Everybody in the Red Book had left London. The West End was a desert,
and the shrill summons of the telephone was heard no more in Mayfair.
Nobody, unless it were the caretaker, was being asked to luncheon or
dinner, and the only tea-parties were in the basement, where the late
lettuce had not yet given place to the early muffin. Only people with
urgent and onerous business were to be found in London. Lord Okehampton
was shooting grouse, and Lady Okehampton ought to have been doing an
after-cure in Switzerland; but "the sad state of my poor niece after
her husband's ghastly death, and the legal business connected with her
colossal inheritance, make it impossible for me to leave town. Much as
I need a complete change, I must stay here, while that poor child wants
me."
This was what Lady Okehampton wrote from her deserted house in Berkeley
Square, to numerous friends, with more or less variation of phrase.
Vera's health was now the most pressing question. She had taken her
bereavement with a dumb, self-contained grief, that is the most morbid
and the most perilous kind of sorrow; the sorrow that kills. When
questioned, pressingly but tenderly, by her aunt, she always replied in
the same unresponsive manner. There was nothing the matter with her. Of
course, as Aunt Mildred said, the shock had been terrible; but no doubt
she would get over it in time. People always get over things. She only
wanted to be left to herself. She was quite strong enough to bear her
burden. No, she was not eating her heart out in solitude. It was best
for her to be alone.
"You are more than kind, Aunt Mildred, and so is Susan Amphlett; but I
am better sitting quietly and thinking out my life."
"But, my poor child, you are perishing visibly--just wasting away. I
would rather see you in floods of tears, hysterical even, than in this
hopeless state."
"What is the use of making a fuss? If tears could bring my husband
back and make life what it was before his death, I would drown myself
in tears. But nothing can change the past. That is what makes life
terrible. The things we have done are done for ever."
Lady Okehampton trembled, first for her niece's life, and next for
her sanity. And here was this stupendous fortune left to Vera for her
life, and to her children after her--her children by the husband who
was dead--but, in default of such children, to be divided among a horde
of Italian relations--third and fourth cousins, people for whom Mario
Provana might not have cared twopence--and among Roman charitable
institutions--sure to be badly managed, Lady Okehampton thought.
It seemed to her that if Vera were to die, that stupendous wealth,
which while she possessed it must be a factor in the position of the
Disbrowes, would be absolutely thrown to the dogs. To divide that mass
of riches into eights, and twelfths, and sixteenths, was in a manner
to murder it. All its power and prestige would be gone, frittered
away among insignificant people, who might be better off without it,
as it would put a stop to laudable ambition and enterprise, and might
ultimately be the cause of unmitigated harm.
"It is so sad to think there were no children," sighed Lady Okehampton
into the ears of various confidential friends. "The dear man made this
will shortly after his marriage, and evidently built upon having an
heir--he was so absolutely devoted to my niece. I know it was a bitter
disappointment for him," concluded the chieftainess of the Disbrowes,
to whom Mario Provana had said no word of his inmost feelings upon that
or any other subject.
Strange indeed would it have been for that strong hand to lift the
curtain from that proud heart. Courteous, generous, chivalrous, he
might be to the whole clan of Disbrowes. He might scatter his gold
among them with a careless hand; but to scatter the secrets of his
lonely life among that frivolous herd was impossible to the man who had
endured a mother's dislike, a father's neglect, and the disillusions of
a _mariage de convenance_, without one hour of self-betrayal.
Vera was childless, and on her frail thread of life hung Mario
Provana's millions.
Lady Okehampton told herself this in the watches of the night, and told
herself that something must be done. It was all very well for Vera
to declare that there was nothing the matter with her, while it was
visible to the naked eye that the poor child was fading away, in an
atrophy of mind and body.
"She will either die or go mad," said Lady Okehampton, and the
alternative offered visions of a _conseil de famille_, doctors'
certificates, and that rabble of fourth and fifth cousins tearing their
prey.
Long and confidential talks with Mrs. Manby, the housekeeper, and
Louison, the maid, had revealed the desperate state of their mistress's
health.
"No, my lady, she doesn't complain," asserted Mrs Manby. "I'm afraid
it's all the worse because she won't complain. But she can't sleep,
and she can't eat. Sedgewick knows what her meals are like: just
pretending, that's all; and Louison says that, go into her mistress's
room when she will, in the middle of the night or in the early morning,
she's always lying awake, sometimes reading, sometimes staring at the
sky above the window sash, but asleep--never! And it isn't for want of
taking things, for she has tried every drug you can put a name to."
"Does the doctor prescribe them?"
