Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: map of Sable Island]
MAID OF THE MIST
BY
JOHN OXENHAM
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
PUBLISHERS LONDON
_Printed in 1917_
TO
MY FRIEND
FREDERICK CAESAR de SUMICHRAST
Professor Emeritus of French Literature
at
Harvard University
in
HIGHEST ESTEEM
and
MOST AFFECTIONATE REGARD.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
For a Woman's Sake
BOOK II
No Man's Land
BOOK III
Bone of Contention
BOOK IV
Love in a Mist
BOOK V
Garden of Eden
BOOK I
FOR A WOMAN'S SAKE
I
At sight of where the chase was leading, most of the riders reined in
their panting horses and sat watching those in front with anxious faces.
The Old Roman Road--so called, though with possibly somewhat doubtful
claim to antiquity so remote--had an evil reputation. At best of times
it was dangerous. More than one of them had sacrificed a horse to it
at some time or other. Some had come near to sacrificing more.
After several hours in the field, wound up by a fast five-and-twenty
minutes' run which had led round Endsley Wood and the coppices almost
to Wynn Hall, and then back through Dursel Bottom, and up Whin Hill, it
was too much to ask of any horse. Besides, it meant the end of the run
in any case, for that old fox, if he failed to shake them off
elsewhere, always made for the Roman Road and always managed it there.
The hedge on this side was as thick and matted a quickset as ever grew.
The sunk road had no doubt originally been a covered way from the old
fort up above. It was indeed more of a trench than a road, with a
sheer descent from the quickset of ten good feet, a width of about as
much, and a grass slope on the other side at a somewhat lower level.
The leap was therefore by no means impossible if your horse could rise
to the hedge and cover the distance and the extra bit for a footing.
But what was the good? The bottom of the old road was always a muddy
dribble from the fields above, and up and down it went several flocks
of sheep whenever they changed pasture. And the wily old fox knew the
effect of these things on scent as well as any hound or huntsman. So,
when it was his day, and he had had enough of them, he made for the Old
Roman Road, and then went home with a curl in his lip and a laugh in
his eye.
But there were riders among them to whom a ride was nothing without a
risk in it, and the Roman Road a standing test and temptation. It was
two such that the rest who had got that length stood watching, some
with tightened faces, none without anxiety. For a leap that is good
sport when one's horse is fresh may mean disaster at the end of the
run. Even old Job, the huntsman, and young Job, his son, who acted as
whipper-in, watched with pinched faces and panted oaths between their
teeth. Pasley Carew, the Master, lifted his foam-flecked black to the
hedge, and the dull crash of his fall came up to them, horribly clear
on the still autumn air.
Wulfrey Dale, the Doctor, on his big bay, cleared hedge and road with
feet to spare, flung himself off as soon as he could pull up, and ran
back to help.
It was as bad as it could be. Carew lay in the road, smothered in mud
and obviously damaged. His horse had just rolled off him, and the
Doctor saw at a glance that one of its forelegs was broken. It was
kicking out wildly with its heels, flailing clods out of the steep bank
and floundering in vain attempts to rise.
Carew, on one elbow, was cursing it with every oath he could lay tongue
to, and with the pointed bone handle of his crop in the other hand was
hammering the poor brute's head to pulp.
"Stop it, Carew!" shouted Wulfrey, sickened at the sight, as he jumped
down the bank. "Damn it, man, it wasn't her fault!"
"---- her! She's broken my back."
"You shouldn't have tried it. I told you you were too heavy for her.
Stop it, I say!" and he wrenched the crop, all dripping with hair and
blood, out of the other's hand, and with difficulty bit off the hot
words that surged in his throat. For the man was broken and hardly
responsible.
It was a hard age and given to forceful language. But never in any age
are there lacking some to whom brutality to the dumb beast appeals as
keenly as ill-treatment of their fellows.
Wulfrey Dale was of these, and a great lover of horses besides, and
Carew's maltreatment of his broken beast cut him to the quick.
With another quick look at the useless leg, and a bitter word which he
could not keep in, at the horror of the mauled head, he drew from his
pocket a long knife, which had seen service on many a field, opened it,
pressed down the blinded tumbling head with one hand, and with the
other deftly inserted the blade at the base of the skull behind the
ears and drove it home with all his force, severing the spinal cord.
"Poor old girl!" he said, as, with a quick sigh of relief, the great
black body lay still.
Then he turned to Carew and knelt down to examine into his injuries.
"No need," said the broken man. "Curse it all! Get a gate. My back's
gone. I've no legs,"--and the others, having found their roundabout
ways, came flocking up, while the dogs still nosed eagerly up and down
the road but got no satisfaction.
Young Job plied his whip and his tongue and carried them away. His
father looked at Carew, then at the Doctor, who nodded, and the old man
turned and hurried away to get what long experience of such matters
told him was needed.
"Take a pull at this, Carew," said the Doctor, handing him a flask.
And as he drank deeply, as though to deaden the pain or the thought of
it, Dale beckoned to one of the group which stood a little aloof lest
the broken man should take their anxiety for morbid curiosity.
"Barclay, will you ride on and break it to Mrs. Carew?"
"Is it bad?"
"Yes, his back's broken."
"Good God!" and he stumbled off to his horse, and with a word to the
rest, mounted and rode away.
Old Job came back in a minute or two with a hurdle he had rooted up
from the sheep-fold, and they lifted the Master on to it and carried
him slowly and heavily home.
II
Carew was on the front door steps as they came up the drive. The
Doctor went on in advance to speak to her.
"Dead?" she jerked breathlessly, as he strode up.
"Not dead. Badly broken. He may live," and her tightened lips pinched
a trifle tighter.
She was a slight, extremely pretty woman of three and twenty,
white-faced at the moment with the sudden shock; in her blue eyes a
curious startled look--anxiety?--expectancy? Even Dale, who had known
her all his life, could not have said. All he knew was that it was not
quite the look one found in some wives' faces in similar circumstances,
and this was not the first he had seen.
She looked scarcely more than a girl, though she had been married five
years. That was due largely to the slim grace of her figure. Her face
was thinner than he had known it, less eloquent of her feelings,
somewhat tense and repressed, and her eyes seemed larger; and all that,
he knew, was due to the fact that it was to Pasley Carew to whom she
had been married for five years, for he had seen these changes come
upon her gradually.
They had played together as boy and girl, when he was just little Wulf
Dale, the Doctor's son, and she Elinor Baynard, living with her mother
at Glynne. As youth and maiden they had flirted and even sweet-hearted
for a time. But Mrs Baynard of Glynne had no intention of letting her
pretty girl throw herself away on a mere country doctor's son, however
highly she might esteem both father and son personally.
Wulf had at that time still to prove himself, and even if he did so,
and eventually succeeded his father in the practice, it meant no more
than a good living at the cost of constant hard work.
Elinor, she was sure, had been gifted by Nature with that face and
figure for some better portion in life than that of a country doctor's
wife, and so she saw to it that the feelings of the young people should
not get too deeply entangled before it was too late.
As for Elinor herself she was very fond of Wulf. She liked him indeed
almost well enough to sacrifice everything for him. But not quite. If
he had only been in the position and possessions of Pasley Carew of the
Hall, now, she would have married him without a moment's hesitation,
and she would undoubtedly have had much greater chance of happiness
than was vouchsafed her.
If, indeed, Wulf had ardently pushed his suit he might possibly have
prevailed on her to marry him in spite of her mother, though whether
Wulf without the possessions would have satisfied her eventually may be
doubted. But Wulf, two years older than herself, had no intention of
marrying at twenty, even if his father would have heard of it.
He was a gay, good-looking fellow, with the cheerfullest of humours,
and on the best of terms with every man, woman and child, over all the
country-side. Moreover he was an excellent shot, a fearless rider,
good company at table, an acceptable and much-sought-after
guest,--whenever circumstances and cases permitted of temporary release
from duties with which no social engagements were ever allowed to
interfere. Marrying and settling down were for the years to come.
As his father's assistant he had proved his capabilities. And when the
old man died, Wulf stepped up into the vacant saddle and filled it with
perfect acceptation to all concerned.
