JEVONS GROWS MYSTERIOUS.
On coming down to breakfast on the following morning I found Mrs.
Mivart awaiting me alone. The old lady apologised for Mary's
non-appearance, saying that it was her habit to have her tea in her
room, but that she sent me a message of farewell.
Had it been at all possible I would have left by a later train, for I
was extremely anxious to watch her demeanour after last night's
clandestine meeting, but with such a crowd of patients awaiting me it
was imperative to leave by the first train. Even that would not bring
me to King's Cross before nearly eleven o'clock.
"Well now, doctor," Mrs. Mivart commenced rather anxiously when we
were seated, and she had handed me my coffee. "You saw Mary last
night, and had an opportunity of speaking with her. What is your
opinion? Don't hesitate to tell me frankly, for I consider that it is
my duty to face the worst."
"Really!" I exclaimed, looking straight at her after a moment's
reflection. "To speak candidly I failed to detect anything radically
wrong in your daughter's demeanour."
"But didn't you notice, doctor, how extremely nervous she is; how in
her eyes there is a haunting, suspicious look, and how blank is her
mind upon every other subject but the great calamity that has
befallen her?"
"I must really confess that these things were not apparent to me," I
answered. "I watched her carefully, but beyond the facts that she is
greatly unnerved by the sad affair and that she is mourning deeply for
her dead husband, I can discover nothing abnormal."
"You are not of opinion, then, that her mind is growing unbalanced by
the strain?"
"Not in the least," I reassured her. "The symptoms she betrays are but
natural in a woman of her nervous, highly-strung temperament."
"But she unfortunately grieves too much," remarked the old lady with a
sigh. "His name is upon her lips at every hour. I've tried to distract
her and urged her to accompany me abroad for a time, but all to no
purpose. She won't hear of it."
I alone knew the reason of her refusal. In conspiracy with her "dead"
husband it was impossible to be apart from him for long together. The
undue accentuation of her daughter's feigned grief had alarmed the old
lady--and justly so. Now that I recollected, her conduct at table on
the previous night was remarkable, having regard to the true facts of
the case. I confess I had myself been entirely deceived into believing
that her sorrow at Henry Courtenay's death was unbounded. In every
detail her acting was perfect, and bound to attract sympathy among her
friends and arouse interest among strangers. I longed to explain to
the quiet, charming old lady what I had seen during my midnight
ramble; but such a course was, as yet, impossible. Indeed, if I made a
plain statement, such as I have given in the foregoing pages, surely
no one would believe me. But every man has his romance, and this was
mine.
Unable to reveal Mary's secret, I was compelled reluctantly to take
leave of her mother, who accompanied me out to where the dog-cart was
in waiting.
"I scarcely know, doctor, how to thank you sufficiently," the dear old
lady said as I took her hand. "What you have told me reassures me. Of
late I have been extremely anxious, as you may imagine."
"You need feel no anxiety," I declared. "She's nervous and run
down--that's all. Take her away for a change, if possible. But if she
refuses, don't force her. Quiet is the chief medicine in her case.
Good-bye."
She pressed my hand again in grateful acknowledgment, and then I
mounted into the conveyance and was driven to the station.
On the journey back to town I pondered long and deeply. Of a verity my
short visit to Mrs. Mivart had been fraught with good results, and I
was contemplating seeking Ambler Jevons at the earliest possible
moment and relating to him my astounding discovery. The fact that old
Courtenay was still living was absolutely beyond my comprehension. To
endeavour to form any theory, or to try and account for the
bewildering phenomenon, was utterly useless. I had seen him, and had
overheard his words. I could surely believe my eyes and ears. And
there it ended. The why and wherefore I put aside for the present,
remembering Mary's promise to him to come to town and have an
interview with me.
Surely that meeting ought to be most interesting. I awaited it with
the most intense anxiety, and yet in fear lest I might be led by her
clever imposture to blurt out what I knew. I felt myself on the eve of
a startling revelation; and my expectations were realized to the full,
as the further portion of this strange romance will show.
I know that many narratives have been written detailing the remarkable
and almost inconceivable machinations of those who have stained their
hands with crime, but I honestly believe that the extraordinary
features of my own life-romance are as strange as, if not stranger
than, any hitherto recorded. Even my worst enemy could not dub me
egotistical, I think; and surely the facts I have set down here are
plain and unvarnished, without any attempt at misleading the reader
into believing that which is untrue. Mine is a plain chronicle of a
chain of extraordinary circumstances which led to an amazing
denouement.
