PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE
NUMBER Five was near the centre of the row of little suburban houses
called Redburn Road.
When the cab drew up at the door Mr. Vimpany himself was visible,
looking out of the window on the ground floor--and yawning as he
looked. Iris beckoned to him impatiently. "Anything wrong?" he asked,
as he approached the door of the cab. She drew back, and silently
showed him what was wrong. The doctor received the shock with
composure. When he happened to be sober and sad, looking for patients
and failing to find them, Mr. Vimpany's capacity for feeling sympathy
began and ended with himself.
"This is a new scrape, even for Lord Harry," he remarked. "Let's get
him into the house."
The insensible man was carried into the nearest room on the ground
floor. Pale and trembling, Iris related what had happened, and asked if
there was no hope of saving him.
"Patience!" Mr. Vimpany answered; "I'll tell you directly."
He removed the bandages, and examined the wound. "There's been a deal
of blood lost," he said; "I'll try and pull him through. While I am
about it, Miss, go upstairs, if you please, and find your way to the
drawing-room." Iris hesitated. The doctor opened a neat mahogany box.
"The tools of my trade," he continued; "I'm going to sew up his
lordship's throat." Shuddering as she heard those words, Iris hurried
out of the room. Fanny followed her mistress up the stairs. In her own
very different way, the maid was as impenetrably composed as Mr.
Vimpany himself. "There was a second letter found in the gentleman's
pocket, Miss," she said. "Will you excuse my reminding you that you
have not read it yet."
Iris read the lines that follow:
"Forgive me, my dear, for the last time. My letter is to say that I
shall trouble you no more in this world--and, as for the other world,
who knows? I brought some money back with me, from the goldfields. It
was not enough to be called a fortune--I mean the sort of fortune which
might persuade your father to let you marry me. Well! here in England,
I had an opportunity of making ten times more of it on the turf; and,
let me add, with private information of the horses which I might
certainly count on to win. I don't stop to ask by what cruel roguery I
was tempted to my ruin. My money is lost; and, with it, my last hope of
a happy and harmless life with you comes to an end. I die, Iris dear,
with the death of that hope. Something in me seems to shrink from
suicide in the ugly gloom of great overgrown London. I prefer to make
away with myself among the fields, where the green will remind me of
dear old Ireland. When you think of me sometimes, say to yourself the
poor wretch loved me--and perhaps the earth will lie lighter on Harry
for those kind words, and the flowers (if you favour me by planting a
few) may grow prettier on my grave."
There it ended.
The heart of Iris sank as she read that melancholy farewell, expressed
in language at once wild and childish. If he survived his desperate
attempt at self-destruction, to what end would it lead? In silence, the
woman who loved him put his letter back in her bosom. Watching her
attentively--affected, it was impossible to say how, by that mute
distress--Fanny Mere proposed to go downstairs, and ask once more what
hope there might be for the wounded man. Iris knew the doctor too well
to let the maid leave her on a useless errand.
"Some men might be kindly ready to relieve my suspense," she said; "the
man downstairs is not one of them. I must wait till he comes to me, or
sends for me. But there is something I wish to say to you, while we are
alone. You have been but a short time in my service, Fanny. Is it too
soon to ask if you feel some interest in me?"
"If I can comfort you or help you, Miss, be pleased to tell me how."
She made that reply respectfully, in her usual quiet manner; her pale
cheeks showing no change of colour, her faint blue eyes resting
steadily on her mistress's face. Iris went on:
"If I ask you to keep what has happened, on this dreadful day, a secret
from everybody, may I trust you--little as you know of me--as I might
have trusted Rhoda Bennet?"
"I promise it, Miss." In saying those few words, the undemonstrative
woman seemed to think that she had said enough.
Iris had no alternative but to ask another favour.
"And whatever curiosity you may feel, will you be content to do me a
kindness--without wanting an explanation?"
"It is my duty to respect my mistress's secrets; I will do my duty." No
sentiment, no offer of respectful sympathy; a positive declaration of
fidelity, left impenetrably to speak for itself. Was the girl's heart
hardened by the disaster which had darkened her life? Or was she the
submissive victim of that inbred reserve, which shrinks from the frank
expression of feeling, and lives and dies self-imprisoned in its own
secrecy? A third explanation, founded probably on a steadier basis, was
suggested by Miss Henley's remembrance of their first interview.
Fanny's nature had revealed a sensitive side, when she was first
encouraged to hope for a refuge from ruin followed perhaps by
starvation and death. Judging so far from experience, a sound
conclusion seemed to follow. When circumstances strongly excited the
girl, there was a dormant vitality in her that revived. At other times
when events failed to agitate her by a direct appeal to personal
interests, her constitutional reserve held the rule. She could be
impenetrably honest, steadily industrious, truly grateful--but the
intuitive expression of feeling, on ordinary occasions, was beyond her
reach.