His ready sympathy, and his particular interest in and devotion to
everyone who claimed his services, endeared him to his patients. They
vowed that the sight of him did them as much good as his medicines, but
he made them take the medicines all the same.
He had also lately been appointed Deputy-Coroner for the district, in
order, in case of need, to relieve Dr Tamplin--old Tom Tamplin who
lived at Aldersley, ten miles away. So that matters were prospering
with him all round. All men spoke well of him, and the women still
better.
A practitioner from the outside, with a London degree and much
assurance, had indeed hung out his large new brass plate in the village
about a year before, and lived on there in hope which showed no sign of
fulfilment. For everyone knew and liked Wulf Dale, and Dr Newman,
M.B., clever though he might be and full worthy of his London degree,
was still an outsider and an unknown quantity, and the way of the
medical outsider in a country district is apt to be as hard as the way
of the transgressor.
So Elinor Baynard, for the sake of her bodily comfort and her own and
her mother's worldly ambitions, married Pasley Carew and became
Mistress of Croome, and learned all too soon that it is possible to pay
too high a price even for bodily comfort and the realisation of worldly
ambition.
Worldly ambition may, indeed, be made to appear successfully attained,
to the outside world; but bodily comfort, being dependent more or less
on peace of mind, is not to be secured when heart and mind are sorely
exercised and bruised.
Jealous Jade Rumour even went the length of whispering that it was not
heart and mind alone that had on occasion suffered bruising in this
case. For Carew was notoriously quick-tempered and easily upset--and
notoriously many other things also. His grooms and boys knew the feel
of his hunting-crop better than his reasons for using it at
times--though doubtless occasion was not lacking. As to his
language!--it was said that the very horses in his stables lashed out
when he began, as though they believed that, by much kicking, curses
might be pulverised in mid-air and rendered innocuous.
Now a wife cannot--Elinor at all events could not--kick even to that
extent under the application of sulphur or riding-whip. Nor can she
legally, except in the extremest case, throw up her situation, as the
stable-boys could, but did not. For the pay in both cases was good,
and for the sake of it the one and the other put up with the
discomforts appertaining to their positions.
Pasley Carew's redeeming characteristics were a large estate and
rent-roll, sporting instincts, and extreme openhandedness in everything
that ministered to his own pleasures.
He ran the hounds and was a fine rider, though over-hard on his horses,
with whom he was never on terms of intimate friendship. He esteemed
them solely for their carrying capacities. He preserved, was a good
shot, and free with his invitations to the less-happily situated. He
was a jovial host and a hard drinker as was the fashion. He enjoyed
seeing his friends at his table and under it. He was not a hard
landlord, and this, and his generosity in the matter of compensation
for hunt-damage, secured him the good-will of the country-side and
palliated all else.
Morals were slack in those days, and no one would have thought for a
moment of affronting Carew by calling him a moral man.
On the whole, Elinor paid a somewhat high price for the bodily comfort
from which--according to the Jealous Jade--sulphurous language and an
occasional blow were not lacking, and for the satisfaction of a worldly
ambition which, if the gradual shadowing of her pretty face was
anything to go by, had not brought her any great peace of mind.
III
Wulfrey Dale was a very general favourite. With men and women alike,
quite irrespective of their station in life, his manner was
irresistibly frank and charming. With the women it might be said to be
almost unfortunately so.
He was so absolutely and unaffectedly sympathetic, so exclusively and
devotedly interested in every woman he met, that it is hardly matter
for wonder that in many quarters impressionable hearts beat high at his
coming, and thought tenderly and hopefully of him when he had gone.
That, too, in spite of the fact that their owners knew perfectly well
that it was simply Wulf's way, as it had been his father's before him,
and that neither of them could change his nature any more than he could
change his skin or the colour of his eyes.
He took a deep and genuine human interest in every man, woman and child
with whom he came into contact, and showed it. With men and children
it made for good-fellowship and extraordinary confidence. The older
folk all trusted young Wulfrey as they had all their lives trusted the
old Doctor. The children would talk to him as between man and man, and
with an artlessness and candour which as a rule obtained only among
themselves. With the women it led in some cases to little affections
of the heart--flutterings and burnings and barely-self-confessed
disappointments, for which their owners, if honest in their searchings
after truth, had to acknowledge that the blame lay entirely with
themselves.
It was a time of hard drinking, hard riding, and quite superfluously
strong language, but none the less, among the women-folk, of a
sentiment which in these days of wider outlook and opportunity we
should denominate as sickly. The blame was not all theirs.
So far Wulf had shown exceptional interest or favour in no direction,
that is to say in all, and so none could claim to say with any
certainty in which way the wind blew, or even if it blew at all.
Not a few held that Elinor Baynard's marriage with Pasley Carew had so
wounded his affections that it was probable he would never marry,
unless----. And therein lay strictly private grounds for hope in many
a heart.
For a heart-broken man, however, Wulfrey managed to maintain an
extremely cheerful face, and his manner to Elinor, whenever they met,
was just the same as to other women.
If it had in fact been somewhat different it would not have been very
surprising. For it needed no professional acumen to recognise that her
marriage with Pasley had not fulfilled her expectations.
She was, indeed, Mrs Carew of Croome, mistress of the Hall and all such
amenities--and otherwise--and luxuries of living as appertained to so
exalted a position, winner of the prize so many had coveted, and--wife
of Pasley Carew. And sometimes it is possible she wished she were none
of these things because of the last.
For Carew made no pretence of perfection, or even of modest
impeccability, never had done so since the day he was born, never would
till the day he must die, would have scorned the very idea. Was he not
a man,--rich and hot-blooded, able and accustomed all his life to have
his own way in all things, easy enough to get on with when he got it,
otherwise when thwarted?
And Wulfrey Dale had seen the freshness of the maiden-bloom fade out of
Elinor's pretty face, in these five years of her attainment, had seen
it stiffen in self-repression, and even harden somewhat. Her eyes had
seemed to grow larger, and there were sometimes dark shadows under
them. Without doubt she had not found any too large measure of the
comfort and happiness she had looked for. At times, mind acting on
body, her health was not of the best, and then she sent for Wulfrey to
minister to her bodily necessities, and found that he could do it best
by allowing her to relieve her mind of some of its burdens.
They had always been on such friendly terms that she could, and did,
talk to him as to no other. Her mother was worse than useless as a
burden-sharer. Her only counsel was not to be too thin-skinned, and
above all to present a placid face to the world. Which, as medicine to
a sorely-tried soul, was easier to give than to take, and proved quite
ineffective.
Wulfrey, on the other hand, gave her tonics, and, to the fullest limits
of his duty to Carew, his deepest sympathy in her troubles and
vexations, and his friendly advice towards encouragement and hope of
better times, when Pasley's hot blood would begin to cool and he would
settle down to less objectionable courses.
At times, under stress and suffering from some more than usually
immoderate outbreak on her husband's part, she would let herself go in
a way that pained and surprised him, both as friend and doctor. He
doubted if she always told him all, even at such times. More than once
she had seemed on the point of still wilder outbreak, and it was all he
could do to soothe her and bring her back to a more reasonable frame of
mind.
On one occasion she openly threatened to take her life, since it was no
longer worth living, and it took Wulfrey a good hour to wring from her
a solemn promise not to do so without first consulting him. So
over-wrought and alternately excited and depressed was she that there
were times when, in spite of her promise, he would not have been
greatly surprised by a sudden summons to the Hall with the news that
its mistress had made a summary end of her troubles.
His mind was sorely exercised on her account, but it was only the
effects that came within his province. The root of the trouble was
beyond his tackling. He did, indeed, after much debate within himself,
bring himself to the point of discussing the matter, in strictest
confidence, with the parson, one night. But he, jovial sportsman and
recipient of many bounties from Pasley, including the privilege of
subsiding under his table whenever invitation offered, genially but
flatly refused to interfere between man and wife.
"No good ever comes of it, Doctor. You know that as well as any man.
