Contains a Love Interlude.
Next day Lefevre learned that the police had been again baffled in their
part of the inquiry. The detective had contrived to trace his
man--though not till the morning after the event--to the St Pancras
Hotel, where he had dined in private, and gone to bed early, and whence
he had departed on foot before any one was astir, to catch, it was
surmised, the first train. But wherever he had gone, it was just as in
the former case: from the time the hotel door had closed on his cloaked
figure, all trace of him was lost.
Nor could Lady Mary Fane add anything of moment to what Lefevre already
knew or guessed. Her account of her adventure (which she gave him in her
father's house, whither she had been removed on the third day) was as
follows: She was returning home from St Thomas's Hospital, dressed
according to her habit when she went there; she had crossed Westminster
Bridge, and was proceeding straight into St James's Park, when she
became aware of a man walking in the same direction as herself, and at
the same pace. She casually noted that he looked like a distinguished
foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death
clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,--a suggestion which melted
the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning
sailor. She was stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel
from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a
steadying hand on his arm, and asked what ailed him. He turned on her a
pair of wonderful dark eyes, which were animal-like in their simple,
direct appeal, and their moist softness. He begged her to lead him aside
into a path by which few would pass: he disliked being stared at.
Thinking only of him as a creature in sickness and distress, she obeyed
without a thought for herself. She helped him to sit down upon a bench,
and sat down by him and felt his pulse. He looked at her with an open,
kindly eye, with a simple-seeming gratitude, which held her strangely
(though she only perceived that clearly on looking back). He said to her
suddenly,--
"There was a deep, mystical truth in the teaching of the Church to its
children--that they should prefer in their moments of human weakness to
pray to the Virgin-mother; for woman is always man's best friend."
She looked in his face, wondering at him, still with her finger on his
pulse, when she felt an unconsciousness come over her, not unlike "the
thick, sweet mystery of chloroform;" and she knew no more till she
opened her eyes in the hospital bed. "Revived by you," she said to
Lefevre.
He inquired further, as to her sensations before unconsciousness, and
she replied in these striking words: "I felt as if I were strung upon a
complicated system of threads, and as if they tingled and tingled, and
grew tighter to numbness." That answer, he saw, was kindred to the
description given by the young officer of his condition. It was clear
that in both cases the nerves had been seriously played upon; but for
what purpose? What was the secret of the stranger's endeavour? What did
he seek?--and what find? To these questions no satisfactory answer would
come for the asking, so that in his impatience he was tempted to break
through the severe self-restraint of science, and let unfettered fancy
find an answer.
But, most of all, he longed to see close to him the man whom the police
sought for in and out, to judge for himself what might be the method and
the purpose of his strange outrages. He scarcely desired his capture,
for he thought of the possible results to Julius, and yet--Day after
day passed, and still the man was unfound, and very soon a change came
over Lefevre's life, which lifted it so far above the plane of his daily
professional experience, that all speculation about the mysterious "M.
Dolaro," and his probable relation to Julius, fell for a time into the
dim background. The doctor had been calling daily in Carlton Terrace to
see his patient, when, on a certain memorable day, he intimated to her
father that she was so completely recovered that there was no need of
his calling on her professionally again. The old lord, looking a little
flustered, asked him if he could spare a few minutes' conversation, and
led him into his study.
"My dear Lefevre," said he, "I am at a loss how to make you any adequate
return for what you have done for my daughter. Money can't do it; no,
nor my friendship either, though you are so kind as to say so. But I
have an idea, which I think it best to set before you frankly. You are a
bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand
affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing--old man of the world
though he was--flushing to the eyes. "What--what do you think of my
daughter? I mean, not as a doctor, but as a man?"
Lefevre was not in his first youth, and he had had his admirations for
women in his time, as all healthy men must have, but yet he was made as
deliriously dizzy as if he were a boy by his guess at what Lord
Rivercourt meant.
"Why," he stammered, "I think her the most beautiful, intelligent,
and--and attractive woman I know."
"Yes," said her father, "I believe she is pretty well in all these ways.
But--and you see I frankly expose my whole position to you--what would
you think of her for a wife?"
"Frankly, then," said Lefevre, "I find I have admired her from the
beginning of this, but I had no notion of letting my admiration go
farther, because I conceived that she was quite beyond my hopes."
"My dear fellow," said Lord Rivercourt, "you have relieved me and
delighted me immensely. I know no man that I would like so well for a
son-in-law. And after all, it is only fitting that the life you have
saved with such risk to yourself--oh, I know all about it--should be
devoted to making yours happy. And--and I understand from her mother
that Mary is quite of the same opinion herself. Now, will you go and
speak to her at once, or will you wait till another day? You will have
to decide that," said he, with a smile, "not only as lover, but as
doctor."
Lefevre hesitated for but an instant; for what true, manly lover would
have decided to withdraw till another day when the door to his mistress
was held open to him?
"I'll see her now," he said.
Lord Rivercourt led the doctor back to his daughter, and left him with
her. There were some moments of chilling doubt and cold uncertainty, and
then came a rush of warm feeling at the bidding of a shy glance from
Lady Mary. He bent over her and murmured he scarcely knew what, but he
heard clearly and with a divine ecstasy a softly-whispered "_Yes!_"
which thrilled in his heart for days and months afterwards, and then he
turned to him her face, her beautiful face illumined with love, and
kissed it: between two who had been drawn together as they had, what
words were needed, or what could poor words convey?
About an hour later he walked to Savile Row to dress and return for
dinner. He walked, because he felt surcharged with life. He desired
peace and goodwill among men; he pitied with all his soul the weary and
the broken whom he met, and wondered with regret that men should get
irremediably involved in the toils of their own misdeeds; he was profuse
with coppers, and even small silver, to the wretched waifs of society
who swept the crossings he had to take on his triumphant way; he would
even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if he had met him
then;--for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising
him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and gods. Oh matchless
magic of the human heart, which confounds all the hypotheses of science,
and flouts all its explanations!
It was that evening when he and Lady Mary sat in sweet converse that she
said to him these words, which he hung for ever after about his heart--
"Surely, never before did a man win a wife as you have won me! You made
me well by putting your own life into me; so what could I do but give
you the life that was already your own!"
Thus day followed day on golden wings: Lefevre in the morning occupied
with the patients that thronged his consulting-room; in the afternoon
dispensing healing, and, where healing was impossible, cheerfulness and
courage, in his hospital wards; and in the evening finding inspiration
and strength in the company of Lady Mary--for her love was to him better
than wine. All who went to him in those days found him changed, and in a
sense glorified. He had always been considerate and kind; but the
weakness, the folly, and the wickedness of poor human nature, which were
often laid bare to his searching scrutiny, had frequently plunged him
into a welter of despondency and shame, out of which he would cry, "Alas
for God's image! Alas for the temple of the Holy Ghost!" But in those
days it seemed as if disease and death appeared to him mere trivial
accidents of life, with the result that no "case," however bad, was sent
away empty of hope.