Maid of the Mist Part 5

"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 surrept.i.tiously 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 circ.u.mstances, 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."