"He used to send her things, in the first few weeks after--the
funeral. But she made him believe that she was quite well, and was
sleeping and eating as usual, and he left off coming. And then Lady
Susan Amphlett brought her tabloids--always the newest thing out. But
they've never done her any good. It's the mind that's wrong, my lady."
"She was absolutely devoted to Mr. Provana," sighed Lady Okehampton.
"No doubt, my lady."
"And she can't get over her loss."
"No, my lady."
Susan Amphlett was of Aunt Mildred's opinion. Something must be done,
and it must be done quickly, before any of those Roman cousins could
appear upon the scene, prying and questioning, and hinting at a
commission of lunacy. Things had come to a perilous pass, when Mrs.
Manby, the housekeeper, could talk of her mistress's mind as the seat
of the mischief. People who go out of their minds seldom take a long
time about it, Lady Susan urged. "It's generally touch and go."
Lady Okehampton waited for no permission, but marched into her niece's
room one dark September afternoon with the fashionable nerve specialist
at her heels, the bland elderly physician from Cavendish Square, whom
nobody in Mayfair had even heard of till he had entered upon his
seventh decade, and who had languished at the wrong end of Harley
Street for a quarter of a century, before the great world had made the
remarkable discovery that he was the one man in London who could cure
one of everything.
He was kind and sensible, and really clever; but the great world loved
him most because he had all the new names for old diseases at the
tip of his tongue, and had the delightful manner which implied that
the patient to whom he was talking was the one patient whose life he
considered worth saving.
"He really does think about you when he's feeling your pulse," said a
dowager. "He ain't totting up last night's winnings at bridge all the
time. He does really think, don't you know."
Dr. Selwyn Tower, as he held Vera's wasted wrist in his broad, soft
hand, looked as serious as if the fate of a nation were at stake.
Indeed, he had been told that millions were in jeopardy, and in the
modern mind the destinies of big fortunes are as serious as the rise
and fall of peoples.
The physician asked no troublesome questions; but he contrived to keep
Vera in conversation--on indifferent subjects--for about a quarter of
an hour, her aunt joining in occasionally with sympathetic nothings;
and by the end of that time he had made up his mind about the case,
or at least about his immediate treatment of the case. He might have
thoughts that went deeper and farther--but those could be held in
abeyance. The thing to be done was to save this fragile form, which was
obviously perishing.
A rest cure--nothing else would be of any use--an uncompromising rest
cure. Six weeks of solitary confinement in the care of a resident
doctor and a couple of highly trained nurses.
Lady Okehampton anticipated a struggle, remembering how resolutely Vera
had resisted this line of treatment three months before; but her niece
surprised her by offering no vehement opposition.
"There is absolutely nothing the matter with me," she said, "but if it
will please you, Aunt Mildred, I will do as Dr. Tower advises."
"Nothing the matter! And you neither eat nor sleep! Is that nothing?"
"Who told you that I can't sleep?"
"My dear lady, your eyes tell us only too plainly. Insomnia has
unmistakable symptoms," said the doctor.
"Yes, it is true," Vera answered wearily. "I seem to have lost the
faculty of sleep. It is a habit one soon loses. I lie staring at the
daylight, and wondering what it is like to lose count of time."
And then, after a little more doctor's talk, soothing, and rather
meaningless, she asked abruptly:
"What time of year is it?"
"Dear child," exclaimed Lady Okehampton, "can you ask?"
"Oh, I have left off writing letters and reading newspapers, and I
forget dates. I know the days are getting shorter, because the dawn is
so long coming when I lie awake."
"We are in the middle of September," said the doctor, "a charming
month for country air--neither too hot nor too cold--the golden mean."
"And in six weeks it will be the end of October, and I can go to Rome
for the winter!"
"You could not do better. We shall build up your constitution in those
six weeks. You will be another woman when you leave Sussex."
"But, my dearest Vera," protested her aunt, "you can never think of a
winter alone in that enormous villa. You will die of ennui."
"No, no, Aunt Mildred, I love Rome. The very atmosphere of the place is
life to me. I am not afraid of being alone."
Dr. Tower shot a significant look at her ladyship, which silenced
remonstrance, and no more was said.
Two days later Vera found herself on a windy hill in Sussex, under
the dominion of the house-doctor and two nurses, and almost as much
exposed to the elements as King Lear on the heights near Dover. An
eider-down coverlet and a hot-water bottle made the only difference.
Lady Okehampton, having sacrificed her own cure to her niece's, went
with a mind at ease to join her husband in Yorkshire; an arrangement
almost without precedent in their domestic annals.