Studies in Wives Part 16

As he walked slowly along the unlovely narrow streets which run parallel to the High Road, his emotional memory brought his wife vividly before him. He began wondering painfully if she would ever understand, if she would realise, from what he had saved her by that which he was about to do. His knowledge of her character made him feel sure--and there was infinite comfort in the thought--that she would remain silent, that she would never yield to any foolish impulse to tell Wingfield the truth. It was good to feel so sure that his old friend would never know of his failure, of his great and desolate humiliation.

Dering spent the next hour exactly as he had planned; in fact, at no point of the programme did his good fortune desert him. Thus, even the doctor, a man called Johnstone, who might so easily have been out, was at home; and, though actually giving a little stag party, he good-naturedly consented to leave his guests for a few moments, in spite of the fact that the stranger waiting in the surgery had refused to state his business.

"My name is Dering. I think you must have often met my wife when you were attending the late Mrs. Hinton. In fact I've come to-night to settle the Hintons' account. I fancy it is still owing?"

Dering spoke with abrupt energy, looking straight, and almost with a frown, as he spoke, into the other's kindly florid face. It seemed strange, at that moment intolerably hard, that this man, who looked so much less alive, so much less intellectually keen than himself, should be destined to find him within a few hours lying dead, obliterated into nothingness.

"Oh, yes, the account is still owing," Dr. Johnstone spoke with a certain eagerness. "Then do I understand that you are acting for Mr.

Hinton in the matter? The amount is exactly ten pounds----"

He paused awkwardly, and not till the two bank-notes were actually lying on his surgery table before him did he believe in his good fortune. The Hintons' account had long since pa.s.sed into that cla.s.s of doctor's bills which is only kept on the books with a view to the ultimate sale of the practice, and this last quarter the young man had not even troubled to send it in again.

Johnstone remembered poor Mrs. Hinton's friend very well; Mrs. Dering had been splendid, perfectly splendid, as nurse and comforter to the distracted household. And then such a pretty woman, too, the very type--quiet, sensible, self-contained, and yet feminine--whom Dr.

Johnstone admired; he was always pleased when he met her walking about the neighbourhood.

This, then, was her husband? The doctor stared across at Dering with some curiosity. Well, he also, though, of course, in quite another way, was uncommon and attractive-looking. What was it he had heard about these people quite lately, in fact, that very day? Why, of course. One of his old lady patients in Bedford Park had told him that her opposite neighbours, this Mr. and Mrs. Dering, had come into a large fortune--something like fifty thousand pounds!

Dr. Johnstone looked at his visitor with a sudden accession of respect.

If he could have foreseen this interview, he might have made his account with Mr. Hinton bear rather more relation to the actual number of visits he had been compelled to pay to that unfortunate household. Still, he reminded himself that even ten pounds were very welcome just now, and his heart warmed to Mr. Hinton's generous friend.

Suddenly Dering began speaking: "I forget if I told you that I am starting this very night for a long journey, and before doing so I want to ask you to do me a favour----"

His host became all pleased attention.

"Would you kindly witness my will? I have just come into a sum of money, and--and, though my will is actually being drawn up by a friend, who is also a lawyer, I have felt uneasy----"

"I quite understand. You have thought it wise to make a provisional will? Well, that's a very sensible thing to do! We medical men see much trouble caused by foolish postponement of such matters. Some men seem to think that making a will is tantamount to signing their own death-warrant!"

But no answering smile brightened Dering's fiercely set face; he did not seem to have heard what the doctor had said. "If I might ask you for a sheet of notepaper. I see a pen and blotting-pad over there----"

A sudden, instinctive misgiving crossed the other's mind.

"This is rather informal, isn't it? Of course, I have no call to interfere, Mr. Dering; but if a large sum is involved might it not be better to wait?"

Dering looked up. For the first time he smiled.

"I don't wish to make any mystery about it, Dr. Johnstone. I am leaving everything to my wife, and after her to sundry young people in whom we are both interested. If I die intestate, I understand that distant relatives of my own--people whom I don't like, and who have never done anything for me--are bound to benefit."

Even as he spoke he was busy writing the words, "To Louise La.r.s.en (commonly known as Mrs. Philip Dering), of 9, Lady Rich Road, Bedford Park, and after her death to be divided equally between the children of my esteemed friend, James Wingfield, solicitor, of 24, Abingdon Street, Westminster, and the children of the late Mrs. John Hinton, of 8, Lady Rich Road, Bedford Park."

Short as was Dering's will, the last portion of it was written on the inner sheet of the piece of note paper bearing the doctor's address, and the two witnesses, Johnstone himself, and a friend whom he fetched out of his smoking-room for the purpose, could not help seeing what generous provision the testator had made for the younger generation.

As the doctor opened the front door for his, as he hoped, new friend, Dering suddenly pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket.

"I have forgotten a most important thing----" there was real dismay in his fresh, still youthful voice--"and that is to ask you kindly to look round at No. 8, Lady Rich Road, after your friends have left you to-night. I should think about twelve o'clock would do very well. In fact, Hinton won't be ready for you before. And, Dr. Johnstone--in view of the trouble to which you may be put----" Dering thrust another bank-note into the other man's hand. "I know you ought to have charged a lot more than that ten pounds----" and then, before words of thanks could be uttered, he had turned and gone down the steps, along the little path, through the iron gate which swung under the red lamp, into the darkness beyond.

