_The Doctor's reflections on his return._
“How much safer am I now?” thought the doctor, as he pursued his way
home in the dark, and reflected on all that had just transpired, and on
the probable consequences of it. “To-morrow there will be a jury,--it
cannot be avoided; and I shall be called to give evidence, and Fanny,
who saw it all, will be called also. She suspects something, and may
tell all until she raises suspicions in the minds of others. Would that
she too were out of the way, and then--then I should be finally secure!”
But as he thus thought on another death, the dread of the last came
strongly upon him; and his skin seemed to creep upon his bones. He
fancied there was a body lying in the road, and several times he checked
his horse to avoid trampling upon it, or turned him suddenly aside in
order to pass it by.
[Illustration: 070]
He could see the shadowy lineaments of the man he had murdered
flickering about in the doubtful air, with the very folds of the
bed-clothes which his own hand had gathered round it, pictured in misty
but accurate lines, like an artist's first sketch emerging from a ground
of dark and indistinct space. He grew anxious to get home. He wondered
how it was that never in his life before had any sight so haunted him,
and yet he had seen many worse agonies than that,--many. Yes; he had
seen old sinners die,--stubborn and unrepentant to the last; he had seen
them die, and make no sign of hope of Heaven's grace. And he had seen
young maids die of very terror at the thought and name of death. Yet
these were nothing. They were happiness itself to what he had witnessed
that night. When he arrived at home, his wife remarked that he looked
pale and ill.
“No, my dear,” he replied, “I am very well indeed,--wonderfully well.
I never felt better in my life. I can assure you, you are mistaken.” He
sat down to his supper; but as he tried to carve, his knife slipped, and
he did not try it again. The face of the lawyer seemed to be over the
table, dancing about in the broad beams of the candlelight.
“You tremble, Frank!” cried his wife; “your hand shakes. How did you
leave Skinwell?”
“He is dead.”
“Dead!”
“Yes,--he is gone. A concussion of the brain has taken him off. It was a
terrible fall, indeed.”
“But how sudden!” exclaimed she.
“People will die suddenly sometimes,” replied the doctor; “and
especially when pitched headlong out of a gig on a stony road. Now I
think of it, let me tell you, my dear, that to-morrow perhaps, or on
some early day, I shall want you to show a young woman down in the
village here, all over the house. I wish her to see the patients. Do not
ask any questions now; I have particular reasons for it. I only have
to request of you very particularly, when she does come, to make no
inquiries of her of any kind, nor to answer any questions she may put to
you. It is of great importance to yourself as well as to me; and more so
indeed than you can be aware of just now; so that it is unnecessary to
insist further upon it.”
The wife promised strict compliance with his injunctions, as it was no
very unusual thing for her thus to be requested to take a blind part in
the performance of some mystery or other in the establishment, of which
no one knew the purpose save Dr. Rowel himself. By this combination
of secrecy with his wife, and of apparent openness and candour towards
Fanny, he trusted to convince the latter that the communication which
the dying man had made respecting her father was false and utterly
without foundation. In adopting this bold course, it is evident that the
doctor laid himself open to the possibility at least of a discovery; yet
it was clearly the safest plan which, under the circumstances, he could
adopt. The opinions which his wife entertained respecting the sanity of
the unfortunate James Woodruff rendered it highly necessary, not only
that the name and relationship of the visiter to whom he had promised
an inspection of his house should be unknown to her, but also that no
suspicion should be excited by any attempt on his part to prevent James
Woodruff's being seen by Fanny along with all the other patients; since
the very fact of one of them being purposely withheld would of itself
give room for doubt; while, from an interview between them he had
nothing to fear, since in his opinion it was a moral impossibility that
either father or daughter should recognise the other.