From King's Cross to Guy's is a considerable distance, and when I
alighted from the cab in the courtyard of the hospital it was nearly
mid-day. Until two o'clock I was kept busy in the wards, and after a
sandwich and a glass of sherry I drove to Harley Street, where I found
Sir Bernard in his consulting-room for the first time for a month.
"Ah! Boyd," he cried merrily, when I entered. "Thought I'd surprise
you to-day. I felt quite well this morning, so resolved to come up and
see Lady Twickenham and one or two others. I'm not at home to
patients, and have left them to you."
"Delighted to see you better," I declared, wringing his hand. "They
were asking after you at the hospital to-day. Vernon said he intended
going down to see you to-morrow."
"Kind of him," the old man laughed, placing his thin hands together,
after rubbing and readjusting his glasses. "You were away last night;
out of town, they said."
"Yes, I wanted a breath of fresh air," I answered, laughing. I did not
care to tell him where I had been, knowing that he held my love for
Ethelwynn as the possible ruin of my career.
His curiosity seemed aroused; but, although he put to me an ingenious
question, I steadfastly refused to satisfy him. I recollected too well
his open condemnation of my love on previous occasions. Now that the
"murdered" man was proved to be still alive, I surely had no further
grounds for my suspicion of Ethelwynn. That she had, by her silence,
deceived me regarding her engagement to Mr. Courtenay was plain, but
the theory that it was her hand that had assassinated him was
certainly disproved. Thus, although the discovery of the "dead" man's
continued existence deepened the mystery a thousandfold, it
nevertheless dispelled from my heart a good deal of the suspicion
regarding my well-beloved; and, in consequence, I was not desirous
that any further hostile word should be uttered against her.
While Sir Bernard went out to visit her ladyship and two or three
other nervous women living in the same neighbourhood, I seated myself
in his chair and saw the afternoon callers one after another. I fear
that the advice I gave during those couple of hours was not very
notable for its shrewdness or brilliancy. As in other professions, so
in medicine, when one's brain is overflowing with private affairs, one
cannot attend properly to patients. On such occasions one is apt to
ask the usual questions mechanically, hear the replies and scribble a
prescription of some harmless formula. On the afternoon in question I
certainly believe myself guilty of such lapse of professional
attention. Yet even we doctors are human, although our patients
frequently forget that fact. The medico is a long-suffering person,
even in these days of scarcity of properly-qualified men--the first
person called on emergency, and the very last to be paid!
It was past five o'clock before I was able to return to my rooms, and
on arrival I found upon my table a note from Jevons. It was dated from
the Yorick Club, a small but exceedingly comfortable Bohemian centre
in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and had evidently been written
hurriedly on the previous night:--
_"I hear you are absent in the country. That is unfortunate.
But as soon as you receive this, lose no time in calling at
the Hennikers' and making casual inquiries regarding Miss
Mivart. Something has happened, but what it is I have failed
to discover. You stand a better chance. Go at once. I must
leave for Bath to-night. Address me at the Royal Hotel, G.
W. Station._
"AMBLER JEVONS."
What could have transpired? And why had my friend's movements been so
exceedingly erratic of late, if he had not been following some clue?
Would that clue lead him to the truth, I wondered? Or was he still
suspicious of Ethelwynn's guilt?
Puzzled by this vague note, and wondering what had occurred, and
whether the trip to Bath was in connection with it, I made a hasty
toilet and drove in a hansom to the Hennikers'.
Mrs. Henniker met me in the drawing-room, just as gushing and charming
as ever. She was one of those many women in London who seek to hang on
to the skirts of polite society by reason of a distant connexion being
a countess--a fact of which she never failed to remind the stranger
before half-an-hour's acquaintance. She found it always a pleasant
manner in which to open a conversation at dinner, dance, or soiree:
"Oh! do you happen to know my cousin, Lady Nassington?" She never
sufficiently realised it as bad form, and therefore in her own circle
was known among the women, who jeered at her behind her back, as "The
Cousin of Lady Nassington." She was daintily dressed, and evidently
just come in from visiting, for she still had her hat on when she
entered.
"Ah!" she cried, with her usual buoyant air. "You truant! We've all
been wondering what had become of you. Busy, of course! Always the
same excuse! Find something fresh. You used it a fortnight ago to
refuse my invitation to take pot-luck with us."
I laughed at her unconventional greeting, replying, "If I say
something fresh it must be a lie. You know, Mrs. Henniker, how hard
I'm kept at it, with hospital work and private practice."
"That's all very well," she said, with a slight pout of her
well-shaped mouth--for she was really a pretty woman, even though full
of airs and caprices. "But it doesn't excuse you for keeping away from
us altogether."
"I don't keep away altogether," I protested. "I've called now."