It's only the intruder suffers. They both turn and rend him like boars
of the wood and wild beasts of the field. Take my advice and leave 'em
alone. These things always straighten themselves out in time--one way
or the other. Deuce take the women! They're not blind kittens when
they marry. They've got to take the rough with the smooth. Another
glass of punch before you go!"--was the irreverent Reverend's final
word on the matter. And Wulfrey could do no more in that direction.
IV
It was under such circumstances that they carried Pasley Carew home to
Croome on the hurdle; under such circumstances that Elinor met them on
the steps and asked Wulfrey, with that curious, startled look in her
eyes which might be anxiety and might be expectancy.--
"Dead?"
And Wulfrey, subconsciously wondering whether she really had got the
length of hoping for her husband's death, and subconsciously feeling
that if it were so it was not much to be wondered at, though
undoubtedly greatly to be deplored, had answered her, somewhat sternly,
"Not dead. Badly broken. He may live,"--for the shock of the whole
matter, and the extreme discomfort of having had to sever that poor
Blackbird's spinal cord, were still heavy on him.
Elinor shot one sharp, searching glance at his face, and turned and
went on before the bearers to show them the way.
The staircase at Croome was a somewhat notable one, wide enough to
accommodate hurdle and bearers with room to spare, so they carried the
Master right up to his own bedroom and as gently as possible
transferred him to his bed.
The explosive fury of his outbreak against Fate and Blackbird, in the
first shock of his fall, had been simply a case of vehement passion
disregarding, and momentarily overcoming, the frailty of the flesh.
Exhaustion and collapse followed, and as they carried him home he lay
still and barely conscious.
He came to himself again as they placed him on the bed, and after lying
for a moment, as though recalling what had happened, murmured in a
bitter whisper, "Damnation! Damnation! Damnation!" and his eyes
screwed up tightly, and his face warped and pinched in agony of mind or
body, or both.
As Wulfrey bent over him, and with gentle hands assured himself of the
damage, Carew looked up at him out of the depths; horror, desperation,
furious revolt, hopelessness, all mingled in the wild gleam that
detected and scorched the pity in Wulfrey's own eyes, and gave him
warning of dangers to come.
"---- it all! It's no good, Dale," he growled hoarsely. "I'm done.
---- that horse! Give me something that'll end it quick!"
"Don't talk that way, man! You know I can't do that. We'll pull you
through."
"To lie like a log for the rest of my life! I won't, I tell you. ----
it, man, can't you understand I'd liefer go at once?"
"I'll bring you up a draught and you'll get some rest," said Dale
soothingly.
"Rest! Rest! A dose of poison is all I want, ---- you! Don't look at
me like that, ---- _you_!" to his wife, who stood watching with her
hands tightly clasped as though to hold in her emotions. She walked
away to the window and stood looking out.
"Carew, you--must--be--quiet. You're doing yourself harm," said the
Doctor authoritatively.
"Man, I'm in hell. Poison me, and make an end!"
"Not till tomorrow, anyway. I'll run down and get that draught. We'll
see about the other in the morning."
Mrs Carew turned as he left the room, and followed him out, and the
sick man sank back with a groan and a curse.
"Will he die?" she asked quickly, as she closed the door behind them.
"Not necessarily. But if he lives he'll be crippled for life."
"He would sooner die than live like that."
"We can't help that. It's my business to keep him alive. I'll run
down and mix him a draught which may give him some rest. You'll need
assistance. He may go off his head. He's a bad patient. I'll send
you someone up----"
"Not Jane Pinniger then. I won't have her."
He knitted his brows at her. "It was Jane I was thinking of. She's an
excellent nurse, both brains and brawn, and he may get violent in the
night."
"I won't have her here," said Elinor obstinately, and he remembered
that gossip had, not so very long ago, been busy with the names of
Pasley and Jane, as she had at other times occupied herself with Pasley
and many another. Undoubtedly Elinor had had much to bear.
"All right! If I can find anyone else----" he began.
"I won't have Jane Pinniger here,"--and he went off at speed to get the
draught and find a substitute for Jane if that were possible.
His doubts on that head were justified. He sent his boy up with the
draught, and started on the search for a nurse who should combine a
modicum of intelligence with the necessary strength of mind and body.
But his choice was very limited. Old crones there were, satisfactory
enough in their own special line and in a labourer's cottage, but
useless for a job such as this. There was nothing for it at last but
to go back to the Hall and tell Mrs Carew that it was Jane or nobody.
"Nobody then," said she decisively. "I will manage with one of the
girls from downstairs, and young Job to help."
"Young Job is all very well with the dogs----"
"He will do very well for this too. We may not require him, but he can
be at hand in case of need," and he had to leave it at that.
V
Carew suffered much, more in mind even than in body. The thought of
lying there like a damned log, as he put it, for the rest of his days
filled him with most passionate resentment, and drove him into
paroxysms of raging fury. He cursed everything under the sun and
everyone who came near him, with a completeness and finality of
invective which, if it had taken effect or come home to roost, would
have blighted himself and all his surroundings off the face of the
earth.
Even his wife, and the maid who took turns with her to sit within call,
accustomed as they were to his outbreaks, quailed before the storm.
Young Job alone suffered it without turning a hair, and paid no more
heed to it all, even when directed against himself, than he would to
the yelping of his dogs.
Wulfrey Dale came in for his share, chiefly by reason of his quiet
inattention to the sufferer's impossible demands for extinction.
But he found his visits to the sick-room trying even to his seasoned
nerves. What it must all mean to the tortured wife he hardly dared to
imagine.
Once when he was there, Carew hurled a tumbler at her which missed her
head by a hair's-breadth. Dale got her out of the room, and turned and
gave his patient a sound verbal drubbing, and Carew cursed him high and
low till his breath gave out.
"Has he done that before?" the Doctor asked the white-faced wife, when
he had followed her downstairs.
"Oh, yes. But I'm generally on the look-out. I was off my guard
because you were there. Oh, I wish he would die and leave us in peace."
"He'll kill himself if he goes on like this."
"He'll kill some of us first. He's wanting to die. It would be the
best thing for him--and for us. Can't you let him die?" and a tiny
spark shot through the shadowy suffering of her eyes as she glanced up
at him.
"You know I can't. Don't talk like that!" he said brusquely, and then,
to atone for the brusqueness, "I am sorely distressed for you, but
there is nothing to be done but bear it as bravely as you can. What
about your mother? Couldn't you----"
"It would only make him worse still, if that is possible. Pasley
detests her. Oh, I wish I were dead myself. I cannot bear it," and
she broke into hysterical weeping, and swayed blindly, and would have
fallen if he had not caught her.
A woman's grief and tears always drew the whole of Wulf's sympathy.
And he and she had been almost as brother and sister all their
lives--till she married Carew.
"Don't, Elinor! Don't!" he said soothingly, as with her shaking head
against his breast she sobbed as though her heart were broken.
Mollie, the maid, came hastily in, without so much as a knock, her red
face mottled with white fear.
"He's going on that awful, Ma'am, I vow I daresn't stop in there alone
with him. It's as much as one's life's worth when he's in his
tantrums."
"Get your mistress a glass of wine, Mollie, and then find young Job and
send him up. I'll go up and wait with Mr Carew till he comes."
He led Mrs Carew to the couch and made her lie down there, and
explained matters to the girl by asking her,
"Does he throw things at you too?"
"La, yes, Doctor, at all of us, if we don't keep 'em out of his reach.
He do boil up so at nothing at all," and she went off in search of
young Job, who was passing a peaceful holiday hour in the company of
thirty couple of yelping hounds.
VI
Dale was confronted with the problem with which every medical man comes
face to face during his career.
Here was a man who, both for his own sake and still more for the sake
of those about him, would be very much better dead than living; who
wanted to die, and, as he believed, make an end; who begged constantly
for the relief of death;--and yet, against his own equally strong
feeling of what would be best for all concerned, his doctor must do his
very utmost to keep his patient alive and all about him in torment.
Wulfrey wished, as devoutly as the more immediate sufferers, that he
would die. He wished it more ardently each time he saw Mrs Carew, and
wholly and entirely on her account.
