THE DOCTOR’S VISIT.
WHEN Vivian came to himself he was lying flat on his back on his bed
upstairs, and some one was bathing his head with cold water, while Mary
stood by the side of the bed holding a basin.
‘He is better now, mum,’ he heard her say; ‘he has opened his eyes, and
the colour is coming back into his face.’
‘Poor little fellow!’ It was Aunt Dora who spoke. ‘I would not have
thought that he was so easily upset. He must have been feeling ill all
morning. I told him to stay in bed for his cold; but I suppose every
one forgot to see after him, and he just got up like the others.’
‘I don’t think it was exactly that, mum,’ answered Mary; ‘for he ate a
good breakfast, and seemed all right till some one began to talk about
Monarch; and I think it was the shock when he heard that the poor brute
had been poisoned that did it.’
At her words the whole hideous story, and the share he had unwittingly
taken in it, flashed across Vivian’s mind. ‘Oh Aunt Dora!’ he cried, ‘I
did not do it. I did not know that it would hurt him.’
Had his aunt been able to understand his words he would have confessed
everything there and then, he felt so weak and miserable and
broken-down; but she only looked at Mary in perplexity.
‘Do what?’ she asked in a puzzled way. ‘What is he thinking of, I
wonder?’
‘About killing Monarch, I should say, mum,’ said Mary. ‘Mrs Mason said
to me that he had been feeding the dog with some scraps while you were
all at church; but of course that had nothing to do with the nasty bits
of cake that poisoned him.—They must have been given to him at night,
after it was dark, Master Vivian, when every one was safe in the house,
and there was no one to see what was going on.’
‘Yes; it could not possibly be anything that you gave the poor dog
that did him harm, dearie,’ said Aunt Dora, kissing him and laying a
soft handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne on his brow. ‘They found a
piece of strange-looking cake in his kennel which had evidently been
put there by some strangers, and we expect there was poison in it. The
police inspector is going to take it to a chemist and have it analysed.
So don’t think about it any more, but lie still and try to have a
little sleep, for I must go back to Isobel, and I hear your uncle
calling for Mary downstairs.’
Mary gave a little gasp. She knew that the summons meant that she
must go down and be questioned as to her movements yesterday, by the
detective who had arrived just as she was carrying Vivian to his room.
She had heard that in London the policemen and lawyers were so clever
that they asked questions until they made people say the exact opposite
to what they meant, and the prospect was very alarming to her simple
country mind.
Her mistress saw her anxiety, and reassured her kindly.
‘Just tell the plain truth, Mary; tell him where you were, and what
you did all yesterday; and remember no one here suspects you, but
detectives always like to question every one in the house before they
do anything else.’
Then they went outside, closing the door behind them, and Vivian was
left to his own thoughts.
He saw the whole thing clearly now. The man with the green patch over
his eye had evidently been prowling about, spying how the land lay, and
seeing how he could best reach Monarch’s kennel and give the poor dog
the poisonous cakes. When Vivian appeared he had hidden himself in the
summer-house, in the hope of not being seen; and, while he was there,
Vivian’s own foolishness in taking out the pistol and firing the fatal
shot that shattered the windows had put him completely in his power;
and the threats of exposure, and the cleverly contrived cock-and-bull
story, which the little boy had believed implicitly, about the lame
daughter at home and her fondness for puppies, had insured the cakes
being given at the right moment.
He ground his teeth as he realised how completely he had been duped and
made a fool of, and for a moment he almost wished that the detective
downstairs would begin to question him, and draw out the whole story.
But he knew that there was little chance of that. If the confession
came, it must come from himself alone; and he turned his face on the
pillow with a sob as he thought what a web of deceit, and lies, and
wrongdoing he had woven round himself, for to confess to having seen
the man, and to having slipped out in the darkness and given Monarch
the cakes, would lead to awkward questions about the broken window, and
to confess to having broken that would lead to the whole story of the
pistol and its concealment.
No, he had not courage to face it all; he must go on living with
the weight of these black sins on his conscience; and as he tossed
restlessly up and down he wondered to himself if this was the way in
which thieves and other wicked people began their lives of crime, and
if he would go on getting worse and worse, until at last he became
quite a wicked man who did not care what he did, and in due time would
break his mother’s heart.
Presently Ronald came into the room, looking grave and anxious.