After an interval of nearly half an hour, Mr. Vimpany made his
appearance. Pausing in the doorway, he consulted his watch, and entered
on a calculation which presented him favourably from a professional
point of view.
"Allow for time lost in reviving my lord when he fainted, and stringing
him up with a drop of brandy, and washing my hands (look how clean they
are!), I haven't been more than twenty minutes in mending his throat.
Not bad surgery, Miss Henley."
"Is his life safe, Mr. Vimpany?"
"Thanks to his luck--yes."
"His luck?"
"To be sure! In the first place, he owes his life to your finding him
when you did; a little later, and it would have been all over with Lord
Harry. Second piece of luck: catching the doctor at home, just when he
was most wanted. Third piece of luck: our friend didn't know how to cut
his own throat properly. You needn't look black at me, Miss; I'm not
joking. A suicide with a razor in his hand has generally one chance in
his favour--he is ignorant of anatomy. That is my lord's case. He has
only cut through the upper fleshy part of his throat, and has missed
the larger blood vessels. Take my word for it, he will do well enough
now; thanks to you, thanks to me, and thanks to his own ignorance. What
do you say to that way of putting it? Ha! my brains are in good working
order to-day; I haven't been drinking any of Mr. Mountjoy's claret--do
you take the joke, Miss Henley?"
Chuckling over the recollection of his own drunken audacity, he
happened to notice Fanny Mere.
"Hullo! is this another injured person in want of me? You're as white
as a sheet, Miss. If you're going to faint, do me a favour--wait till I
can get the brandy-bottle. Oh! it's natural to you, is it? I see. A
thick skin and a slow circulation; you will live to be an old woman. A
friend of yours, Miss Henley?"
Fanny answered composedly for herself: "I am Miss Henley's maid, sir."
"What's become of the other one?" Mr. Vimpany asked. "Aye? aye? Staying
at a farm-house for the benefit of her health, is she? If I had been
allowed time enough, I would have made a cure of Rhoda Bennet. There
isn't a medical man in England who knows more than I do of the nervous
maladies of women--and what is my reward? Is my waiting-room crammed
with rich people coming to consult me? Do I live in a fashionable
Square? Have I even been made a Baronet? Damn it--I beg your pardon,
Miss Henley--but it is irritating, to a man of my capacity, to be
completely neglected. For the last three days not a creature has
darkened the doors of this house. Could I say a word to you?"
He led Iris mysteriously into a corner of the room. "About our friend
downstairs?" he began.
"When may we hope that he will be well again, Mr. Vimpany?"
"Maybe in three weeks. In a month at most. I have nobody here but a
stupid servant girl. We ought to have a competent nurse. I can get a
thoroughly trained person from the hospital; but there's a little
difficulty. I am an outspoken man. When I am poor, I own I am poor. My
lord must be well fed; the nurse must be well fed. Would you mind
advancing a small loan, to provide beforehand for the payment of
expenses?"
Iris handed her purse to him, sick of the sight of Mr. Vimpany. "Is
that all?" she asked, making for the door.
"Much obliged. That's all."
As they approached the room on the ground floor, Iris stopped: her eyes
rested on the doctor. Even to that coarse creature, the eloquent look
spoke for her. Fanny noticed it, and suddenly turned her head aside.
Over the maid's white face there passed darkly an expression of
unutterable contempt. Her mistress's weakness had revealed
itself--weakness for one of the betrayers of women; weakness for a man!
In the meantime, Mr. Vimpany (having got the money) was ready to humour
the enviable young lady with a well-filled purse.
"Do you want to see my lord before you go?" he asked, amused at the
idea. "Mind! you mustn't disturb him! No talking, and no crying. Ready?
Now look at him."
There he lay on a shabby little sofa, in an ugly little room; his eyes
closed; one helpless hand hanging down; a stillness on his ghastly
face, horribly suggestive of the stillness of death--there he lay, the
reckless victim of his love for the woman who had desperately renounced
him again and again, who had now saved him for the third time. Ah, how
her treacherous heart pleaded for him! Can you drive him away from you
after this? You, who love him, what does your cold-blooded prudence
say, when you look at him now?
She felt herself drawn, roughly and suddenly, back into the passage.
The door was closed; the doctor was whispering to her. "Hold up, Miss!
I expected better things of you. Come! come!--no fainting. You'll find
him a different man to-morrow. Pay us a visit, and judge for yourself."
After what she had suffered, Iris hungered for sympathy. "Isn't it
pitiable?" she said to her maid as they left the house.
"I don't know, Miss."
"You don't know? Good heavens, are you made of stone? Have you no such
thing as a heart in you?"
"Not for the men," Fanny answered. "I keep my pity for the women."
Iris knew what bitter remembrances made their confession in those
words. How she missed Rhoda Bennet at that moment!