Her white face, which grew more deathly white each day, and her woful
eyes, which grew ever more despairing in their shadowy rings, were sure
indexes of what she was passing through. Dale wondered how much longer
she would be able to stand it.
He gave her tonics, and his most helpful sympathy and encouragement.
And at the same time, by the irony of circumstance and the claims of
his profession, he must do everything in his power to perpetuate the
burden under which she was breaking.
But the whole matter came to a sudden and unlooked for end, on the
seventh day after the accident.
Wulfrey was hastening up to the Hall to clear this, the unpleasantest
item, out of his day's work, when he met young Job coming down the
drive with a straw in his mouth and three couples of young hounds at
his heels.
"Wur comen fur you, Doctor," said young Job. "He's dead."
"Dead?" jerked the Doctor in very great surprise, for his patient had
been more venomously alive than ever the night before.
"Ay--dead. An' a good thing too, say I, and so too says everyone
that's heard it."
"But what took him, Job? He was going on all right last night."
"'Twere the Devil I expecs, Doctor, if you ask me straight. He were
getten too strampageous to live. Th' air were so full o' fire and
brimstone with his curses, it weren't safe. 'Twere like bein' under a
tree wi' th' leeghtnin' playin' all round."
"And Mrs Carew? ... Who was with him when he died? Tell me all you
know about it," as they hurried along.
"I come up at ten o'clock as ushal, an' the missus met me at door wi'
her finger to her lips. 'He's sleeping, Job,' she says, an' glad I was
to hear it. 'I'll go an' lie down, Job, for I'm very tired,' she says,
and she looked it, poor thing. 'Knock on my door if you need me, Job,'
she says, and she went away. He were lying quiet and all tucked up,
an' I sat down an' waited for him to wake up and start again. But he
never woke, and when the missus came in this morning she went and
looked at him, and she says, 'Why, Job, I do believe he's dead,' and I
went and looked at him, and, God's truth, he looked as if he might be.
But I couldn't be sure, not liking to touch him, and I says, 'No such
luck, ma'am, _I_'m afraid,'--polite like, for we all knows the time
she's had wi' him, and she says, 'Go and fetch Dr Dale.' So I just
loosed these three couple o' young uns--they're all achin' for a
run,--an' I'm wondering who'll work th' pack now he's gone, if so be as
he's really gone, which I'm none too sure of. Th' Hunt were best thing
he ever did, but he were terrible hard on his horses."
Dale hurried into the house and up the stair, and into the sick-room,
the windows of which were opened to their widest, as though to cleanse
the room of the fire and brimstone which had seemed over-strong even to
such a pachyderm as young Job.
Carew lay there on the bed, at rest at last, as far as this world was
concerned, startlingly quiet after the storm-furies of the last seven
days and nights.
Dale was still standing looking down at him, full of that
ever-recurring wonder at the quiet dignity which Death sometimes
imparts even to those whose lives have not been dignified; full too of
anxious desire to learn how it had come about.
The tightly-clenched hands and livid rigidity of the body suggested a
startling possibility. He was bending down to the dead man to
investigate more closely when a sound behind him caused him to look
round, and he found Mrs Carew standing there. Her face was whiter, her
eyes heavier and more shadowy, than he had ever seen them.
"He is dead," she said quietly.
"One can only look upon it as a merciful release--for all of you. How
was it?"
"He wanted to die," she began, in the dull level tone of a child
repeating an obnoxious lesson. Then the self-repression she had
prescribed for herself gave way somewhat. Her hands gripped one
another fiercely and she hurried on with a touch of rising hysteria,
but still speaking in little more than a whisper. "You know how he
wanted to die. He was asking you all the time to give him something to
end it. But you could not. I know--I quite understand--being a
doctor, of course you could not. But there was something he kept--for
the rats, you know, in the stables. And he told me where it was and
told me to get some. So I got it and gave it him in his
sleeping-draught, and----"
"Good God! Elinor!..." he gasped. "... You never did that!"
"Yes, I did. Why not? He wished it. We all wished it. It is much
better so," and she pointed at the dead man on the bed. "It is better
for him ... and for all of us. I only did what he told me."
He stood staring at her in blankest amazement, and found himself
unconsciously searching her face and eyes for signs of aberration. Her
face was wan-white still, but had lost the broken, beaten look it had
worn of late. The shadow-ringed eyes were perfectly steady and had in
them a curious wistful look, like that of a child expecting and
deprecating a scolding.
"Do you know what it means?" he asked at last, in a hoarse whisper.
"It means release for us all," she said quickly, and then more quickly
still, "Oh, Wulfrey, I couldn't help thinking--hoping
that--sometime--not for a long time, of course,--but sometime--when we
have forgotten all this--you might--you and I might----"
"Stop!" he said sternly. "Were you thinking that when you did this?"
and he pointed to the bed.
"Not then--at least--no, I think not. I just did what he told me to
do. But when I saw he was really dead----"
He stopped her again with a gesture, and broke out with brusque
vehemence, "Is it possible you don't understand what you have done? Do
you know what the law will call it?"----
"The law? No one needs to know anything about it but you and me----"
"The law will want to know how this man died----"
"But you can tell them all that is necessary. It was Blackbird falling
at the old road that killed him. If he hadn't broken his back he
wouldn't have been lying here, and if he hadn't----"
"He might have lived for twenty years," he said, breaking her off short
again with an abrupt gesture. "The law requires of me the exact truth.
Do you understand you are asking me to swear to a lie? I would not do
it to save my own life."
"He took it himself----"
"He could not get it himself, and the law will hold you responsible for
supplying it."
"Oh--Wulfrey! ... You won't let them hang me?"--and he saw that at last
she understood clearly enough the peril in which she stood if the whole
truth of the matter became known.
Hang her they most certainly would if the facts got out, or coop her
for life in a mad-house, which would be infinitely worse than hanging.
And the thought of either dreadful ending to her spoiled life was very
terrible to him.
She stood before him, little more than a girl still, woful, wistful,
with terror now in her white face and shadowy eyes, and he remembered
their bygone days together.
"Go back to your room, and rest, if you can. And say nothing of all
this to anyone. You understand?--not a word to anyone. I must think
what can be done," he said, and she turned and went without a word.
VII
Wulfrey Dale thought hard and deep.
He must save her if he could.
How?
For a moment--inevitably--he weighed in his mind the question of his
own honour versus this woman's life.
With a few strokes of the pen he could probably bury the whole matter
safely out of sight along with Carew's dead body. But those few
strokes of the pen, certifying that this man died as the result of his
accident, were as impossible to him as would have been the
administration of the poisoned draught itself.
Moreover--though that weighed nothing with him compared with the
other--there was in them always the possibility of disaster, should
rumour or tittle-tattle cast the shadow of doubt upon his statement;
and an idle word from Mollie or young Job might easily do that. The
neighbours also had made constant enquiry after Pasley since his
accident, and had been given to understand that he was progressing as
well as could be expected. His sudden death might well cause comment.
Indeed, it would be strange if it did not. That might lead to
investigation, and that must inevitably disclose the fact that he died
from strychnine poisoning.
The Dales had never been wealthy, but their standards had been high,
and Wulfrey had never done anything to lower them. He could not sell
his honour even for this woman's life.
He pitied her profoundly. He understood her better probably than any
other. He knew how terribly she had suffered, and could comprehend,
quite clearly, just how she had fallen into this horrible pit. But
cast his honour to the dogs for her, he could not.
Then how?
And, pondering heavily all possibilities, he saw the only feasible way
out.
It meant almost certain ruin to himself and his prospects, but, if it
came, it would be clean ruin and he would feel no smirch.
It involved a false statement of fact, it is true, but of a very
different cast and calibre from the other, and one that he himself felt
to be no stain upon his honour.
As a matter of pure ethics a lie is a lie, and of course indefensible.
I simply tell you what this man did and felt himself untarnished in the
doing.
And the very first thing he did was to go straight home to the little
dispensary which opened off his consulting-room, and alter the
positions of some of the bottles on the shelves; and from one of them
he withdrew a measured dose which he tossed out of the window into the
garden.
