It was the only room which Mr.
Jardine had not inspected before he went down to breakfast.
He pushed open the door, and went in, followed by Towler, wiping the
egginess and haminess from his mouth as he went.
'You kept your eye upon this room as well as the others, I suppose,' said
Mr. Jardine, looking about him.
'Yes, sir, I have kept an eye upon everything.'
The apartment was not extensive. A large copper bath with a ponderous
mahogany case, panelled, moulded, bevelled, the elaborate workmanship
of local cabinet-makers; a row of brass hooks hung with bath towels,
which looked like surplices pendent in a vestry; a washstand in a corner,
a dressing-table and glass, with its belongings, in the window, and a
wicker arm-chair, comprised the whole extent of furniture. No
hiding-place here, one would suppose.
Mr. Jardine looked about the room thoughtfully. It was the one apartment
in which the patient could hardly be intruded upon by his attendant. Here
he could be sure of privacy.
'Did you examine the case of the bath,' he inquired presently, his
mathematical eye quick to take in the difference between the inner shell
of copper and the outer husk of mahogany.
'No, sir,' answered Towler, briskly. 'Is it 'oller?'
'Of course it's hollow. Surely your eye tells you that.'
'Yes, sir; but there's the hot-water pipes inside--and there's no getting
at it, except for a plumber.'
'Nonsense,' said Mr. Jardine, kneeling down at one end of the bath, where
there was a convenient mahogany door for the accommodation of the
plumber, a door which lay somewhat in shadow, and had escaped Towler's
observation.
'Bring me a candle,' said Mr. Jardine, unconsciously imitating the
brotherhood of plumbers, whose consumption of candles is a household
terror.
Towler returned to fetch a candle, while Mr. Jardine with cautious hand
explored the cavern-like recesses between the bath and its outer shell,
recesses in which lurked serpent-like convolutions of hot-water pipes and
cold-water pipes, waste and overflow.
Yes, before Towler could arrive with the candle, he had fathomed the
mystery. Three or four full bottles, and a large number of empties, were
stowed away in this dusty receptacle. He drew one of the full bottles out
into the light. 'Hennessy's Fine Old Cognac,' said the label. This had
been the secret source of fever and delirium--here had lurked the evil
which had made all remedial measures vain.
Mr. Fosbroke was announced while John Jardine was washing the dust and
the stains of rusty iron from his hands. Brian was in too low a condition
to be rude to the country practitioner, much as he had protested against
his interference. He suffered the apothecary to sit by his bed and feel
his pulse, without a word of remonstrance.
'How do you find him?' asked Mr. Jardine, when Mr. Fosbroke had left the
bedside.
'Very bad; pulse small and thready--a hundred and forty in the minute;
violent throbbing in the temporal and carotid arteries; profuse
perspiration--all bad signs. What medicines has he been taking?'
He was shown the prescriptions.
'Hum--hum--digitalis--bromide of potassium. I should like to inject
chloral; but as the case is in Dr. Mallison's hands--'
'If you think there is danger I will telegraph for Mallison.'
'There is always danger in this stage of the malady, especially in the
case of a patient of Mr. Wendover's age. The season, too, is
unfavourable--the mortality in this complaint is nearly double in summer.
If we can get him into a sound sleep of some hours he may wake with a
decided turn for the better--the delirium subjugated; but in his low
state, even sleep may be fatal--there is so little vital power. Yes, I
should certainly telegraph for Dr. Mallison; and in the meantime I'll try
what can be done with chloral.'
'You must do the utmost you can. Mrs. Wendover has implicit faith in
you.'
'I'll drive back and get the chloral.'
When the apothecary was gone, Mr. Jardine's first act was to telegraph to
the London physician, his next, to put the unused bottles of cognac under
lock and key, and, with Towler's help, to clear away the empty bottles
without the knowledge of the servants. No doubt every member of the
household knew the nature of Mr. Wendover's illness; but it was well to
spare him the exposure of these degrading details.