‘Why, Vivi, boy, what came over you?’ he asked, sitting down on the bed
and putting his arm round his brother. ‘They tell me that you turned
quite funny when you heard about Monarch, and Aunt Dora says that she
can’t understand what put it into your head that you had hurt him. You
only gave him some scraps of bread, didn’t you?’
There was something in Ronald’s voice as he asked this question which
seemed to irritate his brother—a vague trace of anxiety, as if he would
like to hear from Vivian’s own lips that this was all that he had had
to do with the dog—for Vivian pushed away his arm roughly.
‘Of course it was all I gave him,’ he answered pettishly, ‘and I never
thought they would do him any harm. I was confused and funny when I
said that to Aunt Dora. Do go away, Ronald, my head aches so, and
auntie said I was to be quiet.’
Ronald was silent for a moment, but there was a worried look on his
face. There had been one or two things in his brother’s conduct that
had puzzled him during the last few days, and he could not help
remembering how he had noticed, the evening before, that Vivian’s
house-shoes looked muddy, as if he had been outside with them, but
clearly he was not in the mood for further questioning, so when he
spoke again he wisely chose another subject.
‘Do you know, I think that Isobel is awfully ill, worse than we think,’
he said. ‘I haven’t seen Aunt Dora at all; but I asked Anne, and
she told me that Isobel woke auntie up quite early this morning by
beginning to scream, and when auntie went into her room she didn’t know
her in the least. They got the doctor at once, and he gave her some
stuff that made her quieter, but she has never been properly awake, and
he is coming back at ten o’clock. I’m wondering,’ he went on slowly,
‘if we shouldn’t tell Aunt Dora about that fall she had on Wednesday?
I’ve heard of people hurting their heads when they fell like that.’
In a moment all Vivian’s fears of discovery were reawakened, and all
his dreams of confession had vanished. If Isobel’s fall were spoken of,
the oak-tree behind the summer-house might come to be examined, and the
hole and its hidden contents would be almost sure to be discovered.
‘Oh Ronald, don’t be a fool!’ he said sharply, sitting up in bed in his
excitement; ‘that can’t have anything to do with Isobel’s illness. She
has been as well as possible since then, and it is no use bothering
Aunt Dora about it now. You’re nothing but an old woman, always going
and imagining things.’
Ronald’s face flushed at the taunt. Always conscientious, and almost
morbidly afraid of telling an untruth, he was apt to be called
‘womanish’ and ‘silly’ by the Strangeways, who could not understand a
boy who preferred to be laughed at or punished rather than get out of
a scrape by shuffling or making an excuse. Their teasing had little
effect on him; but when the taunt came from his own sharp little
brother’s lips, whom he admired with an unselfish admiration which few
elder boys would have accorded to a younger one, it hurt him deeply,
but he stuck to his point.
‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I may either be an old woman or not; but I
once heard father say that injuries to people’s heads don’t always show
at first, that’s why doctors often don’t know what is the matter with
people. So I think that Aunt Dora ought to know, and I’m going to tell
her.’
‘Aunt Dora ought to know what?’ asked a voice, and Mrs Osbourne
entered the room. ‘I hoped to find this boy asleep,’ she said, laying
her hand on Vivian’s hot cheek, and here he is chattering away as fast
as he can. What are you discussing, and what is it that you think I
ought to know?’
‘It is about Isobel, Aunt Dora,’ said Ronald bravely. ‘Did you know
that she had had a fall?’
‘A fall? When? here? Tell me quickly, Ronald.’ His aunt’s voice sounded
so sharp and strained that even Ronald was frightened, and Vivian hid
his face in the clothes and wondered what was going to happen next.
‘It was last Wednesday. We were playing hide-and-seek, and Vivi and
Isobel climbed up on one of the branches of the old oak-tree behind the
summer-house, and when Claude and I caught sight of them they began to
crawl along the branch, and all at once it broke, and they both fell on
to the path.’
‘And why was I not told this before?’ asked Aunt Dora in grave
displeasure. ‘The others were younger; but I thought you were to be
trusted, Ronald.’
The tears came into Ronald’s eyes, but he made no attempt to justify
himself; that would have been to have blamed Ralph.
‘Isobel said she was not hurt, Aunt Dora,’ he said simply; ‘and though
she looked a little bit white at first, she seemed all right in a
moment.’