Then he sat down at his desk and quietly wrote out a certificate of the
death of Pasley Carew, of Croome Hall, Gentleman, through the
administration of a dose of strychnine in mistake for distilled water,
in a sleeping-draught compounded by Dr Wulfrey Dale. And he thought,
as he wrote the word, of the awful pandemonium Pasley Carew, Gentleman,
had created in his own household these last seven days.
He enclosed this in a covering letter to Dr Tamplin, the coroner, in
which he explained more fully how the mistake had occurred. The
bottles containing the strychnine and the distilled water stood side by
side on his shelf. He had come in tired from a long country round.
Had remembered the draught to be sent up to the Hall. As to the rest,
he could not tell how he came to make such a mistake. But there it
was, and he only was to blame. He could only express his profound
regret and accept the consequences.
Then, having completed his documents, instead of galloping off to see
his waiting patients, he sat down before the fire and let his thoughts
play gloomily over the whole matter. His man was off delivering
medicines, and would not be back till midday. Time enough if Tamplin
got his letter during the afternoon. As to his own patients, he had
run rapidly over them in his own mind, and saw that there was no one
vitally demanding his attention. He could not go his rounds and say
nothing, and the thought of carrying the news of his own default was
too much for him. As soon as the matter got bruited about, he thought
grimly, there would probably be a run on Dr Newman's services, which
would greatly astonish and delight that gentleman and would compensate
him for all his months of weary waiting.
It was a good thing for Elinor, he thought, as he sat staring into the
fire, that he was not married. If he had had a wife and children, they
must have gone into the scale against her, and she must certainly have
been hanged.
Quite impossible to bring it in as an accident on her part. That he
had seen at a glance. The jury would be composed of neighbours, and in
spite of the placid face she had turned to the world, it was well
enough known that she and Pasley had not lived happily together. And
though the fault of that was not imputed to her, every man's thought
would inevitably jump to the worst, and condemn her even before she did
it out of her own mouth, which she most certainly would do the moment
she opened it to explain matters.
No, this was the only possible way. If the cost was heavy, he was more
capable of bearing it than she. In any case he could not hand her over
to the hangman. That was out of the question.
He could pretty well forecast the consequences. His practice would be
ruined, for who would trust a doctor capable of so fatal a mistake? He
would have to go away and start life afresh elsewhere. It would have
to be somewhere where he was quite unknown, or this thing would dog him
all his life. Some new country perhaps,--say Canada or the States.
Gad, it was a heavy price to pay for a foolish woman's lapse!
He would not be penniless, of course. His father had laid by a
considerable sum in the course of his long and busy life. If necessary
he could live in quiet comfort, without working, for the rest of his
days. But it was hard to break away like this from all that had so far
constituted his life. A heavy price to pay for mere sentiment--but not
too heavy for a woman's life!
There was no doubt of his having to go. The question was whether he
should go at once, or wait till there was nothing left to wait for.
It would be dismal and weary work waiting. But going would feel like
bolting, and he had never run from trouble in his life. As a matter of
fact he had never until now had any serious trouble to face, but now
that it had come he found himself in anything but a running humour.
If there had been anything to fight he would have rejoiced in the melee
and plunged into it with ardour. But here was nothing to be fought.
By his own deliberate act he was labelling himself untrustworthy, and
no uttermost striving on his part could rehabilitate him. For the
essence of healing is faith, and a doctor who has forfeited one's
confidence is worse than no doctor at all.
VIII
In the afternoon he sent off his man on horseback with the letter to Dr
Tamplin, and towards evening he came galloping back with this very
characteristic reply:
"MY DEAR WULFREY,
Shocking business and I'm sorely grieved about whole matter. Humanum
est errare, but a doctor's not supposed to. Good thing for us we're
not always found out. Could you not bring yourself to certify death as
result of the accident? I consider it a mistake to admit the
possibility of such a thing, so d--d damaging to the profession. And
have you considered the matter from your own point of view? Cannot
fail to have bad effect. Perhaps give that new fellow just the chance
he's been waiting for. ---- him!
Think it over again, my boy, from all points, and be wise. I return
certificate. Your man will tell you all about my fall. My cob
stumbled over a stone last night and broke me a leg and two ribs. I'm
too heavy for that kind of thing and he's a ---- fool! But it was very
dark and we're neither of us as young as we were. For all our sakes I
hope you'll come through this all right. We can't spare you. And it
might come to that. Remember what silly sheep folks are.
Yours truly,
THOMAS TAMPLIN."
Just like the dear, easy-going old boy, fall and all, thought Wulfrey,
and the advice tendered and the course suggested did not greatly
surprise him. But he had to make allowances for the old man's age and
easy-goingness, and his lack of detailed knowledge of all the
circumstances of the case,--how almost impossible it would be to
ascribe Carew's death to the accident, even if he could have brought
himself to do so.
The old man's own shelving would add greatly to the unpleasantness of
the situation, for, as deputy-coroner, he would have to call a jury
himself, and submit the matter to their consideration and himself to
their verdict.
However, there was no way out of that, so he set to work at once and
sent out his summonses, calling the inquest for ten o'clock the next
morning, at the Hall; and to relieve Elinor as much as possible, he
gave orders to the undertaker at Brentham to do all that was necessary,
and sent her word that he had done so.
Early next morning, before he was up, young Job was knocking on his
front door, with half the pack yelping and leaping outside the gate.
"Well, Job? What's it now?" he asked, from his bedroom window.
"That gal Mollie says you better come up and see th' missus----"
"Why? What's wrong with her?"
"_I_ d'n know, n' more don't Mollie. _She_ thinks she's had a stroke."
"Wait five minutes and I'll go back with you," and in five minutes they
were crunching through the lanes, all hard underfoot with frost that
lay like snow, and white and gay with hedge-row lacery of spiders' webs
in feathery festoons, and, up above, a crimson sun rising slowly
through the mist-banks over the bare black trees.
"What makes Mollie think your mistress has had a stroke?" asked the
Doctor. "What does Mollie know about strokes?"
"I d'n know. 'Sims to me she've had a stroke,' was her very words.
She've just laid on her bed all day an' all night without speakin' a
word, Mollie says,--eatin' noth'n, and drinkin' noth'n, which is
onnat'ral; an' sayin' noth'n, which in a woman is onnat'ral too."
"She was quite worn out with nursing Mr Carew."
"Like enough. He _wur_ a handful an' no mistake. Th' house is a deal
quieter wi'out him. But who's goin' to run th' pack?--that's what
bothers me."
"Don't you worry, Job. Someone will turn up to run the pack all right."
"Mebbe, but it depends on who 'tis. Why not yourself now, Doctor?"
"That's a great compliment, Job, and I appreciate it. But," with a
shake of the head, "I'll have other work to do," and he wondered grimly
where that work might lie.
Mollie took him straight up to Mrs Carew's room, where she lay just as
she had sunk down on the bed when he sent her away the previous morning.
"She's nivver spoke nor moved since she dropped down there yes'day,"
whispered Mollie impressively. "I covered her up, but she took no
notice. An' I brought her up her dinner and her supper but she's never
ate a bite."
"Get me a cup of hot milk with an egg and a glass of sherry beaten up
in it, Mollie," he whispered back. "And I'll see if I can induce her
to take it. You did quite right to send for me," and Mollie hurried
away with a more hopeful face.
Elinor lay there with her eyes closed and a rigid, stricken look on her
white face, a picture of hopeless despair. But Wulfrey's quick glance
had caught the flutter of her heavy lids, and the gleam of terrified
enquiry that had shot through them, as they came into the room, and he
understood.
He bent over her and whispered, "I have made it all right, Elinor. You
need have no further fears----"
"They will not hang me?" she whispered, and looked up into his face
with all the terrors of the night still in her woful eyes.
"No one will know anything about it unless you tell them yourself. You
will eat something now, and then you had better lie still. Get some
sleep if you can or you will make yourself ill. If you fell ill you
might say things you should not, you know."
She struggled up on to one elbow. "You are quite sure they will not
hang me?" she whispered again.
"Quite sure, unless you are so foolish as to tell them all about it."