She pulled a wry face, in order to emphasise her dissatisfaction at my
explanation, and said:
"And I suppose you are prepared to receive castigation? Ethelwynn has
begun to complain because people are saying that your engagement is
broken off."
"Who says so?" I inquired rather angrily, for I hated all the
tittle-tattle of that little circle of gossips who dawdle over the
tea-cups of Redcliffe Square and its neighbourhood. I had attended a
good many of them professionally at various times, and was well
acquainted with all their ways and all their exaggerations. The
gossiping circle in flat-land about Earl's Court was bad enough, but
the Redcliffe Square set, being slightly higher in the social scale,
was infinitely worse.
"Oh! all the ill-natured people are commenting upon your apparent
coolness. Once, not long ago, you used to be seen everywhere with
Ethelwynn, and now no one ever sees you. People form a natural
conclusion, of course," said the fair-haired, fussy little woman,
whose married state gave her the right to censure me on my neglect.
"Ethelwynn is, of course, still with you?" I asked, in anger that
outsiders should seek to interfere in my private affairs.
"She still makes our house her home, not caring to go back to the
dulness of Neneford," was her reply. "But at present she's away
visiting one of her old schoolfellows--a girl who married a country
banker and lives near Hereford."
"Then she's in the country?"
"Yes, she went three days ago. I thought she had written to you. She
told me she intended doing so."
I had received no letter from her. Indeed, our recent correspondence
had been of a very infrequent and formal character. With a woman's
quick perception she had noted my coldness and had sought to show
equal callousness. With the knowledge of Courtenay's continued
existence now in my mind, I was beside myself with grief and anger at
having doubted her. But how could I act at that moment, save in
obedience to my friend Jevons' instructions? He had urged me to go and
find out some details regarding her recent life with the Hennikers;
and with that object I remarked:
"She hasn't been very well of late, I fear. The change of air should
do her good."
"That's true, poor girl. She's seemed very unwell, and I've often
told her that only one doctor in the world could cure her
malady--yourself."
I smiled. The malady was, I knew too well, the grief of a disappointed
love, and a perfect cure for that could only be accomplished by
reconciliation. I was filled with regret that she was absent, for I
longed there and then to take her to my breast and whisper into her
ear my heart's outpourings. Yes; we men are very foolish in our
impetuosity.
"How long will she be away?"
"Why?" inquired the smartly-dressed little woman, mischievously. "What
can it matter to you?"
"I have her welfare at heart, Mrs. Henniker," I answered seriously.
"Then you have a curious way of showing your solicitude on her
behalf," she said bluntly, smiling again. "Poor Ethelwynn has been
pining day after day for a word from you; but you seldom, if ever,
write, and when you do the coldness of your letters adds to her burden
of grief. I knew always when she had received one by the traces of
secret tears upon her cheeks. Forgive me for saying so, Doctor, but
you men, either in order to test the strength of a woman's affection,
or perhaps out of mere caprice, often try her patience until the
strained thread snaps, and she who was a good and pure woman becomes
reckless of everything--her name, her family pride, and even her own
honour."
Her words aroused my curiosity.
"And you believe that Ethelwynn's patience is exhausted?" I asked,
anxiously.
Her eyes met mine, and I saw a mysterious expression in them. There is
always something strange in the eyes of a pretty woman who is hiding a
secret.
"Well, Doctor," she answered, in a voice quite calm and deliberate,
"you've already shown yourself so openly as being disinclined to
further associate yourself publicly with poor Ethelwynn, because of
the tragedy that befell the household, that you surely cannot complain
if you find your place usurped by a new and more devoted lover."
"What!" I cried, starting up, fiercely. "What is this you tell me?
Ethelwynn has a lover?"
"I have nothing whatever to do with her affairs, Doctor," said the
tantalising woman, who affected all the foibles of the smarter set.
"Now that you have forsaken her she is, of course, entirely mistress
of her own actions."
"But I haven't forsaken her!" I blurted forth.
She only smiled superciliously, with the same mysterious look--an
expression that I cannot define, but by which I knew that she had told
me the crushing truth. Ethelwynn, believing that I had cast her aside,
had allowed herself to be loved by another!
Who was the man who had usurped my place? I deserved it all, without a
doubt. You, reader, have already in your heart condemned me as being
hard and indifferent towards the woman I once loved so truly and so
well. But, in extenuation, I would ask you to recollect how grave were
the suspicions against her--how every fact seemed to prove
conclusively that her sister's husband had died by her hand.
I saw plainly in Mrs. Henniker's veiled words a statement of the
truth; and, after obtaining from her Ethelwynn's address near
Hereford, bade her farewell and blindly left the house.