‘That did not matter. You should not have listened to her; you should
have come straight to me.’ The words were spoken so passionately that
Ronald was dumb; but Vivian spoke out loyally:
‘It wasn’t Ronald’s fault, auntie, whosever fault it was. He ran into
the house to tell you, even although Isobel begged him not to, and
Ralph laughed at him for making a fuss. But you were not in; you had
gone to see that old lady, and you did not come back till tea-time, and
then Isobel seemed all right, and we never thought any more about it
till just now.’
Mrs Osbourne laid her hand quickly on her elder nephew’s shoulder.
‘Forgive me, my boy,’ she said; ‘but I am so anxious I hardly know what
I am saying, and this only confirms what the doctor feared. He asked me
if she had not had a fall, and of course I did not know. He is coming
back at ten—there is his ring—and he talked—he talked—of her head and
her back.’
The last words were spoken so low that they were scarcely audible; but
as Mrs Osbourne hastily rose and left the room they heard her murmur to
herself, ‘My little girl, my only little girl!’ and they gazed at one
another in awe-struck silence.
‘Aunt Dora was crying,’ said Vivian at last. ‘She can’t think that
Isobel is going to die, can she? Oh Ronald!’ he repeated, taking hold
of his brother’s arm, and shaking it, as if to force an answer from
him, ‘do say something; do say that she isn’t going to die.’
‘Oh, I hope it isn’t as bad as that,’ said Ronald, trying to speak
cheerfully. ‘Lots of people get their heads hurt, and come all right
afterwards; but, all the same, I wish we had told at the time. She
might not have been so bad now.’
In a very few minutes the door opened again, and Aunt Dora came back,
accompanied by an elderly gentleman, who glanced sharply at the two
boys. Aunt Dora seemed quite herself again, although her voice trembled
slightly.
‘This is Dr Robson, Vivian,’ she said, ‘and I want him just to see you
for a moment, to make sure that you are all right after your faint turn
in the morning; and then I want you both to try and remember exactly
what happened on Wednesday, when the branch broke, and Isobel fell.’
The doctor felt Vivian’s pulse, and asked him a few questions. ‘He’s
all right,’ he said, nodding briskly to Mrs Osbourne. ‘His nerves have
got the better of him with the excitement of the robbery and all the
turn-up in the house. Send him out for a good walk on the Heath; it
will do his cold no harm, and he will come in looking like a different
boy.
‘And now, my lad,’ he went on, turning to Ronald, ‘I want you to tell
me exactly what happened last Wednesday, and how far little Miss Isobel
fell, and what she looked like when she got up.’
‘I will tell you what I can, sir,’ replied Ronald; ‘but Vivian knows
better than I do, for he was with her on the branch, and when she fell,
he fell along with her. It took me a few minutes to get round to them,
for of course they fell over on to the Heath, and I ran round by the
lodge. Isobel was sitting on the branch then, and she said she was not
hurt, but her face was so white I thought that she had broken her arm
or something, and there was a queer look in her eyes as if she wasn’t
seeing anything. I was frightened, and I ran in to see if I couldn’t
find Aunt Dora; but she had gone out, and Isobel walked home herself,
so I thought it was all right.’
The doctor listened to his story attentively, nodding his head once
or twice when Ronald spoke of the curious look he had noticed in his
little cousin’s eyes. Then he turned to Vivian.
‘When the branch broke, who was underneath?’ he asked; but Vivian could
not answer this question.
‘I think we both fell together,’ he said; ‘only Isobel fell on her back
and I fell on my face. I remember that because my hands were skinned,
and she said she thought she had bumped the back of her head.’
‘Ah,’ said the doctor quickly, ‘did she say that at once?’
‘No,’ said Vivian; ‘at first she lay quite still, with her eyes
half-open, and then she got up and said she wasn’t hurt, and then she
got awfully white and sat down again, and said that about her head;
then Ronald came, and we all went home.’
‘Did you run home?’
‘No, we didn’t. Claude and I wanted to run, but Isobel said she
couldn’t, for her legs felt as if she were going to take pins and
needles, and she had jumpy pains up her back.’
‘Thank you,’ said the doctor, rising. ‘You have told your story very
clearly.’ Then he glanced at Aunt Dora and said gravely, ‘I am afraid
that this explains a great deal.’