Down the broad and now solitary High Road, filled with the strange brooding stillness of a spring dawn, clattered discordantly a hansom cab. There was promise of a bright warm day, such a day as yesterday had been, but Wingfield, leaning forward, unconsciously willing the horse to go faster, felt very cold.

At last, not for the first time during this interminable journey, he took from his breast pocket the unsigned telegram which was the cause of his being here, driving, oh! how slowly, along this fantastically empty thoroughfare, through the chill morning air, instead of lying sound asleep by Kate's side in his comfortable bed at home.

"_Philip Dering is dead please come at once at once at once to eight Lady Rich Road._"

Wingfield, steadying the slip of paper as it fluttered in his hand, looked down with frowning puzzled eyes at the pencilled words.

The message had been set off just before midnight, and had reached his house, he supposed, an hour and a half later, for the persistent knocking at his front door had gone on for some time before he or his wife realised that the loud hammering sound concerned themselves. Even then it had been Kate who had at last roused herself and gone downstairs; Kate who had rushed up breathless, whispering as she thrust the orange envelope into his hand:--"Oh, James, what can it be? Thank G.o.d, all the children are safe at home!"

No time had been lost. While he was dressing, his wife had made him a cup of tea, kind and solicitous for his comfort, but driving him nearly distracted by her eager, excited talk and aimless conjectures. It had seemed long before he found a derelict cab willing to drive him from Regent's Terrace to Bedford Park, but now--well, thank G.o.d, he was at last nearing the place where he would learn what had befallen the man who had been, next to his own elder boy, the creature he had loved best in his calm, phlegmatic life.

Wingfield went on staring down at the mysterious and yet explicit message, of which the wording seemed to him so odd--in some ways recalling Dering's familiar trick of reiteration. Then suddenly he thought of Hinton, the artist for whom both he and his friend had had reason to feel so deep if wordless a contempt, and yet whom they had both tried, over and over again, to help and set on his feet.

With a sudden revulsion of feeling, the lawyer folded up the telegram and put it back into his breast pocket--this mysterious, unsigned request for his immediate presence had obviously been despatched by Hinton, who might just as well have waited for morning. How stupid of him not to have realised this at once, the more so that No. 8, Lady Rich Road, was Hinton's address, not that of Dering. Quickly he raised his hand to the trap-door above his head; "Pull up at No. 8, not as I told you, at No. 9, Lady Rich Road," he shouted.

The radiance of an early spring morning, so kind to everything in nature, is pitiless to that which owes its being to the ingenuity and industry of human hands. Dr. Johnstone, standing opposite a police inspector in what had been poor Mrs. Hinton's cherished, if untidy and shabby, little sitting-room, felt his wretchedness and shame--for he felt very deeply ashamed--perceptibly increased by the dust-laden sunbeams dancing slantwise about him.

The inspector was really sorry for him, though a little contemptuous perhaps of a medical man capable of showing such emotion and horror in the face of death.

"Why, doctor, you mustn't take on so! How could you possibly have told what was in the man's mind? You weren't upset like this last year over that business in Angle Alley, and that was a sight worse than this, eh?"

But Johnstone had turned away, and was staring out of the bow window.

"It isn't that poor wretch Hinton that's upset me," he muttered, "I don't mind death. It's--it's--Dering--Dering and Mrs. Dering."

Reluctant tears filled his tired, red-rimmed eyes.

"I'm sorry, too. Very sorry for the lady, that is; as for the other--well, I'm pretty sure he'll cheat Broadmoor, and that without much delay, eh, doctor? Hullo! who's this coming now?"

The tone suddenly changed, became at once official and alert in quality, as the sound of wheels stopped opposite the little gate. When the front door bell pealed through the house he added, "You go to the door, doctor; whoever it is had better not see me at first." And Johnstone found himself suddenly pushed out of the room and into the little hall.

There he hesitated for a moment, looking furtively round at the half-open door which led into the back room fitted up as a studio, where still lay, in dreadful juxtaposition, the dead and the dying, Hinton and his murderer, alone, save for the indifferent yet watchful presence of a trained nurse.

From the kitchen beyond came the sound of eager, lowered voices, those of the two young servants who had of late coped with the difficulties of the Hinton household, and whose scanty wages had been paid, so Johnstone had learned in the last hour, by Mrs. Dering herself.

Another impatient peal of sound echoed through the house, and the doctor, walking slowly forward, opened the front door.

"Can I see Mr. Hinton? Or is he next door? I have driven down from town in response to this telegram. I was Mr. Philip Dering's oldest friend and solicitor----"

"Then--then it was _you_ who were making his will?"

The question struck Wingfield as unseemly. How had this young man, whom he took to be one of Hinton's dissipated friends, learnt even this one fact concerning poor Dering's affairs?

"Yes," he said shortly, as he walked through into the hall, "that was the case. But, of course--well, perhaps, you will kindly inform me where I can see Mr. Hinton?" he repeated impatiently. "I suppose he is with Mrs. Dering, at No. 9?" and the other noticed that he left the door open behind him, evidently intending to leave Hinton's house as soon as he had obtained a reply to his question.

For a moment the two men looked at one another in exasperated silence.

Then, very suddenly, Johnstone did that of which he was afterward sorry and self-reproachful. But his nerve was completely gone; for hours he had been engaged in what had proved both a terrible and a futile task, that of attempting to relieve the physical agony of a man for whose state he partly held himself to be responsible. He wished to avoid, at any rate for the present, the repet.i.tion to this stranger of what had happened the night before.