"I have felt the rope round my neck all night. Oh, it was terrible in
the dark. It was terrible ... terrible----" and she felt about her
pretty white neck with her trembling hands.
"Forget all about it now. I have made all the necessary arrangements.
There will have to be an inquest. It will be held here---"
"Here?" she shivered.
"At ten o'clock this morning. You are too ill to be present, so you
will just lie still. It will not take long. And I have done
everything else that had to be done."
"It is very good of you," she murmured, with a forlorn shake of the
head.
She did not ask by what means he had saved her from the consequences of
what she had done. Perhaps she dared not. Perhaps she believed he
had, after all, forsworn himself for her sake, and refrained from
questioning him lest it should only add to his discomfort. Anyway she
was satisfied with the fact. She was not going to be hanged. That was
enough.
Mollie came in with her deftly-compounded cup.
"Drink it up," said the Doctor. "I will look in again later on," and
he went away to prepare the household for the coming meeting in the big
dining-room.
IX
The sixteen jurymen, whom Wulfrey had summoned in order to make quite
sure of a legal panel, came riding up in ones and twos, with faces
tuned to the occasion, disguising, as well as they could, the vast
curiosity this sudden call had excited in themselves and all their
various households.
That there was something gravely unusual behind it they could not but
feel. They were all friends and neighbours; many of them had witnessed
Carew's accident and had been constant in their enquiries as to his
progress. The news of his death had come as a surprise and a shock,
and such of them as happened to join company on the road discussed the
matter by fits and starts, and surreptitiously as it were, but did not
venture below the surface. Their women-folk at home had done all that
was necessary in that respect for the fullest ventilation of the
subject, without in any degree rendering it more savoury or
comprehensible.
Every man had felt it his bounden duty to be there, and so it was
sixteen keenly interested faces that confronted Wulfrey when he took
the chair at the head of the table and stood up to speak to them.
His face was very grave, his manner noticeably quiet and restrained and
very different from its usual jovial frankness.
"This painful duty, doubly painful under the circumstances, as you will
understand in a moment, has fallen to me in consequence of Dr Tamplin
being laid up through the fall of his horse yesterday. I am sure you
will not make it any more painful for me than it is. I shall not
trouble you long. The matter is unfortunately clear and simple. Our
friend, Mr Pasley Carew, died the night before last from the effects of
a dose of strychnine, administered in a sleeping-draught in mistake for
distilled water which was in the bottle alongside it on the shelf in my
dispensary."
His eyes ranged keenly over the startled faces round the table at which
they had all of them so often sat,--under which some of them had not
infrequently lain.
Every face was alight with startled surprise. Not one of them showed
the remotest sign of questioning his statement.
Indeed, why should they? A man does not as a rule confess to so grave
a lapse unless it is absolutely unavoidable, unless the truth must out
and there is no possible loophole of escape.
Not many men would fling away their life's prospects from simple pity
for a woman. For love--yes, without a doubt, and count the cost small.
But from simple pity, in remembrance of the time when the greater love
had been possible? ...
But no such idea found place in any of their minds. His eyes searched
theirs for smallest flicker of doubt, but found none. Whatever the
women at home might have suggested as extreme possibilities, these men
accepted his word without a moment's hesitation. Elinor was perfectly
safe.
"He was in great pain and could only get rest and relief by means of
opiates. How the mistake occurred I cannot explain, except that the
bottles of distilled water and of strychnine stand alongside one
another on my shelf, and that I had come in very tired that night and
the sleeping-draught was prepared hurriedly. I deplore the results
more than any of you possibly can, and of course I must accept the
consequences. I have not judged it necessary to make any post-mortem
examination. I was called by young Job early yesterday morning, and
when I got here Carew was dead and the symptoms were those of poisoning
by strychnine. I was amazed and horrified, but when I hurried back
home I saw at once how the mistake might have been made,
and--and--well, there the matter is and you must bring in such verdict
as you deem right. You can see the body if you wish. You can examine
the servants. Mrs Carew, I am sorry to say, is quite broken down with
the shock. She has been, I am told, practically unconscious for nearly
twenty-four hours and has only just come to herself. But if you would
like to see her----"
"No, no." "No need whatever," said the jurymen deprecatingly.
Dr Wulfrey sat down and dropped his head into his hands, then got up
again heavily and said, "You will discuss this matter better without
me. I will leave you----"
"Couldn't you possibly say he died as result of the accident, Wulf?"
asked one--Jim Barclay of Breme.
They all liked the Doctor. With some he had been on terms of very
close friendship. Some of them had known him all his life and his
father before him.
"Ay, couldn't you?" chorussed some of the others.
"If I could I should have done so," he said quietly. "But it wasn't so
and I couldn't say it was."
"Say it now, Wulf," urged his friend. "And I swear none of us will let
it out. Isn't that so, gentlemen?"
"Ay, ay!"--but somewhat dubiously from the older members, who saw that
after this revelation of the actual facts to themselves their relations
with the Doctor could never be quite the same again, however they might
succeed in hoodwinking the world outside.
They knew him, they liked him, but--well, at the back of their minds
was the thought that if Dr Wulf could make a mistake in one case, there
was no knowing but what he might in another,--that he might at any time
come in tired and pick up the wrong bottle,--that, whatever risks one
might accept on one's own account for old friendship's sake, one's wife
and daughters should hardly be put into such a position all unknown to
themselves. And more than one of them wondered what he would do if he
should happen to be taken ill that night--send for Dr Wulf or the new
man down in the village?
Dale diagnosed their symptoms with the sensitiveness born of the
equivocal nature of the new relationship in which his confession placed
him towards them.
"It is like your good-heartedness to suggest it, Barclay," he said to
his impetuous friend, "but it cannot be. I can only do what seems to
me right," and he left them to talk over their verdict.
"Gad! but I'm mighty sorry this has happened," said one old squire who
had known Wulf from the year one. "Many's the time I've sat at this
table----"
"And under it," interjected one.
"Ay, and under it, and I never expected to sit round it on Pasley
Carew. I'd give a year's rents to have him back, even if he was all in
pieces and raging like the Devil."
"Same here. Whatever we decide it'll get out, and it's bound to tell
against Dr Wulf."
"He's bound to suffer,--can't help it,--it's human nature. Suppose you
took ill tonight now, Barclay. What would you do?"
"What would I do? I'd send for Wulf Dale of course, and I'd have same
faith in him as I've always had."
"Of course, of course,"--but even those who said it had more the air of
wishing to placate Barclay, who had a temper, rather than of any deep
conviction as to their own course should the unfortunate necessity
arise.
"Well," said Barclay, with the manner of a volcano on the point of
eruption. "All I can say is that if any man I know goes ill and does
not send for Wulf Dale, he'll have me to reckon with if the other man
doesn't kill him."
"Hear, hear!" from various points about the table.
"Well, we've got to decide something and make an end of the matter,"
said one. "Barclay, you write out what you think and I've no doubt
we'll all agree to it."
"I'm going to write nothing," said Barclay, whose strong brown hand was
more accustomed to the hunting-crop than the pen. "I say 'Accidental
Death,' and keep your mouths shut."
They all said 'Accidental Death' and promised to keep their mouths
shut; and Wulfrey, when he was called in, thanked theta soberly for
their good intentions, but added to their verdict,--"as the result of
strychnine poison administered in mistake for distilled water in a
sleeping-draught prepared by Dr Wulfrey Dale."
X
Jim Barclay, who was a bachelor, kept his bed next morning with an
alleged bad cold,---a thing he had never been troubled with in all his
born days, and ostentatiously sent his man galloping for Dr Wulfrey as
though his master's life depended on it.
Wulfrey smiled at the message, understanding the staunch friendliness
which lay behind it, and went.
"Well, what's wrong with you?" he enquired of the burly patient, when
he was shown up to his bedroom.
"Just you, my boy. Haven't slept a wink all night for thinking of the
whole ---- mess. Wulf, my lad, I'm afraid you'll have a deuce an' all
of a time of it. Thought I'd show 'em there was one man thought none
the worse of you. ----! ----! ----! Can't any man make a little
mistake like that? Trouble is, most of those other fools have got a
pack of yelping women-folk about 'em, and they're all on the quee-vee
and as keen on the scent as any old----," and he launched into
comparisons drawn from the kennels into which we need not enter. "They
all promised not to blab, and they'll none of 'em tell any but their
wives under promise of secrecy, and it'll be all over the country-side
in a week."
"I know it, old man. I've just got to stand it," said Dale soberly.
"What's in your mind then?"
"I'll just wait quietly and see what comes. I can't expect things to
be as they were before."
"And if things go badly? ---- ---- ---- it all!"
"Then I'm thinking I'll go too."
"Where?"
"Oh, right away. America maybe, or Canada. It's a big country they
say and just beginning to open up. I shan't starve anyway, wherever I
go."
"But,--to leave us all and all this? ---- ---- ---- it all, man! The
place won't be like itself without you. ---- Pasley Carew!"
"It wasn't his fault, you know----"
"It was his ---- fault putting Blackbird at that ---- Old Road after
the run we'd had, wasn't it? I told him he was two stone too heavy for
her. But he always was a fool."
"He was to blame there undoubtedly. But the rest I take to myself. If
folks go to the other man I can't blame them. I shall go nowhere
unless I'm sent for."
"You'll have a ---- long holiday," growled Barclay.
"Well, I can do with one."
"I've half a mind to have a smash-up just to keep your hand in."
"If you do I'll--I'll turn the other man on to you."
"If he puts his nose in here he'll go out faster than he came, I wager
you."
It was comforting to have so whole-hearted a supporter; but one
patient, and a sham one at that, does not make a practice, and Dale
very soon felt the effects of the course he had chosen.
He adhered resolutely to the decision he had come to to visit none of
his patients unless he were sent for. It would be neither fair to them
nor agreeable to himself. It might do more harm than good.
As to Mrs Carew,--he had visited her immediately after the inquest, and
told her briefly that all was right and she need have no further fears.
There was nothing wrong with her which a few days' rest and the relief
of her mind would not set right. All the same he rather feared she
might send for him, and he debated in his own mind whether, if she did
so, he should go or send her messenger on to Dr Newman. It appeared to
him hardly seemly that the man who had accepted the responsibility for
the death of the husband should continue his attendance on his widow.
She did not of course as yet know the facts of the case as outsiders
did. He was somewhat doubtful of the effect upon her when she came to
a clear understanding of the matter. On the whole, he decided it would
be better if possible not to see her again. What he had done for her
had been done out of pity, but it was not the pity that sometimes leads
to warmer feeling. All that had died a natural death when she married
Carew.
He attended the funeral with the rest. It would only have made comment
if he had not. And Jim Barclay and most of the others were at pains to
manifest their continued friendliness and confidence.
Whether the full facts had got out he could not tell, but, rightly or
wrongly, imagined so, and for the second time in his life he found
himself ill at ease among his neighbours.
The day after the funeral, young Job and a bunch of lively dogs came
down again with an urgent message from Mrs Carew requesting him to call.
"Is your mistress worse, Job?" he said.
"She be main bad, Doctor, 'cording to that gal Mollie, but what 'tis I
dunnot know. Mebbe she's just down wi' it all. Have ye heard ony talk
yet as t' who's going to tek on th' pack?"
"Mr Barclay will, I believe. He's a good man for it."
"Ay, he may do. Bit heavy, mebbe, an' he's got a temper 'bout as bad
as Pasley's."
"Bit hot perhaps at times, but he's an excellent fellow at bottom."
"All that, and his cussin' ain't to compare wi' Pasley's, which is a
good thing. I c'n stand a reasonable amount o' cussin' myself and no
offence taken, but Pasley did go past th' mark at times. Th' very
hosses kicked when he let out. An' Jim Barclay he is good to his
hosses, an' he only cusses when he must or bust. Ay, he'll do, seein'
you won't tek it on yourself, Doctor."
"It's not for me, Job. A doctor's time is not entirely his own, you
know."
"Ah!" said Job, and picked a twig from the hedge, and stuck it in his
mouth, and trudged on in solemn silence.
"We wus rather hopin', feyther an' me," he grunted after a time, "you'd
mebbe have more time now fur th' pack an' would tek it on."
"Why that, Job?"
"Well, y' see, it'll mek a difference this. It's bound to mek a
difference. Folks is such silly fools 'bout such things----"
"What things?"
"Why, that there strychnine. 'S if anyone couldn't mek a li'l mistake
like that. Might have sense to know ye'd never let it happen again.
Even th' leeghtnin', they say, never strikes twice i' same place.
Though sure 'nuff it did hit th' old mill one side one day and t'other
side next day. But even then 'twere opposite sides. But folks is
fools."
"So you know all about it."
"Ay, sure! 'Twere that gal Mollie told me, an' it were Mrs Thelstane's
gal Bet told her. None o' us think a bit the worse o' you, Doctor, you
b'lieve me. But some folks is fools--most folks, if it comes to
that.... An' as to Pasley--well, he were a terror now'n again. Th'
Hall's like Heaven wi'out him."
They went on again in silence for a time. But there was that in young
Job's mind which had to come out.
"If 'twere me, Doctor, askin' your pardon in advance for bein' so bold,
what I'd do would be this. I'd just sit quiet till they done yelpin'
and yappin' 'bout it all, then I'd marry th' missus,--we all knows you
was sweet on her once,--and settle down comfortable at th' Hall and tek
over th' pack an' mek us all happy."
"That's out of the question, Job."
"Is it now? ... Well, I'm sorry. Wus hopin' mebbe a word of advice
from a man what's old enough to be your feyther, an's known you since
day you was born, might be o' some use to ye. We'd like you fain well
for Master, both o' th' Hall an' th' Hunt."
"You're a good old chap, Job, and so's your father, but you'll both be
doing me a favour if you'll stop any talk of that kind."
"No manner o' use?"
"No use at all."
"Well, I'm main sorry. An' so's feyther, I can tell ye."
Mrs Carew was sitting in a large chintz-covered armchair before the
fire in her bedroom, when he was taken up to her by Mollie, who
favoured him with her own diagnosis as they mounted the stairs.
"She's that bad again. Can't sleep and off her food. Ain't had hardly
anything all day or yes'day. Just sits 'fore th' fire and mopes from
morn'n till night. 'Taint natural for sure, for him 'at's gone weren't
one to cry for, that's cert'n.... No, she don't complain of any pain
or anything. Just sits and mopes and cries on the quiet 's if her
heart was broke. Sure she'd more cause to cry before he was took than
what she has now."
When he entered the room he did not at first see her, so sunk down was
she in the depths of the great ear-flapped chair.
She made no attempt to rise and greet him. When he stood beside her
and quietly expressed his regret at finding her no better, she covered
her face with her hands and sobbed convulsively.
She looked little more than a girl, slight and frail and forlorn, as
she crouched there with hidden face, and he was truly sorry for her.
It was impossible for him to keep the sympathy he felt entirely out of
his voice.
"What can I do for you, Mrs Carew?" he asked quietly, and the forlorn
figure shook again but made no response.
"You are doing yourself harm with all this," he said gently again.
"And there is really no occasion for it, that I can see."
Her silent extremity of grief--her utter discomfiture was pitiful to
look upon. It touched him profoundly, for he penetrated the meaning of
it. She was overwhelmed with the knowledge of the sacrifice he had
made for her--and with pity for herself.
All he could do was to wait quietly till the feeling, roused afresh by
his presence, had spent itself.
"Oh, I did not know," she whispered at last, through the shielding
hands. "I did not know you would do that.... You have ruined
yourself.... You should have let them hang me."
And there and then, on the spur of the moment, he leaped up a height
which he had not even sighted a second before.
He had, by the sacrifice of his prospects, saved her from the legal
consequences of her act. That was irrevocably past and done with, and
he must pay the price. But she was paying a double due--remorse for
what she herself had done, bitter sorrow at the ruinous price he had
paid for her safety.
He had saved her life. Why not save her the rest?--her peace of mind,
all her possibilities of future happiness.
In any case it would make no difference to him. For her it might mean
all the difference between darkness and light for the rest of her life.
And she looked pitifully helpless and hopeless as she lay there sobbing
convulsively in the big chair.
He saw the possibility in a flash and gripped it.
"Hang you? Why on earth should anyone want to hang you?" he asked,
with all the natural surprise he could put into it.
"You know,"--in a scared whisper. "Because I got him the poison----"
"Come, come now! Let us have no more of that. I was hoping a good
night's rest would have ridded you of that bad dream."
"Dream?" and she looked up at him wildly. "Ah, if I could only believe
it was a dream!" and she shook her head forlornly.
"Why, of course it was a dream. You were over-wrought with it all, and
your mind took the bit in its teeth and ran away with you. What you've
got to do now is to try to forget all about it."
"Forget!"
"How I came to make such a mistake I cannot imagine, but when I got
home I saw at once that there was an extra dose gone out of my
strychnine bottle instead of out of the distilled water, and that
explained it at once."
"_You_? ... _You_ made the mistake?" she looked up at him again,
eagerly, with warped face and knitted brows, and a wavering flutter of
hope in her eyes.... "You are only saying it to comfort me."
"I'm trying to show you how foolish it is to allow yourself to be
ridden by this strange notion you've got into your head."
"Strange notion? ... Did he not beg me to get him that stuff he used
for the rats? And did I not get it for him? And he took it. And
then----" she shivered at the remembrance of what followed when her
husband took the draught.
"All in that horrible dream when your mind was running away with
you----"
"And did you not come and tell me they would hang me unless I kept my
mouth shut? And I lay all that dreadful night with the rope round my
neck----"
"All in your dream. I'm sorry. It must have been terribly real to
you."
"A dream?" and she stared wistfully into the fire, hex hands clasping
and unclasping nervously. "If I could believe it!"
"You must believe what I tell you, and forget all about it and recover
yourself."
"And you?" she said after a pause.
"I shall be all right. Don't trouble your head about me."
"If I did not do it," she said, after another long silent gazing into
the fire, "then there would be no need for you to hate me----"
"No need whatever,--all part of that stupid dream."
"And ... sometime perhaps ... you would think better of me ... as you
used to do. Oh,--Wulfrey! ..."
If it had all happened as he had almost persuaded her to believe, he
might have fallen into his own pit.
For, under the stress of her emotions,--the wild hope of the
possibility of relief from the horror that had been weighing her
down,--the letting in of this thread of sunshine into the blackness of
her despair,--the sudden joy of the thought that it was not she who
needed Wulfrey's forgiveness, but he hers;--the shadows and the years
fell from her, and she was more like the Elinor Baynard he had once
been in love with than he had seen her since the day she married Pasley
Carew.
"We must not think of any such things," he said quickly, but not
unkindly. He was very sorry for her, but he was no longer in love with
her. "At present all we've got to think about is getting you quite
yourself again. I will send you up some medicine,--if you won't be
afraid to take it----"
"Oh, Wulfrey! ..." with all the reproach she could put into it, and
anxiously, "You will come again soon?"
"If you get on well perhaps. If you don't I shall turn you over to Dr
Newman," and he left her.
"She ain't agoing to die, Doctor?" asked Mollie, as she waylaid him.
"No, Mollie. She's going to get better."
"Ah, I knew it'd do her good if you came to see her," said the astute
handmaid with an approving look.
"Get her to eat and feed her up. She's been letting herself run down."
"Ah, she'll eat now maybe, if so be 's you've given her a bit of an
appetite," said Mollie hopefully; and Dr Wulfrey went away home.
XI
But even two patients hardly make a practice, and though from the
stolid commoner folk calls still came for 'th' Doctor's' services, upon
the better classes a sudden blessing of unusual health appeared to have
fallen, or else----
Dr Newman bought a horse about this time, and, though he did not as yet
cut much of a figure on horseback, it enabled him to get about as he
had never had occasion to do since he settled in the village, and it
seemed as though, in his case as in others, practice would in time make
him passable.
Wulfrey watched the course of events quietly and with a certain
equanimity. His mind was quite made up to go abroad, but he would not
go till he was satisfied that that was the only course left to him.
Everybody he met was as friendly as ever, the men especially, but
sickness was a rare thing with them at any time, and their women-folk
seemed to be getting along very well, for the time being without
medical assistance, so far at all events as Dr Wulfrey Dale was
concerned.
Mrs Carew was better. Whatever she really believed as to the actual
facts of her husband's death, she apparently accepted Dale's statement,
to the great relief of her mind and consequent benefit to her health.
She sent for the Doctor as often as she reasonably could, and sometimes
without any better reason than her desire to see him. Until at last he
told her she was perfectly well and he would come no more unless there
were actual need.
"But there is actual need, Wulfrey. It does me good to see you. If
you don't come I shall fall into a low state again."
"If you do I shall know it is simple perversity and I'll send Dr Newman
to you."
"Mollie would never let him in."
Which was likely enough, for Mollie's mind was quite made up as to the
only right and proper course for matters to take under all the present
circumstances.
The March winds brought on a mild epidemic of influenza.
Dr Newman and his new horse were ostentatiously busy. Wulfrey saw that
he had waited long enough, and that now it was time to go. No one
could accuse him of running away. It was his practice that had found
its legs and walked over to Dr Newman.
He made his arrangements at once and by no means downcastly. The
hanging-on had been trying. It was new life to be up and doing, with a
new world somewhere in front to be discovered and conquered.
He packed his trunks, gave Mr Truscott, the lawyer, instructions to
dispose of his house and everything in it except certain specified
articles and pictures, arranged with his bankers at Chester to collect
and re-invest his dividends, drew out a couple of hundred pounds to go
on with, told them he was going abroad and they might not hear from him
for some time to come, and went round to say good-bye to Jim Barclay
and Elinor Carew.
"Where are you going?" asked Barclay, when he heard he was off.
"Wherever the chase may lead," said Wulfrey, in better spirits than he
had been for many a day. "I shall go first to the States and Canada
and have a good look round. If any place lays hold of me I may settle
down there."
"For good and all?"
"Possibly. Can't say till I see what it's like. I want you to take
Graylock and Billyboy till I come back. You know all about them.
There's no one else I'd care to leave 'em with and I don't care to sell
them."
"They'll miss you, same as the rest of us."
"For a week or two, maybe. Dr Newman is getting into things nicely,
but you might give him a lesson or two in riding, Jim."
"---- him, I'd liefer break his back!" was Barclay's terse comment.
"You'll let me know where you get to, Wulf, and maybe I'll take a run
over to see you, if you really find it in your heart to settle out
there. I'll bring the horses with me if you like."
"I'll let you know. Fine sporting country, I believe,--bears, wolves,
buffaloes, game of sorts."
"Well, good-bye and God bless you, my boy! Remember there'll always be
one man in the old country that wants you. I'd sooner die than have
that new man poking round me. I'll send for old Tom Tamplin, hanged if
I don't."
Wulfrey rode on to the Hall.
"Going away, Wulf? Where to and for how long?" asked Elinor, anxious
and troubled.
"That depends. I've not been up to the mark lately and a good long
change will set me up."
"But you will come back?"
"I have really no plans made, except to get away for a time and see a
bit of the outside world."
"I was hoping ... you would stop and ... sometime, perhaps..." and the
small white hands clasped and unclasped nervously, as was her way when
her mind was upset.
"The change I am sure will be good for me. And you are quite all right
again. You are looking better than I've seen you for a long time past."
"I'm all right," she said drearily, "except that I have bad dreams now
and again. I cannot be quite sure in my own mind----"
"Now, now!"--shaking a peremptory finger at her. "That is all past and
done with. Bad dreams are forbidden, remember!"
"I can't help their coming. They come in spite of all my trying at
times. And they are always the same. I see Pasley lying on the bed,
raging and cursing, and ordering me to go and get him----"
"It's only a dream of a dream. I was hoping you had quite got the
better of it. You must fight against it. Now I must run. Got a lot
of things to do yet, and I'm off first thing in the morning. Good-bye,
Elinor,--and all happiness to you!"